by Karen Chance
Nothing.
And it utterly enraged me. Like all those years, loving him and hating him and being drawn to him but being afraid to get too close, because it always, always ended the same way. With him leaving. Either physically walking away, or withdrawing behind an icy facade until I did.
And now he was doing it again.
Now he was doing it permanently.
But the bastard wasn’t getting away with it this time.
I already had him in my arms, and now I shook him. A great clot of blood, his own by the color, fell from his lips, staining my already gory shirt. Like I gave a damn.
“Is this how it ends, Mircea? Is it?”
Nothing.
I threw him down on the sofa, straddled him, slapped him, hard. “Is it?”
“Security,” I heard Marlowe mutter, behind me.
Fuck him.
“I’ll kill the first one who touches me,” I snarled.
And then I slapped Mircea again.
“Five centuries, five fucking centuries, only to die a puling coward while this thing gets away. What about revenge? What about pride? Don’t you care?”
Nothing.
“So many years, and for nothing,” I told him scornfully. “If you were going to die like this, going to just give the fuck up, you should have done it then. You should have died with her.”
Radu was looking at me, horrified. And then he seemed to remember what he was doing, and stuck the bloody arm to Mircea’s lips again. Not that it mattered.
“She waited,” I said, staring down at him, the blood pounding in my ears. “You didn’t come. She bled out, on one of your own brother’s stakes, worse than a damned crucifixion, only it was your name on her lips as she prayed. And as she died, still calling for you. Sobbing, begging…but you weren’t there. You were never there!”
I shook him again, he and Radu together, because as terrified as he was looking, Radu didn’t move. “She needed you; you didn’t come. Now I need you. Are you going to abandon me, too? Are you going to leave me, too?”
Nothing, except the tick of the clock and my harsh breathing.
Nothing.
Until…a movement. Tiny, tiny. Just a tick in his throat.
Or possibly…a swallow.
“Mircea…Mircea, please,” I whispered, as the light in the room, brilliant only seconds ago, dimmed, narrowed to just his face.
Please.
And then nothing.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I tried to push him out, but the Scream had taken all my strength, not that I’d had much to begin with. And he was strong. So strong, this strange creature of light.
“Why are you doing this?” The voice was warm, deep, gentle. Inexorable. “You are hurt and exhausted. And at the moment, weaker than the things you stalk. This is not about the Senate…is it?”
I fought back, knowing it to be futile. I didn’t succeed in driving him out, but for the moment, he didn’t push any further. He was waiting for me to tell him.
I’d be damned if I told him.
But something must have leaked through, anyway.
“The child?” He sounded surprised. And then forbidding. “What do you know?”
I didn’t answer.
“Tell me!”
It was sharp, the tolerance completely gone from his mental voice. But I still said nothing. I couldn’t.
“Then show me,” he said grimly.
And the darkness became dazzling.
The ballroom was a swirl of light and color and sound, stunning, overwhelming. I was almost glad I couldn’t see much of it, yet I yearned for more. I dug my fingers a little farther into the lines of mortar between the bricks, hitched my toes a little higher on the faint edge of an ornamental frieze, and stared.
The pose left me clinging to the side of the palazzo like a barnacle on a ship, and hurt after only a very few minutes. But there were no other safe perches. Gaily costumed people were constantly coming and going on the balcony around the corner, or arriving in gondolas at the pier just below that. And there were lights in every window.
There were no lights here, the shade from another balcony directly overhead offering a wedge of darkness in which to hide. I liked the dark. It allowed me to see others before they saw me. It was cool, comforting, safe.
But the light…
The light was irresistible.
They were irresistible, the very things Mircea had warned me about. Terrible and beautiful, alien and hauntingly familiar, repellent and oh so seductive. I could never get enough of them.
And they had taught me things, things he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t, for I did not think he knew much about them, either. My favorite game was called Families, where I tried to guess how they all fit together.
At first I thought it was easy. Vampires of a single line all burned with the same unearthly fire. If the master wore green flames like a cape, then his Children did, too. Only in smaller, lesser, darker hues: moss instead of emerald, olive instead of jade.
But then I started to notice that that wasn’t always true. Sometimes there would be different colors, some jarringly so, within the same family line, and it confused me. Until I overheard a conversation, and realized that some vampires were adopted into families from other lines. Or traded or sold or acquired a hundred different ways.
And although the new master’s power bled over into the old, it never quite erased all of it. So some of the most formidable-looking vampires had halos of purple-striped green or red-dotted gray or, my favorite, a stern old man who walked about with a shining outline of pink-, blue- and brown-flecked orange.
At first it was funny. And then it made me wonder. My aura was blue. Mircea’s was white. Why was mine not white, too?
“And what did he tell you?” the voice asked softly.
“That I was part of his physical family, but not of the vampire. No dhampir ever is. Mircea could control me to a degree through his mental gifts, but there was no bond of blood. There was no formal tie.”
