streaming out of the other houses with lanterns lit and pitchforks in hand. Some of them were running after the escaping animals, whose reflective eyes were catching the light, and glowing like fireflies in the forest here and there. But others were looking at us, including at me, probably wondering why a crazy woman was on the roof in the middle of the night.
We needed to get gone, I thought, as the warning bells ramped up a notch.
We needed to get gone now—
And then a blade appeared at my throat.
I looked up to see what looked like a gorgeous avenging angel: dark hair blowing like a banner; blood splattered, long, white dress hugging a figure more elegant than mine; and a silver, scimitar-like blade held in one dainty hand.
She said something, but this time, I couldn’t understand her.
“I don’t—I don’t speak, um, whatever it is that you’re speaking right now,” I said, wanting to feel around in my ear for the little silver whatever, but too afraid to move.
I also wanted to shift, but wasn’t sure I could. I should have been out of juice ten minutes ago! But it didn’t matter, because this time, as soon as I reached for my power, she waved a hand—
And shut. It. Down.
I blinked, pretty sure I was hallucinating—a couple of those goat hooves had connected pretty hard—but I didn’t get a chance to worry about it. Because the next second, she was jerking me up to her face, the front of my nightgown in one hand and the wicked looking blade at my neck. And yelling something at me—
That, all of a sudden, I could understand. But not because of the translator. The words were in her own voice, but didn’t match up with her lips.
Translation spell, I thought, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Until I felt the blade bite into my flesh. “Where?”
“Where what?” I half shrieked, panicked.
“Where is my child?”
“What?” I stared at her for a moment, not understanding. And then I got it. She thought I was working with the Svarestri, probably because I hadn’t had a chance to introduce myself. And Mircea didn’t seem to be around to do it for me, damn him! “Um, I don’t—”
The blade bit deeper.
I felt warm blood trickle down my neck, heard the alarm bells clamoring, now so loudly that they almost deafened me, saw my life flash before my eyes—
Or maybe that was the crap ton of fey now jumping for the roof.
Because I guess the ring of staring peasants had clued them in.
I found myself abruptly released, and somehow ended up fighting alongside Elena, on the top of what had been a high-pitched roof and was now more like a haystack with a lot of holes in it. Fey fell through the holes, not that it mattered because they bounced right back up again, like they had springs on their feet. Which wouldn’t have been so bad except they also had swords in their hands—or knives, clubs and arrows, the latter from those still on the ground who preferred to kill us from afar.
And they were making a pretty good attempt, because these weren’t crap, red-shirt types, there only to die. Mircea and Elena had made them look that way, but that had been a handful in the close confines of the house. There were a lot more here now, and they had plenty of room to maneuver.
The only reason I wasn’t shish kabobbed a dozen times was vampire reflexes, which slowed the chaos down to maybe a quarter of the normal speed. Which, considering how fast the fey moved, was still freaking fast! And still damned scary, because there were so many of attackers, converging on us all at once.
I won’t even lie; I sort of lost it. A few moments before, I’d been happily shucking clams—well, maybe not happily—and watching a possibly crazy dog chase its stubby excuse for a tail. Now I was fighting for my life, barefoot and in a nightgown, and my brain was having a hard time with it. The last summer notwithstanding, it was busy shrieking that this shouldn’t be happening!
No shit, I thought, and went ham on some fey.
“What are you doing?” Elena yelled, looking puzzled at my fighting style.
Which made two of us. One minute, I was tapped out, tossing the feys’ own fallen shields, helmets and weapons at them, trying to do some damage through vampire strength, because that was all I had left. And the next, I was lobbing time spells, not in full, but little balls of them at whoever lunged at me. One caught a Svarestri square in the face and went boiling through his head, aging the flesh to dust and leaving me looking through his now empty skull for a second, at the torch wielding crowd below.
He fell backwards off the roof, and into a hail of arrows that were meant for us. I caught the remainder with another spell, but hadn’t had time to aim and it was just a glancing blow. But it was enough to disintegrate a few, and to shave the feathers off one side of some more, sending them off course and into a Svarestri instead of me.
He nonetheless took a swing at me, despite looking like a porcupine, which I blocked by a strand of the Pythian power, the same type that I’d used to rope a badly behaving master vampire to a tree. It worked on the fey, too, it seemed, especially with vampire strength behind it. The rope wrapped around his blade and stopped it cold.
But then, he had two hands, didn’t he?