the great stairs as another army joined the fray. One composed of emaciated brown bodies that reflected the torchlight like lacquer as they surged down the steps, including the one in front, whose shriveled, date-like eyes I’d seen staring at a door for centuries, waiting—
For this.
Louis-Cesare jumped free, unable to use the weapon he’d provided them without dusting to powder. But the poison didn’t seem to have the same effect on the prisoners. Their skin burned with it, but they didn’t disintegrate, I didn’t know why.
“They’re his Children,” Zakarriyyah said, coming up beside me. “It gives them limited immunity.”
Limited being the word, I thought, watching great wounds open up in that strange skin, but the prisoners didn’t seem to care. They waded into the fray, the fang held aloft in the leader’s hand, who used it like a dagger to do what steel never could, and tear open the belly of the beast. The prisoners immediately swarmed into the flood of viscera, tearing, clawing, biting.
And laughing.
Terrible, yet joyous laughter rang around the room and echoed off the stones, sending hard chills climbing up and down my body, while the monster writhed and twisted, trying to throw off his tormentors. Only they weren’t there anymore. They were inside, ripping their former master apart from within, eating him alive even as they were themselves consumed.
Hassani staggered over, pale as a ghost, which he nearly was. The rich blood of a consul had gone to feed the prisoners for this, their final battle. But it seemed almost futile, with what we knew.
“He’ll just come back,” I said hoarsely.
“Let us test that theory.” Hassani looked at Louis-Cesare, who had come up on Zakarriyyah’s other side. “If you would be so kind?”
Louis-Cesare handed over his rapier, with the col de mort attached, which Hassani threw to the leader of the prisoners. He’d been waiting alongside the great wound he had made, waiting while his skin burned and his people died, waiting, for what I didn’t know. Until one of them brought it forth: a huge, still beating heart.
“Your consul didn’t understand the need, when she fought him,” Hassani said, his usually rich voice a soft rasp. “He was but a pile of bones. What could bones do?”
A lot, I thought dizzily, if they happened to belong to a demigod.
“My friend, the honor is yours,” Hassani said to the leader.
I didn’t know if it would be enough; Hassani had said that Sokkwi did not have the same weaknesses as other vamps. But the next moment, the air was suffused with ashes, a huge swirling storm of them, coating our eyes, our ears, our tongues, everything. And when we finally emerged from the choking cloud, we stared around in wonder.
The great body had disappeared.
The gods, it seemed, weren’t so immortal, after all.
Chapter Fifteen
Dory, Cairo
Vampire monks, or so I’d been told, knew how to party, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to this one. I’d had all day to rest, while being attended by an absolute throng of servants, to the point that I’d finally had to lock the door to keep them out of the room so I could nap. It was night again now, and I was feeling surprisingly well, all things considered; that wasn’t the problem.
That was the problem, I thought, staring into the mirror.
“You look lovely,” the woman behind me said.
It was That Bitch, whose real name was Maha. I’d been told that it meant “Beautiful Cow” which . . . okay. Different strokes. She and I had made up, and as a peace offering, she was in my bathroom, attempting to get me ready for the party to end all parties, celebrating the death of the bastard downstairs.
There was just one problem.
“I don’t think it fits,” I said, tugging on the latest fake hairdo.
Glamouries didn’t work at this court, so she’d come up with a selection of wigs to cover my no longer burnt, but terribly bald head. There was everything from short and blonde to vibrant red and flowy, along with a brunette that almost matched my real hair in cut and style. Because it turned out that, while vamp healers could repair a damaged brain and heal baldly burned flesh, they could not regrow hair.
Not that I was totally bald. It was more like a third of my hair that was missing in action, all along the left side of my head, from above the ear to the nape. But it was not festive.