Chapter Eleven

No one tried to kill us all afternoon, I didn't say another word, and the gas held out until we stopped at a garage on the outskirts of El Soldado. We had to add some oil and water, but everything else was okay. The mechanic seemed to know what he was doing. El Soldado was situated in the middle of a long, shallow basin surrounded by high, rolling hills. The basin stretched into the distance, broken only by one broad, low hill, after which the road ran straight as an arrow out into the barren land. With a little more water, El Soldado would have been a pretty sort of place. It wasn't bad the way it was, if you liked one-story whitewashed houses, dirt streets, and cactus in your yard instead of grass. There were chickens and goats and a pig or two in pens behind most houses, and there were children everywhere. I stopped beside a crowd of the kids and asked them where a hotel would be, in my slow Spanish. They laughed and told me to drive on through the town, that on the other side of the square would be the Hotel para Desconocidos. Señora Rivera ran it, they told me. The walls were yellow and white; we couldn't miss it. Then they offered to go with us. I declined with a smile, handed out some coins, and began searching. The kids had been right. We couldn't miss it. The hotel was distinguished by its paint job, which was not only white and yellow, but striped white and yellow. I liked it. I told the grigoris I'd see about rooms. I didn't wait for an answer. I pulled the bandanna back over my bruised neck, and I left my guns in the car. I didn't want anything to shake our chances of getting a place to spend the night. I needed to get away from the grigoris, especially Paulina. In fact, I handed her the car keys, hoping she'd decide to drive away while I was in the hotel. Señora Rivera was delighted to rent us three rooms, and was even more delighted to be paid in advance. She did not have a dining room, she said with a good imitation of deep regret, but there was a café one block away—or if we wanted to drive, there was a place to eat a few miles south. They were both excellent. She handed me the room keys with a great smile and flourish, and I went outside to collect Eli and Paulina. Who were still there. Dammit. Señora Rivera was not as delighted when she saw my companions were wizards, but she was polite enough (or cautious enough) to keep comments to herself. I hadn't even asked if our rooms were together, which showed how rattled and ill I felt. My room was on the main hallway past the señora's desk. Two rooms after mine, the hallway turned right to another block of twelve rooms, six on each side of the corridor. The second and third rooms on the northern side of the corridor were Paulina's and Eli's; at least they would be side by side. I returned to the desk to ask the señora if there were rooms closer together that we could choose, but she told me that we had rented the last three vacancies. I returned to Paulina and Eli, who were standing in the hall outside their rooms, looking impatient. I told them what the señora had told me. I said, "You sure you want to stay? I didn't count on us being apart from each other." "You're that fond of us," Paulina said, sneering. "You're the reason I'm here." "Yes, and you have standards," she said. Even devout farm families, who'd tried to get me to see the error of my ways while they were paying me to shoot people for them, hadn't been this irritating. I took a deep breath. "Paulina, if you don't think I'm doing a good job, fire me," I said. "Pay me what you owe me. I'll be gone tomorrow." I didn't add how happy that would make me. I didn't need to. She was genuinely taken aback. Eli opened his mouth, but I glared at him until he mashed his lips together. Good choice. "We are better with you than we are without you," Paulina said after a goodly pause. "I hope you will stay." I didn't hear an apology in those words, and I started to make that clear. But I remembered Paulina had killed the not-Eli's-brother creature who'd been trying to choke me to death. She'd saved my life. "No mocking me," I warned her. "You have no sense of humor?" "Not where you're concerned." I gave myself a mental shake, got back down to the present moment. "If you want to stay here, I think you and Eli should share a room." I looked from Eli to Paulina, making sure they knew I was serious. "All right," Eli said. "We've done that often enough." Paulina's face turned a dull red. She nodded, just a jerk of her head. "Don't give up the extra room," I said. "Give me the key to it. I like being at the head of the stairs, but we might need the room . . . for something." Eli shrugged and handed me his key. After a brief