Page 6

“Augggghhhhh!”

Somebody was screaming.

I did not think that it was me. It was hard to tell over the sound of the portal roaring like a hurricane in my ears, and the violent green of all that swirling power searing my vision. I had many ways to see, but the raging energy of the line negated most of them.

That was all right.

I did not need to see my attackers to kill them.

Their scent was strange in my nose, and their bodies showed up as cool spaces in my mind’s eye against all that pulsing power. They did not seem to have the same ease at detecting me, however. Several were turned in completely the wrong direction, while others were moving about with their arms out, trying to locate me after I tore away from them in the initial confusion.

I helped them out with that, slitting the first creature’s throat before he knew I was there and then had two more jump me, zeroing in on his aborted cry. I whirled, dancing away from one and slashing another with my blade, where it stuck in the bone of his arm. I tried to cut through and then I tried to pull out, either of which would have worked easily with a human. But he wasn’t one, and my blade stayed trapped.

We circled each other, him trying to get a knife in me while I tried to free myself. I finally cracked through the bone with sheer brute force. But instead of falling away into the electric tunnel we were traveling through, the severed arm began orbiting us, like a piece of clothing thumping about the laundry machine back home.

There were other body parts tumbling around, too, one of which was still screaming. It was part of the small vampire that Dory liked. He must have been close enough when the portal opened to have been swept inside along with us.

My eyes were adjusting now, to the point that I could see the fey as dark shadows silhouetted against all that leaping color. I still couldn’t make out any details, but the vampire . . . yes, I could see him. Because he is family, I thought, and smiled.

I cut off a fey’s head and offered him the bleeding stump, but he only stared at me. Another fey jumped onto my back while a second grabbed my wrist—the one with the scimitar in it. I dropped the body of their compatriot, and snatched a tumbling arm as it fell past.

“Is this yours?” I asked the vampire.

“What?” He stared at me some more.

“Does this belong to you?”

“No?”

“Good.” I used the jagged femur to stab the fey on my back through the eye. And when he let go, I slashed it across the other’s neck.

I picked up the decapitated body and offered the vampire the stump again.

He did not seem to understand.

“Feed,” I urged him.

“What? I can’t!”

Of course, I thought. He has no arms. I dragged the body up to his mouth, to the point that the fey’s blood smeared his lips.

“Gah! Gah! Gah!”

I pulled it back. “Is there a problem?”

“Is there a problem? Is there a problem?” Blue eyes blazed at me. “I get my limbs torn off, get kidnapped, and now you’re trying to poison me—”

“It is not poison.”

“—and you ask if there’s a problem?”

I decided that he might be in shock. Just as well. There were four fey still on their feet, including the one with the missing arm, and they were coming.

I broke off half of the scimitar’s blade in the first one’s neck and kicked a second far enough away that I should have had time to deal with the remaining two. But he only stumbled back a short distance before hitting and then splaying against something that I couldn’t see at all. Something that appeared to be rotating and was taking him along with it.

Dodging a blow, I watched him circle against the primordial fury of the line. Ley lines were fascinating: huge rivers of magical power that flowed around the Earth and then beyond. It was said that their energy could dissolve a human in seconds, and a vampire even faster. No one traveled through them without a shield of some kind.

Like the one gleaming all around us, I realized, as two of the remaining fey jumped me.

I slammed their heads together, somersaulted over top of them, and then did it again from behind. They had thick skulls; they did not go down, and one even spun and swung at me. But I twisted away and pulled back out of reach, taking a second to think.

Why did we need a shield inside a portal, which was already a shielded pathway through a line? That was the reason people made such things: to provide safe passage from one point to another. Why bother with a second layer of protection?

Unless they were more interested in keeping something in than keeping something out, I realized.

This wasn’t an assassination; it was a kidnapping.

Fear and panic swept through me at the idea of being caged, so much so that I lost myself for a moment. I lashed out, beating my fists and feet against the sides of my prison, and then against the jailors who had stupidly locked themselves in here with me. The shield, which had already been spinning wildly from the tumult inside began rocking alarmingly, sliding and sloshing us around.

The rocking motion became so violent that it brought me out of my fit. It was just in time to see us burst through, not the gate on the other end of the portal, but the side of the portal itself. And go spinning off into the fury of the ley line.

Suddenly, everything changed. It was like the difference between riding down some white-water rapids and surfing the crashing ferocity of an ocean in a major gale. We plummeted down what felt like a fifty-foot wave, then rode another back up, only to be spit out the top and do it all again. And again.

I was overwhelmed for a moment, and I suppose the fey felt the same, because the attacks had stopped. Or perhaps there was another reason for that. A vortex of orbiting body parts beat on me as we spun about, as their owners could no longer do. But some bruises were less of a problem than the reason for the fleshly storm: we were tumbling out of control, and I did not know enough about shields to stop us.

But someone else did.

“Goddamnit!” The vampire yelled, his body, or what was left of it, thumping about the shielded circle. “Hold me up. Let me see!”

“Let you see what?”

“That!” He nodded vigorously at something. “The control!”

