by Karen Chance
I held up a shaking hand. “Give me a minute.”
Olga grabbed Stinky by the scruff of the neck, and scooped up Caedmon, who was leaning in utter exhaustion against the wall, surrounded by a ring of burning boards. He wasn’t in any real danger that I could see, but for some reason he was staring at the fire with as much terror as a vamp. She tucked him under one sturdy arm and carried him and Stinky into the light-filled outer portion of the winery.
I sat on the smoking catwalk and waited. Olga had been between the mage and the door; no way had he gotten past her unnoticed, especially with Louis-Cesare in tow. Which meant they were still here.
My eyes scanned the circle of wood, but saw nothing. That wasn’t too surprising—cloaking spells are fairly standard—but they hold up only as long as you don’t move. Unless he planned on suicide, Jonathan had to move and move soon, before the merrily burning catwalk collapsed completely. And when he did, he was dead.
I’d no sooner had the thought when fog billowed up in front of my nose, thick as cotton, leaving me facing a featureless sea of gray. I could hear chanting nearby, echoing weirdly off the walls, but couldn’t pinpoint it. Power pulsed through the air with dangerous strength, pounded at my temples like a headache, made my ears ring. Crazy Jonathan might be, but there was no doubt that he was strong.
But there was still only one way out, and I was sitting right in front of it.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Louis-Cesare!” I yelled as loudly as I could, but the billowing wall of white threw it back in my face.
If he heard, there was no sign. But someone else did. Like a bad microphone, tinny and too loud, Jonathan’s voice was suddenly everywhere. “Your Fey friends are outside, dhampir. No, no, can’t go that way.” He giggled, as if being stuck in a building burning down around his ears was funny.
Fear replaced the fury behind my ribs. I could talk my way out of most things, but no one could reason with a madman. Especially a high madman. But I didn’t have a lot of other options. “Jonathan! Give the vampire to me and we can talk.”
More high-pitched giggles echoed everywhere, as if the walls were laughing. Jonathan was on a power high, and likely to do anything. I had to get to him before he decided he could fly, or something equally crazy, and got Louis-Cesare roasted in the process. I flexed my muscles, feeling tiny pinpricks of pain in my legs as sensation returned. Little burn marks, mostly from floating ash, peppered my jeans, but there was no real damage. As long as I didn’t run into any more spells, I ought to be okay. How Louis-Cesare was holding up was another question. If he was unconscious, he couldn’t even bat away flying particles. A single cinder, if it caught, might be enough to finish him.
I couldn’t wait Jonathan out. Olga appeared in the doorway, looking at me quizzically. Probably wondering if I had a death wish, to be sitting in the middle of an inferno. “Jonathan’s here,” I told her. “He has Louis-Cesare. If he comes this way—”
“I kill him.”
I nodded. Jonathan might still have some tricks up his sleeve, but then, so might Olga. And his magic would be a lot less effective on a Fey than on someone from our world.
I dragged myself to my feet using the wall for support. I swayed like a tree in a hurricane, but my legs held. I stared into the fog resentfully. The only real advantages I have, other than faster-than-human healing, are enhanced senses. That’s all; that’s it. I’ve heard of others of my kind that developed additional abilities with age, but I wasn’t among them. It’s the main reason I hate the dark—or anything else that deprives me of even one sense. It takes away one of the few weapons in my limited arsenal.
What the hell. There’s always a last time for everything. I took a deep breath and moved cautiously forward.
The unnatural gray blanket almost immediately cut off sound and light as if a door had been dropped shut behind me. Weird flickers of flame from below occasionally broke through the fog, like hell’s version of the northern lights, but were not bright enough to see by. My eyes were useless, so I closed them. I concentrated on feel, moving away from the current of slightly cooler air drifting in from outside.
Smoke mixed with the fog, acrid and sharp, making it hard to breathe. I counted steps, trying to ignore the brittle feel of the boards beneath my feet. I passed what I guessed was a quarter of the distance, a third… I hadn’t made it quite to the halfway point when something moved across the current of air I was using as a guideline, disrupting it. I lashed out with the knife, but encountered nothing but air. Then a billow of fire erupted behind me, turning the boards I’d just crossed into charred, papery things that collapsed in a cascade of particles.
