the same objective threat assessment that I remembered from every time we'd encountered an enemy. It had been a while since I was on the receiving end, but I remembered it vividly. Despite the cold, I was sweating in less than ten seconds.
Pritkin uncoiled himself, eyes tracking my every breath as he slowly sat up, dizzy but hiding it well enough that if I hadn't known him, I would've missed it. "And to think, I believed the vampire to be the greater threat," he said, glancing quickly over the rail and back again.
"I'm not a threat," I told him, still feeling numb. Other than the hair, he looked…the same. Just the same. I kept expecting him to demand coffee and tell me off for something.
"You wear well the mask of the distressed innocent," he said, watching me with ice-water eyes as he got to his feet. "But unlike the vampire, I will not underestimate you."
"I mean, I'm no threat to you," I clarified. "We're on the same side."
"A paltry subterfuge," he sneered. "I know what you seek, whom you serve. It is because of fools like you that we are all tottering on the brink of destruction!"
He took a step back until his thigh hit the railing, then swung a leg over. I had no idea where he thought he was going in all that, but knowing him, he'd risk it. And I couldn't allow that. If anyone here was likely to know where the Codex was, it was the man who wrote it.
"Please!" I said desperately. "I don't serve anyone! We can work together, help each other—"
"If you are not in service to that revengeful soul, then you have been deluded by those who have entered into his destructive projects. If the latter, know this: I know not what lies you have been told, but we have no safety but in resistance, no hope of securing our rights and lives but in opposing the power which has unquestionably the design to invade and subvert us!"
I was still trying to decode that when I saw a nightmare rise from the ground behind him. The contessa's body looked oddly like Swiss cheese, with bloody holes in the remains of her black gown, but strands of red flesh and purple veins had already started to weave between the gaps, filling them in. And I knew the score as well as anyone: if a vampire can move, she is deadly, and this one was back on her feet. One of the holes had taken out an eye, leaving a burnt crater in what had been a beautiful face, but the other focused on me malevolently.
I was so dead.
My dress remained motionless—still pretty, but useless as far as defense went. I started fumbling in my bag, scattering jewels across the burning deck while trying to find the gun that probably wouldn't help me anyway. Then I heard a strange whooshing sound and looked up to see a column of flame where the contessa had been and an empty potion vial in Pritkin's hand.
She screamed and ran into the crowd, straight into the path of the elephant. It trumpeted its fear at the sight of a stream of fire headed right for it, and I guess its instinct was to try to put it out, because one of those massive feet came down with the force of a steam-driven pylon, right on top of her. And then another one for good measure. And then I looked away because it was either that or be really ill.
"You did me a service," Pritkin was saying. "That was the return. Do not presume on my goodwill again." He climbed onto the railing, still watching me out of the corner of his eye, and when Parindra made another flying swoop, he caught hold of the edge of the carpet and was gone.
"Pritkin!" I shouted the wrong name, but it didn't matter; by the time the words were out of my mouth, he was already out of earshot. He was not, however, out of trouble.
It took Parindra all of a second to notice that he'd picked up a hitchhiker. He kicked out with his foot, but Pritkin grimly held on, which seemed to annoy the Indian Consul. He took the rug straight up, five or six stories above the tops of the houses, before trying again. This time, he succeeded, dislodging Pritkin with a kick that looked vicious even from this far away, and that sent him flying off into