Except that the large vampire said something to a man working to open the nearest cage, and the next moment, John found himself being dragged back and lashed to a barrel instead.
It was one of three that were standing near the cages, filled with sand and cigarette butts, helping to delineate them from the seating area on that side. They looked like they’d been doing the job for centuries, leaving them brittle and mouse eaten, with their iron bands almost rusted through. They were an altogether terrible choice for their current occupation.
Or they would have been, except that they were surrounded by about five thousand vampires.
None of whom were paying any attention to John. The crowd was celebrating their victory, yelling and stomping their feet on the wooden benches, making it sound like an orchestra of drummers was doing a routine. And laughing and drinking and jeering, even singing in a few cases. To the point that, if John hadn’t already had the grandmother of all migraines, they would have given him one.
The only people staring him down were a group of nearby mages, presumably ones working for the vampires. John was certain they couldn’t see through his glamourie, but they might be able to detect that he had one, or that he was using some form of magic. He saw one of them say something to a nearby guard, but the vampire, with the breed’s usual contempt for humans, ignored him.
John’s hands were tied behind his back, out of sight, so he started working to get them free, dislocating a thumb and then snapping it back into place after sliding it under the ropes. It hurt, but so did everything else; his body felt like a giant bruise. Maybe because of the thatch of old bamboo poles and assorted junk back in the alley, which the locals appeared to have used as an outdoor storage system. It had broken his fall and almost certainly saved his life, but it had had its own set of problems.
Like a hunk of junk that he was fairly certain had left a permanent divot in his back!
It didn’t matter; he’d been trained to think past pain. The problem wasn’t thinking, it was what he had to think about. He needed to get the corpsmen out of here before the fanged monsters finished what they’d started. He needed to talk to Jonas and find out if there was any spell that might break the enthrallment. And, most of all, he needed to find out who had brought them here and how and why and he didn’t know how to do any of it!
And then a tiny voice spoke in his ear.
“Mage Pritkin!”
It almost made him jump out of his skin, and giveaway the fact that he remained semi lucid. Because it was right there, like an insect buzzing in his ear canal, only this wasn’t an annoying whine. It was—
“Mage Pritkin! Damn it, wake up!”
John swallowed and glanced around, but there was no one that close. Except for one of the burly guards, who was standing nearby, leaning on what appeared to be an old-fashioned battle-axe. But he wasn’t saying anything. And even if he had been, John didn’t think he would sound like Minnie Mouse!
John tried to shake his head to clear it, but that earned him a glance from the guard, so he stopped and lolled some more. Which changed his field of vision, allowing him to notice something rather odd. Make that very odd, he thought in alarm, as something began wriggling and squirming and moving about under the fabric of his shirt.
Something alive.
John was desperate to throw a spell to do what his hands could not, but there were too many mages in the crowd who might notice the magic, and weres who could smell it. He couldn’t take the chance when he was the only corpsman still conscious. But he also couldn’t lie there while some creature ate him alive! Which is what it felt like it was doing, with something sharp piercing his skin like—like—like—
Like a tiny golden stiletto?
John stared as a mostly naked and entirely pissed off temple dancer emerged from under a rip in his shirt, her face red and her ceremonial headdress askew.
She was somewhat 3-D, with the lines of her body raised against the skin of his chest like a colorful bruise. But mostly, she was flat, except for certain assets that she was adjusting grumpily, while pulling her hat back into place. She finally managed it and then glared up at him, pushing tumbled black hair out of her eyes.
“Finally! About time you listen to—”
John freed his right hand and clapped it over her. And then glanced wildly around, to see if anybody had noticed. It didn’t look like anybody had, possibly because she wasn’t there, being merely the product of his fevered imagination!
Or possibly because a fight had just broken out.
And, for once, it didn’t involve a war mage.
Instead, it was a vampire who went sailing across the large open area—literally. He wasn’t staggering back from a savage blow, as is usually the case when that phrase is used. He was literally flying as if shot out of a cannon. He burst through the two barn-like doors where John had come in, letting in a greenish swath of light that spotlighted the only other vamp in the clearing.
John recognized him as the creature who had brought him here, and who was currently being jumped by at least a dozen smaller men—because every man in there was smaller—but who did not appear to be overly worried about it. If anything, he just looked bored.
A moment later John found out why. Everybody did. And, for the first time since he’d entered the room, the noise level died down.
Well, except for the shrieking.
Luckily for them, the vampire’s assailants were all vampires themselves, which meant that they might survive having their heads ripped off, or having a leg separated from the rest of their bodies so that the big vamp could beat them with it, or being pulled in two. Part of the latter specimen—a torso with a stunned looking face—scuttled across the floor and stopped near John, where the bloody yellow-white column of his spine slithered back and forth, back and forth across the floor, making tracks in the dirt like the tail of a snake.
Or a scorpion, John thought dazedly, when it suddenly arched upward, as if searching for its body’s missing half.
John’s horrified gaze went from the carnage in front of him to the creature who had caused it. The breadth of chest and shoulders would have done a gladiator proud, although the big vampire was dressed more like a fashion model. He rather looked like one, too, something John hadn’t had much of an opportunity to notice before now, considering that most of what he’d seen of him had been fist. But the knife-edged jaw with the slightly cleft chin, the glittering black eyes, and the sleek black hair, which was somehow still perfectly styled, made him look vaguely like a Chinese superman.
Of course, there were other reasons for that.
A bigger than average vamp jumped off the dais to try his luck while the monster was busy with someone else. He was wielding what John assumed to be a pair of scimitars, based on the curvature of the blades, but he couldn’t be sure. They were moving so fast that they looked like airplane propellers while the craft was still in motion, just two silver blurs.
Until the large vamp spun and kicked some dirt in the sabre wielder’s face. And when that caused him to falter, grabbed him by the throat, snapped his neck and threw the twitching body back onto the dais. Where it was toed off by one of the vampires standing near a trio of thrones, with a slight moue of distaste.
The duel, if such it had been, was over almost before it began, and now the huge vamp was speaking to the people on the platform. John couldn’t understand him, and not just because of the language barrier. But because the chorus in the gallery seats had started up again and become even louder than before. John stared at them groggily, the noise, pain and blood loss making it almost impossible to think straight.