Embrace the Night cp-3

by Karen Chance

  The only exception was Manassier, who'd had his own reasons for sending us on a wild-goose chase. So far, everyone else had refused to talk, didn't know anything, or was looking to get rich quick off a couple of desperate suckers. I'd been battling rising panic already, and Rafe's distress wasn't helping.

  "Please, Cassie!" His voice cracked around the edges, and my stomach clenched at the almost heartbroken look on his face. If it had been anyone else—any vampire, anyway—that look would have had my paranoid instincts muttering furiously. But Rafe didn't have that kind of deception in him. At least, he never had before. And I suspected his basic character was pretty set after more than four hundred years.

  "I told you, I don't have the spell," I said, more gently. "Maybe in a few weeks—"

  "But I'll be dead in a few weeks!" he blurted out.

  For a moment, the world tilted. There was a hollow roaring in my ears and the bar seemed to be closing in, with not enough air, not enough light. It felt like the heavy bass of Purgatory's continuous pulse was suddenly pounding inside my skull.

  Rafe stared at me soberly. "I am sorry, Cassie. I didn't intend to tell you that way."

  For a moment, I just stared back, understanding whipping through my mind with a white-hot sizzle. I'd known the spell was vicious—my own reactions had been more than enough for that—but that it could go so far I'd never even considered. Mircea was a first-level master. There were only a handful of them in the world, and they were almost impossible to kill. The idea of his dying because of a spell, any spell, was crazy, but especially one that hadn't even been designed as a weapon.

  "There has to be some mistake," I finally said. "I know you're suffering, but—"

  "Not suffering, mia stella," he whispered. "Dying."

  "But if I go to him, it'll only make things worse!"

  Rafe flinched when I dropped the wrong pronoun, but it didn't stop him. "The Consul has called in experts from around the world. And you know they would not lie to her." No, I didn't suppose so. The Consul headed up the Vampire Senate, and was easily its scariest member. "I heard one tell her that if you complete the spell, perhaps it will free…me. But he knew of nothing else that would."

  "I'll find another way," I promised, feeling sick.

  Rafe looked genuinely puzzled at my refusal. Like asking me to risk a lifetime of slavery was no big deal. "I do not see what is wrong with this one. Mircea would never hurt you—"

  "That's not the point! How much have you enjoyed being Tony's eternal errand boy?"

  "Mircea is nothing like that bastardo Antonio," Rafe said, appalled.

  I shook my head in frustration. No, Mircea wasn't Tony; despite the geis, despite everything, I knew that. But he was a vampire. And the one thing no vamp could resist was power. If the geis gave Mircea control over mine, he would use it. And, just like with Tony, I'd have no say about what he did with it.

  Tony wanted me dead mainly because I'd set him up for the Feds. I'd had a number of reasons for helping them out, but top of the list was that he'd used my visions to point him to wherever disaster was about to strike—and therefore where an opportunity for profit was to be found. Young and naive, I'd believed him when he assured me that he wanted the information to warn the people who were soon to be in distress. When I found out what he'd really been doing with it, I'd sworn never to be used like that again. Not by him, not by anyone.

  I swallowed, knowing this wasn't going to go over well. But I had to ask. "Tell me the truth, Rafe. Did Mircea send you?"

  If he really was dying, it would make sense for him to send Rafe to tell me so. Mircea had saved my life by refusing Tony his revenge. I owed him one, and I would have expected him to try to cash it in.

  What didn't make sense was why he would order Rafe to put on an elaborate pretense, to make me think he'd actually told him to stay away. But although Mircea looked to be in his early thirties, he was five hundred years old. And, like most of the older vamps, to call his thought processes Byzantine was a serious understatement. I'd discovered long ago that the easiest way to figure out what a vampire really wanted was to look for whatever would benefit him the most, and ignore everything else. And what would benefit Mircea was completing the geis.

  Rafe blinked at me, and for a moment there was something lost and wide open in his expression, almost bruised. "You think I would lie to you?"

  "If Mircea ordered you to, yes. You wouldn't have a choice!"

