Текст книги "Frost Burned"

Автор книги: Patricia Briggs

Соавторы: Patricia Briggs
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

I made a frustrated sound.“I mean someone who didn’t know me. I’m a lightweight.”

“Clever coyote, to survive so many attempts to kill you.” Marsilia sounded somewhat bitter.

“Really, why me?” I looked at them. “I get the whole vampires-hate-walkers thing, I do. But we’re not talking about sending me out on a hunt to find where he sleeps. I’m just not that—”

“Like Coyote, you just keep staying alive,” said an amused voice from outside of our makeshift, ash-coated arena. He’d been standing on one of those damned I-beams watching us for Heaven knew how long.

He hopped down and looked around, laughing silently to himself, a man no one would ever look at twice. At least not unless he were wearing metal gauntlets that looked as though they ought to be part of a torture museum display—as he had been the last time I’d seen him.

William Frost turned around and clicked his tongue against his teeth.“You chose the oddest location for this, my lady fair. We shall all look like chimney sweeps when we are through here. And—no audience? Marsilia, my love, you disappoint me.”

Marsilia drew herself up like a cat that someone had tried to pet without permission, and he smiled.“That’s what the Lord of Night said when he sent you away, isn’t it? ‘Marsilia, you disappoint me.’”

Stefan cleared his throat.“I’ve heard that version. But

actually not.” He sounded apologetic. “It was in Italian, which is a much more beautiful language, but I can translate for those who don’t speak Italian.” This last was aimed at Frost, with just the right amount of veiled contempt. “He said, ‘My beautiful, deadly flower, my Bright Dagger, you dare more than I can allow. I will die of sorrow and boredom without you, but it must be done.’ I was there for that part. The rest I have from an acquaintance in his court. The Master of Milan composed a love song in her honor, as beautiful as his pain, that all who listen to it are moved to tears. The painting the Lord of Night created on the evening when she was banished is still on the wall above his bed so that he can show his lovers that none can compare with his Bright Dagger.” He smiled, showing his fangs, and his voice was nearly as sharp. “He will not be pleased with thee, William Frost. But you won’t have to worry about it, because you’ll be dead.”

Frost had quit smiling.

“It’s like that bit inThe Princess Bride,” I told him. “When Vizzini says, ‘You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.’ Never go in against an ancient Italian vampire whendeath is on the line.”

Stefan laughed. I think he might have been the only one who had watched the movie. Or no one else thought I was funny.

“I have brought an audience for us,” Frost said, ignoring me entirely. “So the display will not be ruined.”

He clapped his hands, and the upper edge of the north side of the shell of the basement of the winery was suddenly lined with the shapes of people—like Indians on the ridgetop in one of those old Westerns. It should have looked hokey—and it did, sort of—but it was also worrisome. Then, in a simultaneous motion that raised every hair on my body, they all jumped into the basement. They were so close in sync that they made one sound when they landed. I’d seen vampires do that kind of thing before, responding to the dictates of their master or mistress. But repetition didn’t make it seem lesswrong.

A black cloud formed around their feet and rose as far as their knees before the ash settled back down on the ground. Maybe a little more rain would be a good thing—but the water that was coming down so far was still just a drop here and there.

“These are mine,” Frost told Marsilia, raising one arm theatrically. “I have bound them to me in such a way that if I die tonight, they will all die. I thought it only fitting that they witness this.”

He looked around again.“So it is you and the Soldier who will fight me, then? Who is your third?”

Marsilia just smiled at him—and I realized we were missing someone. I tried to remember when I had last seen Hao, and it was a long while ago. Long before Frost had done his sudden-appearance act. The sharp smell of the burnt building, so much more sour than true woodsmoke, made it impossible to pick out one vampire from so many. If Hao was somewhere nearby, I couldn’t find him. I wanted to turn around to look, but controlled the impulse. If he had disappeared, it was for a reason. The broken-cement remnants of walls stuck up waist high in places. Maybe he was hiding behind one of those.

Frost laughed again, and all of his people laughed in unison. They all had exactly the same expression as he did on their faces.

Unable to help myself, I snarled. Frost looked at me with a sudden intentness that told me he’d been paying attention to me all along.

“Don’t tell me that you’re going to pull the coyote girl into this? What exactly is she supposed to do—besides die?” The words were a chorus spoken by all of his vampires in time with his lips. I could tell from Stefan’s careful expression that I wasn’t the only one who was getting creeped out by it.

