Touch the Dark

by Karen Chance

  “How do you know we’re even going back there again?” If he was going to be honest with me, the least I could do was to return the favor. “I don’t have the same apprehension or fear or whatever it was around Louis-César anymore. And when he carried me away from Dante’s, nothing happened. For all I know the power has already passed, or it might choose to take me somewhere else.”

  “We believe that Rasputin will try for him that night, the one you have visited twice now, because it was then that Louis-César was changed. You did not know that my brother made him, did you?”

  “I thought Tomas said he was cursed.”

  Mircea shook his head. “I do not know where he heard that, Cassie. Perhaps he believes it because Louis-César did not know what it was to have a master. Like me, he had to make his own way with little guidance. Because my brother was imprisoned, Louis-César’s birth was not recorded until long after the fact. By the time any other master knew of his existence and might have tried to claim him, he was too powerful. Radu bit him for the first time the night you were there, after the jailers left them alone together in an attempt to terrorize our Frenchman. Radu called him back the two nights afterwards until he changed. Perhaps he was trying to gain a servant who could release him.”

  “So why didn’t he?”

  Mircea looked at me with some surprise. “You do not know who Louis-César was?”

  I shook my head, and he smiled slightly. “I will leave him to tell you the story. Suffice it to say, he was not free to move about for a long time, and by the time he was, Radu had been moved and he could not find him. In any case, all Rasputin would have to do to eliminate our Louis-César is to stake him before the third bite; kill him when he is yet human and helpless and he will never have to fight him.”

  “He could kill him in his cradle even easier, or when he was a kid. You don’t know it’ll be then.”

  Mircea shook his head emphatically. “We believe that your gift has been showing you where the problem lies, where someone is attempting to alter the time line. Why else would you keep going back there? In any case, the records on Louis-César’s early life are scant. The first time Rasputin can be sure where to find him is when he changed. It is on record, along with the peculiar circumstances of his masterlessness. He won’t take a chance on something so important. He will try for him where he knows he will be. I know where they held Radu, Cassie. It will be a matter of a few moments to free him.”

  “And can you tell me the exact date his mind gave way? A city surrounds that castle, Mircea. I won’t help you turn a mad killer loose on them.”

  Mircea spoke quickly. “I have spoken with Louis-César. Radu was quite sane when he changed him. You can help me save him, dulceaţă. Torture for others ended soon enough with death or, rarely, exoneration. But not for him. His torturers would never free him because they did not believe he could ever be redeemed, but they would not kill him, since his suffering made such a good lesson for those they wished to frighten.” The emotion in his eyes was hard to witness; desperation was too mild to describe it. “There is no way out for him! You have seen that place. Can you leave him there, knowing what his fate will be? Can you trade his life for your virtue?”

  It wasn’t my virtue I worried about; it was my freedom. But I knew better than to try to strike a bargain over that. There was no way the Consul wouldn’t at least attempt to hold on to me. If I became Pythia, perhaps I’d be able to avoid her manipulation and that of the two circles; maybe I could even help my father. It was a hell of a long shot, but it was the best one I had. I took a deep breath and pushed away from the window, letting the robe slip from my hands as I did so.

  Mircea watched me walk to him, hope dawning in his eyes. I put a hand on his shoulder, in the midst of the decadent, raw silk of his hair, and ran the other lightly down the curve of his face. “You answered my question. Don’t you want your reward?”

  He caught me to him and began speaking softly against my lips, words of thanks and passion intermingled. Tears fell onto my neck and breasts as he kissed, licked and nibbled his way across my upper body. He lay me back carefully onto the bed and kissed his way back to the center of that building pressure that had returned with a vengeance. Soon he had me almost crying for something larger than his tongue to ease the ache. As if reading my mind, Mircea slid a finger down to my throbbing center and eased it inside. It felt wonderful, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  “Mircea!” He didn’t answer, but two fingers slid inside me and I bore down on them, desperate for more of him. They eased the almost-pain and increased the pleasure until I was making a high, moaning sound and riding his hand like I so badly wanted to ride his body. The pressure inside me mounted until I thought I would faint from the delicious, burning ache of it. Then it broke and all I could concentrate on was that wonderful, breathtaking sensation that swept through me over and over. I heard myself cry out his name, then the world erupted in a flash of color and a sound like a rushing wind filled my head.

  A second later, I realized it hadn’t been the wind. “Um, Cassie? Look, I know this isn’t a real good time and all…” I was so drunk on the afterglow that it took me a minute to recognize Billy Joe’s voice.

  “Billy. You have exactly one second to get out.” Mircea held me while I finished my orgasm, speaking softly in Romanian. I was really going to have to break him of that.

  “I would, honest, but we need to talk. Something’s happening. Something bad.” I groaned and pushed him out of my head. He appeared, hovering over Mircea’s naked shoulder.

  Mircea had rolled on top of me, supporting himself with his arms, and he carefully positioned himself. “I have prepared you as well as I can, Cassie,” he told me in a rough, slightly breathless voice, “but this may hurt slightly. I am considered somewhat…larger than usual, but I will be careful.” I wanted to scream at him to get on with it—my body wanted him inside and it didn’t care if it hurt.

