Tempt the Stars

“That now,” I said, pointing.

  “What?”

  “Allû.”

  “Allû?” For a second, he stared blankly at the nearest carpet, and then his face changed. “Fuck!”

  And yeah, that about summed them up. The Allû were the council’s personal guards, who were usually camped out in the Shadowland making life in hell a little more hellish for anybody who dared to cross their demonic masters. But occasionally they got sent on errands, like when the council really wanted somebody dead.

  And they usually got their wish, since their freakish army couldn’t actually die. I knew because I’d fought them before. Not that that experience was likely to help much at the moment, since it had mostly involved me getting killed over and over again. I’d been caught in a time loop and kept “resurrecting” whenever time reset itself, until I finally figured out a way to beat them.

  Unfortunately, this time I didn’t have a hundred chances to get it right.

  “Take us closer!” I told Casanova, trying to grab the edge of Pritkin’s rug as we headed back up again. But it was moving, too, as half a dozen men and creatures fought on top of it, and the fringe barely brushed my fingers.

  Which was just as well, since an Allû fell off the rug a second later, burning from a fire spell and barely missing us on its way to slam into the floor far below. And then to get up, still burning. And to run to the nearest building to rejoin the fight.

  A second later it burst back onto the roof, moving so fast that the oxygen made the flames lick up all the faster. Its outer robes were already mostly gone, with just a few flaming tatters still clinging to the metal underneath, which was now glowing red hot. Not that the Allû appeared to notice.

  But Casanova did, the flames from the burning demon reflecting in his horrified eyes as he stared at me. “Are you insane? Shift us out of here!”

  “I only have strength for maybe one shift, if I’m lucky,” I told him. And that was assuming I could concentrate. But it was the only chance Pritkin had.

  The good news was, the Allû didn’t use spells. The bad news was, they didn’t need them. They were freakishly strong, unbelievably fast, and impervious to pain since they didn’t seem to actually have bodies in there. As far as I’d ever been able to tell, they were nothing more than animated suits of armor.

  Which kind of limited attack strategy. The only way I’d found to get rid of them was to completely destroy that armor. As in shred it to bits with a submachine gun or blow it the hell up, or else they just kept coming back.

  Or got bored and decided to start tossing those wicked blades around. Suddenly, the air was filled with shiny death, one of which Casanova grabbed as it passed over top of us. And used it to bat away several others that were tumbling our way because of our crazy course or plain bad luck.

  But not because they were being aimed at us.

  They were being aimed at Pritkin.

  “Get me up there!” I told him, in a panic. Our tiny craft was still bouncing around, but it was well below the level of Pritkin’s now. He and Rosier had just sent a bunch of their attackers flying, and the sudden lack of weight had caused them to shoot upward.

  “I’m not a mage!” Casanova said furiously. “I don’t know how to drive this thing!”

  “Then think of something!”

  “What do you expect me to do?” he demanded. “Jump? There’s simply—” He caught sight of my expression. “No.”

  “You’re a vampire. You’ll live.”

  “It five floors down!”

  “It’s closer to four now—”

  “That’s four too many!”

  “—and there’s a wagon down there with hay—”

  “It’s fake! This whole place is fake!”

  “You owe me!” I said, grabbing his arm. “You led me into a trap!”

  “I led . . .” If possible, he looked even more outraged than usual. “You kidnapped me—”

  “A trap that almost got me killed!”

  “I didn’t know what Rian was going to do!”

  “So you say. But there’s nothing but your word for it, is there? Help me now and I’ll vouch for you with Mircea.”

  “You—Dios!” he spat. Followed by a lot of things in Spanish that probably weren’t complimentary as we came as close to the floor as we were going to get.

  And then he jumped. But I didn’t get a chance to see how or where he landed. Because without his extra weight, the yo-yo effect became more like a slingshot.

  The ride up was a terrifying blur, the jump from my perch onto Pritkin’s rug was worse, and then I was screaming and Pritkin was cursing and Rosier was stabbing—a guard and not me, for a wonder—and I was shifting—

  And going nowhere.

  “Get him out of here!” Rosier growled, grabbing my arm. “Do it now!”

  I stared at him, desperately trying over and over to do just that. But all I felt was the metaphysical equivalent of grinding gears. Hauling four people through three worlds had left me as dry as the sand that had finally tapered off, after depositing a few dozen more guards on the rooftops of the fake ghost town around us. Rosier must have managed to pick up every damned one off the hillside as he passed, and we couldn’t fight them all.

  A view he seemed to share. “If you’ve cost me my son, girl—”

  “Stiff-necked pride did that years ago,” Pritkin said, knocking his father’s hand away. “Yours and mine. This is not her fight!”

  “She’s made it hers! She insists on making it hers!” Rosier snarled, and the hand was back, this time around my throat. A pair of green eyes, so like his son’s but so different, burned into mine. “Shift him now!”

  But I couldn’t shift him, couldn’t access my power at all, and there was no time for recovery. Because the Allû had decided that the knife-throwing act they were doing wasn’t working, and had started throwing themselves instead. One flipped off a roof to the right, bounced off Caleb’s rug, and then used the momentum to keep right on going, through the air and straight across the drag to a building on the other side.

