But if I were focusing on the greater good . . . “Sure,” I said, glad that I didn’t sound surly. “I want to talk more about our ancestors, anyway.”
I was going to attempt linking to Mircea as soon as Gretchen was safely secured and I had some uninterrupted time, but if that didn’t work, Leotie was almost a thousand years old and she knew more about magic than anyone I’d met before her.
Maybe, just maybe, she also knew where we could find some necromancers.
Chapter 25
Under other circumstances, I would have loved the cabin Ian brought us to. It was on top of a small mountain, and in addition to its sweeping, long-range views, it also had a helicopter pad and hangar. How convenient, if we had one of those. The log cabin blended in beautifully with its wooded surroundings, and the floor-to-ceiling windows showed off the majesty of the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond. It also had the exact number of bedrooms we needed so that no one had to double up. More importantly, it had a basement. A special one.
Vlad had taught me the advantage of building a home on top of a rock foundation. Nothing beat tons and tons of solid stone if you needed to vampire-proof a place. This house lacked the huge, underground dungeon that Vlad’s castle had, but it did have a small, underground room surrounded by enough solid rock to secure even a bloodthirsty new vampire.
That’s where Maximus and I put Gretchen. Maximus set her down on the single pallet the narrow room contained. I didn’t speak as he then secured Gretchen’s wrists and ankles to the shackles the room also came equipped with. I hated seeing Gretchen chained like an animal, yet it was the safest choice.
Ian had left to round up blood bags since he knew the area and we didn’t. I fervently hoped that he got back before Gretchen rose. I remembered all too well the agonizing, all-consuming hunger I’d woken up with as a brand-new vampire, and I’d only had to wait seconds before my first liquid meal. If Gretchen had to wait hours before hers . . . well, we’d need to have her chained. Otherwise, she’d mindlessly try to bash her way out of this chamber no matter if she broke every bone in her body.
When Maximus was finished, he sat down on the floor and handed me the keys to both the underground room and Gretchen’s shackles. “You need to lock me in here with her, Leila.”
“I’m staying,” I said at once.
He gave me a jaded look. “Gretchen will be worse than rabid when she wakes and these chains aren’t as strong as I’d prefer.”
“She’s my sister,” I said quietly. “I want to be here for her.”
He grunted. “I get that, but you wouldn’t be helping. When Gretchen goes into a feeding frenzy, I can’t worry about restraining her and protecting you. Besides, you must be exhausted. You should catch a few hours of rest while you can.”
I wanted to argue more, but Maximus was only reminding me of what I already knew. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was abandoning my sister, even if Maximus was right. I would only be in the way when Gretchen went rabid, and she would. If she escaped her chains, Maximus had the brute strength to handle her without harming her or getting harmed himself. My methods of self-defense could kill her, and I’d had two near-blowups with my voltage today already. No point in tempting a third.
“Fine,” was all I said. “Text me if you need anything, and let me know when she wakes up.”
I leaned down and kissed my sister’s forehead. Her flesh was now cooler than mine and she no longer gave off the low energy field all humans had. For all intents and purposes, she was dead, and Maximus had done this to her. All at once, I understood my father’s anger at Vlad for changing me. It might be irrational because both Gretchen and I had asked for this, yet the urge to punish the person who’d killed—even temporarily—someone you loved was as strong as it was unreasonable.
Once back upstairs, I grabbed my suitcase and went looking for a bedroom that hadn’t already been claimed. As it turned out, they’d left me the master suite on the top floor, and I eyed the comfy-looking bed almost lustfully.
I might have built up my fortitude so that dawn no longer knocked me unconscious, but I was still exhausted. Daylight made all of our kind tired. That’s how the rumor that vampires couldn’t go out in the sun got started. My being a mere half a year undead only made the weariness that much worse.
“I’m taking a nap,” I called down to Marty and Leotie, then closed the bedroom door. But instead of crawling into the king-sized bed like I wanted to, I sat on the floor in front of it. I had a little time where I wouldn’t be interrupted, so I’d try reconnecting to Mircea.
