The consul’s house usually looked like something out of the end of the eighteenth century, when Greco-Roman had been forcibly married to Baroque, in a shotgun wedding that did neither any favors. But tonight it was stunning. Which made it a marked contrast to a good portion of the crowd.
I hadn’t worn a disguise because I’d assumed anti-glamourie charms would be in effect for security reasons. And I had assumed right. Because the crowd was looking…a little scary.
The mages were okay; about what you’d expect, with maybe a few more wrinkles and blemishes than usual. The vamps, though, were another matter altogether. The clothes were couture, the jewels were dazzling, the hair a stylist’s dream. But the faces…
Ray looked pretty much the same, except for a big zit on his nose, possibly because he hadn’t been covering up much. But that wasn’t true for the guy passing behind us, who must have been starved at some point like Radu. Only either it had been for a longer duration or he hadn’t had a brother with serious healing skills, because he looked…well, like a corpse. A dessicated, dried-up stick of one with a sunken neck and eyes, discolored, mummy-like skin, ropy muscle, and a puff of grizzled hair erupting from his skull—what was left of it.
The humans were scattering ahead of him, looks of ill-concealed horror on their features, a fact that was not lost on the vamp. A corner of one leathery lip raised, in sardonic acknowledgment of their fear. Or maybe in the knowledge that he could have any one of them outside these walls, where a moment’s work would return him to youthful beauty.
Although he’d probably do okay without it, I thought, as his power hit me, like the train on his sweeping emerald robes. And despite the spell the consul was using to keep her mage guests from melting through the floor, and despite the fact that he wasn’t even trying, the force of it was like a backhanded slap. I had to clench my teeth to keep an undignified yelp behind them until he passed on, and his power dissipated into the background buzz of the rest of the room.
“Hassani,” Ray muttered. “African consul.”
Great, I thought, swallowing, and feeling a little like a squashed bug. Thankfully, he didn’t know me. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be true of others.
We needed to get moving.
“Where are our seats?” I asked Ray.
“Nowhere. We’re standing.”
“Standing?”
“Hey, I was lucky to get anything this late,” he said, as we merged with the flow heading down the main hall.
And we weren’t the only fashionably late arrivals—the huge corridor was shoulder to shoulder. Or shoulder to head, in my case, and elbow to head, and knee to thigh, since the jostling crowd tended to top me by at least a foot. If it was like this inside, I didn’t know how we were supposed to find anybody.
Ray wasn’t doing any better, getting knocked all to hell across from me, until I grabbed his arm, pushing him into a stairwell. “This isn’t going to work. I need to be able to see.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s what everyone else wants, too,” he pointed out.
“There’s got to be someplace—” I looked up at the stairs. “Where do these go?”
“To the box seats, I guess. But our tickets don’t let us—”
He stopped, because I was already moving, under a velvet rope and up the stairs, which unlike the cattle call below, were completely clear. And then around a bend and up some more. Until I was stopped by two guards lounging in a marble hallway leading to a row of little rooms. The box seats, I assumed, judging from the flash I got of one as a man came out.
A very familiar man.
It was Radu’s latest boy toy, a blond hunk whose name escaped me but who didn’t seem to have that problem himself. “Dory?” he asked, in disbelief.
“That would be me. And this is Ray.” I shoved him forward. “Sorry we’re late.”
“I…you…yes…”
“But we made it, so that’s what counts,” I said, starting forward. Only to find another hunk in my way, this time of the vamp variety. An apologetic-looking one, because anyone who might belong here rated the white glove treatment.
“I am afraid I will need to see your ticket, Miss…”
I ignored the hint for my full name, since I didn’t think it would be popular. “Oh yes, that’s right. Give him the tickets, Ray,” I said, and dodged around the vamp. Who let me go, because it was that or tackle me, and he wasn’t ready for that.
Yet.
“Tickets, I…yeah, where did I put those?” I heard Ray say weakly, as I slid through a red drape of curtain. And into what must have been the family box.
Mircea was absent. Louis-Cesare equally so. I hadn’t really expected them, though. But considering Gorgeous George—or Ted or Harry or whoever—outside, I had expected Radu.
Who wasn’t there, either.
A bunch of other people were, however, who had been talking and drinking and gossiping and who were now silently staring at me, as if I had suddenly grown two heads. I ignored them in favor of turning to the blond, who had just come in behind me. “Radu—”
“Was asked to stand in for your father in the consul’s box. For the opening ceremony.”
“And the consul’s box would be?”
He blinked at me, like I might be slow. “There.”
I followed his gaze across the railing, and the width of the huge gleaming oval below, to the far wall. Where a massive balcony ran the length of all the box seats on our side. It was still mostly empty. A lot of shadows were moving around in an arched alcove, talking and drinking and waiting for the hoi polloi to settle before taking their seats, but only a few had drifted out onto the actual balcony. Radu wasn’t one of them.
But guess who was?
