Changes (34 page)

Mouse came over and nuzzled my face, his tail wagging happily. He walked around me, sniffing, and began to nudge me to rise. I got up slowly, and actually braced my hand on his broad, shaggy back at one point. I felt an acute need to be gripping a good solid wizard’s staff again, just to hold me up. I don’t think I’d ever appreciated how much of a psychological advantage (i.e., security blanket) it was, either. But I wouldn’t have one until I’d taken a month or so to make one: Mine had been in the
Blue Beetle
, and died with it, too.

I was on my feet before anyone else. I eyed the dog and said, “You can talk. How come I never hear you talk?”

“Because you don’t know how to listen,” my godmother said simply.

Mouse wagged his tail and leaned against me happily, looking up at me.

I rested my hand on his head for a moment and rubbed his ears.

Screw it.

The important things don’t need to be said.

Everyone was getting back up again. The canteens made a round, and I let everyone recover for five minutes or so. There was no point in charging ahead before people could get their breath back and hold a weapon in a steady hand.

I did say something quietly to Susan, though. She nodded, frowned, and vanished.

She was back a few minutes later, and reported what she’d found into my ear.

“All right, people,” I said then, still quietly. “Gather in.”

I swept a section of the jungle floor clean and drew with my fingertip in the dirt. Martin lit the crude illustration with a red flashlight, one that wouldn’t ruin our night vision and had less chance of being glimpsed by a nearby foe.

“There are guards stationed all over the big pyramid. The girl is probably there, in the temple on top. That’s where I’m going. Me, Susan, and Lea are going to move up through the gallery, here, and head for the temple.”

“I’m with Susan,” Martin said. “I go where she does.”

This wasn’t the time or place to argue. “Me, Susan, Lea, and Martin will go in that way. I want all eyes facing north when we head for the pyramid. So I want the rest of you to circle that way and come in from that direction. Right here, there’s a cattle truck where they’re storing their human sacrifices. Get close and spring them. Raise whatever hell you can, and run fast. Head west. You’ll hit a road. Follow it to a town. Get into the church there. Got it?”

There was a round of nods and unhappy expressions.

“With any luck, that will draw off enough of them to let us pull a smash and grab on the temple.

“Also,” I said, very seriously, “what happens in the Yucatán stays in the Yucatán. There will be no jokes about sniffing butts or chasing tails or anything like that. Ever. Agreed?”

More sober nods, this time with a few smiles.

“Okay, folks,” I said. “Just so you know, friends—I’m in your debt, and it’s one I’ll never be able to repay. Thank you.”

“Gush later,” Murphy said, her tone wry. “Rescue now.”

“Spoken like a true lady,” I said, and put my hand out. Everyone piled hands. Mouse had to wedge in close to put his paw on the pile. All of us, every single one of us, except maybe my godmother, were visibly, obviously terrified, a circle of shivers and short, fast breaths.

“Good hunting, people,” I said quietly. “Go.”

Everyone had just gotten to their feet when the brush rattled, and a half-naked man came sprinting almost directly into us, his expression desperate, his eyes wide with mindless terror. He smashed into Thomas, rebounded off him, and crashed to the ground.

Before anyone could react, there was a muted rustle, and a Red Court vampire in its black-skinned monstrous form came bounding out of the forest five yards away and, upon seeing us, went rigid with startled shock. An instant later, it tried to reverse its course, its claws gouging at the forest floor.

I’ve heard it said that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

It’s true.

The vampire let out an earsplitting screech, and all hell broke loose.

42

A lot of things happened very quickly.

Mouse rushed forward and caught the vampire by one calf just before it could vanish into the thick brush. He set his legs as the vampire struggled wildly, trying to scream again.

Martin brought his pistol up in a one- handed grip, six inches of sound suppressor attached to its muzzle. Without hesitating for an instant, Martin took a step to one side for a clear shot and fired on the move. The gun made a sound no louder than a man clearing his throat, and blood spattered from the vampire’s neck. Though it kept struggling, its screams suddenly ended, and it bounded and writhed wildly to maneuver Mouse between itself and Martin.

That stopped abruptly when Thomas’s falcata took the vampire’s head from its shoulders.

The half-naked man looked at us, and babbled something in Spanish. Susan answered him with a curt gesture and a harsh tone, and then the man blurted something, nodding emphatically, then turned to keep running into the darkness.

“Quiet,” I breathed, and everyone dropped silent while I stood quite still, Listening for all I was worth.

I have a knack, a skill that some people seem to be able to learn. I’m not sure if it’s something biological or magical, but it allows me to hear things I wouldn’t otherwise pick up, and I figured it was a good time for it.

For a long breath, there was nothing but the continued rumble of the drums.

Then a horn, something that sounded a bit like a conch, began to blow.

A chorus of vampire screams arose and it didn’t take any supergood hearing to know that they were headed our way.

“There. You see?” Sanya said, his tone gently reproving. “Frontal assault.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Murphy said, her tone more disgusted than afraid.

“He’s right,” I said, my voice hard. “Our only chance is to hit them hard.” We had only a moment, and my mind raced, trying to come up with a plan that resulted in something other than us drowning in a flood of vampires.

