"What's wrong with you?" A vampire ran up to me. I recognized him vaguely from Tony's court, a big, shaggy blond whom I'd always thought needed a tan—his surfer looks didn't go well with dead white skin. "You said you could neutralize him! He'll wipe the floor with us!" I followed his gesture to where the fight had resumed big-time. I wondered which «he» the guy meant, because all three looked pretty deadly to me.
Pritkin might be a hostile son of a bitch, but he was a damn good guy to have in a fight. He was on the ground, but his amazing hovering knives were back. In fact, it looked like his whole arsenal was on the move. As I watched, he blew apart a vamp with a shotgun blast while five knives went hurtling into another, one almost severing his head. The vamp must have been a master, because he didn't go down, but the animated knives followed him about, sticking in and pulling out like a swarm of especially lethal bees. He swatted at them as blood started to pour out of a couple dozen deep cuts, but they kept coming back. He roared in rage but preferred getting sliced to ribbons to running. But a couple of other vamps, who were being pursued by grenades, chose not to follow his example. I decided if that's what Pritkin fought like when half dead, I really didn't want to see him at full strength.
Tomas was doing okay, too, tying up two vamps in a knife fight that was so fast and furious I couldn't see any of it, except for an occasional blade flashing in the parking lot lights. Several others lay around him with the now familiar gaping holes in their chests. Louis-César, meanwhile, had decided to take the attack on the offensive all by himself. While Pritkin and Tomas kept the attackers busy, he charged the cluster of vamps around me. The beach bum must not have heard of the Frenchman's reputation, because he leapt for him and lasted all of about a second. That wicked-looking rapier was back in action, and skewering him didn't cause Louis-César even to break his stride. He threw a knife at the second dark mage, but it bounced off him like he was wearing body armor. But whatever the three witches were doing was having more of an effect. The mage was on the ground, scrambling for purchase as ineffectively as a beetle turned upside down, as they began closing in, chanting something in unison.
I was initially pleased to see the Frenchman, since it took only one look at him for the remaining vamps around me to take off, but I quickly changed my mind. I blinked, and Louis-César's bloody blade was somehow under my chin. The look in his eyes made it very clear that he had no idea who I was. "Your Circle made a mistake challenging us," he told me calmly, as if we were chatting at a party. "Fortunately, monsieur, I do not need you alive to send a declaration of war. It should be sufficient that I have your body left somewhere your people frequent."
"Louis-César, no!" I couldn't speak for fear of jamming his rapier farther into my throat, but the voice coming from behind him was mine anyway, as was the hand clutching his sword arm. It looked like Billy Joe had decided to earn his keep.
"Mademoiselle, please go back to Tomas. This will not be pleasant."
"Tomas is kinda busy right now," Billy replied, "and anyway, I'm not Cassie. She's in there." He pointed at me. "And I don't know what'll happen if you kill the body while she's in it. Maybe she'll come back here, but maybe not."
Louis-César's voice softened slightly. "You are delusional, mademoiselle. You may have a concussion and must not exert yourself. Give me a moment and I will escort you from here myself."
I swallowed. I knew that with his strength he could run the rapier through me even with Billy Joe hanging off his arm. I could feel the mage panic, too, and his fear fuelled the battle of wills we were having. The tide of what felt like chilly water was up to my knees.
"Billy! How do I get out of here?" The movement of my mouth pushed the edge of the rapier into the mage's skin, and I could feel a warm stream of blood begin to trickle down his neck. Someone screamed in my head, but I ignored it.
"I don't know." Billy Joe was gripping Louis-César's arm with both hands and practically hanging off it. Sweat was pouring down my face, but it didn't look like he was making any difference at all. "I'm stuck in here until you get back. Your body knows it'll die without a spirit, so it's got a death grip on me. There's no way for me to help you."
"I can't believe you talked me into this!"
"How the hell do you think I feel? I don't want to end up inside a woman!" He paused. "Well, at least not that way."
Louis-César was losing patience. In a swift movement that didn't cause the rapier to waver even slightly, he pulled Billy Joe against him. "You may wish to close your eyes mademoiselle. I do not wish to cause you further distress."
"I think it's safe to say that killin' her counts as distressing," Billy Joe choked out, but Louis-César wasn't paying him any attention. He'd written me off as a hysterical female, and that was that. If I ever got out of this mess alive, I'd show him hysterical.
I only had one idea, and it was a long shot. "Don't kill me! I know about Françoise!" It was all I could think of, the only fact about Louis-César that I knew that the mage probably didn't, but it didn't seem to make much of an impression.
"You will not save yourself with feeble lies, Jonathan. I know your tricks from of old."
"What about Carcassonne? Huh? What about that damn torture room? I—you—saw her burn! We were talking about it a few hours ago!"
"Enough! You die." Billy Joe kicked upwards at the last second and hit the blade so that it went through the mage's shoulder instead of his heart, but it hurt like a bitch. I yelled and wrenched back, but the blade was so long that I was still trapped on it like a butterfly on a pin.
I finally got some help when a small vial flew into my hand. Apparently Mr. Mage had decided we had a common cause. It looked like one of the row of small containers Pritkin had strapped to his belt, but this had leapt out of some inner pocket. The cool water was up to my waist, and I didn't know what would happen if it overwhelmed me, but at the moment I was more concerned with Louis-César. I didn't try to resist the impulses that ran through my brain, but thrust the vial at him.
"I will gut you before you can say the incantation," he promised, but I noticed that he eyed the tiny vial with a certain amount of respect.
"I don't need the incantation at this range. Kill me, and you die, too. So does she." The words appeared in my brain, but they weren't mine. I said them anyway. They seemed to have an effect, for Louis-César hesitated.
The mage must have been waiting for that reaction, because he took the opportunity to step up the inner fight. I was suddenly up to my neck in icy water. "Billy! He's winning, what do I do?"
"I'm thinking… let him?" Billy Joe didn't sound very sure of himself, but he'd done this a lot more than me.
"What?"
If he answered, I didn't hear, because the water closed over my head. But, instead of drowning as I'd half expected, I was abruptly flying again. I landed hard, and the disorientation I'd felt when Tomas and I returned was nothing to what hit me a second later. It was like there were two of me, each going in a different direction, tearing me apart in the process. I screamed and someone tightened their hold around my waist. My blood was pounding in my veins as if it was about to burst out of the top of my head, and the pain was awful. It felt like every migraine I'd ever had all rolled into one. I wanted to pass out, but no such luck. I stayed conscious as the world rocked wildly around me like a carnival ride gone crazy, until I threw up on the asphalt.