Ruxandra blinked, and the fallen angel’s image faded away. Kade still watched her, waiting for an answer.
“Think, Ruxandra.” Kade put his coffee on the table. “All creatures on earth have a purpose, from the smallest gnat to the largest elephant. We must have a purpose as well.”
“God’s creatures have a purpose,” Ruxandra said. “We’re not God’s creatures.”
Kade smiled. “I know.”
Ruxandra’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”
Kade took another sip of his coffee. “Did I ever tell you that I was one of the last sorcerers left in Europe, before I went to Elizabeth?”
“Kade . . .”
Kade ignored the impatience in her tone. “The Inquisition rooted out so many of them that the rest fled, or turned from the path to become monks. I was one of the fortunate few who escaped to the East before they came. Even then, I had to leave most of what I had behind.”
“I’m sure. How did you know?”
“Almost all the sorcerers’ writings were burned. After I left Elizabeth, I searched the offices of all the inquisitors in Spain. I even searched the Vatican, but there was nothing left. Certainly nothing about vampires. So I went further afield.”
He wants to play games? Fine.
Ruxandra sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and glared at him with the same look she’d once used to stare down a bear. Kade put on a smug little smile and took another sip of his coffee.
“I went east of the Holy Roman Empire,” he said. “I searched through Brandenburg, through Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, Livonia, Estonia. I searched for thirty years. I found folktales everywhere, but no hint of anything more. Not until I went to Russia.”
Kade took another sip of his coffee. The waiter brought another and set it in front of Ruxandra. The steam from it drifted up, filling her nose with its warm, savory, slightly bitter fragrance. Ruxandra left it alone and glared.
Kade put his cup down. “You’re not going to ask me what happened next?”
Ruxandra narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips.
Kade took another sip of his coffee. He waved the cup in her direction. “Your coffee will grow cold if you don’t drink it.”
Kade finished his coffee in slow sips, taking time between each mouthful to look out the window as if the people passing were the most interesting thing he had ever seen.
“How long,” he asked at last, “can you sit without moving?”
“Five days before the hunger becomes too much.”
“I see. Does the Beast still break free?”
“Not often anymore. Though I’m getting tempted right about now.”
The Beast—Ruxandra’s animal self that had manifested during her hundred years in the woods and now lived separately within her mind—growled at the mention of its name. It had taken her years to fully regain control, and even now it still lurked, ready to take over, growing more powerful as Ruxandra grew hungry.
Kade smiled. “I suppose I should tell you about your fallen angel, then.”
“Yes,” Ruxandra said through clenched teeth. “You should.”
He sipped his coffee. “In Russia, where the Inquisition never ventured, I discovered a very interesting group of people: one that studies both the natural world and the occult. And their library, oh . . .”
His gaze left Ruxandra and went far away, as if he were seeing the library in front of him. “It is huge. Stored deep underground. They have books there in languages that no one speaks anymore. I had to learn a whole new alphabet, a whole new way of thinking before I could read them. It was there that I learned the origins of vampires, and the origin of you. The tablet said nothing of angels, though. Do you know the goddess Ishtar?”
Ruxandra shook her head.
“She was a goddess from the ancient world known in Babylon and Assyria and even Phoenicia. A goddess of war, of sex, of love and power. The tablet said that a great king asked her to grant him immortality. She did, but at a terrible price. He could no longer stand in the sun, nor partake of food. He was doomed to spend eternity roaming the night, able to take sustenance only from blood. Anyone who drank his blood became as he and was doomed alongside him.”
Just like us. Ruxandra frowned and looked away. The last of the sun’s light was fading from the sky, leaving the world in darkness.
“The cult of Ishtar vanished with the coming of Christianity,” Kade said. “A later book in the magicians’ collection said that the knights of the Christ chased down the unholy offspring of the vampire king, dragging them into the sun and burning them alive. Apparently it took five hundred years, and the king was killed in Russia.”
“And in that book were explicit instructions for summoning a fallen angel. A woman of great size with black wings, just as the tablet described Ishtar. A creature of great power who destroys any who summon her without care and for any purpose not to her liking.”
Like my father and his men.
“And it was then I realized how you must have been turned. Nothing else explains how completely ignorant you were about what a vampire was. Another vampire could not have created you. You had to have been created by the goddess herself.”
“Renaldo!” called a man by the door. “There you are!”
A short, wide man in a bright red coat stood in the door, a smile on his face almost as large as his belly.
“Everyone wants to drink your health before the duel!”
“A duel?” Kade choked back a laugh.
“Yes,” Ruxandra said sourly. “Before I ran into you last night I was on my way to meet Pasquale—a rapist and a murderer. Elizabeth would love him. But since you interrupted me, I have to meet him this morning.”
“Ah. Now what will you do?”
“Drink all night,” Ruxandra said. “Kill him in the morning.”
“Isn’t dueling illegal?”
“Doesn’t stop anyone.” She stood up. “Right, to the tavern!”
Kade caught her sleeve. “Do you need a second?”
Ruxandra stopped, surprised. “I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose so.”
“Then allow me. As a way of making amends for what has gone before,” Kade said. “Besides, I still need your answer.”
