by Karen Chance
Jonathan was a nine-hundred-year-old necromancer who had been using stolen magic to unnaturally prolong his life. But taking other people’s magic into your system was like taking a drug. Yes, it could give you a high, as well as extra stamina for spell casting, but it also built up a dependency. One that required more and more over time to achieve the same result.
And that went double for anybody taking enough to elongate their life more than four times the average for magical humans. Jonathan wasn’t just addicted to magic anymore, he required it to live, and had become very creative at coming up with new ways to get it. Including trapping and draining a master vampire to the brink of death day after day after day.
Louis-Cesare had eventually escaped his imprisonment, but the experience had left him deeply scarred. I wouldn’t have blamed him for taking off after Jonathan tonight. Except for one thing.
“He’s dead,” I said harshly. “We saw the body—”
“And I know him! Do you understand?” The gentle expression of a moment ago was gone, and the blue eyes blazed. “All those days at his mercy, all those nights—” he cut off abruptly, his jaw clenched.
“A glamourie, then. A good one—”
“Do you know what Hassani’s master power is?” Louis-Cesare demanded. He was speaking about the unusual abilities that some of the very oldest vamps acquired. I’d assumed that Hassani had one or more; anyone able to hold a consul’s position practically required it. But I’d never heard what it was.
“No.”
“He sees through glamouries, including fey ones. They say there is nothing his eyes do not perceive truly, and many of his Children have this same gift. The fey did not want us to know that they had kidnapped Dorina. You have enemies; as does your father. If we did not see them, it would widen the field of our search considerably.”
“And slow us down.”
He nodded. “The fey could therefore not have used glamouries at this court and have expected them to work. And neither could Jonathan.”
I frowned, trying to think past the pain, and finding it hard going. “But it couldn’t have been him. We saw the body.”
“Yes, we did.” Louis-Cesare’s voice was grim. “But the Circle refused to release it.”
He was talking about the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical authority and a frequent pain in my ass. They’d had Jonathan in one of the cells at their main headquarters in Stratford, until he had a little ‘accident.’ They’d made us travel all the way to England to see what was left.
“That’s my point,” I said now. “You thought it was him, said you were sure of it—”
“As sure as I could be. But the stench . . .”
My nose wrinkled in memory. The Circle’s HQ was underground, almost like an ancient vampire lair, with a maze of twists and turns and a thousand dark doorways. I’d stopped trying to memorize our path after I saw one suddenly fill in and another casually move itself further down a hallway. But instead of the fine furnishings and unctuous servants of a vampire abode, there had been the reek of potions, so thick that it had permeated the very walls, and cold-eyed war mages fingering their weapons as we slowly walked by.
The cell we’d been escorted to had been even worse than the rest of the place, being small and cold and vaguely damp, a miserable spot to spend any time at all. But Jonathan hadn’t been there long. Because the best security in the world won’t help you if you manage to seriously piss off a demi-goddess.
I didn’t know the whole story there, what exactly he’d done to deserve having his heart aged to powder even while it was still beating. Yes, he was a leading figure among our enemies, coming up with new ways to use old magic and giving us a series of migraines in the process. But you don’t risk alienating your allies in the middle of a war just to execute a guy who was already on everybody’s shit list.
No, it had been personal, whatever he’d done to her, just as it was for me. And despite everything, I hadn’t been able to suppress a vicious smile at the expression on the body draped over the thin cot. He’d been on his back, his arms flung out, his face caught halfway between surprised and apoplectic.
Even in death, he’d looked furious that anyone would dare to cross him.
Only now I had to wonder: had she?
“I couldn’t get a good scent read,” Louis-Cesare was saying. “The mages say we live like snakes in holes in the ground, but at least we clean ours. They had decayed protection wards like spider’s webs in every corner, with new ones merely layered over the top. There was potions’ residue, some of it going back centuries, like pepper in my nose. There were spells, crawling all over each other, and snapping and snarling everywhere I turned, or whenever a war mage passed too close to another . . .”
I nodded. The mage who had been chosen for our escort had been civil, at least, and had managed to keep a sneer off his face most of the time. But his damned coat had shocked me every time I got near it, which was difficult to avoid in some of those narrow tunnels. Not that I could have anyway. I’d initially thought that I was just being clumsy, having been thrown off my usual game by the level of creepy, but no.
I’d looked down after the fifth or sixth shock to see the damned coat reaching out for me with its hem. Like leather fingers ready to pinch. As a result, by the time we’d reached the cells, the only thing I’d been able to smell was my own searing flesh.
Damned mages.
“I couldn’t scent Jonathan through all that,” Louis-Cesare added. “But tonight was different. The taste of his blood on the air, the stench of corrupt magic—it was exactly as I remembered. I’ve never smelled it as strongly on anyone else, or in precisely the same combination. It may as well have been his signature cologne.”
I sat there, and despite the complete sincerity in my lover’s voice, I was having a hard time with this. “But I talked to her. She assured me—”
“You mean the Pythia,” he said, referring to the chief seer of the mages, who pretended to preside over the whole supernatural community.