“And how did you feel about that?”
I didn’t answer.
“Vampires are, by nature, social creatures, some of the most I have ever encountered,” he mused. “They live in large, active families, constantly in the company of others, right down to the sharing of thoughts. I have never met a lone vampire. I do not think they exist, other than for revenants.”
“And dhampirs,” I said hoarsely.
The visits to the palazzos had become less and less frequent over time, not due to Mircea’s prohibition but to my own pain. The yearning grew as I aged, to the point that it became torture to watch them laugh and dance and scheme and belong in a way I never could. For I was not vampire; I could not make a Child. And the human part of me…
“Could not have a child, either,” he guessed softly.
“No.”
“And so you were alone. Vampires are family-oriented by nature, driven to unite with others, to form binding ties. But that is the one thing you could not do.”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. I felt him flip through my memories, like someone paging through a book. Scene after scene of failure, of watching lovers leave, friends flee—
“Even the other part of yourself,” he murmured. “Cut off. Walled away.”
I turned on him, impotent, furious. “Why are you doing this? Does your kind take pleasure in the pain of others?”
“Some do,” he admitted. “But I am not among them.”
“Then why?”
“I needed to understand you. To know why you wanted the child. And I am satisfied that it was not for a weapon, or for your Senate. But for family, connection…loneliness.”
“What does it matter?” I asked harshly.
“Because you may be the only one who can help me find her.”
I woke in another sumptuous bedroom, judging by the feel of the linens. But it wasn’t Louis-Cesare’s. I could feel the pressure of the consul’s house holding me down, like a dozen h
ands trying to push me through the bedding, even before I opened my eyes. And then I blinked the room into view and had it confirmed.
It was a nice room, blue and brown and beige, with lots of iridescent satins and thick velvets and a few furs warming up the ever-present marble. All of which my eyes glossed over because they were busy looking at something else. But I didn’t feel like getting up, or even moving, so for a few minutes I just lay there.
And watched E.T. float around in my wall.
The expanse opposite the bed was mostly unadorned, except for subtle striations in the marble. And a few pieces of museum-quality art. And some glowy blobs that, yes, kind of looked like E.T.
I turned my head—slowly, because it made the room do some convoluted spinning thing otherwise—to look at the wall to the left. The blobs sort of reminded me of reflections, like people passing in front of stained-glass windows. And having their shadows distorted before being cast on the opposite wall.
There was only one problem: there were no windows.
Not too surprising. Regular old vampires had to make do with regular old houses and modify them to suit. But the consul didn’t have to put up with that crap.
I hadn’t had an opportunity to do much exploring last time I was here. But from what I’d been able to tell, her house was built like an onion, with an outermost skin that opened onto long, shallow hallways that kept it from looking strange to anyone who might happen by and wonder why anyone would build a house with no windows. But that’s essentially what it was after you penetrated the first layer.
And I guess I was past that. Because all I saw was some shelves and a table-and-lamp combo. None of which could be throwing light shadows, including the lamp, which wasn’t on.
I turned my head back again—slowly, slowly—and looked at the wall. But E.T. must have found me pretty boring, because he was gone now. Or maybe my brain had decided not to go schizo right at the moment, although I didn’t know why. It had done everything else.
Including possibly killing Mircea.
That whole horror scene came back to me in a rush, hard enough to leave me gasping. I abruptly sat up, and just as quickly regretted it when the room telescoped and threatened to collapse. But I wasn’t going to lie back down.
Not until I found out what had happened.
I threw off the covers and went almost a yard before my knees gave way, throwing me onto a very nice carpet that probably didn’t need any puke stains. I stayed down for a moment, breathing, waiting for my head to accept the idea that, yes, we were doing this. And then I got to my feet and stumbled toward the door again.
And got halfway there before I realized I was naked.
Of course I am, I thought angrily, and went back to the bed for a sheet. God forbid I actually wake up dressed anymore.
I made a sixteen-hundred-thread-count sarong and wobbled back to the door. And poked my head out. And was immediately glad that I’d had enough working brain cells to think of the sheet. Because there were no fewer than six huge vamps outside, all spit and polish in shiny faux Roman gear, eyes expressionless pools of disapproval even without being exposed to a naked dhampir.
But one of them wrinkled his nose anyway, as if he smelled something bad.
Yeah, well, fuck you, too, buddy, I didn’t say, because I wanted to see Mircea more than I wanted to piss them off.
I started out the door, only to have two long spears crossed in front of my face, one from each of the guys framing the door. I looked at them, but they didn’t even bother to look back. They were staring straight ahead, just like the two on the opposite side of the hall, who apparently found something fascinating on the door over my head.
“Really?” I croaked, not gesturing at my sheet-covered form or the dried blood flaking off my upper lip or the fact that my eyes kept trying to roll up in my head. Because I was afraid if I let go of the doorframe, I was going to end up on my knees again.
And because nobody was looking at me anyway.
