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Queen's Gambit
Chapter One
The one-hundred-eighty-degree sweep of floor to ceiling windows would normally have been a little odd for a ball room, but when you’ve got an uninterrupted view of the pyramids, you make sure that everyone knows it. And I had to admit, it was pretty spectacular. The sun was setting, giving the golden hued monuments a salmon, tangerine and navy backdrop, with the latter including a few faint stars overhead. It looked like a postcard, although it was hard to concentrate on it when there was something even more dazzling standing in front of it. “Some view, huh?” Raymond Lu, my self-described go-to guy, had sidled up with a couple of champagne flutes. “You mean the pyramids or the man?” I asked. Raymond frowned. Maybe because he was uncomfortable. His shock of black hair was slicked down and behaving, but he was tugging on the collar of his perfectly tailored tux and shifting from one foot to the other, like his shiny dress shoes hurt his feet. His usual idea of dressing up was a multicolored snakeskin jacket that had fallen off the back of a truck, paired with a black silk shirt and a lot of gold chains. Ray was out of his element. Of course, so was I. My work uniform was jeans and a T-shirt, with maybe a black leather jacket thrown over it when the weather warranted. I liked boots with a heavy sole and a steel tip in case I needed to kick down a door, and a duffle bag full of illegal weaponry in case the boots didn’t work. But no such luck tonight. Tonight, I was in a slinky black silk number, cut down to here and up to there, and a pair of shiny black stilettos. The get up went well with my short dark hair, giving off a vaguely nineteen twenties vibe, although it would have probably gotten me arrested in the twenties. But it made me have to watch every movement so that I didn’t flash somebody. Plus, the thong it pretty much required had migrated inward. Again. I resisted an urge to dig it out and drank champagne. Raymond scowled. “He needs a scar.” I assumed he was talking about my new husband, Louis-Cesare, who was standing on a dais at the front of the room, surrounded by beautiful people who looked completely at ease in their clothes. And jewels. And elaborately made up faces that were laughing at something my lover had just said. I saw several women shoot me envious glances and raised my glass to them. “Die mad about it,” I murmured, despite being pretty sure that they could hear me. We were across a crowded ballroom from each other, but vampire hearing has exceptional range. And they were all vamps, members or high-ranking flunkies of the North African Vampire Senate. It was a subsidiary of the huge African and Middle Eastern Senate, which had so much land to cover that they’d had to split it into more manageable chunks. But it was all under the control of its iron fisted consul, Hassani. He was here, too, his handsome, bearded face—a glamourie but a good one—shown to effect in a turban and a blindingly white burnoose. He and Louis-Cesare were soon to make pretty speeches about the current war and the great victory that our united front had won us. Then would come the presentation of gifts, including spoils taken from the plundered capitol of an alien world. They were already on display, in warded cases scattered around the large room. I was supposed to be over there, smiling and schmoozing and explaining the exotic booty to all and sundry, in order to help shore up the tentative alliance between the world’s six vampire senates. It had been forged after some home-grown enemies joined up with the fey king Aeslinn to wreak havoc, and the only way to get them to stop had been to invade Faerie and kick some ass. Only nobody knew how to fight a war on another world. So we’d united our forces, for the first time ever, with old enemies forged into reluctant allies by a serious threat. But that threat was over, right? So what happened to the alliance now? It was a problem, since the threat wasn’t really over. We’d won a battle—a major one—but a battle wasn’t a war. Yet people who hated each other’s guts tended to forget that, especially when they were also worried that the consul of the North American Senate, who headed up the shaky coalition, might decide to make her rule over vampire kind permanent. After all, it was what they’d do. Enter Louis-Cesare and I, on a good will tour to hand out largesse and compliments in equal measure, and try to keep the allies allied. So far, it wasn’t going great. I didn’t know whose brilliant idea it had been to send a dhampir, the traditional enemy of vampire kind, on a diplomatic mission, but it wasn’t working. I made the locals nervous simply by being in the same room, which was fair. You spend five hundred years bringing back their heads in a bag and it tends to cut into the general sense of goodwill. I’d noticed that whatever display case I was standing by suddenly got very lonesome, and when I walked through a room, people tended to step over each other to get out of the way. I’d smiled at one woman, whom I’d mistaken for a human servant, and she'd passed the hell out. I’d retreated to my corner after that, allowing my famous, gorgeous spouse to take over the schmoozing, which seemed to be working better. Maybe a little too much better, I thought, eyeing the admiring throng. And then eyeing him, mostly because I enjoyed it. His fashionably pale skin—or fashionable for vamps, anyway—was as flawless as the mane of burnished auburn hair that fell half way down the muscular