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me another of his patented glares. "What do you think you can do alone, against Myra and the Senate?”

So he had overheard my little chat with Myra. I shrugged. "Possibly nothing. In which case, your problem is solved." I looked down at Billy. "Will you be all right on your own for a while?”

He shrugged. "Sure. Hell, if I die a few more times, I might even get used to it.”

"I am going with you," Pritkin announced.

"So you're what? Opting for the lesser of two evils, after all?”

"For the moment.”

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but it was good enough. "You're hired.”

Chapter 14

The street was still dark, even to Augusta 's eyes, but I discovered other ways to see. All along the road were people, hidden in the night-in tenements, scurrying along the street or congregating in pubs. Many of them were amorphous, dark-clothed shapes against the night, but all of them had heartbeats, and it was those thousands of living, beating organs that called out to me like a siren song. Beyond the human river were darker spots, just a few streets back, but my skin prickled with awareness of their power. Vampires.

I pulled away so I wouldn't see Augusta 's features reflected in the dark glass. "There's a lot of vamps in the area," I told Pritkin, "maybe a couple dozen." I had managed the sentence without my voice cracking, but my palms had started to sweat. Even in Augusta 's body, there was no way I could fight those odds, and for all his toys, Pritkin wasn't likely to do much better.

"How long until they get here?" He sounded far too matter-of-fact for my frazzled nerves.

"What difference does it make?" I fought to keep from screaming it at him. "We need to find Mircea and hide- fast. It's the only sensible plan.”

Pritkin walked out the stage door and down the steps. I followed him, all the way to the front of the building, where he stopped, looking up and down the frost-covered road. "Humor me," he said.

"In case you've forgotten, the Senate isn't the only problem," I told him, low enough that I hoped no passing vamps would take notice. "I can't let Myra run loose-”

"Then don't. Deal with the rogue. I will handle this.”

"You'll handle this?" I'd rested my hand on a lamppost and didn't realize until I tried to pull away that I'd sunk my fingers almost completely through the cast iron. I pulled them out cautiously and leaned the listing post against a building so it didn't fall over. Getting angry in a vampire body was obviously not a good idea. "A corpse isn't much of an ally!" I told Pritkin frankly. "Some of these are Senate members. I doubt you could even slow them down. We need to hide.”

"They could track us by scent alone. Hiding isn't an option.”

"And suicide is?”

I would have said more, but someone grabbed me from behind. Again. For a half second I thought it was a vamp, but then I felt the heartbeat against my back and smelled the stink of unwashed man and stale beer. I pulled away, but the man came with me. I gave what felt like a gentle push, hardly expending any energy at all, and he went sailing across the street to crash into the heavy glass window of a pub. I could see the frozen shock on his face, the half dozen glass slivers that pierced his skin, even trace the arc of blood on the air.

His friend, whom I hadn't even noticed, gave a bellow of rage and ran at me, fist pulled back. I ducked and managed to subdue him by slipping an arm around his throat, cutting off his air supply. It was absurdly easy-the bones in his muscular workman's neck felt brittle, like a baby bird's, and instead of it being difficult to hold him, the challenge lay in not accidentally breaking anything.

I had never really thought about how delicate humans are, especially not human men, most of whom tower over me. It was suddenly all too apparent how careful vamps had to be not to leave a trail of bodies behind them. The man was making what he probably thought of as a violent attempt to break free, but to me, it was like holding a fragile butterfly by the wings and trying not to tear it. Just a little pressure to cut off the air, but carefully, gently, or the windpipe would collapse and this brawny