35
I reached out toward him and screamed, "No!" I didn't expect it to help, but I had to do something.
Blood spurted from Primo's arm, and he hesitated, staring around the room as if he didn't know where the scream had come from.
I wasn't sure either, but I'd spent months learning how to control what power I had, and I'd felt something. This was the second time I'd done something like this, both times when I was desperate. The question was, could I do it on purpose?
Primo raised the man upward again, as if he'd set his goal and nothing would turn him from it. I reached out with my hands, and I thought about it. I thought about what it had felt like. Like my thoughts hit something around him, formed it into glass to hurt him.
Primo raised the man higher and seemed to be saluting someone behind me, but I didn't glance back, there wasn't time.
I reached out not just with my hands but with that power I had over the dead, that link I had with two vampires, and I slashed at him. Blood flared along his arm again, more red to join the first. It wasn't as much blood, and I didn't know why, because I really didn't understand what I was doing. A few bloody cuts were not going to distract him for long.
"You are not doing this," he said. His voice was a deep rumbling growl that matched the big body and held an accent that I couldn't place.
Jean-Claude's voice floated up from behind us. "No, but I am doing this."
I wanted to look backward and see him, but I didn't dare take my eyes off the vampire in front of me to look at the vampire behind me. But I didn't need eyes to feel his power. It flowed through the room like a comforting hand. It caressed the bodies that pinned me to the floor. I got a whiff of musk and wolf fur and knew that both men were pack. That scent of fur and home filled me, too. I knew that it was partly his tie to Richard, but it was more than that. His magic was seeping down through them to me. He hadn't meant for it to, but I had my own ties to Richard and his wolves. It was hard for him to reach out to them and not touch me.
They both drew long shuddering breaths, as if they'd come back to life, though I knew that wasn't it. The blond, Clay, blinked at me from inches away. He looked surprised, and I couldn't blame him. The one on top had hair the color of mine, though it was straight as straight could be. He blinked dark eyes at me as if he didn't remember seeing me before, or know how he came to be lying on top of me.
He muttered, "Sorry, miss," even as he started moving slowly, stiffly off the top of the pile.
Clay made small protesting noises as the first man began to get off him.
"How do you think I feel? I'm on the bottom," I said.
Clay wasted a smile on me.
Buzz was getting stiffly to his knees from a few feet away. He caught my eye and gave me a look. I didn't know him that well, but it seemed to say, well that solves that.
Jean-Claude was here, and his power filled the room like a warm blanket. It felt so good, and so unlike his power in some ways. I knew what was wrong, it felt too alive. But he was the Master of the City, and none of his vampires would defy him to his face. I believed that was the only excuse I have for letting my guard down and looking away from Primo. You'd think I'd learn that crazy is crazy, dead or alive.
"All of them could not stop me before, Jean-Claude. Three will not do."
The way he said it, made me look back at Primo. He didn't sound like he was giving up. That wasn't right. Challenging Buzz was one thing. Challenging Jean-Claude was another thing entirely.
"They are not here to stop you, Primo, for you are stopped. I am the Master of this City, and I say you are stopped."
"These humans bloodied me!" There was such rage in his words that they scalded along my skin. He fed on his own anger, as well as violence. I realized in that moment that he was a master vampire of sorts. At least some of his powers were master-level powers. That was bad.
Clay was on all fours, which meant I was finally able to get out from under him. I'd been looking around for my gun, but I couldn't see it. It had to be here somewhere. Fuck, the shit was about to hit the fan, and I didn't have a gun.
"How did a vampire of your power allow a mere human to bloody you?" Jean-Claude's voice was easy, conversational, but in my head, his voice whispered something else, "I fear I have underestimated him."
"No, shit," I said.
Clay asked, "What did you say?"
I shook my head, my eyes still scanning the floor for my gun, but I couldn't find it. Then I thought, Fuck it, I'd cut him twice without a gun. I could do it again. Part of me didn't believe it. I told that part to shut the fuck up, too. I had enough problems without self-doubt creeping in.
Primo still had the man he'd picked as his scapegoat, but he was holding him sort of nonchalantly down at his side like a forgotten bag of laundry. I realized that the man had passed out, and got to my feet, trying to see if he was breathing. I didn't like the way Primo had the man's jacket collar twisted around his neck. Had I been so worried about the fist that I'd let Primo choke the man to death?
Jean-Claude's voice breathed through my head. "He is not breathing, but his heart still beats."
I said out loud, "We're out of time."
"Yes," he said, and I think that was out loud. He reached out to me, not with his hand but with his power, and this wasn't the warm living power of the lycanthrope. The cool grace of the grave touched me, and it flared that part of me that raised the dead. I suddenly knew how I'd cut him. I suddenly knew how it worked. It was like a puzzle box in my head, and suddenly I knew just where to press and just what it meant. Slashing from a distance used the beings' own magical aura against them. It turned their magical shielding into a slender invisible blade that could be turned against them. Jean-Claude had known what it was and how it worked for centuries, but he'd never been able to do it himself. He knew the how, but could not do it. I could do it, but didn't know the how. Together we suddenly had it covered.
My goal was not to kill Primo, but to make him let go of the man. I held my hand out toward him, and he still didn't look scared.
"Do you think your little cuts will stop me?" he demanded.
"No," I said, and I threw power at him, almost like throwing a ball, and that ball caught against his aura, his shielding, like a burr on a piece of cloth. But the ball didn't stay a ball, and it didn't exactly pierce Primo's shielding. It was as if the ball melted onto it, and where it melted, it invaded the shielding, became one with it, and turned that protective coating into something long and slender and sharp. I visualized that sharpness cutting across his belly, and his shirt split like a skin to show white flesh and blood.
