Authors: Anthony Francis
“You’ll do nothing,” he snarled. “Or she and her friends all die by
inches
—”
A roaring blast tore through the room, striking my face with the sting of a full backhand mixed in with the hot breath of a dragon. Broken splinters of a wooden door sailed past us and clattered off the wall. Guards began dropping around us, red flowers blossoming in foreheads and chests under a hail of silenced machine gun fire.
Just like that, Iadimus was gone, just gone, and I gripped the arm of the lich tighter as he stumbled back, still suspending me in the air, moving away from the smoke and dust rippling out from a side entrance that had exploded. Secondary explosions and more gunshots echoed through the room, and the remaining guards retreated behind columns and doorways that gave them cover. One ducked out to fire and took a bullet straight to the face. I looked away, squirming in the lich’s grasp, trying to see who was storming through that door. Was it SWAT? Was it the DEI? Was it the remnants of Darkrose’s crew?
No. It was just one man—one
werewolf
, eyes glowing green and lupine as he darted out of the roiling smoke, silenced machine pistol in one hand burping death as he took cover behind the flaming casket, silvery rapier in the other deflecting crossbow quarrels as he rounded it and moved in, fluid and unstoppable, black body armor deflecting another crossbow as he stepped up to us and placed his rapier against the lich’s throat.
—
“Hello, Dakota,” said Doctor Yonas Vladimir. “I see you’ve found Cinnamon.”
“
What
the
fuck?
” I said.
“Lords and Ladies of the Gentry, if I may have your attention,” Vladimir said, voice ringing out across the hall. He no longer looked like the crippled math teacher: his thin hair rose like a dark halo, his eyes glowed like twin emeralds, and his body moved with the grace only possessed by werekin. “Forgive my entry without an introduction, but no one living knows me by sight. Except, of course, Sir Leopold—who can tell you all that I am Vlad the Destroyer.”
“Oh, sweet merciless night,” Lord Delancaster said, voice filled with horror.
“You all know my rules,” Vladimir said. His dark body armor gleamed where Kevlar mesh met exotic composites, and night vision goggles and grenades and widgets hung from the ballistic straps crisscrossing his body—armed and armored like a werekin Nick Fury. “I walk alone in secrecy and peace. If either is disturbed, I destroy everyone who has seen my face.” He smiled, and I felt a shiver in the lich’s grip. “You remember, don’t you, Leopold?”
“There is no need for such measures,” the lich whispered, head tilted ever so slightly back from the point of the blade. “We have not disturbed you.”
“Ah, but you have, Leopold,” Vladimir said, glancing past us. “When you attack my friends, you become my enemy.”
“Thank you, Yonas,” I croaked. “But how did you even know—”
The lich laughed. “Oh, you do not know Vlad the Destroyer, Frost,” he said. “He could track a ghost across the steppes of Russia, even before all the toys of this modern age.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Dakota,” Vladimir twisted the blade back and forth, and I could see it was made of bands of two different metals, one steel, the other … silver? “But I would not break cover and destroy a great House just for you. I’m here for Cinnamon.”
“Cinnamon?” the lich asked—then snarled. “That foulmouthed little
stray?
”
Vladimir dug the point in. “Never use that word,” he said, smiling up at me, very, very grimly. “She
goes
by
Cinnamon.
”
Scara stirred. I started to speak, but the lich tightened his grip on my throat. Scara rose to her feet. I kicked, seemingly uselessly, but really building up mana to shield my throat. “Vladimir,” I choked out. “Behind—”
Vladimir just kept smiling at me, but his gun moved, just a flickering blur,
phut-phut
, and Scara went down, screaming, blood spurting from her shattered knee. “You coward,” she roared, fangs fully exposed. “Drop the guns and face me.”
The gun spat again, and Scara tumbled over, bleeding from her hip and arm. “Not likely,” Vladimir said. “No duels, no contests, no facing off in the pit with the rules stacked against me. I am a
warrior.
I do not fight for machismo or tradition. I only gird my loins to go to war.”
