by Karen Chance
“It seems we got a different idea of what constitutes an outrage,” Sal told her. “Do something for my friend here or I’ll demonstrate mine.”
The woman flushed an ugly red. “We have already done what we could. Conventional medicine is of little use when the body it is being practiced on is already dead!”
“Then come up with something unconventional.”
The argument continued but I stopped listening. Something unconventional. That was supposed to be my department. I was the one who’d inherited all this power, the one who was supposed to be able to fix things. But I didn’t know how to fix this.
I tried to summon my power, but it wouldn’t come. And attempting to force it resulted in the same thing it always did—giving me a headache and having it shy away like a skittish colt. So I tried to reason things out, but that didn’t help, either.
I could go back in time and warn Rafe, tell him to leave with Marlowe and the others. But I didn’t think he’d do it—I knew him better than that—and even if he did, it would only condemn everyone else in our car to death. We’d barely gotten out with Rafe at the wheel. No way would we have made it without vampire reflexes. And he was the only vamp who’d stayed.
There has to be something, I thought desperately. Something I’d missed, something I hadn’t—
My power cut me off midthought. It had decided to come back, and with a vengeance. The makeshift clinic abruptly disappeared, overtaken by a vision so strong, I couldn’t see anything else.
I was walking down a cracked highway half grown in with desert plants. I didn’t encounter any people, but when I topped a hill and stared into the distance, I saw that I wasn’t completely alone. The road was not just broken up and badly overgrown; it was a car graveyard.
Sunlight gleamed dully on the dust-caked surfaces of cars, trucks and SUVs. They were lined up in rows, like a rusted traffic jam, for as far as I could see. And although most of the vehicles were newer models, they didn’t look like they’d moved for fifty years.
I started wading through the mass, but the cars were practically bumper to bumper and I decided it might be easier to walk on the sand. But when I stepped off the highway, the ground under my feet felt funny. It was dry and baked hard underneath, but on top was a layer of crumbling dust that crunched oddly under the soles of my sneakers.
I realized why a second too late, and jerked my foot back. But the bone I’d stepped on was dry and brittle enough that it crumbled to pieces anyway. More bones were everywhere, scattered like shells on a well-traveled beach. Staring ahead, I could see sand littered with white and brittle bits for what looked like miles.
After a minute, I continued through the maze, the glass from shattered windshields crunching under my feet. Some of the cars looked like they’d burned, but the pattern was random, not like that of an attack. Maybe the sun had reflected off of a shard of glass, igniting the fuel leaking from a decaying chassis. The blackened skeletons of twisted metal spotted the line, dark blotches against the field of yellow, like a leopard’s spots.
Even the cars that hadn’t burned were ruined, with drifts of sand and growing weeds obscuring any clues to what had happened. Every once in a while, I came across one with still-intact windows, but they were so caked with accumulated grime that it was hard to see inside. And layers of rust and dust had ruined the hinges.
I tried half a dozen of the best-preserved cars before finally finding one that I could force open. A billow of stale air rushed out, like the breath of a tomb, and something moved inside. I drew back with a little scream.
A desiccated body still sat in the driver’s seat, held in place by a seat belt that had almost been bleached white by the sun. Forcing the door had jarred the remains, causing the head to detach from the rest of the corpse and fall into the floorboard. Its face stared up at me, turned to leather by the dry heat, a few tufts of brittle hair still sticking out from under a baseball cap and mouth caught in a frozen scream.
I stumbled away, but everywhere I turned, it was the same story—more tomblike cars baking in the sun. That’s where the bones came from, I realized dully. From cars that hadn’t remained sealed, from ones that animals could get into and—
I crouched down, my hand on a bumper, my head between my legs. For a long moment, I thought I was going to be sick. But nothing happened except that the dizziness finally passed and my eyes managed to focus again—on the dust-caked remains of a license plate.
