And then I got it, threw off Marlowe's hold and scrambled to my feet.
I still didn't know where the weird whine was coming from, but it wasn't the shield over Louis-Cesare's cell, which was down. And he was out and on his feet, if you counted being supported by Anthony. Marlowe must have fed him, because there was blood around his mouth where there had been none before, although it hadn't made any noticeable improvement.
And no way could he fight like that.
I met Marlowe's eyes and the look on his face told me exactly how much trouble we were in. "Have a nice nap?" he asked, but for once, it wasn't sarcastic.
It was hopeful.
"Yeah," I said, glancing at the babies again. "Yeah, I did."
And then the whine amped up a couple hundred notches, as the ward separating us from the horde outside started to make a sound like every car on the block had decided to screech around a corner at the same time.
Marlowe cursed, and grabbed me. And I suddenly found myself inside the small cell where Louis-Cesare and Anthony had been imprisoned, along with them. Our backs hit the wall courtesy of a freaked out Marlowe, who shoved us inside and then all but flew to the box on the wall.
And before I could ask what the hell, he was slamming into the bricks beside me.
"This one's on me; next one's yours!" he shouted cryptically, while staring past me at the ward.
And then not staring at it, because a second later it was gone, blowing out in a blast of wind and sound, and an army was rushing in at us.
I started forward to meet them, because what other choice was there? Only to have Marlowe jerk me back. Right before the wave of guards slammed into the invisible barrier around the cell, snarling and cursing, and in one case, bursting into flame.
Okay, I thought. I guess I knew what Marlowe had been doing at the box. Only I didn’t see how that helped us, since the re-engaged shield on the cell wasn't doing anything but pissing them off. And wasn't going to last, if that box contained what I thought it did.
And I guess Anthony felt the same. The next moment, he was grabbing the two of us and all but cracking our heads together, because he was pissed. "The talisman is outside!" he snarled, gesturing at the box. "Those damned mages will just deactivate—"
"Those damned mages are about to be busy," Marlowe snarled back, and shoved him down.
"What the hell?" Anthony said, looking like a guy who hasn't been manhandled in a while.
And then like one who'd decided he could live with it when the whole room suddenly lit up, like the sun had dropped in for a visit.
I didn’t see what was happening, because my vision all but whited out. And because I'd instinctively shut my eyes and ducked my head, along with everyone else. For a long second, the four of us were just hunkered down in the middle of the cell, while what sounded like a hundred individual explosions took place outside, and a hundred voices screamed—
And then cut off abruptly, when the sun went nuclear.
The talisman, I thought. They were the battery packs of the supernatural world, gathering up the magical energy of Earth and storing it for later use. There must have been one in the box, powering the shields and whatever else needed power down here. And which was currently releasing it all at once, because Marlowe, the crazy bastard, had overloaded it.
I did glance up after a moment; I couldn’t help it. And saw a bunch of dark bodies being thrown around like ping pong balls, visible only when they hit our shield, and even then only as shadows against the boiling yellow-white light. Saw them ripped apart as the ward's final explosion tore through the room, expending its power in a hurricane of brilliance and sound. Saw—
Nothing.
Because there was suddenly nothing left to see. Our shield gave up the ghost a few seconds after the conflagration, with a small sigh. It didn’t hold much power itself, and there was suddenly nothing left for it to draw on. But it had held out long enough to protect us—and no one else.
I stared through leaping aftereffects at a room washed clean of everything, including the attacking vamps. Who were only there in the form of the bloody, burning mess splattering walls and floor and ceiling, and still sizzling. It was a hell of a sight, I thought dizzily.
And then the babies attacked.
Their shield had dropped along with ours, and now they were coming, blood-maddened and furious, in a scramble of wild eyes and crazy, electrocuted hair. And were stopped abruptly by the hand Marlowe flung out, pausing them the same way that Radu had the vicious tot at Louis-Cesare's court. Like him, they stayed a few feet away, thrashing and snarling and spitting, while Marlowe looked at me, breathing a little hard.
