by David Weber
“Believe me, Dave, I understand what you’re saying,” the President continued. “In fact, that’s why I’ve stayed out of this. I knew about the hints that were being dropped, and I knew Longbow and Pieter were deflecting every one of them. And because of how much we owe them, and because of how much I respect them—and because of how much I trust them—I was willing to leave it at that. But now that Cecilia’s gone rogue, I don’t think we can do that anymore. I don’t like it, and I don’t expect them to like it, but the time’s come when we’re going to have to insist.”
“And if they refuse, Sir?” Dvorak asked quietly.
“Then we have a problem,” Howell replied, equally quietly. “To be honest, I don’t expect it to happen, but if it does, then it does, and we’ll have to deal with it when we get there.”
Their eyes held, then Dvorak nodded again, heavily.
“All right, Mister President. I’ll contact Pieter and pass the message.”
. VI .
VILLA DACIANA, ARGES MOUNTAINS,
ROMANIA
The night air was unseasonably chill for late summer, even for the mountains of Romania. It was certainly too dry and cold to create fog over the Arges River Valley. Even if that hadn’t been true, the small patch of fog drifting steadily—and rapidly—northeast had oddly well-defined borders … and it was moving against the wind.
There were no human eyes to see it, yet it traveled in its own little pocket of silence. The nightly rustlings of the virgin forest—the twittering of small birds, the grunt of wild boars, the grumbling snuffle of a bear—all went still as the fog sailed past, quiet as an owl. It floated under the trees, winding its way up a babbling stream, ghostly pale when a shaft of cool moonlight broke through the tree cover, invisible in the dark.
It reached a road. Not much of one, but one which shouldn’t have been there, according to the maps. The fog stopped there, and it seemed to quiver somehow, if a motionless patch of vapor could be said to do that. Then it moved back the way it had come, but only for a few feet before it stopped once more. It hovered there in the moonlight, radiating—if there had been any eyes to see—a sort of stubbornness, perhaps.
But then, finally, it moved once more, drifting along the roadbed towards the half-seen walls of a mountain villa. It slowed even further as the villa’s walls loomed before it. The villa—more of a fortified château, really—was tucked away in a steep-sided mountain valley, surrounded by ancient trees growing close against its walls. It had a look of permanence, as if it had been there for centuries, but it wasn’t exceptionally large. Nor did it show any visible lights, and a suspicious individual might have wondered why it had been built so deep in the valley’s depths, where it had no view of the surrounding mountains and was all but invisible even from directly overhead.
The fog stopped again, and this time it definitely swirled with an inner agitation. When it moved once again, it drifted back and forth across the roadway, as if leaning back against an invisible leash, but every movement ended with it closer to the villa than where it had begun.
* * *
THE VILLA WAS larger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. It wasn’t simply set against a valley wall; it was cut deep into the mountains’ rocky bones. The library at the foot of the magnificent sweeping staircase looked as if it should have been lit by candles, not by the modern fixtures which filled it with clear illumination. The floor was marble, in intricate geometric patterns of bright, contrasting colors, and its shelves were densely populated by meticulously cataloged books, many of them obviously ancient.
A tall, blond man sat at one of the ornately carved reading desks. If that desk was a genuine antique—and it was—it would have been worth a not-so-modest fortune before the Shongair invasion. The book open before him would have been worth even more—a hand-copied, beautifully illuminated fourteenth-century Bible, its covers crusted in gems and precious metals—and he looked up at the soft sound from the head of the curved stairs.
“Good evening, Cecilia,” he said.
The soft sound stopped, and the ticking of an antique clock seemed deafening in the stillness.
“Come down, Cecilia,” he said, and it was a command, not an invitation.
The stillness lingered a moment longer, and then a woman stepped out of the darkness at the top of the stairs. She sauntered down them with arrogant, insolent grace—her head high, her shoulders back, her lip curled. But there was something else in her body language. Something more sensed than seen, perhaps. That arrogance was a mask for something else, and her eyes flitted around the library as if seeking some avenue of escape.
