Fulk growled. “What are you talking about?” God, he hated him.
The fucker laughed. “How many Romes are there, Fulk?”
Oh…shit.
“It’s three,” Liam answered, gleeful. “Rome, then Constantinople, then Moscow. Remember, brother?”
“We are not brothers.”
He waved, dismissive. “You’re avoiding my point. Which is: Baskin brought a very special Russian with him to this manor house.” He paused.
Fulk stared him down.
“Christ,” Liam muttered, “Alexei Romanov. He brought the tsarevich with him.” He held both hands up, triumphant.
“What is your point?”
Liam blinked at him a moment, then heaved a dramatic sigh. “The point, my dear brute, is this. Romulus has faced more than one would-be killer in his time, but none have ever been able to defeat him. One almost wonders if he really is half god, hm? Vlad stood the greatest chance – he was the strongest, of the original line of Rome, Romulus’s own flesh and blood. But he only managed to put him to sleep. So this begets the question: can he be stopped?”
Talbot looked faintly ill.
“I have a theory about this. I think we’ve–”
“We?”
“–been going about it the wrong way all this time. The vampire, the mage, and the wolf.” He ticked them off on three fingers. “What if a single hero can’t defeat Romulus? What if it takes three Roman emperors to do so?” His grin was sly, his eyes bright, and…
Oh.
Something turned over in Fulk’s stomach, and he couldn’t decide if it was dread or hope.
Liam sat back, looking smug. “The Greeks in Istanbul have a legend. They believe – well, some of them do – that Constantine Dragases wasn’t killed when the Conqueror sacked the city. That he went into hiding, inside a secret vault. And that in Rome’s greatest hour of need, he shall rise again, immortal, the last Roman emperor come to slay the dragon.”
“You stole that from the old Arthurian legend, didn’t you?” Fulk said.
Liam chuckled. “Uncanny, isn’t it? But I swear that it’s true. History has a funny way of overlapping like that.”
“So, what, Constantine was a vampire?”
“Oh, no. Quite human, and very dead. But the legend points to my larger theory: that the secret lies beyond the original city of Rome. It’s more a representative thing. Three immortals in a working relationship: the triumvirate. The triumvirate of Rome. The three Romes.”
“So you’re saying…” Talbot started, leaning forward.
“I’m saying, doctor, that we need three very strong vampires, and their Familiars to take this bastard out. And I haven’t met the boy, but Alexei Romanov is related, by blood, to the last emperor of Constantinople. I think that means something.”
“And so you think…” Every gaze shifted toward Kolya Dyomin, who stood unflinching, still, against the wall. “That we can get to him through Nikita Baskin,” Talbot said.
“I think,” Liam said, “that if Baskin finds out we have one of his dearly departed brethren in the flesh, he’ll become much more cooperative.”
Fulk…couldn’t disagree with his logic.
“Now,” Liam went on, “someone please explain how you managed to lose my daughter.”
~*~
“You look well, sister.”
They’d been alone in the study for nearly ten minutes, and they were the first words Lily had spoken.
Annabel set her book aside; she’d only been pretending to read it anyway.
Her sister stood in front of the fire, firelight dancing up her smooth white arms. She dressed like an eccentric; Beneath the cloak she’d draped over the arm of a chair, her dress was simple, but finely made. It brushed the floor at its flared hem, and was cinched tight at the waist. A walking dress for a lady born well before their own original time.
She looked at Annabel with a small, fond smile, her gaze melancholy.
She smelled like a toasted marshmallow, and Anna fought not to scrunch up her nose. “No, I don’t.” She dropped her feet off the arm of the chair, chunky soles of her boots thumping onto the rug.
Lily’s smile widened a fraction, patronizing in an innocent sort of way. “The house looks–”
“Do you really wanna make small talk?”
“We don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
Anna stifled a growl. Her hands wanted to – to do something, so she gripped the arms of the chair. Hard. Felt the leather give beneath fingertips that seemed more like claws. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act all innocent! Like – like we–” She forced herself to stop, and took a deep breath. “Lily,” she said with more control, “we haven’t spoken to each other in decades. How can you act like nothing ever happened?”
Lily sighed. As with all her gestures, it was delicate, feminine. Appropriate. “Isn’t it better to be civil than to wallow in the past?”
Annabel got to her feet without meaning to. Her wolf strained inside her, wanting out, wanting to trade this fragile human skin for something that looked as ferocious as she felt. “Protecting myself isn’t wallowing. And our past? That wasn’t a couple of schoolgirl arguments. Don’t you dare act like I’m supposed to get over that.”
“Anna, we’re sisters.”
“So? When did that ever matter to you?”
“Always.”
She did growl this time. “Then why did you choose that creep over your own family?”
Lily stood serene, hands folded in front of her, expression infuriatingly placid. “I could say the same of you.”
“Do not compare Fulk to that bastard of yours. They’re nothing alike.”
“Hmm.”
Disgusted, frustrated by her own short temper, Anna spun away with a snarl. She stalked all the way across the room and was nearly to the door when Lily spoke up behind her.
In an uncharacteristic, wavering voice, she said, “Did you meet her?”
