A darkened cell, where he lay helpless and bound. The jailers stripped him roughly, tearing at his clothes, the knife at his neck a silent threat. It didn’t stop him from trying to fight, from thrashing until they beat him almost senseless, fists and fingernails gouging mercilessly. Eventually his limbs refused to obey him and the taste of dust and straw and the metallic tang of blood filled his mouth. The hitching of his breath sounded far away; he could almost imagine that it came from someone else. Until a new pain started, something they had not dared before, that snapped him back into himself in horror.
Clamping his teeth on a scream, he panted in a red haze of pain and fury as his body flinched away from invasion, its desperation beyond his control. He couldn’t master the shaking in his limbs, the reflexive struggle or the half-choked gasps, but he wouldn’t scream. The humiliation settled like stone in his gut, blending with the agony as they took their turns and their time. One of them laughed, and he could feel it in his belly, letting him know this wouldn’t end anytime soon. Bile burned the back of his throat, but an icy calm settled over him. He would find a way out of here, he promised himself, and when he did, no one would ever make him a victim again.
I jerked away, shivering in a cold sweat, damning whatever mages had set this trap all to hell. After my breathing returned to something like normal, I borrowed a handkerchief from Olga and wrapped it around my hand. No more skin-on-skin contact, not here.
I squatted and tried to make eye contact, but I couldn’t see his face until I brushed a snarl of hair back from his forehead. His usual pale perfection had faded to chalk white and his eyes were bruise dark. I felt a surge of unaccustomed compassion. He looked so young, without the superior, closed expression he usually used around me. He didn’t look like Louis-Cesare, Senate member and arrogant bastard. He looked like Louis-Cesare of the auburn hair and the blue eyes and the devastating smile. I reached out, my finger tracing the line of a single tear down his cheek. Then I slapped him.
The first one didn’t have much of an effect, but by the fourth, I’d gotten into the swing of things and his head was thumping the wall each time it rocked back. A slender hand reached out and latched on to my arm before I could deliver a fifth. “Have you snapped out of it yet or should I hit you some more?” I asked. “’Cause I don’t mind. Really.”
His mouth curved into a painful expression that might have been a smile, except for the awful brightness in his eyes. “Dorina.”
“That would be me.”
“Thank you.” There was a quiet gratitude in his voice that made me grin like an idiot, and some of the bleakness in his expression faded.
“You know,” I said, glancing at another Shroud of Flame spell that blocked the door behind him, “you could really make my day and tell me you have something to counter that.”
He blinked at the thick wall of fire as if surprised to see it there. “No.”
“Then we have a problem.” It was an understatement. Now I knew why the mages didn’t bother to waste manpower guarding their backs. Anyone who sneaked in here was trapped until one of them came along and finished him off, or left to rot. Neither option appealed to me, but neither did getting flame broiled. I might survive the Shroud, but I’d spend a month helpless thereafter from having every inch of skin barbecued. Olga might also live through the process—the thinnest troll skin is approximately the consistency of rawhide—but no way could Louis-Cesare manage it. Vamps burn like they’ve been soaked in lighter fluid even without magical help. We needed an alternative.
Louis-Cesare had regained his feet, but was leaning heavily against the wall, resting his head on his forearm. “Merde.” I decided to see if Olga had any ideas; he looked like he needed a time-out.
I eyed the cavern walls speculatively. “Olga, do you think you could hack through that?” She didn’t have a pickax, but then, she hadn’t had one earlier, either.
She shrugged. “In time. But Lars come soon.” Lars hadn’t struck me as a mental giant, and he’d let Louis-Cesare slip by, but maybe I was missing hidden depths. I must have looked skeptical, because she waved at the wall. “He make new door.” Okay, that I could see. Mages tend to forget that there are other ways to solve a problem than magic. You can put all the spells you want on a doorway, but if someone kicks down the wall and makes a new one, it doesn’t matter much, does it? I just hoped Lars didn’t bring the ceiling down on top of us in his enthusiasm.
“Where are we?” Louis-Cesare had decided to join the conversation.
I turned on him, and for a moment had the disorienting sense of double vision, seeing someone who was the same as ever, and yet so very different. I forcibly squashed the empathy that wanted to dull my edge. I couldn’t afford that now. “I didn’t know I was coming here until a few hours ago,” I accused, my voice harsher than I’d intended. “How do you keep finding me?”
Louis-Cesare’s expression shifted from the dullness of shock to arrogant exasperation. “That is hardly relevant at the moment.”
“It’s relevant to me!”
He apparently decided that answering was easier than arguing. “Because of the cell phone I gave you. The Senate was able to use it to pinpoint your location.”
I fished it out of my jeans and stared at it. The sleek black case gleamed innocently in the dim lighting. I should have known. I ground the traitorous device under the heel of my boot with a scowl.
Louis-Cesare watched, a wry curve to his lips. “I am beginning to understand your difficulties with electronics.”
“Very funny.”
“Lars is here,” Olga suddenly announced, getting heavily to her feet.
“You brought trolls with you?” Louis-Cesare had apparently just noticed the two mountains staring at each other through a curtain of fire.
“It’s more like they brought me.” I left him to his own devices and went to see what Olga thought Lars could do.
“Get the others,” Olga was telling him. Lars obediently turned and lumbered back down the corridor, shaking the floor slightly as he did so. “It not be long,” she said, glancing past me to Louis-Cesare. “You know this vampire?”
“Unfortunately.” Her teeth bared and I hastened to explain. “He’s okay. He just whines a lot.”
Under the drained and the pained and the fed up, Louis-Cesare almost looked amused—until Olga thumped him on the back. The comradely gesture would have shattered a human’s spine. “Good. I hear rumors,” she informed us. “They say the rebel vampires and dark mages work together. When Lars come back, we break through these walls. You,” she told Louis-Cesare like a general addressing a private, “sense any vampires, awake or asleep. We kill them first. Then we take back what is ours.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Louis-Cesare asked incredulously. “The Senate itself wouldn’t dare to attack such a place, at least not yet. But you propose to do so with what? A band of trolls?”
He’d addressed the question to me, but Olga answered. “If you afraid, you go,” she said with a shrug.
Louis-Cesare’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as if he was having trouble processing the fact that a wild-looking bearded lady had just called him a coward, but I didn’t let him get going.
I turned to Olga. “There could be a complication.”
She raised bushy eyebrows and I started feeling guilty. I probably should have mentioned this earlier. “There’s a chance that the mages and vamps are getting a little extra help these days.” I spent the next five minutes filling her and Louis-Cesare in on my recent adventures. “Don’t get me wrong—if you still want to kick some vampire butt, I’m your girl. But I don’t think your crew is ready to deal with Drac just yet.” I managed not to mention that I didn’t feel much like it myself, either, although I think the point came across.