Smoke mixed with the fog, acrid and sharp, making it hard to breathe. I counted steps, trying to ignore the brittle feel of the boards beneath my feet. I passed what I guessed was a quarter of the distance, a third…. I hadn’t made it quite to the halfway point when something moved across the current of air I was using as a guideline, disrupting it. I lashed out with the knife, but encountered nothing but air. Then a billow of fire erupted behind me, turning the boards I’d just crossed into charred, papery things that collapsed in a cascade of particles.
Backing away from the dangerous edge, I tripped over something on the floor. I looked down to see the outline of a man, surrounded by faint flickers of what looked like electricity. It cast an ethereal light against his face where indigo eyes, fierce as the wildest storm, met mine. Louis-Cesare.
The room swayed. The sudden pounding of my heart was making me dizzy. I dropped to my knees, and reached out to cup one bloodstained hand around his cheek before drawing it down, curving around the skin of his throat, whole and smooth and warm. I didn’t understand it, but I was not about to question fate. “I thought I told you to get some pants on,” I said, my throat threatening to close on the words.
Pain showed all over his face and in the lines of his body, but a weak smile lifted the ends of Louis-Cesare’s mouth. I could detect the small movement because another billow of flame had erupted on the other side of us. I could see Jonathan silhouetted against it for a moment, safe on the somewhat sturdy side, until the boards he’d just set ablaze collapsed into dark dust. The piece of catwalk remaining to us groaned and started pulling away from the wall, the heavy screws that helped to hold it in place overtaxed without the support of the beams on either side.
“Jonathan doesn’t lose gracefully,” Louis-Cesare said.
I watched the shadow of a man dart along the far wall, the flames from below catching and magnifying him to giant size. “Neither do I.”
I pulled Radu’s knife out of my boot and weighed it in my hand. It wasn’t my preferred size for throwing, but it was heavy and solid. More so than my arm, which felt alarmingly like jelly. But at this range, I could hardly miss. I tracked Jonathan until he paused at the sight of Olga in the doorway. With her weight to consider, she was staying well clear of the weakened causeway, preferring to balance on the stone threshold. But her bulk almost completely filled the opening, barring his retreat. I took my chance and threw.
A shudder went through the wood below us as it slipped another inch or so. It wasn’t much of a movement, and I should have been expecting it. But my whole attention had been on the mage. It shook my arm at exactly the wrong moment. Jonathan hadn’t seen me move, but the vibrating knife sticking out of the wood only an inch or so in front of his nose caught his attention. He and I both stared in disbelief at it, quivering in the side of a support beam. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blown a throw that easy.
Jonathan recovered first, and laughed, wrenching the knife out of the wood. And I realized that I’d essentially tossed away our only weapon. Louis-Cesare had struggled to his knees, his head dropped forward, panting harshly. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him flat again. “Stay down!” I hissed as the mage’s arm went back. I could only hope his aim was as bad as mine.
I never found out. The boards under his feet suddenly crumbled. He grabbed desperately for the railing, which miraculously was still in place due to the more solid boards on either side. But the charred wood splintered under his weight, sending him reeling over the edge. It happened so fast, I never even heard him scream.
A second later, the room tore apart. The mage had made no sound, but a shredding howl of torment spiraled up from below as if formed from wind and fire alone. The power he’d stolen boiled up like a cauldron bubbling over, spilling out, filling the room with a cold silver glow that cut through the fog and smoke like a searchlight, putting the light of the fire to shame. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I saw a snake of pure energy, hovering like a vast and brilliant cobra, ready to strike.
I stared at it, mesmerized by more power than I’d ever seen manifested at one time. I had a chance to think, So that’s what’s inside a master vampire, before a shattering hammer of light crashed down. It sank into my bones and blood in an ice-hot blast: Louis-Cesare’s stolen power, all coming back home to roost. And it didn’t wait for me to get out of the way first.
I found out real fast why it was possible to get addicted to power. A hot silvery rain poured around me, into me, energizing my tired body with a rush. Suddenly, I could feel everything, all my senses hyperfocused, hyperaware. The brush of a piece of ash against my arm felt like a slap, the heated air rushing into my lungs was fire, and all around me, ripples of blue-white energy arched over my body.