Midnight`s Daughter Page 0,126

were still wet and slippery from the rain, but I managed to scramble for cover behind a chimney. I had to get into the entry. The ward the mage had put on Louis-Cesare was hopefully down, but I had no idea if that would be enough or not. He’d lost a lot of blood and God knew what had been done to him after I left. And Radu had too much to handle already to be much help.

The chimney looked like it connected to the living room fireplace, but there was no way I was doing a Santa impression. A cat couldn’t have fit down there. I was eyeing the broken window above the entry, wondering if my posterior could squeeze through; then a beaky head peered over the peak of the roof. I stared at its chartreuse, oddly human eyes, and cursed myself for a moron. I should have remembered—in the fight at the pen, the leader had waited until the others exhausted themselves before it waded in. Like it had done now.

As soon as the one lidless eye on that side of its head got a good look at me, it let out an ear-piercing shriek and took off half the chimney with a swipe from its claw. I scrambled down the tiles backward, that wicked beak slashing down all around me, cracking any tiles it hit clean in two.

The creature’s tail snapped and skidded across the tiles, sending a cascade sliding toward the roof edge with me along for the ride. Grabbing for something, anything, to break my fall, my hand encountered the rain gutter. Already overstrained from the flood, it ripped away from the roof, leaving me dangling over the courtyard right above the mage.

It was good to see that my luck was holding true.

A stream of dirty water flowed out of the pipe directly onto the mage, temporarily blinding him. I let go of the pipe and hit the ground, close enough to the man to get my arms around his waist. A dark shadow fell over the courtyard as the leader spread huge, leathery wings; then it was on top of us, its weight and momentum sending us crashing to the ground. I waited until I heard the mage’s scream when the talons latched on to him, then scrambled out from underneath and bolted for the entryway.

Chapter Twenty-two

The heavy wooden front door was hanging off its hinges, letting in a flood of light, but there was no one to see. Bodies had fallen everywhere, but a quick survey told me that none were Louis-Cesare or Radu. The sounds of a sword fight echoed distantly.

My foot slipped in something, in someone, but I kept my balance and followed the sounds of metal on metal. The long, polished oak table in the dining room bore muddy boot prints, but it, too, was empty. Behind me, I heard the scuffle of claws on tile and glanced back in time to see the leader’s head stick in through the door. I didn’t think its body would make it through the narrow arch, but I didn’t intend to wait around and find out.

Beyond the dining room lay a library, with tall windows on one wall and a floor-to-ceiling collection of books on the others. Weirdly, it looked almost untouched, the only damage a vase of flowers that had been knocked off a small table. I skirted the mess and went through to the next room, which I did recognize: the small antechamber leading down to the wine cellars.

Shit.

I peered down the stairwell. It gaped up at me like a maw. I really hate dark staircases, and this one had no light at all. I remembered that we’d dined by lantern light; maybe Radu had never had electricity run down there. Great, just freaking wonderful.

A crash behind me made me turn in time to see a huge, birdlike body topple over the library table and crush the fallen vase to splinters. Okay, there were things I hated more than the dark—like the things that prowl in it. I practically leapt down the stairs, slamming the door shut behind me.

The stone was cool beneath my bruised feet, and almost total darkness closed around me, sinking into my bones. I couldn’t see anything while my eyes adjusted, but the stairs were evenly spaced and they went only one place—to the small wine-tasting room where we’d dined. Here, a few oil lamps burned, illuminating the room’s only occupants: the hundreds of bottles that