Fury's Kiss (63 page)

“Whoa,” Zheng said.

“I guess the fey didn’t trust the help with the good stuff,” I said, watching blinding bands of snow lash the fey lines. “Too afraid it might fall into our hands.”

“Yeah. That’d be a shame,” Zheng said, and fired a round directly into the wall just below us.

We didn’t get a blizzard that time, but the effect was pretty spectacular just the same. The whole long expanse of rock iced up, like we were suddenly perched on top of a glacier. And sent the couple dozen blonds who’d spotted us, and started scaling the cliff like mountain goats, sliding right back into the crowd.

Zheng got another salvo off after them, but I didn’t see what good it did. Because I had to stop and deal with a group coming through the archway.
You really can’t fault their reaction time
, I thought, and shot the leader square in the face.

His skin turned blue and he staggered back, which I’d expected. And then an ice storm started up in the close confines of the hallway, which I hadn’t. In all of a second, the whole door had iced over, with a bluish white slab so thick that it looked like a glacier had suddenly decided to park itself there.

I laughed, because if you’re crazy, you may as well live up to it, and turned back to Zheng. Who didn’t appear to get the joke. Or maybe he was just concerned about the fact that fully
half the freaking army
had just broken off and were coming for us.

Because yeah, they couldn’t see us and didn’t know how many were up here, I realized, as Zheng fired his last bullet directly into the crowd.

Who, without missing a beat, raised long, shiny black shields above their heads, like they’d been expecting it. And maybe they had. Because the shields locked together, creating a slick, solid surface that gave the ice nowhere to go but out. And it did, spreading like frost over the dark water of a pond and creating an almost flat, hard surface.

Which another group of fey promptly jumped on top of.

“Shit!” Zheng said, grabbed my gun and fired again.

But not at them. Because even though they were climbing fast, something else was more urgent. Louis-Cesare and Ray were in trouble.

I could tell because I could see them, not clearly, but in fits and starts, little glimmers like a couple of ghosts, if ghosts made “oh shit” faces on the one hand and agitated French gestures on the other. And that sort of shit wasn’t going to go unnoticed for long.

Aaaaand it didn’t.

One of the fey in line for the portal nearest them let out a very inelegant squawk, and pointed. And Louis-Cesare and Ray looked up from arguing over Ray’s device to stare at the soldier in shock, as if they hadn’t realized they could be seen. And yelled at. And shot at, only the latter didn’t go so well because of Zheng’s bullet, which hit the floor near the line of soldiers the pointer was standing in and—

Yeah, that’s better
, I thought, as a new blizzard tore through the lineup.

Except for the fact that that had been our last bullet. And that the fey below us had now achieved something that looked like a cheerleaders’ tower, composed of three tiers of black-armored warriors with death on their faces. And that the blizzard that was supposed to be helping Louis-Cesare and Ray was fizzling out for some reason, just like the other had.

I didn’t understand why until I noticed the shields of the fey clustered around them. Which instead of being shiny black, were now a blowing, snowy white, as a blizzard raged—beneath their surfaces. Somehow they’d trapped it, or most of it. The crazy winds and snow of a second ago had lightened to a few thin bands blowing across my vision, which did nothing to obscure the sight of Louis-Cesare and Ray fighting for their lives.

Louis-Cesare was showing the fey that he hadn’t been the European dueling champion for nothing. His form was fluid grace, liquid motion. If it had been slower, it would have looked like an exotic dance. But at speed it was easy to see the moves for what they were, violence doled out with deadly precision.

But it wasn’t enough, even though the fey hadn’t just shot him. I don’t know why. Maybe they didn’t want to waste the ammo or maybe he was too close to the portals, and they didn’t want to risk more going out of commission.

Or maybe they just didn’t want to admit that a single warrior could hold them off.

But he couldn’t, not forever. There were just too many and it didn’t look like he could manage that disappearing trick again. He was already defending instead of attacking, dodging and weaving and twisting, yet finding no opening because there was none to find. Just a solid wall of shields closing in, and swords flashing and—

And Louis-Cesare looking at me, searing me with his stare, for a long second.

