The Devil Is a Gentleman (21 page)

“What the hell is this, Dorrance?” I said. “I’m not an angel. You can’t get off on my blood.” I thought of the vial in my pocket and prayed those in the room already had enough of their own angelwine to mask its scent. The tingle of magic was all around me. I looked toward Bobby and saw his eyes were wide. He was staring at me. I touched my chest, trying to will away the pulling sensation. It was becoming difficult to breathe.

“I don’t know what you are,” said Dorrance, “but that’s not what we want your blood for. We’re going to use you to summon your father here. All we need is the blood of family, and you are as close as we can get. Although, were conditions different, I’d love to take a taste. I can smell you from here.” He breathed in deeply, savoring. He raised an eyebrow. “We’d use The Morrigan, but she doesn’t have human blood any longer.”

“Was that the purpose of your twisted little experiment? To see if it could be done? To see if you could turn my sister into a monster?”

“The Morrigan is not your sister anymore, ” he said. “She’s a living goddess. She has gone beyond humanity. As have we.” He gestured around the circle and faces turned toward me. The faces of the city’s top executives and administrators. Faces with darkened eyes. That wasn’t good for us. I looked at Gage again. He was slowly wiggling the fingers of one hand. I saw his eyes blink. Their casting was wearing off. Luka was watching me intently. I looked around and realized everyone’s eyes were on me. I sucked in air. The pull was hard to resist now. Yuri was frowning at me. The dull thrum filled my ears. I felt a rush of heat and saw the symbols on the table shoot up into the air.

Dorrance waved a hand towards the table and one of the guards ducked under the linked hands of the circle, wincing as he did so, to take the stone bowl and the black-bladed knife from the table. He slid the knife into a sheath that Dorrance wore around his waist, and ducked back out. He placed the bowl on a small sideboard, next to a vase full of flowers. Glancing around I saw several tables against the wall behind the large men, one with a large oriental vase, another with a brass decanter. And there were framed oil paintings on the walls. They looked very old. They were portraits, mostly, of stern-looking men. One was a painting of a group of people standing together. I counted twelve people in the picture.

“The Blood,” I said, panting. I wiped sweat from my face. “The pictures. You’ve been around a while.”

Dorrance smiled again. “No more talk,” he said. “Submit. Lie down on the table and place your head in the basin. Make it easy on yourself, Niki.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. But I felt myself being pulled. My shoes scraped against the tile of the floor as I dug my heels in. I tried to step back, but it was too strong. I saw the copper of the table open up, then, and fire leapt up to the ceiling. I knew that fire. It was Hellfire. I looked back, toward Yuri, and his eyes were wide. He looked from me to the fire and back again. The men were stepping back.

“I’ll say it one more time, Dorrance,” I gasped. I reached toward my pocket. The force wasn’t stopping me from doing that. I pulled out my Makarov.

Dorrance shot a look at Yuri. “Are you stupid?” he said. “You didn’t search her?”

Yuri smiled at him. Dorrance looked at me. He searched the room, looking at each of the men. Comprehension dawned on his face just as I pulled all my strength together and yelled, “Now!” Eight men drew guns and fired at the same time. The sound was like a cannon exploding. The Blood didn’t even any time to react. Dorrance stared in shock, his mouth slightly open. The Caster’s voice wavered, but continued, and even though I fought it, I was still being pulled toward the otherworldly flame.

My men were faster than the Guard, and several of Dorrance’s men fell immediately. I twisted around in the force that was pulling me and fired twice, just as the two guards by the door were pulling out their weapons. They fell, perfect trails of blood crawling down their foreheads. They looked confused as they fell, right before the life left their eyes. I was thankful for whatever Sasha had done to the Makarov. It never missed its mark.

I twisted again and looked over at Gage just as another volley of shots rang out in the room. My hearing was muffled now. Gage was wobbling his head heavily, and I could see something going on with his arms. I saw him go down, his knees buckling as the spell ended.

