Because it didn’t look like the other side cared.
One sprang into existence in front of the wall just down from us, which would have been bad. Except it was maybe a foot away from the marble and facing it. That left the vaguely lizard-type things inside scrabbling uselessly against the flat, shiny surface as more and more tried to push through, until the ones in front finally turned around and tore into the ones threatening to crush them from behind.
None of them made it out.
But the creatures in a second portal had it worse, when their doorway on the world opened in what would have been a prime spot in the middle of the hall—if another portal hadn’t already been occupying it. And no, I’d never stopped to wonder what would happen if a portal tried to open inside another one. But I would have guessed that maybe you ended up with two metaphysical “tubes” running one inside the other.
Only apparently not.
What you got instead was a blur of color as the two portals met, but didn’t meld. The currents started fighting it out, which in turn began pulling them out of shape, distorting the usual round openings into odd and conflicting shapes. Which probably wasn’t good for them but was even worse for the creatures trying to come through.
“Duck!” Ray screamed, as a slurry of bones and fur and mangled flesh was suddenly flung around, like someone had stuck a knife in a blender.
But other than for dropping into a squat, we didn’t move, because there was simply nowhere to go. If a squad of master vampires couldn’t break out of this corridor, Ray and I sure as hell weren’t going to do it. But the odds on getting back to the stairs weren’t looking that great, either, since the battle had shifted and the fighting was taking place right in front of them now. But we couldn’t stay here much longer without—
I stopped, my thoughts skidding to a halt as a third portal caught my attention.
Not because of what came out this time, since it was already open.
But because of what went in.
Nothing much. Just a couple of the hundreds of spent casings rolling underfoot, which had been kicked this way in the scuffle. And which had fallen into the portal, because the bottom of it was intersecting the floor.
Fallen in and hadn’t come back out.
I looked at Ray. “Did you see—”
“No.”
“But I think it’s—”
“I know what it is!” he said feverishly. “And we’re not jumping into some random portal when we don’t know where it goes. We are not ending up any-freaking-where! We are not doing this, do you understand? For once we are not going to take the craziest possible—”
I didn’t try to convince him. I didn’t have to. The Senate’s men had been getting pounded by an army of creatures whose abilities they couldn’t have known about because they weren’t supposed to exist. And by the steadily worsening odds, as portal after portal spit out reinforcements that our side didn’t have. And by the fact that every time they lost a colleague, he or she abruptly ended up on the other side.
Facing them.
Marlowe’s boys were well trained, but they weren’t used to having to hack apart the bodies of their fallen friends. Or to being abandoned by their own kind. Or to having a portal full of gelatinous, acid-filled creatures open in the ceiling directly overhead and start to rain down fiery death.
The first sizzling lump had barely squelched against the floor when they broke and ran.
I didn’t blame them.
Only they couldn’t retreat, because of the mass of civilians behind them, most of whom hadn’t made it out of the ballroom. So they surged forward, running into the minefield of portals ahead. Because they’d last longer there than they would standing in a rain of unquenchable fire.
And they took the creatures they’d been fighting right along with them.
There was no hiding from those kinds of numbers, no standing and facing them. There was only one option that didn’t equal certain death, and I guess Ray felt the same. Because when I jumped for the maw of the suspicious portal, he jumped right along with me.
Something snatched at my arm, something else tore my dress, and a breath hot as fire skimmed along my neck—for an instant. And then the portal grabbed us and threw us around and spit us out. Onto a long, rectangular balcony in what looked like some kind of cave, with a line of fiery blue swirls dotting the side of a rock-cut wall beside us.
And a bunch of men and fey who looked kind of surprised to see us there.
For a second, we looked at them and they looked at us, and yeah, they were Svarestri, all right. At least the fey were. The war mages with them were typical—old leather trenches, ass-kicking boots and a crap ton of weapons. They looked a little grubby next to the fey, with their silver eyes and silver hair and haughty expressions, though the last were kind of overwritten by shock at the moment.
“Well, I don’t know what I expected,” Ray said blankly.
And then we were diving back into the portal, the wrong way around because there was no time to turn—or to avoid the hail of bullets that came after us. But we landed as we’d fallen—on our backs—less than a second before the barrage whizzed by overhead, one bullet cutting through my hair on my way to the floor. Then I was rolling and jumping and getting back on my feet—