I was about to close my eyes to increase my concentration when a photo on the nearby nightstand caught my eye. It showed a beautiful redhead with her arms around an equally attractive man. They both looked so happy and perfect, the picture could have come with the frame, but I recognized them. For starters, they were at my wedding. More importantly, the redhead had helped Vlad bust me out of Szilagyi’s prison a few months ago.
Could Bones and Cat be the owners of this house? I looked around, spying another photo of them on the opposite nightstand. Must be. How ironic that they were the friends Ian had referred to. He truly ran in varied circles.
Then I pushed that out of my mind and refocused on Mircea. I didn’t have anything of his to touch while I tried linking to him, but I hadn’t needed his essence imprint when I’d reached him earlier. Maybe the spell that bound me to Mircea was enough of a link. It made sense; I didn’t need Vlad’s essence imprint to reach him psychically, either. My deepest tie to Vlad came from the blood he’d given me to raise me as a vampire.
If the same were true with the spell binding me to Mircea, all I had to do to reach him was concentrate on him personally. I cast my mind back to the brief moments I’d spent with Mircea, trying to summon up a picture of him in my mind.
He didn’t look like the most dangerous sorcerer you’d ever meet. Mircea might even have been a couple years younger than Gretchen when he was changed. He also had a cockiness that probably came from lots and lots of women fawning over him. Mircea’s biological father had been called Radu the Handsome, and according to Vlad, Mircea was the spitting image of him. Mircea’s too-pretty face was set off by inky black curls and copper-colored eyes that would have been identical to Vlad’s, if their irises also had emerald rings around them.
But they didn’t, and that was the least of their dissimilarities. Sure, both Vlad and Mircea could be brutal and mercurial, but Vlad always had a good reason for his actions. Mircea was cruel for cruelty’s sake. I’d spent less than an hour in his presence, yet it had been enough to show me that there was something permanently broken inside him. Despite centuries of war, death, power struggles, betrayals, and loss, Vlad had managed to keep both his heart and soul intact—
And I obviously missed him since I was now thinking more about him than Mircea. I gritted my teeth and tried again, forcing everyone else from my mind. Come on, Mircea. I know you’re out there. Let me find you.
I sat that way until Ian came back with the blood bags over an hour later. Then I went downstairs and opened the stone cell to hand them off to Maximus. Gretchen still hadn’t woken up, thank God, so after giving Maximus the bags, I sealed them back in. Ian left again, saying he had to go to another hospital farther away to get more blood. That was fine with me because I wanted to get back to my attempts to reach Mircea. It had taken me a long time to reach Vlad only using our inner tie, but I’d done it. I’d do it again with Mircea, now that I knew I could.
I was deep into my second attempt when my cell phone rang. My eyes snapped open, and I was surprised to see it was now completely dark outside. I’d been concentrating so hard that hours must have slipped by. This was probably Maximus calling to say that Gretchen had risen. But when I put my current-repelling glove back on my right hand to answer my cell, I didn’t see Maximus’s name over the number on the screen. It was Vlad’s.
“Um, hi.” The inane greeting was ridiculous, but what else could I say? I sure as hel
l couldn’t ask how his day had gone.
“The hotel e-mailed,” he said, his flat, impassive tone telling me nothing of what he was feeling. “All of you checked out this morning instead of tomorrow. Why?”
I didn’t want to talk about our earlier-than-anticipated checkout, and I couldn’t imagine that he really did, either. All I wanted to do was ask about Samir, but I didn’t. If Vlad was finally returning my calls, then he’d already killed him. Period. My throat tightened and I fought to keep the evidence of that from showing in my voice. I was so angry at him for everything he’d done to thwart me from trying to save Samir, and yet I didn’t want him to hear my burgeoning tears. He had to be in torment, too, even if he did sound rigidly cold.
