Death's Mistress (45 page)

Every year it was the same story. Out of the two hundred or so entrants who qualified for the Big Kahuna of the racing world, maybe twenty percent would actually finish. Out of the eighty percent who were left, most would eventually limp back to the starting line, having fabricated an elaborate tale of how nature/their vehicle/ the gods had conspired against them. But there were a good five to ten percent every year who were claimed by the lines.

There would be editorials in all the papers the day afterward, loudly denouncing the barbarity of it all, and some officials would make properly distressed faces. But nothing ever changed. It was just part of the race.

I must not have done a great job at looking neutral, because Ronnie flushed. “There’s more to racing than driving, you know,” he told me.

“Actually, I don’t know.”

“You don’t follow the races?” Lilly looked stunned and vaguely freaked out, like I’d just admitted to eating live snakes.

“Sorry.”

It was finally our turn at the floating ticket booth, where the kids forked over an eye-popping amount for three-day passes. “You shouldn’t need a pass,” the blonde told Ronnie indignantly, as we moved toward the levitating parking lot. “You should be in the pits!”

“I suck in the pits,” Ronnie admitted. He glanced at me. “I was lollipop man last time around and I got distracted and lowered our sign too soon.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad.”

“And Dad left without a back rear tire!”

“Well, it’s not like he needed it.”

“Oh, he needed it,” Ronnie said, looking miserable.

“The race is mostly in the lines, but they don’t all intersect, you know? Sometimes you have to travel a mile or more to get from one to another. . . .”

“Ouch,” I sympathized. He nodded glumly.

“But that wasn’t what you trained for!” Lilly said loyally.

“What did you train for?” I asked. Because it sure wasn’t driving.

“I’m a spellbinder.”

Lilly nodded enthusiastically. “He’s the best!”

“I’m not sure I know what that is,” I said, only to have four incredulous sets of eyes turned on me.

“You really don’t follow the races,” Lilly said, like she hadn’t believed it before.

“What
do
you know about racing?” Ronnie asked, curious. He looked fascinated, like a scientist confronted by a strange new species:
dontgiveadamnus
from the phylum
couldntcareless.

I shrugged. “You have to be a mage, you have to pony up a big-ass fee and you have to be insane.” In fact, insanity wasn’t a requirement, but it may as well have been. Because nobody in their right minds would have signed up for what was essentially a death trap.

Lilly was frowning at me, and okay, maybe that hadn’t been too tactful. But Ronnie just grinned. “Are you
sure
you don’t follow the races?”

“I think I saw part of one in a bar once,” I admitted.

“There are typically four people to a team,” he told me. “The driver, who leads the team; the navigator, who helps him find the best route; the shield master, who maintains the shield; and the spellbinder, who protects the team from, er, anything they need protecting from—”

“He means the competition,” Toni said lazily.

“—and gets them through the obstacles,” Ronnie finished. He looked at me, expectant, and I bit.

“What obstacles?”

“There’s no actual course, so the only way to make sure everybody really circles the Earth is to have them make pit stops along the way,” he explained.

“With obstacles at each stop,” I guessed.

He nodded enthusiastically. The races were obviously his passion. His thin face lit up when he talked about them, and his pale blue eyes shone. “They can be anything. You just never know because they change every year. Physical barriers, magical ones, even mazes—”

“And your comp-e-ti-tion,” Toni singsonged, obviously half-wasted.

“The competitors are always gunning for the biggest names,” Lilly agreed. “And there’s no monitoring outside the pit stops because there’s no set route, so it’s a free-for-all! The spellbinders have to fight off the attacks of other teams, as well as get their team through the obstacles. It’s the most important job in the race!”

“Sounds like fun,” I lied, eyeing the crush of cars still ahead of us. Most of the vehicles were bunched up in a midair traffic jam, waiting for one of the harassed parking attendants to slot them into place. I decided I could walk and get there faster. “You can let me off here,” I told Ronnie. “I can—”

I didn’t finish, because he suddenly floored it. The car shot out of the queue with either panache or reckless abandon, depending on whether he’d meant to slip through the narrow space between two rows of already parked cars. The movement threw me back against the seat beside Toni.