talk about dinner, we went our separate ways for an hour. We went to the cantina down the street. It had been an easy decision. No one wanted to get back in the car. We ate in silence. By the time we finished our supper—beans and rice, of course, and some chicken—the streets were mostly empty. This little town rolled up the sidewalks—well, there weren't any—early. I wore my guns openly, and I wasn't the only one. People were cautious in El Soldado, seemed like. Even if I'd been the only armed woman in the town, I would have carried my Colts. Someone had been dogging our trail and sniping at us. It was only a matter of time before that someone got lucky. After Paulina and Eli retired to the room that had been assigned to Paulina, I cleaned up, and then I settled down to listen. Two hours after darkfall the hotel was quiet. Then someone wearing spurs went past my room whistling a cowboy song. I was not waiting for anyone who would announce he was coming. The whistler had a room close to the grigoris'. His steps stopped after the opening and closing of a door. I kept seeing that boy's body on the floor, the body that looked so much like a younger Eli. It had been a booby trap, a good one. I'd never thought I'd die any way but by the gun; choking had never been my picture of how I'd leave this world. When no one had stirred in half an hour, I took off my boots and stepped out of my room in my socks, Jackhammer in my hand and my gun belt on. I left my door unlocked. Señora Rivera did not believe in wasting money on electricity. There was only one dim bulb at the conjunction of the halls, just enough to let a guest see the numbers on the room doors . . . if he was sharp eyed. I stood still and listened, got used to the little sounds. In the lobby someone had turned on a radio, keeping the volume low out of consideration for the patrons. From a room across the hall, I heard the slapping sounds of sex. When I was sure I knew what was happening around me, I began to scoot along the inner wall. I looked around the corner. Nothing. I kept moving—real quiet, real slow. No sound from Paulina's room. I unlocked Eli's room, didn't like the little click the key made. I slid inside real quick, pushed the door almost closed behind me. When I'd given the room a good once-over, I turned the knob very slowly and pushed the door shut, releasing the knob just as carefully. The curtains hadn't been drawn in this room, and the moonlight flooded in. Jesus, did I have to tell these people every little thing? Eli should have pulled the curtains to. I half expected to hear a challenge from Paulina's room next door, but there was no sound. They were sleeping. For a minute I hated them. More. Keeping out of the line of sight, I slunk over to the window and looked out from the right side. Nothing but moonlight, and a dog trotting down the dirt-packed alley with something in its jaws. I dropped to my knees, crawled under the window, repeated, looking left. I could see the end of the alley where it met the street in front of the hotel. In fact, I could see the dog pause at our car and sniff the tires before leaving his own message. Nothing was out of place. But the silence was getting to me. My skin was crawling. Magic prickled at me. Was it just the nearness of Eli and Paulina? I was sure something was wrong. What if the grigoris weren't asleep? What if they were dead? When the idea crawled into my brain, I couldn't make it go away. Maybe someone had killed Paulina and Eli while I waited in my room. After keeping them alive this long, maybe I had been outwitted. I could go back out into the corridor and knock at Paulina's door. Or I could try the connecting door between the rooms, which I hadn't expected, since my room had none. It should be locked, of course, since Eli had never been in this room. But I stole over to try it . . . and it opened. My skin crawled so hard I thought it would leave my body. I whispered, "Eli? Paulina?" The curtains were closed in here, but the moon streamed in from the other room. There were two beds, one against each side, and they were both empty. No suitcases. No clothes. The grigoris weren't here. Their things were gone. But they hadn't left town. The car was outside. "Huh," I said, and sat on one of the beds to think. After a moment I checked the window. It was shut but not locked. They could have gone out the window and closed it behind them. The window in the other room had definitely been locked. I felt pretty dumb. If Eli and Paulina had been stolen, they'd have put up a fight, and it would have gotten noisy. Right? But why sneak away when I'd practically begged Paulina to fire me? I could not figure this out. I wasn't sure what to do. Those