Page 35

Ididn’t make it far, but not because I slammed into the ground. I hit a party barge instead, landing near a crowded bar and causing a bunch of beautiful people to pull back and slosh drinks everywhere. There probably would have been more of a reaction, but Zheng smacked down beside me a second later, and people tended to give him a wide berth.

And because I didn’t stay put.

“Dory! Damn it!” I heard Zheng yell, but I was already running and then leaping to the next vehicle in line, a large platform which I tore across in record time, because Louis-Cesare and his one-time captive were battling on the other end of it.

But vamp reflexes are as good or, in the case of these two, better than mine, meaning that they were gone again by the time I skidded to a stop at the edge of the platform, and looked around frantically.

I spied them after a moment, impossibly far away, leaping and fighting their way across the stadium. That would have been less terrifying if the “stadium” hadn’t had huge gaps in between sections. And if the vehicles comprising much of it hadn’t been constantly moving, jockeying for position, and making the spot I was trying to jump to suddenly not there anymore.

I managed to snag a bright red rickshaw before I plummeted to my death, being driven by one of the stadium ticket enforcers who I pushed off onto a bus. That made following the guys easier, or it would have if two hundred and fifty pounds of master vamp hadn’t suddenly landed on the back of my ride, sending us spinning out of control. I managed to compensate after a moment, swerving around a floating house and ducking under a sashimi place. But it meant that I’d lost Louis-Cesare again.

Damn it!

“What are you doing?” I demanded, looking over my shoulder at Zheng.

“I could ask the same of you. What the hell?”

“Tomas, the guy with your guide group?”

“What about him?”

“He was Louis-Cesare’s prisoner for something like a century.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story. All you need to know is that Tomas hates him and is probably trying to stake him!”

“And you’re going to do what about that?” Zheng demanded.

“Stake Tomas first!”

I spotted the two battling masters on the opposite side of the arena, and decided to take a short cut across the large open space. Which . . . probably wasn’t the best plan I ever had. Zheng yelled a warning, half a second before a four-story-tall, bright crimson devil, complete with horns and a pointed tail, leap out in front of us—

And grabbed the squid monster in a headlock before they both fell into the ring.

I didn’t know what had happened for a second, and then realized that Louis-Cesare and Tomas had been fighting near the devil’s cage. They must have damaged it enough to release him, just about the time that the squid thing was let out for the match that was supposed to be taking place right now. It wasn’t, because something better was happening instead.

The crowd roared approval, louder than ever, as two titans faced off. I guessed they didn’t usually see the monsters fighting each other. And for good reason, I thought, because things almost immediately got out of hand.

“Shit!” I yelled, as a flashing aqua, green and bright orange tentacle slashed through the air, barely missing us. And then another one clipped us, sending our ride spiraling toward the dirt, before the devil’s tail punched through the back of us. And we suddenly found ourselves being used like a brick to pummel the squid.

“Every time!” Zheng was yelling. “Every goddamned time—”

I had no idea what he was talking about, and cared less. I felt my fingers slipping; felt an arm the size of a tree trunk go around my waist. And then we were leaping, straight at a man in a smaller, one-person rickshaw.

It was the only vehicle close enough, as everyone else was rocketing away from the fight. But the man—the mage, as it turned out—didn’t want company. He saw us coming, cursed, and got a lasso on us. And, holy shit!

For the record, magical lassos are not fun when you are the recipient. It hurt like hell, burning whatever skin it touched, but it didn’t touch us for long. Because he whipped us over to the side of the great space, onto a grassy bit of land. And as soon as we hit down, he went buzzing away again, to join a dozen more who were attempting to regain control of the situation.

Only that . . . wasn’t going so well. And neither was this, I thought, as Zheng got me into a headlock while the squid screeched loudly enough to threaten my eardrums, and the devil laughed, a great, sonic boom type of thing that made hearing impossible. Except for a master vamp yelling in my ear.

“—not happening! Do not stake my damned team!”

“I’m not staking your team,” I said, thrashing, and really putting my all into it. “Just one.”

“Yeah, but he’s the best one!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of!”

I had been playing fair, which was why I wasn’t going anywhere. I decide to remedy that, and elbowed Zheng considerably below the belt. He didn’t let go—gotta give the guy credit—but he did loosen his grip slightly as well as snarl. “You’re going to pay for that.”

“Maybe, but not now,” I said, and stuck my head in my purse.

