Death's Mistress

Page 25

He snatched it back and wrote PORTAL over the top in bold black letters.
“That doesn’t help! If I stop, they’ll shoot us before we get anywhere near it!” Not to mention that portals give me the creeps, and that’s even when I knew where they went.
Ray shook a fist at me and stabbed the spot, repeatedly. If he’d had a head, he’d have been screaming it off. “I get it!” I told him, stabbing back with my finger. “But I can’t stop, and cars don’t go through portals!”
We were rammed again before he could respond, and the pen in his hand went flying. But he really didn’t need it. I didn’t know what our odds were of surviving the portal, but they had to be better than staying here.
“You better be right about this,” I told him, and swerved hard to the left.
There aren’t many true dead ends in Manhattan, but this one qualified. On either side were tall buildings and narrow sidewalks, and in front, only more of the same. There was a walkway for pedestrians that cut through to another street, but it didn’t look wide enough for the car. And then it didn’t matter, because Ray wrenched the wheel toward the plywood-covered front of a restaurant.
We hit going about forty, which doesn’t sound like a lot unless you’re plowing into a wall of wood. The plywood front was apparently real enough, because it splintered and flew everywhere. As did glass, brick and drywall as we hit something fairly substantial on the other side. But there must have been an active portal in there somewhere, because I felt the usual nauseating drop as it caught us.
I’d never heard of portals being approved for vehicular use, and now I knew why. There was suddenly no road anymore, no up or down, no anything but a rushing slur of color and noise and out-of-control momentum. We were tossed down its long gullet, twisted violently around and then hurled out onto a quiet, tree-shaded street. Upside down.
We hit the ground hard, smashing in what was left of the roof and shattering the remaining windows, before flipping twice. Then something caught on the asphalt, slinging us sideways toward the curb—and the very large, very hard-looking tree just beyond it. I couldn’t do anything—the engine had died, and anyway, there was no time. I braced for impact.
It didn’t come. Instead, we rode a wave of sparks toward the side of the road, with various metal bits cutting deep gouges into the street. They slowed our momentum somewhat, but we still hit the curb hard enough to tip us over onto one side. We scraped along the gutter like that until the car finally came to a halt. It teetered on the edge for a long moment, while deciding whether to give up the ghost or not. Then it gave a metallic sort of whine and slowly fell back onto all four tires.
I clutched the steering wheel with nerveless hands, wondering why I wasn’t in a thousand pieces, while the car bounced up and down like a boat on rough seas. I finally swallowed and glanced to the side, to see Ray clinging to the seat next to me. He was clutching it backward, with a leg wrapped around one side, and vibrating from missing head to toe.
“I told you to buckle up,” I said shakily.
He’d have probably flipped me off, but that would have required moving, and he and the seat appeared to be welded into one entity. That was a problem, because we weren’t out of the woods yet. If we could use the portal, so could the vamps, as soon as they figured out it was there. And that wouldn’t take them long, since there weren’t too many ways we could have vanished into thin air.
“Come on, Ray.” I tugged at him, but he was having none of it. He was clinging to the seat like it was a lifeline, his fingers buried deep into the leather cushion. “You know we can’t stay here!”
Nothing.
I tried pulling his fingers out of the seat manually, but as soon as I let go of one, plop, back in the seat it went. “It’s like a roller coaster, Ray. If you don’t get out, they make you go again.”
That did it. He scrambled out of the wreckage, but then the portal activated, and I had to drag him back in. There was no way the car was going to start, or drive if it did. But I turned the ignition anyway, because it was even less likely that we were going to outrun a group of masters on foot.
Unbelievably, the engine caught. I gave a whoop of disbelief and pressed the gas. For a second, nothing happened. Then the mostly flat tires hit the asphalt with a flapping sound, and we slowly lurched forward. We’d gone maybe half a block when the coupe came slinging into the road out of nowhere.
It landed on one end, hitting hard enough to send it somersaulting into the air before it smashed back down, almost on top of us. Humans would have been dead, but the crash did not noticeably inconvenience the vamps. They immediately began piling out of the car, and one of them saw us. Three black blurs started down the road after us—and disappeared.
It took me a second to realize that they had been broadsided by the sedan. It had come hurtling out of the portal at maybe fifty miles an hour, smashed into them and then into the tree, and burst into flames. I just sat there for a second, feeling the heat on my face and watching car parts fly through the air, because I don’t get that kind of luck.