“I’ve been good about not dying so far,” I said. “You should quit concerning yourself with my health.”

I didn’t say it very loudly, and the vampires were too busy talking to each other to pay attention to me. But Asil frowned at me and made a motion with his hand. I recognized the soundless instructions because Adam used the same ones with our pack. Asil thought we should leave.

But I had a feeling that leaving was not an option. For some reason, Marsilia had wantedme here.

“I have heard about you, Frost,” said Marsilia, sounding bored. “I had disregarded it as vindictive gossip, but I see that it is true. You are a show-off who wastes resources making himself look impressive. You talk and talk, and it is empty talk. You will bring in a new era of vampire freedom and power, and blah blah blah. And yet you have only puppets. When their strings are cut, you have nothing.”

The other vampire’s lips flattened, and he said silkily, “Marsilia, raise your right hand.”

Her lips tightened and both of her hands fisted.

Pay attention, coyote, whispered a voice in my ear.Can you see what he is doing? How he is doing it?

Stefan, to whom the voice belonged, was several feet away. My stomach clenched. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do that anymore. The blood bond between us had been broken when Adam brought me into the pack.

Stefan glared at me and tilted his chin toward Marsilia.

“Marsilia,” said Frost again, focusing his attention on her. “Raise your right hand.”

I felt it then, the thread of power he used—it was sort of like the power of Adam’s voice when he’d roll it over the pack and bring them to heel. I could almost see

I squinted at Frost and tried tolook, as I’d learned to see pack bonds without meditation. I had used that method tosee Peter. But this needed some of the part of me that ran on instinct. The same part of me that ran on four paws gave me a little push and left me using coyote’s eyes while still my human self.

And I could see magic.

Frost pushed his power at Marsilia. To me, his magic appeared to be a black spiderweb of nastiness that tried to stick to her. Greasy threads of power slithered from him to his puppet vampires. I wondered how much of the way I viewed his magic had been dictated by Marsilia’s comment about puppets, because Frost’s vampires had strings of his will tied around each hand and foot and a whole slender web around their heads. Or maybe Marsilia could see his magic, too. The vampires weren’t the only thing he was controlling. Fainter threads of power dripped from his hands to the ground, glistening faintly where they snaked across the floor and climbed the walls surrounding us, disappearing over the edges.

Frost was a Puppet Master. I actually thought the name in capital letters, which meant I’d been hanging around the vampires too long. Marsilia had called him the Necromancer, and that was worse than Puppet Master. Names have power and I refused to give him any more than he already had. “Frost” would do, “Gauntlet Boy” if he got really scary. I looked at the threads trying tocrawl up Marsilia’s body and thought that I might be able to destroy them the same way I had the ones that ensnared Peter. And as if she read my mind, Marsilia’s brilliant red eyes met mine. She jerked her hands and the Puppet Master—the Gauntlet Boy—stumbled forward. The strings with whichhe’d tried to capture Marsilia were broken on the ground in front of him, and they faded to nothing after a few seconds.

He was able to control every move of his vampires with very little effort, but he couldn’t get Marsilia to move one hand. It was true that she fought him, and his minions had given up, but he still had thirty vampires dancing to his tune. That Marsilia had resisted showed everyone here that Marsilia wasn’t just the Mistress of the City—she was a Power.

And the way she’d met my eyes made me think that she could have put a stop to it earlier. She had wanted to give me a chance to see what his magic looked like.

Marsilia knew more about walkers than I did. When she’d come to this country, banished from Milan, there had been no Europeans here. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been in this area, but it was a couple of centuries. She’d seen walkers kill other vampires, lots of vampires.

This summer, on my honeymoon, I’d met other walkers for the first time. I’d been exchanging e-mails with them ever since, trying to learn more about what I was. They knew more than I did, but they still suffered from the same problem I had. Too many walkers had died before they could pass on their knowledge to their heirs, and much of it was lost.

She’d had Stefan contact me deliberately. He’d never have shown me he could still talk in my head because he knew I would hate it. So did she. She hated that Stefan and I were still friends. She was teaching me what I could do to fight a necromancer—and doing her best to drive me away from him. I thought that she was wasting her time with that last, because Frost had been right.

She was going to pick me to fight with her. I was pretty sure that Frost was right about my chances of survival, too. She wouldn’t have to worry about Stefan being my friend because I was going to be dead.

