But none were through the heart; none had slit the throat. He would live if I could just—

And I couldn’t. If I’d been weak before, it was nothing to how I felt now. That scream had taken every bit of energy I had. And even if it hadn’t, Louis-Cesare was a column of solid muscle and I couldn’t budge him. And then there was Ray.…

“What the hell just happened?”

Somebody growled behind me, and I spun, hands still on the shield I was trying to get in place for a travois. But I didn’t need it now, because Zheng was there and—

“Grab them!” I told him desperately, even as eyelashes started to flutter around us and limbs started to twitch. And to his credit, he grabbed them, without asking further questions that I couldn’t have answered anyway.

“We’ll talk later,” he threatened, throwing Louis-Cesare over one burly shoulder and snatching Ray up under one arm, like a package he was carrying home from the store. And then we were moving, back through the crowd that was more like a forest than ever, but the wind through these treetops was sighs and groans and vague, slurred words—

And then action, as the forest came alive even as we neared the not-so-fun slide. Which had been easy coming down but was a bitch going up even for me, and I wasn’t carrying two. But Zheng’s boots were made for walking—and stomping and kicking—and we made it up the first level, and then the second, before our footbridge realized what was going on and all hell broke loose.

But by then Zheng was able to unceremoniously dump his two burdens over the edge of the rock shelf, and then it was just about getting the two of us over. Although that was harder than it sounds with a mountain of fey disintegrating around us. And then surging up underneath us as Zheng caught the ledge and swung us over, arcing just ahead of the grasping hands—

That caught us anyway.

But they caught us at the top of the arc as we fell onto the ledge, not over the side, and that made all the difference. Or it would if I could—

There! I wrestled the vampire’s gun out of its holster just as someone grabbed my leg. And jerked me back, trying to pull me off the ledge or himself up, I wasn’t sure which. And it didn’t matter, because either was equally bad for me and equally not happening. I twisted, trying to line up a shot, while it felt like I was being torn in two.

“GO!” I yelled, as Zheng threw off three fey who had jumped him, sending two over the ledge.

His head whipped around at me, and then at the two bodies lying so still on the floor. But they were on the floor by the portal because Zheng wasn’t stupid, and he’d thrown them as far as he could. And now he dove after them, because we both knew I couldn’t drag them through with me or protect them on the other side if I did.

But he threw his last attacker into mine as he went, buying me maybe two seconds of freedom in the process. But not to run. Because running wouldn’t help, just like the few regular old bullets I had left wouldn’t do much against the dozens of fey now surging over the ledge.

But something else might.

I rolled onto my back, took aim and fired—at the cages just above the ledge. I’d almost forgotten about them, despite the fact that the contents had been rattling their bars and howling. And I guess they’d slipped the fey’s minds, too, because they looked a little surprised when a wave of snarling, slashing hate fell on them as soon as the locks popped open.

I didn’t wait to see who won. I didn’t even turn around. I leapt back into a circle of blue, even as the third fey Zheng had thrown off recovered and twisted and lunged—

And missed.

Because the portal’s familiar jerk caught me.

And I was gone.

Chapter Forty-six

The consul’s place was a disaster area.

Of course, it had been well on its way before. But after another hour of fighting, which was what it took to clear the house and lock up the fey who had gotten through the portal but had avoided being gutted, the place had finished its descent into an expensive heap of rubble. Not that that seemed to bother Zheng.

He tossed what might have once been a quality settee aside, and searched through the debris underneath. And emerged with—

“Don’t you think you have enough?” Ray demanded.

Zheng ignored him and dusted off his find, before severing it from its remaining tether and adding it to his collection. “She said—” he began.

“I know what she said,” Ray interrupted testily. “And it was a head. Not seven heads!” He regarded with loathing the collection bouncing along at his former associate’s waist, tied there by bloody silver-blond hair.

“Yeah, but she don’t like me so much,” Zheng pointed out. “And it don’t hurt to have insurance. Not that I oughta need it after saving the senates’ collective—” He broke off as a younger vamp sped by, clutching a gory trophy tightly against his chest.

