The cobbs gasped, staring at me as if I"d just offered them a map to El Dorado. I heard one of the younger cobbs exclaim, "True, it is!"
"Fleeting, pizza is," Keef said sternly. "Eternal are shoes and leather goods."
"Shoes and leather goods," the rest of the cobbs intoned, tiny voices solemn.
"Few mortals to the little folk show respect, these days," Keef said quietly. "Or trust. True it is that beneath this roof we are crowded. And unto the wizard, debt is owed." He gave the shoes a professional glance and nodded once. "Under your terms, and within our means, our aid is given. Your need unto us speak."
"Scouts," I said at once. "I know there are Black Court vampires in the mall. I need to know exactly how many and exactly where they are."
"Done it will be," Keef barked. "Cobbs!"
There was a little gust of wind, and I was suddenly alone. Oh, and both Sarah"s expensive heels and Molly"s clunky sandals were gone, the latter right out of my hands and so smoothly that I hadn"t even noticed them being taken. I checked, just to be careful, but my own shoes remained safely on my feet, which was a relief. You can"t ever be certain with cobbs. The little faeries, at times, could get awfully fixated upon whatever their particular area of concern might be, and messing around with it was more dangerous than most realized. Despite the metal screen between the cobbs and me, I"d been playing with fire when I held those Pradas over the trash can.
Another thing that most folks don"t realize is just how much the little folk can learn, and how fast they can do it-especially when things are happening on their own turf. It took Keef and his people about thirty seconds to go and return.
"Four, there are," Keef reported. "Three lesser, who of late this place did guard. One greater, who gave them not-life."
"Four," I breathed. "Where?"
"One outside near the group of cars waits and watches," Keef said. "One outside the bistro where the mortals hide stands watch.
One beside his mistress stands within."
I got a sick little feeling in my stomach. "Has anyone been hurt?"
Keef shook his head. "Taunt them, she does. Frighten them." He shrugged. "It is not as their kind often is."
"No. She"s there for vengeance, not food." I frowned. "I need you to get me something. Can you?"
I told him what I needed, and Keef gave me a mildly offended look. "Of course."
"Good. Now, the one outside," I said. "Can you show me a way I could get close to him without being seen?"
Keef"s eyes glittered with a sudden ferocity that was wholly at odds with his size and appearance. "This way, wizard."
I went at what was practically a run, but the tiny cobb had no trouble staying ahead of me. He led me through a service access door that required a key to open-until it suddenly swung open from the other side, a dozen young male cobbs dangling from the security bar and cheering. My amulet cast the only light as Keef led me down a flight of stairs and through a long, low tunnel.
"Access to the drains and watering system, this pa.s.sage is," Keef called to me. We stopped at a ladder leading up. A small paper sack sat on the floor by the ladder. "Your weapons," he said, nodding at the bag. He pointed at the ladder. "Behind the vampire, this opens."
I opened the bag and found two plastic cylinders. I didn"t want the crinkling paper, so I put one of them in my jacket pocket, kept the other in hand, and crept up the ladder. At the top was a hatch made out of some kind of heavy synthetic, rather than wood or steel, and it opened without a sound. I poked my head up and looked cautiously around the parking lot.
The lights were out, but there was enough snow on the ground to bounce around plenty of light, giving the outdoors an oddly close, quiet quality, almost as if someone had put a roof overhead, just barely out of sight. Over by the last group of cars in the mall parking lot, next to the Blue Beetle in fact, stood the vampire.
It was little more than a black form, and though it was human in shape, it was inhumanly still, every bit as motionless as the other inanimate objects in the parking lot. Snow had begun to gather on its head and shoulders, just as it had on the roofs and hoods of the parked cars. It stood facing the darkened mall, where snow blew into the hole left by the thrown car. It was watching, I supposed, for anyone who might come running out, screaming.
