by Karen Chance
And then another, and another, because the senate wanted me to make them an entire army of masters. With which they intended to rip the fey, and the enemies we had hiding with them, a new one. Mircea had come to me all happy and excited, almost giddy with his new plan.
And hadn’t understood my less-than-enthusiastic response.
It wasn’t just about what it would take out of me, because aging someone like that wasn’t as easy as the senate seemed to think. Or about the fact that I’d be too exhausted afterward to do anything else, including fighting gods. But about a question that no one could answer: what was going to happen when that army came back? What were a bunch of new masters going to do, freshly back from war and with enough power to do anything they liked? Who, if anybody, was going to control them?
“We shouldn’t be talking about this now,” Mircea said, his eyes on my face. “You need to rest.”
I shook my head. “I’m all right—”
An eyebrow rose. “Is that why you collapsed in the middle of the consul’s great hall?”
“The consul’s?” For a moment, my mind blanked. And then it came back to me. Shifting into Dante’s—or being shifted, because I’d had no control over it. The wards blaring a warning about Rosier’s presence, almost deafening. Marco bursting through the door, several vamps at his back—
And me shifting out again, before they could stop me. Because I’d wanted . . . something. . . . My eyes widened. “Mircea—”
“My lord—” The tousled-haired vamp, who was clearly crazy, was back. For about a second, until he made a strangled sound and fled.
“There is something you need?” Mircea asked me.
“The Tears of Apollo.”
He frowned slightly. “But you have it. I was told you took it from your rogue, after your duel.”
Trust the senate to know everything that happened, even when nobody had told them. “I need more. It’s a long story—”
“And I want to hear it, but I have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“That’s a long story, too,” he said ruefully. “We need to talk—”
That was the understatement of the century, I thought, gripping his hand. Because I knew what came next. “Mircea—”
“—afterward.”
“Mircea—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, seeing my alarm. Because our talks never quite managed to happen, or if they did, they got off on a tangent and never got around to the point. But this one had to.
“Just tell me,” I said, hanging on to his hand. “You must have had a source, right?”
“A source?”
“For the potion! I mean, you got it from someone—”
“Yes, we got it from someone.”
“Who? Just tell me that—”
Knowing dark eyes met mine. “If I do, will you still be here when I return?”
I bit my lip. Because we both knew the answer to that.
“I thought not.” He bent over and kissed my forehead. “This won’t take long, and then we’ll talk.”
I blinked and he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-two
“Mircea!” But the door was already closing. “Damn it,” I muttered, and threw back the covers, wondering why it felt like someone had sewn lead weights into them. And stood up.
And immediately collapsed, because I had no strength at all. My legs might as well have been nailed to the floor, they were so hard to move. So I didn’t. I just sat there, on a very nice Persian carpet of a type Mircea could probably have identified but I couldn’t, and leaned my head against the side of the bed.
So this was what happened when the potion wore off.
I sat there some more.
I finally decided to lie down, because even sitting up was too hard. I’d have tried to get back on the bed, but it was ridiculously high and far away. Might as well have been Everest. I settled for staring at the ceiling instead.
It probably wasn’t a good sign that it kept pulsing in and out. Or that the rug felt like it was spinning, very slowly, underneath me. I decided that there was a tiniest chance Caleb had been right, not about the addiction part, because how did you become addicted to something you could never find? But about the side effects.
They reminded me of a time when I’d used a power word I knew. It gave you a ton of stamina, like a week’s worth, all at once, to let you deal with an emergency. And you had better deal with it, because you weren’t just tired when it wore off. You were exhausted, passed out, useless, like for days, and—
And—
And shit.
I sat up. Okay, it looked like I could move, after all. Because my sleep-fuzzed brain hadn’t remembered to ask Mircea the most important question of all: what time was it?
The seat of his discarded chair was close enough for me to grab it and pull myself to my knees. And then somehow, and I wasn’t entirely sure how, I made it to my feet. And immediately wished I hadn’t.
I stood there, swaying slightly and clinging to the back of the chair, both exhausted and in serious pain, because my feet were a mess. Mircea had done something—the cuts were closed and the bruises had taken on the purplish hue of days-old wounds—but they did not want to hold me. And the door . . . the door looked like I was staring at it through a telescope, from the wrong way round. It was laughably far, to the point that there was no way, just no way—
And then the vamp was back.
It was the same one as before, with the glasses and the hair that could use a comb, and the generic, off-the-rack suit that needed pressing. I wondered vaguely how he’d gotten past the makeover squad. Most of Mircea’s guys looked like they got tackled and dragged to Armani first thing. Of course, maybe this wasn’t one, because I didn’t recognize him. Maybe this was . . . was the consul’s, I thought blearily, as we stared at each other.
And as he grabbed me, just before I hit the floor.
“Not the bed,” I said, because if I lay down, I wasn’t getting back up. “What time is it?”
He just stood there, holding me awkwardly, and didn’t say anything.