Annabel started to turn around – but caught herself, one hand clenched tight on the crystal doorknob. “Who?” she asked, just to be contrary. She knew exactly, and that was why she couldn’t turn and look at her sister’s face, couldn’t see whatever emotion colored it.
“My…my daughter.”
I hope she never meets you, Anna thought, viciously. I hope she never knows how heartless her parents are. You don’t deserve her. She’s the only good thing that ever came of Liam Price.
But Anna said, “Her name is Ruby. Her boyfriend calls her Red.” Then she left the room.
~*~
Vlad didn’t so much walk as stalk, his gait that of a lion or tiger. Val, or at least his astral projection, had moved around Mia’s apartment with a natural grace, but Vlad was more overtly threatening – even when she didn’t actively feel threatened, like now.
She followed behind him as he made his way through the lab and back to the elevator, noting the way every staff member averted their eyes and hurried to get out of the way. Vlad didn’t acknowledge any of them, but they all ducked and bowed and fled, as if from royalty. From frightening royalty.
He didn’t speak to her in the first elevator, nor during the long walk to the second, and she sank down into her own thoughts.
Decide, Val had said. Decide what?
She still couldn’t believe that she’d touched him. Leaned against him and felt his body heat. Felt the press of bones too close to the skin, and smelled the soap on him. She touched her neck, absently, and recalled the warmth of his tears there.
Val was real.
She didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she bumped into Vlad’s back. It was an embarrassing collision; she ran her face into his shoulder blade, and tromped all over the heels of his boots.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, stumbling back.
He sent her a flat look over one shoulder, but said nothing.
They’d arrived at the second elevator, and its doors slid open with a quiet ch
ime. Mia hurried inside before she could do anything else as stupid as run into Vlad the Impaler.
He followed at a normal pace and pressed the button for the third floor. Once the doors were shut, he finally spoke, and she flinched before she could catch herself.
He chuckled.
The sound surprised her so much that she turned to look at him, to make sure, and, yep, he was laughing. It was low, and dark, and sounded half a growl, but he was smiling, dark eyes creased at the corners.
“What?” she asked, and felt her own disbelieving smile threaten.
He faced his own reflection in the elevator wall, smile still in place. “You’re a brave one, aren’t you?”
“Uh…I try to be.” But her heart pounded, and she didn’t want to turn her back to him.
“Hm. Trying is better than not, in most things.”
“O…kay.”
“My brother said that you are a talented horsewoman.”
The change of subject surprised her – but, maybe it shouldn’t have. Nothing about Vlad spoke of meandering segues and deft handoffs. “Well, that was nice of him.”
“Are you?”
“Oh, um…” She had to sound decisive with this crowd. “Yeah, you could say that. I’ve worked hard at it.”
He murmured a noise she read as approving. “We will go riding tomorrow.”
Another surprise, more lurching than the motion of the elevator. “We will?”
“There’s a stable, and I asked for horses to be stalled there.” A note of imperiousness. A prince, after all. “I wish to take Val riding, and you shall come with us.”
“Oh.” Her heart bumped, part excitement, part worry. “Will they let you take him outside?”
“Do you always worry about what you’re allowed to do?”
She sighed.
He smiled again – more of a smirk. “I can do what I want. Will you come with us?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” The elevator arrived and the doors slid open. “Wear something appropriate.”
It wasn’t until she was back in her room that it hit her: Vlad the Impaler telling her to wear something appropriate. Then she laughed so hard she almost choked.
~*~
She expected her dad to show up at some point, but it didn’t mean she was glad when a knock sounded at her door just after eleven. Exhaustion dragged at her, and she was beginning to feel sick to her stomach, but she’d stayed up on purpose, leaning back against the headboard of the massive four-poster and trading texts with Donna. Donna was dead serious about calling in the National Guard. Mia hated that she was only just now realizing that her boss actually cared about her beyond her ability to warm up a horse.
She fired off another text to her mom, too, a quick check-in. She’d texted her before she boarded the plane in Colorado, her first chance to reach out, and told Kate she was on the way 2 see Dad. By the time they’d landed, she’d had twelve missed calls. Guilt gnawed at her, but she had no idea what to say to her mother; Kate couldn’t help her now, and Mia wanted to be as clear-headed as possible right now.
When she heard the knock, she set her phone aside on the nightstand and called what she hoped was a grudging “come in.”
Edwin cracked the door first, and peeped slowly around its edge before he finally shoved his whole head inside. He looked ridiculous. “Hello, dear. I wondered if I might have a word.”
“Fine.”
He came in smiling, though careful, walking gingerly across the carpet and settling in a claw-foot chair that looked two centuries old. He sat like an old man, legs spread so he could settled his linked hands between them, shoulders rounded beneath the white lab coat he still wore. Mia had a sudden, disturbing vision of herself like this, flabby and stoop-shouldered, hair thinning. Maybe it was because his brain was so industrious; his body had withered under the strain of all that thought. Or maybe it was just genetic. Had Mom’s genes been enough to stave off his? Or would this be Mia, frail, and old before her time?
No, she realized with a sick inner laugh. She’d be dead long before she went gray and thin.
God.
