Claimed by Shadow

  “You first.”

  He sighed. “I would prefer not to use this body any longer than necessary. It is in a large amount of discomfort. Trust the master to scupper my plans without even knowing what they are.”

  “What plans?” It was making my neck hurt just to look at him. I moved so Stoker’s head wouldn’t be at that crazy angle anymore.

  “But that is what we need to discuss.”

  “Look, I really don’t have time to chat!” I tried to move past him, but the large body was blocking the door. “Get out of my way.” I could move him, of course—even without feeding recently, Augusta was stronger than a human—but I didn’t want to hurt Stoker. He’d had enough of that for one night.

  “No, I do not think so. As I recall, I did you something of a favor at our last meeting. I expect you to return it.”

  “Return it how?” I didn’t like where this conversation was headed.

  “I require a body for the evening, and this one has been rendered useless. It will collapse at any moment. I need a strong body, and yours will do nicely.”

  I backed up a step. “You can’t invade vampires.”

  “No, but you can see me even without a body, as you proved at our first meeting. Very well. I will give directions, and you will follow them, and we will let this poor fellow go off to his soft bed and his shrewish wife.”

  “I don’t have time to help you. I have my own job to do.”

  He smiled gently. “Yes. You wish to help Lord Mircea imprison his dastardly brother and make Europe safe from his fiendish ways once more, am I right?” He laughed at my expression, and again it was that goose-bump-inducing sound. “I saw you with Mircea at the ball. I see his mark on you now.”

  He paused because we both heard it at the same time—the ring of steel on steel from somewhere nearby. That would be all I needed, for Dracula to kill Mircea before Myra had the chance! I pushed at him, but he grasped my arm.

  “Tell me, am I right? Is that why you are here—to save his life?”

  I threw him off violently, not caring at the moment that poor Stoker’s hand hit the wall with a bone-crunching thump. “Yes! Now get out of my way!”

  I ran past him, fairly flying toward the stage, and reached the wings in record time. On the boards, two figures were engaged in a sword fight like nothing I’d ever seen. Power sizzled and crackled around them, brighter than the sparks that were struck off their swords. I concentrated on Mircea, but if he’d been hurt there was no sign of it. He wore a white shirt open at the throat, and there were no bloodstains on it that I could see. His hair had come out of its usual clip and it followed his motions, whip cracking around his lean form as he flowed through complex moves with deadly grace. I blinked and looked away, forcing myself to concentrate. When I looked back, I got my first glimpse of his legendary brother.

  Usually, I get a tingle up my spine when I see a vamp, but there was nothing this time. I wasn’t sure whether that was because I was in Augusta’s body, or because my brain was too busy screaming to focus. There was a strong sense of wrongness emanating from the vamp like nothing I’d ever felt. It was like the danger in the room had coalesced into a red mist, as if there was blood in the air. It went well with his dead white face and burning green eyes, the color of emeralds on fire. It did not go well with Augusta’s instincts, which were practically begging me to run.

  The two vampires flowed through the motions of battle like it was silent, deadly poetry. Even with Augusta’s senses I had trouble following them, their blades were striking so quickly. The sound of clashing metal echoed around the theatre like machine-gun fire, and every time I blinked they’d moved yards away from where they’d just been.

  I clutched the curtains, watching with my stomach in my throat as Mircea flung himself to the ground, barely evading a savage slash from his brother’s sword. He flicked his own saber at his assailant’s ankles, but Dracula leaped, clearing the blade easily. By the time he landed, Mircea was back on his feet and they were off again.

  “ ‘Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ ” I had been so intent on the combat, I hadn’t sensed the Stoker’s arrival until he started quoting.

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you before, dear lady—your help.”

  “I’m busy,” I snapped. Dracula flipped over his brother’s head, his sword slashing downward, and if Mircea hadn’t moved even faster than Augusta could see, it would have been over.

