Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(67)

I used the brief reprieve to roll under the chassis to help find Ray’s missing piece, but the car was built too low to the ground to provide me much access. I was feeling around with my arm when a line of bullets strafed the side door, causing me to hit the dirt. A quick glance showed three vamps’ heads poking up over the embankment, a streetlight gleaming on the muzzles of the guns they had pointed at us.

And then the car took off, leaving me hanging out in the open.

Fortunately, Ray had decided to move it only a few yards, apparently having the same trouble retrieving his missing part that I was. It jerked to a stop, scraping along the side of a rock wall, and stymieing Christine’s attempt to climb out over the side. She turned around the other way, scrambling into the backseat just as I slid back behind the protection of the bumper.

Louis-Cesare was holding on to her with one hand and trying to return fire with the other, which wasn’t working out too great, judging by the number of bullets that peppered the ground around me—half of them his.

“Would you cut it out already?” I snarled. “If I’m going to get shot, I’d like it to be by the bad guys.”

He glared at me over the head of a hysterical Christine, who had him in a sobbing neck lock. “And if you will hurry up, we can get out of here before they manage to fix their vehicle!”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

More bullets slammed into the back side of Radu’s baby as I peered under the car. But I could see the whites of two small, angry eyes glaring at me from near the right back wheel. I swept out a leg and hit the side of the head, and it rolled out from under the car—just in time to get drilled through the forehead with a bullet.

“What? What was that?” Ray demanded, his eyes crossing, as I snatched him up by the short and spikies.

“Nothing,” I said, and dove over the backseat, and we were off.

The vamps abandoned their car and took off after us on foot, which was a smart move considering the number of obstacles in our path. They were gaining and Ray was cursing and Christine was sobbing. “Please, please let me out!”

“If I let you out, they will shoot you!” Louis-Cesare told her in French.

“They won’t!” She shook her head hard enough that a spill of ebony hair flowed down over her shoulders. “I know them; I can talk to them!”

“I don’t think they’re in a talking mood,” I said as Louis-Cesare thrust her at me. I thrust her back.

“You cannot drive a stick shift,” he reminded me.

“I also can’t return fire and hold on to your girl-friend at the same time,” I snapped, scrambling over the seat.

“Relax—we’ll lose them,” Ray told me as I tried to take the wheel. “I got a portal right up ahead.”

“We can’t go through another portal!” I said as we bounced across grassy hills, apparently not missing a rock or a root on the way.

“I’m not looking forward to it, either, but you got a better suggestion?”

“Any suggestion would be better!” I said, dropping his spare part in his lap and trying to ease in behind him. “If we go through a portal, we’ll explode.”

“We didn’t explode last time.”

“I didn’t have my duffel last time!”

“What difference does that make?” Ray demanded, his cheek smushed against the steering wheel.

“The putty’s in there.”

“What putty?”

“The putty I was going to use to blow up the portal at your office,” I panted, finally realizing that he had the damn seat belt on. A bullet parted my hair as I worked frantically to get it undone.

“So don’t shoot at it and we’ll be—”

“It doesn’t need to be shot!” I told him as the seat belt slithered free. “If it comes into contact with a portal’s energy, it detonates automatically. And that much would not only kill us, but take out a full city block!”

Ray paled. “Then you might want to turn here,” he said as a familiar flash split the air right ahead.

I swerved hard to the right, sending his hairy butt tumbling into the passenger seat. We plowed through a park bench, skidded into a road and were back on asphalt, if not out of trouble.

I leaned over the seat. “Where to?” I yelled.

Louis-Cesare shot me a pained look. “Vampire hearing!”

“Human adrenaline!” I shouted back, just as loud. “Where?”

He swallowed and faced the inevitable. “We have to report this.”

I nodded and shifted gears. For the first time in my life, I was actually relieved to be headed to vamp central.





Chapter Nineteen


It was an hour later and Elyas was still dead. We were back at the mansion, and things were starting to get a little creepy. Not so much because of the dead body, but because of the ones that remained alive. So to speak.

Exhibit number one was in the hall outside the study. The vamp must have been young enough not to have much power of his own, because without his master’s to aid him, he was little more than an automaton. He had a broom in one hand and a dust pan in the other, and he’d been sweeping the same patch of already-gleaming floor over and over for the last ten minutes.

I had this crazy vision of him standing there, sweeping and sweeping, until he dried up entirely and began to crumble. Until he became dust himself. If his arms go last, he could sweep himself up. . . .