by Karen Chance
“Typical!” Claire said, looking disgusted. Louis-Cesare apparently didn’t like the comment any better, because his face flushed and he rounded on the chief spy. But then Radu intervened.
“They may not have known what she is,” he pointed out. “She scents as human, and the other telltale signs are difficult to spot. And why would they have been looking for them? There are so few dhampirs; they simply aren’t what anyone expects—”
“It makes no difference!” Marlowe said, brushing that aside. “Whether they believed her to be human or mage or some mutant type of fey—”
Oh, yeah, I thought, watching Claire. This was going well.
“—why keep someone alive who could possibly identify them?”
“We don’t know that she can identify them,” Louis-Cesare argued. “She did not even know who I was when I found her. She may know nothing—”
“Oh, she knows,” Marlowe said, turning implacable eyes on me. “And she’s going to tell us, if I have to rip it out of her brain my—”
“Kit!” That was Radu again, but this time he was too late.
Chapter Seven
And suddenly it was like the old saying: you could have heard a pin drop. Which is a lot easier with vampire hearing anyway.
“Is that was this is about?” I asked, but Marlowe had clammed up. Not that it mattered; he wasn’t the one running this show.
He never had been.
“Mind tricks don’t work on me,” I said, my eyes meeting Mircea’s.
“Some do,” he said quietly.
And yeah. Some did. Specifically, his did, because they worked on pretty much everyone.
There was one thing I hadn’t gotten around to explaining to Claire in that twenty questions on vamps we’d been doing. Mainly because she wouldn’t have believed me. No one did unless they saw it for themselves, and precious few outsiders ever did.
Every senior master, sometimes even before reaching first level, developed special abilities. It was the crazy stuff the old legends assigned to all vamps but that most never lived long enough or got powerful enough to see. Like turning into mist or morphing into an animal—the kind of things that impressed people at parties. The kind of stuff that was often less useful than spectacular or awe-inspiring or breathtaking.
Except in Mircea’s case.
Mircea’s gifts weren’t like that. Mircea’s gifts weren’t showy at all—were, in fact, completely invisible, and all the more dangerous because of it. Mircea’s talents lay with the mind.
“That’s why you came here, why you had Louis-Cesare bring me back,” I said. “You wanted me in familiar surroundings.”
“It usually works best that way.”
“You ought to know.”
“What is it?” Claire asked, picking up on the sudden change in atmosphere. “What’s going on?”
But this time Mircea didn’t answer. This was the crunch point, and he knew it. His eyes never left mine. “Will you do it?”
I didn’t say anything, because I was kind of surprised that he’d bothered to ask. Maybe whatever he was planning needed my cooperation. Maybe having me fight him would lessen the chance of getting anything useful. I actually wanted to believe that. Because believing the concern in those brown velvet eyes—fake, fake, you know damned well it’s fake—was always a bad idea.
If I had a problem dealing with the flood of emotions Louis-Cesare stirred up, it was nothing compared to the tsunami named Mircea.
It had been this way as far back as I could remember, a strange dance toward and away from each other, a suspicious, snarling, snapping dance, which I guess made sense considering that we were genetically designed to tear each other’s throat out. Lately, we’d been in one of the better cycles, circling closer, teeth still bared and claws still out because you never knew—no, you never, ever knew—but closer nonetheless. And I freely admitted that that had been mostly his doing.
I hadn’t wanted to get closer. I hadn’t needed one more ride on that merry-go-round, one more trip to that particular rodeo, when it always ended the same way. Why play when you can’t win? Why try when you know ahead of time that it isn’t going to work? When it never works? After centuries of the same old same old, I’d given up. I didn’t want to dance anymore.
Which was when Mircea had decided that he did.
And I had to admit, he’d learned a few new steps since last time. Maybe more than a few, and they hadn’t been mere variations on a theme, either. When Mircea did something, he did it full throttle, and that included turning over a new leaf.
He’d started out by killing the creature who had killed my mother, despite the fact that the bastard in question was his own brother. He’d also told me a few things—very few—about the woman she had been, a commoner he’d married despite the fact that a match like that could only harm his ambitions. He had pulled me into his orbit by attaching me to the Senate’s shiny new portal demolition squad, which he happened to head up. He had dangled Louis-Cesare—moody, unconventional, passionate Louis-Cesare—in front of me like bait in front of a starving fish.
Okay, maybe not that last one, since Louis-Cesare was a serious potential asset to the family, if he ever got his shit together. Which he wouldn’t if he kept slumming around with me. So I didn’t know what, if anything, Mircea had done there, and what had been coincidence. But that was the problem with Mircea—I never knew anything for certain.
He was sitting silently, waiting for me to work through it. Other people were talking—I heard Claire’s bright tones, Radu’s soothing murmur, a flash of Marlowe’s thunder—but I couldn’t concentrate on any of it. All I could see were those dark eyes, so like mine, yet so different. So very different.