Before he fell.

A cold wash of disbelief tore through me, like the blood had suddenly left my body all at once. And if I’d ever had any doubt about how I felt, it was gone in that second. When I couldn’t do a damn thing about it but scream my head off, a hopeless, horrified sound that hurt my own ears with the intensity of it.

But not as much as it seemed to hurt everyone else’s.

Suddenly the whole room went quiet. The portals were still running, still murmuring to themselves, like two dozen rushing rivers. The thin bands of ice were still blowing, making
shush-shush
sounds against the stone. But nothing else talked—or fought or moved. Even the fey coming over the precipice, the ones who had been about to swamp Zheng, were frozen in place, as if they’d all been hit by one of their own weapons.

But I didn’t think so. They weren’t cold and blue; they were simply stopped. Or stunned, I realized belatedly, as one of them fell off the wall and crashed to the floor, and just lay there, looking up with portal light gleaming in his wide-open eyes.

I stared at the fallen fey for a second, and then at Zheng, who was just as unmoving by the wall, face set in a snarl, fist raised. And then I
moved.
Over the wall and down what felt like a fun-house slide, three bumps of
slick, icy shields and then a spray of snow over a cold, cold floor. And then through an army of frozen obstacles, not one of which was less than seven feet tall, with helmets that made them even taller.

It was like being in a shiny black forest, one that could suddenly come to life and kill me at any second, because I had no idea what I’d just done or how long it would last. But something told me to
hurry, hurry, hurry
, to the point that I was pushing soldiers over, jumping past their bodies, fighting and clawing and—and finding them. Both of them, Louis-Cesare bent over Ray, still trying to defend him, even with no fewer than five swords sticking out of his body.

But none were through the heart; none had slit the throat. He would live if I could just—

And I couldn’t. If I’d been weak before, it was nothing to how I felt now. That scream had taken every bit of energy I had. And even if it hadn’t, Louis-Cesare was a column of solid muscle and I couldn’t budge him. And then there was Ray.…

“What the hell just happened?”

Somebody growled behind me, and I spun, hands still on the shield I was trying to get in place for a travois. But I didn’t need it now, because Zheng was there and—

“Grab them!” I told him desperately, even as eyelashes started to flutter around us and limbs started to twitch. And to his credit, he grabbed them, without asking further questions that I couldn’t have answered anyway.

“We’ll talk later,” he threatened, throwing Louis-Cesare over one burly shoulder and snatching Ray up under one arm, like a package he was carrying home from the store. And then we were moving, back through the crowd that was more like a forest than ever, but the wind through these treetops was sighs and groans and vague, slurred words—

And then action, as the forest came alive even as we neared the not-so-fun slide. Which had been easy coming down but was a bitch going up even for me, and I wasn’t carrying two. But Zheng’s boots were made for walking—
and stomping and kicking—and we made it up the first level, and then the second, before our footbridge realized what was going on and all hell broke loose.

But by then Zheng was able to unceremoniously dump his two burdens over the edge of the rock shelf, and then it was just about getting the two of us over. Although that was harder than it sounds with a mountain of fey disintegrating around us. And then surging up underneath us as Zheng caught the ledge and swung us over, arcing just ahead of the grasping hands—

That caught us anyway.

But they caught us at the top of the arc as we fell onto the ledge, not over the side, and that made all the difference. Or it would if I could—

There! I wrestled the vampire’s gun out of its holster just as someone grabbed my leg. And jerked me back, trying to pull me off the ledge or himself up, I wasn’t sure which. And it didn’t matter, because either was equally bad for me and equally not happening. I twisted, trying to line up a shot, while it felt like I was being torn in two.

“GO!” I yelled, as Zheng threw off three fey who had jumped him, sending two over the ledge.

His head whipped around at me, and then at the two bodies lying so still on the floor. But they were on the floor by the portal because Zheng wasn’t stupid, and he’d thrown them as far as he could. And now he dove after them, because we both knew I couldn’t drag them through with me or protect them on the other side if I did.

But he threw his last attacker into mine as he went, buying me maybe two seconds of freedom in the process. But not to run. Because running wouldn’t help, just like the few regular old bullets I had left wouldn’t do much against the dozens of fey now surging over the ledge.

