calls breaking on him like waves. He yanked his father’s quarrel from the frame and slammed the door. The pursuing screams instantly ceased.
“Way to go!” Demascus told Jaul. The hunting horde caught on the other side would find it difficult to open a portal reduced to a childish scrawl on wall and wainscoting. The deva retrieved his dropped sword. The vampire’s shockingly strong kick had winded him, but that didn’t matter. The scales were balanced again. Without her horde, she could be beaten. He’d beat her before, in his own house, with just Riltana to help him.
“Give up!” he told her. The red-nailed woman hadn’t moved. Demascus imagined he detected concern lining her brow. But she wasn’t stupid; she must realize that without her army of minion bloodsuckers, she was unlikely to beat the four of them fresh from rest.
“What?” said Jaul. “You’re going to let her survive? We should take her down. She’s all alone!” The young man brandished one of his scarlet knives, making slashing motions in the air.
The woman said, “Come try me, child,” and stared across the intervening space at Chant’s son with naked appetite.
Jaul blanched, then looked at Demascus, as if the deva would side with him. Demascus suppressed a sigh. If Jaul didn’t learn to temper his emotions, he’d not live to see his twentieth year.
“No,” said Demascus. “I’d prefer House Norjah as an ally, not a foe. This is not our fight. And I want to see what Norjah knows about a friend of mine who lured Riltana there …”
“But-”
“Jaul, stow your sails. It’s up to this harpy whether she wants to survive or make a deal with us.” The windsoul swung around to regard their foe across the room.
The vampire’s snarl gradually smoothed away. “You think you could stop me from leaving if I wished? I can become smoke, or mist, or a flock of bats.” Though she no longer displayed her teeth, her eyes still flashed death.
“Maybe you could,” said Demascus. “But listen. You’ve been hunting down this painting for a while. If you flee now, you’ll have failed for a second time. You have a chance to come away from this with some measure of success-we’ll give back the painting we have, if you intercede for us with your house.”
The woman sneered. “I don’t make decisions for House Norjah. Lord Kasdrian does … for now. And he is unlikely to deal fairly with those who’ve thieved from him. But …” The woman rubbed her chin. “Perhaps I
“Rune Court?” said Chant. “What’s that? Wait, is that something to do with the Twisted Rune?”
Demascus had never heard of either. But he didn’t much care what they were, unless they could sway Kasdrian. The vampire gave the pawnbroker only a leering smile in answer. He shoved his swords into his belt. “Very well, Lady Ascension, let’s …”
A sound he realized he’d been hearing for a little while finally vaulted into his consciousness. A sort of low, thrumming noise. “Anyone hear that?” he said.
Lady Ascension glanced at the tunnel floor.
“I do. The webs are vibrating. The Demonweb has noticed we are not drow …”
Everyone looked down. The interweaving fibers in the passage were moving! Distorting, sliding, and swelling, as if many things were pushing through the layers into the tunnel.
“Retreat!” she yelled. “To the entrance.” Jaul needed no prompting-he’d started moving while everyone else looked down. Chant and Riltana jumped, but wasted no breath asking for explanations. Demascus followed, glancing over his shoulder.
Lady Ascension thrashed in place, as if caught in a spider web. The flooring around her feet bubbled up, disgorging hundreds of many legged ebony spiders that swarmed the vampire to her waist. Ascension’s form pulsed between pale skin and formless smoke. Each time her body lost definition, it was hauled back to solidity by some unseen force. A force, Demascus suddenly recognized at the core of his being, which was divine. It was the unconscious regard of Lolth herself, reacting to a transgression in her world web!
Lady Ascension was lost. As they soon would be, too.
The deva didn’t cry warning to the others already sprinting to the portal. Yelling would only draw attention and guarantee their doom. They were farther ahead and might make it to the exit, because they hadn’t been delayed by watching a vampire be destroyed with poisonous spiders. It was
Then web walls split open on either side, disgorging a fresh flood of eight-limbed horror.
He sprinted through it. A forest of lofting web strands glittered in the corners of his eye. Lords of light! Ignore the contracting tunnel. Forget the spiders. Just go. You’re a stone cast from a catapult, tearing through sheet after sheet of gauzy sails, to finally crash through-
Demascus shot out of the orange haze of the exit portal into a dim courtyard filled with dusty debris. A discontinuity he hadn’t noticed on entering the Demonweb momentarily staggered his footing. Instead of skidding to a graceful stop, his toes caught on a piece of flooring jutting through the dust. He fell on his face. His palms and cheek stung with abrasion from the slide. His legs quivered with dull exhaustion. But no webs had caught him, nor had he been bitten. Lying face down on the floor with just some scrapes and aches, he counted himself lucky beyond words. He turned his head to the side and saw a familiar pair of boots.
Riltana’s cheerful voice said, “See, Chant? I don’t make this stuff up. Can you imagine a
House Norjah was rooted in Airspur’s steep, south-facing cliffs. It enjoyed an unobstructed view of the Throne of Majesty and, beyond that, the northern cliff line. The structure’s noble veneer gave nothing away; Demascus doubted the neighbors suspected the place hosted a nest of vampires. A nest somewhat depleted, of course; he wondered what portion of Norjah’s strength was represented by the horde trapped in the shadow tower dimension?
Demascus tugged the bell pull, a chain ending in a brass wolf-head sculpture. A sound distinctly unlike a bell thudded through the structure of the manor. The storm had lessened its fury, but rain still drizzled down from the sky. If they were forced to flee back outside, would the clouds give vampire pursuers enough shade to hunt their quarry without fear of burning up?
“We can still turn around and leave, you know,” said Riltana, eyeing the closed door. “The storm’s almost spent. With the Demonweb roused against intruders, we can’t follow the drow and oni to their destination; shouldn’t we head out to the island where Queen Arathane told us to go? I mean, really, this is just a sideline-”
“A sideline trying to kill us!” said Chant.
“Not trying to kill
“Exactly,” said Demascus. “This situation needs to be dealt with. I don’t want to be ambushed again while I’m investigating a secret drow incursion of Akanul.” And, he didn’t say, find out how Madri is mixed up with House Norjah. Why’d Madri send Riltana here? How did Madri even know enough about Riltana’s love life to send her after the painting of Queen Cyndra? And just what was Madri, a ghost? Someone pretending to be her? He suspected she was indeed the real deal, if reduced to a vengeful spirit bent on stalking him. And pulling strings behind the scenes to yank the rug out from under him so he would fall and never get back up. Just like I did when I killed her, he thought.
“Last time I was here,” said Riltana, “I entered through the servant’s quarters.”
“We’re not here to sneak in,” he said. He tugged the bell pull again.
After a span of several moments, something clicked and the door opened.
Behind it stood a genasi hardly older than Jaul.
“Greetings. I am Ethred Norjah. What’s your business?” The genasi was dressed in the livery of a manservant, but introduced himself as a family member.
How does that work? wondered Demascus. Normally noble sons and daughters weren’t pressed into service