I could hear the muffled sound of the blasts, each shot like a stab in the head. I turned with a grunt just in time to see Yuri blow half of a stocky guard’s head off. Luka was dead on the ground. One of the Guard remained. Three of my guys were still standing, including Yuri. I lurched around again to face forward. The Blood just watched. And the pull was becoming stronger. I could hardly move anywhere but the direction the magic was forcing me.

There was a shot behind me and I twisted my head with a great effort to see one of my guys fall, holding his stomach. The last living member of the Guard shot him again in the chest and Yuri shot the guard three times in the face. I felt a hot sensation on my hip and I put my hand on the lump in my jacket pocket. I unzipped it. I looked at The Blood. All were still standing there, hands still linked. Dorrance was eerily calm, and the others were watching the gruesome scene before them, some in horror, a few smiling, as if this were a show. And the low thrum was overwhelming.

I was a foot from the circle. I felt as if my chest were being ripped out in the struggle against the unseen force pulling me. I could see the white of the Caster’s eyes. There were voices coming from the fire. They seemed to echo inside my head. I wondered if my father’s voice was one of them, but there were too many. I couldn’t differentiate.

I reached out with my left hand. I could touch the two people closest to me in the circle. Guns were still going off behind me. The two men in front of me turned to look at me, examining me like I was something in a museum. Their bodies were vibrating worse than the room, and as I grasped an arm, a volt of magic shot up through me like electricity and I pulled my hand quickly away with a hiss. One of them laughed. I pointed my gun at Dorrance.

“Are you going to kill me, Niki?” Dorrance mouthed mockingly. I felt rather than heard his voice. The gunshots had done something to my ears. “In cold blood?” I smiled and with an enormous effort, turned toward the Caster. I saw Dorrance form the word “no,” his face suddenly alarmed.

“No one casts on a Slobodian,” I said. I couldn’t hear my own voice, but I felt the words tumble out. I swung my right arm around and pulled the trigger, hitting the Caster in the neck. I didn’t think it would kill her, but at least she wouldn’t be able to speak. She grabbed at her throat, blood spurting and gushing through the wound. The other men and women around her made surprised gasping noises. No one was smiling anymore. The Caster turned toward me, her face a mask of shock. The book hovering in front of her began to spin. The symbols retracted violently from the air back onto the pages and the book dropped, still spinning as it hit the ground. The Caster’s eyes returned to the unnatural dark of the angelwine. The pulling stopped and I stepped back, catching my breath. The buzzing stopped so suddenly that the absence of the vibration seemed louder than the gunshots behind me. The table closed up again, the copper unmarred, the Hellfire gone. It was as if it had never been there.

Finally free, I rushed over to Gage, still gasping for breath. He was lying on his face, struggling to turn over. I pulled him until he was on his back. I could taste the gunfire. I filled my lungs with air and looked down at Gage. He was saying one thing over and over. It took me a moment, but it suddenly occurred to me. He was saying
Get out, get out
over and over again. I motioned to Yuri. “Get him out of here,” I said. I didn’t know if the words came out, but it didn’t matter. Yuri understood. He looked at me and frowned. “Just go,” I said, pointing at the door. I pointed down at Gage and pointed toward the door again. Yuri whistled and the other guy that had come in with us, the only other one left alive, came over. They hauled Gage up and half carried, half dragged him out. Gage was trying to struggle against them, but he was still stiff as a board from the spell. Yuri glanced at me as he went. I tried to convey that it was all right, but only managed a nod.

I looked at Dorrance. He was smiling, his reptilian eyes cold and black. I was alone with The Blood. And I knew what I had to do. I had known it would be like this, ever since Natalie told me to keep the vial close to me. They would never leave me alone. And I couldn’t allow them to continue doing what they had done to my sister. Natalie. The Morrigan. I prayed that my men had gotten her out safely. I reached for the vial and its heat burned my hand. I almost rejoiced in the pain. They would never be able to bring Sasha here. If Natalie had burned up her blood with angelwine, that’s what I would do too. I savored the burning for another moment. The vial seemed to grow hotter and hotter. I stood and took a step toward The Blood.

