Abruptly, Solomon slashed his hand through the air as if he were holding an invisible knife — and plunging it into the sacrifice of Miranda’s undead body. But the gesture was more than just drama. Tango could feel a pressure pushing against her mind, urging her personally toward the chaos that Solomon planned for Toronto. More human magick. She resisted, long years of controlling her own inner chaos coming into play. The Bandog, however, did not resist so easily. Instead of bursting into polite applause, this time they screamed wildly, raised their arms, shook their fists and stomped their feet. Playing along with them made Tango feel ill.
At the front of the platform, one of the High Circle cultists abruptly turned to face the outer circle and held out his arms. The outer circle cultists yelled with excitement. The High Circle cultist to the left of the first was raising his hands, and then the next, and the next. The motion was traveling around the circle away from Tango. She couldn’t see quite what was happening, but the yells of the outer circle grew louder and louder. The young activist turned. Tango turned.
Blood began to run from her outstretched hands as if she had washed in it.
She shuddered violently, remembering that last night of her old life. The sidhe’s gardens. The Bandog just shrieked for more.
“Tonight’s ritual,” Solomon shouted over the din, “shall not end here! Carry it home with you and return with it in two days’ time to Union Station. Live the ritual for two days! You are Bandog!”
“We are Bandog!”
Tango could no longer see Solomon, but she could see the excitement of the Bandog reflected in their jittery bodies. They were waiting for something. From behind and above her, Solomon said, “Then go.” The doors out of the chamber swung open. “Touch the bloodied hands of the High Circle, remember that you share in their deeds, and go for tonight.”
The High Circle stepped down from the platform onto the floor. The other Bandog rushed toward them, grasping at their hands, smearing the blood on their own fingers and palms. Tango saw the short man fighting to get to her and receive the gory blessing from the person he thought was Ian Tanner. Tango ignored him. In the frenzy, no one was going out the door. No one would be downstairs. She would be exposed for a moment, but this was her chance to find Riley.
And her chance to get away from the horror of the black room.
She moved as quickly as she dared. Threading her way through the eager Bandog wasn’t unlike threading her way through a crowd at Pan’s, though at Pan’s her staff T-shirt told people to get out of her way. Here, her High Circle mask drew people toward her. Deftly, she turned them toward other members of the High Circle. No one followed her down the stairs. The noise from above carried to the first floor, but there was no other sound in the house. Pulling off her mask and wiping her bloody hands on Ian Tanner’s jacket, she turned into the hall past the stairs.
Under the stairs and down,
Tolly had said. The basement, obviously. She watched for a door or more stairs as she moved, hoping that whatever entrance there was hadn’t been concealed by Solomon’s magick. The only door under the stairs opened into a closet. Tango moved on, but there was nothing else. The hall ended in the kitchen of the old house, well past the stairs and at the back of the house. There was a door, probably a pantry, beside the entrance to the hall, but it wasn’t under the stairs. Unless... Tango flung the door open. The broad pantry was empty of food, but there was another door at its far end. And she could smell the damp air of a deep basement. She stepped into the pantry, closed the kitchen door behind her and opened the basement door. Worn steps led down into darkness, lit by bare lightbulbs. Tango descended.
Either the original foundation of the house had been unusually deep or the basement floor had been dug down. Tango suspected the latter. The dark old beams of the ceiling were well over her head. The floor was packed black dirt. Tango could see why. There was a tree growing in the basement.
It wasn’t a particularly large tree, though its uppermost branches spread out flat against the ceiling and its trunk was surprisingly broad. It was gnarled and grayish, from its bark to its leaves. A strange, sunny glow came from its far side, casting bright rays that must, to judge by the sharpness of the division between light and shadow, have been magical. Or more likely
magickal,
some effect of Solomon’s human magick. Tango wondered what kind of mage Solomon had been before he became a Nephandus. The Verbena Tradition of witch-mages venerated trees, though to trap one so unnaturally below the ground would have been like blasphemy to them. Perhaps Solomon was Verbena
barabbi,
a traitor to his Tradition. The time Tango spent wondering was very brief, however.
Lying halfway between the tree and the stairs was Miranda.