back and was currently being limed with fire by the setting sun. It had been leashed tonight, as much as possible, by a tortoise shell clip at the base of his neck. It was a popular compromise by the men in the family, who understood that styles had changed but were damned if they were going to wear the short hair of a peasant. In Louis-Cesare’s case, the sleek style only served to highlight a profile that would have made an ancient Greek sculptor weep, and was accompanied by the rest of the Greek god package: broad shoulders, long legs, and the best butt in memory. And I had a long memory. Damn, I hated being the ugly one. I glanced at Ray, who was scowling even more furiously. “A scar?” “You know.” He drank champagne. “Something to give his face some character.” “It has plenty of character.” “Yeah, if male model is considered character.” “You’re just jealous.” “Damned right, I’m jealous. I’m five foot seven; he’s six four. I look like a penguin in this get up; he’s Mr. Universe. Plus, I got hair on my ass, and I bet his is silky smooth—” “Don’t start about your ass.” “I was just making the point—” “Well don’t.” “—that I gotta shave to get my trousers to lay right, while he—” “I’m not listening.” I walked out onto a terrace. Unlike most vampire courts, which tended to be underground, cramped and inward looking, this one was wide open, with the sand colored terrace outside almost as expansive as the ballroom within. I took my champagne over to some stone benches that looked like they’d been looted from an ancient temple, and prepared to try to enjoy myself. Of course, Raymond followed. “Why aren’t you in there, anyway?” he demanded. “Needed some air.” “No, I mean in there. At the front of the room, smiling with the bigwigs.” “When I smile at people, they tense up.” “That’s ‘cause you don’t really smile. You grimace, and half the time, you show fang.” “You show fang.” “Yeah, but I’m not a diplomat.” “Neither am I.” “Ah.” Ray settled down on the organically curved piece of granite, which was high enough to leave his legs dangling. “Then you know.” “Know what?” “That Louis-Cesare married one woman, but he wants another.” I felt my hand move instinctively to the stake I’d shoved into the top of my thigh high. “Oh,” I said nonchalantly. “Which one?” Ray rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. If there was a rival here, do you think I’d tell you? What, am I crazy?” “Then what did you mean?” “Look,” Ray said, and his face in the odd, pinkish light was earnest. Which meant that either I was about to get played, or he was actually serious. “I don’t want to tell you your business—” “Since when?” “—but you’re a killer, and we’re at war. What the hell are you doing here?” “Getting more well-rounded?” “I’m serious.” “So am I. At least, that’s what I was told.” I drank champagne. “And you believed it?” “I believed I was going to get divorced if I ran off on another errand for the senate. Remember what happened last time?” “That was not our fault.” Ray looked indignant. “And we saved a city!” “It’s never our fault, and we almost got killed. Louis-Cesare thought I was safe at home, only to discover on waking that I was halfway around the world battling an ancient demon. He . . . didn’t take it well.” Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that we had just, and I mean just, finished fighting a queen of the light fey, during which time his body had been taken over by an outside force and used as a weapon to try to kill me. He had very nearly succeeded. He had also been seriously traumatized by the whole affair, more than I’d realized, frankly. And then my unexpected side trip took place and . . . well. After I recovered, I’d been forcefully reminded of the fact that my husband had red in his hair. He’d presented me with an ultimatum and I chose him. Ray was eyeing me. “If this is some kind of extended honeymoon, then why did you call me?” “Call it an itch.” I got up and walked to the railing. Damn, it was beautiful here, and romantic—or it would have been, had Louis-Cesare and I gotten half a second alone. Instead, we’d been wined and dined and escorted to that famous site and this ancient statue, as the local senate pulled out all the stops for their illustrious guests. Well, guest, anyway. “What kind of itch?” Ray asked, joining me, although his eyes were darting worriedly around the terrace. There was nobody else out here, with the main event about to start inside, but I didn’t blame him. We’d been through a lot lately. “You mean, like intuition?” “No, I mean like being on unfamiliar ground with a famous senator during a war. The consul’s control over the alliance is tenuous and everybody knows it. If Louis-Cesare was to get assassinated, it might tip the political balance. He wants me on this damned tour because he thinks it’s safer. I think—” “That he’s a target.” I nodded. “You’re a senator now, too," Ray pointed out. "Why aren’t you a target?” “I’m not a dueling champion. If anyone wants to be considered a legit successor to the consul, they have to duel her, and she’s named Louis-Cesare as her champion before—” “Dory—” “—so why not again? Nobody wants to fight him, and a war is the perfect time to take him out before a challenge is even issued and blame it on somebody else—” “You've thought about this.” “Of course, I have. Two birds, one stone. Weaken her politically and make the challenge easier at the same time. It’s how they think; you know it is—" “Dory!” Ray put a hand over the one I had clenched on the railing. “He’s a dueling champion surrounded by vamp bodyguards. I