“He has threatened you?” Louis-Cesare sounded surprisingly grim, considering that he’d done the same himself not too long ago.
“Everyone threatens me; it’s not important.”
“You deserve his respect!”
“For what? Being the boss’ little girl?” I waved my glass, sloshing some wine over the side. It looked strangely like blood in the dark. “ ’Fraid that’s outweighed by the whole killing-off-his-kind thing.”
“I have seen you kill no one who did not deserve it. And you handle your… disability… admirably.” He stopped, looking slightly uncomfortable. “I did not think a dhampir capable of such compassion.”
I stared. By God. A compliment. From Louis-Cesare. That wine was just going right to his head.
And then, of course, he ruined it. “I am glad you have come to your senses about Lord Radu.”
“Come to my senses?”
“To help protect him. It is the only intelligent way to proceed.”
“How exactly is letting Drac run free intelligent?” I demanded.
Louis-Cesare’s eyes narrowed. “He will be caught eventually. It is only a matter of time with the forces the Senate currently has in the field.”
“Except they aren’t gunning for him.”
“He has shown a lack of judgment in the past, a reputation borne out by his current alliance. He cannot help but run foul of the Senate before long.”
“That’s one theory.” And not one I shared. People had been underestimating Drac for centuries. He might be crazy, but he had the Basarab cunning and was utterly ruthless about how he used it. Not a good combo. “But then, you gotta wonder why, if the Senate can deal with him, Mircea went to the trouble of drafting us.”
“He hopes to end this before his brother spills more innocent blood.”
“And you don’t care about that?”
“Radu’s blood is also innocent!” I thought that was debatable, but didn’t say so. Louis-Cesare looked like he was getting a little heated again. So much for having a pleasant, low-key conversation.
“Why do you care so much what happens to Radu?” I asked, knowing I’d probably regret it. “Didn’t he abandon you?”
“He is also my sire!”
“And Mircea is mine. It’s never bought him a lot of slack, actually.”
Louis-Cesare gave me a condescending look. “Has it not? You are here now, in answer to his call—”
“Because of Claire!”
“—as you should be. You would not exist but for him, as I would have died centuries ago if not for Radu. We have a debt to the family.”
A little wind was playing fitfully through the trees, tossing the leaves about, but when I looked upward, I could see the stars in patches. I took a deep breath of cool night air and told myself not to overreact. “You’re confusing me with a vamp,” I said shortly. “Just because Mircea donated some sperm doesn’t mean I’m bound to him.”
“There are other ties than magic. Loyalty, obligation, love—”
“I do not love Mircea!”
“And whether you acknowledge them or not, you feel them, too. You belong by his side when he needs you.”
What I felt was a burst of anger, hot and fierce. Damn him for stirring to life that old, bitter craving, the one that wove itself around the word belong. I’d never belonged anywhere. It was the first lesson I’d ever learned, drummed into my bones and ripped into my flesh long before the infant that would become Louis-Cesare was even born. And it was the one I made sure I never forgot.
“You’ll see how much love I have for the family,” I told him savagely, “when I plant a stake in Drac’s cold, dead heart.”
“You still intend to go after him,” he asked incredulously, “even though it could mean your friend’s life?”
“He’ll come after us. I thought that was the plan.”
“Using Lord Radu as bait was your plan!”
“Which he currently is,” I pointed out.
“Dracula will never try to reach him through such defenses! I did not understand until I saw them for myself, but it is true. He is as safe here as at MAGIC.”
I didn’t feel like debating it. There were no defenses good enough to keep out Drac if he wanted in, but convincing Louis-Cesare of that would be counterproductive. And even if I felt like trying, I doubted I was up to it. Even my anger had sputtered out against the overwhelming tide of exhaustion. I stared at a flickering firefly in the grass, feeling oddly dislocated. “Whatever.”