“There was too much damage to the room to stay” was what I said, glad there were no cracks or wavers in my voice.
“Ah.”
Neither of us said anything after that. Instead, the silence filled with everything we couldn’t bring ourselves to say. Once, I heard him take in a breath as if about to speak, but then there was only more silence.
“I’m furious with you,” I finally said when the building tension became unbearable. “When this is over, we’re going to have a huge fight about your beyond unacceptable high-handedness, but even as I tear you a new one over killing Samir without exhausting all our other options, let alone having me physically restrained, cut off financially, and put on a no-fly list, for crying out loud . . .” I drew in a deep breath to get it all out, “I’m still no less in love with you, and we’re going to get through this one way or the other. No matter what.”
A short, harsh sound escaped him. I wished I could see him or be tied into his feelings to know what emotion had caused it.
“You madden me,” he said, which was something I’d heard before and knew he didn’t mean as a compliment. “Yet I will never love anyone as much as I love you, and you’re right. We will get through this, no matter what it takes.”
Now I was the one who let out a wordless noise as a sigh slipped from me. Our current problems still seemed insurmountable and we had more coming soon, yet the most important thing hadn’t changed. No matter what our adversaries threw at us, they were helpless when it came to ruining what Vlad and I felt for each other. As for the rest, it could be fought over, cried over, decided on and/or faced down later. Right now, even across a thousand miles, we were together, and the silence between us was soothing instead of stifling this time. We’d already said what had mattered most.
“If you’re not at the hotel, where are you?” he asked after several long moments.
“At Cat and Bones’s cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They’re away somewhere and Ian had a key—”
“Is this the cabin in Valle Crucis?” he interrupted me, his tone turning brisk again.
“You know it?” I asked, taken aback.
“I’ve been there,” was his even more surprising reply. “I’ll see you in ten hours.”
Then he hung up without saying good-bye, I love you, or anything else. I stared at the phone for a moment, feeling a hard little smile stretch my lips. Once again, Vlad had changed from loving husband back into medieval conqueror faster than I could blink. I’d add fixing that to my now very long to-do list.
Then I looked at the phone and debated calling him back. There were so many things I still had to tell him, like how Gretchen was now a vampire, or that Leotie, my long-lost ancestor, was here with us, or that I’d finally managed to connect to Mircea, or a thousand other things I’d discovered since I last saw him. Instead, I set the phone back on the nightstand.
Maybe Vlad needed all ten of those hours to help him recover from killing Samir. I probably needed them, too, for a lot of reasons, the biggest of those being the decision that had me feeling as if I were being torn right down the middle. How could I tell Vlad about the legacy transfer, knowing he’d try to make me give it to Gretchen to secure my own safety? Yet how could I continue to let Vlad kill people doing Mircea’s captors’ bidding because he believed that was his only option? It wasn’t, yet at the same time, my sister’s life wasn’t optional.
My best way around this terrible dilemma was to link to Mircea and find where the hell he was, yet for some reason, I hadn’t been able to after more hours of trying. Frustration had me clenching my fists. Since I hadn’t put my left glove back on, my fingernails stabbed right through my palm from the force I used. Blood began dripping onto the carpet and I let out a yelp as I frantically dabbed it with my shirt. Great, now I was trashing another room. Guess I’d have to add a new carpet to the sky-high list of things Mircea had cost me, either directly through his actions or indirectly by making me so damn mad—
I fell forward into a cave as if a hole had opened up in front of me.
Chapter 26
The bedroom disappeared and darkness surrounded me, broken only by faint glimmers of faraway torches. Mircea was here, still in that same tight circle of stones. It didn’t look comfortable. Maybe he couldn’t escape the cluster of rocks that surrounded him like tall obelisks.
Is this where they keep you locked up? I thought at Mircea, and his head jerked up as if I’d yanked it with a string.
Leila. My name was a sneer. So, you finally figured out the real way to connect to me. Thought you’d never put the obvious together, although it made me laugh to imagine you chasing me through essence links that would only boomerang back to you.
