“The human was right,” Louis-Cesare said from over my shoulder. I nodded, trying to keep a grip. Some kind of illegal auction was going on, and it wasn’t for bootleg cigarettes. A lot of the heavy cages ringing the platform were empty, but some still had creatures in them. The fact that a few of them looked suspiciously like the deformed things in Radu’s laboratory made my stomach begin to sink. But even worse was the fact that I caught two very familiar scents on the air. One was the same as in the holding cells: Claire had been here, probably within the last hour. The other was Drac’s.
Tamp it down, I told myself sternly, sinking fingernails into my palm hard enough to break the skin. I wouldn’t do Claire any good by freaking out, if by some chance she was still here. “An unusual specimen,” a human announcer was saying. “Half-Duergar, half-Brownie—quite the combination. It will protect your property better than a pack of guard dogs and fix you lunch to boot. What am I bid?”
A small, dark gray creature, all of about two feet high, stood in the blinding circle of light, vainly trying to shield its large eyes. It was shaking in fear and making a high, mewling noise that sounded like a cross between a child’s wail and a power saw cutting through metal. It made me wince and apparently the buyers didn’t like it any better, because no bids were forthcoming.
The auctioneer kept trying for another few minutes, while I stood there and used every trick I knew to keep the crashing tide in my head from taking over. Had Claire stood in that circle, being jeered at by the motley crowd? Had she been beaten like the tiny crossbreed was currently being, as the auctioneer tried to get it to shut up? The thing must have been stronger than it looked, because it managed to get the stick away from the human wielding it. The creature wrenched it through the bars of its cage, then turned it back on him, getting in several good licks before the man scrambled out of the way.
“That’s it, Marco—I’m done. Put a bullet through its brain and let’s move on.” The auctioneer had shut off his microphone before making the comment to a nearby goon, but it echoed in my head like he’d screamed it. At the image of someone putting a gun to Claire’s head, the tidal wave came crashing through my defenses and I was suddenly drowning in a sea of red.
“Dorina!” I heard someone call my name, but there wasn’t enough sanity left for me to respond. The familiar, killing rage rose up like vomit in my throat. I fought the bloody tide for another few seconds, but that was as useless as it had ever been, and I knew in that instant that Claire was either dead or long gone. There was not the smallest, lingering shred of her blessed calm to help me hold my ground, and with that thought, I gave up trying. If these things had killed her, let them join her. We could all go to hell together. After all, I already knew the proprietor.
Chapter Twelve
I woke up to disorientation and extreme pain. The first was because I was upside down, hanging halfway off an overturned cage with my butt in the air, and the latter because I was bleeding from, at a guess, half a dozen wounds. Most of them felt fairly minor, however, compared with the metal rod that Louis-Cesare was trying to pull out of my side. It had gone completely through me to pierce the top of the cage. He gave a final heave and the thing tore loose with a sound of screeching metal and splitting flesh. With nothing holding me in place, I slipped to the floor, bleeding in more places than I could count.
“Are you sane, or what passes for it with you?” he asked in a strangled half lisp. I recognized the sound—that of a vamp with fully extended fangs—not that I’d heard it often. Mostly, when they get to that stage, they aren’t much interested in talking.
I nodded weakly. The animal that clawed through my veins was gone—for the moment. I could feel the ragged remnants of confused rage, but that was normal. It would pass, and even if not, I doubted I’d be doing further damage anytime soon.
Before he could reply, the Frenchman was airborne, landing several yards away. Two huge brown eyes appeared in my field of vision, peering at me out of a small, misshapen face. Shaggy gray hair obscured most of the features, including any sign of a nose, but there were a few scraggly fangs poking out of the fuzz. I noticed that several of them were pointing the wrong way, heading upward like tusks, while a few of the others had grown in such a way as to be more a threat to the creature than its prey.
I stopped wondering if I was about to become something’s lunch and struggled to sit up. Unfortunately, that made the room tilt violently and my blood seep out even faster. A tearing, sharp pain bit into my side every time I moved or breathed.
“Lie still if you want to live!” Louis-Cesare ordered harshly. “And call that thing off or I will be forced to kill it. I cannot help you while constantly fending off attack!”
“What is it?” The room kept swimming in and out of my vision, but I managed to focus on the hovering gray thing. It reminded me of a Mr. Potato Head doll assembled by a two-year-old. All the parts were there, but they weren’t necessarily in the right place. The comparison was strengthened by its incongruously long, sticklike arms and legs, which poked at sharp angles out of the fur. Its knees were currently up around its head as it squatted protectively beside me, close enough that the stench emanating from it made my eyes water.
“A lot which failed to sell. It was about to be killed when you went mad.” Louis-Cesare nudged it cautiously with a toe and it snarled at him so viciously that one of its bent fangs pierced its bottom lip, causing a trickle of black blood to join the matted dirt and who-knew-what on its chin. “It appears to be under the impression that you saved its life.” A misshapen appendage that only vaguely resembled a hand reached out to pat my hair. “How touching. Now call it off!”
“How do I do that?”
“Improvise.” He had his hand on his rapier, and I didn’t doubt he’d use it.
I sighed. “It’s okay,” I told my little groupie. “If he lets me die, Daddy will kill him for you.”
The thing must have understood something, because it shuffled back a few paces, letting Louis-Cesare get close enough to examine me. I lay back against the floor while he touched my cheek gently, then stroked along my throat. Light mental fingers danced past my tattered shields and suddenly I could breathe without pain. His hands were warm on my skin and his touch swept away the last of the confused frenzy. They made me feel steadier, anchored, and I realized that he’d hit me with a suggestion. Normally, that sort of thing wouldn’t work, but my shields were in shreds. And since it took most of the pain away, I didn’t feel like protesting.
I closed my eyes and let a wonderful numbness creep down my body from neck to knees. The room was spinning to the point that I knew I’d lost a lot of blood—enough to be dangerous even for me. I didn’t try to catalog my wounds, since I couldn’t seem to concentrate, and decided to use what little mental capacity I had for more important things. “Claire?”
“She was here, but not by the time we arrived. There is a note for you, when you are well enough to read it.”
“A note?” Trust Claire to find time, in the middle of a slave auction, to leave a note! The girl needed therapy. I laughed, but it hurt, so I stopped. “I feel well enough now,” I said, and made the mistake of trying to sit up again. The room did some kind of weird kaleidoscope thing and started to grow dim.
“Stay put!” I was told savagely. “You will never read it if you are dead!”
I decided he might have a point, and lay back again. The twisted hulk of the cage loomed over us, and I had to be careful not to move much or I came into contact with some of the hundreds of pieces of splintered wood that littered the place. I eventually identified them as the remains of the folding chairs the bidders had been using. Olga’s group must have gone nuts.