And slamming back down, because they were shooting on this side, too.
We’d ended up back in the great hall, just as a new group of guards appeared from the ballroom. They started laying down a deadly salvo ahead of them, which flew over our heads since we were hugging the ground. But that wouldn’t be a huge help in a second, because they were coming our way.
And they didn’t look like they planned on stopping.
Ray and I dove back inside the portal as a solid wave of heavy-booted feet pounded toward us, since friendly fire kills you just as dead as the other kind. We found the same group of bad guys standing about three yards ahead of us on the other side. Only they were facing away from us this time, having an animated conversation, I guess on the assumption that we wouldn’t come back out the same portal.
And you know what they say about assumptions.
I dropped three of them with the vamp’s gun before the rest even turned around, and then we threw ourselves
backward, hoping like hell that the charge was over.
It was, only it didn’t look like it had been too successful. Because the vamps were now coming back this way, chased by what looked like half the corridor, and that same trick wasn’t likely to work twice. I guess Ray didn’t think so, either, because he picked me up and threw me out of the way, which would have been great if I hadn’t hit the consul’s marble wall quite so hard.
And if he’d been able to get out, too.
And he might have—if four fey hands hadn’t reached out of the portal and dragged him back again. No, I don’t think so, I thought savagely, hugging the wall as guards and things pounded past, ignoring me in their rush. And then lurching for the portal again.
Only to find something in my way.
A big something. I looked up to see a handsome, blood-flecked face with dark eyes and hair and a tiger prowling around the side of it. Zheng.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“In there,” I growled, trying to push past, but he grabbed me with one huge, overmuscled arm. I could see it because he’d lost his tux jacket and his shirt had taken a beating. But not as much as he was about to. “Let me go!” I told him furiously. “They have Ray!”
“Who does?”
“The fey!”
“Where?”
“In there!”
Zheng looked at the portal. “Son of a bitch.”
And then he let me go and we were both diving in headfirst. We hit the ground and rolled back to our feet to find the same bunch, minus three, facing away from us again.
Because some people never learn.
“Surprise, motherfuckers,” I snarled, and grabbed my vampire.
“About…time,” Ray choked, because one of the mages had been trying to chop his head off. He hadn’t succeeded since it had been sewn on pretty well the last time, and because heads don’t just pop off.
Not that Zheng seemed to be having any problem.
“That was really satisfying,” he told me, as three more mangled bodies hit the floor.
And then we hit it right after them, courtesy of Ray, who had just jerked us both down.
“Shh!” he said, looking desperate.
“What—”
“Shh! Shh!”
I looked around, searching for a reason to panic. But I didn’t see one. Just the drop-off, with a bunch of what looked like murky caves beyond, an arched doorway on one side and the portal wall washing us with alien light from behind. And some old, iron-barred cages I hadn’t noticed before, because they were swaying in the air overhead, occasionally dripping some of the nastier bodily fluids down on us and the already badly soiled floor.