But this wasn’t a lower-level vamp. He wouldn’t have been on the desk—considered the first line of defense—if he was. So what the hell?

I didn’t get an answer—unless you counted the eyes suddenly narrowing, and the mouth screwing up. I jerked to the side, hard enough to wrench something. But it ensured that the spit intended for my face hit my shoulder instead, splattering against the heavy leather with an acidic hiss. And then I was out of range, rolling and flipping and putting three bullets through the evil thing’s eyes.

Which didn’t stop it from laughing.

I snatched off the jacket, breathing hard and cursing. And watched the leather bubble and burn and then disintegrate into a baseball-sized hole. I pulled a knife and ripped off the sleeve, wishing I had the ammo to spare to obliterate that horrible grin.

But I didn’t, because I’d just announced my presence to everyone here. Or if I hadn’t, that thing probably had. Was that why he’d been left there? Some kind of early-warning system, a CCTV for the magically inclined?

I didn’t know, but I didn’t intend to wait around and find out.

I pushed on, navigating around puddles of still-sticky blood in case any of them might burn my feet off. But it was impossible to miss the stuff completely. It had even run into the grout between the tiles in the elevator alcove, placing a red grid on the floor. Hell, even the potted plants were splattered with it.

Which was kind of disturbing, since they also appeared to be moving.

Now what? I thought, gripping my gun tighter. But I didn’t retreat because I couldn’t. The damned plants were framing the hall running between the reception area and the elevators. And of course it was the one I needed. So whoever or whatever was back there was about to get—

“Aughhhh!”

I’d jerked on a quivering frond, only to have it jerk back. And scream. And then go running wildly down the corridor away from me, shedding bits of leaves and moss and making strange huffing shrieks. Right up until it ran out of hallway.

It ricocheted around for a second, as if trying to find a branching corridor that wasn’t there. And then it seemed to go a little mad, turning around and coming back again. Which was less of a concern than the fact that it appeared to be sprouting hand grenades like some weird sort of fruit.

One of which fell off and went bouncing along the baseboard.

I didn’t wait to see if the pin was still in it or not. I stumbled back a few steps and then turned and ran, right back the way I’d come, across the lobby and through a corridor and down a flight of stairs, slamming the garage door behind me. Only to have frantic fists beat a staccato hail on it a second later and someone start screaming bloody murder.

I hesitated a second, but I thought the screams sounded a little familiar. And even if I was wrong, whoever it was didn’t seem interested in attacking me so much as in getting the hell out of Dodge. I jerked open the door and something flew through, just a green blur against the dim garage, right up until it hit the bottom of the incline.

At which point it dropped like a stone, screeching and flailing around like some kind of panicked banshee.

A muffled boom came from the other side of the door and I waited a few heartbeats, holding my breath. But there were no other sounds, like running footsteps coming this way. It looked like whatever was downstairs was either deaf or was waiting for me to come to it. Which would have been fine if that hadn’t been exactly what I was about to do.

But at least it gave me some options.

I peeled myself off the wall and went to see what the blubbering thing was doing.

It was blubbering. And writhing. And sizzling slightly because it had just run into the wards at top speed.

It also wasn’t an it so much as a he, and a familiar he at that.

I bent over and jerked him up, and this time he didn’t try to run or even respond, except to continue a litany of “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, know, know, know, know—” until I slapped him.

That shut him up. For about a second. And then he started quivering all over and screeching, and throwing bits of himself at the ward, tearing off leaves and fronds of what looked like half a dozen different plants, pieces of which had been stuck into and taped around a familiar-looking pair of assless pants.

“Ray!” I said sharply, only to be ignored. “Ray!”

He just stared at me out of a blackened face, like some kind of whacked-out commando who’d failed camouflage school. His blue eyes were wide and glazed; his black hair was sweaty and sticking up everywhere; and he was drooling slightly. He looked completely out of it, and that really wasn’t going to work right now.

So I slapped him again.

Only to have him promptly slap me back.

After which followed a bitch-slapping fest that I won by virtue of kneeing him in the gonads.

“Oh. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God!”

