Death's Mistress (36 page)

With four fey in the hall and who knew how many coming, there should have been a hell of a fight going on. Yet the wards hadn’t so much as twinged.
Damned useless things
, I thought viciously. Spend all that money and time, and what did we get? Not so much as a warning siren when the bad guys showed up. If I lived long enough, I was going to tell Olga exactly what I thought of—

I was grabbed from behind and yanked backward into the kitchen. We hadn’t even stopped moving when I slammed an elbow back into my attacker’s gut, and came down on his foot with my heel. And had to stifle my own curse. I’d forgotten I was barefoot, and that had
hurt
.

But he let go and I spun, bringing the short sword up in a stabbing motion—and hit wallpaper. Whoever it was had moved like quicksilver, dodging the blade before darting back in to grab me and shove me against the refrigerator. He pinned me there with his lean, hot weight, grabbing my arms, trapping me.

So I brought up a knee, hard, and heard another grunt, just as I recognized a familiar scent. Fey didn’t smell like butterscotch and whisky—at least, none I’d ever met. I looked up into a pair of furious blue eyes.
Louis-Cesare.

“How the hell did you get in?” I whispered.

“Through the door,” he said quietly, his voice a little strained.

I moved my knee. “Sorry.” And then what he’d said registered. “What do you mean,
through the door
? The wards are set to exclude all but family.”

“I
am
family, Dorina.”

Oh, yeah.

I didn’t ask him why he was here instead of where he was supposed to be because right then I didn’t care. “They’re after Aiden,” I told him. “We need to get them before they go upstairs.”

He didn’t ask me what I meant. I guess he’d gotten a look in the hall, or maybe that keen nose had scented something off, too. “I counted eight of them. And there may be more,” he told me grimly.

“Eight?”
Wonderful. Not that it made a difference. “It doesn’t matter how many there are. We’ve got to stop them.”

I started for the hall again, or tried to, but that iron grip didn’t budge. “We will not stop eight fey warriors by brawn alone,” he told me harshly. “A little planning may be the difference between success and failure.”

“So might delay!”

I wrenched away, but he moved to block the door to the hall, and trying to budge him would have been like going through a brick wall. Harder, actually: I’d been through a wall, but I’d never managed to dislodge Louis-Cesare when he was in a mood. I spun on my heel and flung open the kitchen door instead, intending to circle around back and hopefully take the fey by surprise.

And then I just stood there, staring.

I’d been hearing a weird noise coming from outside, but hadn’t had time to focus on it. It had sounded like someone bouncing on a trampoline, which was a little odd at three a.m. But the reality wasn’t that far off.

“What is it?” Louis-Cesare came up behind me.

I thought it was sort of self-explanatory. He was just in time to see another group of Cheung’s boys throw themselves at the wards. A few of them must have had some serious power, because they actually managed to dent the surface a few inches, distorting their faces horribly as they pressed up against the invisible skin.

And then the wards corrected, throwing more power at the point of contact, and they went staggering backward. Or flying, depending on how far in they’d made it. The reaction seemed to be in direct proportion to the threat.

I could have told them that they were wasting their time. The house wards weren’t run off a talisman that could be exhausted if enough force was applied. They were powered by a ley-line sink, which had unlimited energy. Cheung’s boys could batter themselves bloody, but they’d never get through that way.

“Idiots,” I said with feeling. “It would serve them right if they did get in. I’d like to see how they’d deal with—”

I stopped, staring at all the power expending itself uselessly against the wards.

When it could be in here helping us.

I watched the mud-splattered attackers for a moment and wondered if I was going crazy. No way could the two of us handle a couple dozen senior- level masters. But then, weaker ones wouldn’t be any use against
subrand’s thugs. And when Cheung’s boys stormed the house, there was a good chance the fey were going to assume they were coming to our aid, and vice versa. If they tore into one another, it might buy me time to find Claire and the boys.

Of course, if they didn’t, I was screwed. But I was screwed anyway, and between the devil and the deep blue sea, the devil starts to look pretty good. At least he can be bargained with. The sea will just kill you.

I felt a hand suddenly tighten around my bicep. I looked up, and saw the same idea dawning in Louis-Cesare’s eyes.

“Can you do it?” he whispered.

“Yes. But Cheung will run as soon as he sees the fey.” If he had any sense.

“He won’t run,” Louis-Cesare said, with a slight smile.

I followed his line of sight out into the yard, where I saw Cheung’s head jerk up. He stared at the house, a scowl spreading over his features. “What did you do?” I demanded.

“I suggested to him that he might have his servant, if he was not too much of a coward to come in and take him.”

“You called a first-level master a coward?”

“Among other things.”

“And they say I’m crazy.”

I mentally felt around for the bright web of power flowing about the house. There should have been a corresponding interior web as well, but it was conspicuously absent. Someone had taken down the internal wards, cutting the link between them and their power source, the ley-line sink. But they’d left the external ones intact, either because they’d wanted to fool me into thinking everything was fine or—more likely—because they just hadn’t cared.

It took only a second to wrap the filaments of the external wards around my mental hand and give a hard
tug
. Within seconds, the long skeins of energy had unraveled to nothing, leaving the old house bare and defenseless. “I hope this works,” I said with feeling. “Or we just went from bad to—”

I didn’t get a chance to finish, because I was suddenly slung over a shoulder, carted to the pantry and shoved headfirst down the portal. It happened so fast that for a second, I didn’t understand what was going on. Until it spit me out the other side.

Right at
subrand’s feet.

“—tragic,” I finished blankly.

I think
subrand was almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but he recovered fast. His boot came down in the middle of compost and wet leaves, right where I’d been lying. I wasn’t there anymore, because I’d flung myself backward into the now two-way portal.

I crashed to the hard floor of the pantry and rolled into Louis-Cesare’s legs. And then the lunatic picked me up and started trying to stuff me back inside.
“What the hell are you doing?”

“Attempting to get you to safety.”

“That’s a damn strange way of doing it!” I panted, bracing my hands and feet on the shelves on either side of the gaping maw, like a cat trying to avoid a bath.

“I will get the others out. You have my word,” he said, trying to prize me off. But every time he removed one limb, I curled the others through the metal supports of the shelves, holding on for dear life.

I was sucking in breath to explain, when he jerked me back, ripping the whole shelving unit off the wall. It came away, concrete screws and all, but I held on like my fingers were welded to the metal. He cursed in exasperation. “Why will you not
let go
?”

“Because
subrand’s out there, you complete lunatic!” And then it wasn’t true, because he was suddenly
in
the house and crashing into me.

I don’t think he’d expected to find someone physically blocking the portal, because he hadn’t come through with a drawn weapon. But that was the only good thing. The portal flung him into me, I lost my grip on the shelves and we tumbled to the ground. And then he was suddenly gone. It took me a moment to realize that Louis-Cesare had picked him up and flung him back through.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said, half-appalled, half-impressed, as he turned toward the door. I pushed the shelving off me and grabbed him. “Stay here. Hold off
subrand.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get my duffel.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now! Ray’s in there! If Cheung gets him before we do, he’ll have no reason to stick around.”

“I will go,” Louis-Cesare said as the sound of crossed swords and gunfire came from the hall.

He left before I got the chance to tell him that I’d really prefer to face Cheung and his men than the ice-cold prince of the fey. But then the portal started to activate again. I panicked just slightly at the thought of facing
subrand with nothing but a short sword for a weapon. So I started throwing everything I could reach down the portal’s wide gullet.