Battle for the Blood (13 page)

I tossed the other knives to Hermes and Apollo, who’d put off their quest long enough to see what I was up to. I was airborne the second they caught the bounty, speeding back toward Lau and Eu-meh, worried for Lyssa too, nearly as much as I feared her.

I wasn’t even to the stables when I heard Eu-meh’s furious cry. My wings couldn’t beat any faster, but I tried anyway. My breath stuttered and caught. At times it felt I could either breathe or beat my wings, but not both. I was near enough now to hear the second cry—less piercing and a lot more human. I landed in what had been a staging area outside the stables and rushed to the door we’d previously broken open.

I bumped it hard with my shoulder, expecting it to just swing open but it didn’t give an inch. I bounced back, shoulder now as bruised as my breastbone. “Lau!” I yelled. “Let me in. What’s happening?”

There was another furious dragon cry and something hit a wall hard enough to shake the building.

“Lau!” I yelled, voice pitched with panic.

I backed up quickly and took a running start at the immovable door. It gave just a little. My shoulder gave more. Something was barricading the door shut. My arm was already hanging, in screaming pain at the shoulder and numb below. Another run at the door couldn’t cost me any more.

I did it, hurling myself at the door with everything I had. It burst in a bit…just enough for me to fit myself between it and the jam, which I did. My sudden appearance distracted Lau, who was out in the aisle, facing down Eu-meh, who stood, head bent against the low ceiling in the remains of the stall she’d busted down. The dragon noted her distraction and took advantage, her tail lashing like a whip, catching Lau in the chest and hurling her backward toward me. We both went sailing against the barricade and I hit it wings first, hearing something crack as I did. I wanted it to be the door, but knew otherwise.

“No,” a woman yelled as Eu-meh advanced. “No, stop.” It was Lyssa, as tortured as she’d been on that Greek hillside, but unable to stop her mania from afflicting everyone around her. Her power totally out of control.

No time to think. Eu-meh’s tail lashed again. I pushed Lau one way as I dove the other. One of my wings didn’t tuck properly as I rolled, and the pain was immense.

Eu-meh drew her head back then, her belly rumbling.

“Fire!” Lau yelled. “Run!”

There was nowhere to run. Not ultimately. No way to outpace a dragon. I had to take down the demoness.

“You run,” I said. “Make sure she follows. And misses. I don’t want to explain to Nick…”

She probably glared, but I didn’t look her way as she lunged for the gap I’d left in the barricade.

Eu-meh bellowed, her breath hot enough to scorch all by itself, the scent alone bringing tears to my eyes… like an overfilled dumpster stewing in the sun.

I ducked into the nearest stall, thinking
out of sight, out of mind
…just in time. I heard a massive
whoosh
a millisecond later and peeked out when it subsided to see the barricade completely set ablaze. Even at a distance, the heat scorched my face. The flames superheated the very air, it seemed. Particles of hay or chaff or whatever highly flammable crap had been left behind went up in a flash. In the time it took to blink, that whole half of the stable was ablaze with tongues of flame licking the ceiling and chasing fault lines in the walls.

Eu-meh bellowed again, in fear this time as the fat fingers of flame reached for her. She backed away and backed away until she pushed right through the back wall opposite the barricade, bringing it mostly down with her. The sudden influx of air caused the conflagration to flare to ludicrous levels. I was burning. And choking, unable to draw in enough fresh air to breathe.

I steeled myself to dive back out into the main part of the stable, into the flames. It was so counterintuitive that all of my alarms jangled. But they’d have been jangling anyway. Fire. Dragon on the rampage. Gloom and doom and…

With a huge crack, an overhead beam split and half came down right in front of me.

“Lyssa!” I shouted, only it came out as a cough. My lungs were singed and tarred, every breath painful and ineffective.

“Here,” she said weakly.

I duck-walked blindly toward the sound of her voice, trying to stay low, hoping for more air, but there wasn’t any to be found. My sense of danger pointed me toward the stall where she’d ducked, nearly engulfed by flames. Her eyes were bleeding pools of mania.

“You’re going to have to—” she began.

