Page 27

“Shit,” I said softly, staring as the inky black specter launched itself at a group of maybe a dozen fey, who had been about to end this whole affair with a massive drop from both sides of the street. Instead, they didn’t even have time to shit their pants before—

“Allah preserve us,” Hassani said softly, while I just sat there, staring.

The vamp whose eyes I was seeing through had had much the same reaction. He skidded to a halt at the edge of a gutter while a hail of body parts rattled down on the rooftops, street, and crowd of screaming, running humans below. Right before getting splashed in the face with a huge gout of blood himself from a savaged torso.

It smacked down at his feet, pale and naked and looking like a wild animal had been at it. A really big animal. Vamps are not squeamish for obvious reasons, but I felt this one’s diaphragm give a slight lurch of sympathy.

Because she’d torn them apart, literally ripping the contingent of fey limb from limb, and so fast that my eyes couldn’t track it, because the vamp’s couldn’t. He stared down at the modern art like splatter of white skin, yellow fat, and red blood and veins and meat that was all that was left of a being possibly older than the pyramids. Then he looked up, a little dizzily, giving me a diminishing view of the mad cavalcade as it disappeared down the street.

I saw Dorina flow back into our body, hacking and slashing without missing a beat. I saw Ray fling us around the alley as if he was born to it. I saw myself . . . well, honestly, I didn’t remember what I’d been doing. All this crazy shit had been happening around me, yet I’d noticed very little of it.

Which made no damned sense at all!

Was Hassani doctoring the images he was sharing for some reason? Because I wasn’t that oblivious and Dorina . . . couldn’t do any of that. My brain skidded off the topic of the specter, as if unwilling to deal with it right now, and concentrated instead on the swiftness of the attack. She had the liquid speed of all masters, but she wasn’t that fast—I knew she wasn’t.

Louis-Cesare had been faster than her when we’d fought while he was possessed. Not by a lot, but enough that I’d lost a leg to that damned blade of his! Mircea had managed to reattach it, but I still had the scar. It was only a fine line now, barely even noticeable, just a shade lighter than the rest of my skin. But still. If she’d been able to do what I just saw, I wouldn’t have a mark on me.

And Louis-Cesare would be dead.

Of course, I’d been holding her back, fighting with everything I had, because my lover was not in his right mind and I didn’t want her to gut him. Whereas, last night, I had been helping her. Had my contribution really made so much difference?

Or had she merely been learning new skills since then, spreading her wings now that she could, becoming what she was meant to be all along? Instead of helping her, had I been holding her back all these years? I had no idea.

I looked up and saw Hassani’s eyes on me through the hazy street scene he was still projecting, probably because he was waiting for an answer to his question. I licked my lips. “I . . . never saw her . . . like that.”

“And now that you have?”

I refocused my eyes and stared at the bloody mess scattered across the souk. The consul’s vamps were doing the same, appearing a little shell shocked. But they had a job to do, and to give them credit, they didn’t hesitate for long.

They began dropping off of buildings, with most grabbing passersby and wiping their memories, as well as any phone or other recording device they could find. Others began cleaning up, piling pieces of once formidable adversaries into whatever receptacles were available. There were plenty to choose from, everything from baskets to brass platters, since the shopkeepers had all fled.

Not a single vamp went after Dorina.

I didn’t blame them.

“I got nothing,” I told Hassani honestly.

“Well, perhaps I do.”

The vision faded, bringing his features more clearly into view, or maybe that was the brilliant white light of the laser spectacle behind him. I spread my hands. “Go for it.”

“I have seen something like that once,” he said. “Long ago. I saw one who could fight in spirit as well as in body, and lay waste to hundreds, all on his own. I saw one who moved faster than eyes could track, even our eyes. I saw an army in the guise of a single man, and I never forgot it.”

It took me a minute, because my mind was mostly still back at the souk, trying to reconcile the two versions of events, mine and Hassani’s. And then I still wasn’t sure that I understood him. Because he seemed to be implying . . . no. No!

“You think Dorina is . . . like that thing downstairs?” I said slowly. My skin crawled at the very thought. It crawled hard.

“You misunderstand—”

“I damned well hope so! She doesn’t—she isn’t—I damned well hope so!”

“I only meant,” Hassani began, but I wasn’t done yet.

“That thing didn’t fight like her! He wasn’t a spirit, or whatever the hell. He was a snake—”

“Which is rather the point,” the consul said mildly. “He could take many shapes, but not hold two different ones at the same time. We had deprived him of his greatest power by burying him so far underground, away from the sun. He therefore he chose his next favorite form—”

“Bullshit! This is bullshit! They are not the same!”

“I never meant to imply—”

“Then what the hell did you mean?”

“I would like to hear that myself,” Louis-Cesare said, his jaw tight. He looked disturbed. Yeah, no shit!