“Harry,” Susan said. “How are we going to do this?”

“I need Lea,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and steady. “I need Molly.”

Molly made a squeaking noise.

I turned to Susan and said, “We do it in two waves.”

We moved directly toward the enemy, entering the ancient gallery full of columns, and the vampires came boiling out of the shadows to meet us. I don’t know how many of them there were. More than a hundred, less than a million. I stepped out in front of everyone and said, “Attack!”

Sanya’s battle roar was loudest. He leapt forward, drawing
Esperacchius
, and blazing light shone forth from the blade.

Murphy ran forward upon his right, letting out a scream of her own and holding the shining length of
Fidelacchius
in her hands. An aura of soft blue light had surrounded her. On Sanya’s left, Susan ran,
Amoracchius
held aloft and wreathed in white fire, and her scream was something primal and terrible. Thomas flanked Murphy. Martin ran next to Susan, and both of them charged forward with blade and pistol in hand.

I saw the front ranks of vampires hesitate as they saw the pure, terrible light of the three Swords coming toward them, but it wasn’t enough to stop the momentum of that horde. It swallowed all five valiant figures in a tidal wave of dark, flabby bodies, claws, fangs, and lashing tongues.

Suckers.

I still stood forward of everyone else, and the meeting of the two ranks of combatants brought the horde to a halt. A brief halt, true, something that lasted no more than a handful of seconds—but it was time enough for me to reach down to touch the slow, terrible power of the ley line flowing beneath my feet.

The temple atop the pyramid in the ruins was the center of the confluence, but ley lines, each one a vast, roaring current of magical energy, radiated out in all directions—and the one beneath us was an enormous current of raw earth magic. Earth magic wasn’t my forte, and I knew only a couple of applications well enough to use them in a fight.

But one of them was a doozy.

I reached out and touched the power of that ley line, desperately wishing I had my staff with me to assist with the effort. I could sense the earth magic in my mind, feel it flowing by with a power that vibrated up through the soles of the big, stompy, armor-plated boots my godmother had put on me. I took a deep breath, and then thrust my thoughts down into that power.

I was immediately overwhelmed with a rush of images and alien sensations, contacting a power so intense and coherent that it nearly had its own awareness. In a single moment, I saw the ponderous dance of continents clashing against one another to form mountains, felt the slow sleepiness of the earth, its dreaming shivers felt as disasters by the ephemeral things that lived upon its skin. I saw wealth and riches beyond petty mortal imagination, gold and silver flowing hot in rivers, precious gems by the millions being born and formed.

I fought to contain the images, to control them and channel them, focusing all of those sensations into a well I could see only in my imagination, a point deep below the gallery of crumbling old stone that rested next to the pitifully temporary mortal structure on the surface.

Once I had the raw magic I needed, I was able to pull my mind clear of the ley line, and I was suddenly holding a whirlwind of molten stone in my head, seething against the containment of my will until it felt like my skull would burst outward from the pressure, and realized as I did that the use to which I was putting this pure, raw energy was almost childish in its simplicity. I was a frail wisp of mortality beside that energy, which could, quite literally, have moved mountains, leveled cities, shifted the course of rivers, and stirred oceans in their beds.

I set that well of energy to spinning, and directed its power as it spiraled up, a tornado of magic that reached out to embrace simple gravity. With the enormous energy of the ley line, I focused the pull of the earth for miles around into a circle a couple of hundred yards across and spoke a single word as I unleashed the torrent of energy, bound only, firmly if imperfectly, by my will. The spell, start to finish, had taken me a good sixty seconds to put together, and tapping into the ley line had been the last part of the process—far too long and far too destructive to use in any of the faster and more furious fights that I’d found myself in over the years.

Perfect for tonight.

For a quarter of a second, gravity vanished from Chichén Itzá, and the land for miles all around it, jerking everything that wasn’t fastened down, myself included, several inches into the air. For that time, all of that force was focused and concentrated into a circle perhaps two hundred yards across that embraced the entire gallery and every vampire inside it. There, the enormous power of that much focused gravity, nearly three hundred times normal, slammed everyone and everything straight down, as if crushed by a single, gigantic, invisible anvil.

The stone columns handled it better than I thought they would. Maybe half of them suddenly cracked, shattered, and fell into rubble, but the rest bore up under the strain as they had for centuries.

The assault force of the Red Court wasn’t nearly so resilient.

I could hear the bones breaking from where I stood, each snapping with hideously sharp pops and cracks. Down crashed the wave of vampires in a mass of shattered bones. Many of them were crushed beneath the falling stones of the weaker columns—each flabby black body smashed beneath a weight of scores of tons of stone, even if hit by only one piece from a single block.

The energy involved had been enormous, and as I was bounced up about a foot into the air, I was hit with the wave of exhaustion that came along with it. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Technically, I was only channeling and rearranging forces that were already in existence and motion, not creating them from my will, or I could never have managed to affect an area so big, and to do it so violently. But believe you me, it was still hard.

I was thrown several inches up along with everything and everyone else that wasn’t secured. I landed with only one foot beneath me, so I dropped to one knee, catching myself on my hands. Panting, I looked up to see the results of the spell.

