“Where is Vanessa?” Vein asked. There was a tremble in his voice, not exactly fear, but close. “I felt… something. Where have you taken her?”
Their captor didn’t answer them. He set the bag he carried on the ground at his feet. He opened it carefully and pulled out the satin-wrapped flask. Without a word he unwound the satin and held it up so that the blood glistened in the dim light of the hallway.
Vein’s features melted through emotions, starting with shock and ending in rage. All pretenses at calm forgotten, he slammed into the glass. The elevator shook from the force, and he reared back, slamming into it again. The others gripped his arms, but he flung them aside, crashing into the barrier with more and more force. All the while his tormenter stood very still, holding the flask of blood in his hand reverently. Finally, with a supreme effort, Bruno and Shade managed to pin Vein’s arms, and Kali wrapped her arms around him from behind, holding him away from the glass. It was smeared with his blood, and though the cuts were healing fast, the gory remnant remained.
Cradling the flask carefully, their tormentor laughed softly. “Very touching,” he said. “Such a moment we’re having. Say goodbye to her. I wish I could tell you she was going to a better place or that her spirit would rest, but I don’t know that for certain. I know where this is going,” he held up the blood, “but that won’t matter to you for very long. Can you feel it? The sun? It will rise in less than an hour, and it won’t be much longer after that when it reaches this side of the building.
“You might find a way to break out the glass, but I doubt you can survive the fall, and even if you could, you’d be sliced up by the silver mesh. I think I’ve thought of just about everything, but if you find your way out and down somehow, please, by all means sneak back in and we’ll do this again.
“One thing,” he wrapped the flask of blood carefully and stowed it back in the bag. “When you come back, I won’t be quite like I am now. I’ll even be a little bit more like you, I think, except for that whole undead thing. I’ll be as alive as I am now, and a thousand years from now, I’ll be able to say the same.”
He turned, glanced over his shoulder, and added. “You know, I’m really going to miss you guys.”
Vein saw the man press a button on the wall, and the panel slid back into place, hiding the interior of the building from view. He spun in his follower’s grasp and would have made a dive for the window on the far side, but they’d had a chance to adjust their grips, and they held him back.
“No,” Kali whispered in his ear. “There may be a way, but that isn’t it.”
Vein shook with anger. His sight had glazed with the red, killing bloodlust that threatened just below the surface of his mind, dormant by day and very close to the surface by night. He knew she was right, but he didn’t want to listen. He wanted to bash himself against that window, again and again, until it either shattered, or the force of his blows shook the entire elevator free of the building and sent it plummeting to the earth. They could survive that, if the glass held, and they didn’t slam through the silver mesh on impact.
In the East, still far below the skyline, but rising, the sun began its slow transit. They all felt it, and they knew, even if they managed to calm Vein’s rage, that they would burn, caged like rats, unless they found a way to break out. Far below headlights began rolling down the streets. Lights flickered on, and horns blew. As they hung, awaiting death, San Valencez came to life, unaware of the drama playing out far above — oblivious to the world of night.
SEVENTEEN
Donovan remained pressed to the wall, out of sight. The footsteps drew closer, and then a furtive figure slipped from the alley, staring up at the huge building, as if studying it. He couldn’t help himself; he gasped.
“Amethyst,” he said softly.
She spun, saw him leaning against the wall but didn’t immediately recognize him, and drew something from her pocket. Instinct took over, and Donovan pushed off from the wall, diving and rolling to the side. At the same time, he prepared his defense, cursing himself under his breath. The first thing that came to his hand was the green crystal pendant — a gift from the woman he was preparing himself to defend against. Perfect.
Amethyst drew back her arm, breathed something into the air, and was about to bat it toward him when she stopped. She let out a startled gasp of recognition and pulled back. The cloud spun lazily in the air, and Donovan saw what was about to happen.
He drew the pendant, held it in his palm, breathed a short incantation over its surface, and then, with a flip of his wrist, he let it fly straight toward Amethyst’s face. She wasn’t watching him any longer. Once she’d realized who she was attacking, and stopped her charm, things had gone south for her very quickly. She stared at the hovering cloud, which seemed to be made up of flitting, buzzing insects. She spoke, too low for Donovan to hear, and the cloud wavered, but did not disperse. Instead it spun, coalescing into a solid point at one end and stretching back in a tornado-shaped funnel. The tip of that deadly whirling mass took aim on her face and dove.
Donovan watched, frozen in place by a combination of fascination and horror. There was nothing more that he could do from where he stood, and probably nothing he could have done if he’d been closer on such short notice.
Before the whirling plague could strike, the crystal he’d thrown whipped across the gap separating that whirling darkness from Amethyst’s face. The pendant was an emerald blur. The black gnat-cloud struck it, spread out, whirled together again as if it might burst through, and then — miraculously, dispersed. Amethyst had recovered her senses when the crystal spun into place, and she took control of it without hesitation. Using it as both shield and weapon, she shredded her own backfiring curse until nothing remained but the psychic echo of expended energy.
It was very quiet on the street. Donovan stared at Amethyst, who stared right back. She held the crystal loosely in her hand and he wished, suddenly, that he’d taken the moment’s opportunity the short battle had presented him to reach for something else to defend himself with. He knew the thought was foolish, but he couldn’t understand why she was here, and there were still nagging doubts in his mind about the theft of her crystals.
His mind raced. He had no idea what she might be doing here, but it occurred to him that he’d been very trusting. Over the past several years he’d grown to know her pretty well, but trust was another matter. He really had nothing concrete upon which to base that trust, just intuition, and intuition had failed him in the past.
He thought about the crystals. All the security she’d claimed to have, and yet they’d been stolen easily. No record that could be seen in her crystals. No indication of how the case had been opened or the crystals themselves removed. Was it possible, or had he just bought into her story and been duped? He didn’t have much time to consider all of this before she started walking toward him. The green crystal dangled from her hand, and he thought about how it had dispersed that cloud. He was pleased to know, at least, that when he’d chosen to defend himself with it, it would have worked, but that was small consolation. Amethyst hadn’t been any more aware of who she was attacking than he’d initially been aware of who he was defending against.
“Kind of late for a lady to be out walking the streets,” he said, standing very still.
She must have seen something in his stance. She drew nearer, and she slowed her steps. She didn’t smile. Donovan’s heart slammed in his chest. His thought whirled with incantations and wards, but none of them made it to his lips. She stood about a foot away from him, her head cocked, and her hand balled into a fist and pressed into one hip.
Then she smiled, and she held out the crystal to him.
“What’s the matter, Donovan,” she asked. “Trying to decide if I came here to make a deal with the devil?”
He started to answer, then clapped his mouth shut guiltily and took the crystal pendant. He didn’t fully let down his guard, but he found he could breathe again, and it was a start.
“It occurred to me,” he said.
Amethyst glanced up at the Tefft Complex, soaring high above them into the low hanging clouds. She frowned.
“I was a fool,” she said, turning back to him. “It’s Lance, my apprentice. Here I was thinking myself an amazing teacher, proud of his accomplishments and leaving him in charge of things I should never have relinquished control of for a moment. He was there under my nose all that time, even after the crystals were stolen, and I still didn’t see it.”
