“No, but that’s one of the things I love about you. I love how sweet you are. That you’re so open like that.”
They regarded one another, gazes tear-bright, full of hopeless affection. When he smiled, she echoed it.
Mia said, “Too bad there aren’t any self-help books on ‘What To do When You Become a Vampire and Jump Into a Committed Relationship All At Once.’”
He blinked. “There are books about that sort of thing?”
“Well, not the vampire part. But self-help, yes.”
“Being a vampire after so long as a human is strange,” he apologized.
“But good strange, mostly,” she said. “I like the way…” She hesitated.
He let his hands trail down her throat, and shoulders, her arms. Took her hands in both of his and pulled them up to his chest, pressed them to his beating heart. She relaxed immediately.
“See, like that,” she said. “The way I can sense things. The way being near you makes everything better. I like the way I can sense your emotions and intentions when we’re – together.”
“Together in bed?” he asked, with an eyebrow waggle that left her chuckling.
“All the time – but in bed, yeah, especially then.” She blushed adorably. “When we’re together and I can feel that you want it just as badly as me, and it’s like we can anticipate what the other one needs. God, who could go back to regular sex after that? I can feel how much you want me sometimes,” she said, some of her self-consciousness fading, her pupils expanding. “It’s incredible.”
“It is.” He’d always been able to feel his lovers’ wants, their urgency, read their emotions…even when those emotions were dark and harmful.
“I guess there are times when that isn’t a perk, is it?” she guessed, reading him.
He offered a smile. “Right.”
Silence fell, but it wasn’t loaded this time. Contemplative. Val berated himself for doing a poor job as shepherd to a newly-turned vampire.
“I’m sorry I’ve neglected you.”
“Pfft, you haven’t neglected me.” She sounded scandalized by the idea.
“No, I’ve been a poor mate. I’m sorry.”
“Val.” Her hands tightened on his. “Maybe I’m a new vampire, but you’re new as a free man. This isn’t easy on you.”
“It isn’t easy on either of us,” he corrected, softly.
“No.” She offered a small, hopeful smile. “Maybe we should cut ourselves some slack, huh?”
“Maybe so.”
She leaned forward, and let go of his hands so she could put her arms around his neck.
He hadn’t realized, until then, that he’d feared she might not embrace him again. At least not tonight, not with him smelling like another vampire’s kiss, not after all his ugly admissions. He held her back, tightly, gratefully.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, and he felt a pang, because he should have been the one reassuring her. “Want me to redo your hair?” she asked when she pulled back, a brave expression pinned in place, like she’d determined to cheerfully push past what they’d discussed.
An expression for which he was immediately thankful. “Please.” He slid back to the floor and presented her with his back, already anticipating the drag of her nails.
~*~
He dream-walked that night. Not intentionally, at first. He went to sleep with his head tucked close to Mia’s on the same pillow, his arms around her, but when he drifted off, and opened his eyes to the astral plane, he decided, on impulse, to go and find his brother.
Vlad was at Blackmere Manor, in a room paneled with dark wood, dominated by a massive desk, three chairs, and a low sofa. Tall, mullioned windows with the drapes corded back let in moonlight, and several lamps burned; a fire crackled in the grate, low and in need of feeding. Vlad – dressed in modern clothes, a plain black shirt, and pants, the clunky boots the guards wore – paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, hair loose on his shoulders, furrow between his dark brows.
On the other side of the desk, slumped down rather inelegantly in a chair, was the Necromancer, the mage Liam Price, his red hair wild like he’d finger-combed it, his shirt open at the throat, eyes underlined with heavy, dark bags like bruises. Fulk had described the injuries he’d suffered at Vlad’s hand. He was an immortal, and so he’d healed, but he wasn’t done healing; he looked exhausted and sick.
He was speaking when Val materialized in the room, his sharply-accented voice fuzzed at the edges with exhaustion.
“…it makes sense,” he was saying, eyes burning feverish, hand thumping the arm of the chair as he was gripped by strong emotion. “It goes all the way back to his origins; to the founding. The triumvirate–”
“Ah, talking of Rome?” Val asked, and Liam nearly fell out of his chair he startled so hard.