think he’s fine.” I eyed the four huge vamps inside, who were dimly visible through the striations of setting sun on the glass. They were trying their best not to look like gorillas in their tuxes, which was a complete waste of time standing near my elegant husband. They were big, they were badass—or so they thought—and they were all but useless against the kind of things we had been fighting. And I didn’t mean just our enemies. I narrowed my eyes at Hassani, who had started life as an expert assassin and, as far as I knew, had never gone out of practice. I hadn’t had to ask if he wanted to head up the new Vampire World Senate. He was a master vamp; he wanted it. And Louis-Cesare could be his ticket to ride. Especially when the so-called bodyguards were busy scanning the crowd, while completely ignoring the much more dangerous man standing right beside them! Not that I really thought that Hassani—or anyone else—would try something so openly, but vampires were tricky, especially the old ones. You never knew how their minds worked. And, yeah, I was paranoid, but I had reason to be, and my nerves— Were a little on edge, I thought, realizing half a second after it happened that I had whirled, my body splayed out in a lunge, to hold a terrified waiter at knife point. He didn’t move and didn’t scream, although the front of his nice dark trousers got a little darker as we stood there in our little tableau, staring at each other. “What?” I asked, realizing that Ray had said something. “I was gonna ask why you don’t rate any guards,” he said dryly. “Two of them are mine. I put them on Louis-Cesare,“ I said, and pulled the knife back. It was at the other end of the stake for convenience, and thin enough not to bulge my dress. I’d been flashing it all night anyway, whenever I moved just right, like a gunslinger in the Old West with a .45 under his arm. But I was past caring. Screw diplomacy; my party was going home with all their limbs attached, and if Hassani or anybody else had something to say about it, they could— The waiter dropped his tray of drinks and screamed as the delayed reaction hit, then fled. Several people glanced outside, with the bored disinterest of beings who had seen everything and didn’t think much of it. There wasn’t even a break in the subtle ebb and flow of conversation. “Sorry,” I told Ray, taking the handkerchief he proffered to wipe the spilled champagne off my hand. “I’ve just been a little on edge late—” “Shit!” he yelled, and tackled me. I heard it a split second after he did: a high-pitched whistle, unmistakable to anyone who’d ever been at war. A missile, incoming. And then here, a split second after Ray threw us behind one of the massive old benches, which I guess were as sturdy as they looked. Because the explosion tore around and over us, but not through us. Not through us. I was on my feet and tussling with Ray, who despite appearances was a vampire and a master at that, while debris was still in the air, while heat was still radiating outward in waves, and while the wind of the explosion was still blowing my hair around. I didn’t care. I threw him off and ran, into a once nice ballroom that was currently falling to pieces. Damn it, I knew it! “Louis-Cesare!” I didn’t see him. I did see a jagged edged hole in the sky outside the windows, or more accurately, in what I guessed was a shield surrounding the ballroom and terrace. The pretty view was still being projected onto the inside of what was left of it, while everywhere else . . . Was destruction. A heavy ceiling tile crashed to the floor at my feet, sending sharp edged shards to pepper my legs and the arm I threw up over my eyes. Blackened furniture, much of it still on fire, lay scattered around; destroyed columns were in chunks on the floor, one of them crushing a servant; smoke filled the air, chokingly thick; and the charred bodies of vamps and glassware crunched underfoot. But there were signs of survival, too. There was movement amongst the fire, with the power levels of those in attendance on clear display. The weakest were burnt corpses, mere shells of gray ash that puffed away into nothingness as I passed. Those with more years and more power under their belts were stirring, some weakly calling out for help in a dozen languages, the stronger struggling to get up or staggering back to their feet. But the masters . . . Were furious. A woman jumped up beside me with a snarl, her finery burnt away except for a few scraps clinging to her blackened, naked body. Much of her henna dyed updo was also missing, burnt to the scalp, and the rest was down around her shoulders, one of which was burning like an ember. She clawed it out, grabbing a chunk of her own damaged flesh and tearing it off before it took the rest of her along with it, and then ran to the other side of the room. Others were congregating there as well; rallying around Hassani, who was suddenly surrounded by an army of his creatures, blackened and bloody, but still deadly. And they needed to be. Because the missile had only been the first volley. It had somehow broken through the shield surrounding the court, like a medieval trebuchet making a breech in a wall, and now the army was pouring in. Only an army of what, I wasn’t sure. They were human in shape but swathed in black, including their heads, so I couldn’t tell much about them. Most were on the short side and thin but fast, even by vampire standards, being mere blurs across my vision unless they paused for half a second. And they were strong—insanely so. One lunged for me and I