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.Before my first thrall, I got faces, names, andrelative ages.With practice, I learned to get a whole lot more.During my short time in France, Aarika d taught me to weed out the bloodsuckers thatspoke only French from the ones that just didn t want to let on that they understood English.Jean-Philippe was one of the latter.He and his goons sped up.Vampires in France were faster than the ones back home, but they also weren tas strong.His goon squad tore into me, and my own speed increased.Every other vampire I know can speed up at will; it s decision based, likediving for home or going from a walk to a run.They re just always that fast if they want to be.My powers are a little less fickle than they once were, now that I have a memento mori.The closer I am to Fang, the more reliable my powers.QED, the farther I am away from him, the more flaky they are.And since from Paris to Void City is about four thousand five hundred miles.I thinkyou get the picture.Total flakesville.They ripped and tore at me, but despite the pain I wasn t concerned.It s hard to kill a Vlad if you don t know how, and even harder to kill anEmperor like me.I could remember being staked, beheaded, burned alive, dowsed in holy water, and even blown up by blessed charges of C4 bypeople and things with a much greater desire to see me dead than these fashion victims.No, I wasn t worried.I caught two vampires by theirthroats, one in each hand, and roared as I squeezed, fingers sinking through the flesh to touch the bony spine beneath.A sharp, high-velocity flick ofthe wrist sent their heads right off onto the metal floor.See? There s the speed! It worked for a whole second.Anger seems to help.So much forSingin in the Rain.Twin jets of blood splattered the Eiffel Tower s brown girders.Jean-Philippe went into instant retreat, turned into a bat, and flew.One thing I hadlearned about French vampires was that they didn t try to kill each other.It was about skill and who was better, not like in the States.Compared tothem we re animals, unless you count some of the nonfatal punishments they come up with to entertain each other.It wasn t surprising that Jean-Philippe would run once he realized I was the crazy American vampire that la B:te du G9vaudan had given a free pass.It came as a total shockthat his five remaining buddies tried to cover his escape.I locked eyes with one of the Drones and ordered,  Allez! I hadn t been able to kill a Drone since the werewolves killed.I don t know.somebody important.A guy, I think? Name starts with a K? I couldn t remember his face, yet all of their faces reminded me of his, the dull littlegleam to their eyes, the light that had gone out rather than burning brighter.I just couldn t do it.The first Drone ran and the second one went withhim before I d even sent the order.That left me and the last three Soldiers.They fought well, and they were used to working together.One of them favored some kind of freaky kickboxing.It was cool and deadly.I ve hadvery little martial training since Korea.Fortunately for me, turning into the uber vamp is something of an equalizer, even if it does take a little bit forthe old uber vamp juice to get flowing.My skin went gray, moving steadily toward black, and I grew in size.Fancy-Footwork Boy kicked me off the Eiffel Tower (my fault for letting mymind wander) and the transformation sped up.Purple-eyed and grinning, I flew back toward the three Soldiers.In France they call them lesChevaliers.Even with the fuzzy state of my brain, I remembered that it meant  knights. I also recalled the name of the kickboxing style SoldierNumber One had been using on me.It was called savate.It s funny, the things I remember.He kicked me in the head and it crossed my eyes.Notthat I haven t taken an injury like that before.This time something was different.There was a pop and a hiss, followed by a strong odor, gunpowder and something else and then more pain,hot and burning all through my sinuses, as if someone had lit a pair of bottle rockets and shot them up my nose.Pop.Hiss.Ow.I felt another vampire, a Vlad.She was on Aarika in seconds, moving with impressive speed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]