They both made a hissing sound that no human could quite have duplicated. Kyle pushed Kelly roughly back behind him, where she remained, her soft-looking hands pressed to her stomach, her eyes flooded entirely black and empty of humanity. Kyle stalked toward me and thrust the envelope at me. I swallowed my fear, lowered my blasting rod, and took it.
"Your business here is complete," I told him. "Blow."
"You'd better be there, Dresden," Kyle snarled, pacing back to his sister's side. "My lady will be most upset if you are not."
"I told you to blow, Kyle." I lifted my hand, gathered my anger and my fear as handy sources of fuel, and said, quietly, "Ventas servitas."
Energy flowed out of me. Wind roared up in response to my command, and whipped out toward the pair of vampires, carrying a cloud of dust and dirt and debris with it. They both staggered, lifting a hand to shield their eyes against flying particles.
As the wind faded I sagged, wearied by the effort of moving that much air, and watched the vampires gather their wits and blink their eyes clear. Their perfect tennis whites were stained, their beautiful complexions were mussed, and best of all, their flawless hair was standing up every which way.
They hissed at me and crouched, bodies oddly balanced and held with an inhuman lightness. Then there was a blur of tennis whites, and they were gone.
I didn't assume that they had left until I let my senses drift out from me, tasting the air for the cold energy that had surrounded them. It had faded, as well. Only then, when I was absolutely sure they were gone, did I relax. Well, it felt like simple relaxing - but generally when I relax, I don't stagger and need to plant my staff firmly on the ground to keep from falling over. I stood there like that for a second, my head swimming.
"Wow." Susan came toward me, her face concerned. "Harry, you sure know how to make friends."
I wobbled a little, hardly able to stand. "I don't need friends like that."
She got close enough for me to lean on, and spared my ego by slipping underneath my arm as though for my protection. "Are you all right?"
"Tired. I've been working too hard tonight. Must have gotten out of shape."
"Can you walk?"
I gave her a smile that probably looked strained, and started walking toward the stairs leading down to my apartment. Mister, my grey cat, came flying over the ground from the darkness somewhere and threw himself fondly against my legs. Thirty pounds of cat is a lot of fondness, and I had to have Susan's help to keep from falling over. "Eating small children again, Mister?"
My cat meowed, then padded down the stairs and pawed at the door.
"So," Susan said. "The vampires are throwing a party."
I fished my keys out of my duster's pocket. I unlocked the door to the old place, and Mister bolted inside. I shut the door behind us, and stared wearily at my living room. The fire had died down to glowing embers, but still shed red-golden light over everything. I decorated my apartment in textures, not colors, in any case. I like the smooth grain of old woods, the heavy tapestries on the bare stone walls. The chairs are all thickly padded and comfortable looking, and rugs are strewn over the bare stone floor in a variety of materials, patterns, and weaves, from Arabian to Navajo.
Susan helped me hobble in until I could collapse on my plushly cushioned couch. She took my staff and blasting rod from me, wrinkling her nose at the charred smell, and set them in the corner next to my cane sword. Then she came back over to me and knelt down, flashing a lot of bare, pretty leg. She took my boots off, and I groaned as my feet came free.
"Thanks," I said.
She plucked the envelope from my hand. "Could you get the candles?"
I groaned, for an answer, and she sniffed. "Big baby. You just want to see me walk around in this skirt."
"Guilty," I said. She quirked a smile at me, and went to the fireplace. She added a few logs to it from the old tin hod, and then stirred the embers with a poker until licks of flame came up. I don't have any electric lights in my apartment. Gadgets go out so often that there's no point in constantly replacing them. My refrigerator is an old-style icebox. The kind with ice. I shuddered to think of what I could do to gas lines.
So, I lived without heat, except for my fireplace, and without hot water, without electricity. The curse of a wizard. It saves on the utilities bills, I have to admit, but it can be damned inconvenient.
Susan had to bend down far over the fire to thrust a long candlestick's tip down into the small flames. The orange light curved around the lean muscles of her legs in a fashion I found positively fascinating, even as wearied as I was.
Susan rose with the lighted candle in her hand and cast a smirk at me. "You're staring, Harry."
"Guilty," I said again.
She lit several candles on the mantel from the first, and then opened the white envelope, frowning. "Wow," she said, and held the invitation inside up to the light. I couldn't make out the words, but they had that white-yellow glint that you only get from true gold. "The bearer, Wizard Harry Dresden, and an escort of his choosing are hereby courteously invited to a reception ... I didn't think they used invitations like this anymore."
"Vampires. They can be a couple hundred years out of style and not notice."
"Harry," Susan said. She flicked the invitation against the heel of her hand a couple of times. "You know, something occurs to me."
My brain tried to stir from its congealment. Some instinct twitched, warning me that Susan was up to something. "Um," I said, blinking my eyes in an effort to clear my thoughts. "I hope you're not thinking what a great opportunity it would be for you to go to the ball."
Her eyes glinted with something very much like lust. "Think of it, Harry. There could be beings there hundreds of years old. I could get enough stories from a half hour of chat to last me - "
"Hang on, Cinderella," I said. "In the first place, I'm not going to the ball. In the second, even if I was I wouldn't take you with me."
Her back straightened and she put one fist on her hip. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"
I winced. "Look, Susan. They're vampires. They eat people. You've got no idea how dangerous it would be for me there - or for you, for that matter."
"What about what Kyle said? The guarantee of your safety?"
"Talk is cheap," I said. "Look, everyone in the old circles is big on the old laws of courtesy and hospitality. But you can only trust them to adhere to the letter of the law. If I happened to get served a bad batch of mushrooms, or someone drove by and filled the whole place with bullets and I was the only mortal there, they'd just say, 'Oh my, what a terrible shame. So sorry, really, it won't happen again. »