Yeah, he had. I couldn’t hear him, even with dhampir senses, but I could lip-read. “Payback time, bitches!”
Great.
And then it was. It really, really was. Because it wasn’t just water squeezing through the big, round opening. It was—
“What the fuck is that?” Ray screamed, sounding almost outraged.
I laughed the laugh of the faintly hysterical, because Cthulhu had just made his entrance, or something that looked like him. Well, it would if he were scarlet and three stories tall. As it was, I guessed it was a combatant from Faerie.
And it was pissed.
The creature started laying waste with arms the size of tree trunks—if the trees in question were redwoods—and a maw full of holy hell that could spear a vamp clean through and then fling him the length of the room to splat against the pretty windows.
Okay, I thought.
All right!
Then I realized: we were still losing.
“How are we still losing?” Ray demanded, as half the mages and a good number of the vamps peeled off from us to attack Big Red. Yet Rufus was still sweating bullets trying to maintain the shield. And out in the fray, I saw a mage materialize a glowing spear and run it through three trolls at once.
“What . . . the hell . . . are they doing?” Rufus panted, his dark eyes pained. “How are they . . . this strong?”
“They’re using the merchandise,” I said, staring around.
“What?”
“They have to be.” But I couldn’t see—
And then I did.
“There!” I pointed to a couple vamps with a very familiar-looking crate on the far side of the room by the windows. Another crate was already open and the contents were being passed around, which was probably why a charge of maybe twenty trolls was repulsed like it was nothing, sending them slamming backward what had to be thirty yards. And why a bunch more were already floating facedown in what was now hip-deep water.
“Olga was right,” Ray said, gripping my arm. “They’re gonna kill ’em using weapons made out of their own people!”
“No, they’re not.” I scanned the room again. “Stay here.”
“What?”
“Just guard Rufus for a minute, okay?”
“What are you—no!” And then, when he realized what was about to happen: “No, don’t you dare!”
But I did, because I didn’t have a choice. Another minute of those things, and there wouldn’t be anybody on our side left standing. And it wasn’t going to go down like that.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him, and jumped.
The shield Rufus had thrown up was the kind that let people out, but not in. Although, judging by the expression of the vamp I grabbed, nobody had really expected me to leave. Or to use him as a buffer to keep the mages’ spells off me while I leapt over the balcony and into thin air—
And grabbed one of the little black camera balls as it whizzed past.
The sizzling body of the vamp fell into the drink, and I took off—under an enormous, slashing tentacle; through another huge waterfall that had just opened up; and out the other side, drenched and gasping, only to slam into a line of vamps leaning over the railing, one of which grabbed me. And found himself flun
g into the windows a second later, when I popped a leg, and looked around for—
Yes!
“Richard! Richard Kim!”