“My answer?”
“If you’re coming to Russia.”
Ruxandra shook her head and went to the bravos at the door. They cheered and led her off to the nearest tavern.
Seven hours and eight jugs of wine later, Ruxandra waited in a glade outside the city, under a pale predawn sky. She had put on a fresh shirt and jacket over clean breeches. She looked every inch the young bravo, down to the sword at her waist.
“What’s his name?” Kade asked.
“Pasquale.” Ruxandra’s eyes went to the eastern horizon, watching it grow brighter by the minute.
“So you said. Last name?”
“No idea.”
Kade shook his head. “Bad form, that.”
Ruxandra shrugged. “So is being late. And if he’s much later he can wait until another day.”
“Have no fear of that,” Pasquale said as he stepped into the glade. He had a pistol in each hand, the flint hammers cocked back, the barrels pointed skyward.
“About time,” Ruxandra said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Such a hurry to die,” Pasquale said. “Foolish.”
“Where is your second?” Kade asked.
“Second?” Pasquale smiled. “I didn’t bring a second. I brought friends.”
Ruxandra extended her mind out to the area around them. She could not read minds, but she could sense emotions, which was quite handy for finding prey.
Or, in this case, Pasquale’s four friends hiding among the trees, anger and anticipation burning red inside them.
“Four of them,” Kade said.
Ruxandra frowned. “How did you know?” she asked, voice pitched low.
“I sensed them,” he said, speaking just as quietly.
“I didn’t t
each anyone that,” Ruxandra said.
“Elizabeth discovered it,” Kade said. “After all, it only takes the desire to know what the other person is feeling. Can you imagine Elizabeth not wanting to know how much a victim is hurting? Pity one can’t actually read their thoughts.”
“True.” Ruxandra turned her attention to Pasquale and raised her voice. “You aren’t wearing a sword. Are you not planning to duel?”
“I am planning on seeing you beaten and shamed.” Pasquale smiled. “After I have my way with you, of course. Or did you think me as stupid as the others?”
Ruxandra’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you far stupider than the others, but I didn’t know you liked men.”
Pasquale swaggered closer. “You are no man. Which is why I am not dueling you. Instead I will shoot your second, and my friends and I will have you in every hole until night falls. After which I will hang you naked by your ankles in the square as a warning to other sluts.”
Ruxandra sighed and looked at Kade. “You see why I wanted to kill this pezzo di merda?”
Kade nodded. “We have to kill his friends, too, I suppose.”
“I would rather not.” Ruxandra pitched her voice to the shrubbery. “My quarrel is with Pasquale, not with any of you. If you leave, you live.”
Pasquale laughed. “They will not listen to you, putana.”
Ruxandra put her hand on her sword’s grip and walked toward him. She felt something dark and animal stirring inside her.
“A sword will do you no good whatsoever,” Pasquale said. “I am an excellent shot.”
“The duel begins when I count three,” Ruxandra said, keeping her voice loud. “Your pistols against my sword.”
He laughed loudly. “Oh, you stupid little girl.”
“One.”
“I’ll enjoy ripping you open,” Pasquale said.
“Two.”
Pasquale pointed one pistol at Kade and pulled the trigger. A blast of smoke and flame and noise lurched out from the barrel. It cleared a moment later. Kade remained standing. Pasquale’s mouth fell open in surprise.
“Three.”
Ruxandra had drawn her sword and run three steps forward in the second before Pasquale turned back to face her. She leaped forward into a graceful lunge, driving her sword fully through his body. His pistol, halfway along its trajectory to aim at her head, fell from nerveless fingers. Ruxandra stood up and let his body slide off her blade. His fingers closed over the hole in his chest.
Ruxandra looked to the woods, a small smile on her lips. “Run.”
She heard scurrying as the men abandoned their hiding spots and ran.
Kade stepped up beside her. “Not much of a challenge, was he?”
“They never are.” Ruxandra knelt and put her mouth over the hole in Pasquale’s chest. He gasped in pain as she began sucking the blood out of his body. He tried to struggle but had no strength. Five seconds later he died.
Ruxandra stood up and wiped her mouth. “You want to know why we exist?”
Kade blinked. “Pardon?”
“We exist because a fallen angel wanted to spit in the face of God.” She kicked Pasquale’s body. “We exist because she wants us to roam the world and cause terror and chaos in her place. That’s what she said when she made me.”
“It was Ishtar, then?”
“She didn’t give her name.” Ruxandra remembered the giant phallus the creature had produced when offered Ruxandra’s body. “She said she was an angel that fell with Lucifer.”
“Fascinating.”
“Not fascinating, frightening.” But not only that, either. Ruxandra remembered how safe she had felt in the beautiful angel’s arms, how warm her skin felt. The fallen angel had acted as if she cared about her.
She couldn’t, or she wouldn’t have done this to me. How is this anything but the most evil punishment?
Though another voice in her mind quietly disagreed, reminding her of the art, the music, the love, the freedom, the everlasting youth.
But those are side effects and choices. They are not what she cared about.
“Don’t you want to meet her?” Kade crossed the glade to stand before Ruxandra. “Don’t you want to ask her why you?”