ducked, came back up and got my knife in his neck. But that gave another a change to grab me from behind, and for a second, I couldn’t break his hold. Because I’d been treating him like a human, which judging by the rapid heartbeat against my back, he was. But that wasn’t human strength. So I switched tactics, shucked my shoes, ran up a cracked support column and flipped over his head. And slit his throat. I looked up, panting, but while there were plenty of black clad people running around, no more were targeting me. Maybe because Hassani had just given a shouted order and his vampires had rushed the invaders, making me think for a second that it was all over. But the army in black pushed back against what should have been an overwhelming show of force, half of them somehow stopping the charge while the rest . . . Went for the warded cases of artifacts. And I finally got a clue. This wasn’t an attempted assassination; this was a heist. Somebody wanted the fey artifacts badly enough to risk attacking Hassani’s court for them—and they were getting away with it. An explosive charge was slapped to the blue column of a shield to my right, and I heard it go off as I ran. Another just ahead wreathed a shield in black smoke, and a second later it cracked and then shattered like glass. Artifacts disappeared into black plastic garbage bags, which would have usually gotten a reaction from me, since they were our responsibility. But right then, I couldn’t have cared less. “Louis-Cesare!” I finally saw him, over near the shattered main shield, looking down over the city. He turned his head to stare at me for a second, before yelling something that I couldn’t hear over the fires and the cries and the roar of a furious Hassani. Who leapt over the fleshly breakwater of clashing forces with a scimitar in one hand and a long knife in the other, and began demonstrating, that, yes, his assassination skills were as sharp as ever. The enemy army broke and stumbled back into me, and the vampires yelled and charged. And by the time I fought my way through all of that and ran over to the opening, Louis-Cesare was gone. Or almost. I spotted him in the distance, running hard into the night, chasing . . . someone. It was almost dark and I couldn’t make out who it was. But I could see the shadows that peeled off the walls all around and followed. Goddamnit! “No,” Ray said, running up beside me as I tore the trailing hem off the damned evening dress. “No, you are not going to—” And then I threw myself onto the roof below, and took off.
It didn’t help that Louis-Cesare had had a head start, and was faster than me, although usually only by a fraction of a second. But tonight—tonight he was flying. I’d never seen him move like that; hell, I’d never seen anybody move like that. Except for the creatures pursuing him. There were dozens of them, leaping across the rooftops of Cairo like mad things. And they didn’t look like the shorter types doing the heist; they were at least as tall if not taller than he was. At least as far as I could tell, based on the brief glimpses I got around old stone walls, flapping sheets, and five thousand damned satellite dishes! I jumped onto a terraced rooftop, grabbed a ladder to vault up to the taller story, and paused. Adrenaline was telling me to hurry, hurry, hurry, but older instincts, the kind that live in the lizard brain, were telling me something else. And I learned a long time ago to listen to the lizard brain. I glanced around, while palming my knife. The whole area was dark, with the last rays of the setting sun having just disappeared over the horizon. The only light came from the stars overhead and a few dim windows of illumination, darkened by curtains, in the surrounding buildings. Nothing moved; nothing stirred. My straining ears could hear only distant traffic, faint Arabic from a T.V., and the cooking sounds of somebody fixing dinner in a nearby apartment. And the tell-tale slice of a blade through the air. I lunged to the side, a split second before a knife appeared, vibrating in the wood of the ladder. I grabbed it and threw it back—in the same direction that it had come from, because you learn a thing or two in five hundred years. And finished my turn to see it sticking out— Of the chest of Anubis, the jackal headed god of death. All right, I thought. I had not seen that one coming. The maybe nine-foot-tall creature stepped forward, seeming to coalesce out of the shadows. Starlight limned the muscles on the broad, human-like chest, on thick arms banded by gold, and on strong, athlete’s legs. The latter emerged from under a white linen, pleated skirt, the ancient Egyptian version of a kilt, with a golden jackal’s head in place of the sporran. But they ended with huge, very non-human clawed feet, which along with the elongated snout on the head and the slitted, golden eyes, were enough to give me the creeps even before a spear the size of a small tree was shoved at me. I caught it in a rung of the ladder and sent it spinning off into the night. Only to have the creature materialize another out of thin air. And then three more jackal headed bastards leapt into the fray from the terrace above. Okay, then. Done here. The creatures came along as I jumped for a nearby roof, slashing and hacking at me while we were still mid-air. I received an impromptu haircut from a razor-sharp sword, watched the inch-long fringe arc against the starlight, and got my own knife in my attacker as I hit down rolling. And saw the creature pull eight inches of steel out of its side and throw it away