Midnight's Daughter

Chapter Eight

As I’d expected, the rub came more from Louis-Cesare than Radu. Uncle was smart enough to realize that if the only choice was either to face Drac when he was unprepared or wait for him to gather more followers, the former was infinitely preferable. The only thing we could come up with that was likely to force him to act before he was ready was the prospect of catching both of us together in an undefended area. And that meant a change of venue.

Not surprisingly, Louis-Cesare wasn’t pleased. He didn’t like the idea of Radu leaving the relatively safe confines of MAGIC for his country estate, despite the fact that said house and grounds were a maze of magical traps that Radu had spent years developing. It seemed that every time he invented something new for the Senate, he tested it out at his place. For our purposes, it was perfect. Drac would find us a hell of a lot more prepared than he expected. Louis-Cesare seemed unable to grasp that simple point, however.

“I absolutely forbid it! Gamble with your own life if you must, but not with his!”

“That’s up to Radu to say, don’t you think? Is he your master, or vice versa?”

Radu, who was supervising the loading of a lot of large, smelly cages into a truck, ostentatiously ignored us. He was taking his menagerie of genetic horrors with him, to continue his work from his home lab, and the unusually heavy rainstorm we were getting was making the shift difficult. It seemed the things didn’t like getting wet. Contrary to popular belief, the Mojave does get rain from time to time, only the dry, hard-packed soil doesn’t deal with it well. I hopped over a fast-forming orange red puddle that was leaching onto the concrete as ’Du jabbed at a giant claw with a cattle prod. It had wormed its way through the bars of a cage and snagged one of his assistants. Obviously, dealing with Louis-Cesare was up to me.

“I am trying to ensure his safety,” he was saying fiercely. “Something to which you seem entirely indifferent.”

I gave him a flat look. “Our job is to deal with Drac, not to guard Radu.”

“I will not sacrifice my master to your revenge,” I was informed bluntly.

“This isn’t about revenge! It’s about saving Claire.”

“Then I will not trade Radu’s life for the woman’s. If we can trap Dracula without endangering Radu, well and good. If not—”

“You’d see him go free?” I stared at him, but his face was utterly implacable. He meant it. The stubborn, condescending, self-important son of a bitch actually meant it. And this was the guy Mircea had sent along to help me! I reined in the impulse to connect Louis-Cesare’s head with the driveway a few times and smiled. “Okay. Let’s go over it again,” I said brightly.

“I have heard more than enough,” was the grim reply. “You are reckless, and a danger to yourself and everyone near you. How—”

“I’m reckless? Who almost got us killed on the plane?”

“—you have survived this long I do not know, but I will not allow you to commit suicide and take Lord Radu with you! Other plans will be made. You will be informed of them when necessary.” He turned in Uncle’s direction and actually started to walk away.

“Hey!” I grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be his rain poncho. “Did I say we were done here?”

The temperature of the surrounding air skyrocketed. “I would advise you to remove your hand, dhampir, while it remains attached to your body.”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”

Blue eyes narrowed dangerously. “And what does that mean?”

“It means you have a habit of violating my personal space. Tell me, is that a French thing, or do you just like touching me?”

Blood moved in his face, spreading over his cheeks before draining away and deserting them. “You believe you can say anything you wish to me, and I have no choice but to accept it because of your father.”

I blinked in surprise. I’d used that line on Marlowe, but only as a taunt. I didn’t make a habit of hiding behind Daddy’s reputation. I had one of my own, and there were damn few vamps who forgot it.

“Mircea gets me into a lot more trouble than he’s ever gotten me out of,” I said tersely. “Current situation included. The only reason he didn’t let you stake me in New York was because his ass is in the fire and I’m expected to pull it out. Again.”

“You understand nothing!” Louis-Cesare radiated anger like heat. “I have been told a dozen times today that I was mad to assault you in front of him, mad to think that my opinions might stand against those of his only true child, his only living flesh!”

I choked, caught halfway between a laugh and a curse. “Someone’s been pulling your leg, big-time.” Louis-Cesare looked confused. “They’ve been making a joke at your expense,” I clarified. “Believe me, the only value I hold for Mircea is whatever I can do for him. I’m another weapon in his arsenal, nothing more, and the whole vamp community knows it.”