Frost was worried about fighting Marsilia, the vampires had told me. That’s why he’d chosen a challenge of three. He didn’t like the odds of going against her by herself, but he thought he could come up with two other vampires stronger than hers. Likely he was right—so she’d chosen a different way.

If Adam had come with me, maybe she would have used him instead. He was a werewolf, and necromancy would have no effect on him. But she would work with what she had.

“Yours is the challenge and the manner of challenge,” Marsilia said coolly, as if she hadn’t just jerked his chain. “You chose now, and a three-way challenge. My choice is the place and the official. I choose here. It is large enough and remote.” She smiled at him. “Since it is in my territory but owned by you, I thought it appropriate.”

Owned by Frost. That made sense if he was the money man.

Marsilia paused for a moment and looked around.“Almost symbolic since one of my colleagues destroyed it yesterday.”

Adam would be surprised to find out he was her“colleague.” But I kept my face still.

“And for the officials, as the Master of Ceremonies tonight, I call upon Stefan Uccello, also known as the Soldier.”

One of Frost’s vampires said, “That is unacceptable. He is yours. The Master of Ceremonies cannot be yours.”

I’d quit looking at the magic threads that bound Frost to his vampires. It produced an eye strain, like those bizarre patterns that showed a 3?D picture when observed through unfocused eyes. I couldn’t tell if Frost was making the vampire talk or if the vampire in question was doing it on his own.

“I am not Marsilia’s,” said Stefan. “I do not belong to her seethe.”

“He speaks truthfully,” Frost told his people. “I witnessed this myself. Marsilia treated him so shamefully that he left her seethe, and she was too weak to prevent him. A real man, a real soldier, would never serve such a one. We can accept him—in all ways.”

Rat bastard. He was right, but that didn’t make him any less of a rat bastard. I could see, even if no one else did, that those words had hurt Stefan. Here he was, helping her again as if his menagerie mattered not at all to him.

“It is my place to remind you of the rules,” Stefan said, his voice even. “You, William Frost, have chosen three against three. Two fighters, with you as the captain of yours, and Marsilia as the captain of hers, with the other two participants on either side yet to be chosen. The fight is tothe death of the captains.”

“Excuse me,” I said diffidently. “But both the captains are already dead.”

Everyone looked at me. The vampires with cold, unfriendly gazes, and Honey as if I were crazy. That was okay—because I was utterly crazy. I knew Marsilia was planning on making me fight a bug-nuts vampire. The more scared I get, the faster my mouth moves. I was a smart-ass because I was terrified.

Asil smiled. He was supposed to know all about crazy.

“The fight,” said Stefan gently, because he knew me that well, “is to thepermanent elimination of one captain or the other. Does that satisfy you, Mercy? As soon as that elimination takes place, the other members of the teams may quit fighting—or not, as they choose.

“The captains can call upon anyone to be on their team and those persons cannot refuse. The only stipulation is that they must be present—which for our purposes means within five minutes—of this room. Though I caution you both that an unwilling team member will not fight for you as well as one who chooses to fight. After the teams are chosen, you will each retreat to the farthest corner opposite each other and take five minutes to confer before the battle begins.”

Asil caught my eye and quite boldly repeated his earlier gesture. Five minutes away was doable, I knew it as well as he did. Especially if Honey and Asil worked to slow down the vampires.

I looked at William Frost—Gauntlet Boy—and thought about what he planned. All of the bloodshed and chaos, and the people who lost the most would be the humans who lived in those cities. At first. Then those humans would gather their weapons and give battle. Then they would destroy the vampires, the fae, the werewolves—and it would cost them dearly to do it.

I would not, could not allow Frost to do as he planned. I could not let him win. I would do anything I could to stop him. I shook my head at Asil. He gave me a respectful bow.

Stefan walked between Marsilia and Frost, his posture military straight.“For the duration of the fight, the participants may use anything, any power, any weapon that comes to their hand. People who are not participants may not fight. This means that I must caution the audience—and more directly you, William Frost, that no vampire other than those requested by each of the participants, may join the fight. Even if they do not do it of their own free will. Violators will be killed—by me—and if such violation, in my estimation, leads directly to a victory, that victory will be overturned by the Lord of Night.”

“You are drawing a very fine line,” said Frost, but not as if it made him unhappy.