It was a bigger wound than the other two, and his hand went to it, as if it hurt, or as if he wasn't sure how hurt he was.
"How do you like that one?" I asked. "Big enough for you?"
He snarled at me, flashing fangs that looked too big for his mouth.
It had done exactly what I wanted it to. Thanks to Jean-Claude's centuries of frustrated study, I had a new weapon. I'd been afraid before to hit too close to the victim. All it would have taken was the vic to have a little psychic gift, and I could have done more damage to him than to Primo. But now I had it, I knew it, I felt it.
I flicked a hand at the arm that held the man, and that arm split open from elbow to wrist. Blood spilled down his arm in a crimson wash, if his heart had been beating enough, the blood would have jumped out of his open arteries, but he didn't have the blood pressure for it. Not anymore.
"Do you seek to save this?" he lifted the man by his twisted collar. "It is dead and only meat for the animals now."
"His heart still beats," Jean-Claude said.
But we had only moments before mouth-to-mouth wasn't going to save him from brain damage. I threw both hands up, and I cut him. I tried slicing his arm like you'd bone a fish, but I could not break the deeper tissue. I could cut his skin and meat away but the ligaments held, and that was all Primo needed to hold the vic until he died. Stubborn bastard.
"If you do not drop the man now, Primo, I will see this as a direct challenge to my authority."
"See it any way you like, but I will not be a whipping boy for this," and he pointed not at me, but at the men that lay unconscious around him, at Buzz who stood near, but not too near. We were out of his league, and he knew it.
"So be it," Jean-Claude said. In my head he said, "Ma petite, it is not a knife, it is not a single blade, it is magic. If you can turn one small piece of his power against him, then why not all of it?"
I started to ask, what did he mean, then he showed me. It was like my mind was a wall, and he'd just plugged that bit of answer directly into my brain. I understood, and I didn't hesitate. It wasn't in me to hesitate when lives were at stake.
I didn't point or throw up a hand. It wasn't a game of ball. I could affect his shielding, and that shielding covered his entire body. I thought at that skin of magic, I threw power into all of it, and when I felt all of his shielding, as if I was caressing that invisible skin with my hands, I turned it all against him. I turned it all into inward-pointing blades. It was as if Primo were suddenly standing in the center of a reverse porcupine, a porcupine with spines the size of daggers.
Every inch of his skin I could see was just suddenly covered in blood. He screamed, screamed with a mouth that poured blood, screamed with a throat that was pierced in a half-dozen places. He screamed, and he let go of the man.
Clay and the dark-haired werewolf grabbed the man and dragged him over the bodies of his friends, and away, just away. I wanted to watch, to make sure they got him breathing, but I had other problems.
Primo started to charge us, but he stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. I realized in that moment that I'd blinded him. It wasn't permanent, but it was permanent enough. For tonight he was blind.
He roared at us and yelled in a voice that sounded like he was trying to swallow broken glass. "Damn you, Jean-Claude, damn you. You are not vampire enough to do this. You were never vampire enough for this."
"Did you come to St. Louis to destroy me and take my place?"
Primo raised his bloodied face toward the sound of Jean-Claude's voice. "Why not? Why not be Master of the City?"
"You cannot even be master of your own self, Primo, that is why. Power alone is not enough to rule this city."
I wanted to look behind me and watch him speak, but I didn't need to. In that moment I felt closer to him than if I'd stood holding his hand. I knew then what I'd known before, but only in the back of my mind. He'd used the vampire marks between us more openly, more intimately than ever before. I should have been angry, but I wasn't.
One of the waiters was bending over the man Primo had tried to kill. The waiter had bent back the man's head and was breathing into his mouth. The man gave a sudden jolt, and his first gasp of breath was loud.
The dark-haired werewolf that I could give no name to raised a thumbs-up. The man would live. He would be alright. No amount of muscle that we had here would have freed him in time. Nothing else would have freed him without killing Primo, though I wasn't sure that was a good thing. I thought we should kill Primo, and do it now, before he recovered.
Jean-Claude's voice whispered in my ear, "If someone dies, I will have much more difficulty convincing them all that nothing bad happened here."
I shook my head and thought, there aren't enough vampire mind tricks in the world to blank the mind of an audience this big. Not about something this traumatic.
"Do you doubt me, ma petite?" He was suddenly standing just behind me. His slender white hand appeared on my shoulder, a spill of white lace around it, and a flare of black velvet sleeve framing that lace.
I raised my hand up to touch his and found his skin cold, as if he had not fed or had used a great deal of energy up. There was more warmth to the velvet as it brushed my fingers than to his skin. He was drained. How much energy had it taken for him to talk mind to mind with me, or had things been happening that I didn't know about yet?
The rest of the black-shirted security began to move, slowly, stiffly, as if things hurt. Primo seemed to sense their movement, because he said, "Even blind, I am their match."
He moved into a crouch on the balls of his feet. The movement must have hurt like hell, but he never winced. He put one big bloody hand on the floor and the other in the air, as if he were sensing movement. It was too close to a martial arts move for comfort. He was huge, a vampire, nearly impervious to pain, crazy, and trained in the martial arts. It didn't seem fair.
Nathaniel came to my side, and he had my gun. He held it out to me wordlessly, exactly the way I'd taught him, butt first, fingers well away from the trigger.
I gave him half the smile he deserved, because I was still keeping an eye on the bloody giant on the floor. I clicked the safety off before I holstered it. Call it a hunch, but when Primo rushed us, I wouldn't want to waste that second. I'd need it.