The mouth of the portal grabbed me, sucking me inside, and leaving Zheng literally holding the bag. Until I re-emerged with a warded tab of the type that I’d used on Hassani, and slapped it onto his torso. “What the—”

I grabbed my bag and sprang away, and Zheng went into Asian Ken doll mode, trapped in his little warded cell. Or maybe not Ken, I thought, seeing the frozen snarl on his face, which was showing a lot of fang. The tab would probably hold him about as long as it had Hassani, but I hadn’t had a whole lot of non-lethal alternatives.

I took off, knowing that I had seconds at best.

Make that a second, I thought, as he tackled me.

Son of a bitch!

I flipped over, about to give him a piece of my mind, and found myself looking at Tomas instead.

“You’re really . . . pretty,” I gasped, surprised.

He blinked. “Thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” I said, and tried for a repeat of the trick with Zheng, but the damned vamp was in the way. So, I sucked him into my purse, instead.

I stood up, feeling dizzy and slightly unwell, because my stomach and brain had no idea where we were right now, and were arguing about it. Zheng and Louis-Cesare showed up a second later, and stared at me. “Where is Tomas?” they demanded.

I still couldn’t talk properly, and just held up the bag.

“You put him in there?” Louis-Cesare asked, in disbelief.

“What?” Zheng looked from me to the large expanse of black leather. “Wait. You have a master vamp in your purse?”

“Yeah?” I didn’t know what they were complaining about. He was contained.

“How?”

“Why?” Louis-Cesare demanded.

“Because I didn’t have . . . a lot of options?” Talk about gratitude!

“Dory. The armory is in your purse!”

Oh.

Yeah.

And then Tomas was back, having figured out how this worked in record time. He was also loaded for bear. “Shit,” I said.

He smiled.

And then, just as fast, he was gone, plucked off the earth and into the jaws of the giant squid.

“What the—” I said.

“They’re attracted to power!” Zheng yelled. And then he frowned. “I think I’ve been insulted!”

Louis-Cesare grabbed me, jumping us out of the way of a snarl of huge tentacles headed this way. Zheng ran in the other direction; I didn’t know why. We landed behind a small building that looked like a closed shrine of some kind, and wasn’t very sturdy, but one of the skyscrapers wasn’t far off. We could take shelter there, find a rickshaw, and then get the hell out of here!

I wasn’t the only one to have that idea. The ground was suddenly streaming with headlights, as hundreds of vehicles took off, getting away from the now completely out of control fight. The mages were doing their best, but they had obviously not planned on this, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

Except that Tomas was about to get eaten.

The massive squid had a huge tentacle wrapped around the arm of the devil, and a smaller one squeezing its neck. But its mouth was full of vampire, with the fang-rimmed hole only being kept from closing by a master’s strength. But I doubted that that would work for long.

Graffitied monsters didn’t get tired, but master vamps did.

Tomas was toast.

Until his four crazy-ass partners decided to get busy, and help their friend. I saw Zheng over by the group, gesturing and pointing. They’d been hanging back until now, probably thinking that this was above their pay grade. And that prize money is no good if you’re not alive to spend it.

But it looked like their buddy being taken had changed things, and they were moving in. The dark mage did something that caused a plume of smoke to engulf one of the flailing tentacles, which slowly started to lose color as its strength was sapped. But the main body of the creature did not seem affected, nor did the other arms, and I didn’t think he had time to take it piece by piece.

The ugly bruiser with the torn-up face opted for a more direct approach. He ran and then launched himself at one of the flailing arms, using its momentum to send him soaring at the bulbous head. Where he landed and proceeded to attack with what looked like a large hatchet or possibly a battle ax.

That would have worked fine on a real animal, which might have broken off its attack at a threat to its head. But this thing didn’t appear to notice or care if it did. Maybe because it didn’t run on blood like the rest of us, but on pure magic, which it still had plenty of. The bruiser could probably cave in the whole head, and the tentacles would still work.

I didn’t know if he had enough brain power to figure that out, but somebody else did. The girl stepped forward and raised an arm. The guy, who I was assuming was her brother based on looks, was firing everything he had at the squid. That included a rocket that exploded a mass of blue-green slime out of the thing’s body when it detonated, covering a third of the ring.

The girl just continued to stand there.

For a moment, nothing happened. And then slowly, from far beneath the ground, a rumble could be heard. I didn’t know what was happening, but assumed it wasn’t good. Because the mage squad suddenly dropped their lassos and fled, and the sort of orderly—for Hong Kong, anyway—exodus became an all-out rout.