as if it had been a splinter. All right, then. A little-known fact about dhampirs is that we are fast. Not Louis-Cesare fast, but compared to almost anybody else . . . yeah, I could move. Which I proved by taking off like a bat out of hell. And had one of them pass me in a classic flanking maneuver, without so much as breaking a sweat. Son of a bitch, I thought, ripping up one of the ubiquitous satellite dishes and flinging it at the nearest snout. Only to have it be caught midair and snapped back, so fast that I ended up bending over backwards to miss it and fell off the building. I grabbed a laundry line on the way down, which would have been more of a comfort if one of my attackers hadn’t immediately started reeling me in. I started overhanding it for the other side—fast—only to find that there was a jackal on that end, too. Why they didn’t just skewer me on one of those huge spears I didn’t know, but it wouldn’t matter in a minute. Dorina, I thought, some help here! And I wasn’t talking to myself. Well, okay, I sort of was, but . . . it’s complicated. My name is Dory Basarab, daughter of the famous vampire senator and general Mircea Basarab, and recently a member in my own right of the North American Vampire Senate. I’d been promoted for two reasons: it was assumed that I’d vote the way daddy wanted, thus giving his faction on the senate additional power. And because of Dorina—my “twin” as she called herself—which I guess was a reference to Siamese twins. Only instead of being joined at the hip, we were joined everywhere. We’d been born one person with a duel nature—half human, half vamp—but a single consciousness. Until, that is, our father Mircea—a master mentalist—had decided to put a barrier between our two halves when I was just a girl. The idea had been to give the human side of me a chance to grow up separately from my vampire nature, which had already been stronger than I could handle. That was why so few dhampirs lived for very long: their two sides ended up at war with each other, and ripped their minds apart. Mircea had helped Dorina and I to avoid that, but at the cost of remaining separate people for something like five centuries. And a division like that . . . tends to be permanent. I hadn’t even known she existed until recently, when Mircea’s barrier finally failed, since we had never been awake at the same time. I’d just thought I had fits of dhampir-induced madness, when I blacked out and killed everything in the room. It had kept me apart from society for most of my life, under the assumption that I was a dangerous monster. It didn’t help that I was sort of right. Not that Dorina was a homicidal maniac, but she had all the ruthless practicality of a vampire, blended with centuries of being a virtual prisoner in my mind. Mircea had left human-me in charge of our union, which allowed her limited freedom, mainly when I was asleep or freaked out and my control lessened. She was therefore both very old and yet also strangely naïve in how she thought about things, with much less real-world experience than I had. And, like a child, anything that startled her was likely to get beaten up. Of course, I could really use a little of that ferocity right about now. But Dorina also had the ability to leave our body behind for mental jaunts on her own, and this looked like one of those times. Meanwhile, I was getting my ass handed to me—possibly literally in a minute—by creatures faster and stronger and more numerous than I was. And my damned purse, which had some items that might have evened the odds, was back on the terrace, assuming there was a terrace anymore. I was starting to find Egypt less romantic. And then somebody grabbed me—from behind, just as I was being hauled over the edge of the roof. “If you stake me, I swear to God!” Ray shrieked, before I could retaliate. Or figure out what was happening. Because we were going up, I realized, as one of the jackal-headed bastards jumped for me— And missed. I saw the creature flail in the air, its fingertips just missing the fringe of what appeared to be a rug from somebody’s living room, which I’d been slung across. It was an ugly rug, and its fringe was an unraveled mess. Even stranger, it appeared to be the only thing underneath us. “Hold on!” Ray yelled. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!” That’s reassuring, I thought, as we took off, soaring over the rooftops of Cairo on what appeared to be a flying carpet. At least as far as I could tell with the wind throwing what remained of my hair in my eyes and my fisted hands clutching the hard-to-grasp surface for all I was worth. I almost fell off three times anyway, felt my stomach lurch alarmingly when we jackknifed around a building, and then we stopped—abruptly enough that I did hit the ground. Or another dusty rooftop, at least, with my head spinning and the stone underneath my hands feeling like it was undulating while I stared up at Ray. “What the—” He was off the rug with a hand over my mouth before I could blink. “Shhhh! I don’t know what kinda hearing those things have, all right?” “Whhmpphwhhmmmmhhh?” “What?” I removed his hand. “Then why did we stop?” “Why did we—” he looked at me incredulously. “I don’t know how to drive that thing!” He gestured back at the rug, which was levitating a couple feet above the roof and looking pathetic. Like, really pathetic. For one thing, it wasn’t even close to being a rectangle, which was one reason I’d had so much trouble holding on. For another, it had a “pattern” that would have embarrassed a cross eyed two-year-old, with