The Flight’s teeth were sharp, its backs strong, and its movements swift.
The Flight heard its brother’s howl of pain and captivity. It heard, and answered:
We are coming.
*
The Xiltanda, Cat explained on the way, was a nightclub that took its name from a Quechal word for hell. Not any hell, either: Xiltanda was one of the old-fashioned hells, a hell of many chambers and many punishments, of rings and layers and ranks and files. Before the end of the God Wars, when the night culture in Alt Coulumb—vampires, Craftsmen, and the like—had been underground, they built the Xiltanda as their first great foray into respectability. And as hell had many levels, so, too, did this club, from the ground floor of black marble and chandeliers to the higher realms where there were chains and straps and hooks and padded walls to deaden screams.
There were lower levels, too. Few knew what transpired there. Rumors told of deep mysteries of Craft and thaumaturgy, of human sacrifices and infernal pacts made while smoking cigars in rooms upholstered in green leather.
“It’s gone members-only in the last decade,” Cat said over her shoulder. “But if your friend was in town forty years ago, he’s probably a member. It’s classy, comfortable. Exactly where I’d want to spend time after a long ocean trip.”
“I don’t know.” Tara couldn’t imagine Raz among cool marble and shining lamps. “It doesn’t sound like his type of place.”
“Even if it’s not usually, it’s one of the few clubs he’d remember,” Abelard put in. “The city’s changed a lot in forty years. Even the gods were different back then.”
They found Club Xiltanda on the main drag, an imposing building in mock Quechal style. Giant sculpted faces leered from the stonework at passersby. Most structures in the Pleasure Quarters were horribly talon-scarred, but if there were any gargoyle marks on the Xiltanda’s artfully crumbling, faux-ancient walls, Tara could not see them.
Two waterfalls flowed from the roof to flank the entrance, which was guarded by a large, bare-chested man. Torches everywhere cast smoky light and shadows. Music emanated from within the building, a swing band playing something brassy in four-four time.
Tara sought among the crowd, and to her surprise identified a familiar figure approaching the front gate: Raz Pelham, still wearing his white uniform, sleeves rolled up, cap pushed back on his head. He produced something small from his sleeve, a membership card maybe, and the bouncer stood aside to let him pass.
“Raz!” she shouted, but her voice was lost in the din. She rushed through the crowd, plowing past a clucking coterie of parasol-twirling society girls and nearly overturning a cigarette vendor. “Raz!” He didn’t pause. Weren’t vampires supposed to have exceptional hearing? “Captain Pelham!”
The crowd near the entrance was thick and sluggish, sporting bad leathers and worse attitudes. Tara shouldered her way to the front of the line as the doors closed behind Raz. From all sides she felt the harsh stares of the drunk and disdainful, but it was easier to press on than fight her way out. A thrashing moment later, she stood before the bouncer, who regarded her and the disgruntled crowd in her wake with detached amusement.
“You got a card?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Captain Pelham. The man that just went in there.”
“Wasn’t any man just passed through this door.”
“Vampire. Whatever you want to call him. I’m a friend of his.”
He held out his hand for her card.
The club had been built forty years ago, about the time of the Seril case. Ms. Kevarian was almost certainly a member. Her name could gain Tara access, but also lift the veil of secrecy around their presence in Alt Coulumb. There were other ways into a club. She might as well try them.
“Look, I’m not a member. I just want to talk to him.”
“No card, no entrance. That’s the rule.” He crossed his formidable arms over his chest.
There was an added weight behind that word “rule,” and when she blinked she saw its source. Someone had woven Craft through this man’s body and brain, granting him strength and speed and protection from simple weapons so long as he obeyed the terms of his contract. To admit a nonmember would weaken him, and cause considerable pain.
She could break that Craft with her own power, or modify it to render the bouncer a kitten in her hand. A mere activation of the glyphs woven into her fingertips, a stroke on the side of his neck. She thought back to her fall from the school, and her throat tightened. No. She would not do those things. There had to be another way.
She was still thinking when she heard Cat’s relentless drawl behind her. “Open the door, Bill.”
Tara swung her head about. Cat waded through the press of the crowd. Her black leather skirt and her thin sheen of sweat glistened in the torchlight. Tara’s eyes flicked to the scars at her throat, camouflaged but not quite concealed by her black silk scarf.
