Chapter 20
Fiona bumped her head
on the roof of the car as she shimmied out of her
gown.
“I must be blessed
beyond all men,” Christophe said. “This is twice so far this
evening I’m getting you naked, and the night’s not even half
over.”
“A gentleman would
turn his head,” she said, pulling her shirt over her
head.
He started laughing.
“You’ve got the wrong guy, Princess. I don’t plan to ever miss a
chance to see you without your clothes on.”
She called the
shadows and, bending light and dark to her will, disappeared from
view.
“That’s so unfair,”
he growled.
“Don’t mess with a
ninja.”
“You know, you could
have done that in the museum if anybody walked in on
us.”
“And wouldn’t you
have looked foolish standing there alone with your bits hanging
out?”
He grumbled something
in that melodic language. She wanted to ask, but was afraid he’d
say it was, indeed, Atlantean and they’d be back to that. She
pulled on her underwear and jeans, tricky but not impossible in the
backseat of the moving automobile, and finally dressed, she
released the shadows and lowered the privacy glass and pushed her
dress through to the front passenger seat. It landed in a heap with
the bodice sitting upright.
“Brilliant,” Sean
said. “It looks like I was driving along, and my date melted right
out of her dress.”
“Better work on your
conversational skills, friend,” Christophe advised. “You probably
bored her to death.”
Sean glared at
Christophe then met Fiona’s gaze in the mirror. “So, do you really
like this guy? Do I have to be nice to him?”
“Play nice, boys.
Please. Sean, do you have my bag?”
He handed the leather
tote back to her, and she pulled out a handful of chunky costume
jewelry, her makeup kit, and a short black wig. She quickly donned
the bracelets, rings, and necklaces, and then examined herself in
the rearview mirror, considering. She added a pair of giant hoop
earrings she’d never normally be caught dead wearing. Then she
brushed on a thick layer of dark makeup. Smoky eyes, dark red
lipstick, and bronzer. The final touch was the wig. She fit it
around her head, pinning her hair underneath it. When she was
satisfied that not a single strand of blond showed, she leaned back
in her seat and turned to Christophe.
“What do you think?
Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction,
right?”
“Who?”
“No movie theaters
where you come from?”
“Sadly, no, but the
prince’s brother Ven has TVs and DVD players in all of his safe
houses, so we’ve watched a lot of films.”
“Of course. The
prince’s brother. Anyway, watch that one. American
classic.”
“I like the look.
It’s kind of hot.”
She narrowed her
eyes, and he raised his hands.
“Not as hot as you
usually look,” he said, backtracking.
“Way to go, mate,”
Sean said. “Smooth. Really smooth.”
“Yeah. It’s a gift,”
Christophe muttered.
“This is not a nice
part of town,” Sean said, turning down a road that was no bigger
than an alley. “Are you sure about this, Lady Fiona?”
“Yes, I’m sure. We’re
going to The Melting Moon, and we need—”
Sean’s yelp cut her
off. “What the hell is that?”
He swerved the car
and then slammed on the brakes.
A black vehicle—big,
some kind of SUV—seemed to fill the windshield as it hurtled toward
them at a very high rate of speed. Fiona cried out a warning or
prayer or call for help; she wasn’t sure which.
Suddenly, the bright
glow of blue-green energy filled the car. Christophe grabbed her
and yanked her down to the seat, covering her with his body. But
the expected crash never came; instead the loud screech of brakes
sounded in front of the car and, seconds later, on each side of the
car, too.
“We’ve got trouble,”
Christophe said, unnecessarily. “Stay in the car.”
He kissed the top of
her head, threw the door open, and leapt out of the car. She heard
a loud hissing noise and immediately flashed back to a visceral,
terrifying childhood memory, and her blood turned to ice in her
veins.
Vampires.
Daddy.
“No. Not again. Sean,
stay in the car and get down on the floor.” Calling to the shadows,
she slipped out of the car behind Christophe, hiding from sight in
the darkness and scanning the area. The dark forms advancing on
them from the vehicle on this side of the car weren’t alone. More
shadowy shapes climbed out of the vehicles in front and on the
other side, and as she watched, a fourth pulled up behind them.
They were barricaded in like sheep in a pen.
She had no intention
of being a sheep.