“I hope you find your room to be comfortable,” Dad began.
“It’s very nice,” she said without emotion.
“It’s west-facing.” He twisted his fingers together until they went white. He still wore his wedding ring, she saw. “I thought you might enjoy seeing the sunset.”
She didn’t respond.
He studied her a moment, expression strained. Then he slumped a little more. If possible, the lines on his face deepened. “Mia,” he said, weary, “I know you’re furious. I know you probably hate me. But can’t we – can’t we just talk? Not as doctor and patient, but as father and daughter?”
She had to take a few breaths. Then, as calmly as she could: “You have to understand that there’s nothing you can say at this point. You know that, right? This isn’t just about us, Dad. It’s not father-daughter problems. What you’re doing here – I can’t get over that.”
He looked terribly sad. “Is this really an issue of a wider morality for you? Or is it just about the prince?”
“I–” She hesitated, and that killed her entire argument.
“Mia,” he sighed. “I know that you–” he winced “–have come to care for Prince Valerian in some way. But darling, he’s nearly six-hundred-years-old. He’s killed people, maimed them, drank their blood. He can manipulate minds. He was a sultan’s concubine. How could you ever possibly believe anything he says?”
Concubine? She thought of that day in the stable, when he’d showed her his childhood. There were unpleasant, awful, shameful things he’d meant to show her, he said. But then he’d been snatched away, and her dad’s goons had come to take her. What hadn’t he shown her?
Whatever she felt – she was too numb to label it properly – it must have shown on her face, because Dad leaned forward in his chair, eager now. “I know you don’t like me, and that you don’t want to believe me. But I’m your father, Mia. You’re my little baby. I would never lead you astray in this. Please trust me, for the sake of family.”
“Family,” she repeated. A word that left her cringing. Family had never mattered to him; his blood relation to her, his parental obligation, had never mattered as much as his work. And on some level, she couldn’t even blame him for that. How could science march forward if it was weighted down by dirty diapers and bottle feedings?
She understood that, but she was still a daughter, one who resented her father.
And now…now, he was lying to her about an innocent man who’d been mistreated for an ungodly amount of time.
Decide, Val had said. She thought she knew what he meant, now.
“Yes, family.”
“So…blood is the most important thing,” she said, slowly.
“Mia, it is. Blood is everything.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
He smiled. “Perhaps we can come to an understanding. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yes.” And he didn’t seem to notice that the word rang hollow.
51
EVERYTHING AND NOTHING
Vlad didn’t sleep much. He’d slept for over five centuries, and felt no need to wallow in his bed now.
He forced at least three hours, for basic maintenance. It wouldn’t do to let exhaustion set its hooks in him, not now that so much was at stake. But he usually awakened around four most mornings, and then went looking for something to do. Most nights, he went down to the training room in the main basement, and practiced his sword or knife skills, or pinned up paper targets so he could work on his archery, or worked with modern firearms. He didn’t like the uncertainty of them, but he’d never met a weapon he didn’t want to master. There was a pool in the east wing, and sometimes he swam laps until the muscles in his chest and arms burned. The woods called to him on some nights, dark and alive with the rustle of mammals, wind-tossed, filled with the call of owls.
But then ot
her nights he sought the main house’s rooftop, and the distant glimmering lights along the horizon, a peek at civilization that lay on the other side of the forest. He went to the roof now, drawn there by the scent of something old made new again. A revenant smelled like a human forged of ash and congealed blood, and he fought the instinctual urge to growl as he approached the parapet where a silhouette in a long black coat stood staring off across the compound.
Kolya shifted a fraction, glancing back over his shoulder, his eyes too bright in the dark. When he saw that it was Vlad, he faced forward again, and his shoulders relaxed.
Vlad drew up beside him. “Can you scent me, like a wolf?”
“No.” His voice left his lips as a quiet rasp. The scars on his face, Vlad knew, meant that his flesh hadn’t quite realigned as it had been in life. He imagined scars deep down in his throat, criss-crossing his insides. A patchwork man. “I heard you, though.” Even softer: “I think – I think maybe I could always hear well. It’s hard to remember.”
“Do you remember your friends?”
“Bits and pieces. I – I remember a wolf. It was white. And – blood. War. But. There was a girl. We danced.” A deep groove formed between his tucked brows, and he reached to rub it with absent fingertips. “I don’t know.”
Vlad followed his gaze out across the grounds. The stable lay behind the manor, so from here they had a view of the massive front stair, and circular drive, and the splashing fountain at its center. All of it was lit with torches that looked like the old pitch ones of his time, but which Talbot had told him were powered by underground gas lines.
Everything about the world had changed since he went to sleep.
And nothing had changed.
Vlad reached back into the waistband of his pants and withdrew the two sheathed knives he’d come up here to deliver. Kolya didn’t start, exactly, but his head snapped around, and his gaze landed on them as Vlad held them out on a flat palm. “I believe these are yours.”
The revenant studied them a long moment, and then slowly, hesitantly reached for them. He wore fingerless gloves, and even in the dark Vlad could see the faint pink scars around his nail beds. He didn’t touch them, though; his hand hovered. “Are they? How did you get them?”
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