And it was only the first, like the initial kernel in a bag of popcorn. A minute later, gelatinous bombs were going off everywhere, setting little fires across the dark. Which would have had normal vampires in hysterics, but the nearby area was mostly filled with guards, who had been better trained than that.

Until they realized that the fire didn’t go out.

As bad as the blood of Slava’s vamps had been, the gel-like bodies of the creatures were worse. Because they stuck like glue, and the fire burned like phosphorus, and any guards who couldn’t whip off a piece of affected clothing before the poison reached their skin began to burn like living candles.

One ran past us, screaming and flaming and flailing—and slamming straight into the crowd. Which was also largely composed of vampires. And although he was tackled by two of his fellow guards a split second later, it was too late. “Panic” wasn’t the word for what broke out, with crazed people even jumping for the consul’s balcony in their terror, only to be smacked right down again by the guards.

Until one of Hassani’s men smacked a guard in return and somersaulted over the balcony, decapitating a Were with one sword stroke and grabbing a nearby girl who had been about to be lunch. He threw her up to one of his fellow soldiers, and then started grabbing random guests, plucking them off their feet and tossing them after the girl, with no regard for fine clothes or hurt feelings. Not that anybody seemed to be complaining; in fact, after a second he was all but mobbed, although his fellow soldiers didn’t look real interested in—

“Dory!”

The voice came from above, and I looked up to see Radu’s blond hanging over the edge of the balcony, dangling something. It was red and twisty—the curtains, I realized, a split second before I grabbed it. And then Ray grabbed me and a moment later, we were airborne again.

We were hauled over the side of the balcony, not by the blond, but by Anthony. He was back in his clothes, a bright purple toga in this case, and back in charge. “Go, go, go!” He had a sword in one hand and used the other to slap the shoulders of a double line of vamps pouring over the side of the balcony and into the fray—the guards from outside, I assumed.

He caught my eye. “Having fun yet?”

“No! What the hell is going on? I thought we only had one portal to worry about!”

“So did I. I just sent Radu’s man after him to make inquiries. Radu knows about portals.”

“And what about you?”

“I know about killing things,” he said, before being plucked off his feet by the talons of a huge birdlike creature that came out of nowhere.

Anthony’s sword flashed, gutting his ride halfway across the arena, and then he and it both fell. I didn’t see what happened after that, because of the darkness, and because the fighting had just increased by about a thousand percent. And then Ray was dragging me off to the side.

“We don’t need Radu,” he told me quickly. “I know what’s happening.”

“That makes one of us,” I said, grabbing a sword off a wounded vamp. It looked like somebody had designated the private boxes and the hallway and stairwell behind them as the triage area, because lower-level vamps were running up the stairs with makeshift slings filled with casualties. Most looked like other low-level types, along with some humans in evening attire—people caught in the stampede, as a guess.

I didn’t see any masters.

But then, other than the guards, I hadn’t seen many masters in the fight at all.

So what the hell were they doing?

“It’s the shield,” Ray was saying. “The place was secure until it went down. After that, anything goes.”

“Come again?”

He sighed. “The shield…Look, it doesn’t just protect a portal. It shields an area of a line. Because a portal is just a tunnel cutting through a ley line, and without a shield—”

“They can cut as many as they like.”

“Yes.”

“Then why were they so concentrated on this portal?”

“Because it was the only way through the shield. It’s like…a gateway in a wall, okay? Why do you think those old castles always went to so much trouble to shield their gateways? Because that’s where they were vulnerable. The wall—or the shield in this case—keeps the bad guys out. But there has to be a door for the good guys to get in.”

“And our door is the portal.”

He nodded. “That’s why they call it a gate.”

My head hurt. I wasn’t good with all this metaphysical crap. I was like Anthony; I was good at killing things. Or rescuing things, only I had no idea where Louis-Cesare was, and I’d never even seen Mircea’s room from the outside. It could be anywhere in the labyrinth of corridors running through the interior of the consul’s house.