Louis-Cesare said something else, but it sounded very far away, like he was speaking underwater. I was so tired my eyes didn’t want to focus, to the point that the firefly’s path blurred into a long, continuous neon line. And then it happened again. It was like drowning, sinking helplessly down into dark, frozen depths. But instead of water, I was floundering in a sea of memory.
I realized that the drumming sound I was hearing wasn’t my heart, but someone beating on a door. It took a moment to realize it was me. The door opened to reveal a pissed-off female vamp in a diaphanous white negligee: Augusta, a Senate member. Her outfit stayed white until I lurched into her, soaking the front of the expensive nightwear in enough blood to indicate a mortal wound. I looked down to find that I was wearing only a man’s long overcoat that was gaping open in front. Under that was a lot of blood and what looked to be half of my intestines, which I was keeping inside by pressure from the hand that hadn’t been needed for beating down the door.
“My back,” I whispered.
“I’ll fetch a doctor,” Augusta said faintly. She looked hungry, but I didn’t care. At that moment, she couldn’t have done much more damage. She dragged me over to a big bed and tried to get me to lie down.
I shook my head. “My back,” I repeated.
“I know. Don’t worry—I won’t put any pressure on your stomach.”
“No!” I was trembling with the effort of standing up, but I couldn’t lie down. “Look at my back. It’s a message, for Mircea.” The vamp had been paying so much attention to my ruined stomach that she hadn’t even noticed that the back of my coat was completely drenched, and not by water.
I was trying to get the coat off, but couldn’t manage with only one hand. Augusta helped, then stopped when it was half off to stare in shock. I could see what she saw in the mirror of a small rosewood dressing table, not that I needed the reminder. Someone had carved letters into my flesh, although the blood, part dried and part fresh, blurred them, making them impossible to read.
“Get Mircea,” I whispered, kneeling on the floor, gripping the bedpost to stay partially upright. I heard her leave the room, shouting, and for a small woman she had a surprisingly strong voice.
What seemed like only a few seconds later, Mircea came in, shaking black snow off his greatcoat. He smelled of coal dust, horses and cheap perfume. He knelt by my side. “What happened?”
“You sent me to find your brother,” I gasped, fighting to stay conscious. “Unfortunately, I succeeded.”
Mircea began peeling the coat the rest of the way off. His expression was carefully blank, but his eyes were amber fire. Another vamp entered the room, carrying a basin and a towel. “Master,” he said, bowing to Augusta but managing not to spill the water. “I would like to clean up the girl.”
Augusta gave a bark of laughter. “I’m sure you would.”
“I was an orderly in South Africa, master. I survived the Zulu War; I know something about knife wounds.”
That wasn’t the only way he knew about them. Jack was Augusta’s current pet—and he’d been a monster even before she’d turned him. He stupidly offered Mircea the basin. One savage movement later, both it and Jack went flying against the wall. Jack hit hard enough that his body actually left an impression, tearing away the wallpaper to show the bricks underneath.
He didn’t get to his feet, but cowered on the floor where he’d fallen, hands on his head, not daring to look up. He’d have seemed almost pitiful if I’d had any emotion to sp
are. I didn’t, and it looked like Mircea felt the same. “Do it,” I told him. “You have to.”
Mircea’s hand smoothed my hair gently. Then he snapped his fingers and Jack reached out a trembling hand to retrieve the basin. He crawled with it to the door and was gone. Faster than I would have believed possible, he was back, with more water and several towels. He also carried a bottle of whiskey, but no glasses.
“No alcohol,” Mircea said without bothering to look at him. I guess he must have smelled it.
“Forgive me, my lord,” Jack murmured obsequiously. “I merely thought, to prevent infection—”
“She is dhampir,” Mircea said curtly. “She doesn’t contract infections. Leave us.”