A couple of acres of flat, dead, and a few horribly wounded and dying vampires lay strewn about like so many crushed ants, and standing over them, each in a combat pose, as if ready to keep on swinging, were the friends I had sent running ahead, entirely unaffected.

“Good,” I said, panting. “That’s enough, kid.”

I heard Molly, several feet behind me, let out a sigh of relief herself, and the lights and shining auras vanished from the three figures wielding a Sword.

“Well-done, little one,” the Leanansidhe said, and as she spoke the five figures themselves vanished. “A most credible illusion. It is always the little touches of truth that make for the most potent deceptions.”

“Well, you know,” Molly said, sounding a little flustered. “I just watched my dad a few times.”

Mouse stayed close at my side. His head was turned to the right, focused upon the trees and the darkness that way. A growl I felt more than heard came from deep in his chest.

Susan stepped up to my side and looked at the crushed vampires with undisguised satisfaction, but frowned. “
Esclavos de sangre
,” she said.

“Yes,” said Martin from somewhere behind me.

“What?” I asked.

“Blood slaves,” Susan said to me. “Vampires who have gone entirely feral. They can’t create a flesh mask. They’re almost animals. Scum.”

“Cannon fodder,” I said, forcing my lungs to start taking slower, deeper breaths. “A crowd of scum at a top-end Red Court function.”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out why they’d been there. Mouse’s interest in whatever it was he sensed in the trees was deepening. “The Red Court was expecting company.”

“Yes,” Susan said, her voice tight.

Well. Nothing’s ever simple, is it?

That changed everything. A surprise raid upon an unsuspecting, unprepared target was one thing. Trying to simply kick in the teeth of a fully armed and ready Red Court obviously expecting someone with my firepower was something else entirely. Namely, sheer stupidity.

So.

I had to change the game and change it fast.

A gong began to clash slowly, a monstrous thing, the metallic roar of its voice something low and harsh that reminded me inexplicably of the roar Martin had produced earlier. The tension got thicker, and except for the sounds of the drum and the gong, there were no other noises, not of the creatures of the jungle or any other kind.

The quiet was far more terrifying than the noise had been.

“They’re out there,” I said quietly. “They’re moving right now.”

“Yes,” said Lea, who had suddenly appeared at my left side, opposite Mouse. Her voice was very calm, and her feline eyes roamed the night, bright and interested. “That mob of trash was merely a distraction. Our own tactic used against us.” Her eyes narrowed. “They are employing veils to hide themselves—and they are quite skilled.”

“Molly,” I said.

“On it, boss,” she replied.

“Our distraction was an illusion. It didn’t cost us any lives,” Murphy pointed out.

“Neither did theirs, from their perspective, Sergeant,” Martin said. “Creatures who cannot control themselves are of no use to the Red King, after all. Their deaths simply reduced the number of useless, parasitic mouths he had to feed. He may think of humans as a commodity, but he’d rather not throw that wealth away.”

“Harry?” Murphy asked. “Can you do that anvil thing again?”

“Hell. I’m sorta surprised I got away with it the first time. Never done anything with that much voltage.” I closed my eyes for a second and began to reach down for the ley line again—and my brain contorted. Thoughts turned into a harsh explosion of images and memories that left long lacerations on the inside of my skull, and even after I had moved my mind away from those images, it took several seconds before I could open my eyes again. “No,” I croaked. “No, that isn’t an option. Even if they gave me enough time to pull it off.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Thomas asked. He held a large pistol in his left hand, his falcata in his right, and stood at my back, facing the darkness behind us. “Stand here until they swarm us?”

“We’re going to show them how much it will cost to take us down,” I said. “How’s it coming, padawan?”

Molly let out a slow, thoughtful breath. Then she lifted one pale hand, rotated an extended finger in a circle around us, and murmured,
“Hireki.”

I felt the subtle surge of her will wash out and drew in my own as it did. The word my apprentice whispered seemed to flow out from her in an enormous circle, leaving visible signs of its passing. It fluttered leaves and blades of grass, stirred small stones—and, as it continued, it washed over several shapes out in the night that rippled and became solid black outlines, where before there was only indistinct darkness and shadow.

“Not all
that
skilled,” Molly said, panting, satisfaction in her voice.

“Fuego!”
I snarled, and threw a small comet of fire from my right hand. It sailed forth with a howling whistle of superheated air and smashed into the nearest of the shadowed forms, less than a dozen yards away. Fire leapt up, and a vampire screamed in rage and pain and began retreating through the trees.

“Infriga!”
I barked, and made a ripping gesture with my left hand. I tore the fire from the stricken vampire—and then some. I sent the resulting fireball skipping over to the next form—and left the first target as a block of ice where the damp jungle air had emptied its water over the vampire’s body and locked it into place, rigid and very slightly luminous with the residue of the cold energy I felt in me, the gift of Queen Mab. Which was just as well—there were a dozen closing attackers in my immediate field of vision alone, which meant another fifty or sixty of them if they were circling in from all around us, plus the ones I
couldn’t
see, who may have employed more mundane techniques of stealth to avoid the eye.