“Aughhhh!”
I sat bolt upright, screaming. That felt familiar. And other things that weren’t so good, I thought, as the room slurred violently around me.
Only it wasn’t a room. It was a van, or maybe an ambulance. It wasn’t the usual, boxy shape, but it was kitted out with a lot of medical gear, much of which seemed to be attached to me.
I stared at it, but didn’t take it loose. Not because I was being a good patient, but because my brain had finally caught up and was making connections to things. Things that had seemed random, but were suddenly coming together into a picture.
One I really didn’t like.
And then somebody grabbed me, and I lost my train of thought.
It was Marlowe, who was still there and still yelling, maybe because the van had swerved when I screamed and clipped a line of cars. It righted itself, briefly going up on two wheels in the process, and then we were off again. And Marlowe was in my face, furious brown eyes glaring into mine.
“How did you know that would happen?” he demanded, shaking me. “How did you know?”
“Let her go!” Somebody was tugging ineffectually on his arm. “Damn it, if you pull out the IV—”
“I’ll let her go when she answers the question!”
“You’ll let her go now.” That was Louis-Cesare. He was propped in a corner, among half a dozen other vamps, none of whom appeared to be conscious.
Kit sneered at him. “You’re in no position to give orders—or condition, either, after all that!”
“But by tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal.”
Louis-Cesare didn’t reference the butt kicking.
I guess he thought it was memorable.
And, apparently, Kit agreed, releasing me with one of those cat noises he likes to make.
I fell back against a very inadequate pillow, which I wasn’t complaining about right now. And noticed that I did have a needle in my arm; I guess I’d lost a little too much blood. Might account for why it took energy to breathe.
It didn’t explain what had happened to the rest of them, though.
“What happened to them?” I panted, looking at the piled-up vamps.
“Spell,” Radu said, from somewhere behind me. “They’re all right. They’re just stunned.”
“It wasn’t a spell!” That was Kit again. “There’s no spell that can do that, not to us!”
“That’s all very well for you to say. It didn’t hit you.”
They continued arguing while I concentrated on breathing. It wasn’t going well. “Oh God.”
“No, it’s Kathy.”
I stared up into the pleasant face bending over me, and thought it looked slightly—
Oh.
“Crown Royal.”
“No, Kathy.”
“Well, I could use . . . a drink, Kathy.”
She patted my arm. “Couldn’t we all?”
“—well, obviously, they were adjusted.” Radu was still talking, and now he sounded pissed.
“Adjusted?” That was Kit. “You’re talking about goddamned toys. They’re supposed to be harmless!”
“Mostly harmless.”
“What?”
“As Douglas Adams would say.”
“What?”
“Read a book sometime, you philistine.”
“Radu,” Louis-Cesare said. His head was leaned back against the van’s side now, and his eyes were closed. He looked wiped.
“Very well. My point is, these toys, as you call them, aren’t toys at all. They’re low-grade weapons made for personal defense—”
“PPDs,” Kathy said.
“What?”
“That’s what they’re called in the trade. Personal protection devices.”
“Thank you.” Radu looked like he was making a note of it. “In any case, the only difference between these . . . PPDs . . . and whatever we encountered tonight is the amount of magic they hold. The spells are the same—”
“Bollocks!” Marlowe snapped. “Those damned things killed some of us!”
Radu paused. I could almost hear him reminding himself that some of the dead had belonged to Kit.
“He’s right.” That was Kathy. “My uncle has said for years that there ought to be more regulations on PPDs. There are plenty of guys flagged by the Circle so they can’t buy real weapons, who get some of the low-grade stuff, add a bunch of extra magic, and go to town.”
“And who the hell are you?” Kit demanded.
“I already told you. I’m one of the night docs for the Brooklyn on-call service—”
“I know that! It doesn’t mean you know anything about weapons!”
“I don’t,” she agreed placidly. “My uncle does. Why do you think I was at your party?”
Marlowe didn’t look like he cared. “You should have left with the rest!”
“I have a patient to look after, and you’re not the boss of me.” Kit blinked at her, his expression somewhere between angry and surprised. Like a lion being lectured by a mouse. “Anyway, my uncle is Aaron Samuelson,” she continued.
Nothing.
“Of Samuelson & Todd?”
I’d never seen Marlowe go from asshole to angel that fast. “Ms. Samuelson!” An attempt was made at a smile. “My apologies. It’s been a difficult night for all of us—”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s been kind of stimulating.” She smiled back. “You have a nice butt.”
And, for the second time in one night, I saw Marlowe at a loss for words.
“This is what I think happened,” Radu said. “Our opponents needed a large number of weapons, but were having difficulty acquiring enough from their own sources. The Black Circle is formidable, but weapons manufacturing is a specialized field. Just because you’re a mage doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at it.”
“People train for years,” Kathy agreed. “There’s an apprenticeship and everything.”
“Exactly. It isn’t merely casting a spell; the ones designed for weapons have to last, have to be bound to something portable, and have to be stable enough not to blow up in your face. The Black Circle likely has spellbinders working for them, but not enough for a major war. They needed outside sources.”
Kathy nodded. “Somebody must have figured out that the PPDs use the same spells as the more powerful stuff, so you don’t need a spellbinder. You just need the magic to . . . plump them up.”
“It all makes sense,” Radu agreed.
“It makes no kind of sense!” That, of course, was Marlowe. “Those weapons weren’t merely ‘plumped up’! They were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Each spell felt like it had the combined force of a hundred mages behind it—and there were cases of them! No one has that much magic—not the Black Circle, and certainly not a bunch of slavers. So how the devil are they doing it?”
Nobody said anything.
But I suddenly remembered what I’d realized earlier, in that brief moment of clarity. Dorina had shown me that vampire remains could be hugely powerful, but it was almost impossible to get them anymore. But there was another magical creature that was dying in quantity, and that nobody seemed to care about.
“They’re using fey bones,” I told them, and passed out.
Chapter Forty-four
Something was wrong.
I awoke in a strange bed, with a strange vampire. I had a hand on his throat before I recognized him: the powerful master from the fight. The one my twin liked.
He was in a healing trance, his many wounds bandaged but still radiating heat. Yet he was not insensate. His kind retain a low level of awareness in that state, so he knew I was there.
Yet he never so much as stirred, even with my nails digging into his flesh.
I slowly removed them; he wasn’t the source of the danger.
But something was.
I glanced around.
There was no one else here, but there had been. The room was full of scent puddles, some distant in time, days old. Servants, likely, in to clean and then out again, quickly enough that their presence barely registered. Others were brighter. Like my Sire’s, his scent unmistakable: dark, rich, and deep. Part of it clung to my hairline, where he’d pushed some damp strands away. It was an hour old, perhaps two.