us for long. Because he whipped us over to the side of the great space, onto a grassy bit of land. And as soon as we hit down, he went buzzing away again, to join a dozen more who were attempting to regain control of the situation.
Only that . . . wasn’t going so well. And neither was this, I thought, as Zheng got me into a headlock while the squid screeched loudly enough to threaten my eardrums, and the devil laughed, a great, sonic boom type of thing that made hearing impossible. Except for a master vamp yelling in my ear.
“—not happening! Do not stake my damned team!”
“I’m not staking your team,” I said, thrashing, and really putting my all into it. “Just one.”
“Yeah, but he’s the best one!”
“That’s what I’m afraid of!”
I had been playing fair, which was why I wasn’t going anywhere. I decide to remedy that, and elbowed Zheng considerably below the belt. He didn’t let go—gotta give the guy credit—but he did loosen his grip slightly as well as snarl. “You’re going to pay for that.”
“Maybe, but not now,” I said, and stuck my head in my purse.
The mouth of the portal grabbed me, sucking me inside, and leaving Zheng literally holding the bag. Until I re-emerged with a warded tab of the type that I’d used on Hassani, and slapped it onto his torso. “What the—”
I grabbed my bag and sprang away, and Zheng went into Asian Ken doll mode, trapped in his little warded cell. Or maybe not Ken, I thought, seeing the frozen snarl on his face, which was showing a lot of fang. The tab would probably hold him about as long as it had Hassani, but I hadn’t had a whole lot of non-lethal alternatives.
I took off, knowing that I had seconds at best.
Make that a second, I thought, as he tackled me.
Son of a bitch!
I flipped over, about to give him a piece of my mind, and found myself looking at Tomas instead.
“You’re really . . . pretty,” I gasped, surprised.
He blinked. “Thank you?”
“You’re welcome,” I said, and tried for a repeat of the trick with Zheng, but the damned vamp was in the way. So, I sucked him into my purse, instead.
I stood up, feeling dizzy and slightly unwell, because my stomach and brain had no idea where we were right now, and were arguing about it. Zheng and Louis-Cesare showed up a second later, and stared at me. “Where is Tomas?” they demanded.
I still couldn’t talk properly, and just held up the bag.
“You put him in there?” Louis-Cesare asked, in disbelief.
“What?” Zheng looked from me to the large expanse of black leather. “Wait. You have a master vamp in your purse?”
“Yeah?” I didn’t know what they were complaining about. He was contained.
“How?”
“Why?” Louis-Cesare demanded.
“Because I didn’t have . . . a lot of options?” Talk about gratitude!
“Dory. The armory is in your purse!”
Oh.
Yeah.
And then Tomas was back, having figured out how this worked in record time. He was also loaded for bear. “Shit,” I said.
He smiled.
And then, just as fast, he was gone, plucked off the earth and into the jaws of the giant squid.
“What the—” I said.
“They’re attracted to power!” Zheng yelled. And then he frowned. “I think I’ve been insulted!”
Louis-Cesare grabbed me, jumping us out of the way of a snarl of huge tentacles headed this way. Zheng ran in the other direction; I didn’t know why. We landed behind a small building that looked like a closed shrine of some kind, and wasn’t very sturdy, but one of the skyscrapers wasn’t far off. We could take shelter there, find a rickshaw, and then get the hell out of here!
I wasn’t the only one to have that idea. The ground was suddenly streaming with headlights, as hundreds of vehicles took off, getting away from the now completely out of control fight. The mages were doing their best, but they had obviously not planned on this, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.
Except that Tomas was about to get eaten.
The massive squid had a huge tentacle wrapped around the arm of the devil, and a smaller one squeezing its neck. But its mouth was full of vampire, with the fang-rimmed hole only being kept from closing by a master’s strength. But I doubted that that would work for long.
Graffitied monsters didn’t get tired, but master vamps did.
Tomas was toast.
Until his four crazy-ass partners decided to get busy, and help their friend. I saw Zheng