"Pritkin!”
He caught sight of me. "They're coming!”
"Oh, shit.”
I looked around but saw no hordes of vamps. But Pritkin had his full arsenal out and his shields up, not something he did lightly. I finally got a chance to see Mac's handiwork in operation. The sword that slashed and danced around the mage's head had the same design as the one I'd seen Mac painstakingly carving into Pritkin's skin. But it was larger- easily half as long as me-and as solid and shiny as a real weapon. It also appeared to pack quite a punch. One swipe at Dracula threw him back almost ten feet, and if he hadn't deflected the blade, it would have bisected him.
Suddenly, Dracula and Mircea were fighting side by side, their own feud forgotten in the face of the new threat. Luckily, the two brothers were so busy concentrating on the mage and his bevy of flying weapons that they didn't notice me. Unluckily, they forgot about Myra, too, who had shrunk back from the fight, and her hands were clenched as if she held something. I reached her just as she threw the sphere in her left hand, and felt the effect slam into me like a tidal wave. Oh, joy. Little Myra had got herself a null bomb.
We went down in a tangle of Augusta's voluminous skirts, Myra screaming and me swearing. The thing in her other hand turned out to be another sphere, this one dull black and about the size of a softball. I didn't recognize it, but if it was magic it wouldn't work right now, so I ignored it. Myra raked her nails down my cheek, almost resulting in Augusta going through eternity with a less-than-fashionable eye patch. I turned my head at the last second, avoiding the worst, but the scratches still hurt like a bitch.
"Girlfriend," I told her, blinking to clear the blood out of my vision, "you so do not want to fuck with me today.”
Her eyes got big, then her expression turned murderous. "You!" Myra didn't seem to like it that I'd been able to appropriate a stronger body, because she went for my throat, her reaching hands formed into claws. I managed to wrestle her hands off with minimal damage to either of us, but all I got in return was a snarl and a kick that caught me in the shin.
I slapped her hard enough that her head shot back and her eyes briefly lost focus, buying me a few seconds to check on the fight. The magical sword had disappeared and a few of Pritkin's knives were on the ground, their animation lost to the null's effects. The vamps had dealt with the others by simply allowing them to burrow so far into their flesh that they couldn't pull back out again. Both of them were a bloody mess, but they would survive. I was a lot less sure about Pritkin. He had his revolver out, but steel bullets wouldn't do much against master-level vampires, even assuming they connected.
Billy suddenly walked out onstage, in my body but with his usual swagger. He was looking up and so was Myra, and she was laughing. One glance and I knew why-the rafters were suddenly swarming with vamps. They poured in from the roof, the windows, the doors-my God, there had to be a hundred of them. I stared in stupefied awe, Augusta's voice in my head telling me what I already knew. We were screwed.
A vamp dropped in front of me, plummeting the three floors from the rafters without even missing his footing on the landing. Before I got a good look at him, Billy reached into his pocket and tossed something at us. I caught a glint of gold as a tiny shape arced in the air, and then it changed.
Mac's eagle swooped down in a beautiful dive, gray feathers a blur against the dark theatre, but those glittering eyes just as bright as ever, and the vamp was suddenly not there anymore. A scream, a thud, and he landed in front of me again, this time missing a good chunk of his throat. He was a master-he'd live-but he wasn't going to be doing any fighting anytime soon.
The vamps attacked in a swarm, flooding the stage, and Billy threw the remaining wards into the air in a glittering arc. A wave of spitting, hissing and howling beasts tore into the vamps. A miniature tornado took out half a dozen, tearing along a rafter, tossing bodies everywhere before fading away. A snake the size of an anaconda dropped around another vamp's neck, winding its coils over his eyes, causing him to stagger blindly off the stage into the orchestra pit. A huge wolf jumped on one, snarling and tearing huge chunks out of his torso, while a spider the size of a Volkswagon had another wound up in silk, hanging him from the rafters with an air of pleased concentration.
Myra brought my attention back to earth by attempting to stake me. Luckily, Augusta believed in whalebone-and lots of it-for stays. I ended up with a bruised rib and Myra with a blunt stake. I grabbed it out of her hand. "I'm already Pythia! There's no changing it!”
Myra only laughed. "I already killed one Pythia," she said viciously. "What's one more?”
"You killed Agnes?" I almost let her go in surprise. Not that it surprised me that she was capable of it, but what about the prohibition? "Then why are you after me? Even if I die, you'll never be Pythia!”
"If you're clever, there are ways around almost any problem." She glanced at the combatants. "We'll see what can't be changed!”
The other ball had become tangled in my skirts, but a kick from her started it rolling slowly across the floor toward the fight. I finally got a grip on her by grabbing a handful of hair, but although it must have hurt, she was smiling, her eyes following the black orb like it carried the secret to all her dreams. Considering that her dreams involved mayhem and death, and that she'd probably gotten that thing from her good buddy Rasputin, I decided that it would be very bad if it succeeded in crossing the stage.
It was just like my vision-Mircea covered in blood, fighting for his life, and someone tossing a weapon at him from the shadows. I knew what came next, but with Myra fighting me every inch of the way, I couldn't reach the ball in time to stop it. I dropped her in a heap and ran after her little contraption.
I hadn't gotten two steps before she tackled me, and it was like trying to get away from an enraged octopus- everywhere I moved, she seemed to be there first. Normally, Augusta would have been able to stow her under one arm and run with her or simply knock her unconscious. But the first idea would slow me down and the second was out because I didn't know Augusta's strength well enough to risk it.
Half walking, half crawling, I moved slowly toward the ball, but it was taking too much time. I caught sight of a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye and didn't hesitate. "She's going to destroy the theatre!" I screamed, pointing at Myra.
Myra looked at me like I was mad, but the theatre ghosts heard me just fine. The woman's face had already been screwed into a vicious snarl, watching the mess being made on her beloved stage, and now she had someone to blame. She threw the severed head, which was suddenly looking a lot less jolly, straight at Myra. When they merged, Myra gave a shriek and started convulsing. I shoved her away from me just as the woman joined her tiny partner. A whirlwind started up that left me unable to see more than a thrashing tornado of white and blue.
This was no mere mugging-the ghosts had obviously given all the warnings they intended and had gotten down to business. A living person should have been stronger than they were, but it was two against one and they were on ground that had held generations of the bodies of their ancestors. That's like an extra battery pack for a ghost, something Myra must have figured out. She screamed as they dove for her again, half in fear and half in rage, and vanished.
I lunged after the ball, but a vamp got in my way. I threw Myra's stake at him, more as a diversion than anything else, my aim being what it is. Apparently, Augusta's was better, because it connected.