“And what would you know of the ‘community’?” Louis-Cesare demanded. “When did you ever live among us, Dorina? You choose to stay on the fringes of our society so that you may pick off the weak, but you were never part of it!”

Bitterness shivered through me like a chill. “Yeah, I choose. Gee, I wonder why that is. Maybe because every time I get anywhere near it, someone tries to kill me! Unlike you.” I looked him up and down, with a sneer I didn’t bother to hide. “Basarab line with no taint of bad blood, Senate member, dueling champ. You’re a bloody vamp hero, Louis! What would you know of my life?”

“More than you do of mine, it would seem.” Louis-Cesare’s eyes burned blue fire. “For centuries, my own master refused to have anything to do with me. I was known as the outcast, the one our famous line wanted no part of. While you, a dhampir with the blood of our people still dripping from your hands, were welcomed with open arms! You laugh at them, despise them, threaten to kill them, time and again, and still they want you. Yet every advance I make is thrown back in my face!”

I blinked at him. The fact that I’d never heard of Radu’s offspring suddenly made more sense. “But why spurn you?” Louis-Cesare was the perfect scion, the gallant son whose accomplishments might just cover the blots on the family page. Like Drac. Like me.

His mouth twisted bitterly. “Ask your father if you wish to know. Or Lord Radu. Perhaps they will tell you the truth.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Why? Why ask me anything?” he demanded savagely. “I am merely tolerated for the moment because the Senate is desperate. Too many of their members have already been lost to the war, and others may be so before long. Now they need strength, but when the war ends… things will be as they were.”

I frowned. That didn’t sound like Mircea. Betray him and he’d cut your balls off and feed them to you, but I’d never seen him turn his back on an ally. I doubted very much that I was going to see it now. “When we get through this, I’ll talk to Mircea,” I began, wondering why I bothered.

I stopped because Louis-Cesare was going purple. “I do not need your pity!” He stepped closer, until his body was actually touching mine, but I didn’t call him on it. He’d been so controlled, so smugly superior, in the car; it was good to see some of the arrogance bleed away into a more honest emotion. Nobody else seemed to notice how much of it he carried around, but I knew anger. On most people it was a shallow, washed-out emotion, limp and tepid. On Louis-Cesare it was incandescent.

“What do you need?” It slipped out before I could catch it.

Time froze for a long, breathless minute. Then Louis-Cesare’s eyes flooded silver, melting into white-hot heat. I was so startled by the transformation that it took me a moment to realize that he didn’t look aroused; he looked livid.

“There is only one service you provide to my kind,” he said in a savage undertone. “When I am ready for it, I will let you know.”

It was like a punch to the stomach, a clean blow that takes the wind right out of you. I honestly had no idea what to say. Then an arm slipped around my neck, saving me the trouble by almost crushing my windpipe.

I couldn’t believe anyone had actually managed to sneak up on me; then I heard Marlowe’s voice and understood. The damn vamp moved as quietly as smoke—it was one of many things that made him so deadly. “Have more care, Louis-Cesare. Remember what you’re dealing with.”

Louis-Cesare shot him a purely vicious look. “Release her! This is a family discussion.”

“Family?” Marlowe didn’t bother to hide his disgust. “You’re beginning to sound like—”

I elbowed Marlowe painfully in the groin, then skipped back out of reach. “I don’t know what your deal is,” I told Louis-Cesare furiously, resisting the urge to rub my abused throat, “but you take it up with Radu. This was as much his idea as mine, and he thinks it’ll work. You want to tell your master he’s a fool, you go right ahead. Let me know how that goes, if you survive.”

Louis-Cesare had clamped a hand around Marlowe’s bicep, restraining the enraged vamp, but his eyes were on me. “We are not finished.”

Perverse bastard—he’d been the one walking away a moment before. “Oh, I really think we are,” I said, and splashed toward the garage.

I was halfway hoping he’d follow me, maybe give me an excuse to run over him. But when I drove out in that year’s Jaguar—so new the leather smell hadn’t even worn off yet—he was still standing in the rain, talking with an angry-looking Marlowe. I stopped by Radu, who was giving his battered assistant a lecture on keeping proper distance.

