“Dory’s here because she thinks the bad guys got the password to the consul’s portal,” he said quickly. “And that they’re about to bring a fey army through. Tonight,” he added, since Marlowe didn’t seem real impressed.
I nodded, and darted behind a confused-looking guy who was consulting his ticket.
“Am I in the wrong place?” he asked me.
“No, you’re fine,” I breathed, avoiding the blows Marlowe was aiming to either side of him. And then dropping to the floor and scurrying behind some startled bystanders, when Marlowe growled and picked the guy up, setting him aside like he weighed nothing.
“Only I’m trying to tell her that they don’t. Have the password, that is,” Ray added. “Or that it wouldn’t matter if they did.”
“Wouldn’t matter?” I asked, stopping to glare at him through some chick’s legs.
Only to have Marlowe dive between them and grab me around the neck.
Well, that was fast, I thought resignedly, when the girl’s outraged date—who clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with—kicked Marlowe in the head. It didn’t do much more than distract him, but my patent leather stiletto was a bit more forceful, and his grip slipped. And I slithered away with only the loss of a few chiffon bits.
They don’t make evening dresses like they used to, I thought, as Ray caught my eye.
“It doesn’t matter because nobody’s getting back into Central,” he yelled at me. “It’s on a major lockdown, so they don’t have access to the gate. They couldn’t use the password if they had it!”
“Yes, they can!” I insisted, furiously dodging through the crowd. And yet somehow meeting Marlowe coming the other way.
Crap.
“And just how do you expect them to do that?” Ray demanded, as a hard hand grabbed me around the throat.
But not so hard that I couldn’t talk.
“What if Cheung happened to mention to his would-be employers just how you got your network?” I asked Ray, as I was jerked up. “And what if they decided to take a page out of your playbook? You said it yourself—it’s easy enough once you think of it, only nobody ever does.…”
Marlowe’s hand tightened, almost to the point of strangulation. Which didn’t stop him from demanding information. “What are you saying?”
I looked up at the mirror, looming huge at the far end of the room, and a shiver went up my spine. Or maybe it wasn’t just me. Because for a second, it looked like the whole room was shivering. And then I realized why, when another ripple—tiny, tiny, like a single drop of rain on the surface of a lake—shimmied across the supposedly hard glass.
“I’m saying…what if they hack it?” I gasped, just as the whole surface exploded outward.
Marlowe threw me to the ground and fell on top of me, as hard shards of glass erupted across the combat oval, tearing at my skin and sending the crowd into panic mode. Or maybe that was more about what was coming through the now quite visible portal. From under Marlowe’s arm, I watched five huge, shaggy creatures break off from the horde and make straight for us.
They looked kind of like werewolves—in the same way that saber-toothed tigers look kind of like kitties. They were huge—at least twice the size of normal werewolves, but with none of the elegant lines and dignified bearing of the Clans. Who would probably have run screaming at the sight of them.
I kind of felt like that, too, until Marlowe threw out a hand.
And their heads exploded, one after another, like gory firecrackers.
The bodies thudded to the ground, still sliding forward on their own blood and past momentum, almost reaching us before Marlowe jerked me back. “How sure are you?” he yelled, to be heard over the screaming and the yelling and the whoosh of the vampire guards descending on the rest of the horde like a blurry wave.
“About what?”
“The fey!”
“Pretty sure. But—” I looked at the more immediate problem. “What are they?”
“Cannon fodder,” Marlowe said grimly. “The real army will be behind them.”
“And when it gets through?”
“It won’t. I have a group on the way to the basement now. Stay out of the way; this won’t take long.”
“The basement—what?” I asked, but he was already gone.