A curl of crimson smoke engulfed her leg and quickly climbed up her body. An instant later, where a relatively young woman had stood, a wizened old crone remained, her life sucked into the smoke that was now returning to its container. She clutched a withered hand to her breast and sank to her knees as I bounded up the ramp, scooping up my now bright yellow marble as I went. I didn’t need the life it contained, but someone else would pay a high price for it, possibly enough to let me recoup my losses on this rescue. Dislocators aren’t cheap.

The other mage, the one with leathery skin and a face like a fortyish prizefighter, yelled something. An instant later, what felt like a giant fist slammed into my face, picking me up and throwing me a dozen yards from the plane. I hit the tarmac with a thud, after doing a few disorienting flips midair. The impact resounded all through me, causing me to bite my lip hard enough to taste blood. I looked up at the mage, who was vaulting over the banister toward me like some action-movie hero, and grinned. I never really got into a fight until there was a little pain.

“Sopor!” the mage yelled, long before getting anywhere near me. I hadn’t known the other word he’d used, but this one was another story. I felt a surge of lethargy start to creep up my spine, threatening to send me off to see the sandman for the very last time, and turning my limbs numb and useless in the process. It might have worked except that I’d dealt with this spell before. I bit down hard on my shredded lower lip and the sharp pain caused the sluggishness to recede slightly.

Fighting mages is never as straightforward as I would like. I prefer a nice physical contest where it’s mostly about strength, speed and who has the best moves. With mages, it’s about who has the nastiest toys. Considering that I was facing a dark war mage, I had no doubt at all that his toy collection rivaled mine, which was why I ignored the impulse to have some fun and just threw the knife I pulled out of my boot. The guy didn’t even flinch or try to duck, acting under the assumption, I suppose, that his shields would stop it. They would have, if I hadn’t paid a small fortune to have it enchanted.

That’s the problem with magical protection—it’s only as good as the mage who cast it, and it is no help whatsoever if your opponent’s mojo is stronger than yours. Luckily, my spell had been worth the price. The last emotion on the man’s face before he hit the tarmac was surprise as he looked down at the blade that was sticking out of his heart.

I retrieved my knife and ran back to the ramp, shaking my head to get rid of the last of the stupor, but the remaining mage had slipped past the ship’s defenses while I was preoccupied. I found him inside, engaged in a tussle with Louis-Cesare. I barely noticed them, or the ransacked state of the plane. My whole attention was focused on the battered pilot, who was staring in horror at a small box wired into the floor near the cockpit. It said 01:34 when I first glanced in his direction, and 01:33 a second later.

The pilot’s legs were shattered, with a femur sticking out of the dark blue material of his once nicely pressed trousers. I grabbed him and glanced around. “Anyone else on board?”

He blinked at me but didn’t answer. He didn’t appear to be in pain, which meant that either Louis-Cesare had given him a suggestion or he was in shock. Either way, I doubted he’d be much help, but figured it was worth a shot.

I gave him a little shake, and pointed at the bomb. “Can you disable that thing?”

“I don’t know.” He blinked dilated eyes. “If I had more time, maybe…”

I took in the guy’s dull expression and pale, sweaty face. When I first met him, I didn’t think he looked like someone who should be working for a bunch of blood-sucking monsters, with his sandy blond hair, sun-reddened cheeks and heavy squint that somehow failed to clash with his open, friendly smile. He looked more the part now. “Let’s go,” I said, slinging him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. It left my hands free for weapons, and I assumed I’d need them.

“Dorina! I ordered you to wait!” Louis-Cesare shot me a look while dodging a blow from the mage in front of him. It looked like a standoff to me, since the mage’s shields were deflecting the vamp’s blows, but Louis-Cesare was too fast for the mage to hit. The guy might have used something a bit nastier than the long knife he was carrying, had he not been in a magically sealed area. I couldn’t risk using my toys for the same reason—it was too easy for them to backfire given the wards the Senate had put up.

“Leave him!” I yelled at Louis-Cesare. “We have to go!”

“You go,” he replied, making another useless slash with his rapier. “Jonathan dies today.”

I glanced at the mage, whose cloaking spell had dropped, since he was using all his extra strength to maintain his shields. The two men were nearly the same height, but the mage’s leanness and slim shoulders made him seem smaller. I cataloged him automatically: short white-blond hair, big gray eyes, even bigger nose, pale face; no, I didn’t know him. But then, I try to stay away from mages in general and dark ones in particular.

“We have to get clear before that thing goes off or we’ll all die!” I gestured at the bomb, which now read 00:52. “Come on!”

Louis-Cesare and his opponent both looked at the clock; then the mage decided on the better part of valor and bolted for the door. I didn’t try to stop him; I was too busy following hard on his heels. Louis-Cesare trailed after me, dragging the limp body of the cabin attendant with him, and the three of us ran full out for the chain-link fence near the runway. The mage, unencumbered by bodies, reached it first and vaulted over. Louis-Cesare dropped the steward and sailed after him, jumping across the eight-foot fence like it wasn’t even there.

I dropped the captain beside his coworker just as the plane exploded in an eruption of orange flame and black smoke. Several white-hot bits of metal collided with my back after I moved to shield the captain. I was reaching for the steward when a flying piece of silver sliced through his forehead, scalping him before embedding itself in the fence post behind his head. I huddled over the captain’s still-breathing body and waited it out. Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

Half an hour later, we were in a shiny new Mustang heading for Vegas. It had been chosen because of the heavy UV coating on the windows, but it also came equipped with a manual transmission. I had stared at it doubtfully after we located it in the rental office’s vast lot.

“You should have let me steal something. I don’t drive a stick.”

“I’m driving,” Louis-Cesare said, sliding into the low seat as easily as if he’d done it a hundred times. “You’re drunk.”

I wished. “I had all of two beers, mostly for the water content.”

“If you needed water, why didn’t you drink water?”

“I don’t like water.”

“Get in or stay here, Dorina.”

I got in. I wanted to be there when he told the Senate that we’d destroyed a million-dollar aircraft in less than a day. I rode shotgun, while our two passengers took up the backseat. One was the captain, who had gone to sleep after a little suggestion from Louis-Cesare; the other was the only dark mage, other than Jonathan, to have survived the explosion. If you want to call it that.

Louis-Cesare had insisted on bringing him along, but the guy was giving me the willies. The foot growing out of the side of his neck and the fact that he now literally had eyes in the back of his head probably had something to do with that. After five minutes of hearing him scream, I’d had enough and knocked him unconscious.

“So, who’s Jonathan?” I asked, fiddling with the air vents to get them as wide open as possible. The sun was so hot I could taste it, and the road shimmered in front of us like an undulating black snake. It was the kind of heat that made newspaper headlines and started people making dire predictions about global warming. I had brought the rest of the six-pack along, but like me, the bottle in my hand was already sweating heavily.