A newborn vampire might not be anywhere near as dangerous as an older one, but that was like saying a Mack truck was nowhere near as dangerous as a main battle tank. If you happened to be the guy standing in the road in front of one, it wouldn"t much matter to you which of them crushed you to pulp. If I"d had my staff and rod with me, I might have chanced a stand-up fight. But I didn"t have my gear, and even if I had, my usual magic would have made plenty of noise and warned the vampire"s companions.
Vampires are tough. They take a lot of killing. I had to take this one out suddenly and with tremendous violence without making any noise. If I had to face it openly, I"d have no chance.
Which is why I had used the cobbs" intelligence to get sneaky.
I drew in my will, the magic I had been born with and that I had spent a lifetime exercising, practicing, and focusing. As the power came into me, it made the skin of my arms ripple with goose b.u.mps, and I could feel a strange pressure at the back of my head and pressing against the inside of my forehead. Once I had the power ready, I started shaping it with my thoughts, focusing my will and intent on the desired outcome.
The spell I worked up wasn"t one of my better evocations. It took me more than twenty seconds to get it together. For fast and dirty combat magic, that"s the next best thing to forever.
For treacherous, backstabbing, sucker-punch magic, though, it"s just fine.
At the very last second, the vampire seemed to sense something. It turned its head toward me.
I clenched my fist as I released my will and snarled, "Gravitus!"
The magic lashed out into the ground beneath the vampire"s feet, and the steady, slow, immovable power of the earth suddenly stirred, concentrating, reaching up for the vampire standing upon it. In technical terms, I didn"t actually increase the gravity of the earth beneath it. I only concentrated it a little. In a circle fifty yards across, for just a fraction of a second, gravity vanished. The cars all surged up against their shock absorbers and settled again. The thin coat of snow leapt several inches off the parking lot and fell back.
In that same fraction of a second, all of that gravity from all of that area concentrated itself into a circle, maybe eighteen inches across, directly at the vampire"s feet.
There was no explosion, no flash of light-and no scream. The vampire just went down, slammed to the earth as suddenly and violently as if I"d dropped an anvil on him. There was a rippling, crackling sound as hundreds of bones shattered all together, and a splatter of sludgy liquid that splashed all over the cars around the vampire-mostly upon the Beetle, really.
The effort of gathering and releasing so much energy left me gasping. I was out of shape when it came to earth magic. It had never been my strongest suit-too slow, most of the time, to seem like it would have been worth the bother. As I hauled myself out of the ground, though, I had to admit that when there was enough time to actually use it, it sure as h.e.l.l was impressive.
I padded to the car, watching the mall entrance, but there was no outcry and no sudden appearance of Drulinda or the other vampires of her scourge.
The vampire was still alive.
Un-alive. Whatever. The thing was still trying to move.
It was mostly just a ma.s.s of pulped, squishy meat. In the cold, at least, it hadn"t begun to rot, so that cut down on the smell. One eye rolled around in its mashed skull. Muscles twitched, but without a solid framework of bone to work with, they didn"t accomplish much beyond an odd, pulsing motion. It could probably put itself back together, given blood and time, but I didn"t feel like letting it have either. I held the plastic cylinder over it.
"Nothing personal," I told the vampire. Then I dumped powdered garlic from the pizzeria in the mall"s food court all over it.
I can"t say that the vampire screamed, really. It died the way a salted slug does, in silent, pulsing agony. I had to fight to keep my stomach from emptying itself, but only for a second. Absolutely disgusting demises are par for the course when fighting vampires. A few wisps of smoke rose up, and after a few seconds, the ma.s.s of undead flesh became simple dead flesh again.
One down.
Three to go.
I stalked toward the mall, moving with all the silence I could manage. After years working as a private investigator, and more years fighting a magical war against the vampires in the shadows, I know how to be quiet. I slipped up to within thirty feet of the entrance and spotted the second vampire before he noticed me, right where Keef"s people said he was.
He stood facing the door of the bistro, apparently intent on what was happening within. I could hear voices inside, though I could make out no details over the continued, repeated playing of "Only You," beyond that one of the voices was Drulinda"s leathery rasp. There were no sounds of fighting, which wasn"t good. Thomas certainly wouldn"t have allowed them to hurt anyone without putting up a struggle, and given the mutual capabilities of everyone involved, it would have been noticeable.
