“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I always figured I’d be more like…Q.”

“Q?”

“From James Bond. You know.”

I looked at him. “But Q had stuff.”

“I got stuff.”

“Yeah, but Q had cool stuff.”

Ray scowled. “I got cool stuff,” he told me. “But we shouldn’t need it. This is Central! There’s got to be a crap ton of defenses built in.”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing around. But I didn’t see anything that looked particularly helpful. Just a few exam tables, some dirty footprints and the rows of coolers built into the wall.

One of which appeared to be vibrating.

And it wasn’t the one I’d thrown the arm into.

Great.

“Oh, crap,” Ray said, staring at it. Looking like a guy who had just about reached tilt and couldn’t take one more piece of bad news. I didn’t feel any different, especially when I stood up and wove a little on my feet from light-headedness. But better to deal with whatever it was now, while it was trapped, than have it pop out in the middle of the coming fight.

I grabbed Ray’s rifle and sidled up alongside him, trying not to think of some of the things the Senate could have on ice. Or that Ray had all of three bullets left—our last. Or that neither of us was exactly in shape for hand-to-hand right now.

I just nodded at him, gripped the pull, took a deep breath.

And yanked open the drawer.

Only to have something jump out at me, so blindingly fast that I couldn’t even see it clearly. Something that grabbed the gun, jerked up the barrel and caused the shot I managed to get off to hit the ceiling. Something with a fan of dark hair, a porcelain fist, and a flash of turquoise eyes—

And lashes longer than mine, I thought, relief making me weak-kneed. “Radu!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told Ray. “I’m Q.”

I slumped against the side of the coolers. “You could have told me where you’d be!”

“Well, I didn’t know, did I?” he asked, releasing the gun so he could climb out. “I had to improvise.”

“So you put yourself in the morgue?”

“Zombies are stupid, Dory.”

“But the necromancer controlling them isn’t!”

“But even the best of necromancers can’t control more than two or three puppets at a time. Or see through everyone’s eyes. And whatever you were doing was keeping his attention nicely,” Radu explained.

“Glad I could help.”

Radu nodded regally. “The only inconvenience was that, once in, I couldn’t contact you or any vampire in the area might have felt it. But I knew you’d find me.” He gave me a stern look. “Although I must say, you took your time.”

“You’re welcome,” Ray said sourly.

Radu glanced at him. “Why is he here?”

“He’s my team.”

The door shook as something all but buckled it from the other side. “And what is that?”

“The bad guys.”

Radu put his hands on his impeccably tailored hips. “What kind of a rescue is this?”

“A do-it-yourself kind,” I told him, my eyes lighting on a couple of fire extinguishers. “Where’s the portal?”

“On the floor below, of course.”

“Of course. And how do we get there?”

“There’s a ramp at the end of the hall. But it won’t do any good, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?”

“Well, really, Dory.” Radu looked at me impatiently. “If it were that easy, I’d have simply managed things myself, wouldn’t I?”

“I dunno. Might have messed up your manicure,” Ray muttered.

Radu ignored him.

“What’s wrong with the portal?” I asked, dragging the fire extinguishers off the wall. And blessing the vamp paranoia about fire, because they were huge.

“There’s nothing wrong with it. I just don’t know the password.”

I stopped, halfway to the door. “What?”

“Shit,” Ray said violently.

“What password?” I demanded.

“Well, for the shield, of course,” Radu told me.

“Stop saying that. There’s no ‘of course’ when I don’t know shit about this place! And what shield?”

“The one designed to keep anyone from using the portal to gain unauthorized entry, of—” He broke off at my look. “Well, didn’t you expect the Senate to have something? Considering how many enemies—”

“I expected you to know how to turn it off!”

“Well, I would, if I usually worked here. But I don’t and the passwords are changed on a weekly basis. And, of course, I always have escorts—”

“Stop saying that!”

“Well, I’m sorry—”

“Save the apologies,” I snarled. “You have to remember!”

“Well, I can’t—”

“You have to! You were there when they said it!”