“This?” I touched something about the size of a crystal ball. It was on a stick, protruding waist high from what was probably supposed to be the stationary middle of the shield, but which was now slinging all over the place.

“Yes, hold me up, damn you!”

I held him up.

“Fuck,” was his verdict.

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s peachy fucking keen, what the hell do you think?”

He gave me a rapid-fire stream of directions that involved turning the ball this way and that, which did not appear to have any effect on the spinning. But the wild, leaping color around us slowly became softer and hazier, like veils across the horizon. Until we burst out of the line, into bright blue skies filled with puffy white clouds and startled birds.

Who were less startled than us when we abruptly plummeted for the ground.

“Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire screamed. “Augggggghhhhhhhh!”

The shield remained in place as we fell, which surprised me. I was under the impression that they did not work outside the lines. But then, this was a fey shield. Perhaps they were different.

“Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire screamed some more. “Augggggghhhhhhhh!”

We hit the ground and bounced, what must have been fifty feet into the air. And then did it again and again, while also rolling down a steep incline. It was covered in flowers, predominately purple with a few yellow and white ones mixed in.

Beautiful.

“Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire yelled. “Augg—bump—auggggh—bump—aughhhhhhh!”

We finally rolled to a stop.

I found myself slightly dizzy, but mostly unharmed.

The same could not be said for the vampire, who continued to scream, albeit weakly. I shook my head to clear it, which did not work as well as I would have liked. I still felt as if I was surfing the biggest storm in history, with my stomach doing flips inside my body. It was not a wholly unpleasant sensation, but it did make it hard to move about.

I did so anyway, crawling across the gory floor to gather up the body parts that belonged to my companion. It was easy to tell them apart, as his were smaller than those of the fey. I finished and looked up.

And saw him lying on the bottom of the shield, near the control mechanism, panting and shrieking softly whenever he found enough air. He was covered in blood, his eyes were wild, and he was trembling all over. I needed to get him somewhere safe, as I did not know if the fey could track their device.

But first, I had to deal with more pressing concerns.

“Hold still,” I said, tugging on what remained of his tuxedo.

“Ahhh!”

“I know it hurts. I am sorry.”

He stared up at me in apparent shock. His eyes searched my face, as if looking for something. Probably signs of the woman he knew, which he did not find. Dory was not here; I could feel her absence like a missing lung, leaving me breathless. We had never been apart, not even when I took an occasional mental flight away from our body. There had always been a tether there, a strong, unbreakable connection to my other half.

But not now.

It made me feel dizzier than the ride, and more than slightly horrified. I did not know what had been done to us, but this was not the time to think about it. This was the time to survive; thinking would come later.

The vampire seemed to feel the same. He tensed as if bracing himself. And then he nodded.

I held up one of his severed arms and looked at it. It had lost the sleeve, but the arm itself was more or less all right, except for the raw, red meat and shattered bone at the end. The fey hadn’t cared how much damage they did, merely wanting to put him out of commission. I felt anger well up in me, red hot and burning, but tamped it down.

Later.

We would have our revenge on whoever had ordered this, but for now, I needed to heal the vampire.

“Ray,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Your name is Ray.”

“Raymond Lu,” he said, his lips white. “I’d shake your hand, but . . .”

“You will in a moment.” I regarded the arm again.

It was weakly moving, but not in any purposeful way. A master should be able to control his body parts, even when they were not attached, but Raymond had lost too much blood. He was almost exsanguinated, and that . . .

Would be very bad.

We had avoided exiting through the other end of the portal, and had thereby missed the reception that undoubtedly awaited us. But we weren’t scot free. I paused, looking about.

We’d come to rest on the side of a hill, where a goat trail from below divided and created a small plateau. To our right and below was a verdant valley with a large river running through it, and bright green fields with grasses so long and thick that they moved like water under the breeze. To our left was a dense old forest, with tree trunks as big as houses and a canopy so solid that I did not know how any rain penetrated.

It was beautiful, but it was foreign. I could not name a single type of tree, a single bird, or even the variety of grass, which had odd, purple tips. My tongue flickered out, tasting the air. Cool and faintly scented, but also strange. Alien.

Faerie.

It had to be.

We must have traveled too far to reappear on Earth when we exited the ley line, falling instead into the land of the fey, just not where they had intended. I felt a shiver go through me, but it wasn’t one wasn’t of fear. It was excitement, curiosity, the thrill of the new. I was on an alien world that I knew nothing about—

So why did something smell like home?

“Wait,” I told Ray, who nodded weakly.

I searched around the gory bodies on the floor, and discovered that they were a bit gorier than I’d expected. Eight times more. There had been eight fey warriors in all, and each of them had on his person a small bag.

A bag of blood.

One of them had ruptured during the fight, but the others were intact, inside of clear packets that looked like plastic but felt like paper. It was very odd. I had no idea what they were doing there.

But they were a lifesaver, possibly literally.

Ray did not seem to want the fey blood; perhaps it was too strange to nourish him? But he had to have something. I tore the corner off of one of the packets, to make sure that my nose wasn’t deceiving me, and he made a soft sound. Yes, it was human. I stared at it some more. It appeared to be fresh.