My breath quickened, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest. I tried knocking the dirt away, but it was almost baked on, so I clawed at it with my fingernails. I finally managed to uncover the little plastic sticker with the year. And then I just stared, the colors all blurring together in a smear of primaries—red sticker, yellow dust, blue sky.
It was this year’s date.
The vision shattered as abruptly as before, leaving me trying to breathe through a white-hot spike of panic. Hands gripped my shoulders and I couldn’t break their hold. I heard voices, but I was hysterical, close to hyperventilating, and I couldn’t make sense of them. Until a new voice spoke my name, the simple word melting into a rich, golden tone that washed over me like a benediction.
“It will be all right, Cassie.” Mircea was murmuring the same thing over and over while stroking my back, my hair. And I kept trying to tell him that it wasn’t, that it wouldn’t be. Because my power kept showing me nightmares instead of the answers I desperately needed. Because I didn’t understand what it was trying to tell me. Because Rafe was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“But there is something I can do, dulceaƫă,” he said, somehow understanding. “At least, there is something I can try. I will be with you soon.”
“Soon? What are you . . .” I opened my eyes to find myself lying half over Alphonse’s lap, his hands gripping my wrists, while Sal and Marco stared at me. Mircea was nowhere to be seen.
Before I could say anything, there was a commotion outside. The doors opened and two big vamps in dark suits came in. “Now, this is quite enough!” the nurse said. “The rules governing visitors are clearly posted!”
The vamps ignored her and checked the area, even eyeing the patients on either side of Rafe with suspicion, before dragging over a couple of large white screens. They hadn’t been in use at the time, not that I think they cared. “We have limited space here and you’re clogging the aisles,” the nurse informed us. “All but two of you are going to have to leave.”
Marco’s “Sure” translated as “When hell freezes over.” Sal and Alphonse didn’t bother to answer her at all. Their attention had fixed on the main doors with the intensity of hunting dogs scenting prey.
The vamps finished arranging the screens around Rafe’s bed, completely surrounding us except for the section facing the door. They took up positions on either side of the opening before one of them murmured, “All clear.”
“You can’t just barge in here,” the nurse was spluttering. “I’m going to call for security—” She stopped and turned as the door opened again.
Mircea walked in.
He glanced around the room, one quick flick of the eyes that seemed to take in everything: the rows of cots, the rushing orderlies who were trying not to look like they were avidly watching, the bed with its ointment-stained sheets, and came to rest on Rafe.
Mircea studied him for a moment and then turned to the gaping nurse. “Thank you for providing such excellent care for my kinsman,” he told her. “Your actions will be remembered.”
Irony laced the words, but she didn’t hear. “I—I—it was nothing. Really. We were thrilled to be able to do what we could,” she said, still talking as Mircea walked behind the partition and calmly shut her out.
There was no more talk of throwing us out, and no interruptions. Not that I think Mircea would have noticed if there were. His attention was focused solely on Rafe, who appeared to have fallen into a light sleep.
“Raphael! Attend me!” His voice snapped like a whip,
demanding obedience. And somewhere in the fog of pain that had fallen over him, Rafe heard. He opened his eyes a slit, a bare glittering against the raw flesh. “At this point, the process itself might kill you,” Mircea informed him. “What do you wish to do?”
I didn’t know what Mircea was talking about, but obviously Rafe did. He said something, but it was unintelligible. His voice was muffled, cracking, and I was suddenly grateful that I couldn’t understand. I didn’t want to know what went with the soft, broken sounds. One hand curled into a painful-looking fist and he pressed it down with terrible, leashed force against the soft surface of the bed.
“Then you must be willing to fight,” Mircea responded. “Life is not a gift, Raphael; it is a challenge. Rise to it!”
Mircea’s eyes had lightened, brightened, mahogany fired to gold-chased bronze. Trust me, they demanded, fierce and proud and infinitely compelling. It was the look that made me want to make really idiotic decisions that would only end in heartbreak. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Rafe nodded.