“I’m pleased you finally got here,” Pieter Ushakov said, closing the Bible with the care and reverence it deserved as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Really?” Cecilia’s voice was hard, defiant, and the red tinge flowed and flickered across her eyes.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You have much to answer for, and we have a great deal to discuss.”
“And what makes you think I give a damn what you want to ‘discuss’?” Cecilia sneered.
“I don’t really care whether you do or you don’t. We’re still going to have the discussion. Or do you think we aren’t?”
His voice was calm, cool. Courteous, but with an iron note of authority, and the red in her eyes blazed higher. Her weight shifted, as if she were leaning back against a powerful wind, but then—manifestly against her will—she took a step. Not away from him; towards him.
“Fuck you!” she snapped, stopping as she forced her rebellious body to obey her once more.
“Somehow, I’m not surprised you feel that way,” Ushakov said. “But surely you’ve realized by now that you will obey me?”
“Like hell I will!” she snarled defiantly, but she took another step towards him even as she spoke, and there was desperation under the defiance.
Three weeks had passed since the massacre in Naya Islamabad. Three weeks in which she had at first headed for the mountains of Afghanistan, where she could hide from the breathers and their vampire lickspittles and find an abundance of those ignorant, holier-than-thou religious fanatics who thought they were so tough, so strong, to prey upon.
But it hadn’t worked out that way. Something—some … force or power she didn’t understand—had frozen her each time she found a new toy to amuse her. She’d quivered in place, fighting its compulsion, hungry to rend and break, but she couldn’t. And then she’d realized she wasn’t truly looking for a hiding place, either, not really. She was going somewhere—somewhere specific—and she’d had no idea what her destination was.
When she’d realized that, she’d stopped. She’d found a mountain cave, hidden deep inside the rock. She’d told herself it was her imagination, that nothing was really affecting her but her own desires. Yet she’d found out differently, pacing the confines of the cave like a trapped animal, snarling at the comforting dark around her, as something picked and prodded and whispered and gibbered so deep in her brain that she couldn’t lay mental hands on it. It was there—she knew it was—but she couldn’t isolate it, couldn’t make sense of it.
For two full days she’d hidden in that cave, fighting to understand, trying to resist whatever it was. Yet in the end, she’d been unable to do either … then. Step-by-step, against her will, fighting it every inch of the way, she’d left the cave, transformed herself once again into a cloud of mist, and gone drifting westward towards the setting moon once more. And gradually, in the days that followed, as she’d waged her losing struggle against the compulsion, she’d realized that she recognized the voice she couldn’t quite hear in her brain.
And a part of her had also realized where she was bound, even though she’d never been there before.
“Get the hell out of my head!” she growled now, glaring at Ushakov.
“As Longbow would say, that is so not going to happen,” Ushakov replied with a thin half smile, half grimace.
“Trust me, I don’t enjoy being there, but I have responsibilities.”
“Oh, I know all about you and your responsibilities.” Her sneer made the noun a curse. “And you know what, Captain Ushakov? I don’t give a flying fuck about you or your responsibilities. I am done taking orders from breathers. They’re cattle. No—they’re worse than cattle. They think they’re so special, that they should be able to tell us what to do? Well, I’ve got news for them—and for you, too. They can’t tell me shit anymore! Without us, they’d all be dead, and the universe would be better off without them!”
“I should have seen this coming sooner,” Ushakov said. “No, that’s not really true. I did see it coming; I simply closed my eyes to it because I didn’t want to acknowledge it. But it’s here, now, Cecilia, and it has to be dealt with, one way or the other. We aren’t superior to the ‘breathers.’ Not really. Oh, we can do things they can’t, and if Vlad is any example, it’s possible we’re truly immortal, now. But they can do things we can’t, as well, including building something that can break the Hegemony when the time comes. And I remember what the Hegemony cost me. I remember my wife, my sons and my daughter, my entire family—all those breathers the Shongairi slaughtered. I admire and respect immensely those ‘merely mortal’ breathers you speak of with such contempt. I admire their refusal to lie down and die and their sheer, raw determination. And, when the time comes, they’re the ones who will give my dead the vengeance they deserve. I’ll go every step of that journey with them—like Vlad, and Stephen, and Longbow, and all the rest of us—for that moment, and I will protect them. I will protect them from anything … including our own kind.”