Marlowe looked about the same, even without whatever glamourie he usually used. A little paler, maybe, and there were tired lines at his mouth and dark circles under his eyes, probably because this was something like his fifth straight day awake. But his servants must have finally tackled him out of sheer desperation, because he was currently wearing a perfectly cut black tux without a wrinkle in it. It looked a little incongruous next to the still messy brown curls and the gold earring shining in one ear, but it perfectly matched the sharp, dark eyes, which were busy scanning the crowd below.
But despite the fact that we were in each other’s line of sight, he didn’t see me. I suppose the people in the boxes were regarded as safe, more or less. I only hoped he continued with that thought, because this was the best vantage point I was likely to get.
And there was plenty to see.
The great mirror at the far end of the room reflected back the huge crowd assembling at the other. Although “assembling” isn’t quite the word for being packed into the standing-room-only area like sardines, with no regard for expensive clothes and delicate feelings. Or danger, because the overflow was being channeled along the sides of the wide-open area of floor where the action was soon to start.
If it had been me, I’d have wanted a splatter shield.
But nobody was looking worried, maybe because they were busy looking up—at the balcony, where Ming-de had just emerged from under one of the arches. The empress of the Chinese court was surrounded by attendants, every single one of whom dwarfed her tiny four-foot-eleven frame. But there was no question who was in charge: she was encircled by a rush of power like a tornado.
It was currently keeping several fans aloft, fluttering around her head like jeweled butterflies, which matched the moving splendor of the rest of her outfit. Bright blue dragons coiled around her wide cuffs, white tigers prowled around her hemline, ebony tortoises gleamed on either shoulder, and a brilliant red phoenix preened its feathers at her waist. I knew enough to recognize ancient symbols of imperial power, although not what they meant.
And then there was the stark contrast offered by Hassani, coming up on her left, his elegant movements at odds with the tattered ruins of his face. They were making small talk as their attendants jostled about in the background,
jealously staking out space for their respective masters. Some of Hassani’s were also exotically pretty, in jewel-tone silks and ropes of pearls. They were rushing around, bringing up piles of pillows to cushion the already overstuffed chaises the consuls had in lieu of regular old chairs. But the rest…
Hassani’s more…interesting-looking…servants weren’t running around and they weren’t wearing silk. They’d also apparently declined tuxes, suits or even the elaborate costumes of the consul’s vamps. Instead, they remained in what looked like their everyday attire—stark, hard leathers, old and scratched and vaguely dusty, over thin cotton shirts and trousers and discolored boots. They didn’t go with the decor or the surrounding splashes of gleaming fabrics and bright jewels. They did go pretty well with the rifles slung over their backs and the swords at their waists. And the looks on their faces as they hedged the boss.
And for the first time I seriously started to doubt myself.
It would be suicide for any group to try to fight their way in here. Even assuming they got past the outer wards and the inner wards and the guards bristling with weapons, what then? There would just be more hell awaiting them in the form of the crème de la crème of the vampire world.
The original plan had relied on surprise: a rush through the portal, a strike with overwhelming force on a largely civilian crowd, who could be relied on to go nuts at the first sign of danger and run amok. That would complicate any attempted counterstrike by the consul’s guards for a few vital minutes, during which the other side might be able to gain the upper hand. It was a gamble, but one with decent odds.
Unlike this.
I suddenly started wondering what I was doing here.
Not that it looked like I’d have that problem for long.
“I told you, I must have dropped them on the stairs,” Ray was saying, as he was shoved unceremoniously through the curtain.
There were two guards now, and they didn’t look so obsequious anymore. Although, amazingly, neither seemed to have recognized me yet. It was only a matter of time, though, and if there was nothing more to see from up here, there was no reason to—
Ray came into my line of sight, looking rumpled and put upon and as crabby as ever, flanked by the two guards.
And outlined by the silver gleam of the great mirror behind him.
You know, the one that masked the consul’s portal.
And just that fast, I understood.
“I know we checked, but I’m telling you, somebody must have picked them up,” he was saying, glaring at the vamp with the hand on his arm. “Don’t you have cleaning staff? Have you checked with them? Because you’re making a big mistake here. I’ll have you know that Lord Mircea and I, we’re like this.” He held up a hand with crossed fingers. “He gave me a ride in his limo just the other day, and I was telling him…”
I didn’t hear whatever story Ray had dreamed up, which didn’t appear to be working on the guards anyway. One of whom grabbed my purse, I guess to check for tickets. I let him have it in favor of gripping Ray’s arm. “The password,” I said tightly.
He just looked at me.
“For the portal. You said Radu guessed it.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So the bad guys were right there. What if they heard—”
His eyes got big, but before he could answer, the guards stiffened. And one glance to the right showed me why. It seemed that Marlowe did look up now and again, after all. Because he was practically hanging over the balcony, staring straight at me. And I finally understood the saying “If looks could kill.…”
Only they didn’t have to, because his boys had just been instructed to do it for him.
“Shit,” Ray said, and slammed his elbow back into the gut of his vamp.
I kicked out at mine, heard something crunch, and saw him go staggering at the balcony. And then Ray was jerking me through the door and toward the stairs, only to do a fast one-eighty and drag me through the curtain of the next box instead. “More, coming up fast,” he told me quickly, as Radu’s blond spoke from the hall.