And Sal pulled me up and out of the curtained area. I looked around to find myself surrounded by the family. Sal and Alphonse were there, along with Marco, the two security men and Casanova, who was managing to look suave and frazzled at the same time.
“What are you doing?” I struggled as Sal pulled me toward the entrance. “Let me go! I want to stay with Rafe!” My voice had risen three octaves in that short sentence, which meant I was closer to losing it than I’d thought.
I tried to tear out of her grip, but of course that didn’t work, and her words caught me before I tried to shift. “It’s private,” she said sharply.
“What is private? What is going on?”
“Mircea is going to try to break Tony’s bond with Raphael,” Sal said, biting her lip. “Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but as weak as Rafe is . . .”
“What are you talking about? What difference does it make who his master is if they can’t save him?”
“You heard what that orderly said. The damage is too great for them to do anything, not that I think they tried too hard until we got after their asses. They took one look at him and decided he was a goner.”
She plopped down onto one of the seats that Alphonse and Marco had dragged in through the main doors, and she pulled me down into another one. We were flanking the wall not far from the entrance in one of the few areas with no cots. Instead, a jumbled bunch of medical equipment—wheelchairs, gurneys, IV stands—had been pushed here out of the way. Unneeded for the moment. Like us.
“I still don’t see how changing masters is going to help!” I felt edgy and hot and weirdly tight in the chest, like I couldn’t breathe. Like I had to do something or I might explode.
“Mircea made Tony, but Tony made Rafe,” Sal said tersely. “And the blood is the life.”
I’d heard that phrase all my life; it was a mantra among vampires. But I didn’t see the relevance now. “But Rafe’s blood isn’t helping him!”
“Because it’s Tony’s,” Sal said as if I was being especially slow. “It isn’t powerful enough to let Rafe repair this kind of damage. But Mircea isn’t Tony.”
Alphonse snorted. “No shit.”
“We get our strength partly from our own abilities and partly from our master,” Sal explained, reaching for a cigarette. She noticed a couple of oxygen tanks nearby and stopped, looking frustrated. “The more powerful the master, the more powerful his servants. If Rafe has enough strength left to absorb Mircea’s blood, to let it become his new source of life, he should heal.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“What do you think?” she snapped, obviously tired of twenty questions. She glanced up at Alphonse. “I need a drink.”
“Send Marco,” he said, settling into a permanent-looking stance by the wall. “If the master pulls this off, he’s gonna be weak. And by now everybody knows he’s here. If someone was gonna hit him, this would be the time.”
“He brought guards,” Sal said.
“Two.” Alphonse sounded disapproving. “I got ten more boys on the way, and I ain’t budging till they get here.”
“I have guards,” Casanova said, looking insulted. “Not to mention those thugs the Senate imposed on me.”
For once, Alphonse refrained from a snide comment on the quality of Casanova’s stable. “And now you got more.”
Sal looked at me and I looked defiantly back. I wasn’t budging until I knew about Rafe. She sighed. “I’ll go. This place is fucking depressing. What does everyone want?”
As soon as she left, I rounded on Alphonse. “How could turning someone weaken a first-level master? They do it all the time!”
Alphonse tilted his head back against the wall. For a moment, I didn’t think he’d bother to answer. But then he cut his eyes my way and I must have looked pretty frantic, because he sighed. “For a master to turn a non-magical human, yeah—it’s no problem,” he told me. “Three bites from the same vampire in quick succession and that’s pretty much it. But Rafe was already turned.”
“So?”
“So to break the bond, Mircea has to drain Tony’s blood from Rafe and replace it with his own. Normally, it’s exhausting, but no big deal. A first-level master’s blood is pretty damn potent, so it doesn’t take a lot. But Rafe’s so far gone, Mircea’s gonna have to lend him extra power just so he can survive the Change.”
“And that means draining himself dangerously low,” I guessed, wishing I hadn’t asked.