nothing repeating or making sense. It looked like somebody had scribbled a picture . . . in a hurry . . . in the dark . . . I glared at Ray. “Son of a bitch!” “Shh! Shhhhhh!” “Where is it?” The blue eyes shifted. “Where is what?” “You know damned well!” “All right, all right! Keep your voice down—” I didn’t wait for him to finish pulling an object out of an inside pocket of his tux, and instead jerked it out myself. And then shook it under his nose. “You said it wasn’t finished yet! You said—” “I say a lotta things,” Ray hissed. “Cause I got a master with a death wish! I wanted to test it out first—” “Well, it obviously works!” “Yeah.” He glanced back at the lopsided rug. “You know. Kinda.” “Close enough.” I stood up and looked around, but as I’d feared, there was no Louis-Cesare. There were no jackal-headed thugs, either, including the ones that had been after me. And there’d been at least a dozen, as more had zeroed in on my location from surrounding buildings. What the hell was going on? “How does this thing work?” I asked Ray, returning to the business at hand. He shrugged. “Same as the other, more or less.” I examined it. It resembled a child’s toy pistol, but with an extra-large barrel. But what it shot out wasn’t water. Ray and I had gotten the idea for a new weapon from a recent adventure in supernatural Hong Kong. A hidden city that existed out of phase with the normal world, it didn’t have to hide its weirder elements like most enclaves did. That had allowed some . . . peculiarities . . . to become every day sights, including magical ads that could jump off their billboards and follow you down the street. They were “drawn” onto the side of a building by a gun-like object that contained a reservoir of magic and a spell to animate it. You sketched whatever you wanted on a little screen, pointed the gun, and presto! An instantly mobile, and occasionally vocal, advertisement. Thanks to a buttload of magic supplied by a crazy war mage we’d met, Ray and I had managed to use the gun to animate ourselves a little help. Giant ads had become warriors in a very strange battle, and while their fighting ability had been debatable, they’d served admirably as a distraction for our attackers. But a distraction wasn’t what I needed right now. I drew a figure, aimed the gun at a wall, and pulled the trigger. A second later, what had been bare bricks had a glowing, golden stick figure on them, the size of a six-year-old child. I waited, biting my lip and hoping this would work. Ray and I had taken the idea of the makeshift weapon we’d put together on the fly in Hong Kong to a master wardsmith—the father of a friend—who liked to tinker with crazy magic. He’d refined it, upgraded it, and added some special features. Including that one, I thought, as the “child” started spilling off the wall like an accordion, not one figure anymore but dozens. “Thought you were an artist,” Ray said, checking out the ‘toons’ oversized, lopsided heads and mismatched eyes. I ignored that. The dial control on the device was as hard to use as an Etch-a-Sketch, which probably explained the rug. I pawed through my oversized purse, which Ray had slung over his back, pulled a picture of Louis-Cesare out of my wallet and held it up in front of the nearest little glowing stick figure. It had been toddling around aimlessly along with the rest, having received no instructions yet. So I gave it some. “Find him—fast—and signal me when you do.” The lopsided head got a little more so, tilting in an almost human-like way as it regarded the picture with its big, missing eyes. I hadn’t bothered to fill it in much, so it was mostly just a collection of glowing lines, showing the darkened city scape beyond. But there was obviously something at work inside that empty head. Because a moment later the stick guys were gone, just golden blurs against the night, shooting off in all directions. “Get on!” I told Ray, while clambering back onto the rug. “Yeah.” He eyed it. “Only I was thinking maybe you could make another one. I was kinda in a hurry and—” “It’ll do. Come on!” “—it ended up too small. And lopsided. And—” “Ray! The magic cartridges are $10,000 a pop—” “I know that—” “—so I’m not making another one. And, anyway, we don’t have time. Get on!” Ray was not getting on. Instead, he was backing up, his eyes on the tiny sort-of rug that I was straddling like a motorcycle. He did not appear to want another go. “Did I ever mention I get airsick?” And then a couple of jackals jumped onto the roof, and Ray screamed and threw himself at me. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, which I guess was all the command the little rug needed. It took off like it had been shot out of a cannon, with Ray’s last word being exaggerated into a single long line that I thought might actually be his last word, as we dodged spears and flipped over and somersaulted in mid-air, which had me wanting to scream, too, only I was the master. It wouldn’t have been dignified. We finally stabilized high over the city, with Ray in front and me holding on behind. Old Town was spread out in a warren of broad avenues and narrow alleyways below, through which my tiny golden men were flickering. Not running down the streets as humans would, but appearing briefly on walls, on parked vehicles, and on the shuttered side of shops, the corrugated metal making their distorted shapes even more so. But they were flickering fast. “Come on,” I breathed, watching them. “Come on.” And then I saw it: a little man who was no longer golden. He was red—blood red. And