“I made things clear?” I asked, panting in an effort to keep up.
“It has been your life’s work, removing their stain from humanity. But there are too few of you. Too few dhampirs and so very many of them. And they reproduce at will, constantly making more and more. You need help.”
“And you are going to help me?”
“I’m going to do more than that. After tonight, the vampire world will be in chaos, families feeding on one another as they once did, master against master, line against line. They will destroy themselves, and those who are left will be annihilated in the war. And you will be able to sit back and watch it all happen. I only wish I could be with you.”
“Why can’t you?”
She shot me a puzzled look. “Because I’ll be dead. The rune was my last chance to survive what lies ahead. But I am beginning to see that perhaps I was not meant to survive it. Now that the work is done, I can shed this horrible skin, these baseless cravings….”
“If you tell me a little more about what you plan to do, maybe I can help,” I offered as bricklined nineteenth-century work blurred into modern concrete.
“You have already helped. You gave me the key.”
Christine ducked into a side tunnel and I scurried to keep up. “You’d think I’d remember something like that.”
“For a long time, I could not understand why God had allowed this to happen, why I of all people should be chosen for this fate,” she told me. “But over many years, it slowly became clear: in order to destroy them, I had to be one of them. Only one who knew them intimately could devise a way to bring them down.”
“You’ve been planning this for a while.”
“Something like this,” she agreed. “But I was missing a key element. Killing one or two vampires, here and there, does nothing. Killing masters is better, for then an entire line is weakened. And killing senators is truly useful, for it undermines the political structure and starts the process toward anarchy. But one or two senators will not do. They are merely replaced. To truly destroy their society, I needed a way to kill a great many leaders, all at once, from a great many Senates. But it seemed hopeless. When were they ever together?”
“For the Challenge,” I said, starting to feel a little cold.
“I realized the opportunity the Challenge presented at once, but I did not know how to capitalize on it. I should have known that God would not let me come so far and fail to provide.”
“He provided the rune?”
“No, Dory.” She laughed. “He provided you. The task seemed impossible, but you showed me the way.”
The darkness up ahead fractured, pierced by a dozen tiny shafts of light. It turned out to be a manhole cover, with a ladder leading up. I grabbed her sleeve with both hands. “How did I do that, exactly?”
Her head tilted. “But don’t you see? If we had not gone through the park that night, I would never have thought about using the portal.”
“What portal?”
“The one in the East Coast headquarters. I had been trying to think of a way to smuggle a bomb into the Challenge, but I knew it would be impossible. The wards would detect it immediately and detonate it inside a force field. It would all be for nothing.”
“But then you met me,” I said, feeling sick.
“And you showed me that I didn’t have to get a bomb into headquarters. One was already there, in the form of their portal.” She reached into a pocket in her skirt and came out with a small gray ball. I recognized the remains of my explosive putty.
“That’s why you insisted on coming home with me,” I said dully. “You wanted to take it from my bag.”
“I am sorry for that,” she said, apparently sincere. “I would have asked, but I did not think you would trust me with it. I am a vampire, after all.”
“But you could have taken it at Elyas’s,” I said, desperately trying to stall. I couldn’t catch Christine on the open streets, and headquarters was too close. By the time I made a call, she’d already be there. “You were alone with my duffel in the office while I talked to Mircea.”
“No, Raymond was there. He would have seen. But in the confusion after the fey attacked, it was easy.”
Yeah, easy. Like walking into the East Coast headquarters would be easy. Christine wasn’t a dirty dhampir or a wanted criminal. She probably wouldn’t even be challenged. And a mass of explosive like that in a large active portal—
She was right: she was clever.
There was a cascade of images in front of my eyes, and this time, they were my own. Radu in his ridiculous dressing gown; my mother, glimpsed through Mircea’s eyes, the scene suffused with a love I had never believed existed; Louis-Cesare, head thrown back in passion, fingers gripping my arms like he never wanted to let go.
And Christine, off to destroy all of it.
There was only one solution left, and it meant I was about to disappoint Louis- Cesare. But there was no other choice. If I let her leave, it was over.
I pulled a gun out of my coat; Christine didn’t even notice. She was halfway up the ladder, reaching for the manhole cover, happy and confident in her newfound purpose. And still carrying the putty in her right hand.
I didn’t even try to take cover; there was no point. If the blast didn’t kill me, Christine’s death energy would. Or the tunnel would collapse and crush me. Any way I looked at it, I wasn’t getting out of here. But at least this was something I could do. For once, I didn’t need to be stronger or faster or have better weapons in order to compete. I just had to pull a trigger.
So I did.
EPILOGUE
“I told you she was evil,” someone said as I blinked open my eyes.
I was in my bedroom. A wash of afternoon sunshine cascaded over the old sheets, turning the off-white cotton faintly yellow. A vampire sat beside my bed, and he was in yellow, too. And before my eyes focused on the face, I knew who it was. There aren’t many people, even in the vampire world, who think that daffodil-colored satin is appropriate day wear.
Radu crossed his legs and flipped over another page in the magazine he was reading—Car and Driver, ominously enough—while I checked myself out. The parts I could see poking out of a faded blue T-shirt all appeared to be functional, although most were trying to decide between a livid red and a blue- black color scheme. But I’d looked worse, and I’d certainly felt worse. And, frankly, I was grateful to be feeling anything at all.
Even if I didn’t understand it.
I pushed the extra pillow behind me and sat up. “Maybe you can clear something up for me that I’ve always wondered about,” I said, meeting those famous turquoise eyes.
“Yes?”
“Why do you insist on dressing like freaking D’Artagnan when you were born two hundred years before that?”
Radu frowned. “Formal wear in my day was robes, Dory.”
“And?”
“Nasty, long, hot, smothering robes. Good in winter, of course, but the rest of the time…”
“Vampires don’t sweat.”
“Yes, but knee pants are so much more flattering. You can see my legs.”
“You want people to see your legs?”
“I have very nice legs!” We both paused to admire them for a moment.
“Are you here to shake me down for the car?” I asked, getting it over with. “Because I don’t have three hundred thousand dollars.”
’Du’s eyes flicked over the well-worn furnishings and faded quilts. “I never would have guessed.”
“I’m not likely to have it in the future, either.”
His frown grew. “I’m not here about the car, Dory! I bought it for Gunther, in any case. I don’t drive.”
“Gunther? Your bodyguard?”
“He’s a very good bodyguard.”
I looked at him severely. “ ’Du, you’re not falling for a human, are you? You know how tacky that is.”
“Certainly not.” He shook out a sleeve. “Anyway, I bought him another one.”