Death's Mistress

Page 53

“That’s one of those Halloween things, right?” one of the EMTs asked. They’d followed me down from the house, and now one of them tentatively poked Ray in the cheek.
Ray’s eyes flew open. “Poke me again, and I’ll chew your finger off,” he said nastily. The guy scrambled back with a little scream.
I sighed. I couldn’t do mind control, at least not on the level needed here. They were going to have to get in line.
“But why kill Elyas?” I asked. “If Anthony was going to kill someone, he’d hardly make it a member of his own Senate!”
“Elyas was one of the five.”
“So better to lose one guy who would probably be defeated in a challenge anyway than his champion?” Louis-Cesare nodded.
From a strictly profit-and-loss standpoint, it made sense. If Louis-Cesare was convicted of the murder, Anthony could enslave him and never have to worry about his defection again. But if he just let him leave, Elyas was dead meat anyway as soon as he was challenged.
“But why Elyas?” I still wanted this to be about the rune. Otherwise, my task of finding it had just gotten a lot harder. There was a limited pool of suspects at the apartment, but anyone could have shown up at the club. Not to mention that, if Louis-Cesare was right, he was screwed. How did a person win a court case when the judge had set him up?
“He needed someone with whom I had a grievance, and he knew that Elyas had Christine. No senator would take on such a favor for another consul without first alerting his own. Such a thing could easily cause a rift within his own Senate.”
One of the EMTs was trying to make a call. I reached in the side of the truck, yanked out the CB cord and handed it to him. “Okay, but why tonight?”
“Anthony likely has spies within Elyas’s household, who could have informed him that I was expected.”
“But you were late. If Anthony set things up for your original appointment time, Elyas would have been dead before you arrived.”
“Yes, but he could have waited, concealed somewhere, and acted when he saw me arrive.”
I frowned. “But you said that you were only in the waiting room a couple of minutes at most.”
“About that, yes.”
“So in less than two minutes, Anthony kills Elyas, sets you up and has time to steal the rune he didn’t even know existed?”
Louis-Cesare shot me a frustrated look. “Why are you arguing so strongly against this?”
“Because it’s a worst-case scenario! Why are you so set on it?”
“Because I scented him when I first entered the room.”
“You scented Anthony?”
“Yes. It was vague, merely a trace. But that was most likely due to the window. It was open. The scent would not have lingered long.”
“Why didn’t you mention this?”
“I have no proof, Dorina! And there is nothing your father or Kit can do against a consul. I do not wish them to make an enemy needlessly on my behalf.”
“But… if it can’t be proven, how do you—”
“I did not say it cannot be proven, merely that they cannot do so. There is a chance—” His head jerked up.
“What now?”
“The Senate’s men. Where is Christine?”
“In the house, I guess.”
He licked his lips. “Dorina, it will be much easier to elude them if I do not have her with me. I know it is much to ask—”
“She can stay here,” I said, wondering about my sanity. “I’ll explain to Claire, assuming I ever find her again. But that’s not—”
“Promise me you will look after her, that you will not leave her alone. There is only another hour or so until sunrise, and she will sleep all day. I will arrange for her security by tomorrow night.”
“Why does she need—”
“Promise me.”
“Yes, fine. But you haven’t said what you plan to—” I blinked and realized I was talking to air. Louis-Cesare was gone.
Two large black vans screeched around the corner and skidded to a halt at the curb. They hadn’t even stopped moving when something like twenty guards piled out. I watched them with a strange sort of detachment. The night had reached the point where it would be difficult to get any worse.
Then a familiar curly head emerged from the front of the lead van.
Okay. It was worse.
“It’s that woman,” ’Du informed me. “She’s been back less than a day, and look at us. We’ll probably all be dead by tomorrow.”
“You’re already dead.”
“There’s no reason to be facetious, Dory,” he snapped, as a grim-faced Marlowe stopped in front of me.
“I knew it,” he hissed.
“Knew what?” I asked wearily.
“Knew you would be involved in this. Where is he?”
“By now?” I shrugged.
“Sir, should we—” one of the vamps began, then quickly shut up.
The rotating lights painted Marlowe’s hair with color and glinted in his narrowed brown eyes. “You’re hiding him.”