  "There are always choices," Rafe said, offended. "Had I been ordered to tell you a lie—" He gave a small shrug. "I cannot help it if I am not so good an actor at times."

  "But you're fond of Mircea. It might be an order you'd agree with."

  He sighed in exasperation. "Mircea has many fine qualities, Cassie. I know them well. But he has flaws, too—one in particular that I hope will not prove fatal. He is stubborn. Too stubborn to listen to the Consul's experts when they tell him he cannot defeat this. Too stubborn to believe that even his power can fail. And too proud to admit it, even if he did believe!"

  That did sound like Mircea. And I'd never really stopped to wonder how he would react to the geis' malfunctioning. If anything, I'd assumed his only thought would be to use it to get me under his power. But while I'd almost become used to my life spinning out of control, it definitely wasn't the norm for him. Mircea manipulated other people, used them to get what he or the Senate wanted. He wasn't accustomed to having anyone, or anything, do the same to him.

  "And consider this," Rafe said urgently, "when you think on deception. Mage Pritkin has no reason to save Mircea. If he dies, the spell is broken. All he has to do is stall long enough for that to happen, and you are free."

  An automatic denial rose to my lips, but died before I could utter it. The Codex contained some mysterious spell that Pritkin didn't want found. We'd agreed that once the book was located, I'd let him remove it before I searched it for the counterspell to the geis. But what if he didn't trust me? I didn't know enough about the magical community to know whom to ask for information. So all the experts we'd spoken with had been Pritkin's. Had all that "you go, I'll stay" stuff in Paris been about my welfare or an attempt to make sure I didn't find anything? What if the real reason we kept striking out was because that was what he wanted?

  "I almost forgot. I have something for you." Rafe fumbled under the cloak for a moment, then brought out a small package wrapped in a piece of black felt. "The Fey returned them to Mircea. As your master, they assumed he could get them to you."

  I parted the felt and into my hands dropped a ratty old pack of tarot cards. They were dirty and creased, and more than a few were missing the corners. I was a little surprised to see them, since I'd lost them while on a disastrous trip to Faerie in search of Myra. I'd been happy to get out of there alive, and hadn't worried too much about what I left behind.

  A card suddenly poked up from the deck with no help from me. "The Magician Reversed," a resonant voice began, before I shoved it back inside and slipped the pack into the pocket of my shorts. It did not add to my peace of mind.

  My old governess had had the deck spelled to report on the overall spiritual climate of a situation. It was supposed to be a joke, but over the years I'd noticed that its predictions were depressingly accurate. That was a problem because, no matter how I tried to twist it, the Magician Ill-Dignified was never a good thing.

  You know the guys with the three beans under the shells at carnivals? The ones with the stuffed animals that are going all moldy because they never actually give any away? The Magician Ill-Dignified is a lot like that: a salesman or con man who can make you believe almost anything. You can avoid him, but you have to be on your toes, because he will not seem like a deceiver.

  The card was safely tucked away, but an image of the tiny magician's face still seemed to hover in front of me. And my imagination was giving him Pritkin's bright green eyes. I didn't know how far he was willing to go to ensure that the mystery spell stayed lost. And if Mircea died, my biggest re
ason for finding the Codex died with him. Maybe Pritkin didn't view a single death as too high a price to pay to keep the secret.

  Especially if that life was a vampire's.

  Chapter 4

  Rafe watched me in silence for a moment, then cleared his throat. "There may be an alternative."

  I waited, but he just sat there, his jaw working but no sound coming out. "I'm listening."

  "I can't tell you," he finally said, sounding defeated. Apparently Mircea's command hadn't been so flawed after all.

  I glanced at Billy, who sighed and shrugged. He doesn't like possessions, but they do allow him to tiptoe through someone's thoughts, gathering stray information here and there. And I doubted Mircea had prohibited Rafe from even thinking about whatever it was he didn't want known.

  "Drop your shields," I told him, "and hold that thought."