“Your son is a maniac,” I informed him.

’Du sighed. “What now?”

“He was raving about not being welcome in the family.”

Radu winced. “Not that again!”

“It isn’t true?”

“Of course not! We had to keep him at a distance initially, of course, but that’s all over with now.”

“What’s all over with?”

“Oh, that whole time-change thing,” Radu said vaguely, as if I should already know whatever the hell he was talking about.

“What time-change thing?”

“Oh, you know. Before, when that Gypsy cursed him.”

“Louis-Cesare is cursed?”

“Well, not now,” Radu said, as if he thought I might be a little slow. “In the other time stream. The one Mircea altered.”

“Wait a minute. Mircea altered time?”

“Really, Dory, if you’d keep up with the family, you’d know these things.”

“Humor me.”

“Originally, Louis-Cesare was cursed, not made,” Radu said with exaggerated patience. “Some Gypsy became annoyed with him about something and… I don’t remember the details. Anyway, after the time change, I ended up being the one who made him a vampire. But we had to keep everything else as close to the way it had been as possible or risk altering the present. And that included me not being there for Louis-Cesare, because of course I hadn’t been before, since I didn’t even know him.” Radu looked at me petulantly. “I explained all this to him, you know.”

I blinked. “As coherently as you just did for me?”

“Naturally! Not that it seemed to make a difference.”

“’Du,” I said slowly, “there’s the teeniest chance that he doesn’t believe you.”

In a positive fugue of gestures, Radu rolled his eyes, shook his head and sighed. “Never have children, Dory. They are no end of trouble.”

“I’m a dhampir,” I said tightly. “We can’t reproduce.”

“Well, that’s all right, then.” Radu waved it away.

“I’m going to spread some rumors about our destination in Vegas,” I said, changing the subject before I was tempted to strangle him and save Drac the trouble. “They’ll probably take a while to get around, but there’re no guarantees. Be careful on the way there. I’ll give you a few hours to get under way before I mention anything.”

“Kit has arranged an escort for us.” He glanced back to where the boys were talking. “Try not to bait Louis-Cesare, Dory. He is… somewhat confused at the moment.”

“That would make two of us.” Mircea was going to have some explaining to do, the next time I saw him.

“Try to understand, my dear. He doesn’t know where you fit in. You’re a dhampir, which rather puts you beyond the pale in his way of thinking, but you’re also Mircea’s daughter and therefore someone to whom he owes a degree of esteem. He doesn’t understand that you aren’t serious when you tease him. He interprets it as a lack of respect.”

“Then he’s right on the money,” I said, and floored it.

“I don’t think you understand my position,” I said, signaling the bartender for another drink. The guy was human, yet he didn’t so much as blink at the fact that I was talking to a three-foot-tall gnome with a foot-long nose, beady purple eyes and ears that were growing a forest of bushy white hair long enough to braid. It matched his eyebrows and the snowy mop on his head, but the real stunner was the beard. It was pure silver and almost as long as he was tall. I’d seen him tuck it into his belt before, to keep from tripping, but tonight it flowed free, like a river down his chest. It was an oddly beautiful feature on an otherwise unprepossessing body, and always made me smile.

Benny was a fairly standard Skogstroll, or forest troll, and this was Vegas, land of the strange. But I was still surprised at the total lack of interest everyone was showing. Things had changed a bit since I’d been here.

We weren’t in a demon bar tucked away on a backstreet, but in a poolside lounge at Caesars. I’d been told at his shop that I’d find Benny here, and sure enough, he’d been belting back margaritas for a while, judging by the bleary-eyed look he turned on me. “I get it, all right?” he said, holding up a gnarled hand to keep me from repeating myself. “You got a tough assignment and you need something with more kick than the law allows. But I’m telling you, I got nothing.”

“You always say that.” I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I needed to restock, and it didn’t seem likely that the Senate was going to help me out. Especially since Mircea wanted Drac trapped, not dead, and none of the things I had in mind were the type you walked away from.