Sean jumped out of
the driver’s seat, a very serious-looking gun in his right hand and
a wooden stake in the left. Hopkins must have been training him to
do more than drive her around. She wanted to throw herself in front
of him and protect him, as she had when she first met him, but she
realized she’d do more harm than good. She was definitely firing
that boy later, for his own good. For now, she flanked Christophe
and ignored his stream of Atlantean cursing.
“Fiona, I can smell
you,” he said softly. “If I can smell you, don’t you think they
can? Or hear your heartbeat? Run, damn it.”
She’d forgotten. A
childhood memory of fear had driven away common sense. She called
to her Gift again and used wind and shadow to disperse any sound
and scent. In seconds, no trace of her remained, and yet Christophe
turned and stared right into her eyes.
“I will always be
able to find you. Get out of here before you get hurt.
Please.”
She knew what it had
cost him to add that “please.” He was a man used to issuing
commands and having them obeyed. She could tell that from the
effortless way he’d taken over a leadership role in their quest for
Vanquish. She wasn’t much for obeying, and she had a trick of her
own—literally up her sleeve.
A ninja never left
home unarmed.
“Nice night for an
ambush,” Christophe called out to the vamps as he balanced energy
spheres in each hand. “Didn’t have anything else to do? Polish your
fangs, for instance?”
“You were heard
inquiring about the Siren, human,” the lead vampire hissed. “We
would suggest you drop your inquiry.”
“You need four
carloads of goons to tell me that?”
“Bit melodramatic,
wasn’t it?” Sean said, moving into place with his back to
Christophe’s back. “I thought vamps could fly.”
“Some can. This lot
are obviously the weaklings.”
“We plan to kill
you,” the vampire said. “Unless you tell us, right now, who has
Vanquish and where it is.”
“Interesting form of
suggestion,” Christophe said. “Lots of vampires have planned to
kill me before, bloodsucker.”
He hurled the energy
spheres, twin gleaming arcs of death that exploded the heads of the
speaker and another vampire on contact.
“Usually only once,”
Christophe added.
The rest of the
vampires, shrieking and hissing, leapt and crawled toward
Christophe and Sean in a dark swarm of evil, bending and twisting
in such inhuman ways that the mere sight of them almost made
Fiona’s heart stutter in her chest again. But she mentally kicked
her own arse to get moving.
She was the Scarlet
Ninja, for Saint George’s sake. She was not a helpless ninny. She
threw herself into a low somersault between the legs of two
vampires leaping around the back of her car, and escaped the
closing perimeter of attackers.
When she looked back
at them, Christophe had daggers in each hand and
was—unbelievably—grinning. It was the fierce, exultant joy of a
warrior in action, and she instantly knew in her heart that
everything he’d told her about Atlantis was nothing but the truth.
She ran back a few steps, carefully checking the vampire’s vehicle
to be sure no one was hiding in it, and pulled the slender vials
out of the pouches inside her sleeves.
One of Hopkins’s
inventions, the thick plastic vials hid in the draped fabric of her
loose sleeves. They fit in the palms of her hands and she could
rapidly uncap them with a thumb, which she did. Then she headed
back into the fray to surprise a few vampires.
She dashed out from
behind the SUV then stopped, frozen in shock by the battle being
waged with tooth and dagger in front of her. Never once in her time
as a thief had she encountered violence on an up-close-and-personal
level, and it was nothing like in the films. This blood didn’t
spray artistically through the air.
No, it stained the
side of Sean’s head and ran down Christophe’s arm and the side of
his chest. They were black stains, glistening wetness in the dark.
The vampires didn’t bleed, though. They exploded into a
greenish-black wave of slime, which she knew would be acidic to the
touch. Christophe and Sean had already killed at least four of
them, maybe more, but there were seven left and they were attacking
in waves, too close for one of Christophe’s magic spears to be
effective.
He sliced at one’s
head with his dagger and it yanked its head back, laughing and
hissing at him.
“Fool. Do you think
we are all so easy to kill? I have—” It stopped talking and
shrieked, looking down. Though Fiona couldn’t see its chest, it was
easy enough to see what had happened.
There was a silvery
tip poking out of the left side of its back.