I pushed up from the legs, sailing at her with a blow aimed at her head. I hit right where I’d targeted and she fell like the other half of the downed beam, straight for the ground. If she’d been mortal I’d have worried I’d struck her hard enough to rattle her brains, but as it was, all I could feel was relief at the knockout. The blow had felt good…more and more necessary the more closely I approached. She was a menace. In her transferred mania, there’d been no allowing for half measures or pulling my punch. I was no longer so sure we’d been smart to keep her close, but I didn’t see what choice we’d had. Then or now. I couldn’t abandon her in a burning building. Which meant she was coming along.

Forgetting myself for a moment, I took a deep breath as I heaved her over my shoulder. The smoke instantly invaded my lungs on a search-and-destroy mission. The coughing doubled me over, flopping Lyssa roughly back to the ground and sending me to one knee, catching myself with one hand to keep from toppling the rest of the way. I tried to force the cough down, but the extra tension only made it worse. Relaxing was counterintuitive, but I tried. I was breathless from the coughing and the thickening smoke, sweating like a pig from the fire raging around us. Nearly blind for the same reason. Tears washed away whatever images the smoke revealed.

I had to feel around on the stable floor for Lyssa’s unconscious body and then get somewhat intimate with her form to figure out where to grab her to hoist. But embarrassment was the last thing I had time for.

Apollo’s feedback loop of fear was pounding at me now, and I knew he’d arrived, seen the fire,
not
seen me and done the math. Or maybe he’d just talked to Lau. For the first time ever, I wished our link were more intimate rather than less so that I could tell him to stay out.

Another great crack and suddenly another beam was falling down on us, bringing most of the roof with it. I dropped to both knees, ducking as if that would help, but something caught the falling beams, stopping them somewhere above my head. Apollo’s voice yelled to me from the direction of the door. “Tori, this way!”

He had to be holding up the burning beams the way Atlas supposedly held the world on his shoulders. I didn’t know whether to kiss him or kill him for placing himself in danger, but right then all I could do was leave it up to the Fates. If the fire didn’t take him out, who was I to finish the job?

I fumbled blindly for Lyssa and found one of her arms, which I grabbed firmly. I hoped the floor wasn’t too littered with debris, because hoisting her up was no longer an option. I was going to have to drag her out.

“A sec,” I rasped out in a great whiskey-blues voice. “Got to get Lyssa.”

Her body caught on something at that moment, and I yanked her harder. Something ripped and the tension released, but the ripping sound continued as I dragged her until it didn’t anymore. If she was now indecent, well, she’d be too sooty for anyone to notice or care. Except maybe Hermes, and bless us if we got that far.

“Hurry,” Apollo said, voice full of the strain I could feel through our link.

A downed beam was right in front of me and suddenly the length of the stable seemed endless and the distance insurmountable. I put my shoulder to the burning beam, trying to rush it like the football player I’d never been. It shifted, but from the creaking, cracking, sliding sounds, it wouldn’t move on its own and I didn’t know what it might be holding off us at that very moment.

I had to grab Lyssa into a new position, one in which I could maneuver her around the beam. I hoped she was up to date on her tetanus shots or that it didn’t matter with Maniai, because I couldn’t see all the debris in our path…or much of anything else. I headed toward Apollo’s voice, but not quickly enough. Lyssa’s added weight and my useless lungs were costing me. Anchors seemed to be dragging at my feet with every step.

When arms wrapped around me, I cried out. The added weight just too much. I started to sink. And then Lyssa was gone. Just gone. The superheated air that rushed to take her place felt like a cool breeze as it hit my sweat-drenched back.

Another set of arms caught me as I started to pitch forward, at the end of my strength, and then
I
was being dragged away from the inferno. And dragged. And dragged. Waves of pain—from my wings, back, chest, throat, eyes—competed to overwhelm me, but finally it was Apollo’s voice that did it. “Tori, you’re okay.”

I wondered at his definition of
okay
,
but
took that as my cue to pass out.

Chapter Twelve

I woke coughing up a lung. Trying to, anyway. The troublesome organ seemed contrarily determined to stay right where it was. But it was the roar of an engine that had me bolting upright.

