by Karen Chance
I hadn’t even seen Caedmon move, but there he was, casually leaning against the bathroom door. That robe was thin enough to be declared illegal in most states, I decided, slightly dazed. Then something hit the door behind him with a thud, and he sighed. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like me to dispose of that creature for you?”
“I’d think two members of the Fey would get on better than you.”
Caedmon tilted his head slightly, regarding me somberly. “I will ignore that,” he finally said. “But I would strongly suggest that you never again compare a member of the high court with a dirty half-breed. It is rather like comparing a human to a particularly mangy cur. The nobles who know less about your world would almost certainly… take offense.”
I sat up. “I’ve been called a dirty half-breed myself on more than one occasion.”
Caedmon didn’t reply. In fact, I doubt he even heard me. I looked down and realized that the sheet that had been covering me had slipped when I moved, and that I was currently providing him with a free show. I snatched up the coverlet and his expression tilted perilously close to a grin. I suppose gold velvet wasn’t particularly off-putting.
“I appreciate the thought, but adornment is not needed. Bare skin will do admirably.” He carelessly let his robe drop and turned in a full circle, hands outspread. He not only hadn’t overdressed; he hadn’t dressed at all. “Many strange things are said about us,” he continued, “but most are quite exaggerated. For instance, the Norse believe all Fey to have a flaw somewhere on their person, a mar to their beauty. Fey women are even said to be hollow, with a beautiful frontal appearance but no backs!”
In the dim light, he burned like a pale flame, his hair a flowing nimbus around his head. And if his body had a flaw, I didn’t see it. “Nici un lucru sã nu crezi, cu ochii pânã nu vezi.” The liquid syllables fell with ease from his lips.
My mind was busy with other things, so it took me a moment to realize what I’d heard. Seeing certainly was believing in his case, but that wasn’t the point. “I thought you didn’t understand Romanian.”
Caedmon sat on the side of the bed, naked and gloriously aroused. “In a life as long as mine, one picks up a great deal of esoteric knowledge.”
“You read the note.”
He looked slightly surprised. “Of course. Wouldn’t you? But obviously I could say nothing around the vampire.”
“Louis-Cesare? He’s all right,” I said absently. Caedmon had started stroking my leg through the coverlet, and it was distracting.
“Then you have told him of the ultimatum?” He saw my expression. “No, I did not think so. I do not trust him, either.”
“Why not? You just met him.”
“He’s a vampire, and others of his kind have been causing considerable trouble at home of late. It is possible that they are behind the current unrest, encouraging those who should know better to try for honors above their station.”
This suddenly didn’t sound like a seduction attempt anymore, despite the hand on my thigh. “Why are you really here, Caedmon?”
He tried to lift the coverlet, and I slapped a hand down on it. He grinned, unrepentant. “I told you. I have never before had a dhampir—I quite look forward to it. And afterward we can discuss our mutual problem.”
“Let’s discuss it now.”
He laughed. I seemed to be providing him with a lot of entertainment. I hoped he enjoyed it, because it was all he was going to get. After my emotional roller coaster of a day, I was in no mood for games. Especially not with a strange Fey.
“But I think much better after—”
“Caedmon!”
He sighed and lay back, spilling a waterfall of pale hair over the bed and providing the moonlight with a very attractive playground. I could swear the beams seemed to bend a little around him, as if trying to touch as much of that opalescent skin as possible. “We have common cause: we both want the girl,” he informed me. “You to save her from this rogue vampire, and I to discover whether or not she carries the heir.”
“And if she does?”
“I will see to her safety. You have my word.” That should have been laughable—for all I knew, Caedmon was here to kill Claire, not to save her. Not to mention that I never take anyone at his word, much less a very strange stranger. But when Caedmon said it, the hoary old line took on dignity and weight. I found myself oddly reassured, and it pissed me off.
“Won’t it be a little difficult to guard her in New York?”