Jack bowed deeply and backed out of the room, either to show respect or because he didn’t dare turn his back on Mircea. There was a vibrating tension in the air, sort of like the tremors before a volcano erupts. I concentrated on staying upright while Mircea carefully washed the wounds on my back, wetting an area, patting it dry, pausing to apply pressure here and there to the cuts that were still bleeding, then starting over again. I wouldn’t let him touch my stomach—I assumed I was going to die anyway, so what was the point?
Slowly, the letters began to show more clearly. It took forever and was excruciating, but I was so close to passing out that I barely noticed.
“Can you read it?” Augusta asked when Mircea had finished and set the bowl aside.
“Bandage her wounds,” he said after a moment, ignoring her. “See that she lives.”
“Mircea!” My lips were numb, but somehow I forced the words out. “If you do not finish this tonight, if you leave him any avenue by which to return, I wash my hands of the whole affair. Next time, you will hunt him alone.”
The only answer I received was the door shutting softly behind him. My head drooped to rest on the edge of the bed. My reflection showed that a few of the shallower cuts were already starting to knit together, blurring the edge of some words like random strokes of an eraser. The whole thing would be illegible in a few hours.
Drac had carved his challenge to Mircea into my flesh, then gutted me and left me to stagger back on my own to the house the vamps were renting. And it had worked. Mircea had gone off to meet him, but instead of killing the son of a bitch who had just carved up his daughter, he was going to trap him in some concoction of the Senate’s, all neat and tidy and problem solved.
I swallowed bitterness and stared at the door, trembling with exhaustion and waiting to pass out from the blood loss. It had some impressive dents where my fist had hit it earlier, but it was solid. Nonetheless, I could dimly hear a low-voiced conversation on the other side. I was breathing in pants, trying to get enough air into my lungs to satisfy their craving, but I managed to catch snatches of it anyway.
“The Consul grows impatient and demands a solution, or at the very least an update. I have to tell her something—”
“She will have her solution, tonight.”
“And what will that be? The dhampir is right. You must kill him!”
“This is a family matter, Augusta—it does not concern you.”
Jack’s voice sounded again, stronger than the others, perhaps because he was making no effort to be quiet. “Do I have your permission to attend her, master?” I didn’t catch the reply, but the door opened a moment later and in he came, with bandages, a new basin of water and a small black bag. I eyed it suspiciously, but he took out only a length of thread and a scary-looking needle. He tugged me onto the rug and examined my stomach with a critical eye.
“He may not have been responsible for the deaths of Jack’s victims, but he has been making vampires without permission, and not registering them. For that alone, he will surely be sentenced to death. Kill him now and spare your family the shame of a public execution.”
“Release my arm, Augusta. I do not have time to discuss this with you, even were I so inclined.”
Jack had started to sew me up, and I badly needed something to distract me from the pain. Why wasn’t I unconscious? The needle plunged in and out of my flesh as I stared at the door, straining to hear the conversation.
“Mircea!”
“You do not understand the situation.” Mircea’s voice was calm, but I knew him well enough to recognize the thread of anger running through it.
“What is there to understand? If he had insulted one who belonged to me in such a fashion, I would crack his skull like an egg!”
“And thereby give him exactly what he wants!”
Jack used fine, even stitches, I noticed in something like a daze. He’d have made a good tailor. “If he wants to die, he has merely to say,” Augusta whispered viciously. “There would be no lack of volunteers to grant his wish!”
“And they would be slaughtered for their trouble. Why do you think he provokes me—threatening Radu, attacking Dorina? He wants to die by my hand and no other.”
“Then give him what he wants!” I would have echoed Augusta’s sentiment if I’d had the strength.
“No.” Mircea’s voice was hard as stone. “Let him live and remember, not die and forget!”
I heard him stride away and a moment later, Augusta slammed back into the room. “She will live, master,” Jack told her, unruffled. “I swear it.” He patted my hair almost fondly. “I am not surprised that the count did not like this one. There is no fear in her.”
I wondered, as I finally allowed myself to pass out, how anyone could be so wrong.
