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The vampire stared steadily at me for a second, her eyes all milky white,
corpse cataracts glinting in the reflected light of the fire. Then she smiled
and moved.
She was just too damned fast. I tried to turn to keep up with her, but by the
time I did, Ennui screamed, and Drulinda had seized her hair and dragged her
back, out of the immediate circle of light cast by the amulet.
She lifted the struggling girl with ease, so that I could see her
mascara-streaked face. "Wizard," Drulinda said. Ennui had been cut by flying
glass or the fall at some point, and some blood had streaked out of her
slicked-back hair, over her ear, and down one side of her throat. The vampire
leaned in, extending a tongue like a strip of beef jerky, and licked blood
from the girl s skin. "You can hide behind your light.
But you can t save her."
I ground my teeth and said nothing.
"But your death will profit me, grant me standing with others of my kind. The
feared and vaunted Wizard
Dresden." She bared yellowed teeth in a smile. "So I offer you this bargain.
Throw away the amulet. I will let the girl go. You have my word." She leaned
her teeth in close and brushed them over the girl s neck.
"Otherwise& well. All of my new friends are gone. I ll have to make more."
That made me shudder. Dying was one thing. Dying and being made into one of
those&
I lowered the amulet. I hesitated for a second, and then dropped it.
Drulinda let out a low, eager sound and tossed Ennui aside like an empty candy
wrapper. Then she was on me, letting out rasping giggles, for God s sake,
pressing me down. "I can smell your fear, wizard," she rasped. "I think I m
going to enjoy this."
She leaned closer, slowly, as she bared her teeth, her face only inches from
mine.
Which is where I wanted her to be.
I reared up my head and spat out a gooey mouthful of powdered garlic directly
into those cataract eyes.
Drulinda let out a scream, bounding away in a violent rush, clawing at her
eyes with her fingers and getting them burned, too. She thrashed in wild
agony, swinging randomly at anything she touched or bumped into, tearing
great, gaping gashes in metal fences, smashing holes in concrete walls.
"Couple words of advice," I growled, my mouth burning with the remains of the
garlic I d stuffed it with as she d come sneaking up on me. "First, any time
I m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like
you, it s because I m up to something."
Drulinda howled more and rushed toward me tripping on some rubble and
sprawling on the ground, only to rush about on all fours like some kind of
ungainly and horrible insect.
I checked behind me. Ennui was already out, and Thomas was beginning to stir,
maybe roused by the snow now falling on him. I turned back to the blinded,
pain-maddened vampire. We were the only ones left in that wing of the mall.
"Second," I spat. "Never touch my brother on his fucking birthday."
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I reached for my will, lifted my hand, and snarled, "Fuego!"
Fire roared out to eagerly engulf the vampire.
What the hell. The building was burning down anyway.
"Freaking amateur villains," I muttered, glowering down at the splatters on my
car.
Thomas leaned against it with one hand pressed to his head, a grimace of pain
on his face. "You okay?"
I waved my left arm a little. "Feeling s coming back. I ll have Butters check
me out later. Thanks for loaning Molly your car."
"Least I could do. Let her drive Sarah and Ennui to the hospital." He squinted
at the rising smoke from the mall. "Think the whole thing will go?"
"Nah," I said. "This wing, maybe. They ll get here before too much more goes
up. Keef and his folk should be all right."
My brother grunted. "How they going to explain this one?"
"Who knows," I said. "Meteor, maybe. Smashed holes in the roof, crushed some
poor security guard, set the place on fire."
"My vote is for terrorists," Thomas said. "Terrorists are real popular these
days." He shook his head.
"But I meant the larpers, not the cops."
"Oh," I said. "Probably, they won t talk to anyone about what they saw. Afraid
people would think they were crazy."
"And they would," Thomas said.
"And they would," I agreed. "Come tomorrow, it will seem very unreal. A few
months from now, they ll wonder if they didn t imagine some of it or if there
wasn t some kind of gas leak or something that made them hallucinate. Give it
a few more years, and they ll remember that Drulinda and some rough-looking
types showed up to give them a hard time. They drove a car through the front
of the mall. Maybe they
were crazy people dressed in costumes who had been to a few too many larps
themselves." I shook my head. "It s human nature to try to understand and
explain everything. The world is less scary that way.
But I don t think they ll be in any danger, really. No more so than anyone
else."
"That s good," Thomas said quietly. "I guess."
"It s the way it is." In the distance, sirens were starting up and coming
closer. I grunted and said, "We d better go."
"Yeah."
We got into the Beetle. I started it up and we headed out. I left the lights
off. No sense attracting attention.
"You going to be all right?" I asked him.
He nodded. "Take me a few days to get enough back into me to feel normal,
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