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“This is all very touching,” Zakarriyyah said dryly. “But can we please get back to the point?”

“Which was?” I asked, still hanging onto my lover.

“To discover who sent our attackers. If it wasn’t the two of you—”

“What attackers?”

He looked irritated, probably because he’d already explained this to Louis-Cesare while I was out. But I hadn’t heard it. And I still didn’t.

Because someone cursed and someone screamed, and every vamp in the semi-circle surrounding us suddenly looked like they’d seen a ghost. Several fell to their knees and several more fled, dropping their weapons and running for the exit. And the rest were staring in what looked like horror at something behind me.

I turned, but all I saw was an elongated shadow flickering in the firelight and rippling down the stairs. It didn’t look like a man; it didn’t look like anything, at least not from this angle. And before I could look up and see what had cast it, the healer’s pretty face was in my way.

“Do it,” Louis-Cesare said roughly. “Now!”

“What?” I asked, turning back toward him.

And never completed the motion. A soft, cool hand slid onto my shoulder, and I realized what was going on—half a second too late. “Don’t you da—” I began.

Then I was out.

I woke up furious—and disoriented, because I was staring up at a huge dwarf. He had to be three stories tall and was carrying a basket filled with giant emeralds. He looked like he’d tripped, and some of the stones were tumbling out and cascading to earth like the world’s costliest waterfall. I was lying right underneath, and the view up the glimmering cascade was seriously trippy with only half my brain working.

Bes, the demon fighter, I thought vaguely. God of war and parties, which didn’t seem to go together to me, but the ancient Egyptians had liked him. One of our guides had said that dancing girls often had a tattoo of him on their upper thigh . . .

Then the rest of my brain came online, and I abruptly sat up.

Son of a bitch!

The world went violently swimmy as soon as I moved, as if I was in a boat on the high seas. I clutched the cold stone underneath me and stared around, waiting for my eyes to adjust and my stomach to settle down. I didn’t get any help with that, because the healer—damn her—was missing, although that might have been her screaming somewhere in the distance. I couldn’t tell. It was a woman, but there were men’s shouts, too, and bangs and crashes and—

I grabbed my head, feeling cold hair on one side and bumpy, burnt flesh on the other. It was concerning, but less so than the pain. What had that bitch done to me?

I didn’t know, but I slowly realized that I’d been moved into the shadow of the great stairs, as had Hassani. He was lying nearby, with the remains of his smoke blackened robes still white enough in places to show up in the gloom. He was out cold, but since he hadn’t dusted away, I assumed he was in a healing trance.

Lantern Boy was there, too, standing a little way off and bisected by a jagged backdrop of half-light, half-dark from the slant of the staircase. It lit up his own white and blue robe and the hand he was using to clutch the stone. I couldn’t see his face, but his body language read “freaked out” loud and clear.

Makes two of us, I thought, and rolled to my knees. This did not improve the massive migraine that the vamp hereafter to be known as That Bitch had given me. But I somehow managed to drag myself back to my feet.

The fury helped. It helped a lot. I’d been left with a half dead consul and a kid who couldn’t be more than a couple years into his vampy life.

“I’m the weak one,” I heard Louis-Cesare say again.

Sure, asshole.

Which is why you stuck me at the kiddie table.

We were going to have words about that, oh, yes, we were, but first I needed to find out what the hell was going on. And there was only one person to ask. I tried a few steps, managed not to fall on my face, and limped over to junior. Only I guessed he hadn’t noticed.

“Hey,” I croaked, and had to jump back to avoid his swinging fist.

He recognized me after a second and stumbled back against the stairs, a hand clutching the fabric over his no longer beating heart. Vamps are hard to sneak up on, but this was one was clearly not doing well. The huge, liquid dark eyes were wide and panicked, and the already mangled lip had been bitten all the way through a couple of times. He had one fang up and one down, and was looking frankly deranged.

I frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

This was not the right question. The result was some more bruises courtesy of a pair of slender hands that forgot to be gentle when they grabbed my upper arms, and a panicked torrent of part English, part Arabic, and part something I couldn’t identify with my head swimming and people screaming and what sounded like a full-on battle happening on the other side of the stairs. But my lack of comprehension seemed to disturb him even more, because after a moment, he shook me.

“Do you understand?”

“No.”

And then something flew by overhead, big as a small airplane, and briefly blocked out what little light there was. Lantern Boy ducked with a shriek, his hands over his head, and something hit the far wall of the chamber like a bomb. It rocked the room, sending shrapnel flying everywhere, and dust billowing like a desert storm had blown up inside.