Vlad simply came to a halt, lifted his head, brow smoothing, and said, “Brother.”
Val dipped his head. His brother the prince, the leader, the more dominant of the two. An old, courtly gesture that came naturally, unbidden. “Vladimir.” He used their mother’s chosen name for him, and offered a sincere smile afterward.
Gods, but it was good to see him. To see him awake, and whole, and healthy, and not hating him.
One corner of Vlad’s mouth twitched, the faintest ghost of a smile. And then he frowned. “I thought you would be well away.”
I thought you were safe, his expression said. I gave you leave to escape.
Oh, Vlad. “I am,” Val assured. “We made it to New York. To our friends.”
Vlad snorted. “Your friends.”
“Captain Baskin sends his regards,” Val said, grinning.
Vlad grinned back, all teeth, dark eyes glinting. “Do him a favor and show him how to wield a knife properly.”
“I intend to. Though, I think Mr. Dyomin should prove a good tutor.”
Vlad grunted in an agreeing way. “He’s not bad. For a mortal.” Scarce had so splendid a compliment been offered by Vlad Tepes.
“Ahem.” Liam cleared his throat delicately. When Val glanced his way, he found the mage sitting up straighter in his chair, an attempt at charm plastered across his tired, pale face. “Greetings, your grace. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Val turned back to his brother. “Vlad, he’s totally cowed. He looks sick. What have you done to the poor man?”
Vlad’s gaze sparkled. But his tone was low and flat when he said, “A forced binding. But necessary.”
“Excuse me,” Liam tried. And was ignored.
“I still can’t quite believe it,” Val said. “You with a mage. How did you keep yourself from breaking his neck and being done with it?”
“Excuse me.”
“Shut up,” Vlad told his Familiar. He turned back to Val, and drew himself upright, shoulders thrown back. Uh-oh, Val thought. That was the face of a warrior about to charge into battle. “He’s boastful and foolhardy, but he does know things. He has certain…powers.” The last he said distastefully, lip curling. The fact that he’d sent Kolya with them spoke to an unadmitted sympathy Vlad carried for the revenant, and a disgust for the man who’d dared to raise the dead. Did he think of Father? Val wondered. Or Mircea? Could a necromancer have raised a vampire from bone and ash?
It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Better the enemy you know,” Vlad continued. “He’s safer bound to me than allowed loose, and more useful alive than dead.”
Liam sighed. “I am no one’s enemy.”
Vlad turned to him – but did not silence him, his harsh look a kind of invitation.
When no orders were given, Liam looked to Val. “How is Mr. Dyomin?”
“Do you care?” Val asked, half-affronted, half-curious. “You didn’t bring him back for his own well-being.”
“Yes, well, I’m not a monster.” He glanced between them – between both their disapproving gazes. “Oh, no more a monster than either of you! I intended to use him as bargaining
chip, yes, but that doesn’t mean I wanted him to suffer.”
“How could a man brought back from the dead help but suffer?” Vlad asked.
Liam turned a cold, defensive gaze on his master. “If I say that ‘sacrifices must be made,’ will you, of all people, lecture me otherwise?” When Vlad didn’t respond, he continued: “I think what you gentlemen fail to realize is that this war, as it stands, will require the participation of a great many strong soldiers, and as someone who’s spent centuries moving through immortal circles, I can readily say there aren’t many of you. Why else would I have allowed this place to grow my children?” he asked, growing heated. “Why would I have ever come here?”
“I don’t know,” Val said. “Why did you? Because as far as I can tell, this war everyone keeps on about is a mortal problem, and not one that bothers me or mine.”
“Yes, but you live in the mortal world,” Liam said, brows lifting, as if he’d struck a blow. “We all do. I don’t think either of you want to continue forward in a world in which the entire population is made up of your uncle’s…creations.”
Vlad sighed. “We’re fighting the war. I’m fighting the war.” He sent Liam a quelling glance, and to Val said, “He keeps going on about emperors.”