“Why me?” Bitterness filled Ruxandra’s voice. “Because I was there, so why not? If she went up against the will of heaven, she’s probably insane enough to make vampires for the fun of it.”
Not that the idea hasn’t tempted me. My favorite artists, writers, musicians, lovers . . . But I didn’t do it again after Elizabeth. Who would choose this?
“That is possible.” Kade rubbed his chin and frowned. “Do you think it’s possible that her creation of you was also the will of heaven?”
“How? How can I be the will of heaven?” She kicked Pasquale’s body again. “How can this be the will of heaven? Just because God made the world doesn’t mean he has a plan for it. Or that he’s always paying attention.”
“But if he is paying attention, what then?” His eyes burned with excitement. “You can’t imagine that you and I know all there is to know about God or his angels? What our purpose is, what the purpose of life is? This is an opportunity, Ruxandra. A chance to learn more about ourselves than was ever possible before.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to meet her. I don’t want her walking the earth ever again.”
Kade nodded. “Well. I respect your feelings, my dear. But you need to come to Russia.”
“I said—”
“Because they will summon her, with or without me, at the winter solstice.”
“What?”
“I had hoped that you would help,” Kade said. “And I hope I can still convince you to help. But whether I can or not, they will summon her anyway.”
Chapter 3
God dammit.
“We should probably leave,” he said. “Before others arrive.”
“Why would you let them?”
“I cannot stop people from coming here.”
“You know what I mean, God damn you.” Ruxandra squatted and wiped her sword on Pasquale’s coat. “Why would you let the magicians summon the angel without you?”
“How could I stop them,” Kade asked, “short of killing them all?”
“And you don’t believe in killing?”
“I am not the person I was,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t kill without reason. But in this case it’s simpler than that—I don’t kill my friends.”
Kade has friends.
“So you came to me, knowing I would come.”
“I came to convince you to come,” Kade said. “I came hoping your curiosity would bring you. I did not mean to present an ultimatum.”
“But you did anyway.” Ruxandra closed the distance between them. “You did the same thing back in Castle Csejte. You made it sound like I had a choice when you knew damn well that I didn’t!”
Kade didn’t back up. “As I recall, you managed to come up with another option.”
“Yes.” Ruxandra walked past him. “I did.”
Kade fell in beside her. “Perhaps you will come up with another option this time as well.”
“Perhaps I’ll kill them all and burn the library.”
“Perhaps,” Kade said, and Ruxandra heard the happiness in his voice. “But I doubt it. You will like the magicians, Ruxandra. And there are things in that library that very few people have seen. Wouldn’t you like to know about them?”
For a moment Ruxandra wondered at what, exactly, the library contained. The vampire king . . . did he create a family? A court? What would that be like, a society of vampires? She shoved the thought away. “Not as much as I’d like to stop her from coming back.”
“And the only way you can is to come to Moscow with me.” He smiled and held out his arm for her to take. “Shall we walk together?”
For a reply Ruxandra drove half the length of her sword through his body.
Kade yelled in pain and fell to his knees, hands scrabbling at the blade.
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“Stop whining,” Ruxandra said.
Kade grabbed the blade, trying to pull it out, gasping. “Why?”
“Because you made a prisoner of me in Castle Csejte,” Ruxandra snarled. “Because you came here knowing that I would go with you. Also, because you deserve it.”
“Knowing . . .” Kade winced and grabbed the blade. “Does this mean you’ll come?”
“Three conditions.” Ruxandra knocked his hand away from the blade. “First, you tell me everything you know about vampirism and the dark angel, and I mean everything, from every book you’ve read.”
“Done.”
“Second.” Ruxandra grabbed the sword’s grip and shoved the full length of the blade into Kade’s body. He screamed. Ruxandra twisted it and pulled it out. “I need my sword.”
Kade collapsed again. Ruxandra wiped the blade on his shirt, leaving trails of silver across the gray fabric.
Kade watched her cleaning his silver blood from the blade. The blade shone.
“And third?” Kade asked, warily.
“Third,” Ruxandra said. “Buy some new clothes by tomorrow night. I don’t want to be seen with you looking like this. After all, I am the height of fashion. See you at the café at sunset.”
Ruxandra turned her back and started walking.
“Wait!” Kade called. “Am I forgiven?”
Her scornful laughter echoed in the alley. “Not even close.”
***
Ruxandra spent the day clearing out her apartment. There was very little furniture: a chair to sit in, another for a guest, a wine rack and wines, a comfortable bed with linens, and a set of three-layer-thick curtains that blocked out the sunlight. She had a stack of books—novels and poetry—in Italian, another in Hungarian, and a third in Latin.
Then there were the clothes.
Ruxandra stared at the cupboard and sighed. She loved the fashions of this time. She loved the knee-length coats the men wore and the many colors fabric came in. She loved the way the dresses flared out at the hips to create a wide, elegant line. She owned a dozen dresses and six men’s outfits, as well as gorgeous shoes in silk and leather with buckles, embroidery, paste jewels, and real pearls, and she didn’t want to leave any of them behind.
I can’t carry them all, so there is no sense crying over it.