are not my favorite feelings. I grabbed my Winchester and left the room. There was a lamp on in the lobby. From his resemblance to his mother, the night clerk was a son of Señora Rivera, and no more than fifteen. He was sound asleep, his head on the check-in desk. I opened the front door and stepped out onto the rock-paved entrance. Yes, the car was still there, and yes, it was definitely the right car. I was back in my room in a minute, and thinking as hard as I could. After a short while of coming up with nothing, I went back to the empty rooms. This time I searched. I had to be quiet, and I had to be careful, but I was no longer concerned with there being light in the window. The señora kept a very clean hotel. I know because I crawled on the floor while I looked behind and under the beds. Same with the little chests of drawers, the seat cushions, the throw rugs and bathroom fixtures . . . everywhere. And finally I found something in Paulina's room: the keys to the car. They'd been jammed between the mattress and the box spring. Nothing would land there by accident. If Paulina had wanted to hide the keys from me, she'd have taken them and pitched them out the window. It would have taken me hours to find them in the debris of the alley. So she'd been hiding them from someone else. And that someone else had stolen Eli and Paulina, two powerful magicians who could kill with a few gestures. So that someone was pretty damn dangerous. I could figure only that one thing for sure. So why would have to wait. I went back to the lobby. I hated to wake the boy, but I did it anyway. In my faulty Spanish I asked him if he'd seen the two tall people leave, the ones with the tattoos. Yes, he had. "I was not sure when they were leaving," I said. "Was someone with them?" At least he didn't seem suspicious. "Yes, señorita," he said. "There was another woman with them, very short, she had long blond hair." He sighed. The hair had been beautiful, and the woman underneath it, too, seemed like. "Of course," I said, as if that was what I'd expected. "Our car is still here. They must have gone in her car." "Sí," he said. "They all got into a big car. Someone else was driving." "I'm surprised I didn't hear them. I must have fallen asleep." The boy looked uneasy. "I could not hear them, either, señorita. I don't know how they were so quiet. If I hadn't woken up a little bit, I would never have known they'd walked through the lobby." "You were very tired," I said with a smile. A silence spell of some kind, I guessed. And it was lucky that the boy had kept his wakefulness a secret. I gave him a few coins and I went back to my room. He was asleep again when I came through with all my bags five minutes later. Before I started the car, I looked around. There were a few streetlights, not many, but I could see the packed dirt of the road, and there was one track that seemed to override all the others in the dust. There was only one way in and one way out of El Soledad, so I had a fifty-fifty chance of going in the right direction. When I was at the intersection where I could turn left or right on that main road, I closed my eyes and took a guess, based on the very faint prickling of the magic. For once, my little talent might come in handy. I went south because it felt right . . . and prickly. The Tourer's headlights cut a sharp path through the scrubby desert. There was one low hill in the long valley where the town lay, and it was between me and a long straight. For now, if there was a car ahead of me, the driver couldn't see my headlights. I needed them to get up all the speed I could muster. The last time I'd been in a vehicle at night, my whole crew had been killed or mortally wounded, leaving only me behind. And here I was, tracking through the night again, after my cargo had been taken hostage . . . again. I'd never imagined being in the rescue business. People hired me so they wouldn't have to be rescued. From now on that would be the case. I was clear in my mind about that. And since I was being clear, I wasn't going to trouble myself with second-guessing. I was on the right road. Going the right way. I knew it. I could drive without lights if I went slow and steady, and I decided to do that soon. If I figured correctly, the people who'd stolen Paulina and Eli had at the most an hour's head start, maybe much less. They might get out of town and stop to get some sleep, not counting on me. Maybe they believed I was asleep in my room. Maybe they were laughing about the stupid gunnie who'd left her clients to be snatched. Jackhammer was on the seat beside me, and I reached over to touch it. It was fully loaded. So was the other Winchester, and the Krag. And my