"So did Cicereau, evidently."
Checkmate.
We turned to watch the Inferno forces and Cicereau's muscle men sling weapons over and torsos and every limbs. The echoes of the din were almost deafening.
Sansouci grinned. "Super-fine equipment. Never did cotton to mummies. The werewolves are only in human form right now, but they're fierce fighters even so, and needed some exercise." He eyed me again. "We going to run into those devil-dogs again?"
"Hyenas with eternal, supernatural strength."
"Good." Sansouci hefted his bandoliers tighter over his wide shoulders. "Thanks for the mission."
I stood alone. I felt as edged as a weapon, ready to turn my shame and fury against whoever opposed us. When Grizelle strode over, weapon-hung and holding a sword belt for me, I tightened with dislike.
"I'm your partner. I've got the flame-thrower, you've got the sword. Slash and burn is our game. Vamps are super-fast and super-powerful. No mercy is the only way to deal with them. You ready?"
I nodded. I was ultra-ready to show no mercy to someone. "What about… your boss?"
"What about him?"
"Who's his partner if you're with me?"
"Like you'd worry?" Her white smile showed the teeth of the tiger. She nodded to the dark river's edge.
I saw a tongue of stone pier thrusting out into the dark water where the river had widened into a lake as far as was visible in this dim underworld. A lone black figure stood at the end of the pier, one dead-white, ungauntleted hand throwing a veil of what appeared to be gray powder into the water.
He spoke, intoned, words that echoed off the stones.
"In the names of the murderers and the maidens and time immemorial, I command your ashes to congeal. I command you, La Gargouille, to rise."
Shivers coursed under my leather wetsuit as I remembered Caressa Teagarden's tales of her ancestor, the gargoyle carver of Notre Dame. This was not a mere gargoyle that Snow was summoning. This was the dragon of the Seine itself, supposedly burned to ashes by a holy cardinal.
Who was Snow that he could cast ashes on the water to rise as serpentine flesh and scale? What was he? Devil or angel… or something even more or less, using powers holy or hellish?
But that was then, the legend of the water dragon, in Medieval France, and this was now in Middle-evil Earth, and it was becoming reality.
The dark river water boiled like a vast pot of oil. Then a huge, pale-scaled form came rising, dripping gouts black as old blood, folding its webbed wings against its massive curved sides.
Only one head crowned its long, serpent-supple neck, but it bowed to Snow who leaped upon it. Up he rose to the cavern apex on that thorny, massive brow.
"This is a rescue mission, a raid," Snow's rock-concert voice boomed off the rock walls and water. "We will stop all opposition forces encountered with whatever means suits their breed and any mortal and immortal allies they may have.
"My mount's fiery breath will sear our foes dead; until they number few enough to get past. At that point we'll be hand-to-hand. Grizelle and I will lead, along with Sansouci of the Cicereau syndicate. Each fighter must be on the alert for a mortal prisoner, a Latino man of great value to the vampires-and a prize for our party. He'll be hidden and well-guarded."
The dragon began stalking, its huge body as hidden as the bulk of an iceberg, down the shallow river, towing an armada of empty shallow-bottomed barges. Its cave-entrance-size nostrils snorted mists of steam.
The armed forces shouted in triumph at the size and power of their leading edge, and waded to the thigh-tops into the fearsome dark shallows to scramble aboard the barges.
"Where are they going?" I asked Grizelle
She picked me up like a doll.
"Where we are. Along the doom-driven river Styx to the sacred river of the Egyptian dead and the temple of Karnak. I'm here on orders that you don't get your feet wet in Hell or in the river of blood that will soon flow under the Karnak."
Chapter Thirty-three
The dozen or so barges were shaped like long-necked Viking craft with dragon figureheads.
Gliding along without the aid of oars in the deeper middle of the river, they were as silent in motion as ghost ships.
Armed warriors lined their sides. One thought of shields when envisioning Vikings, but these fighters wore their shields. I would bet the steel-studded wetsuits were fashioned of some impervious blend of materials that made them as supple as second skins and tougher than crocodile hide, chain mail or Kevlar.
The dragon's rear was a dinosaur-size mountain blocking everything ahead, a beaten metal wall of gorgeous scales. Every so often its submerged tail would twitch out of the oily water, splashing the fighters and making their Viking ships wallow wildly.
No wonder this uniform I wore was based on a modern wetsuit. Inside my own impervious body armor, I felt empty and anxious.
I couldn't believe I'd set this awesome force in motion.
I couldn't believe Snow as a dragon-rider, despite his stage shtick, much less as a dragon-raiser.
Some entrepreneur had imported the historical London Bridge to the Arizona desert as a tourist attraction back in the last century, making it a bridge over untroubled sand. The dragon, La Gargouille, though, had been called up from its own ashes. Why was Snow the custodian of such a legendary creature and how could he raise the dead beast?
I shuddered inside my taut leather and steel second skin, wishing I could have worn it for the Brimstone Kiss. Wishing I could slough my real skin like a snake and disown my Brimstone Kiss moments.
Yet, perhaps some events were foreordained.
If I hadn't unknowingly followed Caressa to Las Vegas and finally fulfilled the canceled Kansas interview, I'd never have known about the dragon. According to the legend, a saint had interred the creature's ashes. Was one required to raise it?
That would make Snow a good guy and my crawling skin wasn't about to concede that. The Devil, maybe, had called the monster home after its death in the mortal world and held it in waiting in this New Hell on earth of post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas.
Snow's true nature didn't matter now, though, only that my conclusions were right: Kephron and Kepherati, the twisted soul sister and brother, held Ric captive and he needed to be rescued as soon as possible. If he was still alive to save.
The silver familiar had quit pretending to be subtle, changing into a scale-armored metal serpent as thick around as a cane. It sped over my body taking the positions of a scout. Once it wrapped itself around my forehead and assumed the position of the Egyptian Uraeus. It seemed to be straining to see ahead.
Grizelle, still in human form, hissed at it like a big cat. "I don't like snakes. Where did you get that bizarre familiar?"
"Why?"
"It creeps me out."