“You have no honor!” Scara snarled, trying to right herself.
“Honor?” Vladimir snarled, shooting her again, knocking her other arm out from beneath her so she faceplanted on the stone floor. “Is it honorable to kidnap a vampire because her lover was too powerful? Is it honorable to burn a young girl alive because she was loyal?”
“Burn to … oh no,” I said, still struggling on the end of the lich’s arm. They’d left Nagli in the Consulate, oblivious, even after they’d booby-trapped it. “You did kill someone in the Consulate—Nagli! She was practically a child, still in college! You murderous
bastards!
”
Scara began trying to get up again, and the lich snarled at her. “Stay down, you fool,” he said. “This
is
Vlad the Destroyer. You are lucky to be alive.”
“You are all lucky to be alive,” Vladimir said softly, digging the point of his blade into the lich’s neck. “Now, Leopold—”
The lich cackled at him. “I will do nothing. By coming here and not killing us, you have proved yourself as impotent as Frost.”
I kicked and writhed, and Vladimir snarled, digging the blade in further..
“Do not tempt me,” Vladimir said. “I will kill even you, Leopold.”
“Yes, but before I break her neck?” the lich said, squeezing harder. Surely he had noticed my shield was up, that any human neck would have already broken? “Before Iadimus cuts the rope on the cages? Before my guards lay their bolts into the heart of the werecat?”
Vladimir’s eyes narrowed. “You will still die—”
“And you will still have lost your objective,” the lich said, cackling softly. “And I will go to my grave knowing I have taken something precious from Vlad the Destroyer.”
Vladimir did not move. “A truce, then,” he said.
The lich’s piranha grin grew wider. “Raising the white flag so soon?”
“Suggesting you lower the witch,” Vladimir said, “before I remove your head.”
The lich shoved me harder against the field of the magic circle, and I went still. He smiled, thinking I’d given up. I was thinking something else:
what
an
idiot!
For a magic circle to have this much resistance, it had to contain an
immense
amount of mana. What if the circle broke and we tumbled inside? Didn’t he care about what was trapped in there, something so dangerous its last kill was still burning with magic flame weeks later?
My eyes opened. Something was wrong with my theory of how the magic graffiti worked if it was
Demophage
who was burning. He was inside a magic circle. What was happening to him had to be the natural outcome of the magic, absent all other influences.
I glared at Vladimir and Leopold. They were arguing, politely, about the details of their little truce, about the rules they would follow. Vladimir looked like he was making progress.
Too bad I had had just about enough of all this shit.
“Perhaps I can let the death of Velasquez go,” the lich said, “and you the Consulate secretary, if you agree your kills today balance those we made in Darkrose’s army?”
Vladimir cocked his head. “That is … acceptable—”
“The hell it is!” I said, squirming against the lich’s grip.
“Dakota—” Vladimir warned, as the lich squeezed and I writhed.
“Nagli for Velasquez,” I said. “Darkrose’s men for Velasquez’s men. Deaths for deaths. Fair enough. But what about life for life? What will you give me for the life I spare?”
“Whose life will you spare?” the lich said.
“Yours,” I said, and I released all my pent-up mana at once.
The head of the Dragon screamed out from behind my neck. The wings burst through the shoulders of my jacket. The tail tore through my rights pants leg and whipped out through the air. And my vines began emerging, from wrist and ankle and through every open hole.
The lich quailed, trying to tighten his grip: but his fingers slowly loosened as my vines inexorably expanded, and then Vladimir dug the blade in and the lich gave up entirely, slowly lowering me to the ground. I kept my eyes narrowed upon him, as much for concentration as anything else. The Dragon was not complete, the four segments were not connected, and without the crash course in advanced skindancing that Arcturus had given me the tattoo would already have disintegrated. This was a bluff, a grand bluff: but the lich did not know that.
“What do you demand?” he said, leaning back from the head of the Dragon, arm still on my collar pro forma, holding his other hand over his heart, where my vines still coiled.
“Free the hostages,” I said.
“No,” he replied.