  Billy glanced at Mircea’s sweat-streaked face and rolled his eyes. “Please. You shoulda seen me in my prime. The countess said I had the biggest…”

  “Billy!”

  “…talent she’d ever seen. Anyway, he don’t look that impressive to me,” he said huffily.

  “Shut up and get out!”

  Billy ignored me and, before I could stop him, blew a freezing wind over Mircea. “Especially not now.”

  Mircea yelped and looked around in alarm, while I glared at Billy. “Have you lost your mind?”

  For an answer, Billy blasted Mircea again. The cold didn’t seem that bad to me, but then, I never feel ghosts the same way as everyone else. Mircea looked like he’d been hit with a blizzard; goose bumps covered his flesh, his damp hair actually had ice crystals in it and the result on our activities was the same as a cold shower.

  Before I could explain to Billy exactly how much trouble he was in, Rafe’s excited tones came from the doorway. “Master! I am sorry to disturb, but Rasputin is coming! He’s almost here now!” Rafe had paused in the door and was staring hard at the floor, fairly vibrating in alarm. Tomas entered right behind him. I quickly pulled the quilt up, but he didn’t so much as glance at me.

  Mircea’s eyes were blank and uncomprehending for a second, then he nodded. “How much time do we have?”

  “I don’t know.” Rafe looked frantic. I’d never seen anyone actually wring their hands before, but he was doing it. “Louis-César has gone to meet him, but that Russian testa di merda has an army of weres and dark mages with him! And he has enough masters that he can try to take us in sunlight!”

  Tomas nodded agreement. “The Senate is preparing a defense, but we are badly outnumbered. No one expected an attack with the duel set for tonight. I can take Cassie below. The vault should hold, for a while.”

  Mircea ignored Tomas’ outstretched arms. He caught me up, quilt and all, and strode naked back into the living area of the suite. “Mircea.” I looked up to find him grim faced and determined, and tugged on his icy hair to get hi
s attention. “What’s happening?”

  Mircea glanced at me as we started towards the stairs to the Senate chamber. All around us, the iron wall sconces had turned outward, with the sharp, knifelike decorations on their bottom edges no longer pointing at the floor. I was starting to think that maybe they weren’t decorations at all and hoped they knew who their friends were. “Do not worry, dulceaţă,” Mircea was saying. “They will never breach the inner wards. And this changes little. If Rasputin does not defeat the Consul’s champion before he attempts to take over, the other senates will declare him an outlaw. None of this will profit him.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel much better, considering that we’ll all be dead before the other senates can catch up with him.”

  “Hurry!” Tomas flung open the heavy door to the stairs as a blast came faintly from somewhere outside. “They’ve breached the outer defenses.” Several men and a woman rushed past us, toward the sound of the explosion. They had on enough hardware to make Pritkin look underdressed. I felt their power as they passed—war mages. Well, that should buy some time.

  “I assure you that will not happen, Cassie. I will protect you.”

  I didn’t answer. Mircea would try—I didn’t doubt that—but Rasputin had to be crazy to attempt something like this. And a crazy man always has a serious advantage in making mayhem.

  Pritkin rounded the corner and followed us as we began our descent. I glared at him and he returned the look. “What is happening? What trickery is this?”

  Everybody ignored him. The stairs shuddered under our feet and the overhead lights swung dangerously. “Vaffanculo! The secondaries are down!” Rafe screamed. I didn’t know what that meant, but a look at Mircea’s face told me it wasn’t good.

  “That is impossible. They should not have been able to get through that quickly!” Mircea tucked my head into his chest, and the next second we were at the bottom of the stairs. I guess we flew, but it had happened so fast, I couldn’t be sure. We moved into the Senate chamber at almost the same moment that another explosion came from above, and burning pieces of the stairway rained down behind us. A flaming splinter missed my face by a millimeter; then Mircea made a gesture and the heavy metal door into the chamber clanged shut.

  Rafe stared around fearfully. “This cannot be happening!”

  “You are needed to shore up the defenses,” Tomas told Mircea urgently. “Give me Cassie!” He tried to take me, but Mircea jerked away and crossed the room in another lightning movement. A door opened in the rock where only flat, bare stone had existed before. It shouldn’t have surprised me: this was a facility built by magic users, so there were probably more hidden doorways than visible ones. But it was still the best example of a perimeter ward I’ve ever seen, without a flaw even from only a few feet away. So that’s how Jack had appeared out of nowhere earlier.

  There was a deafening explosion behind us, and over Mircea’s shoulder I saw the heavy door he had just secured blown inward like it was paper. A mage leapt through the opening, only to be speared by two pieces of iron that came out of nowhere. I glanced up to see that the chandeliers had undergone a transformation like the sconces upstairs. Those hundreds of razor-sharp points were now vibrating, sending a dull, metal throbbing echoing around the room, like the sound of thousands of feet stamping in unison at a football game. They were excitedly waiting for someone else to poke their head inside the room.

