Ride the Storm

  He laughed. “She put an ass-kicking on everybody, and from what I hear, her fellow reporters are backing her up. And these people hate each other. They don’t agree on what direction the sun comes up, but they are universally dumping on anybody who hasn’t been helping you. There’d be a crowd of them out front right now, yelling questions, if the guys at the checkpoint weren’t keeping them out.”

  I winced. “How’s it going over?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew.

  “Like a very large, very lead-filled balloon. You know the senate.”

  Unfortunately.

  “Sure you want to go in there?” he asked, nodding at the door. “’Cause you can hang out in the office with me.”

  “Is Mircea in there?”

  “Probably. From what I hear, the whole senate is.”

  “Then I’m going in. I have to see him, and it won’t wait.”

  I transferred my look to the vamp who’d given me the paper, folded it, and handed it back. “Let me in.” It came out as the deadpan delivery of a master in a bad mood, but I didn’t care. I’d given them fair warning, and I’d meant every word.

  That cow pasture should hold two more.

  Buzz Cut took back his paper and looked at it for another minute. And then up at me. And finally did something that left me blinking in surprise: he grinned. “You really kill a couple hundred mages?”

  “I had a lot of help. Now, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Don’t do it,” his buddy advised.

  “But it’s her, man. It’s her!” The grin was out in full force now, showing a gold tooth.

  “It is not. It’s some reporter trying to sneak in, and I’m not getting my ass kicked over this,” he said, and put a meaty hand on my shoulder.

  I sighed. Damn, this was going to hurt. I started to reach for my power, which felt sluggish and very unenthusiastic.

  And then stopped, because I didn’t need it.

  Buzz Cut knocked Mr. Clean’s hand away. “Show some respect.”

  “You did not just touch me.”

  “Just call someone!” Jules said—why, I didn’t know. He knew as well as I did how this was going to go down.

  “Grab the baby,” I said quickly, and Jules snatched the wide-eyed innocent out of the way before a vamp fist knocked a two-foot hole in the concrete.

  And then another one caved in the side of my defender’s mouth, a fact that did not keep him from getting his buddy in a headlock. He spat bloody teeth, although not the gold one luckily, and grinned at me some more. While the other vamp thrashed and snarled, and used his foot to shred a line in the concrete.

  Ours used his to push the door open. “No problem,” he said indistinctly. “I got this.”

  We walked through the door.

  At first, I couldn’t see much, thanks to the consul’s version of emergency lighting. There were more of the standing candelabras around the edge of what felt like a big room, clustered together in threes and fours. But unlike in the hall, where the ceiling had been too low, there were also chandeliers overhead. Massive ones, dripping slippery puddles of wax onto the rough concrete floor, and almost blinding me after the darkness of the hallway. The closest one was especially dazzling, and so big that it blocked the view of most of the middle part of the ceiling—until I moved a little farther in.

  And forgot to breathe.

  “What the—?” Jules whispered, his hand gripping my arm. The baby had stopped, stock-still, on my other side, his mouth open, his gaze directed upward in disbelief. I didn’t know what vamp eyes saw, but to me it looked like a big black cloud hanging over the center portion of the room, with flashes of colors here and there that strained the eyes and hurt the brain. Because they weren’t supposed to exist on earth.

  Like the creatures who made them.

  Because the consul had herself a basement full of demons, oh yes, she did.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  For a moment, I froze, the tiny-mammal-when-a-hawk-flies-over response kicking in with a vengeance. Like the let’s-get-the-hell-out-of-here response that hit a split second later, the two orders crisscrossing in my brain, and giving me a good idea of why people in emergencies fall down so much. It’s not that they’re clumsy; it’s that their feet are trying to follow two different commands at the same time.

  Only, this time, I didn’t fall. Maybe because Jules was still stuck in stage one and had a death grip on my arm. Or maybe because it had just dawned on me that there had been no reaction to our appearance. The cloud acted as if it hadn’t even noticed us come in—which I doubted—but if it had, it wasn’t doing anything about it.

  As far as I could tell, it wasn’t doing anything at all, except hanging out.

  At vampire prom.

  I blinked, but I swear that was what it looked like, now that I could see it: a big concrete rectangle of a room, large enough to have held two basketball courts end to end with room to spare. Only the spare was taken up with sets of old wooden bleachers hugging the walls, to complete the high school gym vibe the place had going on. And it was crowded, with maybe three hundred elegantly dressed masters and clusters of their more plebeian-looking servants, some sitting with comical discomfort on the bleachers, others standing about with glasses in their hands.

  All it needed was a lousy band and a photo line.

  And maybe an exorcist, I thought, staring upward again.

  “Cassie,” Jules said, turning to me, blue eyes wide.

  “It’s okay,” I told him.

  “How is it okay?” he whispered while the baby suddenly broke out of his stupor and flailed around a little before managing to turn around and grab the door.

  In time to see it indent with the impression of a vampire body, causing him to yelp and fall back.

  Nope, not that way.