  And in his wake, he left a bloody line across Pritkin’s stomach, where his sword would have gutted him if war mage reflexes were a little less sharp.

  But that wouldn’t help for long. More than a dozen guards were massing along the roofline, about to overwhelm us with numbers. And it was too late for anything but screaming as they jumped—

  And went flying backward, like a bomb had been set off in front of them.

  Pritkin’s and Rosier’s voices had risen together in a spell that not only saved us, but cleared the other rug, as well. Caleb had hit the carpet at the last second, and now stared up, looking both surprised and vastly relieved. He’d been battling two of the creatures alone, and it hadn’t been going great.

  But then, neither was this. Because they’d be back. And I didn’t think we’d last long with the air full of deadly blades kamikazied straight to their target by a bunch of immortal warriors.

  And I guessed Rosier didn’t, either.

  Some of the Allû were still falling when he muttered something low and harsh and vicious, with enough power behind it to make the hairs on my neck stand up.

  But that would have been fine; that would have been awesome.

  If it had actually done anything.

  “Was that supposed to help?” I asked as Rosier and Pritkin stared at each other blankly.

  And then Rosier tried again, and this time, the power of his words prickled across my skin almost painfully. And kept right on prickling until Pritkin shot out a hand and grabbed his father’s arm. “They aren’t coming!”

  “They have to,” Rosier said, looking almost comically indignant. “I’m a member of the council!”

  “The same one that’s preventing you from shifting back to court?” Pritkin asked acidly.

  “Tha
t’s not them; it’s her,” Rosier said, gesturing at me. “She wants to force my hand—”

  “Are you mad? She doesn’t have that kind of power!”

  “You know who her mother was! There’s no telling what she’s capable—”

  “Face facts! The council would rather see you dead than risk their precious necks! They won’t call off their guards until they’ve killed me—and anyone with me.”

  Pritkin’s eyes focused on me with that last sentence, and I shook my head. Because I knew him. “No. No! I’m not leav—”

  Which was as far as I got before he grabbed me and threw me off the rug—and into Caleb’s arms.

  “Pritkin! Damn it—”

  “Listen to me! I need you to find Casanova. Tell him to have his men—”

  But I didn’t hear whatever he wanted Casanova to do. Because two very scary things happened at once. The crowd below gave a huge roar, like their favorite team had just scored a touchdown, and an almost solid sheet of scimitars came slicing through the air from the other side of the street.

  I didn’t even have time to scream before I was eating carpet, with Caleb’s hand on my neck, holding me down. I saw Rosier pull a red-sheened blade out of his side, felt our carpet buck hard beneath me, heard Pritkin curse as he was jumped by the two guards who had just used us as a springboard. And then we were moving.

  But not very fast. It looked like the spell was having problems, maybe because the Allû had practically hacked to pieces the platform it was trying to use. But despite the poor treatment, it didn’t look like they wanted it going anywhere.

  We, on the other hand, were another matter.

  Something smashed into my side, and for the second time in less than thirty seconds, I felt myself flying.

  And Caleb couldn’t catch me this time.

  Because he was right there with me.

  But a second later, something did catch us, something I promptly fell off because it was the size of a smallish dish towel.

  No, not a dish towel, I thought, as Caleb came rolling after me. I yelped and tried to make room for him on a carpet fragment the size of a single stair, only to fall again—onto another one. I looked up, and saw Pritkin hanging off the side of his carpet, Rosier and the Allû battling all around him, his hand outstretched and an intense frown of concentration on his face—

  As he formed a staircase out of woolen fragments, in some case all of a foot wide.

  And then Caleb fell into me again and we were rolling and bouncing and falling down four “flights,” with pieces of rug managing to catch us every time I was convinced we were about to run out.

  And then I hit something with my face that was a lot harder than wool. And looked up to find Casanova staring down at me. And then snatching me up and flinging me to the side.

  Right before an Allû crashed into the space where I’d been lying.

  “Take it apart!” Casanova screamed, practically hysterical. And his men didn’t waste any time. But they were hotel security, not soldiers. They didn’t carry grenades or percussion bombs, and while somebody had thought to break out the handguns, they weren’t too useful against something with no internal organs.

  I scrambled up and grabbed Casanova’s arm. “Pritkin wanted me to tell you something—”

  Casanova swore. “I’d like to tell him something—”

  “No, listen. I think it was about how to fight these things! And he ought to know. He used to have a golem once—remember? And they’re not that different!”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “That’s just it; I don’t know! We have to get somebody back up there—”

  Casanova said something that looked pretty profane, but I couldn’t hear it. Because the crowd was really getting into it now. They screamed in mock terror as bullets riddled the fallen warrior, then yelled approval when it got back up, the neon glow from a nearby storefront streaming through the hundred or so holes in its body.

  They were also pushing against the line of vamps Casanova had strung across the street, which would have been okay. Since there was no way they were breaking through that. But then the warrior sent a group of security who tried to rush him crashing back into their buddies, and opened up gaps that the crowd started to surge through.