"All right. Your turn."
"What? What?" Anthony was spluttering and staring about, apparently just realizing what Marlowe had done. And then clapping him on the back, almost causing him to lose control of the infants. "You mad son of a bitch! You did it!"
"I cleared this room and the space outside," Marlowe corrected him. "Nothing more."
"What?"
"It will be flooded with guards again momentarily—"
"What?"
"Well, it didn’t kill those upstairs, did it?" Marlowe asked, but he was still looking at me.
"Then you didn’t do a damned thing!" Anthony yelled. "We're still stuck down here!"
"Not for long," I said, because Marlowe was right.
It was my turn.
I grabbed Louis-Cesare.
He may have had a meal, but he didn’t look like it. The blue eyes were dazed, and had trouble focusing. The pale face was not so much white as blue-white, with dark shadows the only color left besides those brilliant blue eyes. If anything, he looked worse than before.
"Are you able to pull from family yet?" I asked, really hoping that was why Marlowe had fed him.
"Starting to," he said hoarsely.
"Okay, good. But right now, I need you to stop and concentrate on—"
"Stop?" That was Anthony again. "What do you mean, stop? He needs to get his power back! He needs—"
"To listen!" I said, and pushed Anthony aside, because it was either that or belt him. "You need to focus on them," I told Louis-Cesare, and gestured at the babies. "You need to make them love you."
"What?" Anthony said. "What the hell are you—"
Marlowe decked him. A quick uppercut that didn’t injure him, but only because very little could injure Anthony. The durability of a damned tank was one of his master's powers, which was why he looked a lot more sturdy than Louis-Cesare, despite probably being treated the same. However, it did drop him.
He stared up in confusion and no little surprise. "Kit! Have you lost your damned mind?"
"Shut up!" Marlowe told him, and looked at Louis-Cesare. "Do what she says. Do it now!"
But Louis-Cesare didn’t understand. He wasn't usually slow on the uptake, but it had been a hard week, and his body was using all the blood he'd obtained to try to heal. It didn’t look like a lot was left over for figuring out crazy long shots.
He finally gave up, and just addressed the request itself. "I don't . . ." he stopped, swallowing, and tried again. "I don’t have your father's gifts—"
"You don’t need them. Any vampire can do it. Half of them turn on the charm to feed," I reminded him urgently.
"But they're babies." He looked at them blearily. "What can they possibly—"
"Trust me. Just trust me. Please." I didn’t have time to explain, and I doubted that, right now, he'd have understood anyway. Luckily, he didn’t ask anything else. Didn’t bitch or complain. Didn’t demand a ton of information so that he could judge the situation, because I was only a little woman and couldn't be trusted.
He just looked at the babies, and whispered a suggestion.
It was soft, sweet and seductive. It was also eye-opening, because I’d never seen him do that before. He hadn’t exactly needed it with me, and I strongly suspected that he was too proud to want any woman he'd have to mentally overwhelm, anyway. But he could
have.
Oh, yeah, he could have, I thought, basking in just the overflow.
Some of the babies were starting to calm down as well, and to look around, seemingly confused. Others were starting to claw harder, trying to get to him, but whether to kiss or to kill, I wasn't sure. And still more appeared unfazed.
The only thing they lusted after was blood.
"This isn’t working," Marlowe said tightly.
"You need to up the power," I told Louis-Cesare urgently, because some vamps were starting to reappear outside.
And he tried. I could see the veins standing out on his neck, the pulse pounding at his temple—and the desperation in his eyes because he hadn’t had time to heal. He wasn't strong enough.
"I don't . . . have your father's gift," he repeated, panting.
"You don't need it—"
Wild blue eyes met mine. "Right now, I do!"
"You don't." My hands found the sides of his face, and pulled him down to me. "You don’t need his power; you already have mine. You have Dorina's. We're linked, remember?"