  I scanned the rest of the room, more carefully this time, but I didn’t see Mircea. I did see the guy in chef’s whites, standing among a group of regular old run-of-the-mill vamps at the far end of the room. They were too far away to make out expressions, but they were clustered together, closer than vamps usually stood, in what looked like a bad case of rather-be-somewhere-else.

  No shame, guys, I thought.

  No shame at all.

  But they weren’t leaving, maybe because they didn’t have anywhere to go, either. And Mircea was still coming, and I still needed to see him and nothing had changed. I swallowed and straightened my shoulders.

  “Come on,” I told my two babies. And started walking before they could argue, in the direction of the nearest set of bleachers.

  And found someone I hadn’t expected.

  The whole section was vacant, maybe because it wasn’t as close to the action. Or maybe because of Rosier, who was sitting four rows up, looking fairly hideous, although in a new way. His size was almost back to normal, maybe a few inches too short, but at least he wouldn’t fit in a backpack anymore. But the pale, almost transparent coloring and pulsing purplish veins were still there, along with something else.

  “Are those . . . What are those?” I asked, looking at two thin membranes growing out of the sides of his head and wafting around in the air currents.

  He scowled at me. “What do they look like?”

  I didn’t say anything. Because, taken with everything else, including the still-in-progress features and fishy lips, they looked like those things the Creature from the Black Lagoon had been growing. Almost exactly like.

  “Fins?” I guessed, and was shot a purely evil look.

  “Ears! Anytime now!”

  “Okay.” I climbed up and sat down. After a moment, my two shadows did as well, crowding close on my opposite side. Like trying-to-hide-inside-my-skin close. Under other circumstances, I would have said something, but as it was I just sighed. And nodded at the cloud. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll
see,” Rosier said testily, obviously not in the mood for a chat. “Do you have it?”

  I assumed he meant the potion. “Working on it.”

  “Work—” He cut off, the pale complexion darkening. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “I’m going to talk to Mircea as soon as he arrives.” The flush deepened. “I can’t just summon him, Rosier!”

  Rosier didn’t say anything, probably because of our audience. But his scowl intensified. And then something hit my lap.

  I looked down. “What is this?”

  “Eat it! I packed a bag full of supplies, which I had to sit on to save them from that thieving woman, but do you eat anything?”

  I regarded the offerings with a serious lack of appetite. And not just because it looked like he’d cleaned out the discount aisle at hell’s jiffy store. “Sit on?”

  “They’re wrapped!”

  I didn’t comment. I kept a couple items and handed the rest to my companions, because it’s almost impossible to eat and panic at the same time. It’s one of the reasons for food at funerals: it’s life-affirming.

  And it seemed to help.

  I ate crackers and watched the Joes and Janes being prodded into a long, ragged line in front of the bleachers. They were facing away from us, but the expressions I saw before they turned were not enthusiastic. “What’s wrong with them?” I asked Rosier, who was watching them, too. “They don’t look happy.”

  “What difference does it make if they’re happy? Servants do as they’re told.”

  “Do your servants do as they’re told?”

  He snorted. “If I watch them like a damn hawk. But mine aren’t part of some bizarre hive mind. They have free will.”

  “Vampires have free will.” He shot me a look. “Okay, it’s limited, but it’s still there.”

  “For masters, maybe,” Jules piped up. “Everybody else is screwed.”

  “You know that’s not true,” I said.

  “What I know is that this isn’t cheese.” He regarded a small package of crackers with distaste. “And why is it sticky?”

  “There’s some peanut butter ones—”

  “I’ll wait.”

  The baby was eating his uncomplainingly—why, I didn’t know. It wasn’t like it would nourish him. But maybe the familiar felt comforting. Something normal and human in the midst of a world that was anything but.

  I decided he had a point and crinkled cellophane—somebody had to eat the peanut butter ones—while Rosier scowled some more.

  “Would you stop talking about snacks and tell me what you meant?” he demanded.

  I looked at him. “About what?”

  “You said vampires have free will, even nonmasters.”

  “Because they do. Technically, a master can force his servants to do what he wants. But he has to expend energy for that, plus, well . . .”

  “Well what?” He looked more interested than I’d have expected.

  “Well, there’s service and then there’s service. It’s better to have them want to help you, to view the family as all in it together. Otherwise, when you need them the most, they might be just a little too slow, you know?”

  “A little too slow?”

  I opened up a cracker to lick off the peanut butter inside. “Alphonse—he was second-in-command of the vamp family I grew up with—used to tell a story about a guy named Don who’d had an abusive master. The guy had mental problems in life, and those don’t exactly get better after death, you know?”

  Rosier nodded.

  “So, anyway, Don got sick of being beat on all the time, and cursed at and generally made into a whipping boy for his master’s issues—and his master had a lot of issues. Final straw came when his master traded Don’s girlfriend to another family for a tough-guy type to help with security.

  “It didn’t help with security.”

  Jules snorted.

  Rosier frowned. “Why not?”