Sean cried out as a
vamp sank its teeth into the side of his neck, and the sight broke
Fiona out of her shock. She heard a scream, the sound like that of
a banshee’s death herald, but she was running before she realized
that she was the one screaming. She
hurtled full speed into the back of the vampire attacking Sean, and
dashed the entire contents of the vial onto the side of its
face.
The vampire shrieked
so loudly something in her ear canals popped with the pain, but she
held on desperately to its shoulders as it released Sean, flailing
around and clawing at the smoking ruin of its face and eye. The
holy water carved crevasses in its flesh, and she threw herself
away from it as it fell to the ground, screeching and
hissing.
She dropped the empty
vial, still holding on to the shadows that concealed her from
sight, smell, and sound, and ran to the left a few paces away from
the dying vampire. The rest of them had to know someone—or
something—had attacked from behind, and she didn’t want to be
caught in a blind sweep.
“Princess, I’m going
to kill you when we get out of here,” Christophe yelled, fury
riding the planes and angles of his face.
He launched himself
into the air, pure blue-green fire shimmering in glowing streams
around his entire body, and tackled three of the vampires who’d
decided to leap over her car toward him and Sean. It was like
watching a martial arts film where the action star was a master
sorcerer. He twirled in midair and leveled a flying kick at the
first vamp’s throat, then followed it up with a dagger in its heart
as it fell backward. Before that vamp even hit the ground,
Christophe grabbed the head of the second vamp and slammed its face
down onto his knee so hard that the resulting crunch sounded like
lightning snapping a dead tree trunk. Energy pulsed between his
hands, brief but fierce, and the vamp’s head imploded, then
disappeared.
Fiona didn’t have
time to watch any more, though, because one of the vampires was
sniffing the ground, crawling on hands and feet like a deranged
hound from hell. Its body moved in ways that bodies were not meant
to move, as though it were boneless or at least had a flexible
spine.
“I know you’re here,
Princess,” it hissed, the sibilants
hanging in the air. “Playing with toys you shouldn’t have? I’m
going to crunch on your bones when I’m done draining you
dry.”
She waited, silent as
the grave she had no intention of going to—at least not today—until
it was in range. Then she hurled the contents of the second vial
into its face and threw herself back and to the side as fast as she
could, to escape the reach of its arms as it threw its body forward
in a last, desperate leap even as it screamed and squealed its way
to a horrific death.
Over the drops of
water that had fallen to the pavement a faint golden glow hovered
for an instant before winking out, and she had a heartbeat of
crystallized time in which to wonder what God thought about blessed
water being used to kill. But then Christophe pulled her up and
into his arms, crushing her in a fierce embrace until she thought
her lungs might burst.
“Don’t ever, ever,
ever, do that again,” he commanded, somewhat ruining the severity
of his command by compulsively kissing her again and
again.
She pushed him away
after a minute or so, shoving against the rock-hard wall of his
chest. “Really? Don’t join in the fight when people I care about
are in danger?” She glared up at him. “Have you met me?”
Then she ran to Sean,
who was leaning back against the car, bent over and breathing hard,
and threw her arms around him. “Are you okay? How bad is
it?”
She pulled his head
up so she could examine his neck. The wound was ragged but only
dripping, not spurting, blood.
“Thank God, thank
God, thank God,” she said, over and over. “If you died because of
me—”
“I’m too tough to
kill,” he said, managing a grin. “Anyway, this wasn’t because of
you. Far as I can tell, it was due to those vamps. Six of which I
killed, by the way.”
He straightened,
puffing out his chest, and she couldn’t help it. She pulled him to
her and planted a big kiss on his cheek. Even in the dim light, she
could see him flush hot.
“That, youngling, is
why men the world over will do anything for a beautiful woman,”
Christophe said dryly. He gently nudged Fiona aside to examine
Sean’s wound. “You’re going to have a scar, but it’s not bad.
Unfortunately, better clean it out.”
He turned to Fiona.
“Do you happen to have any more of that holy water, Invisible Girl?
Sooner is better.”
“This is going to
hurt really badly, isn’t it?” Sean’s throat worked but he tilted
his head so they could get at his neck.
“Like all the fires
of the nine hells are searing your flesh,” Christophe admitted, far
too cheerfully. “Every warrior worth his daggers goes through it at
least once, although our remedy isn’t quite the same as
yours.”