“Dory. One has staff so that one does not have to remember.”

“Goddamn it, Radu, that’s not good enough!”

“Well, just shoot me then!”

“I don’t have any bullets!”

Only that wasn’t actually true, I realized a second later. I had bullets; I had a whole box of them for a .44 Magnum. I just didn’t have the Magnum.

But I did have the .410.

I grabbed it and pulled out the box of ammo, shoving loose bullets into my coat pockets and one into the autoloader of the gun. And yes, it fit. But that wasn’t necessarily good news.

The problem was that Magnum bullets pack a whale of a punch, and not just on whatever they hit. They also put tremendous pressure on the barrel of the gun firing them. Including more than was recommended for a .410.

Like, far more.

Don’t try this at home, boys and girls, I thought, and filled the autoloader with another three shells, which was as many as it would take. And wasn’t that going to be fun?

“Shit, shit, shit.” That was Ray again, only he was looking at the gun this time. Like he thought this was crazy, too.

“Can you hack it?” I asked him, as the pounding increased to a crescendo.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Somebody else’s, sure, given enough time, but—”

“You’re not going to have a lot of time,” I warned him.

“How much are we talking about?”

I checked my ammo. “Two, maybe three minutes.”

“What?”

I grabbed his shoulders. “You’re the best. You said so. You’ve hacked portals all over this city—”

“But not the Senate’s!”

“You’ve hacked some of the Senate’s.”

“But not the gateways!”

“Ray.” I looked at him seriously. “We are not getting back upstairs, okay? I’m just laying it out there. We go through the portal, or we don’t go at all.”

“But you—you’re good—”

“I’m not that good.”

“But best-case scenario—”

“We die on a higher floor, that’s all. There’s just too many of them.”

He stared at me.

“You can do this.”

“I—you don’t understand,” he whispered. “I’m a screwup. I’ve always been a…I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. You can and Radu’s going to help you.” I looked at him. “Aren’t you?”

And it was a testament to how fucked we were that even Radu was looking serious. He nodded soberly. “I know the old passwords, and the kind of things they use. I can…guess…at this one.”

“He can guess,” Ray said faintly, as I pulled them over to the door.

And looked at Radu. “When you get through, tell them that I think we’re dealing with Jonathan. Tell Louis-Cesare.” Because he and the necromancer had a past, and he needed to know.

“You can tell them,” Radu said quietly.

“Yeah, well. Don’t wait for me. If you get the portal open and I’m not close enough—”

Ray said something really foul.

“I don’t have time to argue,” I told them, my head pounding so hard the room was pulsing in and out. “Just remember, all right?”

Radu nodded, Ray glared and I licked my lips.

And then I threw open the door.

The corridor was packed with vamps, but only two fell in—the ones who had been trying to batter down the door, presumably. And got heavy extinguishers shoved into their stomachs for their trouble. “Hold these,” I told them, while Radu shoved them viciously toward the hall. They staggered backward and I pulled the peashooter. Which made a hell of a bigger bang with Magnum bullets in it.

Especially since I’d aimed for the extinguishers.

The cylinders exploded like white bombs, more spectacularly than I could have hoped for. Instantly, the entire corridor disappeared under the dense cloud of icy vapor, thick as a blizzard and bitterly cold. It boiled up everywhere, freezing the sweat in my hair and the rivulets coursing down my back, and frosting my eyelashes. But not before I glimpsed another bunch of vamps jumping down the elevator shaft.

It looks like the necromancer has lost his sense of humor, I thought.

And then somebody took my hand and jerked me in the opposite direction.

I knew we were moving lightning quick—Radu had grabbed Ray and me and he wasn’t wasting any time. But it suddenly didn’t feel that way. I’d had this happen occasionally in battle, when time seemed to invert itself, and the crazier everything got, the slower it seemed to go. I felt the ice crystals in my half-frozen hair hit my cheek softly as I turned my head. Saw a bunch of dark figures erupt out of the mist right behind us. Felt bullets tear through the air, so close one brushed the tiny hairs on my temple, a smooth, slick caress.