I nodded. Despite her court’s claims, and my father’s best efforts to seduce her to our side, she mostly worked with the Circle. Of course, she’d lie if they asked her to. Rumor was she was even dating a war mage these days.
But I’d been in a business where judging people accurately was important for a very long time, and I remembered the intensity in those strange, too-pale eyes, when she’d told me what had happened. She’d shifted into my room at the consul’s court without warning—a demigoddess’s privilege, I supposed—and practically scared me to death. One second, there’d been nothing but air behind me, and the next—
A skinny blonde chick with weird eyes and weirder clay earrings had been standing there. She’d seen me notice the latter and said that some of the young initiates at her court had made them for her. They were supposed to be chocolate kisses, her favorite candies.
They’d looked more like poop emojis to me, but I hadn’t been dumb enough to say so.
She’d stood there awkwardly for a moment before blurting out that Jonathan was dead and she was sorry she couldn’t have saved him for me. And I’d promptly forgotten about terrible earrings and good manners and the fact that people who ruled whole countries were on a waiting list to see this woman. And just turned around and ran. New travels fast and I’d wanted to get to Louis-Cesare before he heard it from someone else.
I’d made it, if only just. And then we’d gone to see for ourselves, because neither of us could believe it, otherwise. And damn it, maybe I should have stayed and questioned her some more, but I still didn’t think she’d lied!
Yet it seemed equally unlikely that she could have been fooled. She was the damned Pythia. I just didn’t know anymore.
“You’re saying that the mages deceived us somehow,” I said.
Louis-Cesare shook his head. “I’m saying that it was Jonathan. How he came to be there I do not know.”
I frowned. My head hurt; my heart hurt. I wasn’t up for this
.
And Louis-Cesare didn’t look any happier. “If I’d stopped, even for a moment,” he said, his eyes distant. “But there he was, leering at me from underneath one of those black masks, having evaded death yet again. He took off and I went after him—immediately, not pausing to think that of course it was a trap. But not for me.”
“Or for me.” I put my head on his chest. “They wanted Dorina. They left me lying in the street, while eight or ten of them shoved her through that portal.”
“I know. I saw. I tried to reach her, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
Neither was I, I thought, and shivered. His arms tightened. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “We shouldn’t be talking about this now.”
“Except that I want to talk about this now. I need—”
I stopped because I wasn’t sure what I needed. I hadn’t felt like this since I lost my mother, all those centuries ago. I’d found the village where she’d lived blackened and corpse-like, under a blanket of new fallen snow. Plague, they’d said. It had had to be burned.
They’d lied.
She’d been murdered, and I hadn’t been there to save her. She’d been lost to me, because I was too slow in tracking her down. I’d been nine at the time, a skinny, pale, dark eyed waif, but a dhampir nonetheless. The Roma, who had taken me in as a baby after she was forced to give me up, had known what I’d become: a predator, one who could fight off their enemies.
But I hadn’t been able to save them in the end, any more than I had her. I didn’t seem to be able to save anyone. And, suddenly, the torrent of emotions I’d felt then burned through my veins again: fear, anger, hatred, loss. I suddenly knew what I wanted, as I had all those years ago, and it wasn’t sitting here grieving uselessly.
I wanted a target.
And now I had one.
Chapter Four
Dory, Cairo
“No,” Louis-Cesare said, his voice hard as I struggled against his hold. “No!” he said, as I fought to get out of bed, to find the bastard who had done this to my family. “No!” he said, as I swore to make Jonathan bleed.
“Why are you doing this?” I yelled in my lover’s face, because try as I might, I couldn’t break that iron grip.
“I failed you!” he said, his color high. “I failed you tonight, and as a direct result, you lost two whom you love. You lost a part of yourself. I won’t fail you again!”
“Then get off me!”
“Dory.” I found my face captured between two huge hands. Sometimes I forgot just how big Louis-Cesare was. Before I met him, I’d usually gone for shorter men. At five foot two, nearly everyone was tall to me, and it made the height difference less ridiculous. Yet who had I married?
A six-foot-four-inch giant with matching hands and body, the latter of which was pressing me down into the mattress, forcing me to listen. I didn’t want to listen. And while I’m not as strong, I’m wily.
A second later, Louis-Cesare was sprawled on the bed, face up because I’d just flipped us. “I’m going after him!” I snarled.
I found myself flipped back again, and this time, he had a foot hooked under the bed, giving him leverage. Damned long legs! “I understand,” he said tightly, “You’re angry, and rightfully so. But you’re not thinking—”
“I don’t want to think! I want to kill something!”
“I know. I’ve been there. And I’ve seen others who experienced the loss of a Child. But I’ve also seen more than one master dead because they didn’t stop to heal—”
“I’m not a master,” I said, fighting him. “I’m not even a vampire. Without Dorina, I’m nothing—”
“That’s not true—”
“It’s completely true and you know it! Nobody gave a damn about me until they found out about her, so what difference does it make—”
I stopped, but not because he had said anything. But because he hadn’t. Not a word, yet the expression on his face was eloquent.
I had rarely seen Louis-Cesare angry. When you’re as powerful as he is, that sort of thing is dangerous. He usually kept himself on a tight leash.