Part of the reason I’d freaked out on Louis-Cesare hadn’t had anything to do with him. He’d accidentally stumbled across one of my admittedly not insignificant number of hot spots, and this one was hotter than most. Or maybe sharper, because that’s what it felt like, the broken edges sharp as glass where memories used to be.
Mircea had used his little gift on me when I was a child, sorting through my head, taking out my recollections of his brother, of what had happened to my mother, of who-knew-what-else, because I sure as hell didn’t. But I could feel it, even now, the place where all those memories should have been, as conspicuous in its absence as a newly lost tooth.
Or a hole in the head. Because that’s what it was: a hole, a wound, a fissure. I could feel the raw edges where my memories had been cut to pieces, the sudden blanks where the film broke and left me floundering on the brink of a thought. A diver walking to the edge of a cliff and looking over to see…nothing.
Supposedly, the idea had been to keep me safe, since my baby dhampir mind had been set on revenge, and nobody in our family was an easy kill. Particularly not when surrounded by an army of guards bristling with weapons. True, they were human and I was not, but they’d also outnumbered me by a few hundred to one and Mircea hadn’t liked the odds. He also hadn’t liked the idea of a quick and easy death for his brother in case I got lucky.
Or so he said. But there was a problem with that. Because Mircea’s idea of fitting punishment had been perpetual confinement, locking his crazed sibling away for centuries after making him a vampire so he couldn’t die and get out of it. So he could never forget. It was a symphony of revenge instead of the few notes I’d planned to mete out, and it made perfect sense—except for one small detail.
No one under master status can make a vampire.
So Mircea had already made the leap to at least seventh-level master when he Changed Vlad, and I was a baby dhampir at the time, almost literally. And yet he couldn’t have controlled me without the mental surgery? He couldn’t have found another way without taking almost every damn memory I had of my early life, including all recollections of my mother? He couldn’t have done something, anything, else?
I didn’t buy it.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I bought it, which was why I w
as having problems with this whole reconciliation thing. And now he wanted back inside my head for round two? I stared at him silently and said nothing.
Neither did he.
Maybe because there wasn’t anything to say. I didn’t ask if they’d already checked other leads because I didn’t have to. Mircea wouldn’t have come here—not to me, not with this—unless he’d already tried everything else. Unless he was out of options.
So he was sitting there, bouncing Aiden on his knee, being patient with Claire, somehow keeping Marlowe in check, and waiting. For the deal. For the terms. For the bargains that were the only real heartbeat of vampire life.
And suddenly I was just sick of it, completely and utterly. There were things I could have asked for, things I could have used, but I didn’t want anything from him. I never had.
Nothing that I was likely to get, anyway.
“All right,” I heard myself say hoarsely.
And the dam burst.
Color, light, and the sound of raised voices surged around me. It felt like a veil had been lifted from over my head, leaving me blinking. And wincing, because Stinky had apparently been trying to get my attention by sinking wicked sharp nails into my thigh.
By the time I pried his toes out of my flesh, the party had moved to the living room, because it was darker. And Mircea needed his concentration for whatever he planned to do to my brain rather than putting out fires. I didn’t follow because I needed a few minutes.
And because of Claire.
Claire was Not Happy.
“I don’t like this,” she hissed, not bothering to keep her voice down.
Not that it mattered. The living room was only across the hall and down a little ways. Which meant we may as well have been standing beside them as far as vampire hearing was concerned. But Claire didn’t look like she cared.
“You don’t understand,” I told her, passing Stinky over so I could hold a paper towel to my leg. So much for another pair of jeans.
“Then explain it to me!” she said furiously, somehow managing to be intimidating despite balancing a baby on each hip. “Explain why you would even consider—”
“Because Varus wasn’t among the corpses,” I snapped. Damn, Stinky was developing freaking talons. “Which means he set us up—”
“He set them up. Not you! Why do you have to—”
“Claire, if the criminal element gets the idea that they can butcher the Senate’s agents at will, we’re all going to be in trouble. The Senate’s got enough on its hands with the war; it doesn’t need another front opening up here.” Especially one that knew its weaknesses as well as Varus probably did.
The reason Geminus had gotten away with his little hobby for so long was that he hadn’t been just any old vampire. He’d been a senator, and what was more, the Senate’s weapons master, which had included locating and developing new ways to kill things. That had given him carte blanche to go into Faerie whenever he liked, and set up his network of portals. But it also meant that Varus, as his right-hand guy, had way too much knowledge about the Senate’s inner workings—and its arsenal.
“We have to find him,” I told Claire. “Finding Varus means finding his contacts, who may be some of the same people causing you problems back home.”
“That isn’t home.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, red hair flying everywhere. It was sunny today, but it had been raining a lot lately, and Claire’s hair goes poufy when it rains. It was teetering on the edge of Afro territory right now, which wasn’t a great look for her. But it was better than the dark circles under her eyes and the pinched skin at the corners of her mouth.
I’d been kind of out of it lately, recovering from one disaster and apparently getting into another, and hadn’t really been paying attention. But maybe I should have; Claire looked like she could use it. “Are you all right?” I asked, wondering if we had a problem.