Colts, slung around my waist. I was ready. My chances were not outstanding. They might drive like bats out of hell until I was hopelessly behind. But their car weighed more, loaded down with people, and it might not be as good a car. Couldn't know. After I rounded the one low hill, I'd be visible. Halfway to the other side, I switched off my lights. Time to run dark. The road would be straight from now on. I couldn't help but wince a bit about the damage the Tourer would take. When I'd been part of Tarken's crew, I'd never made the big plan. I'd never weighted profit against loss. Not my job. But it stood to reason Paulina would rather be rescued and have occasion to buy a new car, than remain captive. Far ahead I saw the headlights of another car. I was pretty damn happy. If they stopped, I'd have a chance to surprise them. Right now they were moving, but not real fast. I tried to creep up on them gradual. It was like the answer to a prayer when the headlights stopped moving. I wondered why they'd pulled over, but I drove faster than before. As long as they held still, I could catch up with them. Then I thought of the sound this car must be making in the silence of the night, now that the other one had shut off. I gently braked to a halt and turned off the engine. I leaped out, Jackhammer slung to my back, Marcial's Winchester in my right hand. I ran. It's hard to run quiet, not falling, even with the help of the moonlight. When I got closer, I stopped, listening. I heard voices, raised in dispute. Holding the leather bag tight under my arm to prevent clanking, I moved forward, real quick and light. The headlights of the other car were illuminating a big drama. A woman was yelling at the top of her lungs. "Our father will crucify you for this! You will die a traitor's death!" Yep, Paulina, all right. She was at the center of the light, her hands held in front of her, ready to cast spells. She was not wearing her vest. She was alone. Maybe they'd already killed Eli. My heart pounded so much I thought it would punch out of my chest. I was seeing, hearing, thinking, more clearly than I ever had in my life. Rifles were no good tonight. I lay them down and pulled both Colts. I got as close as I could, dodging the light, concealing myself. When I was close enough, I could see Paulina was doing a good job of keeping the three—shit, three—kidnappers busy. Eli was down on the ground, bleeding at the shoulder. A grigori, a little blond woman—the beauty seen by the desk clerk—was standing over him with her hands at the ready, looking down every few seconds, but dividing her attention by taking quick glances at Paulina, who didn't have her grigori vest. Neither did Eli. What had they done with the vests? Paulina had a lot of fight left in her. She'd gotten a tactical position, her back against a tree. Trust Paulina to find the only tree of any girth in the miles around. The other grigoris held back as though they feared her, and rightly so. One of the men, the white-haired one, was already injured, bleeding from one leg. The younger man was listing to one side, since one of his legs was clearly the worse for Paulina's attack. But the two men were standing far apart. They weren't dumb. Paulina was pitching a fit. Her voice was loud and her words were furious. But her body told me she'd had a beating, magical or with fists. She needed the tree for support, not just to keep her back guarded. I didn't know how long she could keep it up. A lot of things happened very close together. I saw Eli's hand move, and I knew he was waking up from whatever had happened to him. While Paulina was keeping their attention, I moved behind the men. I was finally in her line of sight, and I stood up. Our eyes met. She saw me. She nodded. Then Paulina carried out her own plan. Didn't matter what mine might have been. "Thanks be to God!" she yelled, pointing where I wasn't. When one of the men wheeled to look, she killed him. He died, screaming. The other guy was smarter; he didn't waste any time watching the spectacular death of his buddy, or turning to see what was behind him. He unleashed some big magic, and Paulina hit the ground like her strings had been cut. But then I shot him with a Colt, and the grigori hit the ground himself. The blonde wheeled to fight me, and Eli's hand seized her ankle, making her stagger. I shot her. She'd already launched a spell at me, but thanks to Eli, I dodged most of it. It spun me around by the left shoulder as though I'd been shot, too. So I was on the ground with everyone else. After a minute or two, I got no idea how many, I was able to move. I got to my knees, then to my feet. My shoulder was numb, but I was otherwise okay. I staggered over