In the silence afterward, Val realized it was in invitation to explanation.
Liam seemed to realize it too, and twisted in his chair so he faced Val fully. “Three is the magic number,” he said, and resituated himself, got comfortable; his voice shifted to one of narration. Like a storyteller getting arranged before a fire and a rapt audience. “Immortals of all kinds existed before the birth of the twins Romulus and Remus, before the founding of Rome. Doubtless. But concrete information of any kind is difficult to find.”
“Our mother is a Viking,” Vlad said, flatly.
“And, oh, what I wouldn’t give to speak with her,” Liam continued. “But in her absence, I do what I can. And, given our main threat at the moment – the threat we’ve seen since the founding of Rome – is your uncle. It’s him, and his power, and his legacy, and all things pertaining to him with which we must concern ourselves.”
“And the number three?” Val said, just to get a rise out of the mage, which he did.
Liam bristled, and reached to smooth his hair with one pale, shaking hand. “There are three kinds of immortals: vampire, wolf, mage. And prior to Caesar Augustus’s rule, there were three leaders of Rome: the triumvirate.”
“There was also a kingdom and a republic before,” Vlad pointed out, dryly, “and emperors who ruled alone after.”
Liam made a frustrated noise. “Yes. But. The triumvirate is a Roman concept; a source of historic Roman power. Just as the triumvirate of vampire, wolf, and mage is a source of immortal power. Rome was an empire unlike any other; powerful, monolithic, destructive, indomitable, just as your uncle means to be. And, over the course of history, there have been three Romes.” He looked straight to Val, then. “You’ve fought outside the walls of one of them.”
Suddenly, Val didn’t feel like teasing anymore. He swallowed. “Constantinople goes by another name now. Belongs to another nation.”
“Constantinople,” Liam pressed on, eyes glinting with a new light, leaning forward in his chair, “was the second Rome. There was Rome, Italy, and Constantinople – now Istanbul, as you well know – and then there was Moscow, the third Rome.
“Your uncle is the birth of Rome, and he is our enemy. There are three immortals, a bond of all three kinds to make the greatest kind of power, and there are three Romes. I think it will take an emperor from each Rome, and his own triumvirate, to push back against the darkness that threatens to overtake us.”
“A theory,” Vlad said, dismissive.
“Yes, but look at it,” Liam said, turning to him. “Look at the coincidence. We have, within our grasp, heirs of all three empires, known and available to us just as Romulus’s threat re-emerges. That can be no coincidence.” He was pleading, desperate.
“You think it was fate?” Val asked, and, internally, he felt as though he were shrinking. Sound seem to come down a tunnel, and though he knew he went clammy with sweat back in his body, tossing and fretful, the sensations were only a buzzing on his periphery – much like the day he’d watched Constantine fall, and known his body was being beaten by soldiers back in his tent.
Constantine…
“Wait,” he said, voice cracking, and Vlad sent a sharp glance his way. “You said heirs – what heirs? Who are you talking about?”
“There’s Alexei Romanov,” Liam said. “He’s the last heir of Russia. I had no idea he’d lived, that he was even…” His expression went terrifyingly excited. He let out a breath, shook his head, and said, “Though faint, and often doubted by history, dulled by the generations, Alexei carries within his blood the blood of the emperor Constantine. He is of the stock of Muscovites who declared themselves the third Rome.
“As for Constantinople.” His gaze sharpened on Val. “The last emperor died childless…though he bore a great, paternal affection for a boy who visited him for years. A little Romanian boy with golden hair, who wished to save him…”
The head rolling toward him, the bloody stump of the neck. Black curls and open, sightless eyes, and a slack mouth. A face beloved…and dead.
Suddenly, Vlad was in front of him, hands hovering as if he meant to grasp his shoulders. “Brother,” he said, stern, but helpless.
“I’m fine.” Val sucked in a breath. Over Vlad’s shoulder, he sent the mage a glare. “Don’t speak to me of him. You weren’t there. You don’t know.”
