While most of his attention was on his opponent, Adam was aware that the room had burst into motion as soon as the tablecloth had announced the beginning of the battle. Bonarata had taken control and was ushering his people out of the room as quickly as possible.

—

MATT HELPED THE NONCOMBATANTS—HUMAN, VAMPIRE, and other—get out of the room. Interestingly enough, Bonarata was doing the same thing.

When they both helped a young woman to her feet, Bonarata tried to catch his eye—Matt supposed he couldn’t help himself. There was always a lot of debate about what advantages the vampires might have over werewolves. Matt had always felt that it was the need most wolves had to establish dominance by meeting eyes. It was handy with other wolves, quite often preventing bloodshed or misunderstandings. But doing it with a vampire was a mistake.

Matt’s beast was cannier than that. Matt said something to the sobbing woman and handed her over to another woman—and the two hurried out of the dining hall.

A vampire who’d been pulling a table out of harm’s way bumped into Bonarata—and the Lord of Night grabbed the other vampire and broke his neck. Reaching out with a casual hand, Bonarata broke off a chair leg—there was getting to be a lot of broken furniture around—and stabbed the helpless vampire through the heart.

A second assassin launched himself from the top of a nearby table. But before he got close to his target, Larry the goblin, in a very ungoblin-like public display of why one should never underestimate goblins, leaped on top of the diving vampire and beheaded him with a garrote. The body, both parts, dropped to the floor just behind Bonarata, with Larry crouched on top of the biggest part.

Bonarata spun, already poised to kill whoever was behind him. Seeing the tableau there, the canny old vampire came to the right conclusion and stopped his attack before Harris had to give up his life by being stuck through with a chair leg that would otherwise have impaled Larry. Bonarata gave both goblins a shallow bow of thanks and turned his attention back to clearing the room of nonessential personnel.

—

ADAM’S ATTENTION WAS ON HIS OPPONENT, BUT HE was aware when some sort of scuffle around Larry erupted in blood, but Larry was still on his feet at the end of it. Adam had to trust he could take care of himself.

One of the diners, a human, passed by Guccio too closely. He casually backhanded her with his left hand. She collapsed to the floor in a broken heap. Dead, Adam judged grimly, before she hit the floor.

But he had no time to mourn for a nameless stranger. Guccio whirled the tablecloth quickly overhead and cast its spreading folds at Adam, then he rushed in right behind it.

It was a classic two-pronged attack: dealing with either threat left one vulnerable to the other, and if Adam tried to move fast enough to counter both, he risked losing his footing. Rather than trust the treacherous floor, then, Adam jumped backward, onto the table he’d so recently been eating at. He landed near the back edge of the table.

He leaned a little and added a little extra thrust with his legs, which pulled the table over with him on top. He grabbed Guccio’s tablecloth and rode the table to the ground, putting the upended piece of furniture between him and Guccio.

The vampire leaped into the air like a demented ballet dancer, soaring neatly over the table. He aimed a kick at Adam’s leg as he brought the dagger down in a sweeping slash at Adam’s neck with inhuman speed.

Adam was happy he wasn’t human, either. He twisted his hips and pivoted to avoid the kick and snapped the tablecloth at Guccio’s blade. The kick missed completely, and the tablecloth fouled the dagger strike, so it missed its target and only sliced a burning line across Adam’s shoulder.

Guccio’s momentum carried him past Adam and he stopped a few feet away, raising the wetted dagger to his forehead in a mocking salute that claimed first blood. As he stepped back from the salute, he stumbled on an overturned chair and was momentarily distracted.

Adam moved in with a strong front kick, but the wolf, catching some motion that seemed wrong, warned him. Adam aborted just in time to avoid being hamstrung when the vampire brought the dagger up between them. The stumble had been a feint, and it had nearly worked.

Adam pulled the kick but had to struggle to control his forward momentum. Guccio took advantage of Adam’s lost balance and used the pommel of the dagger to strike at Adam’s head. Adam blocked the dagger, but not the knee that drove into his stomach.

It hurt, with a dull pain that built to a crescendo, darkening his vision in waves that ebbed and flowed. Vampires were almost as fun to fight as werewolves.

—

WITH THE ROOM MOSTLY EMPTY, MATT GAVE HIMSELF over to the spectator sport in the center of the cleared floor.

Guccio was an excellent fighter; there was no doubt of that. But once in a while there comes a fighter, human or other, so beautiful to watch that he turns the fight into great art, something that Matt felt a privilege and honor to watch. Sugar Ray Robinson had been such a fighter, both graceful and powerful. Matt had seen Robinson fight many times, as often as Matt could manage.

Adam Hauptman was another of Robinson’s ilk.

He moved no more than he had to in order to avoid an attack, a half inch here, a quarter there. He stayed mostly on the defensive, letting the vampire give away his secrets. Neither Adam’s face nor his body gave anything away, and he appeared relaxed and in control—not a usual sight for a werewolf in a fight against an opponent as good as Guccio de’ Medici, who was from a cadet branch of that very famous family, Matt was given to understand. Harris had been a wealth of information about Bonarata’s people.