Is that why I couldn’t reach him before? Because the link binding us together kept rerouting me back to my own location? If so, how had I done it this time? Not that I was about to ask.
I might be new at this, but I’m getting better every day, I replied, glad that my bluff sounded confident.
Mircea held up his left hand, where bloody half moons that mirrored the injury in my own palm were already starting to heal. I’m surprised you were able to form a connection from such a weak conduit. Couldn’t stand to harm yourself more, hmm?
Conduit? What . . . ?
I would’ve smacked myself in the head if there wasn’t a chance that Mircea would feel it, too. How many times had I told people that the spell linking me and Mircea was bound to both our flesh and blood? So flesh and blood were the links I needed. That’s why I’d been able to reach him earlier when I smashed my hands to bleeding pulps while thinking about Mircea. Seems I’d done it again after accidentally stabbing myself with my nails.
Yeah, well, I didn’t feel like doing one of your over-the-top slices, I replied, once again pretending that I’d known all this beforehand.
You take a big risk contacting me, Mircea said, scowling at me from the darkness. Do you want them to kill us?
Them. There was our confirmation that more than one sorcerer held Mircea captive. Why would they care? I asked, then answered my own question. They don’t know we can communicate telepathically this way, do they?
Why would they? Mircea said. No one has ever survived the initial effects of this spell before, and since you’re logged into my mind, I have something to show you. You might be able to psychically relive memories through touch, but I can do so by will alone. Now, Leila, look upon who really brought us both to our current, sorry conditions.
Mircea touched his temple, and I fell forward again, the cave around me dissolving into the black-and-white images of a past memory. I dissolved, too, and became someone else.
I danced ahead of my mother, ignoring her repeated urgings for me to slow down. Father was finally home! I couldn’t wait to tell him I had learned to read and write in two languages, and I had also learned how to do courtly duties, but I hated those things. Father hated them, too, Mother had said. We were so alike. I danced again before sprinting ahead. There was Father now, climbing off his horse in the courtyard!
“Mircea,” Mother yelled. “Return to me at once!”
I continued to race ahead. My older brothers were away, so this time, I would have all Father’s attention for myself. Father’s men gathered around him to welcome him home.
They had missed him, too, but not as much as me. I burst through the crowd, tugging the back of his shirt and laughing when he turned around. “Father!” I said, throwing my arms around him.
He pushed me back. His hands were rough and scarred, but I didn’t mind. One day, I would be a great warrior like he was and have rough, scarred hands, too.
“Mircea, what are you doing here?” he said. Then he straightened and looked past the crowd. “Ilona! Get your son.”
“Father, wait,” I said, fighting as one of Father’s men began pulling me away. “I have to tell you—”
“Not now,” Father said, turning away. “Ilona, take him.”
“Father, wait!” I cried again.
He didn’t turn around, and I was pulled backward until Mother caught up with us. She sighed as she bent down and wiped the tears from my cheeks that I hoped Father hadn’t seen.
“Why won’t he speak to me?” I asked, fighting a sob.
“Mircea,” she said in a soft voice. “Your father is the prince, and he has many duties. He will see you later.”
I turned away, ducking so my hair hid my face. “You said that last time, but then he left.”
She sighed again. “There was a battle. You know this.”
“There is always a battle,” I cried. “He would rather be at war than spend any time with me!”
Mother tried to smooth back my hair, but I jerked away. What had I done to make him hate me so much?
I fell back into the cave with tears from Mircea’s memory still streaming down my cheeks. The memory continued to cling to me, filling me with an ache that was as poignant as it was familiar. I knew how much it hurt to be rejected by your own father, and that’s what Mircea had believed Vlad to be.
I can show you dozens more memories like that, Mircea said, a weary bitterness tingeing his tone. Would you like to see the one where I waited every day for a year in the hopes that Vlad would visit what he thought was my grave so I could tell him I was really alive? Yet he never came. He didn’t care enough to.