no sooner had the color washed over him than it spilled outward to his closest brothers, who turned unerringly on his location. And then more did and more, until I had a bright red arrow spread out below me, fritzing like a neon sign in the darkness— And pointing straight at where my lover was likely fighting for his life. “There!” I yelled, gesturing—and forgetting how the carpet worked. The syllable had barely left my lips when it leapt ahead, causing Ray to yelp and me to clutch his waist as we took off at what could only be described as an extremely unwise pace. I didn’t care. “Faster,” I breathed, and swore that I felt us speed up even more. “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” Ray screamed, because there were no safety protocols on this thing, which had just fallen like a stone. But it had fallen in a slanting, forward motion-y kind of way, which literally seconds later had us hitting the Khan-el-Khalili, the huge bazaar in the center of the city. I’d heard of this place, of course; everyone had. It was almost as famous as the pyramids, with its narrow, cobblestone streets, soaring arches, and limestone walls practically unchanged for seven hundred years. I’d heard tales of towering mosaics, of intricately carved wooden doors, of sagging wooden balconies hanging over shops filled with everything from cheap tourist crap to genuine finds. I’d been planning to visit before we left and maybe pick up some souvenirs for the folks back home. But not like this. Because our turbo charged ride did not seem to understand the difference between flying unimpeded through the air and flying through a still-crowded marketplace, where colored glass lanterns cast rainbows over what had to be hundreds of people—touts, tourists, locals, guides, and shop owners with their merchandise. Especially their merchandise. “Ow!” Ray yelled, batting at a hanging garden of copper pots, pitchers and platters that batted us back. And then at some blue beaded chandelier things outside the entrance of another shop, the strands of which hit us in the face like hail. And then through a lamp seller’s inventory, which—gah! “Down!” Ray gasped, as glass shattered and sprayed everywhere. “Take us down!” We went down, plowing through a shoe vendor’s rack, sending multiple pairs of leather slippers flying like a flock of startled birds. And then through another rack of brightly colored outfits, shimmering with beads and sequins, half of which clung to us. And then behind a local man on a motorcycle, who was staring over his shoulder with the panicked, disbelieving eyes of a guy being chased by a couple of djinn on a flying carpet. Which only got worse when an Anubis jumped off a building on top of him. The man and his ride went skidding into a café, sending the patrons screaming as we tore past. And then was thrown off altogether when he hit a wall. The crash didn’t seem to faze the ancient god, however, who swiftly righted the bike and used it to come after us. “Give me the gun!” I yelled at Ray, who had shoved it back in his pocket. “What?” “The gun!” He gave me the gun. I sketched something appropriate and pointed it at a wall. But we were going so fast that the pic got a little overstretched. Which resulted in a twelve-foot-long scorpion that . . . yeah. Worked really well, I thought, as I gestured at the god of death coming up fast behind us. “Kill it!” The scorpion seemed enthusiastic about this idea, leaping off the wall and tackling the motorcycle riding asshole. At least, I assumed so, judging from all the yelling going on behind us. I would have turned around to see, but another huge assailant had just jumped down and caught hold of the back of our ride. And Ray—God bless him—made sure that he regretted it. Ray had the front of the rug in a death grip, and was using it to steer by tugging this way or that—and he’d gotten pretty good at it. Because we slung around corners, sped down avenues, and zipped across cross-streets. And in the process smashed our would-be assailant into beautiful old geometric wood paneling, into plastic mannequins wearing belly dancing costumes, into glassware, copperware, and shelves of obsidian statues—some, ironically, of Anubis himself. We plowed him through displays of carved wooden boxes and dishes with shimmering mother-of-pearl inlay, and a huge brass hookah taller than he was. We slung him into a couple of massive alabaster vases outside an antique shop and then through a spice seller’s baskets of cinnamon, peppercorns, and cardamom. If there was a shop we missed, I’d be surprised. And when we weren’t crashing into something, we were dragging him over rough-edged cobblestones, scattered café chairs, and a fountain of very hard ceramic tiles. Which I guessed wasn’t fun judging by the sounds he was making. And all the blood he was shedding. Strange that Anubis bled like a human I thought, and reached around to grab hold of the elongated snout, which had yet to move despite all the noise. And pulled. “Oh, fuck!” Ray said, staring over his shoulder at the long spill of silver white hair that flowed out of what was now quite obviously a mask. “Is that what I think it is?” “Fey,” I agreed, and put a knife in its eye. But these weren’t ordinary fey, if there was such a thing. I’d met the silver haired bastards before, and while they were taller, stronger and faster than a normal human by an order of magnitude, they weren’t this strong. Or this fast. Or this numerous, because the marketplace was suddenly crawling. And they didn’t like that I’d just killed their friend. “Go