I blinked into the front grille of an oncoming canary-yellow Hummer. I blamed my recent unconsciousness for trying to fend it off by throwing my arms up in front of my face. I waited for impact, but the next thing I heard was squealing and screeching. Then a high, fluting voice shouted, “What are you waiting for? Jump in. Whoa,
that’s
not going to fit.”

My eyes flew open and I looked up from the grille to the girl—wide Julia Roberts-type mouth opened in awe, high black ponytail shining in the sun, face pale, emphasizing puffy, dark eyes. Mel’s roommate?

“Cori, that’s Eu-meh. Eu-meh, Cori,” Hermes said quickly. “I thought I told you to stay home.”

“Like that was going to happen. I couldn’t just leave Mel out here. Or Apollo. You, on the other hand…”

Even through puffy eyes, her glare was pretty effective.

I coughed again, raising some kind of clumped ugliness this time. I tried to wave away all the gazes on me, telling them with hand gestures to go about their business as I turned away to hack up my tremendous loogie. There was no other choice. It wasn’t as if I could or would swallow it down.

My eyes watered and my chest nearly seized trying to force the lump all the way out. I rolled onto my side to keep from choking on it and finally forced it out, expelling it into a thick, awful lump on the ground.

Everyone looked away, not only from the grotesquery but to follow Cori’s stare, which had skipped right over the novelty of a dragon and laser-focused on her half-eaten friend. The worst part was that Mel seemed to be equally focused on
her
and on crawling her way over for a nosh.

“Oh, Mel,” she said in a hush. “You’d love and hate this. So tragic.”

I hadn’t even thought of that. Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. The irony burned.

“We’ve got to get her home,” Cori said, heedless of the danger. “Maybe if we swaddle her or…something. You’ve got to find a way to reverse this.”

We all looked at each other, not even sure it was possible.

“First,” Apollo said, taking charge, “we have to find a place big enough to hide a dragon. Any ideas?”

It was only then that her gaze swung to really take in Eu-meh. Her ridiculously long-lashed eyes went anime-wide. “Holy shite. Is that… Seriously? I thought they were a myth.”

Coming from a Muse, that was quite a statement. If the ironies kept piling up, we’d have to build an armory to house them.

“Not a myth. Any ideas?”

“Large enough for a dragon? You do realize we’re in the city, right? We can’t take her to my place. She’d never even fit through the door. I’m not even sure she’d fit in the apartment.”

Chopper blades sounded off in the distance, and I wondered if they were coming to search for their out-of-contact colleagues. If so, it was too little, way too late, but I had no idea how thinly military forces might be spread. If not for their downed colleagues, they might be coming for us.

“We have to hurry,” Apollo said, as if reading my mind. “Somewhere close by?”

Cori couldn’t take her eyes off Eu-meh. “Well, there’s the Sheep Meadow Cafe. It’s not huge, and I don’t know what the space inside is like, but it’s close and closed for the season.”

“Lead on,” he said.

The chopper was getting closer. We all looked to the sky. “Quick, everyone in the truck. I’m going to have to get it out of sight. I assume the dragon will follow?”

She looked to Apollo for an answer, but it was Lau who said, “She will if I ask her to.”

Cori’s gaze caught her for a split second of awe. “Too cool. Get in.”

We all crowded into the Hummer, which was
not
built for quick getaways. I thought of my cute little Camaro out in L.A. It might not have handled off-roading in Central Park, but it was great for speed. Cori took off just as Hermes pulled Mel’s still-straining body inside. I had Lyssa on my lap and for a moment had flashbacks to the circus, and especially the clown car, but there was nothing funny about this situation. There was no way a chopper would fail to catch a bright-yellow Hummer in the midst of all the spring greenery of the park.

The Hummer drove like a tank, but Cori was right, the cafe was close by. Almost around a bend, we found a circular wooden building with a pitched roof that made it look like a planked-over big-top tent. It was shuttered for the season, with segmented iron curtains pulled down and locked against intruders. There wasn’t any kind of garage or awning for Cori to hide the Hummer under. The place was made for foot traffic, not vehicles, but there were enough spreading oaks and shade trees that Cori was able to get the Hummer out of sight from the air. As long as no one was using infrared tech, which would pick up the heat not only of all our bodies, but the engine as well, we ought to be safe…for now.

