Shadow's Bane

  Looked down in alarm, at the similar piece of wood sticking out of his own chest, the bloody tip glistening in the latest lightning blast.

  Mircea had a second to see the red-haired woman standing over the body, her eyes huge, her hands still gripping the other end of the piece of wood. And then the master was hacking at him again and again and again, trying to finish the job. And Mircea was grabbing up a shard of his own, his fingers suddenly quicker, steadier, with the feel of an invisible hand covering his own.

  Dorina, he thought, and she was savage, slashing across the creature’s throat, releasing a torrent of black blood, sticky as tar. It flooded over him—them—as he panted in shock and pain. And struggled to get away with the creature’s body pinning his legs.

  But he was too clumsy and it was too heavy. Leaving him nowhere to go as the master slowly raised his head, the dark slash in his throat mirroring the grinning rictus on his face. And grabbed for his makeshift stake again, because the horror hadn’t bled out yet!

  “Die! Die! Die!” Mircea was yelling and stabbing and scrabbling back, agony shooting up his spine as the true state of his legs became apparent. And as the master got the makeshift stake in him, more than once. And as Mircea kept twisting and turning and scuffling and slashing, to make sure it didn’t hit his heart—

  And then watching as the master’s head went bouncing across the cobbles and fell into the canal, when a lucky strike finally finished the job.

  He lay there, watching it bob among the waves for a moment, his mind blank with shock.

  Until somebody slapped him.

  The red-haired woman, Mircea realized, staring up at her.

  “Move!” she screamed.

  He moved. Not running or even walking, both of which were out of the question now, but crawling, if dragging himself by the arms counted. Because passing out, or cursing, or any of the other things one usually did in these cases, wouldn’t get him anything but dead. And he didn’t want to be dead.

  But several hard minutes later, he could still see the space where the portal had been, sandwiched between the two stalls that had fallen over in the gale.

  And right after that, the praetor’s voice had shaken whatever tiny hope he’d had left, leading him to his current state, sprawled against the side of the bridge, wondering if the booming sounds from above were God’s hysterical laughter.

  Then the woman slapped him again.

  “I said, where are the rest?” she screeched.

  Mircea blinked up at her, mud and water and gore dripping off his face. “The rest of what?”

  “Your companions! When are they coming for us?”

  Mircea started wondering if fear had driven her mad. “Would I be in this condition if I had companions?”

  She stared at him. And then she shook him. “What are you talking about? Where is the Circle? Where is Abramalin?”

  “You know Abramalin?”

  She stared at him some more, although he wasn’t sure how well human eyes could see in this light. But she must have seen something, because she managed to slap him again. “You weren’t sent to get me out?”

  “Cease attacking me, woman!” Mircea snapped, and pushed her.

  From his perspective, he’d barely touched her, but he sometimes forgot vampire strength. Or perhaps she slipped on the torrent raging across the cobblestones—he didn’t know. He knew only that she hit the side of the bridge, bounced off, and fell down the embankment.

  Cazzo!

  He scrambled after her, afraid she would drown. And she might have; the canal was roiling like the ocean, as if the whole city had somehow floated far out to sea. But she wasn’t in it.

  “Abramalin! È un figlio di puttana! Un porco demonio, un miserabili pezzi di merda!”

  Mircea blinked. He didn’t know if Abramalin was the son of a whore, but he was absolutely spawn of the devil and a miserable piece of shit. “He sent you in and then abandoned you,” he guessed, as she floundered around in a boat full of fish.

  “He said he just wanted information! He said I wouldn’t get hurt!”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  She wiped her face, which didn’t help because the rain was still pelting down. “You, too?”

  Mircea nodded, before remembering that she couldn’t see it. “Yes. And now we’re both in desperate danger, but if you’re with Abramalin, you must be a witch. You can get us out of this!”

  Sprawled among the fish, she looked up at him for a startled moment, her face blank. And then began laughing hysterically. Mircea went back to worrying for her sanity.

  “I’m what’s known as a scrim,” she finally managed to gasp, as if that made things any clearer.

  “What?”

  “You know, like the curtains?”

  Mircea scowled. “I’m not a mage! I don’t know what that means!”

  “It refers to my kind being like curtains that block out the sun, leaving a room dark inside. Magicless.”

  “Then you’re not a witch.”

  “I’m a witch as much as any of them!” she snarled, probably because she’d just tried to get out of the boat, slipped on fish, and landed on her backside. “But I don’t make enough magic for anyone to detect it. My kind make good spies.”

  “So you’re a spy?” Mircea said, because frankly she didn’t look like one.

  “I’m an idiot,” she spat. “I came to Venice because I have one talent, one I hoped to turn into a fortune and spite them all, everyone who always told me how useless I was! But, instead, I listened to Abramalin, and his stupid stories about the future of the magical community—the same one that always despised me! And now look—”

  Mircea cut her off. “What talent?”

  “Glamourie.” She was thrashing about in fish guts, in what to her was probably total darkness, but that didn’t seem to have dampened her spirits any. “‘Go to Venice,’ they said. ‘The courtesans there live like queens,’ they said.” She slipped again, and ended up draped across the side of the craft, cursing. “If this is a queen, I’d rather be a commoner!”

