Dark blood poured from the wound, flowing as steadily as if his heart still beat. It covered the knife, his hands, and his clothes with a murky crimson liquid. Soon I wasn't even staring at that, however. I was staring with growing incomprehension as the red-smeared powdery substance that was the bones of the men who'd died began to separate, expand...and then form into figures.
"Madre de Dios," I heard Juan mutter, breaking Mencheres's edict of silence.
My own thought was less religiously charitable:What the hell is going on?
Before my gaze, it looked like ghosts formed, shrouding Mencheres. He was muttering something in a language I couldn't even begin to recognize, and those hazy forms kept increasing. They grew until they looked like shadows come to life, because I could still see through them, but they were three-dimensional, all right. Three-dimensional figures of opaque, naked men. One of them turned, and Bones let out a soft groan.Randy, I thought in shock.That's Randy!
More of them formed from the bone dust that coated Mencheres. He kept the knife in his chest, the wound continuing to bleed, until I wondered how he still had any juice left in him. But the more he bled, the less hazy the figures looked, until I could pick out every wraithlike person. There was Tick Tock, just a little to the side of Zero, oh God, Randy...
Only when all twenty-three people who'd been killed the night before stood around him did Mencheres pull the knife out and speak.
"These are not our friends. They don't recognize any of you, and they have no memory of their former lives. They are the mindless rage that lingers in the remains of all murdered people, and I have yanked that rage from their bones and given it form. They will be drawn to their murderer with the single-minded purpose of revenge. All we have to do once I release them...is follow them. They will lead us right to Patra no matter where she hides."
I'd barely wrapped my mind around that before Mencheres said an unknown word and the wraiths shot up into the night like they'd been fired from ghostly cannons. Wow, were they fast. How were we supposed to follow them?
Mencheres stood, raising his arms-and I screamed. The ground was twenty feet away...thirty...fifty...more...
"We need to hurry," I heard him say amid my whipping my head around to see that every person who'd been standing on the lawn was now airborne and being hurtled through the night as if by invisible jet streams. "They will find her soon."
Patra was holed up in an abandoned hotel about eighty miles away as the crow flies. Or in this case, the undead. Bones had me grasped to him, but it wasn't out of need, since Mencheres was still pushing all of us along with an amount of power that was truly mind-boggling. In my wildest imaginings, I hadn't known it was possible for a vampire to do these things, but here we were, following on the magic carpet of Mencheres's power behind the vengeance-filled wraiths he'd raised. Later I'd ponder the significance of that. Like when I wrote my report to Don and watched him faint while reading it.
The hotel was in the middle of a city slum. From the sounds, not many people lived here. In fact, this area was probably going to be razed for new construction soon, because I caught glimpses of bulldozers and other such equipment scattered around. Mencheres brought us down about a hundred yards from the hotel. How did he know it was where Patra was? Because the wraiths flew right into it, moving through the walls like they weren't even there. Neat trick. Sure beat taking the stairs.
"You must cut through her people," he rasped to Bones, gesturing to the building. "I can't go with you. If I am killed, the wraiths will fade, and they are the only things stopping Patra from fighting against you."
They were sure doing something, I knew that. Moments after they'd disappeared into the hotel, there were the most horrible ear-splitting screams.
"Why don't you just kill her yourself?" I blurted. "If you can raise vengeful spirits and levitate two dozen people almost eighty miles, she should be a piece of cake."
Mencheres seemed to fall onto the sidewalk. "I can't," he whispered. "Even now, I can't."
A brief surge of pity filled me before I squelched it. He might still love Patra, but she didn't return the sentiment, and we'd all be dead unless that woman was in the ground.
Bones gave him a cold, quick glance. "I'll keep my promise. We'll get you when it's over. Juan, Dave, you stay with him. Make sure no one comes near."
Juan started to protest being left behind, but a warning glare cut him off. Then Bones cracked his knuckles and faced the hotel.
"All right, mates. Let's end this."
Patra might have had several guards around the perimeter of the hotel. She might have had some in windows, on the roof, in the basement, and manning the entrance. But if nothing else, having twenty-three pissed-off wraiths suddenly swarm the hotel made for a hell of a distraction. In addition to Patra's ceaseless screaming-what were theydoing to her?-there were the scrambling sounds of multiple people running up the stairs, new shouts, an eruption of gunfire, and several odd popping noises. I cast a look at Bones and thought,Huh? The rage-wrought specters weren't even solid, what could they be doing that would make it sound like World War Three in there?
Bones shrugged. "One way to find out."
Once we reached the building's entrance, whatever guards had been stationed there were gone. Spade frowned, shaking his head.Trap, he was saying. I took four grenades from my belt, pulled the pins, and then chucked them inside. Second later, glass shattered and the building shook as they detonated. Whoever might have been waiting for us wasn't there now.
We rushed in, the vampires fanning out to the sides. Bones and I kept low but raced forward. Those screams and awful noises from several floors up got louder. Finally we saw about a dozen vampires burst through an entryway under what I supposed was the grand staircase. They went down in a hail of silver before they even had a chance to back up.
"Where is everyone?" I said low to Bones. Aside from that paltry dozen, the downstairs seemed shockingly vacant.
Bones cocked his head. "There are more upstairs that I can hear. Something's got them in shambles. It must be the wraiths, but I can't imagine how."
I agreed it sounded like a Chinese fire drill upstairs. People were screaming, footsteps were thundering up and back, and there were more of those popping noises that were like nothing I'd heard before them. Whatever was going on, Patra was still alive. She was the one screaming the loudest.
Bones held out three fingers, indicating the group was to split up. Eight of us would take the stairs, another eight would climb the exterior of the building, and the remaining eight would go up the elevator shafts. It sounded like the most activity was about nine floors up, near the top of the building, so that's where we were headed.