Karen Chance: Touch The Dark

That was ironic, considering that Tony must have been the one to have it worked into my skin in the first place. I'd always thought he'd been gypped: its original pentagram shape had stretched as I grew older, and all I'd ended up with was an ugly tattoo that covered half my back and part of my left shoulder. But although it wasn't a very good-looking design anymore, it seemed to work pretty well. However, the vamp who attacked me wasn't a master—that surge of energy had come from somewhere behind us—and how my ward would fair against one of the big boys was an open question. I was pretty impressed that it had done this much; the only time it had flared up before, it hadn't put on nearly as much of a show. It had only burnt the would-be mugger's arm, singeing him enough that I was able to get away. Of course, then it had been a human trying to rip my head off. Maybe it became stronger depending on the strength of the one it was fighting? I had a bad feeling I was going to find out.

I know something about wards, since Tony always kept two wardsmiths on staff to maintain the fortress of magical protections around his home and businesses. I'd learned from them that there are three main categories: perimeter wards, energy wards and protection wards. Perimeter wards are what Tony uses as camouflage when he's up to something illegal—in other words, constantly. Energy wards are more complex: at their best, they are better than Prozac at relieving stress and helping people work through emotional problems. At their worst, which is the way Tony usually used them, they could allow him to influence important business negotiations. Everyone within the perimeter of the wards would start to feel very mellow and would suddenly decide that cutthroat tactics were too much trouble when they could simply do whatever Tony wanted. There are two types of protection wards: personal shields and guards. Eugenie instructed me in the first type when I was a kid. Without them, I could even sense the ghosts of ghosts—the thin energy trails stretching back in time like glowing lines on a map, telling me that once, maybe hundreds of years ago, a spirit had passed by. The older I got, the more distracted I became by the impressions, maybe because Tony's old mansion was sandwiched between an Indian burial ground and a colonial cemetery. Eugenie had finally tired of my mind wandering during lessons and gave me the tools to shield against them. She taught me to sense my energy field, what some people call an aura, then use my power to build a hedge around it for protection. Eventually, my shields became automatic, filtering out anything except active spirits in the here and now.

But shields are only as powerful as the person building them, since they usually draw on personal power, and most aren't enough to thwart a major spiritual or physical attack. That's where guards come in. Crafted by a group of magic users, they are designed to protect a person, object or location from harm. They can be set to fend off danger, usually by turning the evil intent back on its sender or, in cases like mine, ensuring that anyone touching me with harm in mind ends up screaming in agony.

These types of wards are big business in the supernatural community. Tony once paid a wardsmith a small fortune to craft a special perimeter-protection combo for a convoy of ships carrying some highly illegal substances. He was supposed to make them look like old garbage scowls to any observers—not the sort of thing the authorities enjoy searching too thoroughly. But the smith was young and careless, and the wards failed right as the ships were heading into port—almost in front of a Coast Guard patrol. Tony lost the cargo and the wardsmith lost his life. I had been too young when my ward was done to remember the experience, but whoever had crafted it knew what he or she was doing. Tony must have paid a pretty penny for it, although this was probably one instance when he wished he'd gone cut rate.

My eyes had begun to water from the stench of frying vampire flesh, not something you smell every day, and I gagged for a moment before suddenly realizing that I could move again. I looked around frantically for my weapon, before almost immediately giving up and scrambling around the edge of a shelving unit. There was no sign of my 9 mm, and no way was I going to make it to the door without it. And the few boxes on the unit that formed my sad excuse for a hiding spot were not going to fool anybody for long. No weapon, no way to hide and only a warped ward for protection. I decided on the better part of valor, also known as running and hiding, and started backing down the aisle.

If I could avoid the master vamp for a minute, maybe I could make it to the small door leading to the unfinished part of the basement. It had no doorway to the rest of the club but abutted the wall behind the far end of the bar. If I was out of sight, there was a tiny chance the vamp's senses might be confused and he'd assume I'd slipped into the bar again. That might buy me a few seconds to sneak out the back, if he didn't do the smart thing and leave one of his guys to watch it. Of course, even if he did, my ward might take out another low-level vamp. Then again, it might not.

I finally reached the half-sized door at the end of the last row of shelves, but hadn't even gotten it open before I heard a crash and an inhuman scream behind me. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see one or more murderous vamps headed my way. It took my panicked brain a few seconds to realize that the person floating down the aisle was Portia, and that the sound of fighting was coming from several aisles over.

"I told you I would bring help, Cassie!" Her face was shining with excitement and the little rows of curls on either side of her head bobbed as she turned to gesture dramatically behind her. What looked like an entire Confederate brigade had muscled into the storeroom, even though there's no way it could have held anywhere near that many people. I'd seen that trick before—metaphysics tells regular old physics to go take a hike sometimes—but it was still impressive.

A dashing officer with a long mustache swept me a bow. "Captain Beauregard Lewis, at your service, ma'am." He looked kind of like Custer, an observation that probably wouldn't have gone down well if I'd been dumb enough to make it. But before I could say anything, a vamp reached through the shelving and the captain's insubstantial middle and grabbed me around the throat.

Beauregard unsheathed his sword and I had half a second to wonder what he thought he was going to do before it came down in a flashing arc that took off the vamp's arm at the elbow. He yelled and so did I, in my case because I'd been sprayed with a warm sheet of blood and because the severed arm was still tight around my throat, fingers digging for my windpipe. Vamp bodies don't die unless both head and heart are destroyed, so the arm was trying to complete the last order it had been given and choke me to death. Beauregard tried to pry it off, but his hand went right through me.

"I sure am sorry, ma'am," he said, while my vision threatened to go dark for the second time that night. "But I used most of my energy on that blow." He shook his head sadly. "Time has caused us to sadly diminish." He looked like he expected me to say something, but it's a little hard to sympathize when you can't draw a breath and fireworks are going off behind your eyelids.

The vamp made another lunge at me, but Portia managed to trip him with her parasol. "Get him!" she cried, and the battalion, which had been merely observing the scene until now, moved as one churning, massive river of gray. It was one of those moments when your eyes cross as the brain tells them they can't be seeing what they say they are. Several thousand troops converged on the same point, falling into it like water disappearing down a drain. Only the drain in question wasn't designed for that kind of thing and sure as hell didn't like it. The vamp started ricocheting off shelving units, his one arm flapping as if he could somehow beat off the invasion, while his skin turned a mottled shade of purple.