“The hell?” I coughed, and hugged the side of the stairs myself.

I didn’t get an answer. Not that I really needed one. A piece of stone the size of a VW Beetle had hit the wall beside the dwarf and spun to a stop, showing a curved shape with familiar carving on it.

I stared at it, slowly coming to terms with the fact that one of the massive columns that supported the roof had just been launched across the room. I had no idea how, and wasn’t likely to get one with my only informant huddled and incoherent. I decided to see for myself.

There was a lot of dust floating around beyond the stairs, and some large piles of rubble that had probably been pillars a little while ago. A torch still burned over the closest heap, on the side of a still intact column that the rubble had washed up against. It was sending flickering shadows to lick the floor, although they didn’t help much since the torch was guttering, and the debris blocked much of my view.

I glanced around, but didn’t see anybody brandishing weapons, or anybody at all. This area seemed completely deserted. I took a chance and ran, reaching the bottom of the rubble pile safely, and intending to climb up for a better vantage point.

That turned out to be harder than I’d thought. My hands were fumbling and clumsy, and my feet were no better, acting as if the rubble was on some kind of conveyor belt. Which wasn’t far from the truth, as it was loose and moved every time I did. Damn it, how could this simple thing be such a royal pain in the—

There!

I felt an inordinate sense of accomplishment after finally surmounting a hill that had started to feel more like Everest. The damned torch was right overhead, searing my eyes and making it impossible to see anything. But I instinctively hugged the rocks, anyway, staying low, staying out of sight.

Battlefields were no place to poke your head up.

Not that I could hear much fighting anymore, come to think of it. Or any, really. Things were suddenly, eerily quiet.

I shifted position, putting myself in the flickering shadows along one side of the heap, next to the still intact column. The dimness helped my vision, but not my mood. Because the huge room was littered with corpses.

And some of them were still stumbling around.

There was a burned and blackened . . . thing . . . nearby that I only identified as a man by the overall shape. The skin was flaked up, like black, crispy shingles, the left arm was mostly gone and the head was on fire. It looked like a human torch, burning brightly enough to actually light up some of the surrounding rubble. One of the cheeks flared as I watched, and I actually gasped, a lifetime of shit still apparently not enough preparation.

It was a small sound, but the thing’s head immediately turned my way.

It didn’t have eyes, it didn’t have ears, it didn’t have most of a head, but it was coming. And it was coming fast. Fortunately, it seemed to have as much of a problem with the rubble mountain as I had. Unfortunately, its struggle had attracted the interest of a couple buddies, who headed over to help.

And I finally caught a clue.

The human torch was tall, maybe six feet or more despite missing most of a head. But the backup guys were shorter, were wearing identical black outfits, and did not look like they’d been hanging out in a bonfire. They were very clearly dead, with slack features and obvious wounds, with one still having a knife sticking out of his eye. They were also familiar.

I realized that I was looking at two of the small, ninja type guys who had attacked Hassani’s place last night, in order to steal the artifacts. Two who hadn’t made it back out, by the look of things. So, what were they doing hanging out down here?

“Somebody make the bodies from last night go,” a low voice said from behind me.

I turned my head to see Lantern Boy clinging to some rubble, and eying the sparks flying out of the guttering torch warily. He still looked freaked out, but there was also a stubborn tilt to his jaw. As if seeing a beat-up woman head out when he wouldn’t had wounded some pride.

“They carry them to morgue for study,” he continued. “But then—” He suddenly splayed his fingers, like fireworks going off. Or, I guessed, like zombies sitting up. Because that was absolutely what those things were.

Looked like Louis-Cesare had been right, after all.

“They attack our people,” Lantern Boy added. “That why master set fire to monster.”

I nodded. A necromancer, especially one as powerful as Jonathan, could probably animate any corpse in the area. Hassani’s people must have mentally communicated with him about what was happening at the morgue, so he’d decided to make sure that the big boy didn’t get in on the act.

Which, points for proactivity, but he could have said something!

Of course, that didn’t explain why he’d wanted to show me the creepy thing in the first place, but that could wait.

“Only it not work.”

I’d started digging in my jacket, to see if I had anything that might help with the current problem, so it took a second for what Lantern Boy had said to register. I stopped and looked back at him. “What?”

He nodded solemnly. “He return. He always return.”

I knew—I knew—I was going to regret asking this. “Who returns?”

The boy’s eyes flickered ominously, or maybe that was just the light. Most of the fuel had been knocked out of our torch during the impact with the other column, leaving it with only a few knotted reeds and some small sticks in the metal holder, most of which had been consumed. But dark red embers still glowed at the base, and deep in his eyes.