Backing away from the dangerous edge, I tripped over something on the floor. I looked down to see the outline of a man, surrounded by faint flickers of what looked like electricity. It cast an ethereal light against his face where indigo eyes, fierce as the wildest storm, met mine. Louis-Cesare.
The room swayed. The sudden pounding of my heart was making me dizzy. I dropped to my knees, and reached out to cup one bloodstained hand around his cheek before drawing it down, curving around the skin of his throat, whole and smooth and warm. I didn’t understand it, but I was not about to question fate. “I thought I told you to get some pants on,” I said, my throat threatening to close on the words.
Pain showed all over his face and in the lines of his body, but a weak smile lifted the ends of Louis-Cesare’s mouth. I could detect the small movement because another billow of flame had erupted on the other side of us. I could see Jonathan silhouetted against it for a moment, safe on the somewhat sturdy side, until the boards he’d just set ablaze collapsed into dark dust. The piece of catwalk remaining to us groaned and started pulling away from the wall, the heavy screws that helped to hold it in place overtaxed without the support of the beams on either side.
“Jonathan doesn’t lose gracefully,” Louis-Cesare said.
I watched the shadow of a man dart along the far wall, the flames from below catching and magnifying him to giant size. “Neither do I.”
I pulled Radu’s knife out of my boot and weighed it in my hand. It wasn’t my preferred size for throwing, but it was heavy and solid. More so than my arm, which felt alarmingly like jelly. But at this range, I could hardly miss. I tracked Jonathan until he paused at the sight of Olga in the doorway. With her weight to consider, she was staying well clear of the weakened causeway, preferring to balance on the stone threshold. But her bulk almost completely filled the opening, barring his retreat. I took my chance and threw.
A shudder went through the wood below us as it slipped another inch or so. It wasn’t much of a movement, and I should have been expecting it. But my whole attention had been on the mage. It shook my arm at exactly the wrong moment. Jonathan hadn’t seen me move, but the vibrating knife sticking out of the wood only an inch or so in front of his nose caught his attention. He and I both stared in disbelief at it, quivering in the side of a support beam. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blown a throw that easy.
Jonathan recovered first, and laughed, wrenching the knife out of the wood. And I realized that I’d essentially tossed away our only weapon. Louis-Cesare had struggled to his knees, his head dropped forward, panting harshly. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him flat again. “Stay down!” I hissed as the mage’s arm went back. I could only hope his aim was as bad as mine.
I never found out. The boards under his feet suddenly crumbled. He grabbed desperately for the railing, which miraculously was still in place due to the more solid boards on either side. But the charred wood splintered under his weight, sending him reeling over the edge. It happened so fast, I never even heard him scream.
A second later, the room tore apart. The mage had made no sound, but a shredding howl of torment spiraled up from below as if formed from wind and fire alone. The power he’d stolen boiled up like a cauldron bubbling over, spilling out, filling the room with a cold silver glow that cut through the fog and smoke like a sear
chlight, putting the light of the fire to shame. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I saw a snake of pure energy, hovering like a vast and brilliant cobra, ready to strike.
I stared at it, mesmerized by more power than I’d ever seen manifested at one time. I had a chance to think, So that’s what’s inside a master vampire, before a shattering hammer of light crashed down. It sank into my bones and blood in an ice-hot blast: Louis-Cesare’s stolen power, all coming back home to roost. And it didn’t wait for me to get out of the way first.
I found out real fast why it was possible to get addicted to power. A hot silvery rain poured around me, into me, energizing my tired body with a rush. Suddenly, I could feel everything, all my senses hyperfocused, hyperaware. The brush of a piece of ash against my arm felt like a slap, the heated air rushing into my lungs was fire, and all around me, ripples of blue-white energy arched over my body.
