He sat me down, leaning heavily against the wall for support, his disordered mane obscuring his face. I grabbed him, my hands batting at flames that I only slowly realized didn’t exist. He looked like ten kinds of death, but for some reason, he wasn’t burning. “What did you do?” I demanded, willing my knees not to collapse.
“I used a huge amount of power to shield us for a few seconds,” Louis-Cesare said shakily. “I trust we won’t need it again. It has left me… somewhat weak.”
“But alive.” I still couldn’t believe it.
Louis-Cesare slowly pulled himself into a half-standing position against the side of the winery. “What? Did you think one little mage was going to do me in?” He swallowed hard. “Hell, that was just a warm-up.”
I stared at him. A joke. Louis-Cesare had made a joke. The very thought left me dizzy.
And then the barrels started to explode. The ones closest to the inferno of the winery tore apart with the sound of a dozen cannons going off, raining wine and sharp bits of wood all around us. Louis-Cesare pushed me into the wall, shielding me with his body until I kneed him in the groin. “Wood!” I screamed into his outraged face, yanking out a sliver that had embedded itself in his shoulder, and waving it under his nose. Every time one of those barrels went off, it threw out the equivalent of a hundred or so flying stakes.
The cellar was suddenly a vamp’s worst nightmare, and I didn’t like it much better. If we didn’t get out soon, we were toast. Louis-Cesare must have figured it the same way, because he wrenched the top off the nearest barrel, picked me up around the waist and ran.
Hammer blows sounded against the makeshift shield as another row exploded behind us, the flames from one set of barrels igniting the next in line. Weird red shadows, like leaping fingers, grabbed for our heels as we all but flew toward the cellar door. I scanned the floor for Radu, but didn’t see him; it looked as if he really was hard to kill. Like the rest of the family, I thought as Louis-Cesare slammed the heavy oak door shut behind us, just as a volley of explosions rocked it from the other side.
We stood, panting and half-fainting against the scarred wood, knowing we should get farther from danger but too exhausted to move. Dizziness pushed through my body as I stared dully around, looking for the next challenge, the next threat. All I saw were two outraged turquoise eyes staring at me from the darkened stairs. “Dorina! What did you do to my wine?”
An odd rumbling started from my right. My head whipped around and I stopped, staring. The strangest event of a very strange day met my eyes. The last thing I saw before I keeled over was Louis-Cesare. He was leaning against the door, naked and bloody. And he was laughing.
Chapter Twenty-four
We were still arguing about wine two days later. Radu and I were on our way to Benny’s wake, held in his cramped office despite the crowd because the warehouse was still sporting several large holes. The remainder of Benny’s Occultus charms had been sacrificed to keep the large number of usual visitors arriving at the small store-front from raising too many eyebrows.
I watched a mail truck trundle down the street, looking fairly innocuous until it suddenly took a left turn and squeezed itself through the front entrance. I wondered idly what was big enough to need to use a truck as camouflage. It was better than listening to Radu whine about having to buy wine, “and an inferior vintage at that,” because his stores were sitting on zero.
Then I saw a familiar, arrogant stride coming down the street, cape swirling around booted feet. A few last rays of natural light were still peeking over the edge of Vegas’ neon horizon, so the hood was up, but it didn’t matter. I knew Mircea’s walk as well as my own. I had a swift, irrational flash of gut-wrenching panic.
“Don’t even think about it.” I didn’t realize I’d turned away until I felt Radu’s grip on my shoulder.
“I guess saving a man’s life isn’t the debt canceler it used to be.”
“Not when you also blow up his cellar and destroy his house.”
“I had some help with the house.”
Radu gave a snort and steered me into the office. There was a giant squashed in a corner, a long beard like smoke down his chest, who I assumed had been the truck. A couple dozen trolls, a few humans who were definitely shape-shifters, judging by the buzz they gave off, and a few lesser demons made up the mourners who had assembled so far. I mumbled a swift condolence to Olga, who was looking regal in black satin and a veil, and headed for the relative safety of the tiny kitchenette.
It was crowded with offerings of food that I didn’t examine too closely and barrels of beer stacked to the ceiling. Radu’s bottle looked insignificant by comparison, like something a troll might drink for a chaser. I was nonetheless searching for an opener when the bottle was taken smoothly out of my hands.
“You are going to miss the eulogy.” The smoky voice was rich with fondness. It was almost certainly fake, but it still tugged at my heart. Damn it. I silently passed him a glass.
The eulogy ended up being a series of stories, each more outrageous than the last, that followed one another in quick succession. They and the beer lasted well into the night, as we were joined by an endless stream of visitors. Children came with their parents, fell asleep on fathers’ shoulders, listened entranced with their heads in mothers’ laps. Benny was remembered, drunk to, admired. Every crafty deal was praised, every shady transaction celebrated with toast after toast. Tears glistened on cheeks even as people roared with laughter. I didn’t know if this was normal for Faerie, or if, being so far from home, people naturally drew together. Either way, Benny received quite a send-off.
Mircea had found us a perch in the middle of a family of trolls, and ended up holding a small child on his lap. He looked totally at home, as if he babysat trolls every day. The long, slim hands soothed the restless child with ease, until she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. I glared down into my empty glass and got up to refill it.
“I guess we won’t be doing one of these for Drac,” I said a few minutes later, draining my third mug of beer. Radu’s wine was long gone and the Fey beer was the only alcoholic beverage around in unlimited quantities. It had a kick like bootleg moonshine, but despite my very serious wish to get drunk, it wasn’t obliging.
“This is for family,” Mircea chided.
“Drac was your brother,” I pointed out tersely.
Mircea handed the sleeping child to her mother, who simpered at him past a luxurious brown beard. He took my hand and pulled me outside, into the garden Olga cultivated in the tiny space between buildings. It had a porch swing in a corner, facing a slate patio with a few tubs of greenery. Enough light seeped through the slats in the office blinds to stripe the patio in orange and umber, while the full moon on the pavement turned everything else silver.
“He wasn’t a brother,” Mircea said. “He was a disease, from which the family suffered for centuries.”
“So that’s why you killed him?”
Mircea watched me, eyes liquid black in the dark. “I thought your Fey friend did that.”
I gave a laugh so hard it hurt my throat. “Don’t try it. Drac grew up fighting you; there’s no way he could have mistaken Caedmon’s style for yours.”
I should have read the signs sooner: Drac accepting Mircea without question, Mircea calling him “Vlad” when Caedmon had never heard that name, the fear of fire no Fey would have had. But it hadn’t been until I’d spoken to Caedmon that I figured it out. Ǽsubrand had jumped him halfway around the house, trying to finish what he’d started and remove his main obstacle to the throne. Caedmon joined the party only after the excitement was over, once he and Heidar had beaten the bastard into submission.