by Karen Chance
“Yeah.”
We watched Louis-Cesare throw off the guards, grab Marlowe, and launch him at a marble column hard enough to crack it. He’d lost his nice blue suit coat, and his shirt was torn, showing off the kind of physique a vampire doesn’t need, but which is still . . . decorative. And his auburn hair had escaped its usual clip, falling around those broad shoulders like he was about to pose for a romance novel cover.
Fabio wished he’d looked that good.
Purple Hair must have thought so, too, because her “Why?” was tinged with disbelief.
“It’s a long story.”
“Then you wouldn’t care if I—”
“I’ll rip your throat out.”
Louis-Cesare, who had been pounding Marlowe into the parquet, looked up. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
And then Marlowe’s guys re-formed and charged, all at once.
I looked back at Radu. “Why are you dressed like that? Are you staying here now?”
He nodded. “It has everything I need. Several floors, a nice amount of space for entertaining, and a good number of servants’ rooms. Of course, it needs work.”
He frowned around at the gold and white extravagance, the gleaming parquet floor, and the glittering chandeliers, all three of them.
“You bought it?”
“Yes. I’m staying with Mircea while I get it sorted, but Kit was having a party—”
“So you came up here.”
He nodded.
“And Horatiu?”
“We followed him,” Purple Hair said. “He was serving hors d’oeuvres, but he got lost.”
That sounded about right.
“But then he started screaming his head off for no reason,” she said. Because it would never occur to her that someone like Horatiu could pick up on her intentions. But he had an echo of Mircea’s gifts, like everyone in the clan, and while he might be weak as a kitten, he was brave as a lion. My fist clenched. If they’d hurt him—
“He was going to raise the whole house!” Purple Hair said.
“So you had to shut him up.”
“Trevor said if he was going to scream bloody murder, we should oblige him—”
I felt my fangs drop.
She saw and her lip curled. “I don’t make war on . . . whatever he is. He’s fine. He’s tied up with that big blond in the bedroom.”
I assumed she was talking about Gunther the Gorgeous, Radu’s “bodyguard,” a giant with the suntan and six-pack of a professional athlete—maybe a surfer, because the shag was a little long. But he was nobody’s fool. And despite the fact that Radu hadn’t hired him for that reason, he was actually good at his job.
Bet he was pissed right about now.
“I hope you did a better job on Gunther than on Radu,” I told her.
“Didn’t have to. He was already tied up when we got here.”
I looked at ’Du.
He shrugged. “It was his turn.”
I sighed.
“Why didn’t you just call for help?” Radu had Mircea’s gifts to a far greater extent than Horatiu. He could have had half the clan here in a few minutes.
“I tried. She blocked me.”
I looked at Purple Hair with new respect. “Impressive.”
Her lips twisted. “Well. Not so much now.”
And then we had to duck because a shirtless guy flew overhead, spinning like a Frisbee.
I looked after him for a moment, confused, because he was one of Marlowe’s boys, and they’d all been fully clothed when they came in. Then I spied Marlowe himself, throwing a settee at Louis-Cesare, while wearing a new white dress shirt. Louis-Cesare and the sofa went sailing backward, and Marlowe snapped his fingers at another of his guys, who was trying to get out of a pair of trousers.
He was getting dressed on the fly, I realized.
“He’s too tall,” I yelled, and saw Marlowe’s head jerk up.
“The trousers.” I pointed. “They’re gonna be too—”
The sofa came whipping back across the room, taking out Marlowe and his guy.
“Never mind.”
“It will be good to get back to normal,” Radu was saying, when I turned back around. “I’ve spent so much time going to and fro, from the consul’s to Louis-Cesare’s—you have no idea. It’s been so inconvenient.”
“The consul’s?” I felt my nose wrinkle. “Why would you want to go there?”
“It’s where my laboratory is—was, before her men dismantled it.” And, for the first time, I saw what looked like genuine anger. “I went in the other day to find my equipment in boxes, all jumbled up!”
“They just moved you out?”
“They carried in a bed while I stood there! Said it was for some ambassador or other.” He sniffed.
“Is that what all this is?” I asked, nodding at the boxes. “Lab stuff?”
“Oh, no. That arrived yesterday.” Perfectly arched brows drew together. “I wasn’t going to let the Senate’s brutes move a damned thing. Heaven only knows what shape I would have received it in!” He held out a familiar-looking orb. “This is what I’m meant to be experimenting on.”
I took it gingerly, because Radu was the Senate’s mad scientist, and had been known to work with some scary stuff.
But not this time.
I held the little orb in my hand, and decided that the universe was fucking with me.
“What do you think?” he asked, watching me with bright eyes.
“I think you overpaid.”
“They were free.”
“I still think you overpaid.”
“What is it?” Purple Hair asked, peering over my shoulder. Because most vamps don’t need to buy the kind of insurance that I do.
“Junk,” I told her, and tossed her the orb. It looked exactly like the ones James had found at the warehouse.
