Although not as much as looking up and seeing the baby vamp, standing where I had been a second ago, because he must have been the one to shove me out of the way. And had been rewarded for his courage with stakes bisecting both heart and throat. The latter was so long the bloody tip jutted completely out the other side.
Until it was ripped out of him a second later.
“No!” I screamed as he turned to look at me, blood-splattered glasses gleaming in the firelight, and stumbled against the bench behind him.
But there was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. That blow would have taken vampires far older than him. It was another reason babies were kept separate from the rest of the household: for their protection, because they were so vulnerable at that age.
“No,” I said again, my eyes filling.
And then his assailant was jumping for me, bloody stakes in hand, moving like a blur, as someone yelled: “Slow her down!”
Mircea’s voice came again. “I am slowing her!”
But it didn’t look like it to me. I had a split second to see a pair of firelit eyes, to hear Adra’s voice booming “Assist,” and to take the last breath I was ever going to if I didn’t do something right fucking now.
And then a stake was splintering to pieces on the concrete where I’d just been, as I shifted behind the bar.
And almost threw up.
The room swirled sickeningly around me as I grabbed the table for support. Because my spell had unraveled halfway through, depositing me here instead of in the main hall above as I’d intended. And I wasn’t going to be trying again, not for a while, which was a problem because she was still coming.
And it was a she. A she with a gleaming cap of dark hair, who I got a glimpse of as she stared around, hunting for me. A beautiful, golden-eyed she who looked really familiar somehow and—
“You have got to be kidding,” I whispered, realizing that I was about to be killed by my boyfriend’s lover.
At least I was until I upended the table, just as she caught sight of me, too. Glasses crashed; bottles spilled and shattered; a river of booze ran everywhere. And the small candelabra that had been decorating one end of the table fell into the middle of it all, with a bonus I hadn’t expected. I’d just been trying to give her some glass to have to run across, because for some reason she was as barefoot as me.
But this works, too, I thought, stumbling back as the whole center of the room went up in flames.
And immediately thereafter exploded in screams and panicked, scrambling vampires.
Who became even more panicked when they realized that somebody, probably after their last escape attempt, had raised the wards.
The two humans who had been tending bar ran straight out the door, disappearing down the hallway. But the vamps who tried to follow slammed into something invisible, like birds hitting a plate-glass window. And then hitting it again and again, pounding against it as their fellow vamps piled up behind them, able to see freedom but not to touch it.
Kind of like me. I was human, so the ward should have let me pass, but I couldn’t reach it. Not with all the bodies in the way, and not after the fire spread from a tablecloth to the kindling the vamps had made out of a section of old, dry bleachers. They went up, and a full-on panic set in.
The vamps in front were clawing at the ward now, their fingers bloody, while the ones in back turned around and stampeded back this way, trampling me and then the senate in their desperation to avoid the flames.
And the woman calmly walking through the middle of them.
No, I thought, staring in spite of everything, because vampires didn’t do that. Vampires had the flammability of gasoline. Even masters ran at the sight of uncontrolled flames.
Except for this one, apparently.
And then she was on me.
I had a split second to see eyes like gold coins, fangs denting carmine lips, a bloody stake being raised in slow motion, either Mircea’s doing or because my freaked-out brain was playing tricks on me—
And then I blinked and she was gone.
I staggered back and abruptly sat down, hair in my face, staring around blindly. And trying to figure out what had just happened. Which would have been easier if the crowd hadn’t surged all around me.
But not to help me back up.
They were trying to get away from the battle I could hear but couldn’t see, the ring of steel on steel echoing clearly over screaming vamps and cursing masters, and the feet trampling me as I tried to get up—
And ended up crawling under the second table instead, out of self-preservation. Nobody else was down here, maybe because it fronted the fire. Giving me a view past the askew white tablecloth and running people and crackling flames, at a fight. One almost faster than my eyes could track, between the crazy, dark-haired woman—