Caedmon sent me an old look. “I will not endanger all of Faerie for one woman’s convenience, as you surely must know. But do not be alarmed.” He stroked my side as if I were a flustered pet. “It may not be an issue. Perhaps there is no pregnancy at all, or possibly the child is female. Then your friend may stay where she likes.”
“What, women don’t rule Faerie?”
“Certainly not.” He feigned shock. “Or, rather, not in the civilized areas. The Alorestri presently have a female leader—terrible woman—but they have always been unorthodox. It comes from living so near the border, practically side by side with the Dark. They need every pair of hands for defense, and once women are warriors, it is difficult to keep them out of politics.”
“How distressing for you.”
Caedmon smiled. “Oh, I like strong women, Dorina.” I hadn’t seen the hand that had wormed its way under the covers, but I felt it when it slid up my calf. “In fact, I prefer them.”
I reached under my pillow. “And precisely how can you help me?”
He eyed me in amusement. “Refrain from stabbing me and I will tell you.”
I let go of the weapon, but kept it near to hand. Caedmon noticed, but didn’t appear worried. “You are in a difficult situation, little one. If you are to get back your friend, you must give this Dracula the lives of two others whom you esteem. Either that or risk attacking him and possibly losing her nevertheless. Is my summary accurate?”
“Close enough.” He didn’t get any kudos for that; he’d had enough clues from the letter. “What do you propose to do about it?”
“You need two men,” Caedmon said. “One is already here, and the other—” He thumped himself on the chest theatrically. “I can be him.”
I stared. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like Mircea. “You? Not on the darkest of nights! I doubt you could fool a myopic servant, much less his own brother!”
“You forget my people’s ability at glamourie. I assure you, I can.”
I shook my head. “And you forget the vampire sense of smell. Drac could tell the difference from across the room—from across several rooms! He’d never buy it.”
“But I will not be across the room, little one. He will never see me so close—”
I was about to ask how he expected to manage that when I heard something. It was faint, but this house had settled long ago; there was no reason for the stairs to creak unless someone was on them. Judging by the way his hand tightened on my leg, Caedmon had heard it, too. So much for questions about his hearing—it was at least as good as mine.
Or maybe better. “Louis-Cesare,” he mouthed. I don’t know how he knew, but I didn’t question it. The last thing I needed was for Louis-Cesare to think I was in collusion with the Fey. He was suspicious enough as it was. Caedmon seemed to reach the same conclusion, because he tossed the coverlet on the floor, threw a leg over me and started kissing my neck.
I pushed at him, but it got me exactly nowhere. I was getting extremely tired of strong manly types. Whatever happened to the ninety-pound weaklings? The kind I could maybe still beat up? “What are you doing?”
“Providing me with an excuse to be here,” he murmured in my ear. Then he bit it.
“Caedmon!”
“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare’s muffled voice came through the thick wood. I stared at it, wondering why I suddenly felt guilty.
Caedmon took the opportunity of my distraction to cop a feel. I didn’t bother to repress a squeal, since I knew his excu
se wouldn’t work. I had a reputation for being very cautious about my lovers—with good reason. I’d had more than one try to kill me. No way was Radu going to believe I’d invited someone I’d just met for a rendezvous.
The Fey had started working his way downward. Warm lips slid along my collarbone, putting the long line of his neck directly under my nose. I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. I bit it.
Caedmon leaned into the feel of my teeth in his flesh as if to a caress. It startled me enough that I jerked back, ripping my fangs through his skin instead of sliding them out as I’d planned. Blood dripped down the perfection of his chest in a dark stain, and he groaned loudly. I don’t think it was from pain.
The door to the hall burst its hinges and Louis-Cesare stood there, pale and deadly, with eyes like liquid mercury. Someone grabbed me around the waist. It wasn’t Louis-Cesare, because he had moved like quicksilver, getting an arm around the Fey’s injured throat in a stranglehold. Caedmon didn’t appear to have noticed. His eyes were on me, and an odd little smile played about his lips. “If you wanted it rough, my dear, you had only to say.”
