up. I was thinking something else: what an idiot!
For a magic circle to have this much resistance, it had to contain an immense amount of mana. What if the circle broke and we tumbled inside? Didn’t he care about what was trapped in there, something so dangerous its last kill was still burning with magic flame weeks later?
My eyes opened. Something was wrong with my theory of how the magic graffiti worked if it was Demophage who was burning. He was inside a magic circle. What was happening to him had to be the natural outcome of the magic, absent all other influences.
I glared at Vladimir and Leopold. They were arguing, politely, about the details of their little truce, about the rules they would follow. Vladimir looked like he was making progress.
Too bad I had had just about enough of all this shit.
“Perhaps I can let the death of Velasquez go,” the lich said, “and you the Consulate secretary, if you agree your kills today balance those we made in Darkrose’s army?”
Vladimir cocked his head. “That is… acceptable-”
“The hell it is!” I said, squirming against the lich’s grip.
“Dakota-” Vladimir warned, as the lich squeezed and I writhed.
“Nagli for Velasquez,” I said. “Darkrose’s men for Velasquez’s men. Deaths for deaths. Fair enough. But what about life for life? What will you give me for the life I spare?”
“Whose life will you spare?” the lich said.
“Yours,” I said, and I released all my pent-up mana at once.
The head of the Dragon screamed out from behind my neck. The wings burst through the shoulders of my jacket. The tail tore through my rights pants leg and whipped out through the air. And my vines began emerging, from wrist and ankle and through every open hole.
The lich quailed, trying to tighten his grip: but his fingers slowly loosened as my vines inexorably expanded, and then Vladimir dug the blade in and the lich gave up entirely, slowly lowering me to the ground. I kept my eyes narrowed upon him, as much for concentration as anything else. The Dragon was not complete, the four segments were not connected, and without the crash course in advanced skindancing that Arcturus had given me the tattoo would already have disintegrated. This was a bluff, a grand bluff: but the lich did not know that.
“What do you demand?” he said, leaning back from the head of the Dragon, arm still on my collar pro forma, holding his other hand over his heart, where my vines still coiled.
“Free the hostages,” I said.
“No,” he replied.
“I could kill you,” I said, and a rippling growl crackled out of the Dragon.
“ I could kill them,” he said, tightening his grip again. “You only offer one life.”
I scowled. “Then free one hostage. Give me Cinnamon.”
“No,” the lich said. His eyes gleamed at me, obviously pleased, and I started to get scared. What corner was he backing me into? “I will not free the children,” he said. “Without them, I have no leverage. The most I would do is… spare the life of one of the vampires.”
“I don’t want the vampires,” I said. “ I want Cinnamon. ”
“Then you will not mind if both the vampires starve to death,” he said.
My eyes widened. “Yes,” I said. “I mind.”
“Then spare my life,” the lich said, “and you may feed… one of them. A life for a life.”
“Leopold,” Vladimir cautioned. “I can still kill everyone in this room.”
“Do you not see what stands before you?” the lich asked, gesturing at me with his free hand. He no longer resisted my coiling vines; he actually leaned back into them, letting them cradle him, leaning back to appreciate the glowing head of the Dragon. “Frost could probably kill everyone in this room. So could I, or Delancaster, or Iadimus. One of us might survive, but if we fight, it will be a carnival of blood-and all those you hoped to save will surely die.”
Vladimir just stood there, holding his sword. His eyes flickered to mine, then to the lich. I found myself looking between the two of them as well. We were all in agreement; none of us wanted to die, but the lich held the upper hand. A truce was worth a gamble.
I drew in a breath and concentrated, and the Dragon furled its wings and slowly began drawing back into my body. The lich loosened his hand. Vladimir took a half-step back. And then I let the vines go and slid away from the magic circle to stand by Vladimir.
“Guards,” the lich said, gesturing at Scara. “Drag that off. Extract the silver bullets and feed her. This is her mess. She must regain her strength in time to see it cleaned up.”
The guards twitched, unwilling to come out of cover. Vladimir and I glanced at each other warily. The lich raised a shaggy eyebrow at us, openly curious as to what we would do. Finally Vladimir motioned them forward, and two guards carried Scara out.
“Now, choose,” the lich said. “She who left you, or she who took her from you.”
“Actually, I dumped Saffron,” I said. “And Darkrose and I get on fabulously.”
The lich tilted his head slightly. “Such modern ways,” he said. “In the old days she would have killed you for such a betrayal, for fear you would have returned with a stake.”
“Now we just go on Jerry Springer,” I said. “It’s more painful.”
The lich hissed. “Enough delay. Choose.”
I swallowed, and stepped between the cages.
On the one side was Darkrose: stripped out of her catsuit and leggings, wearing nothing but a ragged shift that was little more than a burlap bag. She was drained thin, her black skin crackled and dry like she was covered in burned paper. She lived-at least she breathed-but a normal human would be dead after ten days without water, or half starved without food.
But she looked nowhere near as bad as Saffron. They couldn’t have had her quite as long as Darkrose, no more than a week, but she looked little better than the lich: skin dead white, pulled tight over her bones, cheeks sunken until I could see her skull.
I looked more closely, then recoiled as I saw little white threads creeping over her skin. It was the vampiric fungus: the magical infection that powered vampires and animated zombies. You never normally saw it outside of a microscope. I knew what was happening-I had read Saffron’s paper. Without normal human food, the delicate balance between living human flesh and undead vampire matter inside Saffron had been disrupted, the vampiric fungus was blooming, and she was sliding from daywalker into normal vampire.
Saffron opened her eyes at me, filled with hunger, and I looked away, feeling none of the love I had once felt and all the hate. This was precisely what I had feared would happen if she became a vampire. I glanced at Darkrose’s pitiful form-but who was I kidding?
“I’m so sorry, Darkrose,” I said-and turned back to Saffron.
I stepped to the cage, pulling back my sleeve, and extended my arm to Saffron. At first she didn’t move, but then her brittle hands took it tenderly, and gave me a brief squeeze, as if she knew what this cost me. Slowly, tenderly, she kissed the skin above my hand.
Then her teeth sank in, her eyes closed in bliss, and Saffron took life from my wrist.
Return of the Vampire Queen
There was a sharp pain, a near-orgasmic pleasure, and a terrifying sensation of blood flowing out through my skin, drawn by the suction of her mouth through an orifice that should never have been there, through which blood should never have gone. But beyond all that I felt mana: my own life force, built up in my skin and my body while I had been threatening the lich, just pouring out through this new conduit like a live electric wire.
Seconds later, Saffron ripped her mouth from my wrist, snarling, droplets of blood spraying out over the cage. I collapsed backwards, holding my wrist, as Saffron stood in one explosive motion, arms thrown wide, shattering the bars of the cage so they clattered out across the hall, ringing with the impact wherever they struck like deranged churchbells.
The huge stone weight snapped off its chain and fell upon her. Her arm swung up in a savage motion,
