Blood splattered everywhere. Nyissa fell to the carpet, jaw forced wide open by the end of the silver crossbow bolt protruding from her mouth. She flailed, and I had a horrific image of the bolt jutting out of the bottom of her mouth and into her voicebox.
“Oh my God,” cried the woman, running back into the house. “She shot an ambassador!”
Scara looked at me, then threw the crossbow down and smiled. “Looks like you are going to need a new protector,” she hissed. “What toll shall I make you pay?”
She stepped towards me, eyes glowing, sending a prickling sensation rippling through my skin. I flinched in fear, drawing up my energies, but I could tell that I’d lost too much ink. My shield would be useless. Her hand reached out And then Lord Iadimus was standing between us, straightening his suit. It was like a magic trick. One moment she was advancing on me, the next he was standing there, Scara flinching back. The prickling sensation disappeared, replaced by icy cold emptiness.
“What is going on here?” Iadimus demanded. No one answered, and after a moment he knelt and examined Nyissa, on her back on the floor, choking to death on her own blood. He tilted her head up, then hissed. He gently rolled her over onto her side.
“Who is this vampire?” Iadimus asked.
“She called herself Nyissa,” Scara said contemptuously. “Frost’s protector-”
“Don’t task me, Lady Scara,” Iadimus said sharply, examining the bolt. “Miss Frost, does the Lady Nyissa have guards?”
“A driver, waiting in the limo,” I said.
“Guards, request the presence of her driver,” Iadimus said, withdrawing a white handkerchief from his suit pocket. “I want her attended by her own people.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said.
“Lady Nyissa,” Iadimus said gently. “I am going to remove the quarrel.”
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Call a doctor-”
“No time. The quarrel is silver,” Iadimus said quietly. “It is killing her. Removing it will hurt, and perhaps damage her, but she will have a chance to heal. Lady, are you ready?”
Nyissa’s head moved slightly. Perhaps it was a nod. Then Iadimus wrapped the end of the bolt in his handkerchief, got a good grip, and pulled it out in one swift motion. A new spray of blood splashed out along the floor, followed by a horrible sucking sound as Nyissa fought for air. But even as she flailed, I could see the blood flow stopping, see her begin to recover.
“Get her to a bed,” Iadimus said, standing, letting the guards move in. “Get her blood, as soon as she’s able. Find her fang, put it in warm milk, and call my dentist.”
Then he turned on Scara.
“How dare you, Lady Scara,” Iadimus said, oh so mildly-and a terrible coldness began to spread through the room. I swallowed, and backed up against the wall.
“She was impudent,” Scara said defiantly. “Thinking she could offer protection-”
“You staked a fellow vampire, ” Iadimus roared. I, the guards, even Nyissa flinched from that ice cold rage, and Scara’s face sagged in fear as the larger, taller vampire towered over her. “You assaulted her under truce! You staked her without trial!”
Scara twitched. “I-I-”
“Go back to the Council Chamber or die where you stand.”
Scara hesitated only a moment, then turned and quickly retreated down the corridor.
Iadimus stood there, perfectly still-then abruptly was standing right before me, elbow extended. “ Lady Frost,” he said stiffly. “My apologies for my colleague’s boorish behavior. I should like the honor of escorting you to court under my protection.”
“Thank you, Lord Iadimus,” I said cautiously. “Do-do I have to pay another toll?”
Iadimus glared down at the patch of blood on the carpet. “Enough blood has been shed,” he said curtly. “Consider me… the Lady Nyissa’s stand-in, while she is indisposed.”
I took his arm, swallowing. “Thank you.”
“We shall take the tunnel,” he said stiffly.
I followed him in through the long narrow passage cutting straight through the center of the house. It was like walking through a museum, with thousands of ancient artifacts and pictures arranged beneath high cove ceilings. In one room, the glass was shattered, bullet holes marred the hair plaster, and behind a piano was a pool of blood. Vladimir had not been subtle.
I half expected the tunnel to be artfully hidden behind a trick door, but near the back of the house, a well-lit stair curved down into to a full-sized basement, holding a parlor that was similar to, but more intimate, than the one where the vampire held court. A big-screen TV dominated one side of the room; even the ancient vampire was turning into a consumer.
Glass lamps lit either side of a columned entranceway, with a heavy door that looked not unlike the front door of the house we’d just entered. It had been splintered clear of its hinges. The light grew dim in the hallway, provided by widely-spaced bulbs that barely illuminated the yellow wallpaper. Iadimus led me forward through a century and a half of history splayed over the walls in the form of old photographs, from daguerreotypes through digital prints.