Tango stared at her in shock. The vampire was pale and withered, as if virtually all of the stolen blood that flowed in her veins had been taken out again. Wounds and bite marks covered her arms and neck; the bite marks bore the clear signs of fangs. Solomon didn’t have fangs, of course, but Tango wondered where Matt and Blue had obtained the blood that they had sipped in the parlor. The smell of burning flesh hung faintly in the still air. Miranda’s right hand was charred and twisted — fire, or maybe the sunny light from the far side of the tree. Her face was frozen in agony, her eyes dead. A rough stake, fashioned from a broken branch of the tree, ran through her chest and pinned her to the ground.
Tango walked up to the vampire slowly and knelt to run her hand along the gray shaft of the stake. Sickly gray-green leaves still clung to it. A stake through the heart didn’t kill a vampire. It only paralyzed her. Miranda was helpless, but she had been kept alive. For Solomon’s sacrifice, presumably. Something had happened tonight. Something serious enough that
Miranda had had some kind of falling-out with the Bandog. Accompanying the Kithain in attacking Jubilee perhaps? Solomon must have found out about that. If Jubilee had kidnapped Riley for the Bandog, Miranda would have been turning against the cult and Solomon just by aiding Tango. And hadn’t Matt said something last night about Solomon being angry with her?
Tolly had been right. Miranda was in serious trouble.
But should Tango rescue her? The vampire had killed innocent people at Solomon’s command, for the Bandog, for a demon. Didn’t she deserve what she got? Did she? The nocker looked down at the pathetic form of the woman who had helped her. Tango made a decision.
She wrenched the crude stake out of the ground and slid it from Miranda’s ruined chest. For a long moment, the vampire didn’t move. Tango wondered if the vampire really was dead, in spite of Solomon’s talk of sacrificing her. Then Miranda’s lips slid back from her teeth. Her fangs were huge against her shriveled gums. Her mouth worked weakly. Her eyes came back to life. They fixed hungrily on Tango. “Blood.” The single word was like a cobweb blown on a mere draft of air.
Miranda needed blood to heal her wounds. Tango didn’t dare offer the vampire any of hers. The Kithain blood might drive her mad. “No, Miranda. It’s me, Tango.” She showed her the knife-ring. “Tango. Tolly disguised me. You can’t drink from me. Wait.”
“Blood.”
Tango wasn't sure if the vampire had understood her. She forced herself to turn away from the vampire, as people on the street turned away from the homeless and hungry. She walked around the tree to investigate the golden light.
Riley was propped up against the tree’s trunk, his head turned to one side and nodding onto his chest. His eyes were closed, his breathing steady, his face calm. He was dressed almost exactly as he had been when she had met him in Pan’s. Magickal sunlight covered him like a blanket and inspired the leaves over his head to lively green instead of insipid gray. Apples hung from the branches. Riley might have been napping in an orchard instead of magickally imprisoned in a Nephandus mage’s cellar.
Tango hesitated for a moment, then reached for him.
A dry, stick-like grasp caught her arm, stopping her by its presence rather than its weight or strength. “No,” husked Miranda. There were marks and scratches across the dirt of the floor. The vampire had dragged herself after Tango. There was a brief lucidity in her eyes, pushing past the brightness of unthinking hunger. She had understood. “Burns.” She gestured feebly with her blackened hand.
“Not me, Miranda. I’m not a vampire.” But the magickal sunlight would explain why Tolly knew where Riley was trapped, but couldn’t rescue him. Full exposure to the light would have destroyed a vampire utterly. Miranda’s hand must have been forced into it by whoever had tortured her.
The vampire’s warning did, however, make Tango hesitate. There was no telling what Solomon’s strange sunlight might do to her. It could put her to sleep, as it apparently had Riley. It could, in spite of her living condition, burn her as it had Miranda; it might be that anything entering the light was burned, while Riley slept undisturbed. She turned to go back and fetch the broken branch that had staked Miranda.
Miranda’s dry weight was still clinging to her. Lucid thought was gone again. One arm still on Tango’s arm, the other around the Kithain’s waist, the vampire stared hungrily at the jacket she wore. Her mouth stretched open like a snake’s and her tongue came flickering out to lick at the fabric. Tango could feel its papery pressure. Miranda’s head moved closer, jaws wide, fangs ready.
