by Karen Chance
A fragment of vision curled around my arm despite my best attempt to dodge it. It was so hot that I expected to see a welt rise on my skin. What I got instead was worse—a mosaic of images, each more cruel than the last: a blood-covered Mircea battling for his life in a swordfight almost too fast to see; a triumphant-looking Myra running from the shadows to throw something at him; an explosion that was more felt than heard, reverberating through the ground and tearing the air; and then, where two elegant fighters had been, a sodden mass of flesh and bone gleaming slick and red in low light, so mixed up that it was impossible to tell where one body began and the other ended.
I screamed and jerked away, causing the scene to shatter. I stumbled backward, too desperate to get away from the images to worry about dignity. I stared around frantically, but most of the vamps were still fixated on Mircea. A few spared me a puzzled glance, but none looked as if they had seen anything unusual, much less the gory death of one of their senior members. But there was no doubt in my mind what I’d witnessed. Somewhere, somewhen, Myra had succeeded.
It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice cubes into my stomach. My visions always came true—always. I’d tried to change the outcome of things before, especially when I was younger. I’d gone to Tony numerous times to report upcoming disasters, believing him when he swore he would do everything in his power to stop them. But, of course, the only thing he’d ever done was to figure out how to profit from them. And, in the end, everything had always happened exactly as I’d foreseen. The same held true for a vision I’d seen as an adult, when I tried to warn a friend of his impending assassination. I didn’t know whether he’d received the message or not, but it hadn’t mattered. He still died.
But all that was before I became Pythia, or, at least, her heir. I had changed things since then, hadn’t I? And, if Myra had won, why was Mircea still here?
I finally focused on the Consul. I needed answers and Mircea was in no shape to give them to me. “What is going on? Is this a trick?” Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t. I’d had enough visions to know the real thing when I felt it.
The Consul’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you play with me?” she demanded, so quietly that I hardly heard her.
I looked down at Tomas and drew in a sharp breath. I wasn’t the one playing here. “I want Tomas,” I said, more unsteadily than I liked. “You obviously want something, too. Tell me what it is and maybe we can make a trade.”
“You don’t know.” I finally saw emotion cross that lovely face. It was surprise.
Tomas made a small sound and I lost it. “Just tell me!” The vision had shattered my nerves, and I didn’t feel like chatting while Tomas slowly bled out.
The Consul took a breath, which she didn’t need, and nodded. “Very well. Remove the geis you placed on Lord Mircea, and I will give you the traitor.”
I goggled at her. “What?” Somewhere along the line, I’d missed something. “The only geis around here is the one he put on me! It’s been causing me hell.”
“Hell?” Mircea laughed abruptly, but it was mirthless. “What do you know of hell?” He tore free of his living restraints and dropped to the floor. Two vamps dove under the table after him, but I never saw how close they came. All I know is, it wasn’t close enough. I was suddenly crushed against a hard chest. “Try mine,” he whispered before catching my lips in a bruising kiss.
The punch of his emotions came clearly through the geis, hitting me like a kick to the stomach. The same energy that arced between us whenever we met thrummed through Mircea, only it had grown. This was no vague frisson of passion. The craving had lain smoldering, waiting for the proper fuel, and now it ignited into a roaring blaze. It was like drowning in a river of molten lava. I felt it in his veins for an instant, pleasure as sharp as pain, before it poured into mine in a scalding wash of desire. I felt myself flounder, falling into heat, falling away from thought to a place that was all-consuming sensation. Fire. Sweet fire.
The kiss was hard and brutal, as if he would eat me alive. There was nothing gentle about it, nothing romantic. And it was just what I wanted. My hands closed convulsively on his shoulders, my nails digging into his coat. His mouth was relentless on mine, fierce and insistent, and a hard hand slid behind my head to hold me in place. One of his fangs nicked me and I tasted my own blood. He made a strangled cry and pulled back, his eyes wild, his face beautifully feral.
His tongue darted out to taste my blood on his lips; then his eyes closed and he shuddered. I ripped open his collar and his head tilted, almost blindly, towards the ceiling, giving me better access. My hands tore at his shirt, popping buttons, while my tongue and lips slid down the cords of his neck. My palms traced the contours of his chest and trailed along his ribs, reveling in the fact that his breath quickened under my touch. I kissed a path across the taut skin and hard muscle to a nipple, and when I bit down, he let out what was almost a scream. I knew how he felt—the energy between us sang in time with the throbbing of my pulse and I felt like I could combust at any moment.