“Get up!” I told him impatiently, because I hadn’t hit him that hard.

But he just continued to moan and roll around, to the point that I seriously contemplated leaving him there. But Ray had been stuck here for a couple weeks while the Senate pumped him for information, and there was a good chance he knew more about this place than I did. He could hardly know less.

So I jerked him up again.

And was rewarded by a slightly more sane, if entirely infuriated glare. “The fuck was that?” he screeched.

“That was to get your attention. I need—”

“You hit me in the nuts!”

“And I may do it again if you don’t—”

“You don’t just go around hitting guys in the nuts!”

“Ray—”

“You just don’t, okay? That is not cool. That is not on. That is not—”

“Ray!”

“—ever, ever—God! There’s got to be some damned limits—”

So I did it again.

“THE FUCK?”

“Ray. Get a grip—”

“I have a grip! I have a damned fine grip! If I didn’t, I’d be dead already, and I don’t know why I’m not and it’s no thanks to you and where the hell have you been?”

“That’s what I’m trying—”

“We have to have a talk,” he told me, his voice trembling slightly. “About your responsibilities as a master.”

“I am not your master.”

“One of which is protection, okay? Which I haven’t been seeing too goddamn much of!” He took off his bushy hat and threw it at the floor. For a second he just looked at it, a crumpled mass of leaves and Scotch tape sliming about in an oil slick, and then his face crumpled, too. And he grabbed me in a bear hug that threatened my ribs. “Oh God,” he said brokenly. “I didn’t think you’d ever get here!”

I just stood there a second, completely nonplussed. Of all the crazy things that had happened today, I thought this might actually top the list. I had a master vampire sobbing in my arms and no idea what to do about it.

Except for the obvious.

“Ray?” I told him, stroking his dirty, disheveled hair.

“Hmm?”

“I know you’re upset—”

He nodded into my neck.

“—and you’ve probably been through a lot today—”

He nodded harder.

“But right now I need you to do me a favor.”

He looked up. “What?”

I clenched a fist in his mane and jerked his head back. “Man the hell up!”

“Oh, that’s nice!” he said, wrenching away. “That’s just great! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”

“No, and I don’t care.”

“You suck as a master!”

“I am not your master!” I said, pulling a rifle sling over his head and checking out the gun attached to it. Which I supposed he’d been using for a club, since it contained no actual bullets. “Where’s the ammo?”

“Like I know. I got it off a dead aide,” he said, talking about one of the Senate’s human employees. “But I couldn’t stay to frisk him ’cause there was more of those things coming—”

“What are they? Where are the Senate’s people?”

“They’re the Senate’s people! Don’t you get it?” He glanced around fearfully. “It’s like Night of the Living Dead around here, except they aren’t living.”

“Just tell me what you know,” I said, and started stuffing my pockets with grenades. And cut my finger on a freaking cleaver he had wedged up in there.

“I don’t know anything, okay? I just—” He stopped and took a deep breath, I guess for effect. Or maybe because in times of stress, old habits resurface. “I was in the break room, trying to make myself a damned cup of coffee. ’Cause Marlowe had to do something tonight and didn’t have time to yell at—excuse me, interrogate—me some more until tomorrow. But they wouldn’t let me go, not even back to your place to get a change of clothes, assuming that stupid driver ever brought back my luggage. Even with my shirttail out, it’s getting a little drafty in—”

“Ray.”

“Yeah. So they just left me here. And I was gonna make some coffee and then do a little Web surfing, maybe watch some TV. But I’m down in the kitchen and I hear this commotion outside in the hall. So I open the door and there’s one of the guards getting slammed against the wall by this guy. And the guy was like—he was messed up. Blood and stuff everywhere, all oozing and holes and—and he was dead, okay? Not our kind of dead, either, but DEAD dead. And soon the guard was, too—”

“And then he came after you?”

“No, then they came after me. The guard—he gets up, staked, brains splattered all over the wall and everything, but he freaking gets up, and then they see me and they’re fast. But I got the door shut and I know this place like the back of my hand, right? So I managed to—hey, what are you doing?”