But I was seeing it now.
The aristocratic face had gone deathly white, except for two little spots of color high on his cheekbones. His hair was everywhere, a tousled auburn mess, and the sapphire blue eyes were as bright as I’d ever seen them. He wasn’t angry, I realized. He was furious.
I stopped struggling.
“I give a damn,” he finally said, his voice harsh. “I didn’t fall in love with Dorina. I still barely know Dorina. I fell in love with you.”
He got up suddenly and walked away, not bothering with the opulent robe that somebody had draped over the end of the bed. I didn’t go after him. I was angry, too, more so than I’d been for a long time. He had no right to keep me here!
But he had positioned himself, whether intentionally or not, directly in front of both possible ways out. He was standing between me and the door, and looking out of the sweep of windows that were currently showing a fake, or at least very enhanced, view of the desert. We weren’t anywhere near the desert, being in the middle of Old Cairo, but the wards here were determined to present a pretty picture.
It was pretty, although not because of the sweep of stars or the moon silvering the sand dunes or the wind whipping a few palm trees around. I barely noticed them with my husband standing there. That word—husband—still felt strange, while lover rolled easily off the tongue. Maybe because I’d had lovers before, while the other . . .
I was still getting used to.
Lovers didn’t tell me what to do; lovers didn’t care. At least not the lovers I’d ever had. Some of them had been okay people; some had been outright bastards. But none had ever cared enough about me to get wounded by anything I said.
And yet choose to stick around anyway.
I hugged my knees as wondered what I was supposed to do now. I didn’t talk out problems; I hit things. But I didn’t want to hit Louis-Cesare. So, I sat there and stared at him instead, trying to come up with an argument that might get me out that door. It didn’t work, but the view was nice. The view was incredible.
He was powerfully but elegantly made, with long, graceful lines that flowed smoothly from the muscles of his shoulders and back to the smoothness of his buttocks and thighs. The lamplight loved him, glinting off the hints of red in that glorious mane, gilding the smattering of freckles on his shoulders, and turning the blue eyes to tawny gold.
But while anyone else who looked like that would have been trying to distract me, using his body to get me into another frame of mind, Louis-Cesare wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever known. It was probably why we kept bumping heads.
Even now, even after marrying the guy, I didn’t really understand him. I knew things about him: he was every inch the aristocrat from another age, with crazy ideas like noblesse oblige, the concept that rulers had a responsibility to the ruled, and that power came mixed with duty. That idea was woefully out of fashion among humans, and it had never been in style with vamps in the first place.
I knew that he had serious trust issues caused by a series of important figures in his life walking out on him—something we had in common. In fact, we had a lot in common, including a lifetime of being lied to, left behind, betrayed, and discarded. It had resulted in both of us having issues opening up and being fully honest, even with a partner, something we were still working on.
I knew that he was a mass of contradictions, with nature and nurture in his case having come into serious conflict. He was generous to a fault with money, but often stingy with his thoughts. He was kind and patient with subordinates, but could be harsh and irritated with those on his level who were behaving badly. He was willing to roll up his sleeves and do menial work when required, but he was proud, even haughty, with his fellow vamps, holding them to a code of ethics that they’d never subscribed to.
He was stubborn, my God was he stubborn! But he could be strangely open minded, too, accompanyin
g me to shows for artists he’d never heard of, or listening—with the strangest look on his face—to some of the garage and neo-punk bands I liked, trying to see the allure. I don’t think that had worked, but we had discovered a mutual appreciation for trashy novels and spicy Sichuan cooking, so I supposed that was something.
But, no, I didn’t pretend to understand him. I’d partly agreed to this trip hoping to get away from the war and spend some quiet time together. And we had had a single, wonderful day. Hassani had been held up from playing chaperone by some court issue a couple of days ago, so we’d been given a local guide and a trip to the temple of Abu Simbel, the famous memorial to Ramses II and Queen Nefertiti.
Fortunately, we never made it there. I was already tired of aging stone monuments, desert sand, and heat. Instead, when our airplane stopped at Aswan, the nearest airport, we discovered a Nubian market and fell in love. Or, at least, I did, and Louis-Cesare hadn’t seemed to mind the idea of spending the day among a gorgeous collection of blue, yellow and green buildings, with colorful murals and quirky inhabitants, instead of a long, dusty trip into the desert.
So, we’d overruled our guide and gone shopping.
We’d started with a visit to a local family, who gave us bright red hibiscus tea while we tossed treats to their pet crocodiles. Crocs were everywhere in the village: alive, and waiting for their next snack; dead and carefully mummified; tiny and perched on a local man’s shoulder; or huge and skinned and splayed out above doorways. The usually vicious creatures had been tamed by being hand reared, along with being fed a hefty diet of chicken and fish, to the point that several of them were positively potbellied.
The left-over dinosaurs were well taken care of, being an important money maker for the locals. It was much needed after the famous Aswan Dam took their land away, which they were still waiting to be compensated for. The crocs were also a nod to the crocodile-headed, ancient Egyptian god Sobek, who ironically, like the dam, was supposed to control the flooding of the Nile.
