"The contest rules are clear," Adra told me.

"This isn't a contest, it's slaughter!"

"And the selection is random-"

"It's bullshit! Give him something else! Give him a chance-"

Soft gray eyes looked down into mine, but they weren't angry. They were watchful, curious, intent. As if he couldn't quite figure me out.

And then Rian pushed between the two of us, her beautiful face distorted by pain and fear and the same impotent rage I felt. "Let me go to him!"

Adra looked at her. "You have been pardoned."

"I renounce it!"

"We can do that?" I asked, my hands clenching on Adra's lapels.

Like Mircea's on my shoulder. "No!"

"Can we?" I asked urgently, staring up into bemused gray eyes. Because I might be able to- And then I was being jerked away, hard enough to almost send me to the floor, but for the arms caging me.

"Mircea," the consul said.

"She isn't facing that thing!"

"That's not your call!" I told him, furious. "I got him into this-"

"And now you'll stay out of it!"

"I don't answer to you!"

"You are tired," Adra said, watching me. "And your power is weak here. You have defeated one challenger, but I assure you, this one will not be so easy. Do you truly believe you can take it?"

"I know damned well Casanova can't!"

"And you would risk yourself for him?"

"Yes!"

"He is not your kind; not your responsibility."

"I'm making him mine!"

"Why? We were surprised that you would risk yourself to save your court, but they are yours: your power base, your coven. They give you strength as well as prestige. Allowing them to die would cut at both-"

"Is that honestly all you can see? All you can understand?"

"It is all most people understand. Why risk yourself for someone who is not yours? Why not sacrifice him and save yourself?"

"He's a friend-"

"You lie. You don't even like him."

"How do you-"

"We know much. We understand much. We do not understand you."

"What is so damn hard?" I said, looking down at Casanova-right down at him. Because he wasn't running anymore. He wasn't fighting. He was just standing there, below the balcony, staring up at us. Because he knew this was the only chance he had.

And it was, but I didn't know these people, didn't know what might work on them even if I'd been able to think straight. "Mircea-" I said, because he was the one with the golden tongue, the one who could talk his way out of anything.

Anything except this.

"The council will ransom him back from you," Mircea told Adra tightly, his hand clenching on my shoulder, because Casanova was his, too.

"We will?" the consul asked archly.

"Then I will ransom him!" He looked at Adra. "Name your price!"

"There is no coin you have that we want," Adra murmured, his eyes on mine. "Explain it to me," he told me.

"I . . . don't know what you want to hear."

"The truth."

"Would you believe it?"

"Try me."

I spread my hands, desperate, terrified. Because that thing was coming this way, shaking the ground as it walked, and I didn't have the words, not ones someone like Adra was likely to understand. How I'd had so few people in my life I could rely on for anything, so few who didn't use me or stab me in the back or betray me. How the few I did have were so precious, so very precious: Mircea and Pritkin, Tami and Billy, Marco, and, yes, even Casanova, surprised though he'd probably be to hear it.

"He's my friend," I said. "He helped me. I don't know what your criteria for 'friend' are, but I don't have to always like all of mine! He stood by me-grudgingly, but he did-and saved me when he didn't have to, and . . . and helped me. And now I'm supposed to turn my back on him? I'm supposed to stand here and let him die?"

Gray eyes scanned mine for a long moment, and then looked away. "No."

"No? Then I can-"

"Not you." Adra made a small motion with his head, toward the arena. "Rian."

And that was all she needed.

Before I totally understood what had happened, Rian had shed her human form and dissolved into a cloud of sparkling mist. And flown over the balcony, diving straight into the tiny form of her lover, so far below. And disappeared.

"What can she do?" the consul asked, leaning farther over the balcony.

"Watch and see," Adra said, right before we all had to fall back, when a scaly head came tearing through the balcony opening, ripping off chunks of stone, bending metal girders like aluminum foil, and sending a wash of dust and a blast of fiery-hot breath at us.

But not fire. Casanova wasn't facing a dragon, because dragons were fey, not demon. And because he wasn't that lucky.

And then Adra, who alone hadn't bothered to move, made a slight motion, and the thing pulled back, rejoining the mass of squirming, snakelike heads on the dinosaur-like body below.

At least, I assumed that it did, but since Mircea had dragged me almost to the door to the room inside, I couldn't see much.

"What is it?" I asked him, trying to see.

"Hydra."

"How do you kill it?"

"I don't know." His jaw was tight. Mircea wasn't used to being a bystander. Wasn't used to having to watch someone else fight while he stood helpless on the sidelines. Wasn't used to being the one without power in any situation.

