Karen Chance - Midnight's Daughter

They turned amber, just like Mircea’s when he was angry, I noticed. And at the moment, he was furious, with power sputtering around him like an electric field. Vlad might still think of Radu as his inept younger brother, but that was an image distorted by time. A second-level master could do a lot of damage, especially if the alternative was a sure death. I was glad to see ’Du finally putting some of those centuries of accumulated power to work, but what the hell was up with Louis-Cesare?

Radu helped me up, but tightened his grip on my arm when I started toward the balcony again. “I can feel the pulse deep within your body,” Jonathan was saying, heedless of the carnage around him. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were fever bright. He had widened the wound in Louis-Cesare’s side to a gaping hole. His hand disappeared in it up to the wrist. “That heart of yours, trembling against my fingertips. Beating, just for me.”

The pain must have been excruciating. Louis-Cesare’s neck arched backward until it looked as though his spine would break. The glittering mist of power around him had grown, forming a thick shroud of pale silver light that threatened to hide him from view.

I fought against Radu’s hold. “Are you crazy? Let me go!”

“It’s a spell,” he said quickly. “They’re behind a ward. Break it and it will destroy Louis-Cesare!”

“He’ll die anyway!” I’d met Jonathan’s kind before. Radu released me and snatched up the sizzling vamp from the floor. He slung him, and the melted, smoking metal attached to him, at another, who had come at us so fast he was little more than a rush of air.

“Claire!” I realized that somewhere in all this was the one person who could bring down any ward, half the time without even realizing it. I grabbed Radu’s arm. “Have you seen her?”

“Who?” He was watching Drac’s troops, who were circling us warily. Their master had disappeared—I assumed from the ring of steel on steel coming from the dining room that he and Caedmon had taken their fight in there.

“A woman—tall, red hair, young—have you seen her?”

“No. But Chef was saying something about a girl invading his kitchen earlier—”

“Get to the kitchen. Find Claire and—”

Radu grabbed my stake and threw it at an advancing vamp. It hit the approximate center of his chest—not a heart blow—and although he skidded in the blood, he didn’t fall. The second master, I assumed. Radu snatched the sword off the dead vamp and got it up in time to meet the one headed straight for him.

I crouched, stripping the vamp’s body of a shorter weapon, but had to throw it at a trio of mages trying to get close enough to cast a net spell. Above my head, Radu’s blade slid against the master’s down to the hilt, twisting his wrist at an awkward angle. In the half second it took him to adjust, Radu pushed past his defensive plane and got inside his reach, driving an elbow against his throat. His sword work looked like it had improved through the years.

The vamp staggered and we were on him. Radu pulled the stake out of the middle of the vamp’s chest and plunged it into his heart while I hacked at the neck. It wasn’t a pretty job, but I got the head off.

It bought us a little time, as everyone paused, waiting for someone else to attack first. “ You go to the kitchen!” Radu said, looking a bit crazed. “I’m needed here.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a fighter?”

“I’ve no desire to face my brother. Others I can manage. Now go, and tell Chef I said to let them loose. We could use a diversion.”

“Let what loose?” I didn’t get an answer because Radu was attacked by the two remaining mages with the magical net. If I’d had my backpack, I could have taken care of them in a second; without it, the best I could do was to avoid getting caught myself. Luckily, the mages seemed to view Radu as the bigger threat. I turned on my heel and ran.

The back of the house was an even bigger mess than the front. The hallway to the kitchen had been trashed, to the point that large pieces of it were missing. I leapt through a crack in the broken wall, thinking to save time by cutting through the pantry, since it was now open to the hall. But I had to immediately slow down. I already had several cuts in my bare feet courtesy of the chandelier, and the scene ahead of me seemed specially designed to add more. Broken bottles, smashed cans and crumbled shelving were everywhere. There was so much shattered glass littering the white tile floor that it looked like frost.

There were people, too. A lot of them had to be Drac’s, because I didn’t know them. But the handsome young human who had fed Louis-Cesare after we’d arrived was lying across the doorway to the kitchen. It looked like something had been feeding from him, because his rib cage was open and half his bones were licked clean.

I stepped over him and someone hit me in the head, hard. I grabbed the weapon and smashed the wielder against the wall, only to find myself face-to-face with an outraged human in chef whites, clutching a marble rolling pin. He did not seem to understand even after seeing me that I wasn’t an enemy. I caught a glimpse of myself in the shiny stainless-steel fridge: mud-matted hair sticking up in all directions, wild eyes and a grimy body streaked with blood and sweat. Okay, maybe he had a point, but I didn’t have time to explain.

“Where is she? Where’s Claire?” He pointed the rolling pin at a steel-covered door across the room. “You put her in the meat locker?” I slammed him against the wall again. “Tell me she’s alive!”

“Sh-she was when she went in. It was her idea,” he babbled as I dragged him across the once pristine kitchen floor. It was now covered with dirty foot, paw and claw marks. Of course Radu’s pets would find the kitchen. But they must have been there and gone, because none were in evidence.

I kept one hand on the chef, who was going to experience a world of hurt if he’d lied to me, and yanked at the door. The heavy seal parted only reluctantly, so I tugged harder and it flew open. Claire looked out at me through fogged-up glasses. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by some of Radu’s menagerie. I started forward with a shout, then stopped. Many of the half-breeds were dead, but one or two crawled through the wreckage of the locker, some missing limbs, others dragging blood behind them.

“Claire!”

She looked up, and her glasses slipped down her nose. Her eyes were huge, and she’d obviously been crying. “These poor things were just thrown in here together and when I got here, they were eating each oth—”

“Claire! Bring down all wards within this building! Do it now!”

“What?” She looked confused. “But the chef said the vampires were trying to rebuild—”

“All of them! Now! Claire, please—”

“But these things, Dory—they’re all magic! I’m shielding as hard as I can and I’m still making them sick.” She looked around miserably, tears trembling on her lashes. “I didn’t know. I killed most of them when I—”

I caught my breath and screamed. “Claire!” I shook her by the shoulders. Jonathan or Louis-Cesare: one of them was going to die tonight. Louis-Cesare couldn’t be that one. Because I hadn’t liked Jonathan’s “one last time” comment. I had a very bad feeling that, whatever he intended for Louis-Cesare, it wasn’t something Louis-Cesare was going to walk away from. Not this time. “Listen to me! A person will die—very soon—if you don’t bring down the wards. All of them. Now.”

She looked lost, and more than a little shocked, but she nodded. Several of the creatures nearby tottered over and lay still. “Okay.”

“Get on with it!”