I glanced back at Ray.

Normally, I would never have thought to give a possibly adulterated substance to an already weakened ally, but I did not think that this was poisoned. I could detect no corruption, and in any case, what choice was there? Even were there humans to be found in this place, I did not know how to find them.

And Ray did not have much time.

Exsanguinated vampires could be brought back, but if his limbs were not reattached before he bled out, they could shrivel and die. Leaving him as a stump of a creature for the rest of whatever life remained to him. And while I could spare enough blood to sustain him, at least for a while, I could not give him enough to heal.

We had to risk it.

I held the bag up to his slack mouth, and dribbled a little inside. There was no reaction. He was fading quickly, and would soon go catatonic.

“Ray.” The blue eyes opened, but did not focus. They were not fixed, not yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

“Ray!” I gripped his chin, and saw him frown. But he didn’t curse at me, which I had learned from Dory was not a good sign.

I forced more of the blood down his throat, massaging it to make him swallow. It did not make any difference that I could detect, other than for a faint tinge of color in what had been the dead white mask of his face. So I gave him some more, emptying the bag and starting on another, and kept going until he had drained that one as well.

But still, he just lay there.

I knew that he’d absorbed it; otherwise, it would have been trickling out of his wounds. But it did not appear to be enough. I fed him a third bag, and when he still gave no sign of returning to life, I began to panic.

“Ray!” I slapped him across the face, not knowing what else to do.

“What?”

I blinked. It had been faint and crabby, but nonetheless discernable. “Are you all right?”

“Do I fucking look all right?”

I sat back on my heels, a smile stretching the skin of my face. “You are not dead.”

“Not for lack of trying. The goddamned fey.” His eyes finally managed to focus on something—his arm beside me. “You don’t have that on yet? What the heck have you been doing?”

“I am remiss in my duties,” I said, and saw him narrow his eyes.

“Was that sarcasm? Cause in case you didn’t notice, I’m in pieces here! Can I get some help, preferably before the fey find us and finish the job?”

“Yes,” I said, biting my lip. “I will help.”

“Damned right.” He lay there grumpily while I worked to reattach the arm.

It was easier than I expected. Vampire bodies are largely self-healing, if there is enough blood to use as fuel. Ray had just ingested at least three pints, which was a full meal for his kind, and his body wanted to use it. I had barely put the limb in place when the bones were reknitting, when jagged flesh was flowing back together and smoothing out, when veins were squirming out of the wound like little worms, reaching for—

“Hey! Do you mind?”

I looked up. “What?”

“I could do without the commentary, okay? Little worms . . .” he shuddered.

I sat back on my heels in surprise. “You could hear my thoughts?”

“Why so shocked? You’re my master, right? And where’s my other arm?”

I regarded him for a moment, and then fetched the other arm.

“Great. It’s got nasty fey blood on it.” He scowled.

“Technically,” I reminded him, as I worked to get the second arm back in its proper place, “Dory is your master. You pledged yourself to her.”

“Yeah, only you are her, right? I mean, kind of the hardcore version, but . . .”

I shook my head. “We are different people.”

“Uh huh. Who happened to start off as one person and share the exact same DNA.”

“Twins start off as one person. And they share DNA.”

“But they aren’t born as one and live that way for eleven or twelve years!”

“They also don’t live more than five centuries.” The bone was knitting wrong. I adjusted it. “The percentage of our lifetimes that we lived as one is becoming an insignificant figure.”

“Yeah, but like . . .” He scowled. “Trust me to get into a deep philosophical discussion when my head’s pounding and my eyes are crossing and I still don’t got legs yet.”

“Your arms are healing. Trying to do too much at one time—”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re the expert.” He closed his eyes.

I was not, in fact, having spent far more time killing vampires than healing them, but thought that this might not be the best moment to point that out.

We sat there quietly for a while. He looked so thin and pale, like a teenager, with his hair falling over his clammy forehead and his face speckled with fey blood. It had dried brown and looked almost like freckles.

And even when healed, he would not be a large man, or a particularly strong vampire. He was a master, but he would never reach the upper rings of power. I had seen enough to know.

Yet, he had been brave today, and honorable, and loyal. I had known far stronger men who would have fled at one look at what we faced. But he had stayed, and he had helped.

I did not think I would have made it out of the ley line without him.

“I would also be your master, Raymond Lu,” I finally said. “If you wish it.”

The eyes opened, and as always, it was a surprise to see that they were blue. He was half-Dutch and half Indonesian, I remembered Dory saying. A bastard child never wanted by either parent, on his own in a hostile world far sooner than he should have been. And then a vampire with a master who, while not abusive by their standards, had not valued him. He had been given as a mocking sort of gift to Dory, discarded after centuries of service, like a dirty handkerchief.

But she had recognized his worth, as did I.

“You would?” he asked, sounding confused.

“It would be an honor.”

Ray stared at me. He seemed to do that a lot. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Well, all right, then.”

“I am happy to have you with me on this journey, Raymond Lu.” I looked around at the still intact shield. “Do you happen to know how we get out of here?”