“What time is it?” I repeated, wondering why he was acting like he was hard of hearing when he was a vamp, and saw his pupils blow huge. And then this weird sound started coming from his lips. It wasn’t words—I didn’t know what it was—but it was freaking me out even more than I already was. “What time? What day? Damn it, say something!”
But he didn’t. He did almost drop me, however, and then his arms tightened, making me yelp in pain. The freaked-out look intensified, as did the sound, which had become a weird mewling cry, right in my face. And that sent me the rest of the way into a panic.
“Put me down! Put me down!” I yelled. But the vamp wasn’t putting me down. And he wasn’t stopping that horrible, high-pitched keening, either. However, he did take off running, through the door of the bedroom and down a hall, so fast that the rooms we passed were just a blur.
Like the faces that turned to look at us, and the stairs we all but flew down, and the rug that almost sent us sprawling before the vamp recovered, because his reflexes were better than his sanity. And the man who stepped out of nowhere in front of us, dodging back and forth along with the vamp, refusing to let him pass. And causing the keening to escalate to the point that I’d have feared for his heart.
Except, you know.
And then I recognized the man. “Jules?”
The handsome blond playing tag with the vamp nodded.
“Tell him you didn’t mean it,” he told me. “Tell him now!”
“That I didn’t mean what?”
“Whatever it was you said! Just say the words!”
“I didn’t mean it!” I yelled, because the vamp’s distress had reached earsplitting decibels.
And, just as suddenly, cut out.
He collapsed to his knees, taking me with him, and Jules knelt beside us. “What . . . ?” I breathed, after a minute.
“Later,” Jules said, looking around. “Let’s just get out of here.”
I followed his gaze. We were in a wide hallway that would have looked at home in old Rome. Not the terra-cotta and picturesque stucco version, but pure empire: gorgeous inlaid marble floors, nooks with priceless statuary, tasteful ionic columns. And, for some reason, the utter devastation of the place—it was currently lacking most of the once soaring ceiling—gave it an added charm, like ancient ruins.
Well, it would have if not for the crowd. Moonlight spilled through the giant hole above, splashing us like a floodlight. But not enough that I couldn’t see the ring of curious faces staring at us from the stairs and out of rooms, or just standing around the shadows, because the place was packed. And because the vamp had covered his face with both hands now, and was sobbing.
“What is it?” I asked, beginning to be seriously concerned. I put a hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”
And, oh God, here we go again, I thought, as he looked up at me, brown eyes huge, mouth already opening in distress.
“I didn’t mean it!” I said, quickly. “I didn’t mean it!”
The mouth closed again, with a pop.
For a minute, we just sat there, both of us fairly freaked out.
And then Jules took charge.
“Get up and bring her this way,” he told the vamp, clearly and distinctly. “Now.”
The vamp got to his feet and bent to lift me.
No questions, Jules mouthed at me, over his back.
I shook my head. No questions.
The vamp picked me up, a swift, graceful motion that belied the turmoil on his face. And followed Jules down the hall, one teeming with people. People in burnooses and saris, suits and ties, sarongs and kimonos, turbans and kaffiyehs, who passed us on all sides. Until we ducked inside a door, which Jules kicked shut behind us.
I gave an audible sigh of relief, and he grinned sympathetically. “Yeah. It’s been like that all day.”
I looked around, grateful that we were somewhere pretty normal. Well, except for a dozen lit candles on the coffee table, which provided the only light. But otherwise, it could have been a posh room just about anywhere: a couch, a couple of chairs, some probably expensive paintings on the walls that seemed oddly focused on cows, but overall I liked it.
The vamp must have, too, because I felt him relax a little.
“Put her on the sofa,” Jules ordered.
The vamp put me on the sofa.
He had a watch on his wrist, which I might have noticed sooner if he hadn’t been screaming at me. “Four a.m.?” I asked Jules—carefully, with one eye on the vamp. But there was no reaction this time.
Jules nodded. “Yes, why?”
“What day?”
He looked at me in amusement. “That would sound weird coming from anyone else.”
“Just tell me—please.”
He did. And I relaxed back against the cushions, feeling like my spine had just turned to water. I must have only slept for a few hours. The second day Rosier had promised was still young.
I opened my eyes after a moment, to notice that the vamp wasn’t looking nearly so relieved. He was standing beside the sofa, hands wringing, Adam’s apple working. And glancing nervously at Jules, like he had no idea who he was.
“Jules Fortescue,” Jules told him, extending a hand, which was strange.
Even stranger, the vamp took it.
It caught me by surprise, because vamps didn’t usually shake hands. It was one of those human affectations that slipped away after death, maybe because it didn’t apply to all the cultures and eras they came from. Or maybe because touching another vampire could cause auras to spark, and be taken for a challenge. Most vamps would have looked at Jules—who ought to know better—with disdain for even offering, but this one seemed almost . . . relieved.
Jules smiled and released him. “All right, that’s a lie,” he confessed. “It’s actually Jimmy Tucker. My agent just thought it sounded more dignified the other way.”