I fell to my knees, trying to ride out the sensations, bracing myself against the rough wood of the floor. It was not a good move. Under my hands, the old boards came alive. It felt like I was sinking into them, able to sense for a moment what it was like to be a tree. Only, with my usual luck, I was lying on a section that had been struck by a bolt of lightning before being cut. And I felt it, knew the way it had spread like liquid fire through the tree, searing living tissue into dying, charred cinders…
Louis-Cesare pulled my shaking body against his chest: one arm around my waist, the other in my hair, tucking my head protectively under his chin. It didn’t help. Along with the writhing, boiling mist of power came memories. I couldn’t even start to comprehend all the images that rushed into my mind. Unlike the tree’s one searing impression, this was centuries of love and hate, triumph and loss, dreams attained and hopes dashed and, beyond everything else, the feeling of being bereft, abandoned, lonely. Or maybe those were just the memories that made the most sense to me, that my mind could most easily process. The energy storm raged around us, but I could barely see it anymore. Vivid pictures slid across my vision, scenes captured once by another pair of eyes; then the world streamed away into brightness.
A little child with golden curls tottered on unsteady legs toward a richly dressed woman in embroidered satin. She picked him up with a delighted laugh. “My little Caesar. Someday, you will outdo your namesake!” Other images in the fast-moving stream showed the boy listening, day after day, for the sound of horses’ hooves on a dirt path that would announce her return visit. A visit that never happened from a mother who had prudently forgotten he ever existed. Because he hadn’t fulfilled the prophecy—he hadn’t ruled, imprisoned instead by a brother he had never met.
A new scene, a pair of turquoise eyes in the darkness, a gasping breath that forced air into lungs that had lain unused for days. An elegant, pale hand on his brow, feeling hot next to his chill, smoothing tumbled auburn curls out of his eyes. A slow understanding dawning of his new state, disbelief giving way to hope of belonging, of acceptance, of finding in death what had eluded him in life. Only to discover that this new father wanted him no more than the old. Memories of tracking him across the continent, of finding him repeatedly, only to see him turn away again and again.
I jerked away from Louis-Cesare, hoping the loss of contact would also stop the flood of memory. But it didn’t seem to help. The pale body was still limned in fire, but the power was fading fast, withdrawing back into him, becoming part of him again. Yet the memories didn’t go with it. They soaked into my skin, saturated my mind, bearing down on me with the weight of centuries.
The wood shuddered beneath us, the power that had spilled into me also shaking the overburdened catwalk. I had a moment’s lurch of dizzying vertigo as we slid sideways, toward the hellish pit the winery had become. But I couldn’t seem to move, could barely breathe, as Louis-Cesare’s memories melded with my own.
Another century, a pair of flashing hazel eyes, a brief, heady affair, only to have her taken from us. Tracking her through the streets of Paris, to an old door, pulpy with rot, that hid far worse decay inside. Finding Jonathan, a mage who hid centuries of cunning behind a boyish face. He’d prolonged his life by seeking out the unprotected, by stealing the power that flowed through their veins. Christine should have been protected from such as him, by the one who said he loved her, yet had allowed this to happen.
We made the bargain, agreed to return, to become a victim once more for her sake. We took her to safety, only to learn that the doctor’s couldn’t save her, that we had arrived too late and failed once again. Making the decision to change her to save her, only to see the horror when she awoke and realized what she was. What we were. Monster, she called us, and damned and wicked, before fleeing into the night, leaving us behind.
Louis-Cesare caught me as I started to tumble over the edge. He had a one-armed grip on the last support beam still clinging to the wall and the other hand grabbed my wrist. But the strain on his face was evident; he’d lost too much blood to hold for long. I tried to climb up his body to get a hand on the beam myself, but another wave of memory crashed into me.
Going back to Jonathan almost felt right. Perhaps the jailers had spoken truth when they whispered in our ear—it was all we were good for. We’d believed it, even when the blistering agony of a blade thrust through our back stuttered up our spine. We’d looked down to see a blood-slick blade sliding back inside our chest as a hand shoved between our shoulder blades, drawing it back out. We watched the pulsing arc shimmering in midair, like a spill of rubies, until the mage sang to it and it dissolved like smoke. We’d believed, because night after night, the torture continued. And night after night, no one came.