  “Push them back, push them back, push them ba—” Casanova was yelling, before he got backhanded, too.

  I saw his men stare at him fearfully, unable to help and control the crowd at the same time. I saw him sail through the air and hit a wall. I grabbed a gun off a nearby vamp and scrambled after him, because I didn’t see the Allû—

  Until I was suddenly on my back again, with a blank bronze face staring into mine.

  Its weight was threatening to crush me, the jagged edges the bullets had torn in its torso were stabbing me like tiny knives, and the heat from several blackened places on its armor was trying to scorch me. But I barely noticed. Because that blank bronze faceplate was maybe two inches from my nose, reflecting my own stunned features back at me.

  And, insanely, the only thing I could think of at that moment was Daisy, peering at me out of the side of her bucket, her eyelash drooping over one shiny cheek.

  And the fact that that was a damned weird last thought to have.

  But then Caleb proved me wrong, jerking the bullet-ridden body off me and sending it sliding over the ground. Which wouldn’t have helped much, except that he slapped a shield over it before it could get back to its feet. I scrambled after it, a half-formed thought hammering at my brain, and found the creature lying on its back like a bug caught in amber.

  But not for long.

  War mages are tough, and if the training Pritkin put me through was anything to go on, they emphasize endurance above everything. Because you can’t channel magic if you pass out from exhaustion. But Caleb had been fighting all day, and part of that time had been somewhere that required added effort. The strain was all over his face, and I didn’t think I was the only one who noticed.

  There were no eyes, no mouth, nothing to form an expression of any kind on that piece of burnished metal. Just blank determination as it pushed inexorably against the shield. So why did I get the definite impression of malice staring up at us?

  These things might not feel pain, but they clearly felt something.

  Like for the woman who had blown a bunch of them to pieces a couple of weeks ago.

  Too bad I didn’t have any of those weapons now. And the one I did have wasn’t likely to do enough damage to matter. I didn’t have anything—

  My thoughts stopped, screeching to a halt at the sight of a small, diamond-shaped jewel glittering in the middle of a sea of bronze—what would have been the creature’s forehead, if it had one. I hadn’t noticed it before, because it was tiny, maybe half the size of my little fingernail, and reddish gold, almost the same shade as the metal surrounding it. It was virtually invisible at any distance. . . .

  But I wasn’t at a distance, and I saw it clearly.

  Like I heard my father’s voice saying, “Do you see a control gem in his forehead?”

  Yeah, I thought dazedly, I kind of thought I did.

  I also thought I knew what Pritkin had been trying to tell me.

  Casanova came running up, and I grabbed him. “Do you have a gun?”

  “Yes,” he said sarcastically. “Of course. I keep it in my underwear!”

  “Then get one!”

  One of his vamps tossed him a Beretta, and he snagged it out of the air even while glaring at me. Vampire senses never ceased to amaze. At least, I really hoped this wasn’t going to be the first time they let me down.

  “I don’t know what good you think this is going to do,” he crabbed. “We’ve wasted a hundred rounds on that damned thing already—”

  Caleb cut him off with a roar. “Casanova! Get her out of here!”

  B
ut it was too late.

  The shield burst and we all went flying, and then landing, in the case of Casanova and me, a good five yards away and on our asses. It hurt, but not as much as it was about to. Only Caleb recovered almost as fast as the creature, tackling it around the knees as it went for me.

  “Shoot the jewel!” I yelled, grabbing Casanova.

  “What jewel? What are you—”

  “Between its eyes! The one between its—”

  “It doesn’t have any eyes!” he screeched as the creature threw Caleb into the line of vamps and launched itself at us—

  And exploded into a bunch of bronze-colored junk when Casanova got off the shot of the century.

  He looked even more surprised than I was, and his hands started to shake. But when I grabbed him and screamed, “Shoot the jewels, tell your men to shoot the—”

  He did.

  At least, I assumed he did; I don’t hear vampire communication. But I saw it when vamps who had been standing around, worrying about crowd control, suddenly spun and started shooting every Allû in sight. And while humans might have had a problem with fast-moving targets smaller than M&M’s half a football field away . . .

  These weren’t human.

  For a second, I just sprawled there on my bruised butt. And watched as suits of armor exploded while leaping off buildings or standing on rooftops or getting thrown off the remains of two once-nice rugs by a couple of enraged demons. And despite the fact that everything hurt, and a migraine was pounding at my temples and I felt like I might possibly throw up, a slightly manic grin spread over my face.

  And then the lights went out.

  Chapter Twenty

  The neon cactuses dancing on a bar sign opposite us abruptly went dark. The couple of dozen cell phone screens, which people had been holding up to record the show, went dead. The strings of Christmas lights draping the fake donkey winked out. And then all of it was replaced by a huge blue-black nothingness that tore at my mind.

  And a presence that screamed of age. It was old, old, so very old; I could usually guess vampire ages, but this . . . I didn’t have words for this. Or air, when its power slammed into me.