Death's Mistress

Page 23

His hands jerked away like they’d been burned, and he stopped, dead still.
I did, too, as a completely new idea occurred. “Sit down,” I told Raymond, who obligingly buckled his knees and parked his tush on the edge of the roof. His legs swung free over the courtyard below like a little boy’s. A little headless boy coated in gore, but still.
There are other explanations, I told myself. He could have stopped feeling me up once he’d figured out who I was; he could have sat down because he was weak from blood loss. I might be totally misreading this.
“Raise your right arm if you can hear me,” I said, and the arm obligingly shot up.
Or maybe not.
I patted down my borrowed jacket, but found only change, some matches and half a pack of cigarettes. But Ray had a cell phone in his pocket, although he didn’t seem inclined to give it up. “What?” I asked, slapping his hands. “It’s not like you can use it.”
He gave me the finger.
I ignored him and dialed a number that doesn’t show up in the phone book. It took me a minute to get through because there was some sort of party going on. And because the staff hates me.
“Senator Mircea Basarab,” I repeated for the fourth time, several minutes later.
“Lord Mircea cannot be disturbed,” yet another supercilious voice informed me. “Might I take a message?”
“Yes. You can tell him that his daughter’s on the phone. And if he doesn’t take my call, I’m going to dump that corpse he wanted in the river.”
There was some murmuring in the background, but no answer. Vamp #4 hadn’t hung up, though. I could hear party noises: music, laughter and the muted chime of fine crystal. And then a voice that managed to be more beautiful than all three.
“Dorina, are you all right?”
It was unfair what vampires could do with intonation, especially that one. Warmth, concern, love—it was all there in one short sentence, and it was all a lie. He was in a good mood because he thought I had Ray. He was going to be a little less amused when he discovered my part didn’t talk.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, my voice sounding harsh in my ears.
“This isn’t one of the numbers we have on file for you.”
“Yeah, well, there’s been a snag.”
“Do you require assistance?”
“I require answers. It seems there’s a few things even I don’t know about vamps.”
“Such as?”
“Say there’s a fifth-level master who’s lost his head—”
“I assume you mean that literally,” was the dry response.
“—and say that said appendage is no longer in the immediate area—”
“It’s missing?”
“I’ll be glad to give you a play-by-play later! Right now, I need to know why a headless body would continue to hear and obey commands.”
“It wouldn’t.” The sounds of the party faded, so I assumed he’d moved somewhere more secure for this conversation. Good. He might actually plan to cough up a few facts for a change.
“Yeah, well, empirical evidence would suggest otherwise.”
There was silence for a moment, while he debated it. I doubted he felt any shame about siring a monster who regularly went around killing his kind, but only because that particular emotion wasn’t in his repertoire. But he nonetheless avoided telling me any facts that might make my job easier. He was probably afraid that I’d use them against him someday.
Smart man.
“A vampire’s body is connected on the physical plane like a human’s,” he finally told me. “But we also have a metaphysical connection to our corporeal form that is not easily severed.”
“So, metaphysically speaking, he still has a head?”
“Yes. Its sensory perceptions are dulled, of course, and will rapidly become more so. But for a time, our limbs can move and carry out commands even when detached from—”
“I know that.” I should; I’d been attacked by enough hacked-off body parts through the years. “I need to know if the brain can send more than just signals to muscle groups. Can it transmit information—like where it is?”
“That is what I am attempting to tell you,” Mircea said, sounding faintly annoyed. No vamp ever dared interrupt him like that. I was such a trial. “The metaphysical link becomes strained without the physical to reinforce it. Eventually, it will fade altogether, usually in about a week at that power level—”
“I know that, too! I just want to know if it can draw me a freaking map!”
“—with the higher brain functions being the first casualty.”
Shit. “So no map.”
“At that level, I am surprised he is mobile. However, he may yet be of use. The connection will be stronger the closer the severed parts are to each other. The body should therefore act somewhat like a Geiger counter, telling you by its strength and coordination how close you are to your goal.”
“So, the more energetic the closer, the more sluggish the farther away?”
“Essentially. How animated is it?”
