His eyes stared into mine, and the hate drained away, replaced by a desperate sort of pleading. And I could do nothing. Except watch as the fire crept up his torso to the rapidly fluttering heart.

I’d never seen a weapon that could do something like that, that could overwhelm the body’s shields and its natural healing ability so quickly and so completely. But the fey never stood a chance. His heart went up like a flame a second later, a sudden bright flare, and it was over. In less than a minute, the body had been completely consumed. All that was left was a scorched black shape on the floor, like a crime scene cutout.

“What the hell kind of trap did you lay for us?” Scarface snarled, staring from the blistered boards to me. His voice was as belligerent as always, but he looked more than a little freaked out. The sword hung limply by his side, like he was almost afraid to touch it.

I would have been, if I were him; vamps burned easily enough as it was.

“No trap,” I said, my mouth a little dry. “Or did you not notice that he was trying to kill me?”

“Why? You steal from him, too?”

“I didn’t steal from anyone. I’m working for the family who own the rune. They want it back.”

“Finders keepers.”

“Yeah, only you haven’t found it yet.”

“Give me a minute,” he growled, and then his head jerked up. And he leapt—but not at me. It took me a second to realize that he had raced back into the hallway, and I didn’t think it was out of fear of my little knives.

I dropped the bread knife, which had been a lousy choice anyway, grabbed my iron version off the floor where Scarface had tossed it and shoved the bloody thing back into the straps at the small of my back. Then I scooped up the duffel and tucked it under my arm. That left me a hand for my sword and one for the cleaver, and that was as good as things were going to get.

The rain was coming down harder now, drumming on the windows and the ceiling overhead. But not enough to muffle the ring of steel on steel. I ran to the hall door and saw two things: Cheung and Scarface, halfway up the stairs, fighting three fey back to back. And Louis-Cesare battling subrand in the middle of the vestibule.

All around there were blackened marks on the boards of the floor, the stairs and, in one case, in a man-shaped smudge on the wall. Shapes I strongly suspected were the remains of Cheung’s men. I glanced up, and through the ruined ceiling spied other battles going on above our heads, but there looked to be more fey than vamps.

And then I wasn’t thinking anymore, because my eyes had caught sight of the glowing sword in subrand’s hand. My heart lurched sickeningly and an icy fist tightened in my gut. And then I was throwing everything in my bag at anything that moved, but especially at him.

I had a small fortune in legal and not so legal weapons, and I used them all. A couple of disorienting spheres did nothing—I was going to stop buying the damn useless things—but a disruptor had more luck. It packs the punch of a few dozen human grenades, and I timed it perfectly—it hit the floor at his feet and exploded almost at the same time, too fast for even a fey’s reflexes to knock it away.

But when the dust cleared, I saw a chasm where the floor had been, new holes in the roof and half the remaining stairs gone. Cheung and Scarface had one less opponent, who was now a smear all over the wall behind the stairs. But subrand was still standing.

It hadn’t gotten through his shields.

“The little creature spits and hisses,” he said, mockingly. “Come, dhampir. Is that the best you can do?”

“Get back!” I told Louis-Cesare, who in a fit of complete insanity was about to jump the chasm. He saw what was in my hand, and his eyes widened, before he changed direction and jumped for the door of the living room instead. Scarface cursed, grabbed Cheung around the waist and dove for the second story. And I threw the nastiest weapon I had.

I didn’t see the dislocator hit, because I’d leapt back into the kitchen the second it left my hand. I didn’t hear it, either, because those things don’t explode in the conventional sense. But I felt the deadly current ripple past. I crouched behind the heavy table, huddled over the duffel bag and stared at nothing.

“What the fuck was that?” Ray whispered below me.

Oh, shit. Ray. “Tell me you were behind something,” I said, belatedly realizing I hadn’t thought to check.

“Fuck yeah, I was fucking behind something,” he whispered viciously, as the vibrations slowly subsided. “My ass is outside with the sane people!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Dislocators do exactly what their name implies. And it wouldn’t help Ray to get him back together if the pieces were all jumbled up.

After a minute, I edged around the blackened mark on the floor, the edges of which were still sizzling, and crept across the kitchen. Everything was quiet, peaceful. I stuck my head out the door, cautiously looking around. I didn’t see anything.

That was a disappointment, as I’d been hoping for an arm growing out of a wall, or maybe a torso where the banister used to be. As long as it was subrand’s, I wasn’t picky. But there was nothing.