“Words? You’re going to use eloquence against me? That’s your secret anti-vampire weapon?” Cecilia’s laugh was a brittle silver icicle. “I don’t know how you made me come here, but I’ll bet you’ve been sitting on your ass in this library—and where the hell are we, anyway?—the entire time. Little hard to walk and chew gum at the same time, is it, Mr. I’m-So-Fucking-Holy? So knock yourself out. I’ve got plenty of time, and if you want to spend the next couple of centuries sitting here under this pile of rocks while we just look at each other, that’s okay with me. Because you’re not going to be doing any of that ‘protecting’ from anything else if you have to spend all of your time just sitting on me!”
“Which is why I have no intention of doing anything of the sort,” Ushakov said.
“Well, I ain’t going anywhere I don’t fucking well want to go, so you’re shit out of luck on that front, Jack!”
“One of us is, at any rate,” Ushakov told her.
“Oh, yeah? And why’s that, asshole?”
“For the same reason you had no choice but to come to me here. Vlad left me in command, with Longbow as my deputy. I am not yet as old and as strong as Vlad is, but I hold his authority, and you have no choice but to yield to it. Wherever you go, my mind can reach you. You can’t hide from me, and you can’t defy me—not for long. But I knew you’d try to, and that’s the true reason I decided to summon you here, to Villa Daciana.”
“And what’s so special about ‘Villa Daciana’?” Cecilia demanded.
“This is the home Vlad built for himself five hundred years ago, Cecilia, when he first mastered his own change. He named it for his first wife, who died by her own hand at the siege of Poenari Castle, barely ten kilometers from here, rather than face Turkish captivity. Poenari was one of Vlad’s principal fortresses, although it lies in ruins now, of course. But the villa has served him in much the same way over the centuries, and he designated it as our … HQ when he left. So it seemed wisest to bring you here, where we could have this discussion in privacy.”
“And what ‘discussion’ would that be?” Her tone dripped contempt.
“The one in which you agree to turn away from your madness.”
“Like hell I will!”
“Yes, you will. Unless you wish to force me to resort to harsher measures.”
“Ohhhhh, I’m so scared!”
“I suppose that in many ways this isn’t really your fault.” There was a sort of stern compassion in Ushakov’s tone. “This is the madness Vlad warned Longbow and me about. We’re fortunate, actually, that you’re the only one of us in whom it’s manifested … so far, at any rate. But I won’t permit you to play with the breathers around you as if they existed only to be your toys.”
She snarled wordlessly at him, and he shrugged.
“You’re the only one who can defeat your madness, Cecilia. I can’t do it from the outside. Not even Vlad could … cast out your demon. That, as Stephen or Dave would say, is ‘on you.’ It can be done, by someone with sufficient strength of will, sufficient determination. Vlad himself faced it and won. You can, too, I believe, and if that’s what you choose to do, I’ll help you in every way I can.”
“Go to hell! I like it just the way it is. I am so sick and tired of having to worry about what other people think, or care about, or need. And you know what? None of that matters a single good goddamn to me anymore, and I’m glad. It shouldn’t matter to you, either, but if you’re so frigging stupid, so holy, then you go right ahead. But me? I am fucking out of here!”
“No, you aren’t. Because under this villa there are not simply cellars, but dungeons … and crypts. And in one of those crypts, in a lead coffin, is where you’ll await Vlad’s return if you choose to continue to defy me.”
Her eyes blazed scarlet, her hands curled into talons, and her fingernails extended into knife-edged black claws, but he only regarded her calmly.