A second"s thought told me that it might also be a good sign. If they"d killed him, they would have made a big mess doing it. a.s.suming he hadn"t gone down without getting to put up much of a fight-and I refused to a.s.sume anything else: I knew my brother too well-something else had to be happening.
My brother could go toe to toe with a vampire of the Black Court, if he had to, but the last time he"d done it the effort had nearly killed both him and the woman he"d had to feed from in order to recover. There were two of them inside, and though Thomas was as combat-capable as any of the White Court"s best, he wasn"t going to start a slugfest if he thought he could get a better fight by biding his time, doing what the White Court did-looking human and using guile. My instincts told me that Thomas was stalling, choosing his moment. h.e.l.l, he was probably waiting for me to show up and help.
I looked down and found his birthday present, untouched by the flying debris, lying in its bright red and pink paper where Molly had dropped it on the sidewalk outside the doors.
I found myself smiling.
Twenty seconds or so later, I tossed the present underhand. It tumbled through the air and landed on the floor directly outside the bistro"s entrance. The head of the vampire on guard jerked around, focusing on the present. It tilted its head to one side. Then it whipped around toward me, baring its teeth in a snarl.
"Gravitus!" I thundered, releasing a second earthcrafting.
Once again, everything jumped up-but this time, it wasn"t quiet. The circle of nullified gravity embraced every shop nearby in the mall, sending merchandise and shelves and dishes and furniture and cash registers and dressing dummies and G.o.d knew what other sundry objects flying up, to come crashing back down to the floor again. A great crashing rose up from the floors above us as well.
Once again, the circle of supergravity crushed a brown-shirted vampire flat to the floor-only I"d forgotten about the levels above. There was a shriek of tortured metal and a great crashing rain of debris came down in a nearly solid column as floors and ceilings gave way under the sudden, enormous stress. It all thundered down on the pulped vampire.
There was a second of shocked silence, while objects continued falling from their shelves and bins and who knew what else. Evidently, the damage to the ceiling had torn through some plumbing; a steady stream of water began to patter down from overhead onto the mound of rubble, along with occasional bits of still-falling material.
Then two things happened, almost at the same time.
First, my brother chose his moment.
The front wall of the bistro exploded outward. I saw the flying form of another vampire security guard hurtle across the hallway into the opposite wall with no detectable loss of alt.i.tude, and it smashed against a metal security grate with terrifying force.
Second, Drulinda let out an eerie howl of fury. It was a horrible sound, nasty and rasping and somehow spidery, for all that it was of inhuman volume. There was a crash from inside the bistro. Young men and women started screaming.
There wasn"t any time to waste. I ran for the vampire my brother had thrown from the bistro. It had bounced off and fallen on the ground and was still gathering itself up. I had hoped it would take it a moment to recover from the blow, to give me time to get close enough to act.
It didn"t work out that way.
The vampire was on its feet again before I could get halfway there, one of its shoulders twisted and deformed by the impact, one arm hanging loosely. It spun toward me with no sense of discomfort evident in its expression or posture, and it let out a very human-sounding scream of fury and flung itself at me.
I reacted with instant instinct, raising my right hand, with my will, and calling, "Fuego!"
Fire kindled from my open palm and rushed out in a furious torrent, spewing raggedly across the tile floor in a great, slewing cone. It splashed against the floor, up onto the metal grate, and all over the vampire in question, a sudden, if clumsy, immolation.
But without my blasting rod to help me focus the attack, it was diffused; the heat was spread out over a broad area instead of focused into a single, searing beam. Though I"m sure it hurt like h.e.l.l, and though it set the security guard vampire"s uniform on fire, it didn"t cripple him. It might have sent up an older, more withered vampire like a torch, but the newbie was still too...juicy. It didn"t burn him up so much as broil him a bit.
