Not one of the Lords of Outer Night remembered to keep me down.

I was suddenly free.

I hurled myself at the Red King’s back with a scream, and saw him spin to face me, knife in hand. His dark eyes suddenly widened, and the awful power of his will descended upon me like a dozen leaded blankets.

I staggered, but I did not stop. I was hysterical. I was not well. I was invincible. My armor and my grandfather’s staff and the sight of my frightened child and the cold power flowing through my limbs allowed me to push forward one step, and another, and another, until I stood nearly toe-to-toe with him.

The Red King’s restored right hand snapped forward to bury the obsidian knife in my throat.

My left hand dropped the staff and intercepted his wrist. I stopped the knife an inch from my throat, and his eyes widened as he felt my strength.

His left hand shot out to clench my throat with crushing power.

I formed the thumb and forefinger of my right hand into a C-shape, ice crackling as it spread over them, rigid and crystal clear.

I plunged them into both of his black, black eyes.

And then I sent my will coursing down my arm, along with all the soulfire I could find as I screamed, “Fuego!”

Fire seared and split and cooked and steamed, and the king of the Red Court, the most ancient vampire of their kind, the father and creator of their race, screamed in anguish. The sound was so loud that it blew out my left eardrum, a novel new agony for my collection.

And when the Red King screamed, every single member of his Court screamed with him.

This close to him I could almost feel it, feel the power of his will calling them, drawing vampires to him with a summoning beyond self-interest, beyond reason. But even if I hadn’t been there touching him, the sudden storm of cries from outside would have told me the same story.

The vampires were coming toward us in a swarm, a storm, and nothing on earth would stop them from going to their king’s aid. His grip on my throat faltered, and he staggered back and away from me. My fingers came free of his head, and I grabbed his knife hand at the wrist with both hands. Then, screaming in rage, coating his arm with frost, I snapped his forearm in half—and caught the dagger before it could fall to the floor.

Freed, the Red King staggered away, and even blinded and in sanity-destroying pain, he was dangerous. His will, unleashed at random, blew holes in the stone walls. Sorcery lashed out, the scarlet lightning that seemed to be a motif around here raking over one of his own Lords and cutting the struggling vampire in half.

The eldest vampire of the Red Court screamed in his agony as a tide of his creatures came to obliterate us.

And the youngest vampire of the Red Court knelt on the ground over Martin, staring at her hands.

I watched for a second as the skin around her fingers seemed to burst at the tips. Then I saw her fingers begin to lengthen, nails growing into claws, muscle tissue tearing free of skin with audible, obvious torment. Susan stared at them with her all-black eyes, shaking her head, her face a mask of blood. She was moaning, shuddering.

“Susan,” I said, kneeling down in front of her. The howl of sorcerous energies filled the temple with a symphony of destruction. I took her face in my hands.

She looked up at me, terrified and tortured, despair written over her face.

“They’re coming,” she rasped. “I can feel them. Inside. Outside. They’re coming. Oh, God.”

“Susan!” I shouted. “Remember Maggie!”

Her eyes seemed to focus on me.

“They wanted Maggie because she was the youngest,” I said, my voice cold. “Because her death would have taken us all with her.”

She contorted around her stomach, which was twisting and flexing and swelling obscenely, but she kept her eyes on my face.

“Now you’re the youngest,” I hissed at her, my voice fierce. “The youngest vampire in the entire and literally damned Court. You can kill them all.”

She shuddered and moaned, and I saw the conflicting desires at war within her. But her eyes turned to Maggie and she clenched her jaw. “I . . . I don’t think I can do it. I can’t feel my hands.”

“Harry!” screamed Murphy desperately, from somewhere nearby. “They’re coming!”

Lightning split the air outside with thunder that would register on the Richter scale.

There was a sudden, random lull in the cacophony of sorcerous war, no more than a couple of seconds long.

Susan looked back at me, her eyes streaming her last tears. “Harry, help me,” she whispered. “Save her. Please.”

Everything in me screamed no. That this was not fair. That I should not have to do this. That no one should ever have to do this.

But . . . I had no choice.

I found myself picking Susan up with one hand. The little girl was curled into a ball with her eyes closed, and there was no time. I pushed her from the altar as gently as I could and let her fall to the floor, where she might be a little safer from the wild energies surging through the temple.

I put Susan on the altar and said, “She’ll be safe. I promise.”

She nodded at me, her body jerking and twisting in convulsions, forcing moans of pain from her lips. She looked terrified, but she nodded.

I put my left hand over her eyes.

I pressed my mouth to hers, swiftly, gently, tasting the blood, and her tears, and mine.

I saw her lips form the word, “Maggie . . .”

And I . . .

I used the knife.

I saved a child.

I won a war.

God forgive me.

Chapter 49

Everything changed the night the Red Court died. It made the history books.

First, for the unexplained destruction of several structures in Chichén Itzá. A thousand years of jungle hadn’t managed to bring the place down, but half an hour of slugfest between practitioners who know what they’re doing can leave city blocks in ruins. It was later attributed to an extremely powerful localized earthquake. No one could explain all the corpses—some of them with dental work featuring techniques last used a hundred years before, some whose hearts had been violently torn from their chests, and whose bodies had been affected by some kind of mutation that had rendered their bones almost unrecognizable as human. Fewer than 5 percent of them were ever identified—and those were all people who had abruptly gone missing in the past ten or fifteen years. No explanation was ever offered for such a confluence of missing persons, though theories abounded, none of them true.

I could have screamed the truth from the mountaintops and blended right in with all the rest of the nuts. Everyone knows that vampires aren’t real.

Second, it made the books because of all the sudden disappearances or apparent outright murders of important officials, businessmen, and financiers in cities and governments throughout Latin America. The drug cartels took the rap for that one, even in the nations where they weren’t really strong enough to pull such tactics off. Martial law got declared virtually everywhere south of Texas, and a dozen revolutions in eight or ten different countries all kicked off, seemingly on the same night.

I’ve heard that nature abhors a vacuum—though if that’s true, then I can’t figure why about ninety-nine zillion percent of creation is vacuum. But I do know that governments hate ’em, and always rush to fill them up. So do criminals. Which probably tells you more about human beings than it does about nature. Most of the nations in South America proper kept their balance. Central America turned into a war zone, with various interests fighting to claim the territory the vampires had left behind them.

Finally, it made the books in the supernatural community as the night of bad dreams. Before the next sunset, the Paranet was buzzing with activity, with men and women scattered over half the world communicating about the vivid and troubling dreams they’d had. Pregnant women and mothers who had recently delivered had been hardest hit. Several had to be hospitalized and sedated. But everyone with a smidge of talent who was sleeping at the time was troubled by dreams. The general theme was always the same: dead children. The world in flames. Terror and death spreading across the globe in an unstoppable wave, destroying anything resembling order or civilization.