“Gods not like us,” he told me. “They not die, you see? They . . .” he stopped, as if searching for the right word. Which I guessed he didn’t find, because he looked frustrated. “Like torch, about to go out.”

He waved a hand at the fading item over our heads.

“They burn lower?”

He nodded. “Yes, they go low. But not out. They just need—”

“Someone to add more fuel,” I said numbly, wondering why what remained of my skin suddenly felt like it was about to detach and crawl off.

A massive crash shook the rubble underneath me, and another pillar disintegrated into pieces. It was on the far side of the room, in an area of mostly shadow, but that didn’t matter. From this vantage point, I could see perfectly well. And what I could see . . .

“He glow bright now,” Lantern Boy whispered.

Yeah, I thought, staring at the creature emerging from the curling clouds of dust.

Yeah.

It was a snake, if snakes were as big as buildings. A cobra by the look of it, with the typical wide spread hood and flickering tongue, and black as sin. But not like the zombie, which had been darkened by fire. This thing looked fresh out of the box new, without a mark on it. The black was a shiny, lustrous gleam of a color, like the paint on a luxury car, or the patina of black pearls. It was broken up into a thousand small scales—if the size of a medieval shield is considered small—that shaded to gray and then to white on its belly, getting smaller and tighter as they went, down to maybe the size of my fist.

I shouldn’t have been able to see it so well from this distance, but I guess my hawk charm was still functional. Because I was getting a perfect view of round, wicked black eyes reflecting the lamplight like golden suns. And of fangs longer than my body. And of a tongue flicking out in between them, as if testing the air, looking for . . .

Something.

My stomach gave a lurch, but I didn’t have time to decode the message it was sending before the burning zombie lunged. How it had hoisted itself up Mount Rubble I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I put two bullets in what was left of its brain and kicked it back into the other two, who were also clumsily headed up. More of the creatures turned their heads my way, as if on a string, drawn to the echoing sound of the bullets.

But not the main event. It just stayed where it was, swaying back and forth and occasionally striking down at . . . nothing, as far as I could tell. But it wasn’t nothing.

Please God, I thought fervently. Please, just one time. Just this one, fucking time, don’t let it be—

Goddamnit!

The creature turned suddenly and I spotted Louis-Cesare, clinging to the side of its neck, just under the great hood, with a sword in his hand. He clearly intended to use it to chop off the head. Which would have been fine, which would have been great, except that that wasn’t going to work, and where the hell had I put—

“Where he come from?” Lantern Boy shrieked, spotting him, too, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, not that it mattered at this point.

“He does that,” I muttered, searching frantically through my jacket.

“Does what?”

“It’s called the Veil. He goes . . . dim,” I explained—badly, but who had time for—

A muffled scream from Lantern Boy had me looking up, just in time to see my lover hit the far wall of the great chamber, hard enough to leave a Louis-Cesare shaped divot in a cavorting goddess. I didn’t know who she was, but she had a tambourine in her hand and was wearing a ton of golden spangles, each of which appeared to be made out of actual gold and was as long as a spear. Which became a problem when Louis-Cesare fell to the ground and they stabbed down on top of him.

He was a master; they wouldn’t kill him. But they could pin him for a second, and a second was all that thing needed. And if there was anyone else still able to help, I didn’t see them.

In a split second, I spotted hairy chested Rashid, his bald head gleaming in the torchlight, his body writhing on a spear half buried in solid rock. Nearby was bearded Bahram, on his feet but wrestling with half a dozen energetic looking zombies. Zakarriyyah was also still standing, in front of a pile of the wounded, defending them alone with a single sabre. Even That Bitch had gotten in on the act, with twin daggers in her hands and a snarl on her pretty face, as she stared down two partially burnt corpses.

But no one else had been crazy enough to take on the main event, no one but my husband. Who was about to pay for it. The huge, hooded head reared back, the fangs descended, the body lunged—

And was hit by a double barrage of bullets as I sped across the floor, a bright red crotch rocket between my thighs, a defiant scream on my lips, and two .44 Magnums in my hands.

The bullets didn’t hurt it; I hadn’t expected them to hurt it. The damned thing had survived a funeral pyre and come out shiny and spit polished. But they got its attention.

Oh, boy, did they get its attention.

And goddamn, the creature was fast. It didn’t so much stop its lunge as change direction, almost quicker than my eyes could track. One second it was spearing down at Louis-Cesare, and the next—

It was right in my face.