The winery was equipped with bare-bulb lighting overhead, but it was currently out of commission. A few lanterns burned here and there instead, seeming almost unnaturally bright as I exploded out of the dim corridor. The place was larger than I’d expected, on two levels, with the lower housing the stainless-steel vats used for fermentation. They lined the walls like chubby sentinels, their shiny surfaces reflecting my own face back at me multiple times. Up a set of wooden stairs was a catwalk leading to the rest of the building. At the moment it was ringed by faces—Caedmon, Drac and Olga were looking down, not at me, but at the crumpled body in the center of the floor. A mage lay in a twisted pile, like a doll thrown down by a two-year-old. I didn’t need to check to know that he was dead. Unfortunately, he wasn’t Jonathan.
Drac recovered first and lunged at Caedmon, who sidestepped the blow, his sword back up in the space of time between thoughts. Even in the narrow confines of the catwalk his fighting form was perfect, a smooth flow of muscle and sinew, every motion exquisite. Drac’s style wasn’t nearly as pretty, but it seemed effective. Caedmon was bleeding in several places, while Drac was bloody only on one arm. Too bad it wasn’t his sword arm.
My brain was so focused on what was happening ahead that I didn’t notice the faint rustle of wings behind me until the room was suddenly filled with the tuneless howl and fury of the leader. It came at me out of the dark, trailing one wing uselessly, but it didn’t need it in the confined space. I leapt backward, away from those slashing claws, and then I saw them, Louis-Cesare, Jonathan and some flunky on the floor near one of the huge vats.
At almost the same moment, Jonathan glanced up, probably at the sound of the leader slamming into the vat beside me, and our eyes locked. He huddled over the vampire’s unmoving body protectively, like a predator over his latest kill. Before I could move, he drew a knife from his boot and cut a deep gash across Louis-Cesare’s throat.
A white hiss of panic crowded rational thought from my head for a stunned moment, as blood flooded down the pale torso and across my vision. But one thought got through clearly enough: challenge had been made. I couldn’t see if Louis-Cesare still lived; all I knew was that he wasn’t moving, and it was more than enough. Challenge was accepted.
As I started forward, Jonathan threw a hand out, shedding a trail of fox fire in its wake, and something exploded around me in a wave of red sound. Power rolled over me, knocking me to my knees, turning the room hot and vivid and scarlet, until I was drowning in the blood-ripe taste of it. I tried to reinforce my shields, but I couldn’t sense them, couldn’t sense anything but the crash of those waves across my body. Somehow, I’d ended up on my back. I watched Jonathan start to drag Louis-Cesare toward the wooden staircase leading to the upper areas of the winery while my pulse throbbed in my ears and I struggled to breathe.
“Dorina! Behind you!” The shout came from the fight above—Mircea’s voice. I was still so disoriented that it took a moment to realize what he was talking about. The creature had righted itself from its wild ride into the vat and begun to stalk me with quiet, deadly intent. I could see it getting larger, a black hulk reflected in the nearest vat, lurching at me across the floor. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Jonathan had hit me with a souped-up disorienting sphere. I’d seen them before, but never been able to afford one. Apparently, the mage had a bigger bank account. I could throw off the usual kind in a matter of minutes, but this version was a wartime weapon used to take out whole groups of mages at once. I had no idea how long the effect would last, and it didn’t look like I’d live long enough to find out.
Above me, blades clashed hard enough to strike sparks, and Caedmon gave way first. Drac pushed him back using sheer force, striking with hammer blows that Caedmon met but didn’t have the strength to return. So much for the Fey’s boast about his dueling ability. I struggled to move, but couldn’t even manage to sit up. I felt a presence behind me, and braced for the attack.
It never came. Olga tossed something over the balcony, and a gray blur hit the floor with a graceful roll. Before I could identify it, the tiny whirlwind was streaking across the floor at me, snarling and snapping useless fangs and launched itself right over my body. It took forever to figure out which way to turn my head to see what was going on. When I did, I was treated to what even a baby Fey can do when it’s really and truly pissed.
Stinky’s long, twiglike fingers had found purchase on the leader’s neck. His tiny body was saved from that vicious beak by the simple method of hiding behind the creature’s own head. Stinky was little more than a fuzzy bump on the vast expanse of leather-like back, safe from beak and claws as he slowly choked the creature to death. It was a great plan, except that the leader realized that the game was up and decided to try to take me with him. Instead of moving forward, in a vain attempt to cross the last few yards to me, it suddenly sprang backward, directly into a huge holding vat. It had dented the thing earlier; now the force of its final assault punctured the steel, letting loose a river of wine that spilled outward in a crimson flood, threatening to drown me.