  “Glamourie,” Mircea repeated, hope dawning. “Then you can disguise us!”

  “I could disguise myself,” she corrected. “I don’t have enough magic for two. And it doesn’t matter, anyway, when I can’t disguise my scent. Or don’t you think I’d have walked away before this?”

  Mircea felt like battering his head against the boat, but he was hurt enough.

  “Abramalin, the bastard, was supposed to send someone to get me,” the woman continued, ripping her skirts to get them free of a nail. “But the damned praetor changed locations, and I couldn’t get to the rendezvous for a week or so. She didn’t want anyone getting wise to her little scheme—”

  “To kill the consul and take over,” Mircea said, as things finally made sense.

  The woman nodded. “The weapons she was making from all those bones would give her the edge she needed when they dueled, and she wasn’t taking chances. I found out everything, but no one ever came to get me out! Just left me for dead. Who cares about a damned scrim? I should have known—”

  She cut off when Mircea shook her. “Wait! You’re saying you can do magic, you just need more power?”

  “I—yes. Something like that. Why?”

  He looked behind him, up the little stretch of beach.

  “I have an idea.”

  * * *

  —

  “Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God—”

  “Be silent!” Mircea hissed.

  “I’ve never done anything—oh God!” And then the witch grabbed him, her eyes reflecting the lightning above them. “I’m going to be sick,” she told him calmly.

  And then she was.

  All over him.

  Mircea didn’t care. He was already waist-deep in water, with waves crashing into h
im on the regular, washing away worse things than that. Much worse.

  He held on to the little boat full of fish. And tried to keep the waves from slamming the damned thing into his half-healed legs. Something he couldn’t very well prevent and hold on to the briccole, the wooden pillars used for docking, at the same time!

  He and the witch were down a little way from the bridge, near where the vampires had been doused earlier. The side of the canal was built up here, to make a decent pier. Enough to hide them from eyes on the quayside, if they didn’t look down. And they wouldn’t, not with what they were about to see.

  That was the hope, anyway, Mircea thought, fighting with the boat. It was an old hulk of a thing, a repurposed gondola with its once-shiny paint now mostly gone and the wood beneath cracked and splitting. Which was less of a problem than whether it would stay afloat!

  “They’re coming.” He felt Dorina rejoin him, after briefly flitting about the nearby streets.

  Mircea was surprised it had taken them this long. The first five vampires had been nobodies, just hunting in local taverns and rousted out by the urgency of the praetor’s command. But her real troops were out now, and augmented by whomever they could press into service. There must be literally thousands of vampires on the streets, looking for them.

  And thanks to Dorina’s whispers in the leaders’ ears, most of them were now coming this way.

  How long? He asked her mentally.

  Now.

  Damn! He grabbed the witch, who had been hugging a briccola to stay upright. “Do it!”

  She swallowed and looked at the boat, which had a mage and a vampire in it. Or, to be more precise, half of each, two of the bodies from the fight at the now-vanished portal, wedged in and weighted down by piles of fish and nets to look like they were sitting up. One wore Mircea’s face, the other her own. And either she was low on power, or she had overestimated her gift, because Mircea’s doppelganger had one eye higher than the other, and a terrifying grin on his face, while hers . . .

  Well, that would cure a man from going to brothels, he thought wildly.

  But perhaps it would be good enough from a distance.

  “I’m going to let the boat go, and then you do it, all right?” He repeated the plan, because she wasn’t looking all right.

  “I hope this works,” she told him rapidly. “I haven’t done this much. Or any. I mean, when I was younger, before they realized . . . I had the usual training, but I don’t actually use . . . I mean, I never—”

  Mircea fought an urge to shake her. “It’s all right. Just try to concentrate.”

  “Yes.” She swallowed again. “When—when did you want me to—”

  “Now.”

  “Now?”

  Mircea’s head jerked up, because all of a sudden he could feel them. And by God, it was an ocean of vampire power surging their way. Irresistible, unstoppable, overwhelming. They were both going to die!

  “Yes, now! Now, now, now!”

  “All right—”

  “Now!”

  “Stop yelling at me!”

  “NOW!”

  “Then launch the damned boat!”

  He didn’t have to launch it so much as let the sea take it. He shoved it, nonetheless, as hard as he could, out into the swollen canal. Which grabbed it like a child with a new toy.

  Mircea grabbed her, jerking the woman back among the briccole, and slamming them both up against the canal, where the raging sea had carved a shallow channel into the side.

  He couldn’t see the vampires, assembling somewhere above them. Could barely even see the boat, through the water that kept hitting him in the face, and the mountainlike waves. Couldn’t see anything—

  But someone else could.

  “There! In the boat! They’re getting away!”

  He had a brief moment to hear the shout taken up by what sounded like an army. And then swords being dropped and boots being shed, as the praetor’s guards prepared to jump in after them. And yet still the witch did nothing.

  And neither could Mircea, for fear of being overheard.

  Wait, she mouthed, as he glared.