Welcome to my world, I thought, and then Marlowe was beckoning us over.

He had rejoined the consul, who had returned to her former position as soon as the thing was gone. And appeared to be having the time of her life, kneeling on the edge of the precipice, because the railing was now mostly gone, too. There were just a few bits of curled metal and broken glass here and there, and a lot of open air with wind blowing her long dark hair around.

"It can be done," Marlowe said, looking up as we tried to find a clear spot.

"How?" I asked, staring down at that thing. And searching for Casanova, who I didn't see at all.

"Hercules did it-at least according to myth."

"Casanova is not Hercules," Mircea said grimly.

"Hercules was an idiot," the consul said. "Don't go for the heads."

"What else do you go for?" Marlowe asked as Mircea kicked some glass out of the way to make us a spot.

"The heart. It only has one of those."

"According to myth, the body would live as long as a single head remained."

"Have you ever known anything that can live without a heart?" she demanded. "Including us?"

"No, but . . ." Marlowe looked around. He was still in the rumpled reddish suit from yesterday, only it was more rumpled now. Like his windblown curls, which were flying everywhere. And those dark eyes, which seemed to be having trouble deciding what to focus on. "I'm beginning to think my expertise . . . may need an upgrade," he finally said.

"You really think that'll work?" I asked the consul, my heart in my throat.

She looked up, and for once, for maybe the first time ever, she was smiling. No, she was grinning. "Tell him to carve it out and we'll see."

Sounded like a plan to me.

If we could find him. But it was like he'd simply vanished. The creature seemed to think so, too, prowling around the arena, the many heads stretching in all directions. Including into the stands in a few cases, lunging at demons who spilled back out of the way, causing what looked like tidal flows in the crowd.

But there was no Casanova.

"Can she make him invisible?" I asked, wondering what kind of trick Rian was pulling.

"No," Mircea told me. "Or, if she can, she has never chosen to do so in four hundred years."

"What can she do?" I asked, because I didn't think normal incubus powers were likely to help here. In fact, I didn't know what would, minus an army. Which Rian didn't have.

"What can he do?" Adra asked, coming over. And dropping down between the consul and me, to swing his legs over the opening.

"What?"

"What abilities does he have?"

"What difference does that make?" Nothing he had was going to help him now.

But Adra didn't seem to agree.

"It makes all the difference. That is what possession does. Occasionally, yes, it can give you powers you wouldn't normally have. But far more often, it simply increases the ones you do have."

"Increases by how much?" Marlowe asked sharply.

Adra smiled at him and kicked his legs some more.

The consul wasn't the only one having a good time, I thought.

"That would depend on the demon," Adra said. "But while incubi are not among the more powerful of our kind, Rian has been on earth for a rather . . . extended stay. She has acquired a great deal of power, and therefore has more to lend."

"But what can she do?" I repeated.

Adra shrugged. "What can your vampire do?" he asked again. "Possession for humans will not increase their power greatly since, you'll forgive me, they have little to enhance. But a vampire . . . well. Strength, speed, all the senses, and any master's powers the vampire may have would be greatly augmented."

"You know about master's powers?" the consul asked.

Adra looked at her. "My dear."

"How greatly?" Marlowe repeated.

Adra shrugged. "See for yourself."

And, suddenly, we were. Casanova stepped out from behind the giant, hollowed-out shell, which by now was all that remained of his former opponent. He looked impossibly tiny from what had to be a couple of football fields away. Unlike his opponent, which saw him at almost the same moment we did, and went boiling down the length of the arena toward him.

"Mircea-" I said, gripping his hand.

"I've told him what we know. It will be enough or it will not."

He sounded calm, but his hand was almost squeezing mine in two.

But I hardly noticed, because the hydra had already crossed one football field's worth and was tearing up the second, and Casanova still just stood there. Not flinching, not moving, not panicking. Not doing anything-until the creature was almost on top of him. And then he moved, so fast I couldn't even track him with my eyes.

But I could track the results.

The giant beetle shell suddenly popped up out of the ground and went sailing through the air, cutting a dark swath across the arena like a massive Frisbee. A massive Frisbee with a knifelike edge and enough force behind it to have bisected a mountain-or a dozen thick, snakelike necks, snipping them off like tender flower stems.

Heads rolled everywhere, rivers of blood spurted, and a tiny figure of a man leapt for the thrashing body before it could regrow anything it had lost. I didn't see what he used for a knife-maybe another piece of shell. But whatever it was, it worked, piercing deep and sending the thing rolling onto its back, writhing in a spreading stain while the crowd went wild and Casanova stabbed it, over and over like a madman, until he was coated with as much black gore as the sand.