Not that it seemed to be slowing her down.
I’d gotten back to my feet, but before I could blink, my ankle was caught, my butt hit the floor, and the only reason I didn’t go over the edge was the couple of large ogres I’d managed to grab on the way down.
And the fact that I was slamming my boot into her head as hard as I could.
“Out of curiosity,” I panted, while one of the ogres’ friends started wailing on me with a toaster, “is there a reason you and Blondie both showed up tonight?”
She spat blood. “You’re a hard person to find. You get appointed to the Senate, then immediately get sent out of the country.”
And, yeah, the Senate had had a couple errands for me, one of which had resulted in my current, less-than-optimal state. But I didn’t see what that had to do with her. “So?”
“So we didn’t know where you went, and had to wait for you to get back, and now there’s only a week left.”
“Until what?”
“Until the swearing in,” she said, getting smacked by a determined little guy with a broom handle. “Once you’re confirmed . . . no one can touch you . . . until after the war. And by then . . . you’ll have made alliances.”
I vaguely remembered somebody telling me that duels between senators had been outlawed until after the war, to cut down on the chaos. And because I guess the consul felt like she’d lost enough Senate members already. But we newbies weren’t technically senators yet, were we?
“So this is gonna be an all-week thing?” I guessed.
“Oh, trust me.” The annoying smirk was back. “It won’t take nearly that long.”
I was beginning to think she might be right. Because she was somehow managing to drag me, the two ogres I’d latched onto, and what appeared to be their whole clan—all of whom were now holding on to them, with some even bracing in the doorway—toward the precipice. And that was while I did my utmost to punch a hole through that stupid grin.
And I wasn’t the only one.
“Die, bitch,” Blondie said, coming to the rescue despite having her stake still sticking out of his chest.
“How are you guys getting up here?” I asked, but didn’t get an answer. Because a passing troll fight swept them and a third of the room away, and would have dragged me off, too, if the ogres hadn’t jerked their relatives back just in time. And taken me with them.
“Hey, thanks,” I said sincerely, staggering back to my feet.
And had the whole room charge at me at once.
I had a split second to spot a rope, or end up plunging through space without one. But between the fighting and the dust and the disco-ball-on-acid effect of the flashlights, that wasn’t easy. But I thought I glimpsed something off to the left and leapt for it, hoping it wasn’t another live wire.
I never found out.
However, I did find out how the vamps were all but levitating around, when I went rocketing toward the roof. It took me a second to realize that I’d landed on the broad back of a troll, who was too busy chasing a blue team member up the wall to notice. And judging by the level of enthusiasm, I really didn’t want to be there when he caught him.
Not that that was likely to be a problem, I realized, when somebody jumped off another passing titan and grabbed me.
“Would you get a life?” I gritted, watching Purple Hair wrestle with my boot.
“Trying to,” she told me indistinctly, while I slammed my heel into her face some more.
I am not a weakling, and I was motivated. But it didn’t seem to be making much of an impression. Of course I could be wrong, I thought, as a side table, a keyboard, and a La-Z-Boy came flying out of the apartments we were passing, as if pulled by a string.
Or by a determined master vampire who wanted to give me something else to think about.
And she wasn’t short on ammo. A bunch of tumbled bricks came streaming at me a second later, like a machine gun spewing huge, rough-edged bullets—half of which were hitting my freaking ribs. Even worse, the barrage seemed to have given my ride’s opponent an idea, because we were suddenly being pelted by a ton of stuff from above, as he tried to slow us down. Including the burnt-out remains of a fridge he’d grabbed out of somebody’s kitchen and was about to—
Okay, yeah.
I stopped pummeling and twisted, hanging off Troll Boy’s bandanna by one arm, getting ready. And, to her credit, Purple Hair wasn’t stupid. I saw her eyes widen and her hands fumble for weapons she’d so far ignored, right before my leg muscles bunched and my knee snapped and she was thrown into the path of the fridge, still flailing.
People can say all they want about Babe Ruth, but that troll was the real MVP, wielding that thing like a bat and sending her up, up, and all the way out, through the nonexistent roof and into the moonlit sky beyond.
Hitting a home run if ever I saw one.
“Heh,” I said, because it was funny.
And because I never learn.
Suddenly, I had a very unhappy troll’s face in mine, a chair-sized hand snatching me off his back, and a wall coming at me too fast to do anything about. This time, the flyswatter connected. A moment later, I was bleary-eyed and barely conscious, scrambling to find a handhold on the rough old bricks.
And I did. I found plenty. Because the wall had been seriously charred here, which left it jagged and broken, with any number of potential grips. Unfortunately, it also left it soft and brittle, and pieces of it kept breaking off under my hands.
My head jerked about, looking for alternatives. But all I saw were ominous cracks racing off for yards in every direction. And the concrete slab of the lobby floor, way too far away to be survivable. And Louis-Cesare looking up, surrounded by a circle of bodies, fear and horror dawning on his face.
And a lump in my pocket that one of my flailing hands brushed against, and that I vaguely realized was the gold he’d given me.
Gold.
A moment later, the whole section of wall crumbled to pieces. And I fell into wind and light and noise, with no ropes, no jutting bits of hallway, and no passing giants to the rescue. Just a glittering line of coins racing ahead of me, pattering down on the floor below like golden rain. And a flood of small somethings surging out of the dark, scrabbling for them greedily before looking up—
And seeing me speeding at them like a dhampir-shaped bullet.
Suddenly, the whole, echoing tower of crazy sounded like the world’s biggest popcorn popper going off.
Which is why I hit down, not on a hard concrete subfloor, but on a sea of rubbery, bouncy, inflatable somethings, most of which were still trying to spot the coins in the soot. And battering me this way and that, sending me bouncing around like a drunk chick in a ball pit. One whose boyfriend came to grab her out of the air a second later, and drag her against his chest, yelling something inaudible because the room had suddenly gone crazy.
But not because of us.
“Well, shit,” I said distinctly, staring upward.
Right before we were buried under a couple thousand pounds of falling muscle.
Damn, I knew that was going to happen, I thought.
And passed out.
Chapter Five
Not surprisingly, I dreamed of trolls.
Not big ones, but normal sized, even a little puny, watching me with tiny eyes blown wide with fear as I tore past, raking backhoe amounts of bricks out of walls and carving the old building into my personal ladder. I couldn’t see well, just smears of light that sometimes dazzled, sometimes blinded, when they shone directly into my eyes. And I could barely hear, the surrounding walls reflecting back every sound, from my hoarse breathing to the deafening cheers of the crowd.
Didn’t matter.
I could sense my prey ahead, could smell him—an oil slick of a scent, partly the result of whatever he used on his hair, partly him. A little man. A frightened man. A bully, as slavers always were.