I cleared my throat and decided to try again. “I just want to see my father.”
And okay, that got a reaction. Not verbal, because I didn’t rate that. But the stony look in the vamps’ eyes got a little stonier.
“Sorry,” I said drily. “I forgot that it’s bad taste to mention that he is my father, but there you go. And I’m going to see him.”
I started to duck under the spears, only to have the two vamps on the other wall suddenly appear in my face. Or, at least, their crotches did. Another day, I would have made a cute remark about heat and leather jock straps, but I wasn’t feeling real cute right now. Apparently, they weren’t either, because the next thing I knew, the spears were gone, the door was shut and I was back inside the room, despite not being able to recall how I got there.
Okay, then.
I stared at the door, swaying gently, for what was probably a full minute. I would like to say that I was standing there planning my next move, but mostly I was just standing. My head felt really…odd.…My mouth was dry and I really, really wanted to crawl back into bed.
But I wanted to see Mircea more. And I was going to. Just as soon as I figured out—
My train of thought, such as it was, got derailed at the appearance of another otherworldly visitor. Only this one was a little different. Instead of E.T., it kind of looked like the blobs that used to goop around inside lava lamps, round and unformed and visible in a full-length mirror to the right of the door.
I turned around. It was on the same wall that the bed was facing, the one that held a large, ornate fireplace and a couple chairs. And, at the moment, some fuzzy blue stains that glooped along until they hit the mantel. And then flowed along its massive carved shelf until they fell off the other side.
I blinked at them for a moment, and then wobbled over.
They hadn’t waited. By the time I got there, they’d traversed the entire length of the room and disappeared. But before that, they’d gotten a little clearer for a moment. And instead of random blobs, they’d formed themselves into a vaguely person-shaped thing, with a distinct head, torso, and a couple smaller bits that might have been arms or tentacles.
I supposed the former was more likely, but considering where I was, I wasn’t ruling out the latter. But here’s hoping, I thought, and stuck my head in the fireplace. Or, more accurately, through the fireplace, because the bastard wasn’t really there.
It shouldn’t have surprised me—what does a vampire really need with a fireplace? And yet they were all over the building. And now that I thought about it, I vaguely recalled the consul vanishing into one the last time I was here, when she’d thought I was too out of it to notice.
Like I had just done.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, and then to notice that I was standing in a corridor, surrounded by a wedge of hazy light. It was coming from a filmy ward over the surface of a square opening in the wall. The fireplace, I assumed, which was apparently just for camouflage. I could see the whole room from here, including the bed, which was creepy.
But not as creepy as another light monster coming my way.
What is this, Grand Central? I thought, staring stupidly at the haze for a second, which was getting rapidly brighter. And then I stumbled quickly in the opposite direction.
It wasn’t exactly a run, because running into utter blackness isn’t fun, and I wasn’t really up to it right now anyway. The best I could manage was a shuffle, with a hand on the wall for balance. But at least there was nothing to trip over, because nobody had bothered about decoration in here. It was just a concrete floor, cold against my bare feet, and an equally cold blank wall.
Or it was until a reddish light started coming toward me from the other direction. I turned around, but the purple light monster was still there and still coming up strong behind me, judging by the way shadows were jumping on the ceiling. Well, shit, I thought, backing up, trying to get a wall behind me.
Which would have worked better if there had been one the
re.
But my reaching hand found only air, just my ears registered a difference in the echo. I was standing in front of another opening. And then I was through it and into an almost black room.
I threw myself to the side of the opening, hard enough to set my head spinning, so I didn’t see much as the blobs passed by outside. Just flickers of different colors strobing in through the opening for a second. And then they were gone and everything was dark again.
Except for something that gleamed to the far right of the room, displacing a tiny bit of dark.
My eyes fixed on it, and after a moment, it came into focus.
It was a candle.
I felt my spine relax, and I let out a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding.
It was sitting on a small table by a bed. The bed was big and old-fashioned, with a canopy and curtains to close it off from the cold—and the consul’s spy tunnel, I assumed. It was the sort that had gone out of style with humans when things like central heating came into vogue, but had retained its popularity in the vampire community due to offering added protection from the sun.
Of course, that wasn’t needed here. A windowless room inside a vampire stronghold was about as far from sunlight as it was possible to get. But the bed was there anyway. So it probably belonged to one of the older vamps, who tended to be more traditional.
And who probably wouldn’t be thrilled to wake up and find a dhampir looming over him or her.
I paused, because the last thing I needed was another fight. And if whoever was in there was old, they were probably also powerful and well rested and I…was not. So it might not just be inconvenient.
I should go back to bed.
For once, I should just do the smart thing and go back and get some sleep. By the time I woke up, someone would probably be around to tell me how Mircea was doing. Who was probably fine because he was a freaking tank and people had been trying to kill him for five centuries and had usually ended up dead instead. He was fine and I didn’t even know that this was his room and he was fine.
I moved closer.