“There’s no rush,” I said, holding out the vain hope of arriving in one piece.

“Like hell there’s not!” Lilly spat, pointing with her beer bottle. “They’re following us!”

I twisted my neck around to see our old friend the race car driver. He’d cleared the ticket booth and was in hot pursuit, the angry Bug owner in the seat beside him. “It wasn’t my fault!” Ronnie insisted, as the car dipped alarmingly.

I turned back around to see him staring past me at the pursuit, while ahead of us, the grandstand full of people loomed large. “The stands!” I yelled, pointing.

“What?”

“The. Stands!” I twisted his head back around, and he froze, staring at our collective doom.

“Oh, for—” Lilly reached over and stomped on the brakes, halting us close enough to the back of the bleachers that I could have reached out and touched the sun-faded wood. Luckily, the several thousand people assembled to watch the qualifying heats were facing the other way, except for a redheaded little boy peeking out through the slats.

He had a pink cotton candy grin and a massive treat clutched in one tiny fist. Which he smushed all over Lilly’s hair. She screeched and forgot about the car, which floated up and out, wafting above the crowd like a steel balloon. That was apparently not allowed, because almost immediately an irritated-looking mage in a uniform rose from the sidelines and started for us.

“Damn,” Toni said, looking a little nervous.

I was finding it hard to feel much trepidation, personally. And although I could see the wisdom of not putting the patrols in something as bulky as a car when they’d be zooming around over people’s heads, the choice of substitute seemed a little unfortunate. “They couldn’t have issued you guys motorcycles, at least?” I asked the mage on the Segway.

He scowled and ignored me. “Levitation isn’t allowed above the stands,” he told Ronnie.

Ronnie didn’t respond. He was too busy staring over his shoulder at the irate duo in the race car. They’d paused behind the bleachers, bobbing just above where the multicolored pennants began, in order to shout obscenities at us.

“You’re going to have to move your vehicle,” the patrol tried again, this time addressing Lilly.

It was another wasted effort. “My hair!” she screeched, red-faced and outraged. “I paid a fortune for this color! Arrest that kid!”

The mage didn’t reply, because a beer bottle exploded against the side of the car in a rain of green glass. “What the—” The rent-a-cop looked around, trying to figure out where it had come from, while the people below us shouted in outrage.

I doubted that much of the glass had connected, because a kid had parked his Boogie Board on that side of us as a sun shield. It floated above the crowd, deflecting most of the green hail into the aisle. But that didn’t seem to matter to anyone. We were maybe twelve feet above the stands, so the spectators couldn’t reach us, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t fire up a spell. As least, I assumed that was what rocked the car hard enough to almost tip us out.

“All right, that’s enough!” The cop dropped to issue a warning to whoever the joker was below, and I caught another bottle that had been about to bean me.

I whipped it back at its thrower—a young guy standing at the top of the bleachers. He and a group of friends had been talking to the driver of the Bug, who was still pointing in our direction and yelling. And then they froze, gawking at something behind me with their mouths still open.

I spun around to see almost the entire crowd staring at the huge mirror. In between showing the races, it had been reflecting interviews with noted drivers, car sponsors and paid ads. Only it was hard to imagine what that particular image could be selling.

But one thing was certain: the man seated in the large armchair wasn’t going to be giving any more interviews.

The man sat facing the camera, legs crossed, slumped slightly to one side in a large wingback armchair. A cigarette burned in an ashtray by his elbow, which was odd, since he looked to have been dead for at least a century. His skin was brown and withered, like old leather; his hair was stark white; and his lips had shriveled up and drawn back from his teeth, giving him a sort of ghastly smile.

“And now a word with returning champion, Peter Lutkin!” an announcer burbled obliviously.

Lilly screamed.