Stefan bowed his head in acknowledgment.“The rules are the Lord of Night’s. My job is to make those rules clear. The first call for comrades belongs to the challenged—Marsilia?”

“I call upon Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack,” she said, not unexpectedly.

Beside me, Honey growled, her voice low and threatening. I’m not sure whom she was growling at—possibly me. Asil just stared at me. He knew I’d seen this coming.

“Yes,” I said coolly.

I was no match for a necromancer, though I was beginning to think that I might actually be an asset along those lines. I worried Frost enough that he had tried—twice, if Stefan was right—to eliminate me. Fear like that can be as much of an asset as actual power.

“Mercedes,” said Asil in a cheerful voice. “You are going to get me killed at last. Bran would not do it, but I believe your mate will have no trouble.”

I frowned at him.“I make my own decisions. Adam knows that.”

He smiled at me.“He may know this in his head, Mercedes. But his heart will feel differently. You are a woman, and this is a thing of men.”

“Asil,” I said. “You heard. You want me to turn down this fight?”

He closed his mouth and looked away.

“Touching,” said Frost. “But not germane. She isrequired. She cannot refuse.”

Honey snarled at him, and he drew back involuntarily. She looked at me and snarled again, louder.

“He hired the man who killed Peter,” I reminded her. She quit growling and looked at him, again, and this time she showed him her very large white fangs. Werewolf fangs are more impressive than vampire fangs. They are more impressive than coyote fangs, too.

“I’ve accepted already,” I told Stefan. “Get on with it.”

He looked at me a long moment. I couldn’t read his face. “Don’t get killed,” he said.

“Awfully late to be worrying about that, vampire,” snapped Asil. “You should have made certain that Adam could be here. He at least would have stood a chance.”

“Werewolves,” said Marsilia, “are specifically forbidden from participating.”

I stared at her.“But you invited Adam, too.”

She smiled at me.“He is not what you are, Mercedes. Do you think that I who beguiled the Marrok’s son would not be able to beguile your mate so that he would allow you to fight?”

She’d caught Samuel, but she’d never have caught Adam. Samuel might be more dominant and a lot older, but Adam was more wary. He’d never have let her trap him in her gaze—and if he had, I could have freed him. But that part she probably didn’t know. Mating bonds are one of the things we didn’t talk to the public about, and they are idiosyncratic.

Mating bond or not, that she was so certain of her ability to incapacitate Adam made me reevaluate her intelligence—and not upward.

“She couldn’t have asked Adam,” Stefan said, meeting my eyes forthrightly. “Werewolves are specifically excluded from this kind of fight for territory.” He wasn’t just repeating the rule Marsilia had already stated. He was telling me he’d known what Marsilia planned and had not warnedme.

For a moment I was hurt. But only for a moment. If Marsilia was right, that I was useful, more useful than Stefan would be—and I wasn’t forgetting the way she’d misjudged Adam’s vulnerability—then bringing me here had been the right thing to do. Frost had to be stopped.

I gave Stefan a faint nod.

“Your first pick, Frost,” said Stefan in a “let’s get this done” tone of voice.

“Shamus,” Frost announced grandly. “Shamus, former Master of Reno and now my right-hand man.”

We waited, but no one appeared.

“He will be here in plenty of time.” Frost smiled genially. “He has always been a ferocious fighter. Under my tutelage, he has only improved—especially the ferocious part.”

“Marsilia? Your second and last choice.”

“I choose Thomas Hao, Master of San Francisco.”

Out of the shadows, not three feet from Frost, Hao sort of coalesced.“Of course,” he said. “I am delighted to accept the invitation.”

Frost hissed, stumbled back, and for the first time, his eyes flashed ice blue with shock. He recovered himself almost immediately, giving Marsilia a small salute.

“You have been busy, I see. Well then, I have a surprise, too. Let us finish the preliminaries. I call for my last companion—Wulfe. Better known as the Wizard.” He smirked at Marsilia, who wasnot happy.“Keep your enemies close, Marsilia. You have kept him so close to you all these years—but you failed tonight. You might have called him to your side, but you chose to summon this filthy walker instead.” He spat. On the floor. Toward me.

I guess I was supposed to feel insulted or impressed.“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” I chanted tunelessly and quietly, as if to myself, except that everyone in the room could hear me. If Frost wanted to be childish, I could do it, too—and do it better.

Stefan turned his head away, and I was pretty sure he laughed.