“You’ll take no harm. You’ll simply sleep—hibernate, perhaps—until Vlad awakens you to deal with the situation. He’s much stronger than I am, so perhaps he’ll be able to get through to you. If not, I’m afraid he’ll move to the final option.”
“Oh, goody!” She rolled her eyes. “I’m so glad we’re finally getting to the final option. Maybe when you’re done going on and on, I can get out of here. So go ahead. What’s the ‘final option,’ oh fearless leader?”
“The final option is to kill you,” Pieter said levelly.
“Kill me?!” She laughed incredulously. “You think you can kill me? Do you have any idea how many bullets have gone right through me in the last fifteen years? Hell, I’ve even let some of the breathers stick knives into me, just so I could watch their faces when they realized it wasn’t going to do them a damned bit of good! What makes you think you can kill me when none of them have been able to?”
“I don’t ‘think’ I can, Cecilia. I know I can.”
He reached into a drawer of the reading desk. His hand came out of it with a khukuri, the traditional weapon of the Gurkhas. The curved blade was razor-sharp and sixteen inches in length, with a chill, steely gleam under the library lights as he stood at last.
“A knife.” Cecilia shook her head, her expression almost pitying. “Weren’t you listening? I’ve had plenty of knives stuck into me already.”
“Not by me, you haven’t.”
He stepped around the desk to face her. She tried to move back, away from him. Instead, she took a step towards him before she could make herself stop, and her eyes were the color of blood.
“I don’t care who you think you are.” Her words were slurred by her growing fangs. “It doesn’t matter. Jill and Susan and I went at it in that stupid basement in Pakistan, and none of us could hurt the other one any more than the breathers can. You’re no different.”
“Cecilia, please,” he said. “I am different, and I can kill you. I don’t want to, but I can, and I will if you force me to it. What you’ve done—what you’ve become—has to end, and it will. One way or the other, it ends right here, tonight.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?” The tension in her body eased slightly. “You really think you can kill me, and you really don’t want to.”
“Yes, I can, and no, I don’t want to.”
“Well, in that case, maybe—”
It happened so quickly that a �
��breather” wouldn’t even have seen her move. Her voice was calmer than it had been, reasonable, almost soothing, and then she lashed out from a relaxed, manifestly nonthreatening posture with those lethal claws, going for his throat with a viper’s speed.
But fast as she was, she was still too slow. The khukuri in Ushakov’s hand flashed in the light as the curved edge, shaped to maximize the force of the blow, slashed into the side of her neck.
Cecilia had been right about the number of knives she’d faced and laughed at. About the bullets, the blades, even the chair legs, which had completely failed to harm her or any of the other vampires. But that cold steel in the hand of Vlad Drakulya’s deputy was unlike any other blade she’d ever encountered, and her hungry snarl ended in a shocked grunt as sharpened steel clove completely through her neck.
Her head flew, the scarlet eyes wide in disbelief. It hit the library floor and rolled, and for just a moment, those eyes blinked up at him from the marble while her decapitated body stood upright, frozen. And then, as silent as smoke or drifting snow, she simply … dissipated into dust and vanished.
Pieter stood for a long, still time, looking at the space she’d occupied. Then he drew one of the deep breaths he no longer truly needed, shook his head, and replaced the khukuri in the desk drawer. He laid one hand on the closed Bible for a moment, then squared his shoulders and drew his phone from his pocket.
“Dvorak,” he told it.
“Contacting David Dvorak,” the phone replied. He stood waiting.
“Pieter?” Dvorak’s voice said from the phone.
“It’s finished,” Ushakov said. “She was … unreasonable to the end. She will no longer be a problem.”
“I’m sorry,” Dvorak said quietly. “I’m sure that was … difficult for you.”
“In many ways. But—” Ushakov shrugged “—in other ways, her attitude made it much easier than it might have been.”
“Do you think we’re going to see any more like her?”
