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The fog was beginning to thin ahead of us, and I thought I could see moonlight. There was a sound behind us like a click or a hiss, I didn’t know what, and then a roaring sound echoed through everything. I glanced back to see an orange glow in the fog behind us.
Nathaniel started to run, pulling me along with our joined hands. The fog opened up to a clearing surrounded by small, stunted trees. It reminded me of the trees on the clifftop in the dream I’d had in the car. But this time there was no cliff, just three women standing together in the center of the clearing. They were dressed similarly to us except for the color, which was black. It matched their hair, and though it was hard to tell in the moonlight I knew that one had pale tan skin, one dark. Neva in the center was the oldest, still standing tall and straight, unbent by age, but her skin showed a lifetime of being out in the sun without care, her bones delicate the way some people look over seventy.
It was the three brujas of the rodere, the wererats’ witches in the moonlight. No, not sunlight. No, they were inside in the fighting pit, the heart of the wererats’ power. Nathaniel and I were running full out now with the roar of the dragon behind us. The fog glowed with fire, but there was no heat and the fog never lifted except in front of us.
Nathaniel’s feet hit the sand of the fighting pit and then it was all gone. I was chained to the wall in the warehouse with Deimos holding me in his arms. He pushed me away from him, so that I stumbled in the pile of carpets. It was better than sleeping on the floor, but I was really beginning to wish for more even ground.
“Who has such magic that they could interfere between me and my prey?” he demanded, which meant he hadn’t seen anyone else inthe vision he’d created for me. “They are using your reluctance to join with me as a thread to find you, somehow. If you let me give you my marks without struggle, then it will be over, and no one will be able to take you from me.”
“Why would I stop fighting now? I know that all our people are searching for me. It’s our territory, we know it better than you do, and they will find me.”
“It won’t matter once you bear my marks. In fact, their magic will join with mine and Queenie’s and make me even more powerful.”
“Fuck you.”
“When I have taken the last of Jean-Claude’s whoredom from you, perhaps your language will not be so slatternly.”
“I don’t even know what that last word means.”
“Basically he’s calling you a low-class, dirty streetwalker,” Rodina said.
“Damn, he is new in town if he thinks that anything about Jean-Claude is low-class.”
She almost smiled, then fought it off. Then all trace of smiles were gone. “Why are they bringing our brother?”
“I’m told on occasion he sleeps with her.”
“Sleeps, not fucks,” she said.
“The language you young women use today.” He damn neartsked at us.
“She smelled of leopard twice tonight. Once when you were near her, Phobos, and just now. From all reports leopard is her animal to call, not Jean-Claude’s but hers alone. Is she gaining power through the two of you?”
“I have betrayed her in every way, and she has sworn to kill me; why would I help her, even if I knew how?” Rodrigo asked.
“That is the question, isn’t it, Phobos?”
Two cloaked figures who were completely covered, including masks, entered the room carrying Ru by his arms, which seemed to be bound behind his back. I realized there was a rope around hisankles that went behind his back to connect to his arms. They’d hog-tied him. It was not a comfortable way to be tied up, and depending on how tight they did the knots it could be really uncomfortable. Ru’s head was hanging down, so I couldn’t see his face. He seemed to be out cold.
“Nice to know one of you didn’t betray us,” I said.
“He was happy to see me at first,” Rodrigo said, “and then he defied me.” The look on his face as he said the last part would have scared me once, but honestly I had bigger problems right now.
“I thought he’d join us once he realized Rodrigo was alive,” Rodina said.
“Where do you want him?” one of the masked figures asked.
“Mischa, you took a blood oath to Jean-Claude; you shouldn’t be able to betray him like this.”
“Deimos offered stronger blood and I took it.” I couldn’t see anything but his bright blue eyes behind the mask. He was back in full Harlequin gear and all in black. Once black meant they had come to kill you. White meant they were still there to observe. Red had meant punishment or pain, drawing blood. They were dressed in black, but then all our security wore black. I hadn’t thought about the color code and the fact that we didn’t have one anymore. So many rules had gone away when the old vampire council had been destroyed.
“I expected better of you, Goran.”
The other cloaked figure looked at me with reddish-brown eyes in his mask. “I go where my master goes; it is the way of things.”
“He was physically abusing you.”
“You forced us to go to therapy and we went,” Mischa said.