“Where did you get it?” I asked Radu.
“From a smugglers’ warehouse out in Queens. We’d planned a raid for earlier tonight, but somebody beat us to it. They managed to evade us, but one truck hit a light pole and was left behind. It was full of these.” He gestured at the containers.
Huh. Well, that couldn’t have been Blue; he’d been busy tonight. So maybe the reporters had been right, after all. There really was an underworld war going on. But over these? Why not just knock over another semi, or hit up the manufacturers, if you wanted them so badly? According to James, that’s what everyone else had been doing.
“That’s what the Senate wants to know,” Radu said, when I asked. “I was hoping you’d have an idea. You know about magic, Dory.”
“Not this kind.”
But still. There was something going on with these “weapons.” Somebody was risking their lives for the magical equivalent of whoopee cushions, and I didn’t know why.
Radu sighed. “No more do I, I’m afraid. But you know how the Senate is. Everything they don’t understand is automatically my purview. Of course, it would be easier if, at the same time they’re increasing my workload, they weren’t also kicking me out of house and—”
His lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear anymore. Because an alarm had gone off, loud and insistent, drowning them out. And then the lights flickered off, and an electric frisson flooded over my skin, a wash of power so strong that it lifted my hair like a lightning bolt had just struck nearby.
“The wards?” Purple Hair yelled, looking around. Because the big boys had just come online, and they don’t play well with modern power sources.
“How odd.” Radu frowned. “Must be a malfunc—”
The whole house shuddered, hard enough to almost knock me off my feet, and to send Purple Hair to one knee. Hard enough to set the chandeliers swinging violently, throwing small scintillations of light everywhere, moonlight
refracted through crystal. Hard enough to stop the fight in its tracks, and to have Marlowe yelling, “What the hell?” from under Louis-Cesare’s arm.
Too hard.
Mircea was a senator; senators have enemies. They also like to sleep in safety. And while he always had some human servants hanging around during the day, just in case, good wards were simply what you did.
The kind that didn’t shudder from a single blow.
Or blow inward in a carnage of expensive glass and fine painted wood a second later, followed by a bunch of guys in masks.
Looked like somebody wanted their stuff back, I thought, right before the world whited out.
Chapter Forty-two
Mircea, Venice, 1458
For a moment, everything was quiet. The ship creaked, the girl snored, the footsteps of the two men echoed vaguely from somewhere overhead, their master having disappeared back through the portal. But that was all. The hold full of unconscious vampires didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move.
Except for the one with the broken arm, which finally finished twitching itself back together and then fell off to the side, pulling the rest of the vampire along with it.
He hit the boards hard, and the sound reverberated in Mircea’s brain. For a moment he didn’t know why, the panicked hurry, hurry, hurry in his veins clouding his thoughts. But then he realized: if he fell off his own stack, he’d end up sprawling either on the girl below or right beside her. He would almost certainly come into contact with her, might even touch her skin. And then—
Maybe nothing. Touch helped his mental abilities, but even at his best, he couldn’t control people with his mind. He couldn’t make them do something they didn’t want to do. But he could influence them, especially if what he was pushing for was something they wanted anyway.
Of course, he didn’t know that the girl wanted to help. She might just want to get away. In her position, he definitely would, since her life expectancy with what she knew was probably about the same as his.
But he wouldn’t know if he didn’t ask.
And he couldn’t ask if he never got off this pile!
He put his mind onto moving again, anything, anything at all, just so long as it helped his precarious position become a little more so. And when that didn’t work, he shifted his attention to a finger on the hand that lay in front of his face. Trying for a twitch that might send it sliding off the pile and possibly take him along.
He didn’t get it.
Cazzo!
And before he could try again, the two bullyboys were back, along with a number of sailors. They started carting the vampires up the ladder, quickly but carelessly. Nobody seemed to worry if a head hit a beam or struck the ceiling as they were towed through the small opening. No one seemed to mind if half-healed bones were rebroken, or if a protruding, rusty nail snagged an arm, tearing a great gash out of the flesh. No one seemed to care what kind of damage was done, and Mircea knew why.
Abramalin had told him.
Mircea had always wondered why there were so many mages in Venice. He’d understood why the vampires were there: it was a perfect feeding ground, with festival crowds regularly coming and going, most of them too drunk to notice if they lost a little blood. And, before the new consul changed the rules, it had been the only place in Europe where masterless vampires could find refuge.
But why so many mages?
He’d originally put it down to Venice’s size and wealth. A large, well-off populace meant plenty of targets for whatever scam the unscrupulous were running this time, and plenty of customers for the more legitimate practitioners. It was also a busy port, meaning that potion supplies were easy to come by.
One potion supply in particular.
Because, while he’d been right about some of the reasons for the large mage presence, he’d overlooked the biggest draw of all. That wasn’t surprising; it was almost unthinkable to him, even now. But unthinkable or not, the fact remained: the mages were in Venice because the vampires were.