“They just jumped over the balcony,” he told someone laconically. “They’re back downstairs now.”
There was the sound of booted feet hitting marble, but only some of them. Others started checking the box seats, because they hadn’t been born yesterday, and that included this one. Which I’d just noticed contained only two people.
One of whom was making down gestures at me.
I grabbed Ray and dove behind a low-slung couch, just about the time the metal curtain holders shlincked along their rod. And, presumably, a guard poked his nose in. And saw what I just had, namely the hairy leg and thigh of the flagrantly naked man on top of a pretty brunette senator whose name escaped me, but it had once been linked with Geminus’s.
Only it looked like she’d traded up. Because the guy continuing to move lazily against her was none other than Anthony, the European consul. Who obviously had his own way of celebrating, and it didn’t involve hobnobbing with a bunch of his rivals.
Fortunately, scaring the crap out of intrusive guards had made the list. Or maybe he was just returning a favor I’d once done him. Either way, he was giving a good glare over the back of the chaise.
“Yes?” he drawled, voice dripping with the privilege of a few thousand years.
“I…uh…I…” Well trained or not, the guard had obviously been thrown for a loop. I guess the consul’s place was usually a bit more straitlaced—an adjective that had never once been applied to Anthony.
Who suddenly smiled at the flustered vamp. “If you stay here any longer, I am going to assume you want to join in.”
The guard fled.
Anthony looked at me. “Having fun?”
“Not even,” I said, scrambling back to my feet.
Only to have Ray grab me. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“How?” I demanded—hopefully. Because nothing would make me happier right now.
“They weren’t that close,” he said quickly, because neither of us was under the impression that Anthony had bought us much time. “We got the portal open before you came around the last bend, but you couldn’t hear us ’cause it was so loud in there. So Radu had to go get you. They couldn’t have heard—”
“Vampire zombies,” I reminded him grimly. “Their strength and speed doesn’t vanish, even after they start to decay—”
“Don’t remind me.”
“So why should their hearing? And the necromancer heard everything his puppets did. Remember the half-missing guy upstairs?”
“I said don’t remind me,” Ray hissed, and then: “Marlowe’s probably changed it by now, anyway.”
“Changed what?”
“The password! You know how paranoid the guy is—”
“I also know he hasn’t slept in five days and has about a thousand other things to watch. He can’t—”
“Can I say something?” Anthony asked mildly.
“What?” Ray and I both demanded in unison.
“He’s standing behind you.”
Chapter Forty-three
I always wondered what Marlowe would look like if he ever really lost it. I found out. He gave a very nonhuman snarl and jumped me, sending a brazier tumbling and the hot oil inside it sloshing and Anthony and his pastime running butt naked out into the hall when the oil caught their chaise on fire.
Marlowe didn’t even appear to notice. His eyes were fixed on me, and they were blacker than I’d ever seen them. It was like staring into two black holes, only not as friendly.
“Wait,” I said.
And then I was airborne.
Which might not have been so bad, but Marlowe was, too. I got a split-second impression of him launching himself over the balcony I’d just sailed across, and then my back hit the floor of the arena. Hard.
And oh, yeah. That’s what I needed tonight, I thought, rolling over. And thereby missing the vampire who landed on light cat feet right beside me. And getting squashed by the one wh
o smacked into me like a sack of potatoes a second later.
“Okay, okay,” Ray said, from atop my butt. “Let’s not be—”
And then he was sliding backward, too, like a toboggan, only without the sled, across the shiny floor. And I was jumping back to avoid the fist of an enraged master vampire. Who seemed to have forgotten that he needed my brain intact in order to probe it.
“Is this the first match?” I heard someone say, as I ducked and dodged and tried to explain what was going on, only I didn’t have the breath.
“Tell him!” I gasped at Ray, who ran back up as I bobbed beneath an iron fist.
“Dory’s here because she thinks the bad guys got the password to the consul’s portal,” he said quickly. “And that they’re about to bring a fey army through. Tonight,” he added, since Marlowe didn’t seem real impressed.
I nodded, and darted behind a confused-looking guy who was consulting his ticket.
“Am I in the wrong place?” he asked me.
“No, you’re fine,” I breathed, avoiding the blows Marlowe was aiming to either side of him. And then dropping to the floor and scurrying behind some startled bystanders, when Marlowe growled and picked the guy up, setting him aside like he weighed nothing.
“Only I’m trying to tell her that they don’t. Have the password, that is,” Ray added. “Or that it wouldn’t matter if they did.”
“Wouldn’t matter?” I asked, stopping to glare at him through some chick’s legs.
Only to have Marlowe dive between them and grab me around the neck.
Well, that was fast, I thought resignedly, when the girl’s outraged date—who clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with—kicked Marlowe in the head. It didn’t do much more than distract him, but my patent leather stiletto was a bit more forceful, and his grip slipped. And I slithered away with only the loss of a few chiffon bits.
They don’t make evening dresses like they used to, I thought, as Ray caught my eye.
“It doesn’t matter because nobody’s getting back into Central,” he yelled at me. “It’s on a major lockdown, so they don’t have access to the gate. They couldn’t use the password if they had it!”