And then lights started coming on in brownstones all along the road, which didn’t look like it got a lot of traffic—especially of our dubious variety. Concerned citizens were probably dialing the cops right now, giving me yet another reason to get gone. I floored it, and we took off, going all of twenty miles an hour.
I chewed a thumbnail and wondered how much time this bought me. I suspected it wouldn’t be a lot. The vamps in the pileup might be out of commission, but it didn’t matter because they’d had plenty of time during the chase to call for backup. And with two flat tires, a whine in the engine and something grinding ominously under the dash, no way could we outrun them. We needed to go to ground, but if we did, the Hounds would be on us in no time.
This is why I hate Uptown, I thought, staring around at the well-tended brownstones of the wealthy. They kept their cars in luxury, air-conditioned garages. Not to mention that they were probably all late models I couldn’t have hot-wired even with the tools I didn’t have. I was a Downtown kind of girl, and this was a strange land.
I clamped my teeth on what I suspected would be an hour-long string of obscenities. Not that I had an hour. Come on, come on, think! You’ve lived here for years. There has to be someone—
I got a glimpse of the nearest street sign and stood on the brakes, craning my neck to be sure. I parked the Impala in the middle of the road, tossed my jacket over Ray’s stump and dragged him over the seat behind me. Come to think of it, I did know one Uptown kind of guy.
I just hoped like hell he was home.
“Home” to senior masters traveling outside of their territories could mean a lot of things. For those on Senate business, it usually meant staying at one of the Senate’s many properties worldwide. But if they were traveling for pleasure—or if they were up to no good that they didn’t want their fellow senators to know about—they usually sponged off a subordinate. But what if they didn’t have a flunky in the area? Then they went to the vamp equivalent of a hotel. They stayed at the Club.
Vampire owned and Senate approved, with branches in most major cities, the Club provided visiting masters with luxury, convenience and, most important, security. If someone wasn’t on the approved list, they didn’t get in. And I was most definitely not on that list.
Fortunately, I was with someone who was.
“Raymond Lu to see Prince Radu Basarab,” I told the little bald daub of a desk clerk.
He didn’t answer, being too busy gaping at Ray’s gory stump. My jacket had fallen off somewhere in the mad dash here, and even I had to admit that the result was kind of gruesome. The blood flow had finally stopped, though, so that was something.
“I—I—”
“Radu Basarab,” I repeated slowly. “He’s here, right?”
The vamp swallowed, and his hand disappeared under the counter, his shoulder jerking as he repeatedly stabbed the panic button. I glanced over my shoulder and wished whoever was in charge would hurry the hell up already. And then it was too late.
A truck rumbled down the street, its bed full of men. They were seated on benches along each side, like a bunch of soldiers on their way to a fight, which looked a little out of place in this area. It was pretty accurate, though, I realized a second later, as a streetlamp caught a familiar face.
It was one of Cheung’s boys, the one I’d fought in the storeroom. He must have been a senior-level master, because that shot should have killed him. Instead, livid and puckered scars crisscrossed his face and neck, and disappeared into the collar of the new shirt he’d acquired. He’d probably taken it off a subordinate, because it was too small, showing off a large indentation where his stomach ought to be. He’d heal eventually, of course, but in the meantime, he looked a little peevish.
Scarface spied me through the leaded glass in the front door and his mouth dropped open—for a split second, until he leveled his shotgun at me. I jerked to the side, and it blew a hole through the door and across the room and would have taken out Ray’s head, if he still had one. Instead, it exploded against the expensive wood paneling behind the desk.
“Never mind. I’ll find him myself,” I said, and dragged Ray over the counter.
We dashed down a hall and ran straight into a group of well-armed security. “Oh, my God, look what they did!” I screamed, and pointed at Ray, who obligingly slumped against the wall. The security guard shied back; then his jaw set, and he and the rest of the team streamed past, headed for the lobby.
Ray and I scurried ahead as the sound of shots, curses and breaking glass echoed down the hall. A waiter coming out of the kitchen saw Ray and dropped a tray of glasses. “Have you seen Prince Basarab?” I asked him. He just stood there, the tray clutched to his chest, and didn’t say anything. So I poked him. He jumped and stared at me instead. “Radu!” I repeated.
He pointed up the stairs, and Ray and I took them two at a time. Vamps were peering out of all the doors on this floor, and none of them was ’Du, so I kept going. But at the top of the next flight of stairs, a handsome young man in a light blue dressing gown was just pulling a door shut behind him. I thought I recognized him, and sure enough, he saw me and smiled. “Dorina, isn’t it?”