I waved the hand not holding Ray. “Yeah. Because this is where you come when you want to be inconspicuous.”
“You deny that he was here?”
“You can scent him. You know damned well he was here.”
“Yes, instead of standing trial to save his life!”
“He seems to think a trial isn’t going to get him anywhere.”
“And this is?”
“If he finds the killer.”
“In twenty-four hours,” Marlowe told me harshly, “Louis-Cesare will be declared a fugitive, and the Senate will rule against him. Flight is as good as an admission of guilt. If you want to help him, you will tell me where he is.”
“He’s a first-level master. He’s wherever the hell he wants to be.”
Marlowe glanced up at the huge guard looming behind him. “Search the house.”
He looked at me, like he was waiting for a reaction. I just stood there and dripped at him. For once, there were no big dark secrets to find. The only ones I’d had, I’d already chucked at the fey.
“He’ll trash it, just to be vindictive,” Radu said darkly, as Marlowe gave up and stomped off.
I shrugged and started after him. “Too late.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Marlowe glanced at me suspiciously as we passed through the front door, but I wasn’t interested in checking up on him. I assumed that he’d bug the place, and that I would remove them as soon as he left. I just wanted something dry to wear.
I headed for the stairs before I remembered—we no longer had any. So I swerved into the living room for a blanket instead. I found one that didn’t smell too much like troll, wrapped it sarong-style around me and started back for the hall. And stopped.
My eyes had focused on a tiny movement near the door. I bent down and found myself looking at a lone warrior, all of two inches high. It was one of Olga’s chess pieces.
That in itself wasn’t unusual; they ended up scattered about everywhere. But they didn’t usually carry small torches that they waved around wildly. And, once it had gotten my attention, the tiny thing started off across the forest of clothes and bedding.
It finally paused at the top of the stairs going down to the basement. It looked up at me, the minuscule faceplate gleaming in the torchlight. When I stayed where I was, it started waving again impatiently, and pointing down into the blackness.
For a minute, I just stood there, swaying a little on my feet and wondering how paranoid a person had to be before she decided the toys were out to get her. But in the end, I shrugged my shoulders and just went with it. I picked the little thing up and carried it down the stairs.
At the bottom, another small warrior was doing something near the rusted hulk of Pip’s still. There was no light in the basement, and the tiny torch cast wavering shadows on the walls that confused me further. But when I got closer, it became obvious that he was pushing around small sticks and bits of moss, arranging them in some sort of pattern.
The first small warrior started poking me in the side of the hand with his sword, so I put him down. He made his way across the peeling paint of the floor and touched his torch to the end of the nearest pile of kindling. Fire ran across the old concrete, forming jagged letters for a brief instant before the tiny fuel was exhausted: OPEN.
I stared at them and then at the wavering imprint they’d left on my retinas. The message was clear enough: it had been left in front of the wall where Pip’s conduit to Faerie manifested. But if Claire was on the other side, she could open it for herself. And if she wasn’t…
But subrand would never leave a message like that. And the only time he’d been in the cellar, he’d been too busy trying to kill me to rig something up. At least, I fervently hoped so.
I reached out, wondering if I was about to make a huge mistake, and pressed the small talisman that powered the link between the ley-line sink and the portal. I jumped back, but not fast enough. A swirl of light and color appeared on the wall, flooding the ugly old basement with a rich golden light. And something huge tumbled out of nowhere and smacked me to the ground.
My skull hit the floor hard enough to have me seeing stars. But it was difficult to concentrate on that while the life was getting squeezed out of me. The massive weight shifted slightly, and while I was still crushed, I could breathe.
And that was worse.
My lungs had room to fully inflate, but they were cowering in my chest in fear. I’d once been buried under a pile of decomposing corpses, with jellylike flesh and gangrenous limbs, and it hadn’t reeked like that. I retched, but my stomach had nothing left to bring up. Lucky I never got that sandwich, I thought, as someone started slapping troll flesh.
“Get off her! Move, Ysmi! Dorina, are you all right?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I could talk, and anyway, I was afraid to open my mouth and let in more of that hideous stench. But I looked up.