But no one was laughing when Wulfe dropped in from behind me so I didn’t see him jump, only heard the sound of his feet hitting tile. I turned so I could see him and still keep an eye on Frost.

Vampires scared me. I even had a mental list of the vampires who scare me the most. Some of those were dead. More dead. Not ever moving again. On the very top of the list of the still moving was Wulfe. I didn’t know why, exactly, he was so much worse than other vampires. Maybe it was the way that every time I met him, he seemed to know just exactly how to freak me out. Maybe it was the “nobody home” look in his eyes.

The Wizard looked like he should be worried about how to ask a girl out on his first date, checking the mirror for acne spots, deciding if he should get an ear pierced and if so, how he could hide it from his mom. He wore ripped-up, red Converse basketball shoes, blue jeans, and a thick cable sweater. His hair had been shaved boot-camp short. He held a thick chain that was attached to a metal collar wrapped around the neck of another vampire.

The second vampire was huge. If he’d been standing upright, he would have been the tallest person in the room

the grungy basement. He must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds.

He wasn’t standing upright, though. He was crouched on hands and knees, and he clicked his teeth together in a weird rhythm.

He saw me looking at him—all of the vampires had looked away from him almost immediately. If I had known him when he wasn’t this

monster, I doubt I could have kept my eyes on him, either. He roared at me, then launched himself like a junkyard dog and hit the end of the chain hard.

Physics said that he should have been able to drag Wulfe across the floor. But physics had only a nodding acquaintance with Wulfe. He had no trouble holding the vampire—who must have been Shamus—with one hand. His other rubbed the stubble of his hair, which looked more white than blond in this light.

“Hey, Mercedes,” Wulfe said lightly. “So they succeeded in roping you into this? I’ve always wanted the chance to taste your blood from the source. Walkers have this lovely bouquet. Like daffydowndillies in the spring, my old ma used to say.”

“Wulfe,” said Marsilia. I think she wanted to say something else, but didn’t know exactly what. So she was just quiet, but her quietness had a quality of sorrow to it.

“Don’t be mad, Marsilia,” he said earnestly. “But us badass vampires must stick together, you understand.” He paused. “Maybe not. How about if I put it this way? It grievest me, dear heart. But in sooth, it is for the best, as you will see anon.”

“Five minutes,” said Stefan. “Starting now.”

12

We huddled in our corner. I huddled, anyway. Asil looked faintly bored. Honey never took her eyes off Frost. Hao lurked—which he did very well for such a compact man. Marsilia? Marsilia was all business.

I was going to fight vampires, and my name wasn’t Buffy—I was so screwed.

“Did you see his magic?” Marsilia asked me briskly. “I had Stefan tell you to watch closely.”

“I saw.”

“Your job is to stop him from doing it. Any way you can. Walkers are immune to vampire magic—even vampire magic that has its origins in witchcraft.”

She sounded a lot more confident than I felt.

“You didn’t seem to have much trouble stopping him,” I said.

She grimaced.“Yes. But he wasn’t trying very hard—and he exaggerated his reaction when the magic broke. He’s trying to get me overconfident.” She glanced over her shoulder at Frost, who was talking at Wulfe. Wulfe was watching Marsilia and not paying any attention to Frost that I could see. He noticedI was watching and winked at me.

“It is a tactic that Frost takes,” Hao said. He paused and looked at his hands. They were smudged black, and he had black ash smears on his gold shirt. Marsilia’s black outfit showed no wear and tear. I didn’t bother looking down at myself. My foster mother maintained that I could get dirtyin a swimming pool, and getting older hadn’t helped much.

“There were only a few witnesses to his other fights who were willing to talk to me. Some of them were in the same shape Shamus is.” He didn’t look at the collared vampire, but I could feel his attention. “Shamus was a fine guitarist, and he liked Tennyson poems. He could and would quote them by the hour.”

“Why aren’t there other vampires here?” I asked. “He doesn’t have all the seethes under his control, right? Aren’t any of the other powerful vampires trying to stop him? Why are you and Hao the only ones here?”

“Vampires do not work well together—any more than Alphas work well together. And the Masters who are farther east feel Frost is at the limits of what he can control. An illusion Frost has done his best to foster,” Hao answered me.

“And most of them think that Frost’s desire to bring out the vampires and allow them to feed where they will is the best idea they’ve ever heard,” said Marsilia. “Stupid. I hate stupid people.”

