“Your goal of getting my sword?”
“Indeed.” The vampire’s smile was icy cold. “Drop it, or your lover dies.”
“You’ll kill him anyway,” I said, though I would trade the sword in a second for Michael’s life. If I could be certain the trade offered was a fair one, I would take it, but the last thing I wanted was to give more power to the vampire while his hand was wrapped around Michael’s throat.
He shook his head minutely, as if to warn me his captor couldn’t be trusted.
“Perhaps,” the vampire said. “Perhaps not. I have kept him alive these last days to ensure I had sufficient bait for my trap.”
“I need assurances.” I slumped, pretending I couldn’t resist the power he kept using on me, but I surreptitiously went back to sawing Chopper’s blade through the bars. I was more than halfway through one. “I’m willing to make the trade, but you have to let Michael go free and get back to the road. Then you release me from this cage. Then I’ll give you the sword.”
“Of course you will. The Ruin Bringer is so known for being friendly and fair to magical beings.”
“I’m not unfair to anyone. The only beings I’ve killed are murderers.”
“One society’s murderers are another’s heroes.”
For some reason, I thought of that troll that had been stealing from the meat-packing plant for his people. If he’d only stolen, I wouldn’t have been sent after him, but he’d been a killer. He’d murdered more than ten people as he stole. I wasn’t the bad guy here.
“Who considers you a hero, vampire elf?” I demanded, more of the bar filing away under the subtle rasps of my blade. “You just said you were driven out of your world.”
“A mistake my people made that I will remedy once I have your sword.”
“What’s the deal with my sword? It can’t possibly be that great. There are swords all over this planet and must be millions more on the other worlds.” I knew Chopper was better than any Earth-made sword without magic, but magic was as common as allergies on the other worlds. It couldn’t possibly be that rare. Maybe he was stuck here on Earth for now, and there weren’t that many other magical swords around.
He curled a pale lip. “If you believe that, you are more ignorant than I thought.”
The magical tiger disappeared from my awareness, his aura vanishing. What the hell? He’d been up near the tower the last time I’d checked on him.
I couldn’t tell if the cub had also disappeared. Her aura had been weak, too weak for me to detect from the grand hall.
“Drop the sword, or I will kill him,” the vampire stated.
I was so close to sawing through the bar. But what then? Even if I kicked it free and could get out, I would still have to face the wizard, the vampire, and those wolves.
“I already gave you my deal,” I said.
“Unacceptable.”
His fingers tightened, and Michael gasped in pain, his back arching as magic flowed down his spine.
If I’d thought the vampire was bluffing, I might have been able to hold out, might have been able to do nothing while my friend writhed in pain. But the vampire’s icy eyes said he would kill Michael and then send his wizard and wolves in to take the sword from me. And they could do it. Even if Willard had still been here, we couldn’t have fought off two powerful magic users. I certainly couldn’t by myself, especially when that tiger might reappear at any moment. I was surprised the vampire didn’t already realize he had me overpowered and that he could easily force the issue. Maybe he thought the sword was more powerful than it was.
Michael dropped to his knees. Blood ran out of his left ear and dripped off his stubbled jaw.
“Fine,” I called. “Stop.”
I turned the sword, so I could stick it out through the gap and prepare to drop it.
The vampire released Michael, who dropped to his hands and knees, still gasping, but more in relief now than pain. The magic that had been flowing into him ceased.
“I’m sorry, Val,” he rasped, looking up at me.
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’m sorry this asshole dragged you up here.”
“I know you are.” Michael managed a quick smile. “If there was anything to forgive, I would forgive you.”
The vampire’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted a warning hand toward Michael.
“Let him come over here, and I’ll drop the sword.” I still held Chopper out of the cage but hadn’t yet let go.
“Drop it now, or I’ll finish what I started.” The vampire drew a magical bone dagger from a belt sheath, the wicked blade almost a foot long. He held it over Michael’s back.
I shook my head. “I want him out of your range before—”
A blast of magical power struck my wrist like a sledgehammer. Chopper tumbled from my grip and clanged to the floor. The ogre sneered and twitched the end of his staff. My sword levitated four feet into the air and floated toward the vampire.
I swore and brought up Fezzik, but the ogre hurled another blast of power toward me, this time at the cage instead of my wrist. The vampire lunged at Michael, that bone dagger raised. I fired at him through the bars, but the ogre’s attack landed, and my cage rocked wildly. The dagger plunged through Michael’s spine, and he screamed.