“Only this time, it ain’t no bargaining tactic. There’s this war happening, you know? My inventory was raided by the Senate—they said to confiscate contraband.” Benny accepted another drink from a waiter, whose eyes never quite managed to focus, and licked the rim. “And right after that, the damn black mages hit me for what was left. Don’t nobody understand the concept of paying for nothing no more.”

“Come on, Benny. I know you. You never have everything at the shop.”

“And now I ain’t got nothing nowhere else, neither.” He sighed and patted my hand. “You been a good customer, Dory, and you know me. I’ve always played straight with you, right? But it’s the times we’re living in. Word is, the Senate is vulnerable and its control is slipping. Who knows what’s coming? Nobody, that’s who. So they all want protection, don’t they? A little something extra in case things start to implode. Truth is, my inventory was getting pretty thin even before the raids. And now…” He shook his head. “I got nothing.”

A harassed-looking mother walked by the bar, little girl in tow with a sno-cone clutched tightly in one fist. The girl’s bright blue lips shaped a startled “oh” of astonishment as she caught sight of Benny, who dropped her a friendly wink. “Mommy! Look at the elf!”

“Don’t stare, Melissa! And don’t call people names!” I looked at Benny as the little girl was towed away, still protesting that she wanted to say hello to the “nice elf.” “I wouldn’t call an Occultus charm nothing, Benny,” I observed mildly. They were expensive items used to ensure that anyone who didn’t already know what someone looked like would see only a projected image. The exception was young children, whose brains hadn’t yet formed the preconceived ideas about the way the world ought to work that the charm exploited.

He shrugged, unapologetic. Benny was like most of his kind when it came to turning a buck. He’d sell his own mother—who had, after all, tried to eat him—if he thought he’d get a good price. Problem was, he didn’t think I had the funds for the no-doubt completely over-inflated prices he was getting these days. Most of the time, he’d have been right. But not today.

“Well, that’s a shame.” I casually placed my shiny yellow marble on the surface of the bar, next to his collection of colorful paper umbrellas. “You know I’d prefer to deal with you, but I guess I’ll have to go somewhere else.”

His eyes fixed on the small orb and he slowly set his drink back down. “Come to think of it, Dory, I might have a few special items put away.”

A little over half an hour later, we pulled up outside a large warehouse. “A few items?” I asked as we climbed out of the Jag.

Benny shrugged and struggled with a heavy lock on the thick metal door. “I’ve had this place for years. Usually, I keep it at least half-full. Right now, well”—he pulled back the sliding door—“take a look.”

A large, echoing space greeted us. Empty pallets were scattered about, along with a lot of crushed cardboard boxes and a rusty forklift. The overhead lights flickered on reluctantly, and I noticed what looked like a small office in back. “This way,” Benny said, picking a path through the trash. “Got a shipment in a couple days ago, and lucky for you, nobody’s been by to rob me yet.”

“Why don’t you move your inventory somewhere they can’t find it?”

“If I leave some interesting stuff lying around, I stay up and running and don’t get dead.” Benny’s booming voice bounced off the walls. “War isn’t a time to have people start looking at you as expendable. The Senate knows I got contacts they don’t. That’s what comes of trying to put craftsmen out of business for a couple hundred years—they tend not to want to do business when you get yourself in a jam.”

After disarming a few dozen protection wards, Benny flipped on the fluorescents in the claustrophobic office and squeezed around the side of a desk even messier than mine. I stayed back a few feet, in case any of the towering piles decided to fall, and waited. “But I wasn’t shooting you a line earlier. My selection ain’t what it used to be.” Out of his old metal desk he pulled a small briefcase. There was a wait while more spells were disarmed, and then the lock stuck. When he finally got it open, I had a hard time keeping a suitable poker face while eyeing the stuff inside. Benny waggled a shaggy eyebrow at me. “Well, Dory. Can we do business or what?”

I bent over for a better look, making sure a few of the items were what I thought they were, and barely kept from grinning like a fiend. Oh, yeah. I really thought we could.

Ten minutes later, I had four disrupters with the power of about twenty human grenades each, and a top-of-the-line morphing potion. The latter was a yellow glop that performed a glamour even on nonmages like me. Spread it over your face and within minutes you could look like virtually anyone. It tended to break me out, but there were lots worse things than a bad case of acne, and with Drac on my back, I needed all the help I could get.