He must have had time to get out the back door, I thought furiously. I shouldn’t have hesitated, waiting for Cheung, but as much as I had no reason to like the guy, dislocating half his organs seemed a bit much. But now that complete bastard was probably half a block away—

And someone grabbed me from behind.

“Stop doing that!” I said as I was yanked back against a hard chest. “You’re going to scare me to death.”

And then Louis-Cesare walked out of the living room—on the opposite side of the hall.

“That would at least be a novel way to die,” subrand said, casually breaking my wrist. The sword fell to the ground with a clatter.

I sucked in a breath and fought not to scream, while my brain gibbered somewhere in the background that that was impossible, that no shields held against a dislocator, that that was why the damn things were so illegal that it was a life sentence just to possess one. I’d always been willing to take the risk, on the logic that life in jail was better than no life at all. And dislocators were the option of last resort when nothing else worked.

And now we were screwed, we were screwed, we were so very screwed, my brain helpfully informed me. Because I didn’t have anything worse. I didn’t even know of anything worse.

“Release her,” Louis-Cesare said, prompting a laugh out of my captor. I could feel it vibrate through me as he jerked me hard against him.

“And if I do not?” he asked, sounding amused.

I looked down at the slim hand holding me so easily. He was only using one; the other was still wrapped around that damned sword. I watched its pale glow leech over the boards and wondered if it was going to hurt much.

The fey hadn’t looked like he’d enjoyed it, as I recalled.

“I will kill you,” Louis-Cesare said simply.

subrand sighed. “It was an intellectual challenge to breach the wards. But now that it is done, I find myself growing bored.” That hand came up around my throat again, smearing mud and someone else’s blood. “Give me what I want or die,” he said calmly.

“I knew you were a villain,” Louis-Cesare said calmly. “I did not know that you were also a coward.”

Unlike Cheung, subrand ignored him, instead tightening his grip on me. Louis-Cesare made a small movement and the hand around my throat cut off my air entirely. He stopped.

I was running scenarios through my mind, and the only one sticking was the time. I could hear the clock in the kitchen ticking so slowly that I was sure something must have been wrong with it. How many minutes were left until the wards cycled back on? Two, three?

Because I didn’t think I had that many.

And then subrand jerked and spun, throwing me against the wall and slicing through the air behind us with the sword. It should have taken off his assailant’s head, but the guy who’d just nailed him in the temple with my lost stiletto didn’t have one. And then the knife at my back was out and stabbing up.

subrand turned at the last second, or I’d have had him; as it was, the cold iron carved a bloody furrow across his chest. It looked like those shields didn’t hold so well against one thing, I thought, as two fey dropped to the ground from overhead.

They landed almost on top of Louis-Cesare, and several others poured out of the remains of the pantry. They were trying to overwhelm him with numbers, but Scarface gave a yell from overhead and dive-bombed them, a sword in each hand and a huge grin on his face. I didn’t see any more, because I was trying to avoid getting the same treatment as the fey in the kitchen.

It wasn’t easy. subrand didn’t even flinch, either at the blood pouring down his temple or at the gash in his torso. He also didn’t slow down, and he moved even faster in person than his doppelgänger had, a blur of silver against the dark hallway.

I’d dropped as soon as the heart blow missed, grabbed my fallen sword and rolled to the side. But I hadn’t had time to get back to my feet before that glowing blade stabbed down, hard enough to stick into the floorboards. He wrenched it out, and a split second later, it was flashing down again, and again, and again, as I rolled around the vestibule, dodging the staccato-like stabs, barely staying ahead of the blade and only getting my own sword up once.

That resulted in getting it sliced in two, as I was going to be any minute now, and then subrand stumbled, cursing, the first sign of pain I’d seen. Of course, that was understandable, considering that a vampire head had latched onto his ankle like a rabid pit bull.

The rest of Ray was in the vestibule, hiding behind some furniture, which he started lobbing at us. A side table hit subrand in the chest, and a lamp struck him in the shoulder, and then Ray’s head was sent flying to land with a wet-sounding thump well down the hallway. Whereupon his body went into a frenzy, tossing everything and anything it could get its hands on. And it wasn’t bothering to aim anymore.

Or maybe it was and it just couldn’t see that well—I didn’t know—but in short order I was pelted by a wooden chair, a vase, the matching side table, and I barely ducked in time to avoid a large mirror. subrand had been headed for me, but had had to jerk back to avoid the mirror, giving me a second to strike. And a second was all I needed.