“No!” I screamed just as loudly, feeling as if the blade had plunged into my own heart.
The chain holding the cage, the chain Willard had weakened with her shots, snapped. I plummeted to the floor.
“Kill her,” the vampire said, snatching Chopper out of the air and striding for the back hallway.
The cage landed sideways, the bar I’d been sawing now above me. I twisted onto my back and kicked at it.
Snaps and snarls sounded as the wolves ran toward me. Even worse, the aura of the tiger reappeared, right at the ogre’s side.
A part of me wanted to stay in the cage and hope the animals couldn’t get at me, but there would be no safety in that. The ogre would hurl magic to kill me as I lay helplessly pinned.
I kicked again and again. The bar snapped, flying upward. I squeezed through the gap, hefted Fezzik, and sprayed fire at the oncoming wolves, at the tiger loping behind them, and at the ogre. He leveled his staff at me again, and I knew my death was inevitable. Michael lay crumpled on the floor where the vampire had left him, blood pooled under his unmoving body, and I feared he was already dead.
The tiger’s eyes met mine as I tried to shoot at all the animals surging toward me. I couldn’t read anything in them, and when he sprang, his powerful muscles taking him past the wolves, I was certain he was eager to reach me first.
But the tiger landed and snapped his great jaws to the left and to the right, tearing out the throats of the two wolves closest to him.
I was so startled that I stopped firing for a second. But more wolves were coming—they were almost upon me. I focused on the ones that weren’t near the tiger and that hadn’t yet noticed he’d turned on them. The wolves had eyes only for me.
The ogre shouted, “Stop!” in his own language.
The tiger froze, halted by the magical command. My bullets took one wolf in the eye, and it toppled to the ground. Another one leaped, springing for the cage I was still halfway inside of. I hit it twice, one in each of its eyes, my magical bullets gouging into its brain.
That was the last of the wolves, and just as I thought I might survive, a blast of power from the ogre hit me square in the chest.
It tore me out of the cage and hurled me all the way to the wall. I slammed into it like a human wrecking ball, wood splintering all around me. The blow knocked all the air out of my lungs and made my entire chest spasm as I tumbled to the floor, Fezzik falling from my grip.
The tiger prowled toward me. Not in mighty leaps and bounds, but slowly, a cat stalking his prey.
Or maybe not quite that. His eyes were hard to read, but the ogre kept chanting something. An order to kill me, not a spell. The tiger had no choice but to obey.
The blow had shocked my solar plexus, and I couldn’t breathe, but I lunged and snatched Fezzik again. I turned the weapon not on the tiger, who was less than ten feet away, but toward the ogre. And held down the trigger, willing every bullet to slam into his chest.
But the ogre saw the attack coming and, with a whisper of magic, formed an invisible shield in front of himself. My bullets ricocheted away, embedding in the ceiling and the walls.
The tiger crouched to spring. Reluctantly, I turned my weapon toward him.
Then gunfire rang out, not from me but from the other end of the grand hall. Willard had stepped inside from behind, her rifle on auto as she rained bullets into the ogre’s unprotected back. She’d found a way to sneak around, and thanks to her lack of magical blood and lack of a magical weapon, the ogre hadn’t sensed her coming. And his shield didn’t extend around to his back.
The rounds pounded into him. They weren’t magical, but they were effective.
He lost his concentration, and his defenses dropped. I skittered to the side so Willard wouldn’t be in my sights if I missed, and joined her in firing at the sturdy ogre. Bullets pummeled him from both sides, and his staff clattered to the floor. I finally managed to gasp in a few stuttered breaths as he pitched over sideways next to it.
The tiger was still in his crouch, poised to spring at me, but for whatever reason, he hadn’t attacked. He looked back at the ogre, and when the wizard’s aura faded, his life disappearing from his body, the tiger disappeared from our world.
Willard stopped firing, and I sprinted around the cage and the dead wolves to fall to my knees beside Michael. Hoping in vain, I touched shaking fingers to his throat. But the vampire was an expert at death, and he’d succeeded at killing my best friend.
Only the knowledge that the vampire was still on the loose—and with my sword, damn it—kept me from breaking down.
“Fuck,” Willard said, slumping against the doorjamb. “Nothing in this place dies like it should.”
She was glaring at the ogre, dozens of bullets riddling his body.