“Yeah, but Q had cool stuff.”
Ray scowled. “I got cool stuff,” he told me. “But we shouldn’t need it. This is Central! There’s got to be a crap ton of defenses built in.”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing around. But I didn’t see anything that looked particularly helpful. Just a few exam tables, some dirty footprints and the rows of coolers built into the wall.
One of which appeared to be vibrating.
And it wasn’t the one I’d thrown the arm into.
Great.
“Oh, crap,” Ray said, staring at it. Looking like a guy who had just about reached tilt and couldn’t take one more piece of bad news. I didn’t feel any different, especially when I stood up and wove a little on my feet from light-headedness. But better to deal with whatever it was now, while it was trapped, than have it pop out in the middle of the coming fight.
I grabbed Ray’s rifle and sidled up alongside him, trying not to think of some of the things the Senate could have on ice. Or that Ray had all of three bullets left—our last. Or that neither of us was exactly in shape for hand-to-hand right now.
I just nodded at him, gripped the pull, took a deep breath.
And yanked open the drawer.
Only to have something jump out at me, so blindingly fast that I couldn’t even see it clearly. Something that grabbed the gun, jerked up the barrel and caused the shot I managed to get off to hit the ceiling. Something with a fan of dark hair, a porcelain fist, and a flash of turquoise eyes—
And lashes longer than mine, I thought, relief making me weak-kneed. “Radu!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told Ray. “I’m Q.”
I slumped against the side of the coolers. “You could have told me where you’d be!”
“Well, I didn’t know, did I?” he asked, releasing the gun so he could climb out. “I had to improvise.”
“So you put yourself in the morgue?”
“Zombies are stupid, Dory.”
“But the necromancer controlling them isn’t!”
“But even the best of necromancers can’t control more than two or three puppets at a time. Or see through everyone’s eyes. And whatever you were doing was keeping his attention nicely,” Radu explained.
“Glad I could help.”
Radu nodded regally. “The only inconvenience was that, once in, I couldn’t contact you or any vampire in the area might have felt it. But I knew you’d find me.” He gave me a stern look. “Although I must say, you took your time.”
“You’re welcome,” Ray said sourly.
Radu glanced at him. “Why is he here?”
“He’s my team.”
The door shook as something all but buckled it from the other side. “And what is that?”
“The bad guys.”
Radu put his hands on his impeccably tailored hips. “What kind of a rescue is this?”
“A do-it-yourself kind,” I told him, my eyes lighting on a couple of fire extinguishers. “Where’s the portal?”
“On the floor below, of course.”
“Of course. And how do we get there?”