Dragon’s Claw

  “No sign of who did this?” he asked now, his voice changing as he went into interrogation mode. “No clues as to which of your enemies might be starting a turf war?”

  “It isn’t a turf war!” Cheung said. “And there were plenty of clues. Hours of them!”

  “We have surveillance on all our sites,” Zheng explained. “Not for our own people, but for the non-family groups we work with at times. Some of those bastards will steal you blind.”

  “Then you know who did this,” Marlowe said, his forehead wrinkling. “At least, you know who attacked your other sites.”

  “Oh, yes,” Cheung said, still glaring. “We know.”

  “Then what are we standing around here for? If you need the senate’s help—”

  “We don’t need your help with anything!” Cheung exploded. “Not when you’re the ones doing this!”

  “The tapes all show the same thing,” Zheng intoned. “Our men, loading up some recent stock from Faerie into trucks, just like they were supposed to. And then calmly setting fires all over the warehouse, just like they weren’t supposed to. And standing around afterwards, dead eyed and robotic-looking—”

  “Until they burned alive! Because your father damned well told them to!” Cheung said, and lunged for me.

  And was batted back across the room for his trouble, before I could blink.

  Kitty Kat went back to washing a giant paw, having never even moved off my lap.

  But a lot of other people were moving, suddenly. Cheung stood back up, four huge slash marks across the meat of his chest, his eyes solid fire. And the hue spread to the surrounding circle of his vamps, like a spark across dried kindling. It was impressive, or it would have been, suddenly looking at a bunch of high-level, flame-eyed vamps—if they hadn’t just been given a target for all that pent-up rage.

  Me.

  And there are limits to even what a giant cat can do for you.

  Mages, on the other hand, are more versatile.

  Cheung’s boys simultaneously attacked from all sides, and at the same moment, a dozen pipes burst through walls and ceiling and floor, like manic snakes. Most were water pipes, sending wild, wet arcs everywhere as they wrapped a metal embrace around vamps and snatched them off their feet. And then slammed them around the room, knocking them into floor and ceiling and each other, or jerking them back through walls to disappear into darkness in the rapidly collapsing basement, which wasn’t designed to take this sort of abuse.

  Dirt and dust and parts of the ceiling were raining down, heavy metal pipes were slamming vamps about everywhere, and Kitty Kat was standing on alert over top of me, growling softly, making even getting back to my feet a problem.

  And then the lights went out.

  Suddenly, all I could see were sparks from the electrical lines freed from the now only sort-of-existing walls. They were flashing dangerously in the dark, water-filled room, seemingly on all sides. But despite the obvious danger—to all of us, since vamps are even more flammable than humans—they weren’t my main concern.

  Because one of those severed lines hadn’t been carrying water.

  “Oh God!” I heard Vamp #1 cry, and then: “Oh fuck, oh shit!”

  Right in three, I thought, as the cursing vamps were hit by a waterfall of sewage.

  Kitty Kat gave a shriek and went into a crouch. I coughed and cursed and retched and thought about throwing up—it was that bad. But I somehow grabbed hold of some well-muscled fluffiness instead and we bounded ahead.

  It wasn’t a flawless victory. I scraped my thigh across brick on one side, and had somebody try to drag me off on the other. But a well-placed kick to the head dealt with that, and then it was too late for anybody to catch me. Kitty Kat and I shot up the old, wooden stairwell, while cursing and gunfire erupted behind me—really? They were trying to shoot the pipes? And then pounding feet were coming up the stairs.

  Vamps usually go around on little cat feet, but they weren’t bothering with stealth now. And neither was Kitty. We burst out of that godawful basement and into the foyer with the stairs collapsing beneath us, and I turned around in time to see a bunch of blurs shooting up behind me.

  And then around and in front, running hell bent for leather for the entrance of the building while it was still standing.

  Thankfully, it was Marlowe and his guys who gathered in the street around kitty. The chief spy had even thought to grab a very traumatized looking mage, who nonetheless managed to shoot a bolt of something orange and angry back at the building. And formed a wall of flame in the doorway we’d just passed through.