Hassani sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. It was dark brown and lay in perfect waves, because he was using a glamourie. I’d seen him without it and it had been half gray and wiry, and his face had been lined as it wasn’t now. But the natural elegance of the man wasn’t fake.

Yet his movements at the moment were abrupt and lacking grace, and his face was showing too much emotion for one usually so poised. It occurred to me to wonder if there was a reason why he had been beating around the bush so much, taking me to see the remains of the creature downstairs today and stalling tonight.

He didn’t know how to talk about this, either.

“I am explaining this badly,” he finally said. “Let me go back to the beginning. To what we were discussing in the temple earlier today.”

I realized that I’d stood up at some point without even realizing it. I wanted to keep on going, to walk right out. I’d been so sure that Hassani had something useful, something that would lead me to Dorina or at least to Jonathan, and this was it? Some crazy shit about—

God, I was pissed!

I should have left as soon as I woke up this evening, just grabbed Louis-Cesare and gone. He’d seen what was in the morgue, before it tried to kill us. If there were any clues, he had them, and I had people—

Hell, I was a senator now. I didn’t even need my old contacts, although I had them, I had plenty of them! But I could also call on the Hounds the senate employed. Their vamps could track a fly in a hurricane. I didn’t need this—

Louis-Cesare took my hand. Immediately, I felt calmer, more grounded, more in control. I resented it, because I didn’t want to be calm right now, but I acknowledged that I needed it. Because, yes, I could do all of that. But if Jonathan had taken a portal what good did it do me? He could be anywhere by now, and Hassani’s people were the only ones who might have seen something useful.

I was going to have to be a freaking diplomat if it killed me.

I sat back down. “All right.”

Hassani looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind and just got on with it. “The gods became aggressive toward each other after a time on Earth,” he said, “unable to decide how to allocate its resources and those of the hell regions beyond. Yet they were too well matched for one group to triumph over another, and thus tried to create themselves armies to tip the scales in their favor. But humans were not strong enough for the purpose, and thus experiments were made to improve them.”

I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that I knew all this. Some I’d heard from the Irin, and the rest from the countless senate sessions we’d had lately about the war. How all the gods had been vying with each other, trying to come up with some kind of advantage over the rest. Then one, Artemis, realized that she already had it. While everyone else was struggling to build armies, she was building up herself, using her unique ability to traverse the hells to hunt the juiciest prey: age old demon lords with millennia of accumulated power, all of which she’d absorbed after killing them.

It had made her into an army all on her own, which had eventually allowed her to kick the other gods off Earth and to slam a metaphysical door—in the form of a powerful spell—behind them. But Artemis had since died, and the old gods were now pounding on the door trying to get back in. And to make matters worse, they had supporters on this side of the barrier, including the fey king Aeslinn, who had donated all those warriors last night.

We were attempting to hunt him down before he succeeded in finding a way to throw open that door, leading to the ass kicking of the century for our side. So far, it had been going better than expected, mainly because we had a demigod in the ranks, the child that Artemis had had before her death. And despite the Pythia’s questionable taste in jewelry, she had been able to pull victory after victory out of her ass.

Problem was, it only took one defeat, one thing that we didn’t see or account for, for the tide to change. Once the gods were back, they were back, and we had no way to fight them. Aeslinn’s capitol currently lay in ruins, his people scattered, his army decimated. But he was still out there, he had a fighting force, and he was plotting.

The question was, what was he doing?

“But this did not work out quite as planned,” Hassani said, watching me. “The gods’ experiments resulted in some of the greatest heroes—and monsters—of our mythological past, but the disciplined armies they hoped for did not materialize.”

“We don’t know that,” I pointed out tersely.

“Oh, but we do. Not from records, I grant you. Few have survived from that era, and none from the gods themselves. But we can extrapolate from the changes they made in the prototypes.”

I frowned. “You mean the dusting away in the sunlight, stake through the heart stuff?”

He nodded. “And the instability of weres around the time of the full moon. If an army is loyal to you, you have no reason to reduce its effectiveness in such ways.”

“And an army that goes insane once a month is vulnerable,” Louis-Cesare added. “As is one that burns up when the sun shines.”

I looked back at him. I had no idea what he thought about what we’d just seen, but he hadn’t pulled away from me, and there was no revulsion on his features. Just concentration, as if he wanted to understand this.

I just wanted Hassani to get to the point already!

The consul nodded. “Such a force can still be used against your enemies, who do not know of the safeguards that you have built in. But should your army rise against you, you can easily wipe them out.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what does any of this have to do with Dorina? She wasn’t tinkered with by the gods; she wasn’t even born then!”

“No, she was not,” Hassani agreed. “And we also know when your father was born . . .”

He trailed off, waiting.

I just looked at him. If he wanted to play little games, he’d picked the wrong woman and definitely the wrong night. He began to look slightly uncomfortable after a moment, but he didn’t say anything else.

