I didn’t answer, because she didn’t need it. The best way to lose a fight was to use half measures against an opponent using full ones. Especially this one, I thought, watching as he duplicated my movement, only he didn’t grab a troll’s club.
He grabbed the troll.
It was a smaller one, which I dodged easily. But he sent two more my way just afterward, and was moving fast enough to be annoying. I decided to drop into the mental state vampires used in battle, the one that made everyone else seem to slow down, just to be on the safe side.
Only to realize: I was already there.
That would explain why people in the flood were looking around with startled expressions. To them, it must have seemed as if their allies or opponents had simply disappeared, plucked up and tossed like living boulders across the room. It must have seemed like that to the creatures as well: I saw one’s ferocious expression change to bewilderment as he sailed past, especially after I pulled his sword from his hands.
And just managed to get it up in time to meet the one slashing down at me.
The vampire was also strong, I discovered, surprisingly so. He’d fought my twin before, but he’d apparently been pulling his punches. He wasn’t pulling them now, or to be more precise, the creature controlling him wasn’t. If we’d been on the ground, he might have done some serious damage.
But we weren’t on the ground.
We were flying above the battle, balancing on a couple of speeding camera balls, while dodging the spells being flung at us from the ground and a few balconies.
And it looked like he didn’t know how to fight this way.
I smiled, showing fang, as our swords rang together and as Dory took us down at the same moment, ruining his momentum as we dipped underneath and then zipped away. But he learned fast. Because the next time, he didn’t come for us.
He came for the ball.
And it seemed that I had been wrong: he wasn’t fast; he was quicksilver. He was lightning, flashing across the sky. He was faster than the spells we were dodging, which boiled by almost leisurely in comparison.
He was faster than me.
Not by much, just a fraction of a second, but sometimes, that’s all you need. There followed a blur of motion, a strange aerial ballet across the room, each of us standing on a speeding camera, swirling and ducking and somersaulting, and silent except for the staccato ring of swords clashing together almost too fast to see, even for me. It was heady, exhilarating; I’d never known anything like it, as each of us tried to find an advantage, and each of us failed.
Until that split second came into play.
I saw the blur of the blade coming for my mechanical platform, but wasn’t fast enough to dodge it. So I jumped, straight up, just as the blade turned the camera I’d been using into so many flying parts. And I flipped, landing on the vamp in a judo hold, one leg around his neck, a stake in my hand— Only to have Dory throw off my aim. And before I could recover, a wave of static hit me like a fist. Like a thousand fists, boiling behind my eyes. I heard myself scream, felt Dory convulse but somehow manage to grab the vampire’s controller, felt us spring away. But if she’d planned to send Louis-Cesare careening off while we recovered, it didn’t work.
Because he kicked the camera out from under him, sending it shattering into a thousand pieces against the wall, and fell as we did. And I learned that static could be used in more than one way. It cut out abruptly, either deliberately or because he’d just splashed down, disrupting the creature’s thoughts. And either way, the shock caused me to do the unthinkable.
It caused me to trip.
I landed on a troll’s back, wet with water and blood. But instead of using him as a platform to jump to the nearby balcony and get away, I slipped off his shoulder, heading for the water ten feet below. And hit something else on my way down.
The vampire already had his blade back up, and it pierced our leg, a sharp, biting pain that became agony when it hit bone. And kept on going. The blade was so razor-sharp and was wielded with such force that it took me a moment to realize we’d just lost a leg. The part below the knee spun off into the fight, lost to view, and we fell backward into water over our head, that was immediately fogged with red.
The pain was stunning; the blood loss even more so. I prepared to dive, in the vain hope that I could beat the vampire to the bottom, and lose him in the thrashing, battling pairs all around. Or at least get enough water between us that it would blunt the next blow and save our lives. Instead he lunged for us, in a move almost too fast to see, even in slo-mo.
And jerked us back up.
“Louis-Cesare! Please!” That was Dory.
I could hear her pain, her anguish. Not only for us, but for him, what this would do to him when that thing let him go. And something of that must have gotten through, because for a split second, I saw him falter.
But the creature was too strong, and reasserted control almost at once. The blue eyes, confused and horrified one second, were suddenly resolute once more. And the sword was being raised and we were out of options.
But somebody else wasn’t.
Louis-Cesare was swarmed by a bunch of flying cameras, perhaps twenty or more, all hitting him at the same time. One smashed into the back of his head; another punched the side of his jaw. And then more and more at various angles, until the little things had kamikazied their guts out, like big, black, wildly swinging fists.
They didn’t hurt him, but the surprise bought us a second to tear away, and I didn’t hesitate. I landed back in the frothing water, disoriented and desperate. And somehow grabbed a shield.
It was a long wooden thing, heavy and unwieldy. A fact not helped by the depth of the water, which was now over my head. My foot couldn’t reach the bottom of this newly formed lake, and I was off-balance and rapidly losing blood from the leg. I nonetheless managed to get the shield up, and block the next strike of the blade. Only to have the wicked, curved steel sink deeply enough that it caught in the wood, allowing the vampire to use the sword as a handle.
And rip our only protection away.
Dory! I yelled mentally. Help me!
One second!
She was doing something with the hand under her control. Then she dunked us underwater, swimming for the bottom, and how was that supposed to help? I didn’t get an answer, and the next second we were jerked back out of the tide. I’d been expecting it, and closed my hand on the wrist holding the sword as it slashed down. But even though I was putting everything I had into the fight, the blade kept coming closer and closer, a relentless, deadly weight, until the shiny surface reflected my strained face and startled, disbelieving eyes— And something else.
I had half a second to see a giant mass of muscle, fur, and fury leaping for us, before it was gone—and Louis-Cesare along with it. For a split second, I watched him being dragged through the fight by a were the size of a car, and then the view was obscured as the rest of Roberto’s creatures appeared, a river of fur parting the water and immediately taking the fight to a new level.
But not for long.
Not where the vampire was concerned.
I saw him across the fray, battling the were, and knew we had seconds at best. Not enough time to get away, not enough time to do anything. He was relentless.
But so was Dory. She’d found the controller the vampire had dropped, and apparently it went with the fritzing, sparking wreck of a camera ball speeding toward us. The thing could barely fly, and was listing hard to one side, but when the up button was pressed on the controller, that’s where it took us, straining and fighting, but unerringly UP.
Toward the weapons, I realized.
And then we shot through the doorway and into a vortex of light and sound that grabbed us like a fist, jerked us through, and spit us out . . .
Somewhere else.
Chapter Sixty