  It was thick and red and shimmering—but not enough to keep me from seeing Cheung, rabid faced and crazy-eyed, staring out at us and screaming.

  Suddenly, I was really glad I didn’t know Cantonese.

  “Perfect!” Marlowe was almost as livid as Cheung. “That’s just perfect! Thanks to that raging idiot, the crime scene is ruined and we didn’t get a damned thing!”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I told him, still coughing, and pulled out a knife.

  Several guys took a step backward, I have no idea why. I was on their side. I shot them a look and grabbed Kitty’s collar.

  Like everything on the tat, it was a pretty thing. It had a line of large emeralds set in gold, probably the repositories for the magical energy that fueled the ward. They weren’t what I was after, though.

  No, that would be the bullet I’d noticed earlier, gleaming silver bright against all that gold, and half buried in the collar. At a guess, it was what had pushed Kitty into the wound, temporarily trapping her, and allowing her alone to survive the carnage. I pried it out and Marlowe had one of those little evidence bags ready by the time I did, his eyes gleaming.

  “Come,” he said, staring past me at Cheung. “We have a report to make.”

  Chapter Five

  A short time later, I was trudging up my least favorite staircase in the world.

  It wasn’t just that it was long and that the steps were annoyingly broad and shallow, so that ascending them for shorties like me was more like step-shuffle-step than anything with any dignity, but it was also where the steps were going. Most of the time, trips to see the vampire queen, AKA the consul, AKA Her High and Bitchiness, were preceded by a three-hour car trip from New York, because the palatial heap she lived in was in the rolling countryside of upper New York state. It gave me time to get my game face on.

  Not this time.

  No, this time had been deemed an emergency, so we’d taken a short cut in the form of a portal from Central. Only, instead of letting out into the ballroom, as it used to, the realities of warfare had caused the senate to change the route. Leaving us to slog across the lawn and up the staircase from hell.

  Of course, it wasn’t really the staircase that was the problem. More like the huge number of high level vamps crammed into the house behind it, which sent my dhampir senses into overdrive. To the point that we were almost at the top before I noticed: the guards at the front door were making some weird faces.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked Marlowe, who was already glaring.

  It didn’t look like he liked his reception, either.

  “Is there a problem?” he barked, in a tone that said there had better not be.

  The hapless guard in front, one of four, stepped forward. “I . . . it’s just . . . no, my lord, of course not, my lord, but . . .”

  “Well? What is it, man?”

  “That.” The guard pointed his eight-foot-long spear at me. “It’s not authorized.”

  I scowled. Was this sort of bullshit ever going to stop? “I’m a goddamned senator!” I snapped.

  “Y-es, sir. I mean, ma’am. My lady,” the guard looked alarmed. “I didn’t mean—”

  Kitty leaned forward and bit off the end of the spear, and then stood there, crunching it thoughtfully.

  The guard looked at his ruined weapon, and then back at us. “Uh. I meant, the, uh, the cat. The cat is not authorized.”

/>   “It is now.” Marlowe started past, only to have another guard’s weapon block his way. And I swear, I saw actual steam coming out of the chief spy’s ears. “Son. You do not want to try that today.”

  It was a simple sentence, but it made all the hair stand up on my arms.

  It didn’t seem to have done the guard any good, either. He turned white as a sheet, but to give him his due, he stood his ground. Another one was crowding closer, backing him up, while the last was zoned out behind them, probably calling for reinforcements.

  Great. This was just all I needed.

  “It’s okay,” I told Marlowe. “Kitty and I will stay out here.”

  He took some convincing, mainly because he wanted another witness to what had happened in the basement. But he finally gave way, probably to keep Cheung from showing up and telling his side of things first. He swept inside, glaring at the guards as he did so, who barely noticed this time.

  Maybe because Kitty had started to sniff at them, as if wondering if they’d taste better than the spear.

