Queen's Gambit (Dorina Basarab 5)

Something.

My stomach gave a lurch, but I didn’t have time to decode the message it was sending before the burning zombie lunged. How it had hoisted itself up Mount Rubble I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I put two bullets in what was left of its brain and kicked it back into the other two, who were also clumsily headed up. More of the creatures turned their heads my way, as if on a string, drawn to the echoing sound of the bullets.

But not the main event. It just stayed where it was, swaying back and forth and occasionally striking down at . . . nothing, as far as I could tell. But it wasn’t nothing.

Please God, I thought fervently. Please, just one time. Just this one, fucking time, don’t let it be—

Goddamnit!

The creature turned suddenly and I spotted Louis-Cesare, clinging to the side of its neck, just under the great hood, with a sword in his hand. He clearly intended to use it to chop off the head. Which would have been fine, which would have been great, except that that wasn’t going to work, and where the hell had I put—

“Where he come from?” Lantern Boy shrieked, spotting him, too, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, not that it mattered at this point.

“He does that,” I muttered, searching frantically through my jacket.

“Does what?”

“It’s called the Veil. He goes . . . dim,” I explained—badly, but who had time for—

A muffled scream from Lantern Boy had me looking up, just in time to see my lover hit the far wall of the great chamber, hard enough to leave a Louis-Cesare shaped divot in a cavorting goddess. I didn’t know who she was, but she had a tambourine in her hand and was wearing a ton of golden spangles, each of which appeared to be made out of actual gold and was as long as a spear. Which became a problem when Louis-Cesare fell to the ground and they stabbed down on top of him.

He was a master; they wouldn’t kill him. But they could pin him for a second, and a second was all that thing needed. And if there was anyone else still able to help, I didn’t see them.

In a split second, I spotted hairy chested Rashid, his bald head gleaming in the torchlight, his body writhing on a spear half buried in solid rock. Nearby was bearded Bahram, on his feet but wrestling with half a dozen energetic looking zombies. Zakarriyyah was also still standing, in front of a pile of the wounded, defending them alone with a single sabre. Even That Bitch had gotten in on the act, with twin daggers in her hands and a snarl on her pretty face, as she stared down two partially burnt corpses.

But no one else had been crazy enough to take on the main event, no one but my husband. Who was about to pay for it. The huge, hooded head reared back, the fangs descended, the body lunged—

And was hit by a double barrage of bullets as I sped across the floor, a bright red crotch rocket between my thighs, a defiant scream on my lips, and two .44 Magnums in my hands.

The bullets didn’t hurt it; I hadn’t expected them to hurt it. The damned thing had survived a funeral pyre and come out shiny and spit polished. But they got its attention.

Oh, boy, did they get its attention.

And goddamn, the creature was fast. It didn’t so much stop its lunge as change direction, almost quicker than my eyes could track. One second it was spearing down at Louis-Cesare, and the next—

It was right in my face.

Chapter Fourteen

Dory, Cairo

It was impossible, just impossible. And this was coming from someone who had once stared down a fully grown dragon. I’d thought that was intense, but after this, I was going to have to revise my personal scale.

Holy shit just got a brand-new definition.

Of course, that depended on me surviving this at all, which . . . yeah.

Fortunately, the senate didn’t buy cheap shit, and while I wasn’t the best on a bike of anybody I’d ever seen, I was motivated. I threw a couple of magical smoke bombs, skidded around in the resulting confusion, saw that giant head strike down all of an inch

away from my right leg. And knifed the bastard in the eye.

It reared back, an unholy ululation of surprise and pain coming out of its mouth, so human-sounding that it had every hair left on my body saluting the insanity. And then it was coming for me as I rocketed ahead, with a sound like all the sandpaper in the world being scraped across all of the stone. The dragging shhhhSSSSHHHSSSHHHHHSSSSSHHHHHH noise made my ears want to join my skin wherever it had fucked off to.

And damn it, I tried. I was flying, straight back the way I’d come because that was the only exit I knew, and I was getting the fuck out of here! And so was someone else.

A second earlier, Lantern Boy had been on top of the rubble heap, hiding like he maybe had some sense. Now he was sitting behind me, holding onto my waist, and screaming in my ear. “Take a left!”

“What?”