Dragon’s Claw

  “I should have remembered you used to belong to Cheung,” I said.

  He scowled. “Used to being the operative phrase. Do I wanna know why he’s trying to kill you?”

  “He’s having a bad day.”

  “So I see.” Ray looked at the scrabbling vamps, who had now started throwing themselves at the door. He waited for a moment, until their master showed up and thrust them aside. And then Ray reached into the darkness beside the ward and flipped a switch.

  And damned near electrocuted his old boss.

  “You were waiting to do that,” I accused.

  “Damned right. Bastard cleaned out my bank account.”

  “That was, like, a month ago.”

  “So what? I’m supposed to be over it now?”

  “Holding grudges is bad for you.”

  “Bad for him, too,” Ray muttered, and zapped him again. “By the way, your dad wants to see you.”

  “Mircea?”

  “You got another one?”

  I sighed. “There’s only one Mircea.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” He wrinkled his nose. “And, er, no offense, but you had a bath lately?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, you might want to switch out your soap.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my soap,” I said, as we left Cheung and his boys smoking and cursing outside the ward and headed down a hall. “It’s lavender.”

  Ray snorted. “I keep telling you, you oughtta let me do the shopping.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause somebody saw you coming.”

  “They did not!”

  “Did so.” He sniffed again and made a face. “’Cause, baby, that ain’t lavender.”

  Chapter Six

  Considering how much his nose was twitching, I’d expected Ray to lead me upstairs, to freshen up in the posh set of rooms that had been assigned to my use. Not that I did—use them, that is—since living around here was basically my idea of hell. But they had proved a great place to stash Ray and the boys, who had been left temporarily homeless after a fire destroyed their club.

  And it seemed that he’d been paying attention to his new digs.

  “This place gives me a headache,” I said, after the tenth turn and sixth flight of stairs.

  We’d been mostly headed down, which I guess meant freshening up wasn’t on order, into a part of the palace I’d never visited before. It didn’t look like too many other people had, either, including the clean-up crew. It was all bare concrete, industrial stairs and trash in the corners—a serious contrast with the polished marble perfection upstairs.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Ray commiserated, as we hit a concrete box at the bottom of another staircase.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause it’s about to get worse,” he said, and threw open a battered metal door.

  “Son of a bitch!” I swore, as a vamp the size of a taxi came flying through the air towards us.

  I ducked; I don’t know why. It was like trying to dodge a small mountain, and merely meant I’d get pancaked a little lower. Only not, I realized, as a golden spell-net caught the creature, literally inches before he erased us from existence.

  It gave me a close-up of the world’s largest butt crack for a second, before the net sprung back into place and sent him flying back into the fray.

  And fray it was.

  “What the hell?” I yelled at Ray, who just shrugged and shook his head. No point trying to explain anything in here. It was deafening.

  And insane.

  For a moment, I just stared at what had to be a couple hundred vamps beating the ever-loving shit out of each other. And not in the usual way. Half of them were stomping around like giants, easily the size of the human missile we’d just dodged, the largest maybe a couple stories tall and heavy enough to shake the ground when they fell into it.

  Which they were doing all the time despite their size, because the rest were throwing spells.

  I blinked a few times, sure I was missing something, because vamps . . . don’t do that. Vamps, weres, and weirdos like us dhampirs, are magic, but we don’t make magic. It’s a big distinction, in fact it’s the distinction, the one that separates the magical world into two competing camps. It’s also why I’m always broke, because if I want to go around throwing magic, I have to buy it from people who know exactly what their talents are worth.

  But that clearly wasn’t the case here.

  I know all about the types of containers used to hold potions or bind spells until they’re needed by the purchaser—me—and to keep them from blowing up in some unfortunate person’s face in the meantime—also me. And I didn’t see them anywhere. Just vamps waving their hands around, making flourishes and throwing lightning, which was . . . which was stupid. It was just stupid.

  There were exactly two ways for vamps—or weres or dhampirs—to get magic: either buy it or buy the services of somebody who had it. That’s it, and the latter explained why Marlowe had taken the time during a fracas with a murderous senator to snatch up his mage like a damned baby and run off with him. Because he was a precious commodity to the family.

  Mages with skills like his—good mages who actually had power and knew how to use it—didn’t often work for vamps. So when you found one that would, and who would be loyal to boot, you were loyal to him. You paid him well, you took care of him and his family, and you protected him, even at risk to yourself.

  But not now, I guessed.

  Now, nothing made sense and my whole world was upside down. I found myself getting angry as I watched the impossible: vamps throwing glittering rope spells around others to trap them; vamps forming shields out of thin air to protect themselves; vamps firing curses like it was nothing. This was bullshit.

  Ray was tugging on my hand, trying to tow me off somewhere, probably further away from the golden nets containing the chaos. But I wasn’t going. I was standing there, working up a true head of steam—never hard with a dhampir temperament—by thinking about all the thousands I’d spent and all the lowlifes I’d dealt with, trying to give myself a fighting chance against—well, people who could do things like that!

  Only it seemed we could do things like that.

  And no one had told me.