The blood that Solomon had conjured during the Bandog ritual. Tango had wiped her hands on the jacket. Miranda sensed the drying blood, her instincts drawing her to it. There wasn’t enough in the fabric to sustain her by any means, but there was enough to whet her hunger. Enough to break what control she had.
Tango shoved her away. It was more difficult than she had expected. The starving vampire was much stronger than her skeletal, wounded body suggested. Miranda hissed, lunging at her again. Tango whirled off the jacket and pushed it at her. Miranda snatched it out of the air. Her mouth fastened on the bloody stains from Tango’s fingers, sucking desperately at the dry cloth. Tango backed away from her. She didn’t dare turn her back on the vampire again, in case she attacked her. That could be dangerous for both of them. Tango’s blood would render Miranda helpless at the very least. And while Tango had never been bitten by a vampire, she had seen the effects of their bite on humans — the pleasure was said to be so intense that only the strongest wills could continue to fight against it. Her will was strong, but she didn’t want to risk slipping into that ecstasy. Miranda would drain her dry in an instant.
The vampire’s hunger would also spoil their escape.
The back door in the kitchen had seemed the most likely route of quick retreat. Out the door, around the house through the shadowy yard, down the street to Tanner’s car, and then back into the city, back to a bolthole that Tolly had arranged for her. Somewhere, he said, where she and Miranda and Riley would be safe from location by Solomon’s magick. Of course, that plan had been built on the expectation that either Miranda or Riley would be able to walk on their own. In a pinch, Tango’s nocker strength, coupled with the size of Tanner’s body, might have enabled her to carry both of them. There was no way, however, that she would be able to carry even Riley if she had to contend with a vicious, struggling vampire.
There was only one solution that Tango could see, and it wasn’t an option she liked. She had to try it, though. Backing rapidly up the basement stairs, she prayed that Miranda wouldn’t abandon the bloody jacket for a few more moments. She shut the basement door behind her and slipped back toward the front of the house. Luck was with her; a number of the Bandog were still lingering in the foyer and parlor. There was no sign of either Solomon or the blond doorman. Tango spotted the short man who had curried her favor before the ceremony. She caught him by the shoulder. “I put in that word to Solomon for you. He wants to see you.”
“Now?” the short man squeaked.
“Now.” Tango almost dragged him back along the hall to the kitchen and into the pantry. She hated herself for doing this. Even more, though, she loathed the fact that a part of her was eagerly anticipating what would happen next. The short man looked around him with confusion.
“Where’s Solomon?”
“Downstairs,” Tango lied grimly. She opened the basement door. The stairs were darker than they had been before. The lightbulbs had been smashed. The only light was the dim glow of the magickal sunlight. She ushered the short man down the stairs, making sure that she stayed several feet back from him.
Miranda dropped out from among the ceiling beams like a thin, shadowy stroke of lightning. Her fangs were in the short man’s throat before he could make a sound. Or at least before he could make a sound of terror. His last breath was an ecstatic gasp. Then the only noise in the gloom of the basement was Miranda’s frenzied slurping. Tango tried not to watch, but there was no way she could escape that primal, blissful sound. When it finally stopped, she turned and asked, “Miranda ?” The vampire’s eyes were coals in the shadows. “Thank you.” Her voice was deeper than normal, but it was stronger. “Is that really you, Tango?”
“Yes. Tolly....” The story was too long to explain now. “Was he enough?” she asked instead. She felt sick. Sick and dirty.
“No. But he was a start.” Miranda rose. “I’ll be all right for a while. Tango, I’m...”
Tango cut her off. “Later. We have to get Riley out, too. Before anyone misses Tanner or....” She gestured at the drained corpse. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. “Did you know about Riley?”
“No.”
Tango wasn’t really sure whether to believe her or not. “Do you know anything about the light he’s in?” She found the stake. Something embedded in its broad end cut into her palm as she picked it up. Fragments of glass. This must have been what Miranda used to break the lightbulbs.
“Only that it bums like sunlight.”
“Let’s hope that’s all.” She poked the wood into the sunlight. Nothing happened.
Good.
She threw it off into the darkness. “All right. I’m going to try and wake him up, but I’ll keep my legs out of the light if I can. If I fall asleep or anything, haul me out. Okay?”