“Let me go,” I ordered Geoffrey. My only answer was having the coverlet, which he’d snatched from the floor, thrown over me. “I mean it! Put me down this minute!” I felt myself being carried into the hallway, but the damned blood loss ensured that there was little I could do about it. “Goddamnit, when I get my strength back—” I heard what sounded like a war starting up behind me, but I couldn’t see anything for the damned sheet. I decided on a different tactic. “If you let them kill each other, Radu will stake you!”
“The master’s son is quite able to take care of himself. And I very much doubt he will kill an honored guest. Sadly, none of us are permitted to do so.” The tone was Geoffrey’s usual imperturbable one. But he let my head bounce off a half-dozen walls, vase-topped plinths and wall fixtures on the way to wherever we were going.
Chapter Seventeen
“You should have eaten your dinner, Dory,” Radu reproached me. “Chef was quite upset. That is a very complex spell, you know, and he thought you didn’t like it. And that was on top of The Pear Incident.” His tone gave it capitals. “He’ll sulk for a week. You’ll be lucky to get a peanut butter sandwich tomorrow.”
“That actually sounds pretty good.” At least I wouldn’t have to hunt it down before I could eat it.
Whatever Radu was about to say was cut off by a loud crash and a curse from above our heads. The sounds of carnage had been going on for the last five minutes. I thought it a shame—if they trashed the place, Radu would probably redecorate. I glanced around, fearful for the tasteful original touches that remained. I wasn’t scoping a way out, but Geoffrey tensed from his position by the door. He’d given me the velvet bedspread, which I’d draped togalike around me, but he obviously wasn’t going to let me rejoin the fun.
“Since you brought up food—,” I began. If I was trapped in the living room with Radu, I figured I might as well eat something. I needed to get my strength back. Among other things, I had a butler to beat up.
Radu sighed. “Sit,” he commanded. “I’ll have something brought. If Chef hears that you were prowling around his space tomorrow, I shudder to think of the consequences.”
“If he’s one of Mircea’s stable, surely you can order him to—”
“Of course he isn’t,” Radu said, tugging on an old-fashioned bellpull on the far side of the fireplace. “Have you ever heard of a vampire chef?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Nor will you. Death, you know,” he said archly, as a mirror shattered somewhere above. “Ruins the taste buds.”
“But you eat, occasionally anyway, and Mircea—”
“I’m second level, Dory, and your father is a step above me. With power comes certain advantages, but do you really think the world’s handful of upper-level masters have nothing better to do than braise a leg of lamb? That’s what we were supposed to have tomorrow, by the way, with homegrown rosemary, but who knows what we’ll get now. Chef threw it out after The Pear Incident.”
I waited while a servant came in and received instructions. Somewhere in the distance, it sounded like an entire china cabinet had been pushed down a flight of stairs. After the man left, I glanced at Radu. “What, exactly, is Louis-Cesare’s problem?”
“Which one?” I raised an eyebrow; apparently Radu hadn’t forgiven his son for the scene at dinner. Suddenly, a speculative gleam lit his eyes. It made me nervous. “He tends to be very protective of women,” he said thoughtfully. “You’re a woman, Dory.”
“Thank you for pointing that out. But I didn’t think dhampirs qualified.”
The ceiling shook, so hard that some of the plaster cracked and fell down in small chunks. Radu smirked. “It appears you’ve been upgraded.” I moved my chair slightly, to avoid being directly beneath the large, swaying chandelier, and looked up to see him regarding me with that same disquieting look. “Perhaps he’ll finally stop blaming himself over that girl,” he mused.
I knew I’d regret it, but I asked anyway. “What girl?”
“Christine, the perpetually tragic.” Radu threw a new log on the embers, apparently solely for the chance to stab viciously at it with a poker. He saw my expression. “You haven’t heard the tale?”
“Should I have?”