People screamed, vehicles bolted, even the ponderous platforms, which handled like a semi with all the tires flat, started to move away. Why, I wasn’t sure, although something was definitely happening now. Something bad, I thought, as the ground swelled, as pipes broke and spewed water everywhere, and as bridges rocked wildly even as hundreds tried to get off.

And as a tiny finger of blue light speared up from below, tearing a hole in the devil and causing him to roar and fall back a step.

“Stop her!” Louis-Cesare said, grabbing my arm. “She’ll rupture the shield!”

“The—shit!” I said, finally realized what I was seeing. That the crazy woman was trying to use the power of the lines to fight her battles for her, and was going to kill us all in the process. “How in the hell—”

“She’s a jinx. Don’t let her so much as look at you.”

Great.

“And what are you going to do?” I demanded.

He kissed me briefly, but fiercely. “Save Tomas.”

Shit.

But he was gone before I could stop him, because of course he was. The damned man had just tried to kill him, but letting someone he’d once been responsible for get eaten wasn’t in Louis-Cesare’s nature. It was in mine, but nobody had asked me.

I said a bad word and ran straight for the girl.

It was harder than it looked. The ground was streaming with shadows and colors, because some of the crazy cavalcade up there had multicolored lights hanging off their buses or draped around their balconies. A few even had strobes on their party barges, which sent wildly waving disco lights across the remains of the park, and flashed blindingly bright in my eyes.

They were confusing, although not as much as the waves of dirt being flung upwards by the tentacles, or the massive feet of the demon, which were slamming down here, there, and everywhere, threatening to pound me into the ground. Or the water blasts from the ruptured pipes, which were trying to drown me in the gigantic mud puddle forming under my feet.

Or under my knees, since it was already that deep in places, causing me to flail, and making each step a hard, sucking slog. I wasn’t getting anywhere this way, I thought, watching the tentacles waving about everywhere. And then reaching up and grabbing one going in the right direction, which ripped me out of the mud and launched me at the bitch causing all of this.

I didn’t make it all the way there, as I had to let go when the tentacle started to head back up. But I hit a mostly solid piece of ground and was up and throwing myself at her a second later. And I wasn’t in the mood to be gentle.

She went down and then out when I belted her upside the jaw, possibly hard enough to break it. I threw some magical cuffs on her and kicked her into my purse, because I couldn’t carry her through all this otherwise. Then I took off, running and leaping and occasionally falling through the chaos, heading for the side of the ring and the shadow of a now deserted broadcasting booth.

The two announcers had long since fled, although the nearby Jumbotron was still running with images. I didn’t try to figure them out; I was far too close. And the same was true when I turned back to the fight, which was so high above my head that I couldn’t see anything.

But nobody had turned off the second Jumbotron across the park, which gave me a perfect view of Louis-Cesare stabbing his sword hilt-deep into a giant squid eye. And unlike the side of its head, which the creature hadn’t seem to give a shit about, it was Not Happy with this latest attack. Probably because a blind animal is very soon a dead animal.

It sent out another of those skull-piercing shrieks, echoing off the buildings and pulling a collective groan from the remaining crowd. It also thrashed wildly, trying to find this dangerous new threat—and in the process dropped the old one. Tomas went tumbling out of the beast’s mouth, Louis-Cesare reached for him and missed, and the now tiny looking body plummeted straight for the ground—

Before a slashing tentacle smacked him my way.

I started slightly as he hit the Jumbotron, causing all of the colors and images to scatter wildly for a moment. And then to stabilize, when he peeled off and fell limply to the ground, face first. He just lay there, as if dead, but he wasn’t dead. He was a first level master and while that probably hadn’t done him any good, he’d recover.

I glanced around.

Nobody was in the area, unless you counted the fight going on overhead, which looked like it was winding down. The thrashing had caused the tentacle around the devil’s arm to loosen, and he’d seized his chance. He’d grabbed the squid thing, trying to rip it apart, and giving Louis-Cesare a chance to escape.

And me a chance to assemble my crew.

I ran over to the not-moving vamp, crawled inside my purse for a second, and came up with another Spider’s Bite. I threw it on the bastard, watched it web him up, and dragged him inside. Fucker.

Then I moved over to the bottom of the now wrecked cage that the devil had been in, with its huge door hanging off its hinges and the metal bars twisted or broken. Another slumped figure lay beside it, having been tossed there at some point in the fight. I checked his meaty neck for a pulse, and it beat strong and steady. He might not be smart, but he was tough. He was also starting to come around.

I threw a couple of pairs of cuffs on the bruiser, hands and feet, then added a third to connect them in back and hogtie him, just to be safe. Then into the purse he went. Okay; that was three.

