“But,” I said. When Iadimus said no loss of our lives, I’d thought he meant the Gentry, not vamps in general. “But… prune the house
… Scara blew up her Consulate.”
“Oh, Dakota Frost, you fool,” the lich laughed. “Thinking you can fight with us like we were common street thugs. We are not pugilists; we are strategists. Uncover the cages. ”
The guards at the winches, who had not moved an inch during the battle, now stepped forwards. The golden tassels were pulled; the red shrouds fell. And inside the killing cages I saw Darkrose… and Saffron. Darkrose looked all right behind the bars, just worn and tired; but Saffron looked like… like she had become a vampire.
Her ruddy skin had gone pale, her curvy cheeks had become drawn, and one hand gripped the cage, bony and white. Only her flaming hair had held its color, but had an odd luminous cast to it that made it seem unreal. She raised her head to look at me, eyes pinpricks of light.
“You’re starving her,” I said, choking it off as the lich tightened his grip.
“Yes,” he said, “and we will be killing her, unless you release me.”
“You’ll kill her anyway,” I said, gripping his wrist. It was like a bar of iron, and I concentrated, letting out my breath, murmuring words of strength to protect my throat.
“You don’t know that,” he said, tightening his grip, choking me again. “You do know we’ll kill her-or her companion, or perhaps your daughter- gak! ”
My vines tightened about his chest, and I had the distinct feeling that they had penetrated that chest, that they were curling about his heart. I found the twisting knot rolling underneath the tendrils of my magic and squeezed, and he snarled and choked harder.
“You-so much as-break my daughter’s iPod and I’ll be most irate.”
“You’ll do nothing,” he snarled. “Or she and her friends all die by inches -”
A roaring blast tore through the room, striking my face with the sting of a full backhand mixed in with the hot breath of a dragon. Broken splinters of a wooden door sailed past us and clattered off the wall. Guards began dropping around us, red flowers blossoming in foreheads and chests under a hail of silenced machine gun fire.
Just like that, Iadimus was gone, just gone, and I gripped the arm of the lich tighter as he stumbled back, still suspending me in the air, moving away from the smoke and dust rippling out from a side entrance that had exploded. Secondary explosions and more gunshots echoed through the room, and the remaining guards retreated behind columns and doorways that gave them cover. One ducked out to fire and took a bullet straight to the face. I looked away, squirming in the lich’s grasp, trying to see who was storming through that door. Was it SWAT? Was it the DEI? Was it the remnants of Darkrose’s crew?
No. It was just one man-one werewolf, eyes glowing green and lupine as he darted out of the roiling smoke, silenced machine pistol in one hand burping death as he took cover behind the flaming casket, silvery rapier in the other deflecting crossbow quarrels as he rounded it and moved in, fluid and unstoppable, black body armor deflecting another crossbow as he stepped up to us and placed his rapier against the lich’s throat.
“Hello, Dakota,” said Doctor Yonas Vladimir. “I see you’ve found Cinnamon.”
A Life for a Life
“ What the fuck? ” I said.
“Lords and Ladies of the Gentry, if I may have your attention,” Vladimir said, voice ringing out across the hall. He no longer looked like the crippled math teacher: his thin hair rose like a dark halo, his eyes glowed like twin emeralds, and his body moved with the grace only possessed by werekin. “Forgive my entry without an introduction, but no one living knows me by sight. Except, of course, Sir Leopold-who can tell you all that I am Vlad the Destroyer.”
“Oh, sweet merciless night,” Lord Delancaster said, voice filled with horror.
“You all know my rules,” Vladimir said. His dark body armor gleamed where Kevlar mesh met exotic composites, and night vision goggles and grenades and widgets hung from the ballistic straps crisscrossing his body-armed and armored like a werekin Nick Fury. “I walk alone in secrecy and peace. If either is disturbed, I destroy everyone who has seen my face.” He smiled, and I felt a shiver in the lich’s grip. “You remember, don’t you, Leopold?”
“There is no need for such measures,” the lich whispered, head tilted ever so slightly back from the point of the blade. “We have not disturbed you.”
“Ah, but you have, Leopold,” Vladimir said, glancing past us. “When you attack my friends, you become my enemy.”
“Thank you, Yonas,” I croaked. “But how did you even know-”
The lich laughed. “Oh, you do not know Vlad the Destroyer, Frost,” he said. “He could track a ghost across the steppes of Russia, even before all the toys of this modern age.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Dakota,” Vladimir twisted the blade back and forth, and I could see it was made of bands of two different metals, one steel, the other… silver? “But I would not break cover and destroy a great House just for you. I’m here for Cinnamon.”
“Cinnamon?” the lich asked-then snarled. “That foulmouthed little stray? ”
Vladimir dug the point in. “Never use that word,” he said, smiling up at me, very, very grimly. “She goes by Cinnamon. ”
Scara stirred. I started to speak, but the lich tightened his grip on my throat. Scara rose to her feet. I kicked, seemingly uselessly, but really building up mana to shield my throat. “Vladimir,” I choked out. “Behind-”
Vladimir just kept smiling at me, but his gun moved, just a flickering blur, phut-phut, and Scara went down, screaming, blood spurting from her shattered knee. “You coward,” she roared, fangs fully exposed. “Drop the guns and face me.”
The gun spat again, and Scara tumbled over, bleeding from her hip and arm. “Not likely,” Vladimir said. “No duels, no contests, no facing off in the pit with the rules stacked against me. I am a warrior. I do not fight for machismo or tradition. I only gird my loins to go to war.”
“You have no honor!” Scara snarled, trying to right herself.
“Honor?” Vladimir snarled, shooting her again, knocking her other arm out from beneath her so she faceplanted on the stone floor. “Is it honorable to kidnap a vampire because her lover was too powerful? Is it honorable to burn a young girl alive because she was loyal?”
“Burn to… oh no,” I said, still struggling on the end of the lich’s arm. They’d left Nagli in the Consulate, oblivious, even after they’d booby-trapped it. “You did kill someone in the Consulate-Nagli! She was practically a child, still in college! You murderous bastards! ”
Scara began trying to get up again, and the lich snarled at her. “Stay down, you fool,” he said. “This is Vlad the Destroyer. You are lucky to be alive.”
“You are all lucky to be alive,” Vladimir said softly, digging the point of his blade into the lich’s neck. “Now, Leopold-”
The lich cackled at him. “I will do nothing. By coming here and not killing us, you have proved yourself as impotent as Frost.”
I kicked and writhed, and Vladimir snarled, digging the blade in further..
“Do not tempt me,” Vladimir said. “I will kill even you, Leopold.”
“Yes, but before I break her neck?” the lich said, squeezing harder. Surely he had noticed my shield was up, that any human neck would have already broken? “Before Iadimus cuts the rope on the cages? Before my guards lay their bolts into the heart of the werecat?”
Vladimir’s eyes narrowed. “You will still die-”
“And you will still have lost your objective,” the lich said, cackling softly. “And I will go to my grave knowing I have taken something precious from Vlad the Destroyer.”
Vladimir did not move. “A truce, then,” he said.
The lich’s piranha grin grew wider. “Raising the white flag so soon?”
“Suggesting you lower the witch,” Vladimir said, “before I remove your head.”
The lich shoved me harder against the field of the magic circle, and I went still. He smiled, thinking I’d given