Apollo was the first one out of the Hummer, and he ran to the largest of the iron screens, looked up at the angle of the sun, down to the massive padlock that held the screen in place and back to the sun. I made the mistake of following his gaze and burned my retinas, bright-purple spots spreading like ink blots across my vision.

The ink blots hadn’t cleared when there was a flash and the smell of overheated iron. When I blinked back the spots across my vision, I saw the padlock had melted to slag, Dali-esque and barely recognizable. Apollo risked burning his hand to grab the iron screen and yank it up.

We all held our breaths, hoping it wouldn’t be a long glass snack counter or one-at-a-time entryway. We were well beyond due a break and, miraculously, we got one. Behind the metal screen there was a bistro/bakery type place with not just a door, but an entire wall that slid open to form a large entry. Wide enough, I thought, to fit Eu-meh with minimal scraping of her sides. If she ducked. Definitely it wasn’t high enough to admit her at full height.

Lau checked it out first, waiting for Apollo to melt the wall lock as well before she slid it open and slipped inside. The center of the place was cleared of displays, tables or anything else, all stowed away for the season. It was perfect, but…

Lau looked back at Apollo. “This will work, but how are we going to keep the slagged lock from being discovered?”

Apollo looked sheepish. Appropriate, given where we were.

“We’ll just have to get a new one,” I said, “weather it a little and put it back in place. With a zombie apocalypse going on, who’s worried about snack shacks with no visible damage?”

Lau went out to Eu-meh, who had followed us. Her head hung now in exhaustion or regret for having attacked Lau. Could dragons feel regret? Given Eu-meh’s hangdog expression, I expected so.

With her head hung, it came just about level with Lau’s, and as she reached out to stroke Eu-meh’s neck, the dragon rested her chin on Lau’s shoulder. It had to be heavy, but Lau didn’t bend, just put her cheek to Eu-meh’s and spoke to her in a musical language I didn’t understand. The dragon’s eyes closed as a cat’s might at being petted beneath the chin, and we all stood in wonder, but also anxiety, at the moment. We had to go. But we had to do it right. Poor Eu-meh deserved some understanding.

Lau said a few final words and pulled back. Eu-meh raised her head reluctantly and blew into Lau’s face, ruffling her already disheveled hair. Then she plodded into the open cafe, belly scraping the ground, her wings pulled in tight. When she got to the center, she turned slowly so that she’d be facing the way she’d come and settled into a ball, tail curled around herself and tucked up under her chin. She watched Lau through barely open eyes, clearly ready for sleep.

Lau touched her fingers to her lips and held the hand out to Eu-meh, as if giving her a good-night kiss. “I’ll be back,” she promised, in English this time. “I’ll bring you something nice.” She repeated it in that musical language.

When she turned to the rest of us, her eyes were moist, but none of us commented. The wonder of seeing the mutual feeling between the two was humbling. If every scrap of moisture in my body hadn’t burned up in the fire, I might have had a tear in my eye.

Apollo left the glass wall open to let air through, but pulled the metal screen back down over the cafe. The slagged lock stayed where it was, just fine if no one gave it a second glance. Lau could bring the replacement when she came back for Eu-meh.

For now… The chopper sound was close. Close and slowing, as though it had landed and momentum was all that was keeping the blades going. At a guess, they’d found the other copter…

No one said a word as we piled back in the Hummer and Cori took off, going slowly enough to keep the revving engine noise to a minimum but fast enough to keep us from a crawl. She ended up driving us along a footpath never meant to accommodate a tank, until we came to a set of stairs, and then we were off-roading it down a steep hill, sticks and stones thrown up into the air to catch in her undercarriage. The Hummer ate them for breakfast.

By the time we bounced out onto an actual road, my insides felt like they’d been scrambled, but we were mercifully alive and I wasn’t about to take that for granted.

I breathed a painful and far-too-shallow sigh of relief when Cori stopped at the parking garage of a high-rise building and punched in a code to get us in. Hermes hadn’t been kidding when he’d said she and Mel lived close to the park. The gate opened and I tensed, waiting for something to come at us, but, miraculously, nothing staggered out to swarm us. The normalcy of an actual garage, a residential building, actual electricity gave me a misleading sense of safety. We weren’t home free. But danger was temporarily on pause.