  Rafe looked a little nervous, but since Billy slipped inside his skin a few seconds later, he must have done as I asked. I glanced around, wondering what the tourists would say if they knew that a ghost was currently possessing a vampire a few feet away. It made Dante's staged shows look a little tepid by comparison. Then Billy stepped out of Rafe's other side, looking freaked. "Oh, hell, no."

  "What did you see?"

  "Nothing. Not a damn thing."

  "You're lying." I couldn't believe it. Billy has a lot of flaws, but he doesn't lie. Not to me.

  His jaw set and his hazel eyes looked as implacable as I'd ever seen them. "If I am, it's for your own good!"

  There are, so tradition says, four main reasons for a ghost to appear to mortals: to reproach, to warn, to recall and to advise. I could add a few more: to annoy, to obstruct or, in Billy Joe's case, to seriously piss off. "I'll be the judge of that!" I told him angrily.

  "And your judgment's been so great so far?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Every time you get involved with the vamps, it's a bad thing." Billy held up three translucent fingers. "Tomas. ‘Oh, Billy, he's just a sweet street kid who needs a home. A sweet street kid who happened to be a master vampire in disguise, who betrayed you and almost got you killed!" A finger went down. "Mircea. ‘Oh, Billy, I've known him forever, he's nothing to worry about. Until he placed that damn geis on you and maneuvered you into the Pythia thing, that is." Another finger folded under, leaving me staring at a rude gesture. "See why I'm a little worried here?"

  "I'm involved anyway!" I reminded him tightly.

  "You won't like it."

  "I already don't like it. Just tell me!" The bartender was looking at me a little funny. Probably wondering why I was yelling at the bar.

  "Your buddy has been doing some investigating," Billy said, with obvious reluctance, "and heard a rumor. But it's probably no more than that. People have been speculating about the Codex for centuries—"

  Rafe shook his head, then grabbed his throat again. The bartender began slowly edging away. I sent him a smile, but the expression in his eyes said clearly that he thought we were nuts. It would have bothered me less if I didn't halfway agree with him.

  "Billy!"

  He sighed. "The word is that the Codex was never lost, that the mages have had it all along but circulated the rumor because they didn't want anyone looking for it."

  "Wonderful," I said morosely. "All I need is another run-in with the Circle."

  "Cass," Billy said, almost gently, "there's more than one."

  It took me a moment to understand what he meant; then my eyes automatically slid over to Rafe. "The Black has it?" I whispered in a savage undertone.

  The Black Circle was a group of dark magic users, people with no scruples about how they obtained power or what they did with it. They had recently allied with some rogue vampires against the Silver Circle and the Vampire Senate, in a war that threatened to engulf the entire supernatural world. So far, I'd mostly managed to stay out of it. I really wanted to keep it that way.

  At least Rafe had the grace to look slightly abashed. "I'm trying to avoid making any more enemies," I said tightly.

  "And if Mircea wants to raid a dark stronghold, he has the people to do it," Billy pointed out. "He sure as hell doesn't need us."

  I nodded emphatically. For once, Billy was making a lot of sense. Rafe looked lost, unable to hear Billy when he wasn't in residence, so to speak. "Mircea has a capable stable—" I began, only to have Rafe cut me off with an agitated gesture.

  "None of them will do anything," he croaked, sounding half-choked. I went around the bar to get him some water.

  "Why? Do they want him to die?"

  "No!" He looked around agitatedly, but his almost yell had been lost in the thrum of music and the hum of conversation. He leaned over the bar and dropped his voice to a whisper anyway, so much so that I practically had to lip-read. "There might be a few who resent their positions, who think they could do better elsewhere, but most are wise enough to see…" He trailed off.

  "See what?"

  Rafe took the glass I handed him, but didn't drink. He put it down and started rubbing both hands across the bar top in an unconscious, distressed motion. "That with Tony gone and Mircea dead, there will be no one to protect us. The family will be ripped apart, each of us taken by other masters to add to their power base. And they won't know us, Cassie; they won't care. We'll be commodities to them, nothing more. Things to be used and discarded when we fail to please."

  I mentally cursed myself for not thinking that far ahead. Of course Mircea's death would be more than a personal tragedy—his position as family patriarch ensured that. And it would be devastating for people like Rafe.