Benny and I were dickering over whether four or five disorienting spheres—which made you either very dizzy (demons), forget why you were fighting (vamps) or pass out (humans)—should complete the deal when a faint whiff of ozone suddenly replaced the dry tang of the desert. I hit the ground and the next moment, the glass windows that composed the top half of three of the office walls shattered inward, and a wave of force slammed Benny against the metal back wall, reducing his oversized head to so much jelly. I started to move about the same time that the glass shards hit the stained carpet squares.

I grabbed the case from where it had been knocked to the floor by one of Benny’s thrashing arms, and hopped out a now missing window on the far side of the room. I threw an expensive disorienting sphere behind me as I left the office, since I was now in possession of twelve of them, and took a second to glance about. The office had obviously been an afterthought, perched near the back exit by someone who decided that managers should have a little privacy. It was not near enough, however. I dove behind a bunch of empty crates and wondered if my extensive karmic debt was about to be called in. A foot away, several more crates and half the wall exploded as the giant fist that wasn’t there slammed into them.

Have I mentioned that, sometimes, I really hate magic? The problem was that I didn’t have a full warehouse offering plenty of cover—the sad state of Benny’s business had seen to that. Since I doubted my ability to survive a blow from whatever was attacking me, the dozen yards to the back door may as well have been a thousand, especially since I strongly suspected that I’d find a welcoming committee waiting outside. Even if I made it in one piece, I wouldn’t remain that way for long.

And again I smelled it, a faint flicker of ozone, like the first lick of an approaching storm. I told myself I was imagining things. It had rained lately, after all. But, slicked with sweat, I froze in the darkness, muscles locked and singing with strain as icy panic gnawed at my spine.

Another smash of crates, which was close enough to send splinters into my boots, brought up my other small problem: I might not be able to move, but I also couldn’t stay where I was. My usual choice when backed into a corner is to attack everything in sight, but since there was nothing in sight, I decided I might have to try something else. The trashing of Benny’s office had blown out the lights, so the only illumination was the dim starlight filtered through some grimy windows near the ceiling. Acting on the hope that whoever was out there couldn’t see me any better than I could see them, I backed away from the exit toward the forklift I’d noticed earlier.

I kept near to the wall as the area closer to the door was systematically wrecked. One nice thing about all the noise, I didn’t have to bother being quiet. I finally made it to the metal monster and climbed aboard. I was not, of course, going to try to drive it. Forklifts weren’t likely to be able to outrun even a fit human, and if it was mages with magically enhanced speed, weres or vamps after me, I’d really be toast. It would, however, provide a nice distraction if I could get it to work. I put a couple of Benny’s disruptors on the floorboard, emptied the rest of the case’s contents into my new coat’s roomy pockets, started the engine and jumped out of the way.

When the invisible hand smashed the thing to bits a few seconds later, I was already halfway across the floor running full out for the front door. I’m as fast as all but the oldest vamps when I want to be, and knowing what would happen when the disruptors went off gave me the best incentive I’d had in a long time to break speed records. I was still inside the building when the explosion came, but just barely. The blast picked me up and threw me against the sliding door, which buckled and then tore off its track. The crumpled metal sheet and I went for a wild ride across the parking lot, striking sparks off the pavement, skidded past a group of dark figures and careened into an SUV.

I rolled underneath the chassis of the vehicle but didn’t stay there long. A set of powerful hands grabbed me and hauled me out the other side, about the same time that pieces of the warehouse began to rain down all around us. So much for having to worry about disposing of Benny’s body, I thought, as I brought a knee up to connect with my captor’s groin. He let out a curse, which I barely heard, being temporarily deaf from the blast, but a flaming crate landed almost on top of us at the same moment and I got a glimpse of his face. Uh-oh.

“Dor-i-na.” The syllables were like three strokes of a lash. “I have been looking for you.”

I swallowed and gave a sickly smile. Ashes and fire continued falling all around us, like a vision straight out of hell, but I barely noticed. Who cares about the setting when you’re already looking at the devil? “Uncle.”