  “Alphonse knew Don because his master was in the same not-exactly-legal line of work. Guys like that have enemies. One night, not too long after the girlfriend incident, Don’s master was caught in an alley by an ambush and was really getting hammered. Now, it takes a long time to kill a master with bullets, and the guys assaulting him weren’t getting close enough for anything else for fear he might drain them. So there should have been time for a rescue.”

  “Should have been?”

  “Oh, shit,” Jules said.

  “Don’t spoil it,” I said. “Anyway, the master put out a call for help, and Don dutifully loaded up a vanload of guys and took off—on the most circuitous damn route he could find, with the most traffic and the most stoplights. Think of those taxis in Vegas that take you via the tunnel—they’ll get you to your hotel, but you’ll have a hell of a bill, considering the airport is actually visible from the Strip.”

  “But the master had given him a direct order!” Rosier seemed upset. Which was strange, since he’d never struck me as a rules-loving kind of guy.

  “And he obeyed. But the master had neglected to give step-by-step directions, being kind of busy at the time, so what route Don took was up to him. By the time he got there, there was nothing left but the mopping up.”

  Rosier looked really annoyed for some reason. “But didn’t that endanger him, too? I was under the impression that vampires can draw energy through the bond no matter where they are. The master could have drained his whole family trying to save himself!”

  “But then who would rescue him?” Jules pointed out.

  I nodded. “Don kept telling him he was getting there, he was getting there . . . and he did. Just a little too late.”

  Rosier scowled. “This . . . complicates things.”

  “Complicates what?”

  “The invasion, of course!”

  I stopped chewing. “What invasion?”

  “What do you mean, what invasion? We’re going to have to invade, aren’t we?”

  “Invade . . . what?”

  “Invade—” He looked at me incredulously. “Has no one discussed this with you?”

  I felt my face flush. There was a chance someone had avoided discussing it with me. “No. What are we invading?”

  “Where is the support base for those trying to bring back the gods?” he demanded. “That Antonio of yours and the other vampires he’s allied with, the damn Black Circle, your rogue acolytes, and who knows who else? Where have they all been hiding?”

  “Faerie.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “The senate is still planning to invade,” I said, because of course they were.

  “Well, of course they are,” Rosier said. “No one wins a war by staying on the defensive. We have to take the fight to them!”

  I glanced at the line of vamps. “And you think vampires are going to be . . . helpful?”

  “Not helpful—key.” He suddenly became animated. “A demon or a mage suffers an immediate and significant power loss in Faerie, just as the fey do in ours. But vampires don’t. An army of them could give the fey something to worry about!”

  “Maybe,” I said, having heard this argument before. “But even if you’re right, there aren’t that many masters. And anybody below that isn’t going to do you a lot of good in Faerie. And speaking of masters, the other side has them, too.”

  “But the other side doesn’t have demons.”

  “But demons can’t go into Faerie.”

  “Who said we can’t?”

  “You just did—”

  “I said our power is limited there, which it is, although we could still raise hell in sufficient numbers. But what if we could go into Faerie . . . without going into Faerie?”

  Jules and I exchanged a look.

  “Think about it,” Rosier said. “Vampires are magical beings, but they don’t use magic—th
ey don’t sling spells or what have you. They simply are, and what they are is supported by the life energy they absorb from others. Feed them enough, and they just keep going. Like Energizer Bunnies. Energizer Bunny tanks. Energizer Bunny tanks full of demons.”

  “Oh my God,” Jules said.

  “What?” I asked, pretty sure I’d heard wrong.

  But Rosier was nodding enthusiastically. “The idea is to have your vampires serve as housing for some of our stronger demons. Load them up, send them in, and just plow the enemy down. And end this, once and for all!”

  I looked at him. His face was flushed, his eyes were shining; he looked like a guy who’d just seen God. Or, since it was Rosier, like a guy who was really, really high. Which was also what he sounded like.

  “What?”

  Some of the glow faded. “It could work.”

  “No.” I shook my head hard enough to flop my hair around. “No, it can’t.”

  “And why not?”

  “Why not? For one thing, if your power doesn’t work in Faerie, then it doesn’t work. Whether you go in alone or with some vamps doesn’t change that!”

  “But it won’t be working in Faerie,” he said impatiently. “It will be working in the vampires. And as vampires are immune to the effects of that terrible place, so should we be, as long as we remain inside them. That’s what a possession is—a symbiotic merging with another. We receive their immunity—”

  “And what do they get?” Jules interrupted.

  “Depends on the type of demon they end up with,” Rosier said, frowning at him. “But at the very least, we can make them stronger than they already are, faster, more resilient, more deadly—”

  Jules rolled his eyes.

  “But vampires feed off blood,” I said. “And not the fey variety. And only masters can pull enough from family to sustain themselves in combat.” It was one of the main reasons Mircea had wanted me to make him an army of masters. Regular old vamps, which the senate had plenty of, would starve in Faerie.

  “Vampires feed off life energy,” Rosier corrected. “They just obtain it through blood. That’s their conduit, as lust is for my kind. The method isn’t important—the energy is. And with my people feeding them directly, they won’t need a conduit, now, will they?”