Until a voice out of the darkness, shrill with fear. Until a lone figure stood over us like a wolf protecting its young, snarling with a rage and possessiveness that was close to demonic, until the mages ran. Until Radu took us away, hid us while we recovered—and then left us once again.
“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare’s voice cut through the fog, and I gulped in a deep breath of hot air. I met eyes full of pain, but not enough. Not nearly enough. I stared at him, dumbfounded. The wine had worn off; he didn’t know what I’d seen. “I can’t hold you!”
I nodded, head swimming, trying to work against the effects of the disorientation sphere and the distraction of the memories. My brain kept giving orders, but my limbs were slow to carry them out, and my eyes didn’t seem to want to focus. And then it didn’t matter. With a crack like a gunshot, the beam tore away from the wall and we tumbled into the flames below.
We hit the bottom with a jarring shudder and a splash. The small section of the catwalk somehow held together, but didn’t serve as much protection. It caught fire immediately, turning into a jagged square of flame as wine gushed over the dried boards. I stared around frantically, looking for a spot anywhere that wasn’t already burning. I didn’t see one. Then Louis-Cesare grabbed me around the waist and jumped, straight into the middle of shin-deep burning liquid.
“Are you crazy?!” He ignored me, spinning us toward the tunnel through knee-deep flames. They licked at my legs, hot and bright and hungry, but for some reason, I didn’t feel the burn. Shock, I thought distantly as Louis-Cesare made a final jump that landed us both in the dark, barrel-lined hallway leading to Radu’s cellar.
He sat me down, leaning heavily against the wall for support, his disordered mane obscuring his face. I grabbed him, my hands batting at flames that I only slowly realized didn’t exist. He looked like ten kinds of death, but for some reason, he wasn’t burning. “What did you do?” I demanded, willing my knees not to collapse.
“I used a huge amount of power to shield us for a few seconds,” Louis-Cesare said shakily. “I trust we won’t need it again. It has left me… somewhat weak.”
“But alive.” I still couldn’t believe it.
Louis-Cesare slowly pulled himself into a half-standing position against the side of the winery. “What? Did you think one little mage was going to do me in?” He s
wallowed hard. “Hell, that was just a warm-up.”
I stared at him. A joke. Louis-Cesare had made a joke. The very thought left me dizzy.
And then the barrels started to explode. The ones closest to the inferno of the winery tore apart with the sound of a dozen cannons going off, raining wine and sharp bits of wood all around us. Louis-Cesare pushed me into the wall, shielding me with his body until I kneed him in the groin. “Wood!” I screamed into his outraged face, yanking out a sliver that had embedded itself in his shoulder, and waving it under his nose. Every time one of those barrels went off, it threw out the equivalent of a hundred or so flying stakes.
The cellar was suddenly a vamp’s worst nightmare, and I didn’t like it much better. If we didn’t get out soon, we were toast. Louis-Cesare must have figured it the same way, because he wrenched the top off the nearest barrel, picked me up around the waist and ran.
Hammer blows sounded against the makeshift shield as another row exploded behind us, the flames from one set of barrels igniting the next in line. Weird red shadows, like leaping fingers, grabbed for our heels as we all but flew toward the cellar door. I scanned the floor for Radu, but didn’t see him; it looked as if he really was hard to kill. Like the rest of the family, I thought as Louis-Cesare slammed the heavy oak door shut behind us, just as a volley of explosions rocked it from the other side.
We stood, panting and half-fainting against the scarred wood, knowing we should get farther from danger but too exhausted to move. Dizziness pushed through my body as I stared dully around, looking for the next challenge, the next threat. All I saw were two outraged turquoise eyes staring at me from the darkened stairs. “Dorina! What did you do to my wine?”
An odd rumbling started from my right. My head whipped around and I stopped, staring. The strangest event of a very strange day met my eyes. The last thing I saw before I keeled over was Louis-Cesare. He was leaning against the door, naked and bloody. And he was laughing.
