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.Roger ssoul spiraled up from the broken soul warden the overgrown marble that had imprisoned him.He passed through the barrier, recognizing me toolate. Eric, enough I had no words for him either, only death more final than he might have deserved.He sank into my ghostly body and if he screamed, I didn t noticebecause my eyes were on the corpse of a fortysomething woman with blond hair, lying on the ground.When most Vlads die, those few whose kill requirements don t result in a destruction of the body, they rapidly age toward their true span of years upon the earth.I d turned Greta when she wastwenty-one.I d often wondered what she might have looked like as she aged.Now I knew. Eric. Phillip scrambled about the wreckage, fumbling for something amid the debris. Look. He gestured toward a vampire who was stakedand bound.I recognized her from a distantly remembered dream Lisette. We found Lisette for you.See? You went to Paris to find her and shecame here. He d killed her.He d killed Greta.No one had to tell me.I knew.Percy sat in the remains of an easy chair. Percy. Phillip s voice cracked, panic reined in but not conquered as he continued to search. Tell him, Percy.You saw everything. Yes, Percy agreed. I saw everything.I m seeing everything now.It s what I do. Phillip sobbed, eyes lighting from within as he found what he d been searching for and attempted to conceal it within the sleeve of his Victorianjacket.I flicked the ward with my thumb and middle finger.Bright blue sparks flew like mutant fireflies as the energy field collapsed.A groan announcedthe absence of the structural reinforcement it had been providing, and dust fell from the ceiling as everything shifted a bit more.Methane rose from the gas fireplace in a steady stream, tainting the air.Lord Phillip gestured at me with a piece of copper in the shape of a rod,and lightning rushed along its length, striking me and igniting the methane in one big kaboom.I ghosted as it happened and when the smokecleared, Phillip gasped at the sight of me, standing exactly where I had been before the explosion.A single step brought me inside his lair.When the second lightning strike came, I mistimed my shift to revenant form and took the full brunt of theblast.It cooked my clothes and fried my synapses, but it couldn t kill me.It was only lightning.My foot struck the frame of an ornate mirror wroughtwith dragons and I picked it up.My reflection looked up at me, out of synch with reality, and I gave it a head butt, shattering the glass.A smalldemon trilled its freedom to the universe as the fly-sized being rose from the mirror, but I caught it in my fist and crushed it until it popped, a tiny jelly-bean of ichor.Then, I threw the mirror at Phillip.It shattered all over the floor and the wall behind him.He d turned to mist. Come now, Eric, he said. I m sure we can. But I wasn t hearing Phillip any longer, I was hearing the voice of Sydney Greenstreet in the movies behind my eyes, the good ones in black andwhite where this kind of thing turns out right at the end and the bad guys go to jail and the hero.the hero.But I m not a hero.If I was, he wouldn t have beaten me.If I was, I wouldn t have been having three-ways in Paris while my daughter was being captured and torturedto death in Void City.If I was a hero, none of this would have happened.But monsters can win too.Just watch a slasher film or, worse yet, pick up a newspaper.Phillip s words went by unnoticed.It was a grand speech, peppered with quotes from famous men in languages long dead or rarely used.It waswitty and irreverent, clever and charming.I probably would have laughed if I d been paying any attention to it.Perhaps I did laugh.I don t remember.I inhaled, my mouth gaping open in defiance of its natural boundaries.Percy drew a small golden ankh from beneath his shirt, but remainedotherwise motionless.His ankh blazed brightly, a flickering candle against the hurricane, but a candle that did not go out. Eric! No! Phillip screamed. Please.We ll Light, all of it save the light from Percy s ankh, bent as if my inhalation was sucking it in
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