  “Is it your plan to stand by and watch as they kill each other?” Dracula’s blade had nicked Mircea’s left arm, splattering his shoulder and chest with red, and I didn’t think it would be the last time. Mircea was rumored to be a better-than-average duelist, but it looked to me like his younger brother was the faster of the two. It was a tiny difference, a fraction of a fraction of a second, maybe caused by the wound Dmitri had inflicted the night before. But sooner or later, it would be enough. And if Mircea lost, I somehow doubted Vlad had prison in mind for him.

  “Who would have thought,” the incubus murmured softly, a silken whisper in my ear, “the old man to have so much blood in him?”

  Their shadows flickered in and out of the scenery, soaring against the back wall in a deadly dance. Something clicked as I watched them. I’d seen this before. It was the same scene as in my vision—the one that ended with Mircea’s ghastly death. I swallowed thickly and turned to the incubus. “What’s your plan?”

  He pointed out a very familiar-looking box behind the curtains. I grabbed it with a sense of profound relief. I’d been wondering what to do about Myra since I’d left my box in a backpack somewhere in Faerie. She might be playing for the ultimate stakes, but I wasn’t thrilled about having another death on my hands. Even hers.

  “What’s your interest in this?” I asked when I returned with the trap.

  “The same as yours. We have much in common, I think. We both love dangerous creatures.”

  “You’re Dracula’s lover?” It looked like Stoker had gotten one thing right, after all. Only he’d put succubi in his novel. A nod to nineteenth-century morality, I guessed.

  “I have waited many years for my master’s release,” the spirit said, “but it will profit neither of us if he is killed shortly thereafter. The Senate knows he is near—I spent most of the night laying false trails, but they will not work for long. They are coming. My master does not believe that imprisonment is better than death, but I feel otherwise.”

  Things suddenly made more sense. “That’s why you helped me at the ball. You wanted Mircea alive so he can trap Dracula.”

  The spirit blinked Stoker’s eyes at me. “Next year or next decade, I will find a way to free him again. As long as he is alive there is hope.”

  “So you want to trap him to save him? He won’t thank you.”

  “Perhaps; perhaps not. What does it matter to you?”

  He had a point. And with Dracula safely tucked away, Mircea would have no reason to hang around this death trap. I held out the box. “Okay, so tell me how to work this thing.”

  A couple of minutes later I was crawling behind the scenery, the box in my pocket and doubt in my mind. If the incubus was playing me I was in a lot of trouble; if not, I was still in a lot of trouble, but at least one problem would be solved. Of course, I should have known better—I never get one mess cleaned up before another makes an appearance.

  This time was no exception. Myra flashed in so close to the fight that she might have been skewered had the two opponents not broken apart at just that moment, pulling back from an impasse. Dracula did something that caused Mircea to stumble—it was so fast I didn’t see it—and he whirled to face the new threat. But before he could run her through, a dark shape plummeted from the rafters overhead and would have landed on him like an anvil if his reflexes hadn’t been so sharp.

  “Pritkin!”

  He caught sight of me. “They’re coming!
”

  “Oh, shit.”

  I looked around but saw no hordes of vamps. But Pritkin had his full arsenal out and his shields up, not something he did lightly. I finally got a chance to see Mac’s handiwork in operation. The sword that slashed and danced around the mage’s head had the same design as the one I’d seen Mac painstakingly carving into Pritkin’s skin. But it was larger— easily half as long as me—and as solid and shiny as a real weapon. It also appeared to pack quite a punch. One swipe at Dracula threw him back almost ten feet, and if he hadn’t deflected the blade, it would have bisected him.

  Suddenly, Dracula and Mircea were fighting side by side, their own feud forgotten in the face of the new threat. Luckily, the two brothers were so busy concentrating on the mage and his bevy of flying weapons that they didn’t notice me. Unluckily, they forgot about Myra, too, who had shrunk back from the fight, and her hands were clenched as if she held something. I reached her just as she threw the sphere in her left hand, and felt the effect slam into me like a tidal wave. Oh, joy. Little Myra had got herself a null bomb.