“What do you
mean?”
“Trust me, you don’t
want to know.” Christophe looked around them, his eyes narrowing.
“Anybody notice something odd here?”
“You mean, we’re
still in London, one of the busiest cities in the world, and nobody
else has come down this alley during this entire time?” Fiona
nodded, pulling another vial of blessed water from her sleeve and
holding it up to Christophe, who nodded. “Yes, I noticed. In fact,
how are they—”
“Accomplices,” Sean
said. “It’s how we used to do it. Bloke at each end when there was
going to be trouble. We’d call out a warning.”
“A warning is one
thing,” Christophe said. “An empty alley for the better part of
half an hour is another. I’d guess sorcerers. If they’re
enthralled, we’re either in big trouble, or they’re dead.
Interesting that they thought we knew where the Siren is. Must mean
the vampires don’t have it. Or at least this group of
vamps.”
“Let’s do this,”
Fiona said. She took a deep breath as if she would feel her own
flesh sear. She wished it could be. She
deserved it, not Sean. Her games as the Scarlet Ninja were what had
put him in jeopardy.
“Just do it,
Princess. Quick and get it over with,” Christophe said, not
unsympathetically. “The anticipation is almost worse.”
She held her breath
and upended the vial over Sean’s wound, which sizzled and hissed
like butter on a hot griddle. Sean sucked in a sharp breath and
then said a few words she hadn’t known he even remembered from the
old days.
“More,” Christophe
said.
“But—”
“More.”
She opened her last
vial and poured it directly on top of the bubbling mess on Sean’s
neck, feeling the hot tears escaping her eyes. By the time she’d
finished the vial, it poured clear and all signs of steam or
infection had disappeared.
“That should do it,”
Christophe said, nodding once. “When it doesn’t react any more,
it’s cleaned out. Now we get out of here.”
“Home. Sean needs to
rest. And you’re bleeding, too.” Relieved of the worry over Sean,
she was swamped by fear for Christophe. She tore open his shirt
like a wild woman to look at the wound in his chest.
He caught her hands
in his own and kissed her knuckles. “I’m fine, mi amara. A scratch. Atlanteans heal faster than
humans, too. Now we need to get out of here. Sean?”
Sean nodded and
headed for the vehicle blocking their way, while Christophe headed
for the one parked in the middle of the street.
“Search for anything
interesting,” Christophe called, and Fiona ran around her car to
the SUV on the other side, leaping over the piles of
still-dissolving slime that was all that was left of their
attackers. A great many people were warning them away from the
search for Vanquish. The important questions were why and who had
it.
She made quick work
searching the SUV, and found nothing, which was what she’d
expected. The percentage of vampires who bothered to register with
authorities and get any kind of official papers was still
frighteningly small. Why lease a car when you could enthrall a
human into giving it to you?
She made sure not to
leave her fingerprints anywhere, slammed the door shut, and
returned to Sean and Christophe. “Nothing.”
“In either of these
two, either,” Christophe reported.
Sean shook his head,
strain showing clearly on his face. “Not this one,
either.”
“Now. We leave now,”
Christophe said.
“I’m driving,” Fiona
announced. “Sean, you rest in the back.”
Sean tried to
protest, but Christophe opened the door to the backseat and
pointed, and Sean half climbed, half fell into the car, the
reaction from the battle finally hitting him. Christophe closed the
door and turned to Fiona.
“I still need to go
to those pubs and find out what in the hells is going on,”
Christophe said.
“Not without
me.”
“It’s not like I will
allow you to drive home unaccompanied, either. Not after that
attack.” He tilted her chin up with his finger and kissed
her.
“I’m not a fan of the
word ‘allow,’ but I’ll admit the more the merrier,” she
said.
“Please, then. Please
get in your vehicle now and drive home as quickly as you can, in a
straight line.”
She opened the door
and paused. “Wait. Where are you going to be?”
He pointed up, then
leapt into the air and, right in front of her eyes, transformed
into a sparkling cloud of mist that soared into the air over the
car and hovered there.
Please drive now, she heard in her head, and she
didn’t have any energy left to debate the possibility or
impossibility of telepathic conversation. She just slanted her body
into the car, turned the key in the ignition, and
drove.