“Not really. It’s long and extremely depressing. Suffice it to say that, centuries ago, Louis-Cesare brought her over in order to save her life. She had been tortured because of him and he felt responsible. But he never stopped to consider that she was an ardent Catholic, and moreover one who believed the old stories about us. She thought the change had damned her, and informed him once she rose that she would have preferred a true death.”
“So he killed her?”
Radu rolled his eyes. “If only!” he said fervently. He saw my expression and grimaced. “Don’t give me that look—you haven’t met her. The woman is impossible, always in some trouble or other. Most recently, she was kidnapped by Alejandro.” Radu said it like I should know the name. “The leader of the Latin American Senate,” he added impatiently when I looked clueless.
“So why is Louis-Cesare here, instead of off rescuing her?”
“Because no one knows where she is, of course!” Radu looked at me suspiciously. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No, I just can’t imagine the family swallowing an insult like that.”
“You simplify everything,” Radu said crossly. “Not every problem can be solved by whacking it with a stick!”
“No, just nine out of ten.”
Radu visibly restrained himself. “An underling of Alejandro’s, a vampire named Tomas, challenged him,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “Alejandro wanted Louis-Cesare to be his champion. But the rumors about that court—it’s disgraceful.”
I didn’t need to ask what he meant this time. It was infamous for sadism, even among vamps. “I take it Louis-Cesare refused?”
Radu nodded. “He told him that part of the purpose of a challenge was to weed out incompetent, cruel or insane masters—and that if he couldn’t fight his own battles, he didn’t deserve his position.”
I winced. Diplomacy didn’t seem to be Louis-Cesare’s strong suit. “So Alejandro kidnapped Christine to make it his battle,” I guessed. “Fairly standard.”
“It is too bad you weren’t there to warn him at the time,” Radu said acerbically. “In any case, Louis-Cesare defeated Tomas, but refused to kill him, as the man had done nothing wrong. So Alejandro refused to release Christine, claiming that he had stipulated to let her go only when the threat was gone, and that as long as Tomas lived, the threat remained.”
“And the Senate couldn’t intervene on his behalf,” I reasoned. Agreements between masters were rarely challenged by the Senates, especially if the two involved were members of different Senatorial bodies. It was too easy to have a personal quarrel escalate into war.
“Which is why this has dr
agged on for so long.”
“How long?”
Radu flipped a hand. “Oh, a century.” I stared while he went blithely on. “And ever since she was taken, Louis-Cesare hasn’t been the same. He knows she may be suffering, and he feels responsible for it—twice over, in fact. He’s become extremely morose about the whole thing.”
“Radu! The woman was tortured, forced to join the undead and kidnapped, all because of him. Has it occurred to you that maybe he has something to feel guilty about?”
“You sound just like him!” Radu said irritably. “He didn’t torture her; the Black Circle did.”
I blinked. “Come again?”
“They were trying to steal power, as usual. She was an untrained witch, you see, before the change. Very powerful magically, but her faith ensured that she wouldn’t accept it. Any manifestations were ignored, or put down to the devil’s work.” Radu shook his head. “It was only a matter of time before the dark found her.”
“Louis-Cesare said you rescued him from some dark mages once. I assume we’re talking about the same group?”
Radu looked annoyed. “He shouldn’t have mentioned that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I promised Mircea not to have any contact with him.”
“Because of that time thing,” I guessed.
“What time thing?”
“The one I’d know about if I kept up with the family.”
“Oh, yes, exactly. But then, when no one could find him… well, what was I supposed to do? Leave him to be tortured to death every night? Anyway, don’t mention this to your father. Mircea doesn’t need to know everything.”
Amen to that. “Did you really bring down the roof?”
Radu ignored the question with aristocratic disdain. “As I was saying, Christine has had several hundred years to recognize that we aren’t monsters. I explained to her myself that vampirism is a disease. She doesn’t blame weres for transforming into slavering beasts on a regular basis, but she continues to view us as just above Satan himself. It’s insulting.”