Specifically, the mages were there for vampire bones.
No one knew exactly why, but vampire bones were one of the most potent potion supplies to be found anywhere. Not that they changed a potion; they didn’t seem to have any effect on the intended outcome at all. Except for one.
According to Abramalin, the addition of even a small amount of vampire bone to any potion instantly upped its power by several magnitudes. It could take a minor-level ward and make it virtually impregnable. It could take a simple love spell and bind someone with utter devotion. It could take a spell meant to light a candle and cause a raging inferno.
Put simply, it was a multiplier for magic, many times over. And as such, was worth considerably more than its weight in gold. The supply, however, was somewhat . . . challenging . . . to come by. Masters protected their families with deadly vigor, with even unimportant family members avenged lest anyone think the clan weak. Vampire bones, as magical as they might be, were a rare commodity.
Or they had been, before Venice was established as an open port. The masterless had started flocking to its sandy shores, their few belongings on their backs, desperate hope in their hearts. Hope that was soon shattered by the reality of the place. For most of the creatures who found these shores, it had proven to be merely more of the same: wealth, power, and position were the keys to success in Venice, and they had none of them.
Stubborn types like Mircea pushed through anyway, struggling to scrape a living on the bottom of Venetian society. Or to learn a skill that might endear them to one of its masters, and possibly find them a home. But others, who had pinned their last hopes on the supposed refuge, only to be disappointed again . . .
Well, suffice it to say that there was no shortage of vampire bones in Venice.
They were as plentiful as seashells on the shore, literally washing up on the sand after the daily immolation. Every morning, the wretched and the damned went down to the sea, to await the fearsome embrace of the sun. And every night, the mages and their assistants feasted, courtesy of the haul they’d made after scouring the beaches.
Until the current consul came to power, that is.
And the once-plentiful bones were suddenly less so.
There were still some poor souls, unable to cope with eternity in what they viewed as hell, who were willing to end it all. But for many, the change in regime had made a marked improvement in their situation. There were new safe zones in several areas, including the glittering capitol at Paris. There were rights-of-way being marked out between them, allowing safe-ish travel through jealously guarded territories. And, most of all, there were laws against littering vampires around the landscape that you weren’t planning to be responsible for.
Masters were now expected to account for every child they made, and those who became too careless risked their own lives and positions. So the masterless had less competition finding themselves a family, more places to search for one, and an elevated position even if they chose to remain on their own. For there were jobs where the unaffiliated were preferred, and they were becoming a rare breed.
For the first time, the unwanted hordes of Venice had a real reason to hope.
Of course, for the mages, the shoe was on the other foot. Not only was the supply of masterless vampires drying up, but the ones who did arrive weren’t even killing themselves anymore! The once-plentiful commodity, which had made the great mage families of Venice filthy rich, was suddenly rare once again.
And then things became worse.
Because somebody had started hunting vampires, taking by force what was no longer being given. And worse still, the bastards weren’t sharing. Abramalin had been very clear on that point.
“There’s nothing,” he’d told Mircea, his various beards quivering in indignation. “Not a scrap! The only shipments going out these days are remnants of old stock from some of the bigger trad
ers—at triple the price! But nothing new. Nothing at all!”
“That’s . . . unfortunate,” Mircea had said, trying for diplomacy while wondering if Abramalin was planning to augment his stock with him.
But if the idea had occurred to the old mage, he gave no sign. “Unfortunate? Unfortunate? It’s like having your magic cut down to a tenth of what it was!” he raged. “Everything has to come from us now, doesn’t it? And we don’t make nearly as much as we use!”
“I can see how that would be troubling.”
“Can ye now?” Black eyes had glittered at him behind falls of grizzled hair. “Then imagine this. Some of us aren’t interested in workaday spells. We’re innovators, visionaries, inventors! We are the future of the magical community, keeping it on a par with—well, you lot, for one. And any other rivals we find out there.”
“Yes, I under—”
But the old man hadn’t been listening.
“Come up with a spell, and somebody finds a way around it. So you have to come up with another. But it’s trial and error, isn’t it? Twenty, fifty, a hundred times I might have to attempt the same spell before it works, and then I have to refine it! And where does that power come from, hmm? I don’t generate enough—no single mage does! So, without our shipments, innovation has slowed to a crawl, and will soon get worse when the old stock is used up. We must have that trade reestablished!”
“I’m not going to help you kill anyone,” Mircea had snapped, fear giving way to anger. “I’m not going to help you collect anyone’s bones!”
“Have I asked ye to?” Abramalin sneered. “We aren’t the ones butchering your kind, boy! But if it’s found that some damned fool mages are trying to manipulate the price or whatever the hell they think they’re doing, and murdering your people in pursuit of it, what do you think is going to happen then? To all of us?”
“Then do something about it! Find these murderers—”
“Don’t ye think we’ve tried?” The old mage threw his hands up. “We’ve had people in Venice for months—good people—but found nothing.”
“How is that possible? I thought you had ways—”