“You don’t seem to be in a hurry to plan anything for the fight,” said Asil. “And you have two minutes left.”

Marsilia looked at him—and for a moment I saw lust in her face again.

Hao bowed to Asil.“Marsilia and I have spoken about this much so our plans are already laid. She will take on Frost. I will take both Wulfe and Shamus. Ms. Hauptman’s job is to keep Frost from bespelling either of us. It may be that Frost will be so busy that he has no time for tricks and your

Alpha’s matecan sit on the sidelines and cheer.”

I was going to have to come up with a rank for myself besides Alpha’s mate. In the pack, I was just Mercy—but if ten more people called me the Alpha’s mate, I was going to hit someone. It sounded like a chess move.

“More likely, he has tricks up his sleeves,” said Marsilia. “He knew coming to this that he had failed to kill Mercy.”

“He has a bunch of ghosts trapped here,” I told her. And I remembered Peter brushing Honey’s hair. Ghosts who could manipulate the physical world were few and far between. “They could be a problem.”

“Ghosts are not problems,” said Marsilia dismissively. “They moan and scare silly people.”

“Ghosts who can throw rocks and debris are a problem,” I told her. “And there’s that dead but still-moving-just-fine fae assassin, too. If he animated her, it was because he had a job for her to do. If she is a real zombie, then my understanding of the rules says he can call her to fight with him. Zombies aren’t living creatures, they are animated dead with no willpower or thoughts of their own. A zombie would come under the heading of his ‘power’ right?”

“You take care of the ghosts, then,” said Marsilia. “And keep him from trying to control us. We will do the fighting.”

Hao smiled and rolled his shoulders to loosen them. I’d been wrong. He did smile when he was happy.

“This should be an interesting fight,” he said.

When the fight started, I was about fifteen feet behind the two vampires on my side with orders to stay as far away from the action as possible. My knee hurt, my cheekbone throbbed—and I was as scared as I’ve ever been.

“Dear God,” I murmured earnestly. I’d quit worrying about who could overhear me when I prayed a long time ago. When you live with werewolves, there is no such thing as a private conversation even if you are talking to God. “Please don’t let me end up in a wheelchair again. No broken boneswould be a happy bonus, but I’m not expecting you to make up for my stupidity quite so completely.” And then, even more sincerely, I said, “Whatever happens, you don’t let that vampire make it out of here still moving. If he wins, it will be bad news. Any help you can give us will be appreciated. Amen.”

Stefan heard me. He didn’t look, but his mouth softened, and he shook his head.

“Go,” he said, and stepped back against the wall where the spectators had been allowed to watch. He stood next to Asil and Honey, which I had a bare instant to appreciate—if something happened to me, I knew he’d do his best to get the wolves out of here. Not that Asil would need much help.

Vampires are loud when they fight. I don’t know why that took me by surprise. I’ve been in a lot of sparring matches, and they get noisy. Maybe it was because werewolf fights are quieter, the silence imposed by the need to keep hidden. Though people know about the wolves, public fighting is still forbidden.

My job was to watch Frost, and that was what I’d do. The basement was “in,” Hao had explained. I couldn’t go outside the basement without forfeiting my place in the battle. That didn’t mean I’d get out of fighting. It just meant that Stefan would have to kill me. That’s why they had to have a powerful Master of Ceremonies. He would enforce the rules during the fight and declare the winner.

I found a perch on top of a broken section of walls with my back to the outer wall. Probably Frost wouldn’t try anything too soon. Unlike human fights—or even werewolf fights—vampire fights could take a long time. Not breathing, not needing a beating heart meant that a vampire was dangerous long after a werewolf would be unconscious. It takes a great deal of damage to make a vampire lose consciousness.

The soot, disturbed by the violent action of the fighters, flew in a foot-high miasma of blackness. The footing was made worse because only part of the floor was tiled. Not even Marsilia was immune to inconvenient stumbles.

I was very grateful for Asil’s perspicacity in grabbing a coat for me. Once I stopped moving, I quickly grew chilled. Tucking my hands in my pockets, I encountered Zee’s abbreviated magic sword. Tad’s warnings rang in my head, so I had no intention of drawing it under anything but the most dire circumstances. But it gave me something to fiddle with—and that actually helped me focus on something besides how terrified I was.

The action was so quick it was difficult to split my attention, and I was trying to watch Frost. Even so, I caught glimpses of Hao fighting and wished my sensei could see him.