And then looking around in shock when he realized that it suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

“Oh, come on!” Ray said, as the young vamp caught sight of his golden ticket being tied securely onto Zheng’s waist.

Zheng grinned at him. The younger vamp’s shoulders slumped, and he sped off.

“He wouldn’t last a day against the competition anyway,” Zheng said. “Anybody who don’t get a seat and thinks they ought to have, will be challenging for it for weeks, maybe months. There’s a lot of fighting ahead.” He looked pleased.

Ray looked skyward—literally, since that part of the roof was missing. “I wasn’t talking about him!”

“Oh? Then what?”

“You saved their collective asses? I thought I had a little bit to do with it, too!”

“Oh, yeah.” Zheng grinned. “That was pretty good. Where’d you send ’em, anyway?”

“This swamp I know,” Ray snapped.

“Swamp?”

“In Faerie.”

Zheng looked disapproving. “That don’t seem so bad.”

I had a brief flash of that vision Ray and I had shared once, about a primeval-looking quagmire straight out of Jurassic Park, and begged to differ.

Only I didn’t have time, because Anthony staggered out of a hole in the wall, hugging a pretty blonde in one arm and an amphora of wine in the other. His toga was gone, his tunic was bloody and he was sporting what looked a lot like an old-fashioned shiner. But he seemed happy.

He looked around at the spotty fires, the drifting clouds of smoke and the tumbled marble of what had been a beautiful atrium only hours ago.

“She really knows how to throw a party,” he told me, with apparent satisfaction. “You have to give her that.”

He staggered off.

Zheng shook his head, frowned and looked around one more time. “I think that’s all of ’em.”

“What?” Ray asked. “There had to be, like, a couple hundred fey who got through before we hijacked their portals.”

“Yeah, but the consul cheated. Her sandstorm scoured half of ’em, and then Hassani’s fire cooked most of the rest and then Ming-de got hold of what was left—”

We collectively shuddered.

“—and then she has the nerve to say she won’t take ’em unless they’re in good shape.” He clucked over his collection, all of whom looked pretty good to me.

For severed heads, that is.

“Yeah, but I still don’t get it,” Ray said fretfully.

“What’s not to get?” Zheng asked. “She wants people who’ll fight for her. What’s the use of Senate members if they won’t do anything?”

“No, I mean I don’t get this,” Ray said, gesturing at their surroundings. “I know how the fey hacked through the shield, okay? But it shouldn’t have mattered. It should have been back up in minutes—”

“And it woulda been, if somebody hadn’t offed Marlowe’s guys. You heard him, all five ended up—”

“Dead, yeah. And that’s my point. Who killed them?”

“Whaddya mean, who killed them? The damned fey killed them. Or their mutants did. Those things were strong—and fast. Did you see—”

“Yes, I saw,” Ray said sharply. “I saw a bunch of…things…come through the portal. But Marlowe spoke to Dory just after that—like less than a minute after—telling her that he’d sent guys to the basement. So he must have sent them practically the second he saw anything come through.”

I nodded. “He told me he had people taking care of it.”

“But they didn’t take care of it. And a couple minutes later, he had Halcyon ask you to check on ’em, because the shield wasn’t back up and they hadn’t reported in.”

“Yeah.” I was starting to see where he was going with this.

“So the mutant things are back in the ballroom and then a few minutes later, they start showing up in the hall. But Marlowe’s boys are dead by then, because you and me, we’re already on the way to check on them. So again, who killed them?”

“It couldn’t have been Jonathan’s experiments,” I said slowly. “Marlowe’s boys should have been ahead of them.”

Ray nodded.

“Unless a portal opened down in the basement,” Zheng pointed out. “We wouldn’t have seen it, so we wouldn’t know.”

“Okay, say it happened that way,” Ray replied. “Say somebody figured Marlowe would be sending a group to fix the shield, and opened a portal down there before we even realized they could do that. That still leaves a bunch of other things unexplained.”

“Like what?”

“Like Slava’s.” He looked at me. “It’s been bugging me since our convo in the car. The bad guys, they got this perfect plan for getting into Central, right? But that requires us arresting a bunch of Slava’s guys and taking them back there. They got in so easy because they were let in, and they were let in because they were expected.”