So.
I had to change the game and change it fast.
A gong began to clash slowly, a monstrous thing, the metallic roar of its voice something low and harsh that reminded me inexplicably of the roar Martin had produced earlier. The tension got thicker, and except for the sounds of the drum and the gong, there were no other noises, not of the creatures of the jungle or any other kind.
The quiet was far more terrifying than the noise had been.
“They’re out there,” I said quietly. “They’re moving right now.”
“Yes,” said Lea, who had suddenly appeared at my left side, opposite Mouse. Her voice was very calm, and her feline eyes roamed the night, bright and interested. “That mob of trash was merely a distraction. Our own tactic used against us.” Her eyes narrowed. “They are employing veils to hide themselves—and they are quite skilled.”
“Molly,” I said.
“On it, boss,” she replied.
“Our distraction was an illusion. It didn’t cost us any lives,” Murphy pointed out.
“Neither did theirs, from their perspective, Sergeant,” Martin said. “Creatures who cannot control themselves are of no use to the Red King, after all. Their deaths simply reduced the number of useless, parasitic mouths he had to feed. He may think of humans as a commodity, but he’d rather not throw that wealth away.”
“Harry?” Murphy asked. “Can you do that anvil thing again?”
“Hell. I’m sorta surprised I got away with it the first time. Never done anything with that much voltage.” I closed my eyes for a second and began to reach down for the ley line again—and my brain contorted. Thoughts turned into a harsh explosion of images and memories that left long lacerations on the inside of my skull, and even after I had moved my mind away from those images, it took several seconds before I could open my eyes again. “No,” I croaked. “No, that isn’t an option. Even if they gave me enough time to pull it off.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Thomas asked. He held a large pistol in his left hand, his falcata in his right, and stood at my back, facing the darkness behind us. “Stand here until they swarm us?”
“We’re going to show them how much it will cost to take us down,” I said. “How’s it coming, padawan?”
Molly let out a slow, thoughtful breath. Then she lifted one pale hand, rotated an extended finger in a circle around us, and murmured, “Hireki.”
I felt the subtle surge of her will wash out and drew in my own as it did. The word my apprentice whispered seemed to flow out from her in an enormous circle, leaving visible signs of its passing. It fluttered leaves and blades of grass, stirred small stones—and, as it continued, it washed over several shapes out in the night that rippled and became solid black outlines, where before there was only indistinct darkness and shadow.
“Not all that skilled,” Molly said, panting, satisfaction in her voice.
“Fuego!” I snarled, and threw a small comet of fire from my right hand. It sailed forth with a howling whistle of superheated air and smashed into the nearest of the shadowed forms, less than a dozen yards away. Fire leapt up, and a vampire screamed in rage and pain and began retreating through the trees.
“Infriga!” I barked, and made a ripping gesture with my left hand. I tore the fire from the stricken vampire—and then some. I sent the resulting fireball skipping over to the next form—and left the first target as a block of ice where the damp jungle air had emptied its water over the vampire’s body and locked it into place, rigid and very slightly luminous with the residue of the cold energy I felt in me, the gift of Queen Mab. Which was just as well—there were a dozen closing attackers in my immediate field of vision alone, which meant another fifty or sixty of them if they were circling in from all around us, plus the ones I couldn’t see, who may have employed more mundane techniques of stealth to avoid the eye.
I wanted them to see what I could do.
The second vampire fell as easily as the first, as did the third, and only then did I say quietly, “One bullet apiece, Martin.”
Martin’s silenced pistol coughed three times, and the slightly glowing forms of the ice-enclosed vampires shattered into several dozen pieces each, falling to the ground where the luminous energy of Winter began to bleed slowly away, along with the ice-riddled flesh.
They got the point. The vampires stopped advancing. The jungle became still.
“Fire and ice,” murmured the Leanansidhe. “Excellent, my godson. Anyone can play with an element. Few can manipulate opposites with such ease.”
“Sort of the idea,” I said. “Back me up.”
“Of course,” Lea said.
I stepped forward and slightly apart from the others and lifted my hands. “Arianna!” I shouted, and my voice boomed as though I’d been holding a microphone and using speakers the size of refrigerators. It was something of a surprise, and I looked over my shoulder to see my godmother smiling calmly.
“Arianna!” I called again. “You were too great a coward to accept my challenge when I gave it to you in Edinburgh! Now I am here, in the heart of the power of the Red King! Do you still fear to face me, coward?”
“What?” Thomas muttered under his breath.
“This is not an assault,” Sanya added, disapproval in his voice.
I ignored them. I was the one with the big voice. “You see what I have done to your rabble!” I called. “How many more must die before you come out from behind them, Duchess? I am come to kill you and claim my child! Stand forth, or I swear to you, upon the power in my body and mind, that I will lay waste to your strong place. Before I die, I will make you pay the price for every drop of blood—and when I die, my death curse will scatter the power of this place to the winds!
“Arianna!” I bellowed, and I could not stop the hatred from making my voice sharply edged with scorn and spite. “How many loyal servants of the Red King must die tonight? How many Lords of Outer Night will taste mortality before the sun rises? You have only begun to know the power I bring with me this night. For though I die, I swear to you this: I will not fall alone.”
I indulged in a little bit of melodrama at that point: I brought forth soulfire—enough to sheath my body in silver light—as my oath rolled out over the land, through the ruins, and bounced from tree to tree. It cast a harsh light that the nearest surviving vampires cringed away from.
For a long moment, there was no sound.
Then the drums and the occasional clash of the gong stopped.
A conch shell horn, the sound unmistakable, blew three high, sweet notes.
The effect was immediate. The vampires surrounding us all retreated until they were out of sight. Then a drumbeat began again, this time from a single drummer.
“What’s happening?” Thomas asked.
“The Red King’s agents spent the past couple of days trying to kill me or make sure I showed up here only as a vampire,” I said quietly. “I’m pretty sure it’s because the king didn’t want the duchess pulling off her bloodline curse against me. Which means that there’s a power play going on inside the Red Court.”
“Your explanation isn’t one,” Thomas replied.
“Now that I am here,” I said, “I’m betting that the Red King is going to be willing to attempt other means of undercutting the duchess.”
“You don’t even know he’s here.”
“Of course he is,” I said. “There’s a sizable force here, as large as any we’ve ever seen take the field during the war.”
“What if it isn’t his army? What if he’s not here to run it?” Thomas asked.
“History suggests that kings who don’t exercise direct control over their armies don’t tend to remain kings for very long. Which must be, ultimately, what this is all about—diminishing Arianna’s power.”