“To kill the consul and take over,” Mircea said, as things finally made sense.
The woman nodded. “The weapons she was making from all those bones would give her the edge she needed when they dueled, and she wasn’t taking chances. I found out everything, but no one ever came to get me out! Just left me for dead. Who cares about a damned scrim? I should have known—”
She cut off when Mircea shook her. “Wait! You’re saying you can do magic, you just need more power?”
“I—yes. Something like that. Why?”
He looked behind him, up the little stretch of beach.
“I have an idea.”
* * *
—
“Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God—”
“Be silent!” Mircea hissed.
“I’ve never done anything—oh God!” And then the witch grabbed him, her eyes reflecting the lightning above them. “I’m going to be sick,” she told him calmly.
And then she was.
All over him.
Mircea didn’t care. He was already waist-deep in water, with waves crashing into him on the regular, washing away worse things than that. Much worse.
He held on to the little boat full of fish. And tried to keep the waves from slamming the damned thing into his half-healed legs. Something he couldn’t very well prevent and hold on to the briccole, the wooden pillars used for docking, at the same time!
He and the witch were down a little way from the bridge, near where the vampires had been doused earlier. The side of the canal was built up here, to make a decent pier. Enough to hide them from eyes on the quayside, if they didn’t look down. And they wouldn’t, not with what they were about to see.
That was the hope, anyway, Mircea thought, fighting with the boat. It was an old hulk of a thing, a repurposed gondola with its once-shiny paint now mostly gone and the wood beneath cracked and splitting. Which was less of a problem than whether it would stay afloat!
“They’re coming.” He felt Dorina rejoin him, after briefly flitting about the nearby streets.
Mircea was surprised it had taken them this long. The first five vampires had been nobodies, just hunting in local taverns and rousted out by the urgency of the praetor’s command. But her real troops were out now, and augmented by whomever they could press into service. There must be literally thousands of vampires on the streets, looking for them.
And thanks to Dorina’s whispers in the leaders’ ears, most of them were now coming this way.
How long? He asked her mentally.
Now.
Damn! He grabbed the witch, who had been hugging a briccola to stay upright. “Do it!”
She swallowed and looked at the boat, which had a mage and a vampire in it. Or, to be more precise, half of each, two of the bodies from the fight at the now-vanished portal, wedged in and weighted down by piles of fish and nets to look like they were sitting up. One wore Mircea’s face, the other her own. And either she was low on power, or she had overestimated her gift, because Mircea’s doppelganger had one eye higher than the other, and a terrifying grin on his face, while hers . . .
Well, that would cure a man from going to brothels, he thought wildly.
But perhaps it would be good enough from a distance.
“I’m going to let the boat go, and then you do it, all right?” He repeated the plan, because she wasn’t looking all right.
“I hope this works,” she told him rapidly. “I haven’t done this much. Or any. I mean, when I was younger, before they realized . . . I had the usual training, but I don’t actually use . . . I mean, I never—”
Mircea fought an urge to shake her. “It’s all right. Just try to concentrate.”
“Yes.” She swallowed again. “When—when did you want me to—”
“Now.”
“Now?”
Mircea’s head jerked up, because all of a sudden he could feel them. And by God, it was an ocean of vampire power surging their way. Irresistible, unstoppable, overwhelming. They were both going to die!
“Yes, now! Now, now, now!”
“All right—”
“Now!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
“NOW!”
“Then launch the damned boat!”
He didn’t have to launch it so much as let the sea take it. He shoved it, nonetheless, as hard as he could, out into the swollen canal. Which grabbed it like a child with a new toy.
Mircea grabbed her, jerking the woman back among the briccole, and slamming them both up against the canal, where the raging sea had carved a shallow channel into the side.
He couldn’t see the vampires, assembling somewhere above them. Could barely even see the boat, through the water that kept hitting him in the face, and the mountainlike waves. Couldn’t see anything—
But someone else could.
“There! In the boat! They’re getting away!”
He had a brief moment to hear the shout taken up by what sounded like an army. And then swords being dropped and boots being shed, as the praetor’s guards prepared to jump in after them. And yet still the witch did nothing.
And neither could Mircea, for fear of being overheard.
Wait, she mouthed, as he glared.
Wait! as he shook her.
Wait, a pox take you!
And then a lightning bolt flashed, blindingly bright, and thunder boomed, so close and so loud that Mircea almost jumped out of his skin. And finally—finally—the witch threw out a hand, while everyone cowered in fear and the elements roared and the little boat, storm tossed and tempest rocked—
Went up like a powder keg had gone off.
Make that a hundred powder kegs, Mircea thought, pushing the woman the rest of the way into the water. And shielding her as best he could as explosion after explosion tore through the night. They displaced the waves in a huge trough around what had been the boat; they sent what looked like burning orange fireworks into the formerly darkened night; they lit up the entire expanse of waterfront, including the witch’s amazed face, resurfacing with a gasp, because she hadn’t expected that, either.
So that’s what half a skeleton’s worth of vampire bone gets you, Mircea thought, as the praetor’s men shouted, and the winds blew, and what was left of the little craft sank beneath the waves, to be carried away by the tide.
Chapter Fifty-one
I slept for over a day. And, for a wonder, nobody bothered me this time. Well, almost nobody.
I blinked my crusty eyes open to find another pair staring back at me. They were blue, a lovely almost-violet shade that human eyes never achieve without help. And huge, like those of an anime character come to life. And startled, because I guess they hadn’t expected to be suddenly looking into mine, either.
A small creature let out a bleat and stumbled away, into the middle of my bedroom floor, because somebody had brought me to Claire’s. He hunched down with arms over his head, like he thought I was about to strike him. And then just stayed there, shaking in fear.
I didn’t move.
The shaking increased for a moment, and the arms tightened. But when nothing happened, they loosened enough for one large, purple eye to peer out from underneath. It flicked toward the door, which was halfway open, but the owner didn’t budge.
I didn’t, either, because I’d recognized my guest, and wasn’t particularly worried about being attacked by a half-dead troll kid. Not that he was looking half-dead now. I hadn’t expected Olga’s rescue to be on his feet anytime soon, even in an obviously shaky sort of way, much less to be exploring the upper floors of the house.
But trolls are damned hardy, more so than me. I felt stiff and starved and badly in need of a drink, but I didn’t want to freak out the kid. So I just stayed there, unmoving, until he slowly, slowly, slowly stretched into a more or less standing position.
He had dark brown hair, thick and shaggy and completely unlike the twins’ baby-fine variety. He also wasn’t the usual gray-green, but more of a gray-teal, with bluish undertones to the skin. He had the small mouth and round face of a child, and even a somewhat smallish nose, which for trolls is more telling. To the point that I wondered how young he actually was. And then there were those eyes, framed by long, thick, dark lashes.