  We went down in a tangle of Augusta’s voluminous skirts, Myra screaming and me swearing. The thing in her other hand turned out to be another sphere, this one dull black and about the size of a softball. I didn’t recognize it, but if it was magic it wouldn’t work right now, so I ignored it. Myra raked her nails down my cheek, almost resulting in Augusta going through eternity with a less-than-fashionable eye patch. I turned my head at the last second, avoiding the worst, but the scratches still hurt like a bitch.

  “Girlfriend,” I told her, blinking to clear the blood out of my vision, “you so do not want to fuck with me today.”

  Her eyes got big, then her expression turned murderous. “You!” Myra didn’t seem to like it that I’d been able to appropriate a stronger body, because she went for my throat, her reaching hands formed into claws. I managed to wrestle her hands off with minimal damage to either of us, but all I got in return was a snarl and a kick that caught me in the shin.

  I slapped her hard enough that her head shot back and her eyes briefly lost focus, buying me a few seconds to check on the fight. The magical sword had disappeared and a few of Pritkin’s knives were on the ground, their animation lost to the null’s effects. The vamps had dealt with the others by simply allowing them to burrow so far into their flesh that they couldn’t pull back out again. Both of them were a bloody mess, but they would survive. I was a lot less sure about Pritkin. He had his revolver out, but steel bullets wouldn’t do much against master-level vampires, even assuming they connected.

  Billy suddenly walked out onstage, in my body but with his usual swagger. He was looking up and so was Myra, and she was laughing. One glance and I knew why—the rafters were suddenly swarming with vamps. They poured in from the roof, the windows, the doors—my God, there had to be a hundred of them. I stared in stupefied awe, Augusta’s voice in my head telling me what I already knew. We were screwed.

  A vamp dropped in front of me, plummeting the three floors from the rafters without even missing his footing on the landing. Before I got a good look at him, Billy reached into his pocket and tossed something at us. I caught a glint of gold as a tiny shape arced in the air, and then it changed.

  Mac’s eagle swooped down in a beautiful dive, gray feathers a blur against the dark theatre, but those glittering eyes just as bright as ever, and the vamp was suddenly not there anymore. A scream, a thud, and he landed in front of me again, this time missing a good chunk of his throat. He was a master—he’d live—but he wasn’t going to be doing any fighting anytime soon.

  The vamps attacked in a swarm, flooding the stage, and Billy threw the remaining wards into the air in a glittering arc. A wave of spitting, hissing and howling beasts tore into the vamps. A miniature tornado took out half a dozen, tearing along a rafter, tossing bodies everywhere before fading away. A snake the size of an anaconda dropped around another vamp’s neck, winding its coils over his eyes, causing him to stagger blindly off the stage into the orchestra pit. A huge wolf jumped on one, snarling and tearing huge chunks out of his torso, while a spider the size of a Volkswagon had another wound up in silk, hanging him from the rafters with an air of pleased concentration.

  Myra brought my attention back to earth by attempting to stake me. Luckily, Augusta believed in whalebone—and lots of it—for stays. I ended up with a bruised rib and Myra with a blunt stake. I grabbed it out of her hand. “I’m already Pythia! There’s no changing it!”

  Myra only laughed. “I already killed one Pythia,” she said viciously. “What’s one more?”

  “You killed Agnes?” I almost let her go in surprise. Not that it surprised me that she was capable of it, but what about the prohibition? “Then why are you after me? Even if I die, you’ll never be Pythia!”

  “If you’re clever, there are ways around almost any problem. ” She glanced at the combatants. “We’ll see what can’t be changed!”

  The other ball had become tangled in my skirts, but a kick from her started it rolling slowly across the floor toward the fight. I finally got a grip on her by grabbing a handful of hair, but although it must have hurt, she was smiling, her eyes following the black orb like it carried the secret to all her dreams. Considering that her dreams involved mayhem and death, and that she’d probably gotten that thing from her good buddy Rasputin, I decided that it would be very bad if it succeeded in crossing the stage.

  It was just like my vision—Mircea covered in blood, fighting for his life, and someone tossing a weapon at him from the shadows. I knew what came next, but with Myra fighting me every inch of the way, I couldn’t reach the ball in time to stop it. I dropped her in a heap and ran after her little contraption.