  “We’ll, uh, go back down,” I told the guy in front. And for the first time ever, I had a high-level, senatorial guard look like he wanted to kiss me.

  “Thank you,” he said fervently, just as another six Roman centurions clanged out of the main doors—the reinforcements, I assumed.

  Ming-de isn’t the only consul who likes to make a spectacle.

  They stopped on a dime, staring from me to Kitty Kat and back again, but nobody decided to be a hero. I breathed a sigh of relief and called my new pet away to chase little creatures on the front lawn. I needed a mage to figure how to get rid of it, but I didn’t have one and, frankly, thought Kitty might be useful as long as Cheung was on the war path.

  Like right now, I thought, as a limo started screaming up the long drive.

  I didn’t pause to wonder how he’d found a portal so fast, since he was a smuggler, after all. I didn’t pause to wonder anything. I just here-kitty-kittied myself and my large furball into the shadows beside the steps, and hoped that the tat didn’t hold a grudge.

  I was pretty sure that getting a senator eaten was against the rules.

  We just made it before the limo screeched to a halt and a bunch of guys got out. Like, all the guys. It made me think of a clown car, because they just kept coming. A stretch limo can hold a lot of people, but seriously? It looked like Cheung had squashed his whole family in there.

  Except for Zheng. I didn’t see the bluff giant anywhere. I hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.

  The stream of well-dressed madmen went pouring up the steps and tried barreling past the guards, who were having a bad night. But not as bad as Cheung and company. I hadn’t been able to see them too well, due to the light from the building getting pretty dim by the time it cascaded down all those steps, and the fact that I was having to peer through a forest of fur. But my nose was doing all right, and they reeked.

  That poor limo, I thought, as Cheung demanded to know if Marlowe had been through here already.

  “Yes. Lord Marlowe arrived a few moments ago,” one of the guards said, sounding a little strangled.

  Eau de Sewer to a vamp’s nose had to be pretty overwhelming. We’d left the poor Hound retching at Central, while the mage held peppermint oil under his nose. It hadn’t looked like it helped.

  “And that sei bat po?” Cheung spat. I couldn’t see the guards, or much of anything else from my position, but I could imagine them standing and looking at each other. Nobody answered, because nobody knew what he meant. “That damned bitch!”

  Oh, he meant me.

  “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

  Here’s the thing about the senatorial guards. I hadn’t been hanging around them too long, but I’d noticed that, if you played nice, they were usually pretty respectful. Even to a damned dhampir, they stayed polite, as long as you didn’t make their lives any harder. Because let’s face it, men who have to wear little leather skirts for a living already have enough problems.

  But for people who were an issue, they gradually became more and more polite, since they couldn’t very well bite your head off. Not without answering to someone a lot harder to appease than a pissed off senator. Instead, they just got nicer and nicer, and harder and harder to deal with, because there were only about a fuck ton of rules around here, and it was up to them how stringently they were applied.

  And Cheung was about to get the business.

  “Are you hard of hearing?” he demanded. “That damned dhampir! Where is she?”

  “What dhampir would that be, my lord?”

  “What dhampir?” Again, I couldn’t see Cheung, but his voice sounded incredulous. “How many dhampirs do you know?”

  “Personally?” the guard sounded thoughtful. “None. Until recently, I believed them to be a myth.”

  Several of his buddies chimed in to agree that they, too, had not believed the stories. It was all very well-mannered and civil. Or it was until Cheung gave what could only be called a primal scream, and then came the sound of a scuffle.

  “Get the hell out of my way! I’m going to find her myself!”

  “I am sorry, my lord,” the guard’s voice, although a bit strained, now dripped with solicitousness, almost to the point of parody. Maybe because it sounded like he’d just been reinforced again. “But I’m afraid that I cannot allow your men to pass.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, you can pass yourself, sir, of course, but your men were never vetted and put on the approved guests list—”

  “They’re not guests! They’re my family!”