“This isn’t about me!” she said shrilly, green eyes flashing.
And okay, yeah. A problem. Of course, maybe having her slam somebody through a wall should have clued me in to that already. Claire had the stereotypical redhead’s temperament, but she usually stopped short of forcible redecoration.
“How can you let him do that, just…just tiptoe around in your brain like that?” she demanded.
“It won’t be the first time.”
“And that’s even worse! He already altered your memories once. What’s to say he won’t do it again?”
It looked like Mircea had less success with fey than with humans, I thought, because Claire clearly wasn’t a fan.
“It’s like I told you,” she said severely. “They only understand their own side, and it isn’t yours!”
“I’m part vampire, Claire,” I reminded her, since she seemed to keep forgetting that.
“You’re part human, too. And I’m beginning to believe the human part is the best part—in all of us.”
“What does that mean?”
She looked away. “Nothing. It’s just…Lately it feels like everyone I love is hanging by a thread, while some madman runs around with scissors. And some days, I just want to—”
“Throw somebody through a wall?”
Her head whipped back around. “Damn it, Dory!”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I get that way, too, remember?”
“Then help me.” Blazing emerald eyes met mine. “I can’t take any more stress right now. I just want to know that you’re safe. All right?”
“What are you stressed abou—”
“All right?”
I didn’t say anything, because Louis-Cesare had appeared in the door. “They are ready.”
Claire looked at me accusingly.
“I’ll be fine,” I told her firmly.
“Why do you even bother to say that?” she grumbled, and followed me across the hall.
The shades had all been pulled in the living room, and the curtains closed. The electricity was on, but it didn’t help much since it only powered an old fixture that hung from the ceiling, the lamps having been carted off by the troll twins for their basement apartment. We didn’t miss them much because we lived mostly in the kitchen and on the back porch, but it did make things a little gloomy at the moment.
I guess Ray had gotten tired of hanging out in the hall, and had come in here, only to be banished to a perch on the card table. I still didn’t know what he was doing here, but this didn’t seem like the time to ask, not with Marlowe glowering alongside, arms crossed, in almost the same pose he’d used in the kitchen. Like a beam of sunshine, I thought sourly.
Mircea and Radu had taken seats on the old-lady sofa, which Claire had inherited along with the house. It was red brocade with a high arched back, and always looked to me like it ought to be gracing a geriatric bordello. But with the two of them on it, its usual tattered garishness faded into the background.
A matching wingback chair had been pulled up in front of it, which I assumed was for me. I started toward it—which would have worked better if Louis-Cesare had let go of my arm. I looked up to find that the scowl he’d been wearing earlier had taken up permanent residence. It matched the shadow in his eyes, which the gloom had deepened to indigo.
“You don’t have to do this,” he told me shortly.
“Like hell she doesn’t!” Marlowe snapped.
“You don’t,” Louis-Cesare reiterated, and Marlowe suddenly went very still.
That was probably because Louis-Cesare had just made what could have been interpreted as a direct challenge. And it might have, had he so much as glanced Marlowe’s way. But his eyes were on me, and they were serious. I briefly closed mine.
When I opened them, he was still looking at me, still concerned. Still totally oblivious to the fact that he’d basically just challenged the Senate’s chief spy to a duel. It was days like this that made me wonder how, even with his fighting ability, the guy had survived as long as he had.
He was honest and honorable
and ethical and generous, in a culture that was exactly none of those things. That didn’t even value those things, because “good” was a relative term and being a good vampire was to be like Marlowe: cunning, deceitful, ruthless, overwhelming. Or like Mircea: calm, patient, resourceful, relentless. “Kind” wasn’t in the job description; “compassionate” even less so.
Damn it, the man needed a keeper.
Yeah, sure he did. A dark-haired, dimpled, dhampir keeper, which wasn’t going to happen, so just shut up. Sometimes I didn’t think it mattered what Mircea did in my head, because I was already crazy anyway.
“It’s like someone invented you just to mess with me,” I said resentfully.
“Quoi?”
I sighed. “I’m fine,” I said, just wanting to get this over with.
“I see what you mean,” he told Claire drily, and she blinked at him in what looked like surprise.
There was no point in stalling, so I walked over and sat down, really glad that I’d had that drink earlier. Even with Claire’s presence leeching the manic energy off my skin, like some kind of supernatural magnet, I was still crawling with it. Any other time, I’d have been crawling the walls, too—or, more likely, punching through them. As it was, I wanted this done.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, so now what?” I asked…Radu, because just that fast everyone else was gone.
Chapter Eight
I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. Or having the lights go out. Or having the room suddenly be replaced by towering glass-covered skyscrapers on one side and rippling dark water on the other.
First-level masters, I reminded myself grimly. You never got anywhere underestimating them, and Mircea already knew my brain like the back of his hand. He ought to; he’d basically designed it.
But at least he hadn’t had any trouble finding the right memory. The ripples frothed against an embankment like lace on a hem. Or maybe a neckline, because a few dozen ships rode the waves, glowing under the moonlight like a string of pearls.