Bloodstains began appearing in the hallway, but Iadimus didn’t stop, not even when we encountered the bodies of two more guards, dead on the floor. We emerged in another parlor, this one filled with scattered bodies. I shuddered, but Iadimus kept walking, climbing the stairs into another room, all the doors but one blocked off with tossed furniture.
Iadimus cleared his throat, then led me through the door and into the vampire’s parlor.
“Thanks for the heads up,” Vladimir said dryly, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Do not mention it,” Iadimus said stiffly.
“You left a lot of bodies on the deck back there,” I said quietly.
“You can’t make an omelet,” he said, staring over my shoulder at Iadimus. “But I don’t think it will matter. Consider it payment for all of Darkrose’s men Scara killed.”
“As you offered before-a fair proposal,” Iadimus said. “I am inclined to seek agreement with you, so we may salvage something from this catastrophe.”
“I am inclined to let you all live if you behave,” Vladimir said.
“Excellent,” Iadimus said, releasing my arm and turning to face forward. “Sir Leopold, Lords and Ladies of the Gentry,” he said, with a gracious bow, “on behalf of the Lady Nyissa of the House Beyond Sleep, may I present her envoy, the Lady Dakota Frost.”
I nodded to myself. Then I turned and faced the vampire court.
Everything was more or less as I had left it: Saffron and Delancaster seated on either side of the lich’s throne, Darkrose still in her cage. Scara sulked at the edge of the dais, and everyone else looked grumpy and uncomfortable. Even the vamps’ guards were seated, except two fresh ones around Darkrose, one guarding the rope, one guarding the cage with a crossbow.
Only the lich seemed alert, bright, animated. He prowled around the chunk of masonry, brazenly walking past the now-broken magic circle, touching with an occasional cackle the blackened surface where the tagged gateway had once stood. Demophage’s coffin still flickered with slowly dying rainbow light. Interesting -though the lich seemed not to notice.
“I did what you asked,” I said. “Now release my friends, and let’s put this behind us.”
“We can clearly see you dealt with the magic marks,” the lich said, hand extended to the cracked, blackened ruin of the tag. Chuckling, the lich returned to his throne and sat down. “But what of the rest of what you promised? What became of the tagger?”
“Dead. I short-circuited his magic to kill both him and what he summoned.” I turned to give Scara the full force of my words. “Then I cut him free of the graffiti, pulled what was left of his brain through the hole the tag had made in his skull, cut it into pieces, and stomped on ’em.”
Something flickered over Scara’s face, but she did not respond. The lich, however, did. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Our little Edgeworld witch has shown herself to have a spine-”
“And then,” I continued, “since he seemed to have such an affinity for vampire magic, I rammed a wooden stake through his blackened corpse, and cut his head off with this.” I pulled Tully’s closed switchblade out and tossed it at his feet. “I couldn’t quite get off all the goo-and while I’m not a vampire, I’m pretty sure you can smell that’s burnt human, well, werekin fat.”
The lich just sat there in stunned silence. After a moment, Saffron spoke.
“Yeah,” she said. “ That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Nuke the site from orbit,” I said. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
I glanced at her, and she nodded. Neither of us was smiling, or happy, or even really friends again, but it was a truce, of sorts, a shared bit of sentiment in the face of adversity.
But then Scara spoiled it. “Lead us to them, and we will put them on trial,” she said, spinning around, talking to the hall. “One of the delightful farces all you precious children value so highly. If we find them innocent, we find them innocent; if we find them guilty-then we will kill the wolf, and leave to Vlad the Destroyer the duty of killing his own pupil, or the guilt of sheltering a murderer-”
“God damn you,” Vladimir said.
“That sounds like a great idea-go to hell, Scara!” I said. “I did what that the Gentry asked, and this is the thanks I get? I don’t believe for a minute that you plan to hold a fair trial, and I’d die before I turned over Cinnamon.”
But at that, Scara whirled and jabbed her hand out at me.
In hindsight, I don’t think she intended to strike. Her mouth was open, as if she was making a point, a gesture I recognized half a second too late. Too late, because in the first instant her hand shot towards me, I instinctively sashayed back and murmured shield.
Mana flooded out over my body-but my vines were gone. Magic surged into what was left of my tags, especially the Dragon, my unfinished masterwork, with unterminated graphomantic circuits spreading out over my whole body. Without the vines to ground them, they dumped all their mana back into my skin in concentrated points, and I screamed.
My body flailed. More mana built up as my skin stretched and living blood surged through millions of capillaries running beneath billions of cells, feeding back into my tattoos and then back into my body. It was a living feedback circuit, like the one I had used to destroy the monster-but the only place for the magic to go was back on myself.
Slowly, inevitably, the pieces of the Dragon came to life-and began tearing me apart.