And even if I could find them, they might be better off where they were. Rather than being dragged unconscious through the thick of the fight by someone who wasn’t likely to be much protection right now. Especially with a sword that my arm didn’t feel strong enough to wield.

I passed it to Ray and took a gun from a guard who had just been brought up—the first master I’d seen. Something had all but bisected him, and yet he was still trying to crawl off the pallet, to get back to the fight. Unlike the rest of them.

Where were they?

“Stay down,” someone told him, and I looked up to see the brunette senator Anthony had been with earlier. She’d found her clothes, too, only to have the front of her pale blue evening gown smeared with dark blood, since she seemed to be the one serving as hospital manager.

“You are Dory?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Kit said to tell you that the men he sent to the basement earlier have not reported in. He wants you to check on them.”

“He wants…” I looked at her incredulously. “What is going on? Where are your masters?”

“Those sworn to the North American Senate are in the fight, those who were here, in any case. And more have been summoned. But they cannot use the portal, and therefore will take time to arrive.”

“And the other senates? What are they doing—sitting on their hands?”

“Yes,” she said, bitterly. “Except for Anthony’s. But he had few masters with him, as most of his were knocked out of the competition early. He is doing what he can, but he does not have the numbers—”

“But there’s a metric ton of master vampires here!”

“Belonging to other senates. Who do not wish to waste their resources on a fight which is not theirs.”

“Not…Then whose fight is it?” I demanded. “The fey are coming to slaughter them, or didn’t they get the memo?” Marlowe would have had more than enough time now to flash a thought around, telling everyone what was going on.

“They heard, but they do not believe. The fey have never attacked us, they say; why should they do so now? Undeclared?”

“Because that’s the best way to win?”

“They do not believe a king of the fey would be so dishonorable.”

“Then what do they think is happening?”

“That our consul is staging this, to force them to do what they have been avoiding, and to put their forces under her control.”

I just looked at her for a moment. “What?”

She nodded. “Our kind can sometimes be too suspicious. It has hurt us before.”

“Fuck hurt; it’s about to kill you!” I snarled, before Ray dragged me away.

“I think I know what’s in the basement,” he told me.

“What?”

“The shield’s power source. Marlowe must have sent his people to reactivate it, once the other side brought it down.”

“But they haven’t.” And I couldn’t think of a single reason for that that didn’t involve something nasty.

“No. But as soon as they do—or as soon as someone does—the shield goes back up.”

“Trapping us in here with the mutant squad!” I pointed out.

“But keeping out the fey army,” he pointed out right back.

He won.

And even better, this was something I could do. Exhausted or not, I could activate a freaking shield charm. We had one in the basement; it wasn’t hard.

“All right, I’m going,” I told him. “Stay—”

“We’re going,” he said, cutting me off.

“You—” I stopped checking the master’s pockets for ammo. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do,” he said, crabby as ever. “What if there’s a problem with the shield? You don’t know anything about that stuff. But I can jury-rig something out of almost nothing.”

That was true.

“It could be dangerous.”

“Like this isn’t?”

“Okay, it could be more dangerous.”

Ray crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m coming.” It was flat.

It was also something else.

I thought about all the senior masters, sitting on their hands or taking a few potshots here and there, and refusing to join in the fight. I thought about how much more power they had than a small, chubby, low-level little guy who was nonetheless willing to put his neck on the line. And then I thought that maybe the Senate’s method of choosing new members was screwed.

“I guess maybe you are Batman,” I told him roughly. “Come on.”

Chapter Forty-four

We’d reached the bend in the stairwell when Ray suddenly grasped my arm, his grip tight enough to bruise. “Wait.”

I froze, looking around for a danger I didn’t see. Just bare marble walls, with what sounded like an epic battle raging on the other side. “What?”

“Just…hold on.…” He was fumbling around in his coat with his free hand, and finally pulled out his wallet. And from that he took—

“What’s this?” I asked, staring blankly at the mushed-up granola bar he gave me.