  After Mircea finally convinced the wards to let us through, we swept down a long corridor. Torches burst to life left and right. Electricity tends to interfere with some types of wards and the corridor was fairly crackling with them. We went through three huge metal doors that were so heavily warded my skin felt pulled out of shape as we passed, like little hands were crawling all over me. The last one was the worst. The resistance was so strong that, for a minute, I didn’t think it was going to let any of us through. But Mircea barked out a command, and finally the almost physical barrier weakened enough that we could push past.

  Inside was a small room with four hallways branching off at different angles. Mircea stopped, so abruptly that Tomas almost ran into him. “Mircea! Which way?”

  “How did they break through so quickly?” Mircea asked again, and for a moment I thought he was talking to me. Then I looked up and saw Tomas’ face. There was nothing of the man I had known in it. It was a haughty, savage, beautiful countenance, something that would have looked right staring out from an ancient coin. I could see the Incan noble in his features; what I could not see was any sign of the gentle man I had known.

  “We can talk later! Tell me the way, Mircea!”

  Mircea smiled, his attention still apparently on me. “I have been a fool, it seems, Cassandra.”

  I glanced in confusion between the two of them. There was a building current of power in the room that worried me. The wards didn’t like it either; the air was close and getting heavier by the second. “Tell me, Mircea!” Tomas demanded. “No one has to die today.”

  “Oh, I can assure you,” Mircea replied, almost kindly, “someone will.”

  “What are you two talking about?!” I tried to get to my feet, but Mircea’s grip didn’t loosen.

  Rafe answered from behind me, his voice bitter. “It seems Tomas has changed sides, mia stella. What was the price for your betrayal, bastardo?”

  Tomas sneered at him, and the expression looked strange on his usually stoic face. “Did you really think I would work to keep myself in chains? I should be Consul! I would lead the Latin American Senate today if it had not been for that creature’s interference. I will not let you keep me subject to the whims of a child!”

  “Oh, okay.” Billy Joe floated around Tomas’ head. “That’s how the dark mages were able to figure out the wards so fast. Tomas told them what to expect. Guess he ain’t thrilled with the idea of staying servant to that French guy.” He glanced over his shoulder, back the way we came. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “They will be here soon,” Tomas told Mircea. “Don’t be a fool. Help us, and you will be rewarded. I give you my word!”

  “Why would anyone take the word of a traitor?” Rafe asked, his tone insulting. I would have told him to be quiet if I’d thought it would do any good. The expression on Tomas’ face reminded me of Tony in a mood, and antagonizing him then had never been smart.

  “What do you plan for Cassandra?” Mircea demanded.

  Tomas’ eyes flickered to me. “She has been promised to me, as part of my reward. She will not be harmed.”

  Mircea laughed contemptuously. “Cassandra may become Pythia. Quite a prize, Tomas. Do you really think your master will let you keep her?”

  “I have no master!” Tomas shouted, and I felt a bolt of power slam against Mircea’s shields, just above my head. His defenses held, but I didn’t see how. I was dazed from only the near miss, and Rafe was on the floor, screaming.

  “Rafe! Mircea, put me down.” He ignored me. I had the impression that he and Tomas had forgotten that anybody else was in the room.

  “If Rasputin kills Louis-César in anything but fair combat, your side wins nothing. You know this, Tomas. What are you planning?”

  “Rasputin will be fighting Mei Ling, not Louis-César. He will win easily, and the other senates will have to acknowledge his control. The Frenchman dodged our first attempt, when Cassie and I saved the girl, but soon it won’t matter.”

  “What?” I had the impression I’d missed something.

  Mircea seemed to understand, though. “You slipped earlier, when you said he’d been cursed. But he wasn’t, and you should have known that—you’ve been his servant for a century. I should have caught it then. Before you and Cassie interfered, Louis-César was not made; he was cursed, wasn’t he? By the gypsy family whose daughter died because of him. That is the way it originally happened, is it not?”

  It took a second for his words to soak in. “You have got to be kidding,” I told him. He shot me a warning look, and I shut up.

 
; Tomas apparently didn’t notice. “She was their only daughter. The king ordered her death to make a lasting impression on his half brother, but her family didn’t know that. They blamed the man they thought had seduced her and then had her killed when she ceased to be amusing. Her grandmother was a very powerful woman, and in her grief she cursed him with vampirism.”

  Rafe had managed to get back to his feet, although he didn’t look good. He started to speak, but I frantically shook my head at him. The last thing I wanted was to remind Tomas that he was in the room.

  Tomas was too caught up in his story to care. “When I realized Cassie had brought us to a time when Louis-César was still human, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to free myself. I thought if the girl was rescued, the curse would not be laid and he would die after a normal, human life span. I blame him for causing much suffering by his interference, but it was largely unwitting. I thought it would not be a tragedy for him to die as all men do, at his appointed time, but I should have been firmer. I do not know what went wrong, how he became vampire after all, but it does not matter.” He looked at me. “You will take me back, Cassie, and this time, I will be more direct. You must help me possess a body so I will have the strength to kill him.”

  I stared at him. What the hell did he expect me to say: sure thing, no problem? I was beginning to think he was as crazy as Rasputin.