  Wait! as he shook her.

  Wait, a pox take you!

  And then a lightning bolt flashed, blindingly bright, and thunder boomed, so close and so loud that Mircea almost jumped out of his skin. And finally—finally—the witch threw out a hand, while everyone cowered in fear and the elements roared and the little boat, storm tossed and tempest rocked—

  Went up like a powder keg had gone off.

  Make that a hundred powder kegs, Mircea thought, pushing the woman the rest of the way into the water. And shielding her as best he could as explosion after explosion tore through the night. They displaced the waves in a huge trough around what had been the boat; they sent what looked like burning orange fireworks into the formerly darkened night; they lit up the entire expanse of waterfront, including the witch’s amazed face, resurfacing with a gasp, because she hadn’t expected that, either.

  So that’s what half a skeleton’s worth of vampire bone gets you, Mircea thought, as the praetor’s men shouted, and the winds blew, and what was left of the little craft sank beneath the waves, to be carried away by the tide.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  I slept for over a day. And, for a wonder, nobody bothered me this time. Well, almost nobody.

  I blinked my crusty eyes open to find another pair staring back at me. They were blue, a lovely almost-violet shade that human eyes never achieve without help. And huge, like those of an anime character come to life. And startled, because I guess they hadn’t expected to be suddenly looking into mine, either.

  A small creature let out a bleat and stumbled away, into the middle of my bedroom floor, because somebody had brought me to Claire’s. He hunched down with arms over his head, like he thought I was about to strike him. And then just stayed there, shaking in fear.

  I didn’t move.

  The shaking increased for a moment, and the arms tightened. But when nothing happened, they loosened enough for one large, purple eye to peer out from underneath. It flicked toward the door, which was halfway open, but the owner didn’t budge.

  I didn’t, either, because I’d recognized my guest, and wasn’t particularly worried about being attacked by a half-dead troll kid. Not that he was looking half-dead now. I hadn’t expected Olga’s rescue to be on his feet anytime soon, even in an obviously shaky sort of way, much less to be exploring the upper floors of the house.

  But trolls are damned hardy, more so than me. I felt stiff and starved and badly in need of a drink, but I didn’t want to freak out the kid. So I just stayed there, unmoving, until he slowly, slowly, slowly stretched into a more or less standing position.

  He had dark brown hair, thick and shaggy and completely unlike the twins’ baby-fine variety. He also wasn’t the usual gray-green, but more of a gray-teal, with bluish undertones to the skin. He had the small mouth and round face of a child, and even a somewhat smallish nose, which for trolls is more telling. To the point that I wondered how young he actually was. And then there were those eyes, framed by long, thick, dark lashes.

  He was freaking adorable.

  But he was also still hunched over somewhat, despite the impression I had that he was standing straight, or as straight as he could. Claire had put him in one of her old hippie shirts, loose and flowy and painter’s-smock-y, which was enormous on him, so all I could see was a head and some teal-colored toes. I supposed it was a miracle that he was getting around at all, but the posture looked uncomfortable. I wondered why—

  Oh.

  That was why.

  The big eyes moved to my bedside table, and mine followed. And showed me that I’d had an earlier visitor in the form of my roommate, who knew a little about dhampir metabolism and liked to feed people. She’d loaded me up, probably because foo
d had a tendency to disappear if left in the kitchen.

  As a result, I had three whole sandwiches waiting for me. I slowly reached out a hand and took one, a nice fat BLT, because Claire understands that the B is the most important part. Thick-cut, peppery B, complemented by her own homemade bread and vine-ripened tomatoes and bacon jam and—

  I heard my stomach grumble. And be echoed a second later by a similar sound from under Claire’s smock of a shirt. My visitor was hungry, too.

  I held out the sandwich. “It’s okay,” I said. “You can have it.”

  The little troll didn’t move.

  But he didn’t run away, either, although his eyes kept flicking from the sandwich to me to the door. Over and over. He was obviously frightened, but also hungry, but also frightened. . . . It was an impasse.

  I decided to help him out and put the sandwich platter on the foot of the bed, pushing it as close to him as I could without getting up, which I somehow knew would spook him.

  Then I sat back against the headboard and ate my own sandwich, because it smelled like heaven.

  He watched me for a moment, eyes huge.

  And then, faster than I would have expected—almost faster than I could see—he grabbed the remaining two sandwiches and fled, practically knocking Claire over in the process.

  She’d been coming in the door with some laundry, and had to do an acrobatic maneuver to avoid getting mowed down. “What the—Hey! What are you—”

  But the kid and his loot were already gone.

  Claire stared after him for a moment, and then turned to me, astonishment on her features. “He’s walking!”

  “He’s running around, stealing sandwiches,” I corrected. “Good ones, too.” I licked bacon grease off my fingers.

  “He’s supposed to be in bed!”

  “Put a platter of sandwiches beside it. He’ll never leave.”

  Claire blinked, considering that. Then she put down the laundry basket and went out again. I heard her talking to Gessa, and I guess they sorted it out, because she was back a moment later. She started putting towels away while I hauled my stiff-as-fuck body out of bed.