Chapter Fourteen
“Dorina!” Hands were clenched frantically on my shoulders. Whoever was holding me was shaking. I gripped strong arms in both hands, struggling to reconnect with the present. “Are you all right?” someone demanded.
I was back, I realized. Shocked to the core, but back. “Never better.” My laugh sounded thin and ragged even to me. I let it peter out.
My eyes focused enough to see Louis-Cesare staring down at me. He didn’t look much more composed than I felt. Panic had washed the color from his face, leaving his eyes insanely blue. “You are not all right.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said, still half-confused about where we were. My eyes saw grass and stars and fireflies, but my brain kept telling them they were wrong. Only the lighting was right: the dim glow from the house approximating candle flame. “He wanted to be sure I lasted long enough to deliver the message….”
Louis-Cesare said something extremely rude in French. I blinked at him. It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about Drac. But how did he know…? “You saw.”
He nodded grimly. I felt the flex of strong biceps under my palms as his grip tightened. “As if the memories were my own.”
I peeled a wet strand of grass off my cheek. It felt clammy, like the touch of Jack’s hands. “Sorry about that.” It seemed pretty inadequate, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
I managed to sit up. The hands gripping my shoulders dropped away, but the fingers dragged almost reluctantly down my arms. It was a tiny thing, lasting the space of a heartbeat, but it sent something weightless coiling through my stomach.
I leaned against the water-slick side of the fountain for support, but it wasn’t enough. The scene around me telescoped without warning and I sagged face-first into more wet grass. Louis-Cesare pulled me back into his arms. I should have protested, but the heat of his chest at my back was soothing. I’d get up and face whatever had just happened; I’d force my body to a strength I didn’t feel, in a minute.…
We sat there not saying anything. I was too confused to speak. I hurt, but not in the right places. I wanted to clutch my stomach, even though it was one of the few parts of my body that didn’t ache. But it felt like it should, like those stitches were still being punched through my flesh. Like it had really all just happened again. And then there was the feeling of Louis-Cesare’s heart beating against my back, his legs solid on either side of mine. He had dropped his head to my shoulder, and the sound of his breathing in my ear was steady and
sweet. “I’m sorry, too,” he whispered, and I found I couldn’t talk at all.
His thumbs began digging into the knotted muscles of my shoulders, kneading the tension expertly away. After traveling from my neck to the small of my back, they worked their way up again, wringing the aches from my body. I closed my eyes, feeling my muscles relax one by one, and my head dropped forward. I heard my own murmur of contentment, but it sounded impossibly far away, lost in the hypnotic stroking of Louis-Cesare’s hands.
There was a sharp callus along the side of his index finger. He flinched a little when I reached out and captured that hand, held very still while I stroked lightly over it. The skin was uneven, just a little rough, and the flesh beneath was hard. He was watching me touch him, and I could hear his breath halt in his throat.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sat like this with anyone. Kindness after cruelty, warmth in a cold place, tenderness instead of suspicion: none of it was supposed to come to me, and certainly not from a vampire. Uncertainty fluttered through my stomach. What was I doing? I dropped his hand and started to move, to pull away, when his voice stopped me. “Why did Dracula torture you?” he asked softly.
“What did Jonathan do to you?” I shot back, expecting that to end the conversation.
He surprised me. “Something similar. Someone important to me… a witch… was taken by the Black Circle. They intended… you know they steal power, from whomever they can?” I nodded slowly, barely moving my head. I didn’t say anything, afraid to break the mood, afraid that he would disappear back inside that shell of his and I’d never find out what was going on. “What you may not know is that, taken to extremes, it kills their victim.”
Actually, I did know that. A normal human isn’t simply someone with no magic; he is a completely different species. If magical creatures lose all their magic, that doesn’t somehow transform them into norms. It kills them, by draining away something they need to exist as much as humans need blood.
“What happened?” I asked cautiously.