  I hadn’t gotten two steps before she tackled me, and it was like trying to get away from an enraged octopus— everywhere I moved, she seemed to be there first. Normally, Augusta would have been able to stow her under one arm and run with her or simply knock her unconscious. But the first idea would slow me down and the second was out because I didn’t know Augusta’s strength well enough to risk it.

  Half walking, half crawling, I moved slowly toward the ball, but it was taking too much time. I caught sight of a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye and didn’t hesitate. “She’s going to destroy the theatre!” I screamed, pointing at Myra.

  Myra looked at me like I was mad, but the theatre ghosts heard me just fine. The woman’s face had already been screwed into a vicious snarl, watching the mess being made on her beloved stage, and now she had someone to blame. She threw the severed head, which was suddenly looking a lot less jolly, straight at Myra. When they merged, Myra gave a shriek and started convulsing. I shoved her away from me just as the woman joined her tiny partner. A whirl-wind started up that left me unable to see more than a thrashing tornado of white and blue.

  This was no mere mugging—the ghosts had obviously given all the warnings they intended and had gotten down to business. A living person should have been stronger than they were, but it was two against one and they were on ground that had held generations of the bodies of their ancestors. That’s like an extra battery pack for a ghost, something Myra must have figured out. She screamed as they dove for her again, half in fear and half in rage, and vanished.

  I lunged after the ball, but a vamp got in my way. I threw Myra’s stake at him, more as a diversion than anything else, my aim being what it is. Apparently, Augusta’s was better, because it connected.

  A very pale and shaky-looking Stoker lurched out of the wings, staggering toward the ball as fast as his unsteady legs would carry him. It wasn’t fast enough. The small sphere had reached the fight and rolled under the feet of the two combatants, who were now fighting against a circle of Senate members. It was getting pushed about as they shuffled and jockeyed for position, going first one way and then the other. The look of abject terror on Stoker’s face was enough to make me run full-out after it.

  I arrived just in time to get hi
t in the face by a sandbag on a rope that had fallen from the rafters. It was one of four that were swinging around, being dodged easily by most vamps, except the one who hadn’t been paying attention. It had to have weighed fifty pounds, and had got up a lot of momentum on its arc. By the time I noticed it, there was no time to do anything but take it. It knocked me off my feet and I went skidding on my back for several yards.

  “Dislocator!” Stoker had collapsed onto the stage, and unfortunately it was on his stomach. He screamed, but it was the same odd word, over and over.

  I scrambled back up as the duelists paused, looking down at the small sphere at their feet. Everyone froze for half a second. Then the Senators melted away, flowing out of the theatre as quickly as they’d come into it, Mircea grabbed Billy and jumped straight up to the rafters, and Dracula ran towards us after snatching up Stoker. Pritkin threw an arm around my waist and took a flying leap off the stage. We landed in the orchestra pit, and because he’d rolled us at the last minute, he took the brunt of the impact.

  It knocked him out and rattled my teeth, and the next second, a wave of power shot over our heads from stage level. The bomb must have found something to connect with, maybe some of the fallen vamps. If so, I didn’t think they’d be getting up again. The impact had felt nothing like a null bomb. It was darker and almost greasy, and in no way would ever be mistaken for a defensive weapon.

  I raised my head to find that I was almost nose to nose with Dracula. He looked strangely pleased to see me; then I was staring at the knife hilt sticking out of my chest, right between the third and fourth ribs. It hurt, but not like I would have expected. There was no bright, searing pain, and very little blood. That might have been because Augusta hadn’t fed recently or because the bastard had missed her heart by a fraction of an inch.

  Vlad was preparing to take off her head, why I couldn’t imagine. Maybe because she was helping Mircea? Maybe because he was a nut? Who knew? But he was taking his time about unsheathing the long knife at his side. The one he’d used on me was one of Pritkin’s—he must have pulled it out of his own flesh—but this one looked like an old family weapon, with a heavy, inlaid grip and a fine, polished blade. Too bad he wouldn’t get a chance to use it.