I didn’t know if he understood. Didn’t know how much of that had gotten through to a mind still reeling from days of torture and blood loss. Didn’t know anything, because the room was suddenly inundated with a new wave of attackers, slipping and sliding on the blood of the first.
And being met by my last potion bomb, activated by a scream as I spun to meet them, because I couldn’t reach my pack. But I didn’t need it. It was still lying in the middle of the floor, under their feet as they tore inside.
And then floated up into space, because gravity had just been jerked out from under their feet.
The effect spread into the outer room as well, sending the vamps trying to get through the door tumbling backwards toward the stairs, like astronauts horsing around on the space station. But that was actually a bad thing, because the further the bomb's effects spread, the quicker they were going to dissipate. We were looking at seconds here.
So I grabbed the vamps floating nearby, shoved them out of my way, and used the momentum to struggle toward my pack. It was wafting up into the air now, too, only to be grabbed by a vamp right before I could reach it. Who jerked it away from me so hard he went spinning around helplessly. And then flipping over as I snatched it back and pushed off him, all at the same time. Because I don’t buy weapons I don't know how to use!
Another vamp grabbed me, and got a knife in his eye for his trouble. Blood went spurting everywhere in a lazy cascade of droplets, making me almost blind. Until I shoved off the floor to get above them, and went zooming toward the ceiling—
And then abruptly crashed back down to Earth.
But not because my purchased magic had suddenly given way.
But because somebody else's had voided it.
Jonathan, I thought, looking up from the bloody ground. I saw the cold smile that never reached colder eyes. I saw a hand raise, and lips open for a curse—
And then I was being trampled by a rush of boots and tennis shoes and hard high heels suddenly stabbing down all around me.
But not from Jonathan's vamps, I realized after a second.
But from ours.
And the best thing—the very best thing—was that no one on their side got it. They had the spell; they knew what it could do. But, apparently, it had never once crossed their minds that the lab rats they'd made were anything to worry about. Probably thought they were just panicked by the battle and were trying to get out.
And they kept right on thinking it, until the baby vamps starting ripping off heads.
Because the babies weren't babies anymore. Or, rather, they were, but they were also in a Lover's Knot with a first-level master. One who might be too weak to pull much from the family right now, but who was perfectly able to open a conduit for them to do so. The spell gave them his talents, and the family donated all the power they needed to use them.
Making them suddenly look a lot like first-level masters themselves.
By God, I thought dizzily, watching them go.
It was glorious.
And then my own trio of masters were grabbing me, and we were out of there.
Conclusion
"Oh! Oh! There you are!" Elise practically crawled over the airline seat to point out something on the iPad I'd stolen from the European senate. I figured, all things considered, that it was the least they owed me. And I doubted anyone would notice.
It had come from Aagtje's rooms and she had more important things to worry about right now.
Way more.
"Ha!" Elise laughed. "I love that part."
She was talking about the movie that was currently playing on the little device, showing me and a beautifully coiffured Jacqueline having a dustup at the top of the main stairs of Amour. It had started to rain while we were inside, so all the fleeing guests—and guards, and pretty much everyone else—trying to get away from the maddened horde of first-level masters, had ended up slip-sliding down the magnificent set of stairs. Because ridiculous shoes may look cool, but they cause problems when running for your life.
Or fighting for it, I thought, watching a tiny version of me grab tiny Jacqueline's newly shed wedge heel and beat her with it.
Girl hadn’t known a lost cause when she saw it. Heinrich had been smarter. He'd left his co-conspirators to take the heat while he headed for something faster than his little sedan chair, namely a black Maserati around the corner.
Of course, that hadn’t turned out so well for him, either.
"There she goes, through the window," Elise laughed, because tiny me had just thrown Jacqueline back into Amour, along with her shoes.
"High heels," I told her. "Screw fashion; leave them at home."
She looked like she was taking notes. I guessed she needed them as Heinrich's newly-appointed replacement. Occasionally, Anthony made a good decision; I was assuming it was luck.