“I don’t say this to wound you,” Liam said, head inclining to an apologetic angle. “But we can’t allow delicate feelings–”
“Delicate feelings?” Val asked.
“…to interfere with facts, in these instances. You, Valerian, are the closest thing that exists to an heir of old Constantinople – and are of the true Roman blood, besides. It’s a good fit – a better fit than we could have hoped for, to be honest.”
Val reeled a little, physically dizzy. He felt like he’d been punched, all the air abandoning his lungs in a sharp gust.
“Which would leave you, your grace,” Liam continued, turning to Vlad, true deference in his voice now. Even if he thought himself superior, Vlad was his bonded master, and that carried considerable weight. “To serve as the emperor of Ancient Rome.”
“By default,” Vlad said flatly.
“By birthright. Your uncle, the first king, sired no offspring that lived. By every law of succession, his oldest living nephew would inherit his title.”
Vlad’s expression didn’t change, save the slightest upward tick of one brow. “So you’d have three Roman emperors. What then?”
“Together, you’d defeat Romulus, of course.”
“Of course,” Vlad echoed, mocking. “Or I could simply continue forward with my own plans, kill him myself, and my brother and the Romanov boy don’t have to get dragged into any of it.”
Val was aware of his brother glancing his way, and frowning. He said something – his name, Val thought. But he was removed from the scene; the astral plane tugged at him, as he wrestled through a veiling of old cobwebs; as the past rushed up around him, flickering at the edges of his vision like candle flames. As he remembered the warm, soft chuckle of the reluctant emperor he’d called friend. Who’d wanted to embrace him, and comfort him, when Val was just a stupid, sobbing, spectral child standing in the middle of his study.
His heir? How could that be true in any capacity? How could anyone look at him, the sly-tongued golden whore, and call him emperor?
“Valerian,” Vlad said, low, firm, and right in front of him.
Val blinked, and his brother’s face filled his field of vision, close enough to see the lines that bracketed his mouth and eyes, grooves worn by worry that had no place on an immortal’s face. Vlad had worried enough for all eternity in his tenure as mortal ruler of Wallachia.
Val took a breath. �
��I’m alright.” But he could tell that, back in his hotel room, his body was trembling in Mia’s arms.
Vlad shifted, like he almost reached for him again, but remembered at the last second. Val wanted, almost desperately, to be here in the flesh. To feel Vlad’s strong arms go around him, to press his face into his brother’s neck, breathe him in, and be reminded that there were safe places in the world, Vlad’s protection chief among them.
He offered a tremulous smile instead. “It’s fine. It’s only–”
“I know.” And he did, because Val had shown him. He turned to regard his mage. “Leave us.”
Liam didn’t argue. Stood, bowed his head, and wished them both a good evening in the politest voice.
Val snorted when he was gone. “He hates you.”
“Everyone does,” Vlad said, certain and easy; Val felt a pang of sadness to know his brother was so sure of the fact.
“I don’t.”
“You have terrible taste. Come sit.”
They ended up in the arm chairs on either side of the fireplace, Vlad actually sitting, Val giving the impression that he did so, legs crossed, chin resting in his cupped hand. Even if he wasn’t corporeal now, and it didn’t make sense, he felt a true relief to get off his feet; like he could almost feel the tufted leather of the chair at his back.
“You’ve contacted Baskin and his men?” Vlad asked. He phrased it like it was tactics; a rendezvous between military allies.
Val suppressed a smile. “I have. I just came from a day spent with them, actually.” The urge to grin subsided. “They’ve met Kolya.”
“A shock.”
“A big one.” He grimaced when he remembered Nikita’s blank look, so different from his usual look of affected disinterest. He’d looked like his heart stopped. “I did it as a kindness – reuniting them. For all three of them. But now I wonder…Nikita didn’t take it well. Sasha seems to have his head on, still, but…” He picked at a loose thread at the hem of his tank top. He’d materialized in tonight’s club outfit, he realized with a belated inner chuckle. An emperor of Constantinople with his collarbones and ribs showing.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 43