to the blonde. She wasn't quite dead. I shot her in the head. I would have left her whatever minutes she had remaining, but with grigoris you could never be sure what they could pull off in their last moments. Eli looked at me, and he made a move of his hand that I thought meant he was going to be fine. I was glad to accept that just now. Very slowly I worked my way around the scene to check on everybody else. The two male grigoris were dead, for sure. Paulina . . . if she was alive, it wasn't very. There might have been a very weak heartbeat, already stuttering. I went back to Eli, my best bet, and sat beside him. Then it seemed like lying down would be better. I didn't ever pass out. But I wasn't all there. The headlights of the kidnappers' car cut off after a while when the battery was drained. I could see the stars, a million of them. After a long, drifting space of time, I felt a hand holding mine. "Lizbeth?" Eli whispered. "Yeah." "I knew you'd come." "Yeah." "Paulina alive?" "I don't think so." "The others dead?" "Yeah." "Thanks." "Welcome." Then we were silent. Until I thought to ask, "Where is your vest?" "I think they burned it. We'll look. Later." "You remember talking about the shadows, the last time you used that death magic?" "Maybe," he said. "That the one at the top was the sun, the people in between the sun and the ground were the schemers, and we were the people on the ground." "Yeah, pretentious." "I don't know what that word means. But I don't believe I'm in anyone's shadow. That's all." There was another silence. "Looking at the stars?" he asked. "Yeah." "Nice." "Uh-huh." It was a long, long night. I would have liked to sleep. But I don't believe I did, at all. There were some things I should tell Eli, but maybe Paulina was alive, and I still hated her. But with great respect. I couldn't seem to make myself get up and move. Couldn't do any of the things that needed doing. The feeling was coming back in my shoulder, though it was still impossible to lift my hand. It was the weariness of this trip, the worry of every decision I'd made, the . . . everything. "Maybe I'm dying," I said. "At least we have company," Eli answered. I didn't understand. "We do?" "Each other," he said. "That's good." And it was. "Tell me," I said. "Why do people keep trying to kill us?" "Because not everyone wants the tsar to live," Eli said. It simply hadn't occurred to me that not everyone in the HRE was as enthusiastic about Alexei I as Eli and Paulina. I tried to figure this out, since Eli had fallen silent. "But Alexei's wife might have a boy," I said. "Even if he passes away in the meantime." "It might be a girl," Eli said, sounding as tired as if he'd been up for a week. "The tsarina . . . is not popular. She wasn't brought up in the Russian way, or even the English way. She doesn't have a sense of duty. She's always on holiday. Doesn't take her position seriously." "So who's the other contender?" That must be where this conversation was going. "Alexei's uncle, Grand Duke Alexander." This was really complicated, compared with our presidential race. Texoma elected a new head official every four years, and there were at least four parties, so it was a brawl, but an open brawl. "Is this Alexander married?" I asked. I could see I'd struck gold. "Yes," said Eli. "To an inappropriate woman, Sophia Feodorovna." "Not a royal." That was the most inappropriate thing I could imagine. "Correct. The grand duke's wife in Russia was a countess, and she was killed by the revolutionaries. His new wife is a common woman, a woman with whom he had three sons while they were unwed. Obviously, they were together for years before his true wife died. When Grand Duke Alexander escaped from the revolutionaries, this woman came with him. Alexander has a son by his first wife, and three by this Sophia." They'd definitely won in the kid sweepstakes. This Alexander must not be any spring chicken. His older brother, Tsar Nicholas II, had died a couple of years ago after a bout of pneumonia; Nicholas's wife, Alexandra, had preceded him in death. So I figured Grand Duke Alexander would probably be in his sixties at least. Four sons! "Are the sons healthy?" "The oldest son, Vasily, fruit of the first marriage, is now in his thirties. And married to a Russian duchess. And he has several children, including a boy. His illegitimate brothers have very strong reasons to want Vasily in power. They are not good men." "So that's why all this has happened. Because some people don't want Alexei's son, if he has one, to be ruler if Alexei dies." "Yes. That's why all this has happened." "If we get through this, you have to tell me why Oleg's blood is so necessary," I said. I fell asleep.