Fortunately, Marlowe had stayed behind to help him clean up the mess, maybe to make up for belting him, not that Anthony seemed to hold a grudge. He could be a whiny little bitch at times, but the guy had layers. He was lazy as hell, for instance, but if you ever got him off his ass, he was . . . fairly formidable, I thought, watching the pad. Where a guy who'd been tortured for a week and drained almost completely dry was nonetheless riding the backs of two scrambling vamps down the stairs, like a goddamned chariot.
Right before he broke both their necks.
"They survived," Elise told me, peering through the seats. "Gave information on a lot of Black Circle ties we didn’t know Amour had."
"And won’t have for long," I guessed.
She made a happy little grunting sound. Marlowe had opposed Anthony's choice for the new security chief, probably because he still wanted to poach her himself. But he'd agreed to send her to our senate for a crash course on how to properly run her new department anyway. I didn’t think he needed to worry; the vamp version of Interpol was more about paperwork than fighting. Elise was going to be fine.
Not that she couldn’t do the other, as well, if properly motivated.
"Look, there's you," I said, handing the pad over the seat. I’d already watched it like five times.
The building opposite Amour had been equipped with surveillance equipment, courtesy of the European senate's sneaky new security chief. Unlike her department head, Elise had been concerned about them for some time, and had correctly assumed that vamps wouldn’t worry about human devices. So now we had a nice, clear copy of the fight, including her come-out-of-nowhere tackle and subsequent pummeling of Heinrich.
"Son of a bitch," I heard her murmur, as the rhythmic sound of his tiny head hitting concrete, over and over and over again, drifted over the seat.
Yeah, she was coming along nicely.
"Champagne?" A very pretty stewardess asked, bending to proffer a tray with two glasses, because I couldn’t get up.
I had a vampire in my lap.
Well, his head, anyway.
"Thanks, no,"
I said, holding up the beer I’d gotten from one of her counterparts. Louis-Cesare didn’t even open his eyes. But his hand adjusted my thigh slightly, to make it more comfortable, I suppose.
"That's a bone," I told him. "It doesn’t fluff."
Elise handed me the pillow I’d never gotten on our previous flight, and I stuck it under his head. "Better?"
"Perfect." He looked up without opening his eyes, and pulled me down for a kiss. "Like you."
I had been about to tell him that my leg was asleep and he needed to sit up. Somehow, I never got around to it. I frowned; I still didn’t know what to do with the damned man.
He dozed off, still smiling.
I was about to do likewise, because Anthony had loaned us his personal jet for the return trip, and there was so much room for activities. But Radu came over before I could. And settled in solitary splendor on a huge swivel chair across the aisle, accepting the champagne I’d refused.
"Finally," he told me, with a heartfelt sigh. "Civilization."
"Did you ever round up all the babies?" I asked, because that had been his job.
He tossed silky dark hair, which was loose today and extra shiny. It looked like he'd had time for a spa visit before our return. "Oh, yes. It was easy once Claude removed the spell. Good thing, too. If even one had died—" he shuddered and drank champagne.
"It would have been terrible," I agreed. It was bad enough that a bunch of people who didn’t want to be vamps in the first place had suddenly found themselves part of a new world—and back to baby status, at that. Because the effects of the spell did not carry over. Anthony had promised to find good homes for them, though, and I thought he meant it. He'd looked genuinely grateful when telling me about it.
He ought to, I thought.
They'd saved his ass.
"More than you know," Radu said, leaning over to pat his son's leg, as if he still couldn’t quite believe he was back. It was cute; he'd been touching him all day, I thought, and randomly smoothed away some auburn hair that had fallen in Sleepy's eyes.
"What don’t I know?" I asked Radu, who waved over the stewardess. She had acquired some little salmon canapes, topped with crème fraiche and caviar. Anthony knew how to live, I decided, accepting one myself.