  He'd never had much respect at Tony's, where a steady trigger finger counted for more than artistic genius. But at least he'd known the rules of the household and where he fit into the hierarchy. In a new family there would be a constant struggle for position—maybe for decades. And Rafe was no warrior. He might not last long enough to carve a new place for himself.

  "Then why won't the family help him?" I demanded. "It's their butts on the line as much as his!"

  "Because the Consul has forbidden it!" Rafe whispered. "I am risking her wrath by even being here!"

  Well, that explained the nervousness. "Why would she do that? She needs Mircea alive!" As scary as the Consul was, she couldn't hope to win the war alone. The Senate was ultimately only as strong as its members, and it had already lost more than a quarter of them to combat or treachery. She couldn't afford to lose Mircea, too.

  "She says that everything that can be done is being done, and that we'll only make matters worse by interfering. But I think there is more to it than that. You're the obvious person for us to seek out, and she doesn't want us to aid you."

  "But I'm trying to help!" Lifting the geis would benefit me as much as Mircea, and if there was one thing I'd have thought the Consul understood, it was self-interest.

  "I know that, Cassie. But she doesn't. She believes that you are still angry with him for placing the geis, and may attempt some form of revenge. She knows you don't have to help him; that once he dies, the geis is broken—"

  "She actually believes I'd do that? Stand by and watch him die?"

  Rafe's hands clenched on the bar top. "I don't know what she might think under normal circumstances. But these are not normal! We are at war, and she is afraid of losing him. Even more, she's afraid of your power. Fear is not an emotion she feels often, and when she does…she tends to overreact. Perhaps, if you spoke with her…"

  I shot him a look, but didn't bother to reply. I had a suspicion that the Consul's plan to rid Mircea of the spell might involve killing the one who had placed it on him. Which, thanks to the aforementioned timeline snafu, was me.

  "Mircea isn't going to die," I said, trying to convince myself as much as Rafe. "He's a Senate member, not a newborn!"

  Rafe didn't answer. Instead, he held out his hand, opening the palm to reveal a slim platinum hair clip. I recognized it immediately. Unlike a lot of ancient vampires, Mircea didn't usually dres
s in the clothes of his youth. I'd only ever seen him in them once, and that had been to make a political statement. He preferred understated, modern attire, with the only outward sign of his origin the length of his hair. He once told me that in his day only serfs and slaves had short hair and that he'd never been able to overcome his prejudice against it. But even there he conformed to modern conventions by keeping it confined at the base of his neck in a clip. That one.

  I stayed a good two feet away, desperate not to trigger a vision. Just thinking about Mircea was hard enough; I couldn't risk seeing him. But this time, my caution did no good. A wave of images crashed into me, sweeping me away.

  I blinked a new scene into focus, my ears ringing from the sudden silence. Low-burning candles cast a puddle of watery gold light around a large bed, raised up several steps from the rest of the room. I had an impression of comfortable surroundings—dark wood, soft carpets and a lot of heavy antiques—but I couldn't focus on them. All my attention was taken up with the body lying on the crumpled sheets, skin china-pale next to the chocolate-colored fabric. Dark blue shadows softened the clean, strong lines, draping them with a subtle beauty completely unlike electricity. Watching the flames run orange-gold fingers along Mircea's muscles, I finally understood the allure of candlelight.

  He'd unbuttoned his shirt but kept it on, and it was all he was wearing. It was plastered to him, the thin white fabric gone nearly translucent from the sweat that soaked it. I took in a swift succession of images, none of which did anything for my equilibrium: nipples drawn to tight points, stomach muscles quivering, hips slick and straining, eyes liquid amber.

  His body, already taut with pain, suddenly shuddered and twisted violently. His back arched, throwing out his chest, flexing every muscle until it looked as though his spine would break. His fingers splayed across the damp sheets helplessly, his thighs trembling as if he'd just finished a marathon. His head craned back against the mattress, teeth clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out starkly. I stared at him with a heart-squeezing ache that made me want to grab him and cling, as if that would somehow keep him safe. Instead of damning us both.