  Suddenly, I was furious, and I wasn’t the only one. Kitty’s hackles had raised along with mine, the once silky fur under my hand now bristling and standing on end. Even worse, the by-now familiar crouch was happening, which I’d learned was the precursor to a leap.

  And I knew at what.

  I saw disaster coming before it arrived but had no way to stop it. One of the giant vamps, a monster maybe twenty feet tall, had nonetheless been knocked across the arena—straight into the net in front of us. It caught him, although it spit and hissed, as if taking that amount of force strained even its abilities.

  Or maybe it was just that it was suddenly being assaulted on both sides.

  Kitty had pounced, grabbing the vamp by the back of the neck, and was attempting to shake him the way a housecat would a toy mouse. But mice are not as tall as a building and built like a brick shithouse. And they don’t reach around in bemusement, feeling around over the net and pulling off the fearsome ward as if it was an annoying bug, preparing to—

  “No!” I yelled, and ran forward before I thought.

  Suddenly, a large, round, strangely benign face was in mine, and an eye the size of my fist was regarding me through the golden weave of the net.

  It was blue, I thought blankly. With crinkles at the corners that, while huge, also looked oddly good humored. Like the laugh lines around the mouth.

  A massive, shaggy brown head shook, and a hand that could have reached all the way around my body instead held up my hissing, snarling kitty cat.

  “Is this yours?”

  The words were a low grumble, but they cut straight through all the din, shivering through the air and into the ground like the bass at an underground club, trembling the floor beneath my fe
et. I felt them all the way to my bones. It was intense.

  “Uh. Yeah?”

  “He’s a fighter,” the creature said, flashing fangs half as long as my arm.

  I stared at them, seeing my own face reflected back at me, elongated to the point of caricature in the shiny surface.

  All things considered, it took a moment to realize that he was smiling.

  That was despite the fact that kitty was swatting at him, with a now very small looking paw, and gnashing what appeared to be tiny little teeth.

  “Yeah.” I licked my lips.

  “Would you like it back on your person?” the giant asked. “Might be a good idea in here.”

  “Uh. Sure.”

  I barely knew what I was saying. It had been a rough night, although a fairly understandable one, up until now. I wasn’t understanding anything anymore. I usually adapted faster than this, but the sight of a huge, snarling fake tiger being lowered by a giant hand toward my arm was breaking my brain. Especially when said tiger dissolved into an orange and white mist, and appeared on my skin a moment later, the colors slowly gathering together like swirls of paint until—

  “Oh,” I said stupidly, because it was Kitty Kat, now tiny and prowling around the skin below my elbow.

  “He’s cute,” the giant said, watching him try to hide under my ripped and tattered sleeve.

  I looked up. “Who are you?”

  “Liam. Used to work in the kitchens,” he said bizarrely.

  And then a tiny vamp sent what looked like green rain pattering down all around my new friend, who rolled his eyes. “Not this again,” he sighed.

  A second later, I understood why, when the rain became a net, which abruptly tightened. And the captured giant went flying back into the fight, only not at random. Instead, he was being used by the tiny vamp like a Hulk’s fist, to smash a swath through the battling throng.

  I stared after them, feeling strangely dizzy.

  Then jumped at the feel of a hand on my arm.

  “You done playing around?” Ray yelled. “They’re waiting for us!”

  “Who’s they?”

  He gestured at the far end of the long room, where a square window set high in a bare concrete wall looked out over the festivities. Behind it, I could just make out Mircea’s handsome face, Marlowe’s angry one, and . . . oh, joy. Cheung stood beside the consul, one hand on the back of her chair, his withering gaze directed at me.

  Well, shit.

  * * *

  The only fun part was that Cheung hadn’t taken the time to bathe, either. So, in addition to wearing a filthy, bloodstained suit and missing a chunk out of his arm, he also stunk. It’s the little things, I thought, as he leapt for me.

  “Hold.” That, surprisingly, came from the consul.

  “Or what?” Cheung rounded on her, fangs out and color high.

  Oh, I thought blankly. This should be good.

  A lazy hand waved. “Or I shall let her savage you. For insubordination.”

  “I’d like to see her try!”

  A truly creepy smile flitted over the beautiful face for an instant. “So would I.”

  Cheung didn’t seem to know what to do with that.

  One of her little snakes hissed at him.

  I’d seen her wear a whole outfit of the things before—and yes, it was every bit as disturbing as it sounds. But today she’d toned it down, sporting only a couple of jade scaled numbers in place of jewelry around her wrists. The rest of her was covered in a gold jumpsuit with a plunging neckline and batwing sleeves, because I guess it was casual day.

  I had to admit it looked good with her rippling dark hair and general sloe-eyed sultriness, but Cheung did not appear impressed. I guess after a lifetime dealing with Ming-de, you had to really up the ante to get a reaction. Or maybe he was just too focused on me.

  “What is your problem?” I asked him, as he stood there and breathed heavily at me. He sounded like a bull in heat. “You sound like a bull in heat,” I added, because I was through being polite.

  Cheung lunged at me again, and nobody appeared interested in stopping him, so I stepped aside abruptly.