“Ms. Elle,” Bill said. “You haven’t been by in a while.”
She placed her hands on her hips. Tara stepped aside to let her work. “I haven’t had a reason to come. You’ve been glad of that, haven’t you, Bill?”
Bill glanced left, right, looking for someone to tell him what to do. Cat had power here, apparently. Tara looked to Abelard for an explanation, but he was still forcing himself through the crowd. “You’re always welcome, Cat.”
“Don’t give me any crap.” Her voice was smooth and dangerous. “I’ve two kids looking for a quick nip, and a hungry old man inside who wants a meal with personality. If you don’t get out of my way I’ll make sure the Xiltanda doesn’t stay open a full night for weeks.”
Whatever hold Cat had over the club, this threat was enough for the bouncer. He was wired to serve the institution first and guard the door second. He cast a warning glance back at the crowd, sought once more for a supervisor to consult, then stood aside, opened the door, and bowed his head. “Ms. Elle.”
“That’s what I thought, Bill.” Cat produced a coin from her belt, feathered it down the side of his neck, and rested it in the hollow of his collarbone. He swallowed. “Be well. Say hi to your kids.”
She flowed past him through the open door, Tara on her heels. Abelard stumbled out of the clutching crowd and followed.
The club’s foyer eschewed the Quechal style for brass, marble, and polished wood, illuminated by a hovering crystal sphere within which glowed a creature tiny, winged, and almost human, trapped by twisting tines of Craft. An imprisoned sprite—but no. Tara’s eyes narrowed. Not imprisoned. A ward filled the creature with pain and rapture, yes, but it was temporary, and mutually beneficial. She allowed herself to be captured here every evening, and at dawn a portion of the club’s power passed to her. Was this, in truth, slavery? Ask the managers of the club and they would deny it, and the sprite trembling inside the globe would say the same. Tara was uncertain either of them could be believed.
A few patrons lingered in the foyer, checking their coats or smoking or waiting, but Raz Pelham was not among them. A thick, beaded curtain led to the dance hall. Tara strode toward it, and through.
The Xiltanda’s main hall was more to Tara’s taste than any of the crowded, sweaty dives she had seen in Alt Coulumb thus far. Trapped sprites shone within the crystal chandelier–cage above the oak dance floor, and a swing band twirled a lively tune. Patrons sat at deep booths along the walls, drinking, watching, and waiting. An iron skeleton with a heart of cold fire danced with a bronze-skinned woman whose hair trailed down the plunging back of her dress in long slender braids. The skeleton dipped her and she threw her head back and her teeth flashed. In a corner booth an ancient Iskari Craftsman played an Old World game Tara didn’t recognize—a board game with no pieces save stones the size of a thumbnail, some black and some white—against a long thin boy with long thin fingers and golden hair. By the bar, something that might once have been human, but now resembled a winged reptile, was losing an argument against a plump, smiling Craftswoman who munched on peanuts and nursed a tall glass of stout.
The club reminded Tara of pleasant evenings at the Hidden Schools, but this was not time to join the party. Across from the stage rose a broad iron spiral staircase, winding down into shadow and up through the vaulted ceiling to unknown chambers. Raz Pelham was three quarters of the way to the Xiltanda’s second story, and moving fast.
Rather than skirt the dance floor’s edge, Tara cut through. She dodged the spinning skeleton and his partner, and nearly tripped over the black dress train of a tall, pale woman dancing with a mustachioed gentleman in a pinstriped suit. A lumbering green-skinned man who looked to have been reanimated many times over nearly crushed Tara with a flailing limb, but she ducked. Behind, Cat shoved dancers out of her way as Abelard apologized in broken sentences. “Very sorry, I mean— My apologies, she— Well that’s hardly—”
“Come on,” Tara called over her shoulder as she sprinted for the stairs. “Captain Pelham!” she shouted over the music, but the retreating vampire didn’t break stride. He must have heard her.
Cat and Abelard started up the stairs behind her. The swift percussion of their footsteps clashed with the tripping rhythm of the band below.
This stairway connected all floors of the Xiltanda, but a veil of opaque shadow divided each level from its neighbors. Tara passed through the shadow between the gleaming first story and the second, a chamber drunk on red velvet and echoing with screams and sighs and repetitive, bass-heavy music. Raz’s feet were already disappearing through the shadow above, between the second story and the third.