But something else might.

I rolled onto my back, took aim and fired—at the cages just above the ledge. I’d almost forgotten about them, despite the fact that the contents had been rattling their bars and howling. And I guess they’d slipped the fey’s minds, too, because they looked a little surprised
when a wave of snarling, slashing hate fell on them as soon as the locks popped open.

I didn’t wait to see who won. I didn’t even turn around. I leapt back into a circle of blue, even as the third fey Zheng had thrown off recovered and twisted and lunged—

And missed.

Because the portal’s familiar jerk caught me.

And I was gone.

The consul’s place was a disaster area.

Of course, it had been well on its way before. But after another hour of fighting, which was what it took to clear the house and lock up the fey who had gotten through the portal but had avoided being gutted, the place had finished its descent into an expensive heap of rubble. Not that that seemed to bother Zheng.

He tossed what might have once been a quality settee aside, and searched through the debris underneath. And emerged with—

“Don’t you think you have enough?” Ray demanded.

Zheng ignored him and dusted off his find, before severing it from its remaining tether and adding it to his collection. “She said—” he began.

“I know what she said,” Ray interrupted testily. “And it was
a
head. Not seven heads!” He regarded with loathing the collection bouncing along at his former associate’s waist, tied there by bloody silver-blond hair.

“Yeah, but she don’t like me so much,” Zheng pointed out. “And it don’t hurt to have insurance. Not that I oughta need it after saving the senates’ collective—” He broke off as a younger vamp sped by, clutching a gory trophy tightly against his chest.

And then looking around in shock when he realized that it suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

“Oh, come on!” Ray said, as the young vamp caught sight of his golden ticket being tied securely onto Zheng’s waist.

Zheng grinned at him. The younger vamp’s shoulders slumped, and he sped off.

“He wouldn’t last a day against the competition anyway,” Zheng said. “Anybody who don’t get a seat and thinks they ought to have, will be challenging for it for weeks, maybe months. There’s a lot of fighting ahead.” He looked pleased.

Ray looked skyward—literally, since that part of the roof was missing. “I wasn’t talking about him!”

“Oh? Then what?”

“
You
saved their collective asses? I thought I had a little bit to do with it, too!”

“Oh, yeah.” Zheng grinned. “That was pretty good. Where’d you send ’em, anyway?”

“This swamp I know,” Ray snapped.

“Swamp?”

“In Faerie.”

Zheng looked disapproving. “That don’t seem so bad.”

I had a brief flash of that vision Ray and I had shared once, about a primeval-looking quagmire straight out of Jurassic Park, and begged to differ.

Only I didn’t have time, because Anthony staggered out of a hole in the wall, hugging a pretty blonde in one arm and an amphora of wine in the other. His toga was gone, his tunic was bloody and he was sporting what looked a lot like an old-fashioned shiner. But he seemed happy.

He looked around at the spotty fires, the drifting clouds of smoke and the tumbled marble of what had been a beautiful atrium only hours ago.

“She really knows how to throw a party,” he told me, with apparent satisfaction. “You have to give her that.”

He staggered off.

Zheng shook his head, frowned and looked around one more time. “I think that’s all of ’em.”

“What?” Ray asked. “There had to be, like, a couple hundred fey who got through before we hijacked their portals.”

“Yeah, but the consul cheated. Her sandstorm scoured
half of ’em, and then Hassani’s fire cooked most of the rest and then Ming-de got hold of what was left—”

We collectively shuddered.

“—and then she has the nerve to say she won’t take ’em unless they’re in good shape.” He clucked over his collection, all of whom looked pretty good to me.

For severed heads, that is.

“Yeah, but I still don’t get it,” Ray said fretfully.

“What’s not to get?” Zheng asked. “She wants people who’ll fight for her. What’s the use of Senate members if they won’t do anything?”

“No, I mean I don’t get
this
,” Ray said, gesturing at their surroundings. “I know how the fey hacked through the shield, okay? But it shouldn’t have mattered. It should have been back up in minutes—”