“What the hell kind of trap did you lay for us?” Scarface snarled, staring from the blistered boards to me. His voice was as belligerent as always, but he looked more than a little freaked out. The sword hung limply by his side, like he was almost afraid to touch it.
I would have been, if I were him; vamps burned easily enough as it was.
“No trap,” I said, my mouth a little dry. “Or did you not notice that he was trying to kill me?”
“Why? You steal from him, too?”
“I didn’t steal from anyone. I’m working for the family who own the rune. They want it back.”
“Finders keepers.”
“Yeah, only you haven’t found it yet.”
“Give me a minute,” he growled, and then his head jerked up. And he leapt—but not at me. It took me a second to realize that he had raced back into the hallway, and I didn’t think it was out of fear of my little knives.
I dropped the bread knife, which had been a lousy choice anyway, grabbed my iron version off the floor where Scarface had tossed it and shoved the bloody thing back into the straps at the small of my back. Then I scooped up the duffel and tucked it under my arm. That left me a hand for my sword and one for the cleaver, and that was as good as things were going to get.
The rain was coming down harder now, drumming on the windows and the ceiling overhead. But not enough to muffle the ring of steel on steel. I ran to the hall door and saw two things: Cheung and Scarface, halfway up the stairs, fighting three fey back to back. And Louis-Cesare battlingsubrand in the middle of the vestibule.
All around there were blackened marks on the boards of the floor, the stairs and, in one case, in a man-shaped smudge on the wall. Shapes I strongly suspected were the remains of Cheung’s men. I glanced up, and through the ruined ceiling spied other battles going on above our heads, but there looked to be more fey than vamps.
And then I wasn’t thinking anymore, because my eyes had caught sight of the glowing sword insubrand’s hand. My heart lurched sickeningly and an icy fist tightened in my gut. And then I was throwing everything in my bag at anything that moved, but especially at him.
I had a small fortune in legal and not so legal weapons, and I used them all. A couple of disorienting spheres did nothing—I was going to stop buying the damn useless things—but a disruptor had more luck. It packs the punch of a few dozen human grenades, and I timed it perfectly—it hit the floor at his feet and exploded almost at the same time, too fast for even a fey’s reflexes to knock it away.
But when the dust cleared, I saw a chasm where the floor had been, new holes in the roof and half the remaining stairs gone. Cheung and Scarface had one less opponent, who was now a smear all over the wall behind the stairs. Butsubrand was still standing.
It hadn’t gotten through his shields.
“The little creature spits and hisses,” he said, mockingly. “Come, dhampir. Is that the best you can do?”
“Get back!” I told Louis-Cesare, who in a fit of complete insanity was about to jump the chasm. He saw what was in my hand, and his eyes widened, before he changed direction and jumped for the door of the living room instead. Scarface cursed, grabbed Cheung around the waist and dove for the second story. And I threw the nastiest weapon I had.
I didn’t see the dislocator hit, because I’d leapt back into the kitchen the second it left my hand. I didn’t hear it, either, because those things don’t explode in the conventional sense. But I felt the deadly current ripple past. I crouched behind the heavy table, huddled over the duffel bag and stared at nothing.
“What the fuck was that?” Ray whispered below me.
Oh, shit. Ray. “Tell me you were behind something,” I said, belatedly realizing I hadn’t thought to check.
“Fuck yeah, I was fucking behind something,” he whispered viciously, as the vibrations slowly subsided. “My ass is outside with the sane people!”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Dislocators do exactly what their name implies. And it wouldn’t help Ray to get him back together if the pieces were all jumbled up.
After a minute, I edged around the blackened mark on the floor, the edges of which were still sizzling, and crept across the kitchen. Everything was quiet, peaceful. I stuck my head out the door, cautiously looking around. I didn’t see anything.
That was a disappointment, as I’d been hoping for an arm growing out of a wall, or maybe a torso where the banister used to be. As long as it wassubrand’s, I wasn’t picky. But there was nothing.
He must have had time to get out the back door, I thought furiously. I shouldn’t have hesitated, waiting for Cheung, but as much as I had no reason to like the guy, dislocating half his organs seemed a bit much. But now that complete bastard was probably half a block away—
And someone grabbed me from behind.
“Stop doing that!” I said as I was yanked back against a hard chest. “You’re going to scare me to death.”
And then Louis-Cesare walked out of the living room—on the opposite side of the hall.
“That would at least be a novel way to die,”subrand said, casually breaking my wrist. The sword fell to the ground with a clatter.
I sucked in a breath and fought not to scream, while my brain gibbered somewhere in the background that that was impossible, that no shields held against a dislocator, that that was why the damn things were so illegal that it was a life sentence just to possess one. I’d always been willing to take the risk, on the logic that life in jail was better than no life at all. And dislocators were the option of last resort when nothing else worked.