Tara ran after him. When she reached the third floor (a bare monastic scene, altars and stone walls and the distant crack of whips), Raz had not yet reached the next shadow. He redoubled his speed without a backward glance.
Raz had to know that fleeing would make her pursue. She had already seen him. Even if she didn’t catch him, he couldn’t hide from her forever, or from Ms. Kevarian for that matter. If he was afraid of being identified, he should try to attack and silence her, not escape. There was no reason to run, if the decision was his to make.
Comprehension congealed in her gut. The next time she closed her eyes, she let herself truly see.
Vampires were creatures of Craft, their life in daylight traded for strength at night, their death for hunger, their satiety for senses more acute than mortal imagination. Folk in Edgemont feared vampires because they looked like people until it was too late, but to Tara’s eyes, their twisted souls shone.
Which was why she hadn’t previously noticed the hooks of Craft that speared Raz’s head and heart. Something was riding Captain Pelham, pulling him upstairs under his power but not of his own will.
“Someone’s got his mind!” she shouted back to Abelard and Cat. Whatever gripped Raz must have heard her, because the vampire ran faster still. She reached out with threads of Craft to lock his limbs in place, but the threads melted against his flesh. No surprises there. Craft was difficult to use against a person neither dead nor alive.
Someone had snared Raz’s mind all the same.
The fourth floor was white-walled and smelled sickeningly sterile, the fifth dark as pitch and so silent Tara did not hear her own footfalls. She closed her eyes and saw Raz outlined in blue and receding above. Motionless human figures floated in the darkness around her, curled into fetal balls and warded with Craft that banished all sensation. She shivered as she ran, and almost fell.
The sixth floor smelled of sulfur, the seventh of ice. Tara’s legs were made of melted metal, and something hot and sticky lodged in her lungs in place of air. Raz disappeared through the shadow ceiling above, to the eighth floor. Tara ran after him and found herself at the top of the stairs, her path blocked by a latched steel door.
With a backhand wave she shattered the deadbolt, crashed the door off its hinges, and burst onto the chill rooftop. Neither moon nor stars relieved the darkness of the cloud-clogged sky. The only light rose from the street below.
“Raz!” she called again. He did not break stride or slow as he neared the roof’s edge.
Vampires were difficult to catch with the Craft, but not impossible. She couldn’t touch his body nor his soul, but the dense contract that knit his spirit to his dead flesh, that she could hold. Threads of starfire spanned the distance between Raz and Tara; his muscles and mind locked up and he skidded to a halt five feet from the edge of the roof.
He pulled against her Craft. Sweat beaded on her forehead. This was harder than it should have been. Clouds robbed Tara of the stars’ power and left her to bind Raz with her own meager reserves of soulstuff. She needed to get that hook out of his mind quickly, or her strength would fail.
Footsteps on the rooftop gravel behind her. She recognized Cat and Abelard by their breath, hers even and steady, his wheezing.
“Tara,” Abelard said when he could form words. “What the hell?”
“Hook in his mind.” Raz pitched and strained like a fish against her line and she almost fell. Her unseen opponent didn’t seem to care whether the Captain escaped or plummeted to his death, so long as Tara didn’t hold him. “Controlling him.”
“What?”
She took a step toward Raz, two, the strain increasing with every foot. Her arms ached, her hands shook. She had never been one for raw displays of power. Hers was the clever solution, the quick step, but now she matched might with an old vampire who had been strong even in life.
She bound her feet to the rooftop with Craft to prevent them from sliding, and in that moment of diverted attention he began to pull away.
Someone called her name, but she could not answer. Dark shapes moved around her and she paid them no mind because she had no mind anymore. Raz was four feet from the edge of the roof, three. If he fell with Tara’s power hooked through him, so would she.
He would have pulled her off the roof already had she not bound herself to the ground. At that thought, an idea came to her. She knelt, and as he surged against her bonds, fangs bared, she connected the cords of Craft that held him with those that anchored her to the rooftop. One line knit Raz, body and soul, to the solid stone of the Xiltanda. His tether went taut and he bounced back, crumpling on the building’s edge like a netted animal.