  I’d been standing in front of the full-length opening in the wall, which looked recent. At least, nobody had bothered to put glass in there yet. And he’d been moving with vamp speed, so he couldn’t stop in time.

  Cheung basically threw himself out the window and into the fight below, and I walked over to the bar along one wall to see what they had.

  Mircea sighed. “That didn’t help,” he informed me shortly.

  “But did it hurt?”

  Cheung screamed from somewhere below. “Probably.”

  “I promise not to do it again.” I’d think of something else next time.

  “He did attack her,” Marlowe pointed out, causing both me and Mircea to raise an eyebrow.

  Marlowe looked uncomfortable. Maybe because he usually spent his time complaining about me, not defending me. But today had been a day of wonders.

  “Well, he did,” he snapped. “Along with me and my men! That’s two senatorial assaults in one day, more than enough—”

  The consul didn’t say anything, but she raised a languid hand.

  Marlowe cut off.

  Damn, I thought.

  Wished I could do that.

  I fixed myself a Manhattan, because I was feeling fancy, and strolled back over to the window. Ray was already there, a curled fist at his side, his eyes gleaming. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah!”

  Somehow, I didn’t think he was rooting for the boss.

  “Would someone like to tell me what the hell is going on?” I asked, gesturing at the five hundred impossible things happening outside the window.

  “Cheung’s getting his ass kicked,” Ray said delightedly. And then pumped a fist into the air. “Yeah! Hit him again!”

  I looked away from my savage Child to the rest of them and gestured again.

  “She doesn’t remember,” Marlowe said.

  “I’m aware of that.” Mircea came over, looking perfect as usual, especially next to the rest of us bedraggled types. He was in a dark blue suit in his usual M.O.: sleek, understated, and gleaming slightly with a luxe nap that whispered rather than screamed its quality. But he must have been feeling a little wild today, because the tie was a bright, poppy colored silk.

  “Don’t remember what?” I demanded, because memory was a sore point between me and Mircea. Very sore. “If you’ve been taking my memories again—”

  “I haven’t. You don’t recall the last time you were here because you weren’t the one in charge.”

  It took me a second, I don’t know why. I’d just had her show up tonight. “Dorina.”

  He nodded.

  “Yeah,” Ray added, without turning from the fight. “From what I hear, she chased one of those demon-possessed bastards all over the place!”

  I blinked. “Demon?”

  “Of course, she was really trying to kill the Pythia, but you know how easy that ain’t. She kept spatially shifting all over the place, but I’d still put money on your other half taking her down sooner or later. ‘Cept the demon high council showed up—”

  “What?”

  “—and loaned the senate some of their best fighters. Age old demons with all kinds of crazy skills, y’know?”

  No, I did not know. I stared at the fight happening below—or not below in the case of the giant vamps—and wondered if I was going mad. Because a very weird idea had just occurred.

  “Ray. What . . . happened to the demons?”

  “They possessed the vamps, of course,” he repeated, and finally turned from the window. “The senate’s making a demon possessed army in order to invade Faerie. Didn’t anybody tell you?”

  I stared at him for a moment, and then I looked at Mircea.

  He sighed. “Well, they have now.”

  Chapter Seven

  The conversation had moved to my rooms, after all, because it was hard to talk with all the
mayhem going on. And because Cheung was going to fight his way out of the arena sooner or later and probably do something stupid, so the consensus was that it was better for me to be elsewhere. Although I suspected that my basement funk was the real reason: her high and mightiness’s nose had wrinkled a couple times.

  So, I was having a bath, and Mircea was telling me a bunch of insane stuff outside the door.

  “Okay, okay,” I told him, scrubbing my filthy hair. “I get it. The bad guys behind the war have allied with some fey and are hiding out in Faerie. And normal human magic doesn’t work there, so the Silver Circle can’t reach them.”

  The Circle was the main mage organization and liked to believe that they really ran the supernatural world. That was debatable even here, but Faerie wasn’t in our world, and it had its own rules. Bet the idea of a place where that their so-valuable magic was all but useless had stung, huh?

  It would have been funny if they weren’t also our allies, at least for the current conflict, which had made all kinds of strange bedfellows. Because the senate had had to face an unfortunate truth: that they weren’t much better off in the land of the fey. Sure, they could fight there, and for longer than the mages, but fighting takes power which takes blood, and from all I’d ever heard, fey blood was nasty.

  It also provided zero power to a vamp, meaning that any army they sent in would eventually run out of steam. And then be trapped and savaged by the fey, who knew their world a lot better than we did. Invasion had therefore looked like a no go, leaving us fighting a war where we were constantly on the defensive, yet couldn’t attack.

  That hadn’t been going so well. So, the senate had gotten weird with it, and made some kind of deal with the demons. It turns out they didn’t like the idea of a bunch of old gods being brought back from exile—the main motive of the other side—any better than we did, because age-old demons are even tastier to power-loving deities than us.

  Still following all that? Because that’s exactly how fast it got dumped on me. Sometimes I think Mircea assumes I’m smarter than I actually am, and that’s when I haven’t been beat and banged around all night. But okay. I was pretty sure I got the gist, anyway.