He finally went limp and I laid him down to check for a pulse. I found one and breathed a sigh of relief. "You seem to be doing well enough on your own," Pritkin commented.
"Against humans! It isn't humans hunting us.”
"No, but the principle is the same. When they looked at you, the two men saw only a weak woman, where they should have seen a predator." He gave me a brief, mirthless grin. "I often have that same advantage.”
"You can't take them all, predator or not!”
"The principle is the same," he repeated, wrenching the heavy lamppost I'd ruined out of the ground, then shoving it back into the hole, hard. The gas main underneath the street ruptured and caught fire with a whoosh, sending a bright plume skyward. I jumped back, Augusta 's instinctive terror running through me. But a vamp I hadn't even noticed caught fire and ran screaming into another. Pritkin grinned viciously. "Never be what they expect.”
He ran down the street after the fleeing vampires, whooping and generally making as much noise as possible, and the dark wells of power in my vision began to turn the same way. The vamps didn't know what was going on, but they'd been looking for a fight, and Pritkin seemed ready to give them one. And he called me insane.
I ran back into the theatre and found Billy cowering behind the ticket booth. I nodded approval. There was no safe place at the moment, but it beat having him with me or the maniac outside.
I turned my attention to finding Myra. There were three people in the building, and only one was human. I could hear the strong, steady heartbeat, could feel it at the back of my throat as something thick and sweet. The vamps weren't bothering with trivialities like having a pulse, but I could smell them. And even at this distance Augusta 's keen nose could pick out the crisp scent of pine.
I followed Augusta 's hunger through the backstage areas, trying to zero in on Myra 's exact location, but the place was a rabbit warren of tiny rooms and dead-end corridors, with props stuck here and there haphazardly. I fumbled out of a forest of painted trees to find myself in the wings of the stage. The theatre was dark, enough so that to a human's eyes little would have been visible. I could make out a few props-a chest, a couple of flags and some blunted lances- waiting for the next performance. There was no sign of activity, however, and the human's heartbeat was still a good way off.
I finally located my target in a room behind the stage, down a stairway filled with dust and old suits of armor. I kept a wary eye on the battered knights as I slipped by, but none so much as twitched. The first room I reached was set up like a dining room, with a large shiny wood table that practically reeked of beeswax. It was oak to match the paneling on the walls and the beams on the ceiling. There were a bunch of portraits scattered around and a big stone fireplace. It had a gothic feel to it that would have served as a good backdrop for a couple of vamps, only there weren't any.
The still-glowing embers in the fireplace and the decanter and two used glasses on the table told me that they hadn't been gone long. I peered into the next room, drawn by an odd smell, and found the human. It wasn't Myra.
A tall, portly guy with dark hair and, oddly enough, a red beard, stood by a counter with his shirt open over a pale, hairy belly. He had a candle in his hand and I identified the odor: cooked human flesh. He appeared to be trying to melt the skin on his chest and stomach, patches of which were already a flaming, lobster red. A few that had received extra attention were starting to bubble. He was crying silently, tears coursing down his cheeks to soak his beard, but he didn't stop.
I ran forward and knocked the candle away. It rolled across the floor and went out, and he looked after it blankly. Then he reached to the shelf behind him, got another one and was in the process of lighting it when I jerked it away, too. I looked into his eyes, but there was no one home. Somebody had hit him with a suggestion, a strong one. I slapped him, but it didn't seem to help. I tried to catch his eyes with mine, but it was hard to get him to focus enough to get a hold. Vampires have a hard time influencing people who are really drunk, high or crazy, because their minds don t work right. Apparently that goes for those who’ve been hit with a prior suggestion as well.
In the end, I got his attention by throwing his candles and matches into a garbage pail and refusing to let him retrieve them. He woke up enough to notice I was there and along with the recognition went a wince of pain. That was going to get a whole lot worse as his brain unfogged, but for the moment he was just uncomfortable.
"Where's Myra?" I asked. He stared at me as if he was having a hard time remembering English. "Have you seen a girl, shorter than me, weird eyes-”
"The master and Lord Mircea are dueling," he said sadly. I tried repeating the question, but he just stared at me. There was only one thought in his head, and it wasn't about Myra.
"Where is this duel?" I didn't need to find Myra if I located Mircea-she'd find me.
"Onstage.”
"I was just there-it's empty.”
"They have gone to Lord Dracula's rooms for weapons." His face twisted in pain, but I think it was less from his wounds than from the thought of his master in jeopardy. I had never met Mircea's infamous younger brother and wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. But what really concerned me was the fight. Half the Senate was after them, and they were taking time out to duel?
"Why are they fighting?”
"If my lord wins, he goes free-his brother has sworn it. But if Lord Mircea wins, he must go back into captivity, possibly forever!" The big man started sobbing as if his heart would break. I sighed. I should have known. Of course Dracula wouldn't want to go back into jail or whatever asylum the Senate had fixed up for crazy vamps. But while he and Mircea battled it out, Myra and her new buddies would end the dispute by killing them both.
I turned the large man's face towards me. "Why were you burning yourself?”
"Lord Dracula commanded it, for my failure to keep Lord Mircea from learning his whereabouts. He came here an hour ago, and I meant to tell him nothing, but then everything I knew poured out of me.”
"Mircea can be very persuasive.”
"My lord was very generous not to end my life for such incompetence.”
His eyes held the light of a true believer. I didn't even try to convince him that his god was really a monster. "What's your name?”
"Abraham Stoker, lady. I manage the theatre.”
I did a double take. Okay, that explained a lot. "It has to be late. Go home and get some medical attention for your burns. If anyone asks, you were checking on a sauce here in the kitchen and pulled it off on you.”
He nodded but looked torn, so I upped the amp on Augusta 's suggestion. It used up a lot of energy, and I had to resist the impulse to snatch him to me for a quick bite. Being in a vampire body had its downsides.
Stoker started to leave, but jerked violently halfway to the door and came to a stop. His head swiveled around to face me, despite the fact that his body remained facing forward. Another inch and he'd break his neck. "Tell me, if you can, what sort of spirit are you, to so easily possess a master vampire?”
"I told you to go home!" I eyed him cautiously. His voice had sounded funny, lower and more in control.
"And I told him to stay. It seems we know who is the stronger here, do we not?”
I was getting a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Who are you?”
"I am one whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.”