“He is speaking of your mother,” Louis-Cesare finally told me, and I suddenly understood the consul’s silence. He’d wanted my husband to say those words, because if it had been him—

We’d have had a diplomatic incident on our hands.

“I’m done here,” I said, and got up.

But Louis-Cesare obviously wasn’t and he still had hold of my hand.

“Dory.”

“This is bullshit. You know it is.”

“Dory—”

“First, he insults my sister, comparing her to that evil . . . thing . . . we killed, and now my mother?” I looked at the consul, who was still just sitting there. “You don’t know the first damned thing about my mother!”

“And neither do you,” Louis-Cesare said, causing me to look down at him, confused and hurt.

He took my other hand as well. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be for added comfort, or if he was trying to make certain that I didn’t put a fist through Hassani’s face. But it made me feel trapped and that . . . was a mistake.

“Let me go.” It was flat and completely uninflected.

Louis-Cesare let me go.

I started for the door, got halfway there, then spun around, so angry I could barely see. “My mother was a Romanian peasant girl! She died almost six hundred years ago!”

“So I understand,” Hassani said, leaning forward and finally speaking quickly, as if he didn’t know how much time he had. “The question is, when was she born? Was she the last of the godly prototypes, one more powerful than all the rest? Was she the reason Artemis acted when she did, and drained herself so badly fighting an entire pantheon on her own? Would she have preferred to wait, to accumulate even more power, but couldn’t, with a new army on the way that could tip the scales—”

“This is ridiculous!”

“It is speculation,” he admitted. “It may have been the fey who engineered your mother instead, using the knowledge they’d gained from the gods. But, either way—”

“Consul,” that was Louis-Cesare, his voice sharp. “A moment.”

Hassani stopped talking.

I stared blindly past his fucking head at the light show outside, which was apparently coming to an end. The colors were rapidly changing and lasers were flinging everywhere, as if the age-old monuments had stumbled into a disco. They strobed the room, bright enough to hurt the eyes, but I stared at them blindly for a moment anyway, before finally looking at Hassani.

And for once, I didn’t give a shit what was on my face.

“Then tell me this,” I rasped. “If she was so powerful, how did Vlad the bitch Tepes manage to kill her? He staked her to death, left her writhing on a pole for hours. I thought she’d died when her village burned, but I later found out—”

I stopped and shuddered all over. Louis-Cesare got up, but I waved him off. I didn’t like to think about what had happened, even after so long, didn’t like to face how she must have suffered.

But I was going to, because I wanted a goddamned answer!

“If she was some demigod super soldier, then how in the hell—”

“She was likely not a demigod,” Hassani said, his voice low, slow and non-threatening. For some reason, that made me even angrier. Louis-Cesare got up and moved between us. I stared at him, and then almost laughed.

Even for me, the last twenty-four hours had been hell. I was exhausted—mentally, physically, and emotionally. What the fuck did he think I was going to do to a consul?

And then I realized what he thought.

I stared at him. “You think I’m a monster.”

“Dory, no—”

“You do! You think—you believe him. You believe him! You think I’m like that—that hideous—that—that—” I cut off, not being able to breathe, and a second later, his arms were around me. I was furious, but I didn’t even struggle. It hit me, all at once: losing Dorina, fighting all day, yet not being one step closer to getting her back, Hassani’s lies, my mother—

I sank to my knees, gasping for air, and suddenly the lights all cut out.

I thought for a second that I was about to pass out, then I realized—the damned light show had just ended. I faintly heard clapping from somewhere; the party I assumed. Glad someone was having a good time.

And then Maha was there, kneeling by my other side. Hassani must have summoned her, and was probably regretting it, I thought vaguely, as her eyes flashed at the two men. “What happened?”

“She became upset,” Louis-Cesare said.

“And why did she become upset? What did you say to her?”

“It was more what I said,” Hassani admitted, causing his Child to whirl around. “I am sorry, my dear. It seems I am losing my touch.”

Maha started to say something, then bit her lip. “Whatever it was, it can wait. She needs sleep—”

“I slept most of the afternoon,” I said, a little breathlessly. But I was feeling better—a lot better. Her touch was goddamned magic.

“You were sedated most of the afternoon,” she corrected. “You need natural sleep in order to heal.”

“I’m well enough,” I said, trying to push her off so I could stand.

“You are not!” It was snapped and it was loud. All three of us stopped to look at her.

Maha had struck me as the type who was usually cool, calm, and peaceful. A soothing presence for her patients and an overall kindhearted person. She wasn’t looking so kindhearted right now.

“You are going to sleep,” she told me furiously. “Right now. As for the two of you—”

And at least I got this much, I thought, watching two first-level masters, one a consul and one who could have been had he wanted to try and salvage Antony’s wreck of a court, shrink in on themselves, one might almost say cower, before a pissed off woman.

Maybe we did have power, after all, I thought dizzily. But I never got a chance to find out what she told them. Because her hand slid onto my shoulder again, and this time—

“Well, crap,” I said, and passed out.