  “Yes, but as I’m sure you can understand, the rules in wartime are rather stringent about who can be permitted into the consul’s presence—”

  “I don’t want to see the damned consul,” Cheung said, his voice dropping to just above a whisper. “I want that damned dhampir, and you’re going to stand aside or—”

  “—and the proper forms must be filled out. They are F-341 and B-19A,” the guard added helpfully. “If you have them with you, I can submit them tonight, and within a week or so—”

  The guard’s spiel was cut off by the sound of a fist hitting flesh.

  That wasn’t unexpected; in fact, I was kind of surprised it had taken as long as it had. Senator Cheung must be trying to make a good impression. Which did not appear to be going well, I thought, about the time a body came soaring through the air and hit down on the ground near the foot of the stairs.

  It wasn’t Cheung, but it wasn’t a guard, either. And based on the fact that the vamp in question had brown splattered clothes and reeked like a garbage truck in August, I was pretty sure he’d been in the recently demolished basement. And that he remembered me, I thought, as his head jerked up and our eyes locked.

  “My lord!”

  Shit.

  “Down here!”

  And, suddenly, I was having to hold onto Kitty, who was ready to throw down, while also looking for a place to run. Because I am good—I am very good—but nobody is fight-a-whole-vampire-family good. And my daddy didn’t raise any stupid children.

  Unlike Cheung, I thought, as his idiot Child decided to make a run for me, before waiting for backup.

  “Down, Kitty!” I said, as the damned thing went bounding across the lawn, dragging me along.

  Kitty did not get down.

  I didn’t know if there was some kind of code words to control this thing, and if any of them were in English. So, there wasn’t much I could do except hold on, and try to keep Kitty from dining on something larger than the damned chipmunks. Which wasn’t going so great, I thought, as dumb ass got savaged.

  And then, above the sounds of combat from above and the screaming and snarling down below, I somehow heard it: a whistle.

  Kitty heard it, too, and stopped abruptly, with a dripping maw full of vampire.

  And then bounded off to the shadows below the stairs, where a dark hulk was looming outside what looked like a . . . door?

  I stared at
it, because that hadn’t been there a second ago.

  “Dory!” It was a whisper, but it carried. “Over here!”

  I headed over there, not so much because I’m fond of dangerous looking shadows, but because Cheung’s boys were now pouring down the stairs, with some leaping over the railing to cut me off.

  And, you know, it never ceases to amaze how many people forget that dhampirs kill vampires. You’d think I was what I looked like, some diminutive human with zero game the way they came at me—one at a time. It looked like Kill Bill all of a sudden—in more ways than one, I thought, as I pulled out a knife.

  Not that I killed anybody—I’m pretty sure—but goddamn. Show some respect, I thought, pinning guy #1 to the stairs with a knife through the neck—yeah, be careful of that jugular buddy—and then throwing guy #2 into guy #3. And snatching a spear that I guess they’d taken off a guard, and shish-kabobbed the two together before sending them running into guy #4.

  But there were more coming—a lot more—and I was out of spears. And then it didn’t matter anyway. The shadow, suddenly looking much smaller than before, grabbed me and we went pelting across the rest of the lawn and through the hidden door. And slammed it behind us. And watched in bemusement—at least I was—through a door that appeared transparent on this side, while dozens of enraged vamps hit and then scrabbled at the other side, apparently as incapable of seeing the opening as I had been.

  “It’s always fun to watch you work,” said a familiar voice.

  I turned around to see Ray, my supposed Child, scratching Kitty Kat behind the ears.

  “Are you a good kitty?” he asked the crimson jawed horror, who nuzzled happily into his hand. “Yes, you are. Oh, yes, you are!”

  I leaned back against the wall—easier said than done, since it was slanted like the stairs—and got my breath back. And watched Ray play with the cat.

  It was impressive, because Ray is a skinny, half-Dutch, half-Indonesian, all nose kind of guy, with a shock of dark hair and a thin face, who looks like he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Although he would, apparently, say “good kitty” to a monster. He never ceased to surprise.