And then the voice started singing “Happy Birthday.” The tune wasn’t even vaguely close to the actual song, but the “Happy birthday to me” lyrics were unmistakable.
Sarah’s eyes had widened. “Drulinda?”
“Who the hell is Drulinda?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head. “One of our characters. But her player ran away from home or something.”
“And you didn’t recognize her actual name?”
Sarah gave me a slightly guilty glance. “Well, I never played with her much. She wasn’t really very, you know—popular.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Tell me whatever you can about her.”
She shook her head. “Um. About five four, sort of . . . plain. You know, not ugly or anything, but not really pretty. Maybe a little heavy.”
“Not that.” I sighed. “Tell me something important about her. People make fun of her?”
“Some did,” she said. “I never liked it, but ...”
“Crap.” I looked at Molly and said, “Code Carrie. We’re in trouble.”
The horrible, dusty song came to an end. “It’s been a year since I left you,” Drulinda’s voice said. “A year since I found what all you whining losers were looking for. And I decided to give myself a present.” There was a horrible pause, and then the voice said, “You. All of you.”
“Code what?” Molly asked me.
I shook my head. “Sarah, do you know where the announcement system is?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “Administration. Right by—”
“The security office.” I sighed.
Drulinda’s voice continued. “The entrances are closed and watched. But you should feel free to run for them. You all taste so much better when you’ve had time to be properly terrified. I’ve so been looking forward to seeing your reaction to the new me.”
With that, the PA system shut off, but a second later, it started playing music—“Only You,” by the Platters.
“Molly,” I hissed, suddenly realizing the danger. “Veil us, now.”
She blinked at me, then nodded, bowing her head with a frown of concentration and folding her arms across her chest. I felt her gather up her will and release it with a word and a surge of energy that made the air sparkle like diamond dust for a half second.
Inside the veil, the air suddenly turned a few degrees cooler, and the area outside it seemed to become even dimmer than it had been a second before. I could sense the delicate tracery of the veil’s magic in the air around us, though I knew that, from the other side, none of that would be detectable—assuming Molly had done it correctly, of course. Veils were one of her strongest areas, and I was gambling our lives that she had gotten it right.
Not more than a breath or two later, there was a swift pattering sound and a dim blur in the shadows, which ceased moving abruptly maybe twenty feet away and revealed the presence of a vampire of the Black Court.
Drulinda, or so I presumed her to be, was dressed in dark jeans, a red knit sweater, and a long black leather coat. If she’d been heavy in life, death had taken care of that problem for her. She was sunken and shriveled, as bony and dried up as the year-old corpse she now was. Unlike the older vamps of her breed, she still had most of her hair, though it had clearly not been washed or styled. Most of the Black Court I’d run into had never been terribly body conscious. I suppose once you’d seen it rot, there just wasn’t much more that could happen to sway your opinion of it, either way.
Unlike the older vampires I’d faced, she stank. I don’t mean that she carried a little whiff of the grave along with her. I mean she smelled like a year-old corpse that still had a few juicy corners left and wasn’t entirely done returning to the earth. It was noxious enough to make me gag—and I’d spent my day tracking down and dismantling a freaking slime golem.
She stood there for a moment, while the Platters went through the first verse, looking all around her. She’d sensed something, but she wasn’t sure what. The vampire turned a slow circle, her shriveled lips moving in time with the music coming over the PA system, and as she did, two more of the creatures, slower than Drulinda, appeared out of the darkness.
They were freshly made vampires—so much so that for a second, I thought them human. Both men wore brown uniforms identical to Raymond’s. Both were stained with blood, and both had narrow scoops of flesh missing from the sides of their