“I could kill you,” I said, and a rippling growl crackled out of the Dragon.
“
I
could kill
them
,” he said, tightening his grip again. “You only offer one life.”
I scowled. “Then free
one
hostage. Give me Cinnamon.”
“No,” the lich said. His eyes gleamed at me, obviously pleased, and I started to get scared. What corner was he backing me into? “I will not free the children,” he said. “Without them, I have no leverage. The most I would do is … spare the life of one of the vampires.”
“I don’t want the vampires,” I said. “
I want Cinnamon.
”
“Then you will not mind if both the vampires starve to death,” he said.
My eyes widened. “Yes,” I said. “I mind.”
“Then spare my life,” the lich said, “and you may feed …
one
of them. A life for a life.”
“Leopold,” Vladimir cautioned. “I can still kill everyone in this room.”
“Do you not see what stands before you?” the lich asked, gesturing at me with his free hand. He no longer resisted my coiling vines; he actually leaned back into them, letting them cradle him, leaning back to appreciate the glowing head of the Dragon. “Frost could probably kill everyone in this room. So could I, or Delancaster, or Iadimus. One of us might survive, but if we fight, it will be a carnival of blood—and all those you hoped to save will surely die.”
Vladimir just stood there, holding his sword. His eyes flickered to mine, then to the lich. I found myself looking between the two of them as well. We were all in agreement; none of us wanted to die, but the lich held the upper hand. A truce was worth a gamble.
I drew in a breath and concentrated, and the Dragon furled its wings and slowly began drawing back into my body. The lich loosened his hand. Vladimir took a half-step back. And then I let the vines go and slid away from the magic circle to stand by Vladimir.
“Guards,” the lich said, gesturing at Scara. “Drag that off. Extract the silver bullets and feed her. This is her mess. She must regain her strength in time to see it cleaned up.”
The guards twitched, unwilling to come out of cover. Vladimir and I glanced at each other warily. The lich raised a shaggy eyebrow at us, openly curious as to what we would do. Finally Vladimir motioned them forward, and two guards carried Scara out.
“Now, choose,” the lich said. “She who left you, or she who took her from you.”
“Actually,
I
dumped Saffron,” I said. “And Darkrose and I get on fabulously.”
The lich tilted his head slightly. “Such modern ways,” he said. “In the old days she would have killed you for such a betrayal, for fear you would have returned with a stake.”
“Now we just go on Jerry Springer,” I said. “It’s more painful.”
The lich hissed. “Enough delay. Choose.”
I swallowed, and stepped between the cages.
On the one side was Darkrose: stripped out of her catsuit and leggings, wearing nothing but a ragged shift that was little more than a burlap bag. She was drained thin, her black skin crackled and dry like she was covered in burned paper. She lived—at least she breathed—but a normal human would be dead after ten days without water, or half starved without food.
But she looked nowhere near as bad as Saffron. They couldn’t have had her quite as long as Darkrose, no more than a week, but she looked little better than the lich: skin dead white, pulled tight over her bones, cheeks sunken until I could see her skull.
I looked more closely, then recoiled as I saw little white threads creeping over her skin. It was the vampiric fungus: the magical infection that powered vampires and animated zombies. You never normally saw it outside of a microscope. I knew what was happening—I
had
read Saffron’s paper. Without normal human food, the delicate balance between living human flesh and undead vampire matter inside Saffron had been disrupted, the vampiric fungus was blooming, and she was sliding from daywalker into normal vampire.
Saffron opened her eyes at me, filled with hunger, and I looked away, feeling none of the love I had once felt and all the hate. This was precisely what I had feared would happen if she became a vampire. I glanced at Darkrose’s pitiful form—but who was I kidding?
“I’m so sorry, Darkrose,” I said—and turned back to Saffron.
I stepped to the cage, pulling back my sleeve, and extended my arm to Saffron. At first she didn’t move, but then her brittle hands took it tenderly, and gave me a brief squeeze, as if she knew what this cost me. Slowly, tenderly, she kissed the skin above my hand.
—