I glanced down at Ray, who had confiscated the cigarettes. He had somehow managed to light one without barbecuing himself, and now he was smoking it—through the hole in his neck. I understood the need for a nerve settler, but still…
“Pretty animated.”
“Then the missing item remains in Manhattan. Give me your location. I will have a search team join you.”
I didn’t reply, because three vampires had entered the courtyard and were looking around. They weren’t Ray’s—I could feel the energy they generated from here, which meant that they were masters. Even worse, at least two of them were Hounds.
The two in front were scenting the air, mouths open, looking almost comically like their nickname for a moment. But there was nothing funny about it. Hounds—vamps with an almost uncanny sense of smell—were one of the few creatures who might have a chance at tracking Louis-Cesare through the scentscape of a city.
Or of picking up the trail of Ray’s other half.
Almost as though he’d heard me, the lead vamp lifted his head and sniffed, deep. A second later, bright black eyes were staring directly into my own. “Dorina?” Mircea’s voice was a static tickle in my ear.
“No time.”
“What is it?”
“Hounds.” I snapped the phone shut and towed Ray across the roof. The other side overlooked the street, which was empty but wouldn’t stay that way for long. And by the time I maneuvered a stumbling vampire down three flights of steps, they’d be on us.
It looked like we were going to find out about that abuse thing, after all.
I waited until I saw them emerge from the club and vanish into our building. They should have left someone in the street, maybe several someones. But there were only three of them, and they had to know by now what I was.
Occasionally those old legends came in handy.
“Uh, Ray? The next step’s kind of steep,” I said, and pushed him off the roof.
He landed on the top of an ancient tan Impala parked along the curb, shattering a window and punching a hole in the top with one leg. That was lucky because I didn’t have time to break in properly. I landed hard on the sidewalk beside him, suppressed a groan when my ankle twisted, stumbled over to the car and yanked him out.
I looked up to see three furious faces glaring down at us from the roofline. They prepared to jump as Ray rolled off the top and began desperately trying to get the door on his side open. I reached in through the hole and popped the lock on mine, and was about to do the same for him when he busted out the window and slithered through the forest of shards.
Each to his own.
I wasn’t exactly unskilled in the fine art of carjacking, even under pressure. But that was with proper tools. I’d brought them along, just in case, but they were in the duffel along with everything else. I mentally added another tick beside Louis-Cesare’s debt as I feverishly worked to get the car started.
A bullet drilled into the seat just beside my left ear. I pulled my Glock, slammed another clip home and pressed it into Ray’s shaking hands. “Try not to shoot me or the car,” I told him, and crawled under the dashboard.
The vamps must have landed in a V formation around the car, because the bullets came from three directions at once. Ray returned fire wildly, and from the sound of things, he killed a bag of trash, the windshield of a car across the road and the streetlight overhead. I doubt he so much as winged the vamps, but they nonetheless backed off, waiting for him to run out of ammo. Bullets might not kill them, but no one likes getting shot. And I guess they didn’t think we were going anywhere.
It was a point of view I was starting to share, as I struggled to strip wires without the proper tools and without electrocuting myself. Then Ray started kicking me. I glanced up and saw him miming needing another clip. I shook my head. “They’re in the damn duffel!”
He kicked me again, just to be an ass, then began chucking things out of the hole in the roof. The car must have served as one of Chinatown’s infamous tailgate stores during the day, because the back held several cases of knockoff DVDs, fake Gucci handbags and a big box of glass bongs. Ray threw it all, as well as a large portion of the backseat, but it wasn’t enough. A vampire’s fist smashed through the windshield and grabbed him.
The vamp tried to pull Ray through the shattered window, but I grabbed his waistband and pulled back. Ray’s stylish khakis strained and then split down the middle like stripper wear, leaving each of us holding a leg and him in a pair of red satin boxers with Feeling Lucky? emblazoned across the crotch. “Not really,” I said, and punched the vamp in the face.
He staggered back, but the two others had figured out that we were out of ammo—of all kinds—and rushed forward. One of them reached through the hole in the top and grabbed Ray, by the arm this time. That left me struggling one-handed to break the lock on the steering column—with a knife, no less—while holding on to Ray by one hairy leg.