The vamp blinked.
“Yeah, used to be an actor,” Jules said, sitting down. “It’s okay if you’ve never heard of me. It was a long time ago.” He hooked another chair with his foot, dragging it a few feet closer. “Go ahead, sit down.”
The vamp sat. His eyes were still flicking around—at me, at a painting of a rustic hillside, at a rodeo rider cast in bronze on a bucking bronco. “Mine,” Jules said, seeing the direction of his gaze. “This is going to be my office if anybody ever brings me a desk.”
“Office?” I said. “Then they finally let you out?”
The last time I’d seen Jules, he’d been a sort of prisoner of the senate, although not because he’d done anything wrong. But because he’d done something unique, something that no vampire had ever done, at least as far as anybody knew. He’d turned human.
Or, to be more precise, I’d turned him human, in an attempt to save his life. He’d blundered into a terrible curse, one of the ones Augustine had been working up for the senate, and it didn’t have a cure yet. So I’d lobbed a Hail Mary and tried de-aging him, to turn the clock back to before he was cursed, hoping that would lift it. And, for once, something had actually worked out—sort of.
I still didn’t fully understand it, considering that physical wounds weren’t similarly affected. A stabbed human just became a younger stabbed human, for example, but in Jules’ case he’d ended up curse free. And that included the curse of vampirism, which had been lifted right along with the other, when he aged back to before it was laid.
It was what had given the senate the idea for their army. Because, if I could de-age someone, why not the reverse? It had also put Jules in a bad position, in a big way. Before the change, he had been one of my bodyguards, a master of Mircea’s family line, someone with power, money, and influence. Afterward, he was a self-professed lab rat, and one I’d promised to help spring from his cage.
Only it looked like he’d already done that.
“For the moment,” he agreed. “I’m their liaison to all the new vamps they’re bringing in.”
“What new vamps?”
“Ones like this guy.” Jules leaned forward, elbows on knees, his usually expressive hands hanging down, calm and quiet. Like the casual smile in his blue eyes as he looked at the twitchy vamp. “I’m not going to ask you any questions,” he told him slowly. “Neither of us is. Right?” He looked at me.
“Right.”
The vamp looked seriously relieved.
“I’m just going to talk to Cassie for a bit. That’s Cassie.” He nodded at me. The vamp looked my way, and his face reddened. I wasn’t sure why. For once, I was properly attired in tan capris and a pink blouse. There had been little pink ballerina flats in the room, too, arranged on the carpet, but with my feet, I wasn’t sorry I’d left them.
“Hi,” I said, wondering if that was safe.
Guess so.
“Any questions we ask are not meant for you,” Jules told him. “Just relax for a bit.”
The vamp visibly relaxed.
“So,” Jules asked me. “What happened?”
“I have no idea.”
He nodded. “Let me guess. You were with a vamp—someone more than a few days old.”
It took me a minute, before my eyes cut to Twitchy. “A few days?”
Jules glanced at the guy again, who seemed to be taking the relaxation thing seriously. He was slumped in his chair, staring at cows. “Okay, maybe a few weeks. Definitely not over a month.”
“A few— What is he doing here?”
It was a fair question, because baby vamps were, well, pretty useless. They were mostly carried for the first few years in any family, being given easy
, human-level tasks that didn’t require thinking anywhere close to morning, when their brains got all fuzzy. And which utilized the few things they were good at: lifting heavy items, running fast, and, uh, that was about it.
They weren’t even trained much at first, because it took time for their senses to sort themselves out. You can’t just go from a human nose to one like a bloodhound’s and not have it throw you. Or from human hearing to suddenly hearing everything, including conversations a mile off. Or from human sight to vision that could act like a camera’s zoom lens at will—or randomly, if you didn’t know how to control it.
Which was probably why Twitchy had just grabbed the arms of his chair and jumped back—
At a sudden attack of cow.
“Oh, for— I said relax,” Jules snapped, and then sighed when the guy promptly went limp.
“Sorry,” he said as Twitchy slid off the chair and onto the floor, almost like he was boneless.
“You’re not even one of them anymore,” I pointed out, as Jules grabbed him and stuffed him back in his chair. And turned it to face the nice, blank wall to his left, huffing a little with the effort. “Why is he following your commands?”
“Because he’s traumatized,” Jules said, watching Twitchy for a moment to see if he’d stay put. He did. Jules went over to the cabinet with the bronco, which swung outward to show a hidden bar. “There’s a reason they usually separate babies for a while, even from other family members. You know, bunk them with a mentor to see that they don’t walk out into the sun or something, and give them a chance to adjust.”
I nodded. Tony had had a special room he called the nursery, set up behind one of his businesses. Any new vamps he made stayed there for at least the first six months, and sometimes longer depending on how well they were taking it. Because it could be pretty shocking: hearing the family talking in your head all day, the whole bloodlust thing, the new senses . . . Most of the time, babies were considered to be doing pretty well if they didn’t lose their minds and run amok.