Dorrance wasn’t smiling anymore. The blood sprayed from the Caster’s neck and hit the copper table, hissing and smoking where it landed. He seemed to finally notice how injured she was, and what the blood was doing to his colleagues. One by one, the members changed, turning toward the bleeding woman. Teeth grew down to rest on their chins. Nostrils flared and eyes slitted. Their entire bodies elongated. There was a growl that seemed to continue from one to the other. All except Dorrance. He didn’t change. He just looked angry. He was saying something to the Caster, not to help her or comfort her, but to stop her from reeling away from the circle. Her hands, still linked with her cohorts, were slick with blood and she was struggling to hang on. She grasped at the hands that were linked in hers, but they were growing, elongating. She slipped, still trying to grab at them as she fell to the floor with a wet thud. There was a snap in the air as she went down and she grasped at her neck, trying to stop the blood from flowing out.

Dorrance scowled, his angelwine-dark eyes narrowed and his teeth bared then and began to grow, just like the others. They were going to tear me apart and I knew it. They would never find Sasha, but I would be damned if I was going to go quietly. Dorrance suddenly stopped and raised his face to sniff the air. The glint of the vial caught Dorrance’s eye just as I raised it to drink. He froze and seemed to grow even paler than he already was.

The man next to the fallen Caster suddenly lunged at her as she writhed on the ground. I heard a sickening rip as he sank his teeth into her body near the wound, and then jerked his head back to pull a chunk of meat away from her shoulder.. I put the vial to my lips and poured the entire glowing contents down my throat.

Frank Bradley said it burned. It did more than that. It seared down my throat and my eyes widened as I staggered back. It was like I’d swallowed burning kerosene. It exploded in my chest and stayed there, and I might have gone mad with the pain, but the pain started to feel good. My hearing cleared and I could sense everything. Every heartbeat, every drop of Caster’s blood hitting the floor, and every breath of everyone in the room. And there was a smell. A metallic smell like fresh meat that made me salivate. I could smell their blood.

I dropped the empty vial and it shattered, and I could follow the course of every tiny fragment of its broken glass. One of the women surged forward suddenly in a blur towards the back of the room, but I was in front of her in a quarter-second. She reached for the stone bowl on the sideboard. I took the vase and smashed it into her face, then hurled the bowl with the thimbleful of angel blood against the wall so hard it went through the plaster, making a giant spiderweb of cracks from floor to ceiling. She looked at me, enraged and tried to lunge at me, but I was faster. She went for my throat, but I was already behind her and had one elbow locked under her chin. With one swift motion, I twisted her head around with a crack and she fell to the floor, dead.

” You’re an idiot,” said Dorrance, through growing teeth. He left the circle and began walking toward me along with the nine others. “That angelwine will kill you if we don’t. No one’s ever taken that much at once.”

” I know,” I said, my voice guttural and hoarse. I could feel my body changing still, my spine cracking and popping as it stretched out, my shoulders creaking as they widened, the pain both overwhelming and intoxicating. “But you’ll be dead before me. I might even have enough time to piss on your corpse.”

A man lunged at me and I caught him in my left hand, feeling his soft throat under my fingers that now seemed to be made of steel. I squeezed hard and felt the crunch and a tacky warmth flow over my hand. I looked to find I had pulled his head off of his body. It hit the floor with a crack and rolled to Dorrance’s feet, trailing blood as it went. His body sprayed blood as it fell, splattering all over me. It only seemed to make me stronger. I licked sticky warmth off my lips.

I found my gun was still in my right hand and I held my arm out and pulled the trigger, hitting another man straight through the eye. He crumpled immediately. Dorrance pulled the long black knife out of its sheath and looked at it. He raised his eyes to me and I smelled his fear. He took a step back. His teeth receded into his gums. He seemed to know now that he was defeated. It was still eight to one, but he knew I would win. I sensed his defeat, the scent of bitter bile, the quickening of his heart. I was so hungry.

I shot again and a woman sneaking up on my left fell with a thud. I pulled the trigger again and the gun gave a hollow
click
. It was empty. I dropped it on the tile with a clatter and yanked someone’s head down hard, smashing it on the floor like an egg. I advanced on Dorrance.