Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(66)

It exited into the hall, where a crowd of people now wreathed the ruined study door. And, of course, one of them saw me. There was one of those startled moments when everyone just looked at one another, and then came a collective surge down the hallway. Louis-Cesare reached out of a small bedroom, jerked me inside and slammed the door.

Yeah, like that was going to help.

Someone put a foot through the door a second later, and when they drew back, I threw a disorienting sphere out the opening. It was designed to make vamps forget why they were fighting, but either I’d gotten a dud, or these vamps were especially motivated. Because an arm reached through, grabbed mine and slammed me into the door headfirst.

I twisted the wrist enough to get myself free and turned, still seeing stars. And then I saw Louis-Cesare gathering a woman into his arms. “We must get you out of here,” he told her gently.

There was no light, but a spill of moonlight through an open window highlighted high cheekbones, sensual lips and sleek dark hair pulled back into a smooth chignon. She looked like a fashion model, if they’d had them in the nineteenth century, which was when her high-necked white lawn nightgown appeared to have been made. And she smelled like apples—crisp, fresh and succulent.

Oh, yeah. He’d really been suffering, I thought viciously.

And then the arm grabbed me again.

I stuck a knife through it as the woman turned her face up to his. She smiled. “Louis-Cesare.”

The French window led onto a small balcony. He carried her out and looked over the edge. “It is a long drop,” he told her in French. “Land on your feet in a crouching position.”

She shook her head, grasping him around the neck. “It is too far for me.”

“It is not too far,” he said patiently. “You must try.”

She shook her head more violently, starting to panic as she looked down. “No! No, I cannot. Please do not make me—”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Ray said. “What? Are you afraid she’ll bruise?”

Louis-Cesare looked at me. “I’m with Ray on this one,” I told him, as someone kicked in the door.

It fell onto the bedpost, which blocked it somewhat, but several vamps slithered around the sides anyway. Louis-Cesare put Christine down to face them, and she ran into an adjacent room. I followed her and found her hugging the back wall of a small dressing room.

“Please, please do not let him force me!” she begged.

My first thought was that Louis-Cesare had been right—her power signature was so low, she could have been a newborn. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I might have mistaken her for a human. My second thought was that for someone who wasn’t afraid of anything, she seemed pretty damned timid to me.

My third was how lovely that head would look on a pike, but I shook it off and grabbed her wrist.

“Okay,” I promised. “It’s okay. Louis-Cesare won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“You promise?” With tears trembling in her dark eyes and her color high, she was truly stunning.

“I promise,” I told her, pulling her back toward the door.

She followed me through meekly enough, flinching when Louis-Cesare broke off a bedpost with a crack. He wedged it against the door, which he’d somehow forced back into place. “We must go!”

“Couldn’t agree more,” I said, and shoved Christine off the balcony.

Louis-Cesare ran to the edge, looking over. “What did you do?” he asked me, in disbelief.

“What needed to be done.” I pulled out a gun and emptied it into the swarm of vampires behind us. And then his arm was around my waist, and we were falling.

We landed on something hard, but more yielding than concrete, and then we were moving into Central Park in a squeal of tires. We were in the Lamborghini, with Christine in the front, clutching the seat. And Ray driving.

“You can’t drive!” I told him, trying to get my limbs sorted out as we barreled diagonally across the street, heading straight for the curb.

“No shit!” We jumped it, and the resulting jolt almost threw me out of the car. I grabbed the back of Christine’s seat as we slammed back down on a footpath and careened toward a fountain. And then somebody started shooting at us.

The only good thing was that by midnight, even most of the bums had gone home to sleep it off. That was lucky for them, because Ray was the worst damn driver I’d ever seen. And that was after I jerked his head out of the duffel and parked it on the dashboard.

“Gah! That makes it worse!” he told me, as I tried to get the eyes facing forward.

“How can it possibly be worse?”

“Because I got double vision now! Get it off! Get it off!”

He batted at his own head and succeeded in sending it tumbling into Christine’s lap. She immediately went into hysterics and slapped it away. The head fell out of the car; Ray hit the brakes and we came to a screeching halt.

“What are you doing?” I screeched, as he hopped out. “There are people firing at us!”

“Tough!” came from somewhere under the car.

Louis-Cesare had pulled a gun from the duffel and was returning fire, and either he was a good shot or he got lucky, because the left front tire of our pursuers’ car suddenly blew out. The explosion of rubber caused their car to swerve violently, sideswiping a tree and disappearing over an embankment.