Where was number four?

Surprisingly, four was still in it, spraying both of the creatures above him with bullets, apparently not realizing that his friend was no longer in need of rescue. That was good. It kept his attention elsewhere.

And in all this, it wasn’t like he could hear me sneaking up on him, was it?

A moment later, number four was secured, leaving only one.

But the dark mage was wilier, and very much aware of what had just happened. He had simply been too far away to stop it. But now he was running at me, both hands consumed by black, oily-looking clouds, which based on what had happened to the squid, were intended to drain me of magic and/or life as soon as they touched me.

Great.

To make matters worse, Louis-Cesare, who should have been down by now, had become stuck—literally. The blue gel that the squid’s body had thrown out was apparently harmless, but very sticky. Which meant that it wasn’t harmless since it had glued my hubby in place, stuck to what was left of the squid’s body as it and the devil reached crunch time.

I reached back into my bag of tricks, grabbed a grappling hook, and slung it at a passing rickshaw. It caught the back seat, jerking me up and over the dark mage’s head before he could grab me, which was good. But it was traveling in the wrong direction, which was not. The maneuver also seemed to really piss off the mage, who dropped the power sucking spell in favor of a lasso, and a moment later, he was in my face.

So, I put a fist in his, something he hadn’t seemed to expect, because mages never do. They’re so used to finding magical solutions to problems that they sometimes forget that the old fashioned, bare knuckles type works, too. In fact, it worked a little too well, because the bastard let go of the lasso and started slip and fall away.

I caught him. I almost tore my shoulder out of joint in the process, but I caught him. And got my legs around him a moment later, because he was a dead weight and I was holding us both up one-handed while being jerked across the damned sky!

Even worse, the lasso spell hadn’t faded away yet. It was lashing me like a burning rope every time the damned rickshaw driver changed direction, which was often because the mages were back. They had regrouped and were heading into the fray, seeing an opportunity to finish this.

And in the process, they were freaking out my driver, who encountered grim war mages everywhere he turned, who were not happy to see him. One of them plucked him out of the driver’s seat and yelled something at me; what I didn’t know because I was busy, damn it! And I don’t speak Cantonese.

But I’d managed to get my free hand into the bag and felt around. I needed something to hold the mage, but it would have to be something special. Something he wouldn’t immediately know how to counter, something that would take him by surprise—

Something like that, I thought, as the pissed off war mage got tired of talking and threw a cuff at us, which latched onto the mage’s ankle. It quickly started climbing his body, spewing out chains with locks every few inches. And, knowing war mages, each one of them probably required a different spell to release.

That’ll do, I thought, and stuffed my purse over his head.

A second later, he was gone, and that made five.

The team was assembled, although they hadn’t impressed me much so far. But at least they knew where Eternity was, which was more than I did. Now I just had to get out of here.

Another cuff was thrown at me, but missed because I was launching myself into the now empty driver’s seat. A second after that, I was peeling away from the war mage’s rickshaw, back toward the fight. Right alongside a phalanx of other vehicles, because the mages were diving as one.

I dove faster. Louis-Cesare was tiny compared to the creatures they were fighting, and I didn’t know if they’d see him or not. And the kind of combined spells they could throw might not be survivable, even for a master. So, I floored it, heedless of thrashing tentacles, battling giants, and pursuing mages. But spells travel faster than people, and they were gearing up to throw, and—

And they had to abort, sending colorful spells shooting off into the night, because a huge limo was suddenly rocketing into the scene, like a shiny black bullet.

Several spells hit the side, which had thrown itself between Louis-Cesare and the mages. I expected to see it go up like a fireball, but it must have been warded. Because, instead, all I heard was—

“Short stuff! Grab him!”

I grabbed him.

Not that I had to do much. Louis-Cesare had almost freed himself already, and jumped into the seat beside me as soon as I got close enough. I didn’t have to stop or even pause as a result, just took off in a new direction, trying to get as far from the fight as possible before—

That, I thought, as a tentacle caught us a massive blow.

It was the biggest one of them all, which had been wrapped around the devil’s arm this whole time. But he was being targeted by the mages now, maybe because he was in better shape than his beleaguered, half blind, and battered opponent, allowing the tentacle to spring free. And the squid’s full strength to hit us broadside.

Louis-Cesare grabbed me as our vehicle went flying in a great inverted parabola, high over the city. He held on as it broke in two, falling away as we reached the apex of the arc. He stared at me, his face terrible for a long instant.

And then we fell.