“Come on, everyone,” Cori said. “Let’s get Mel home and then you
will
explain to me what’s going on and how I can help.”

She led us to an unremarkable elevator in the corner with unremarkable steel-gray doors…until those doors opened onto an interior that was an art deco dream. The decor couldn’t possibly be authentic, not descending down into a cement parking garage, but it certainly had the old-time glamour of curving yet geometric bronze cutouts backed by glass. We were underdressed in our battle-worn clothes. Something cocktailesque would have been more appropriate—gowns, glitter, furs, sky-high heels, champagne. Not really my scene. The wrap I had over my shoulder was a living, breathing demoness. So chic.

The building had twenty-one floors, missing unlucky thirteen. Cori pressed the button for number ten. Not the penthouse then. Still, I was impressed. A place on the Upper West Side
with
parking couldn’t come cheap. I was even
more
impressed when she opened the door on a Central Park view.

I tried not to gawk like a country bumpkin. I’d seen this kind of luxury…on television. Apollo’s condo in L.A. was well-appointed, of course, but it was more Mediterranean inspired, oceanfront. Homey. This was…Hollywood. Or, anyway,
Broadway.
Cori was right that Eu-meh never would have fit, but because of the doors and the clutter, not because of the size of the space. A grand piano sat front and center. Sofas and chairs, divans, music stands, instruments of all sorts were scattered about the room, as if she and Mel entertained regularly. One whole wall was taken up with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with thin volumes that looked like scripts, musical scores, playbills and a few substantial photo albums. Faced out here and there were pictures of Cori or Mel—at least, I guessed it was Mel; she wasn’t looking quite the same these days—clearly in the midst of some performance or hugging someone or other. I vaguely recognized a few and was blown away by others there was no mistaking.

The walls, where we could see the walls, were taken up with play posters, almost all with multiple signatures scrawled across.

“Nice place,” I said, almost in awe.

“Thanks,” she answered, but there was no pride in her voice, and when I turned, she was looking at Mel. “Let’s get her to her room.”

“Lead the way,” Hermes said. He held Mel carefully, tightly so that she couldn’t bite him the way she so desperately wanted to.

“While you’re at it, is there somewhere I can put this one?” I asked, nodding toward Lyssa. My back and chest and everything else were still protesting, but I hadn’t felt that I could hand her over to Apollo or Lau. After that blow I’d given her, I needed to feel her still breathing.

Cori looked at the demoness, blood tears smeared across her face making track marks through snot and soot from the fire. “The bathtub, I guess,” she said. “Follow me.”

I did, and she pointed me toward a closed door with a framed Moulin Rouge poster affixed. I entered to find a small bathroom with a shower curtain pulled back around a white clawfoot tub. It was deep, and every muscle in me protested as I lowered Lyssa into it. There was a basket near the sink with sage-green towels and washcloths, and I grabbed one of the latter, wetting it in the sink and lathering it up with green tea and ginger hand soap. I gently swiped it over Lyssa’s face a few times, using the less soapy end to rinse. Lyssa looked like a fallen angel sleeping there. I wondered what torment it was to inspire only insanity in others. What a lonely existence.

But there wasn’t time to dwell.

I closed the door behind me when I left and went back out to meet the others. The five of us stared at each other for a second, taking in the incongruity between our surroundings and our situation. “Can I offer you anything?” Cori asked, like she couldn’t help herself, she was so used to hosting.

“Scotch?” Hermes asked. “Bourbon? Absinthe? I’m not picky at this moment.”

Lau gave him a sour look. “At a time like this? Don’t you think it’s best to have your wits about you?”

“My dear Dragon Lady,” he answered, “my wits are strongly tied to my spirits. Restore one and the other will follow.”

I snorted. I’d called Lau Dragon Lady before I knew how literally I’d had her pegged.

“Fine, scotch,” Cori said. “Anyone else?”

“Yes,” Apollo and I chorused. I was sure it was five o’clock somewhere, and, anyway, it was apocalypse now.