She wasn’t the only one, and a moment later, the carefully controlled chaos wasn’t so controlled anymore. Some people were still sitting in shock, staring at the gruesome image of the dead man. But others were surging to their feet, demanding explanations, calling for their kids, gathering up belongings. The cheerful, raucous mood of a second before was completely gone.

That was particularly true after a couple of stunned drivers collided near the sidelines. One of them must have dropped some oil or gas on something inflammable, because a nearby tent went up in flames. If anyone had forgotten we were at war, the pillar of black smoke billowing skyward was a damn good reminder. The already panicked crowd broke and ran.

I jumped over the side of the car, ignoring—like everyone else—the magically enhanced voice telling us to remain calm and in position. The Boogie Board broke my fall, and the momentum of my landing pushed it off on a long glide toward the bottom of the stands. I was congratulating myself on finding a fast way off the bleachers when a sudden updraft flipped the board, leaving me dangling upside down as I careened over the driveway.

My sweat-slick fingers lost their grip about the same time that a truck flew by underneath. I dropped to the bed, then used it as a platform to launch myself at the bumper of a passing patrol car that was screaming toward the house. I rode it past a couple of wide-eyed guards and straight into the private courtyard.

Of course, I didn’t get any farther. Unlike Elyas, the consul didn’t believe in taking chances with her front line of defense. The guard who snatched me out of the air was at least a second-level master, and I strongly suspected his buddy of being a first. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Until providence intervened in the form of panicked humanity. The expensive race cars were suddenly not the only vehicles on the track, as people who couldn’t get out the main gates started cutting corners. Half a dozen plowed through the air overhead and swerved around the house, heading for the road and the ley line running through it.

One rusted El Camino clipped the plaster as it tore past the side of the house, sending a cloud of particles into the air and exposing the raw brickwork below. The vamp holding me swore. I could practically hear his thoughts. If a sideswipe could do that, what would a head-on collision do? Particularly if the car had a full gas tank.

I suddenly became a lot less interesting. As far as he was concerned, I was merely a frightened human. He thrust me and a set of magical cuffs into the arms of a young servant who was hovering under the impressive Roman-style portico, out of the sun. Then he and his buddy took off after the floating battering rams.

The young vamp had soft brown hair that brushed his shoulders, soft blue eyes and soft pink lips that didn’t completely hide glistening fangs. They were out because he was hungry. At his level, he should have been in a safe room somewhere, dreaming of plump pink wrists. But it looked like it was all hands on deck for the races, and at his power level, that meant a heavy drain on his resources.

He clearly thought a snack was in order. He smiled gently as he reached for me. “Don’t worry; this won’t hurt.”

I smiled back. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it will.”

A moment later, the stunned vamp’s arms were cuffed around one of the support pillars, and I was through the front door. There were no wards, as I’d half expected; I suppose with all the people coming and going from the races, it would have been impossible to keep them up. But it seemed odd that the consul, who wasn’t known for taking chances, would forgo such an elementary—

It hit me suddenly, like a punch to the gut, sending me staggering into a wall. Not a ward or a weapon, but a massive sense of
presence
. I’d been around vampires all my life, but not hundreds, not senior- level masters, not all together under one roof. My vampire sense almost blew my head off.

Of course she didn’t need wards
, I thought, clutching the wall for support. Who the hell was going to walk into
that
? Only I had, and damned if I was going to turn tail and run because of a feeling, no matter how uncomfortable.

But if I wasn’t going to run, I had to
move
. The baby vamp must have called for help by now, and I was standing in the main damn hallway. Horatiu couldn’t have missed me, much less the kind of guards the consul kept on hand. And there was no Mircea around to tell anyone that this was one dhampir they shouldn’t kill.

Just breathing was hard enough; actually going anywhere sounded absurd. The very air felt thick and heavy in my lungs, like a couple extra atmospheres were suddenly pressing down from above. My breathing was ragged and my feet felt like they weighed at least a ton each. Merely staying upright was a struggle.

Just get to the next room
, I told myself sternly.
It’s a couple of yards, that’s all. Then you can face-plant onto the nice marble floor.