Pretty much, it just p.i.s.sed him off.
The vampire came at me with another, higher-pitched scream, and swung a flaming arm at me. Maybe the fire had disoriented him a little, because I was able to get out of the way of the blow-sort of. It missed my head and neck and instead slammed into my left shoulder like a train wreck.
Pain flooded through me, and the canister of garlic went flying. The force of the blow spun me around, and I fell to the floor. The vampire came down on top of me, teeth bared, still on freaking fire as he leaned in with his non-pointy, still-white teeth, which were plenty strong enough to rip my throat open.
"Harry!" Thomas screamed. There was a rushing sound, and a tremendous force pulled the vampire off me. I sat up in time to see my brother drive his shoulder into the vampire"s chest, slamming the undead thing back against the concrete wall between two stalls. Then Thomas whipped out what looked like a broken chair leg and drove the shattered end of the wood directly into the vampire"s chest, a couple of inches below the gold, metallic security badge on his left breast, slightly off center.
The vampire"s mouth opened, too-dark blood exploding from it in a gasp. The creature reached for the chair leg with its remaining arm.
Thomas solved that problem in the most brutal way imaginable. His face set in fury, my brother ignored the flames of the vampire"s burning clothing, seized the remaining arm with both of his hands, and with a twist of his hips and shoulders ripped it out of the socket.
More blood splashed out, if only for a second-without a heartbeat to keep pumping it, blood loss is mostly about leakage-and then the mortally crippled vampire fell, twitching and dying as the stake of wood through its heart put an end to its unlife.
I felt Drulinda coming, more than I saw it happen, the cold presence of a Black Court vampire in a fury rubbing abrasively against my wizard"s senses. "Thomas!"
My brother turned in time to duck a blow so swift I didn"t even see it. He returned it with one of his own, but Drulinda, though new to the trade, was a master vampire, a creature with its own terrible will and power. Thomas had fought other Black Court vamps before-but not a master.
He was on the defensive from the outset. Though my brother was unthinkably strong and swift when drawing upon his vampiric nature, he wasn"t strong or swift enough. I lay sprawled on the ground, still half-paralyzed by the pain in the left half of my body, and tried to think of what to do next.
"Get out!" I screamed at the bistro. "Get out of here, people! Get the h.e.l.l out now!"
While I screamed, Drulinda slammed my brother"s back into a metal security grate so hard that it left a broad smear of his pale red blood on its bars.
People started hurrying out of the bistro, running for the parking lot.
Drulinda looked over her shoulder and let out another hissing squall of rage. At this opening, Thomas managed to get a grip on her arm, set his feet, and swing her into the wall, sending cracks streaking through the concrete. On the rebound, he swung her up and around and then down, smashing her down onto the floor, then up from that and into a security mesh again, crushing tile and bending metal with every impact.
I heard a scream and looked up to see Ennui fall from her impossibly high black heels in her tiny, tight black dress, as she tried to flee the bistro.
A horribly disfigured hand had reached out from the rubble over the crushed vampire, and now held her.
I ran for the girl as my brother laid into Drulinda. My left arm wasn"t talking to me, and I fumbled the second canister out of my left jacket pocket with my right arm, then dumped garlic over the outstretched vampire"s hand.
It began smoking and spasming. Ennui screamed as the crushing grip broke her ankle. I stood up in frustration and started
stomping down on the vampire"s arm. Supernaturally strong it might be, but its bones were made of bone, and it couldn"t maintain
its grip on the girl without them.
It took a lot of stomping, but I was finally able to pull the girl free. I tried to get her to her feet, but her weight came down on her broken ankle, and from there it came down on my wounded shoulder. I went down to one knee, and it was all I could do not to fall.
I almost didn"t notice when my brother flew through the air just over my head, smashed out what had to be the last remaining pane of gla.s.s at the mall entrance, and landed limply in the parking lot.
I felt Drulinda"s presence coming up behind me.
The vampire let out a dusty laugh. "I thought it was just some poor pretty boy to play with. Silly me."