up, go up!” Ray screamed, as half a dozen fake gods leapt for us. The rug went up. Unfortunately, our enemies were up there, too. Running across rooftops, jumping from balconies, throwing huge spears like freaking rain and causing our little conveyance to have to dodge here, there, and everywhere along the narrow alley, goddamnit! “Need some help?” I felt a familiar, cool presence slip inside my skin, or our skin technically, since my alter ego was back. And just in time. “Is that supposed to be funny?” I yelled, as five jackal-headed thugs dove at us like they were trying to set an Olympic record. And fell in pieces on the ground behind us a second later, because— “Where did you get that?” I demanded, looking at the bloody scimitar in my hand. Dorina gestured vaguely behind us, to where I guessed she’d ripped off a vendor as we flew past, or mugged a fey, before I'd even realized she was back. Which she definitely was. Because instead of gripping the little rug with both knees and at least one hand, I was now standing up on the tiny surface like a surfer on a board, and slashing at jumping fey with a bloody sword. “Dorina?” Ray guessed, staring up at me. “What do you think?” I yelled, trying to focus past the panic and find— Him, I thought, half in joy, half in shock, as we slung around a minaret, above a cobblestone courtyard where I finally spotted Louis-Cesare, fighting alone, and surrounded by what had to be three dozen massive, jackal headed assailants. My heart seized as Ray circled 'round again, as half a dozen spears flew up at us, and as I scribbled as fast as I could one handed— “Got it!” I yelled. “Got what?” Ray demanded, looking at me over his shoulder. “What is that thing?” “Horus.” “What?” “The king of the gods!” I yelled, as a huge falcon tore off the side of the minaret, its wingspan big enough to threaten to block out the sky. I don’t know how large it actually was; I was kind of distracted. But I’d poured the rest of our magic into it, and I guess that reservoir had been worth the money. Because in that place and at that moment, it looked like a jumbo jet. It soared into the air, and then matched speed with us, the mighty wings knocking over a shop stall or two in the process. “What the hell?” Ray demanded, staring at it. “We just pulled rank!” I pointed at Louis-Cesare, and saw the bird's great head turn with my movement. “Save him!” And Horus did. Ray and I landed in a nearby alley to watch the show, because our ride was running out of juice. Sort of like the fey, I thought, watching the giant beak savage the no-longer-huge-looking creatures. It was a bloody slaughter, and I had no idea how we were going to explain this to Hassani, assuming he hadn’t engineered the whole thing, not to mention cover it up. But when I saw Louis-Cesare running toward me across the square, slicing and dicing fey as he went, it suddenly didn’t matter anymore. Love . . . is a strange emotion, Dorina commented. Couldn’t argue with that. “You owe me an Omega for this,” Ray piped up, from behind me. “What?” “You know, the watch? The kind James Bond wears.” I glanced back at him. “What about it?” “I been thinking, and that’s what I want as a master’s gift.” “Come again?” “Masters always give their Seconds a gift, something to show off, only you haven’t ponied up yet.” “I’m not much of a master,” I pointed out, watching Louis-Cesare decapitate two fey at one time without breaking stride. “But I’m a great second.” Yeah, I thought. He kind of was. “What kind of Omega?” I asked, glancing back again— In time to see him torn limb from limb by four fey. “Ray!” I screamed, while someone else shouted: “Now!” The alley lit up with a strange purple light, and something hit me like every freight train on Earth, all at once. I didn’t scream, but only because I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything, including fall, despite the fact that I’d been caught halfway through a leap. Except watch as what looked like a stone hockey puck—one of the captured fey artifacts—sent purple lightning scrawling up the alley walls. I could feel Dorina struggling as hard as I was, but we remained suspended in mid-air while the lightning built and built above us, raising the hair on our head and arms and sending painful chills cascading up and down our body. And then it came crashing down, all at once, a searing torrent of it that felt like it should have incinerated us on the spot, or cooked our bones inside our skin. But it didn’t kill us. I didn’t know what it did, other than make me feel like I was coming apart at the seams. And maybe I was. A portal opened up in the opposite wall, and from the strength of it, it was headed a long way away. I barely noticed. A horrible ripping, tearing, sundering feeling had hit me, and suddenly, there she was, standing in the alley bedside me: Dorina, but not in the ghostly way she sometimes appeared when we had a chat. But solid. Real. She touched my hand, looking as shocked as I was. For a second, we just stared at each other. And then a group of fey tackled her like linebackers, and all of them disappeared through the portal. It immediately closed up behind them and I fell to the ground, the strange light dying at the same moment. Louis-Cesare grabbed me a second later, right before I passed out, yelling things that I couldn’t hear over the pounding of my heart. Because I’d just realized something. He hadn’t been the target, after all. Dorina had. And now she was gone. Look for Queen's Gambit on July 15, 2020!
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