Alphonse scowled at a couple of orderlies who had been loitering around like starstruck teenagers ever since Mircea showed up. They quickly found somewhere else to be. “The master’s gonna be hemorrhaging power whether this works or not,” he rumbled. “I’m here to see that he doesn’t pay for it.”
There didn’t seem to be much else to say, after that. The three of us sat there silent, unmoving and, in the case of the vampires, not even breathing. I couldn’t tell how Casanova and Alphonse were feeling, because they’d lapsed into the non-expression vamps use when there’s no reason to impress the humans. But I felt anxious, miserable and utterly useless.
For some reason, my brain kept going to the presents Rafe used to bring me whenever he went on a trip. They were always thoughtful, fitting whatever I needed at the time. As a rambunctious tomboy, I’d received a plastic gladiator helmet from Rome and a matching sword that I’d used to chase him through the halls of Tony’s farmhouse. As an adolescent girl who wanted to appear more grown-up than she was, I’d been given small bottles of perfume from Paris, perfectly child-sized but filled with adult fragrances. And right before my escape from Tony’s, Rafe had slipped me my very first fake ID.
He had never asked for anything in return, had never seemed to expect or want anything. He was probably the only person in my life I could say that about. And now he was dying.
I usually wasn’t a violent person. I’d seen so much of it growing up that it had lost its glamour for me, even before everybody and their dog started attacking me. So it took me a few minutes to put a name to the feeling flushing my cheeks and curdling my stomach. I didn’t know who was behind the attack today, or even for certain that anyone was. But I knew one thing.
If I ever found out, I’d kill them.
Chapter Thirteen
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke up with my head against Marco’s shoulder, which somebody appeared to have drooled on. My eyes were gummy and I felt like I’d been hit by a large truck. My shoulders and back were in knots and my head was pounding. But Mircea was outside the screen, leaning heavily on Alphonse’s arm, and Rafe was—
“Rafe!” I bolted up the aisle, grabbed him and held on tight, whispering things that hurt against my throat. He still looked like death, but he was on his feet, and the skin that showed under the pale blue hospital gown he’d acquired was crisscrossed by scars but whole. The cracks were gone, the redness was gone, and he was standing. I was seeing it, and I could barely believe it.
“He br
oke your bond,” Sal said, and the look she sent Rafe was half relief, half jealousy. She’d been after Mircea to do the same for her and Alphonse ever since they came to Vegas, but so far, he hadn’t had the time or the energy to spare.
Rafe didn’t notice the undercurrent. He just nodded, looking dazed and amazed and utterly exhausted. He glanced at me, but I wasn’t sure he even knew who I was.
“My son requires a room,” Mircea told Casanova.
“I have something ready. Your rooms are waiting as well, of course. And the Consul requests an audience at your earliest convenience.”
“Tell her I will see her in an hour,” Mircea said. Casanova blinked and started to say something but swallowed the words. Instead, he mutely led the way out of the infirmary.
Dante’s had two penthouses, one in each of its twin towers, with the second reserved for the hotel’s owner. The best thing about them from my standpoint was their sheer inaccessibility. Each suite took up a whole floor and the only way in was through a private elevator with key-code access. And just in case Spidey scaled the building or a bunch of ninjas rappelled out of a helicopter, we were joined by a dozen guards as we crossed the lobby.
Six took the elevator up ahead of us, and the rest waited to follow. Marco, Mircea’s two guards, Casanova, Sal and Alphonse came up with us. And even in the plush elevator, which boasted its own padded bench seat and twinkly chandelier, that was a squeeze. I was all for security, but I didn’t see how anyone was supposed to draw a weapon if we couldn’t even move.
“Do we need a whole platoon?” I asked when we finally got the doors closed.
“The order went out after MAGIC fell: no one of senatorial rank is to go anywhere without an escort,” Mircea informed me.
“But you’re a master vampire.”
“And you are Pythia,” he said pointedly. “At the moment, our power merely makes us better targets.”