Mircea pushed me against the sandstone wall of the chamber, but I was held there more by the physical impact of those fire-lit eyes than by the body pressing against mine. I looped a leg around one of his and slid a hand to the nape of his neck, molding myself to him. His hands dropped below my waist and lifted, and I gasped as his arousal pressed full against me. He was large and hard and it felt wonderful, but I wanted more. It seemed that he did, too, because he gasped my name in between savage, hard kisses, ran a hand through my hair and over my face, cursed in Romanian and generally forgot about dignity. I wasn’t doing any better myself, making inarticulate demands whenever I could catch a breath.
I found myself straddling one of his legs, my thigh tight against his groin. Even through our clothes, the sensation was unbelievable: a combination of raw pleasure and yearning hunger. But then he wrenched away, abruptly putting inches between us. His expression was desperate and he looked almost ill, as if racked by the same need that tormented me. Yet, when I reached for him, uncomprehending, he flinched away as if my touch was painful.
Immediately the geis showed both of us what pain really was, flaring into a white-hot heat. Pain beyond imagination slammed into me, ripping from my throat scream after scream that all but shredded my vocal cords. The blood burned under my skin until I thought I would die from unfulfilled need. Hot tears fell over my cheeks onto Mircea’s hands as he gripped my face, trying to calm me. But nothing helped; the pain was literally unbearable. My knees gave out when the screams stopped spearing me upward, and Mircea caught me as I sagged against him.
“Mircea! Please . . .” I didn’t know what I was asking for, only that he make it stop, make it better. I closed the small distance between us and kissed him desperately. I had a few seconds to delight in the familiar warmth of his mouth and the clean scent of his flesh before he jerked back.
“Cassie, no!” It sounded tight, like he was forcing the word out. He put both hands on my upper arms, holding me away from him, but they trembled, and the strong column of his throat worked in a silent swallow. He was fighting the geis, I finally realized, but I couldn’t help him. His hands moved up to cradle my head, smoothing my hair. The pain and pleasure together were devastating. My body was wracked by alternating surges of agony and ecstasy, and my pulse roared so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear.
Just when I thought I would tip over the brink into insanity, the energy flared and reformed into something completely new—a sparkling brilliance, like water under a desert sun. It broke over us like a tidal wave, and the pain was simply gone. In its place was an overwhelming sense of relief, followed by a rush of pure joy. I saw the astonishment in Mircea’s eyes as it broke over him, too.
I realized abruptly that more tears were streaming down my face. It wasn’t from memory of the pain, but from how good, how safe I felt being near him. It was every dream I’d ever had rolled up into one—home, family, love, acceptance—and so exhilarating t
hat it blinded me to everything else. For an instant, I forgot about Tomas and Myra, about Tony and my whole laundry list of problems. They didn’t seem to matter anymore.
I shook in dawning comprehension. I wasn’t simply attracted to Mircea. Attraction didn’t feel like this, didn’t destroy my ability to breathe, didn’t make me ache, didn’t make me feel hopeless and desperate at the thought of being apart from him. I clung to him, knowing there was no way he could possibly return my feelings unless a spell compelled him, and I didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he loved me back. I craved him like a drug, needed him to feel alive and whole. Much more of this and I would do anything, anything at all, never to be parted from him again.
I felt an answering emotion in the tightness of his grip and finally understood. It seemed that passion was only one of the tricks in the geis’ repertoire, and not the most devastating. Not by half.
“When did you place the spell?” the Consul demanded.
I gazed at her blankly, having forgotten she was even there. My thoughts were thick and sluggish, the very air around me heavy, and I had to fight to understand the question. I considered my options and they were sobering. “I don’t know” wasn’t likely to go over well, but pointing out the obvious fact that the Consul was mistaken wasn’t likely to do any better. I had no idea what answer might satisfy her, or how long I needed to stall. And Mircea jabbing something into my rib cage wasn’t helping.
I looked down to see that the offending object was a pale pink high heel that he must have been concealing in an inner pocket of his coat. It was oddly fragile looking, with the delicate satin material starting to flake off in places and a few darker colored sequins hanging by threads. It looked like an antique, except for the design. I didn’t think they made three-inch spiked heels in the good old days.
After a minute, my brain caught up. I’d hobbled around Dante’s kitchen that morning because I’d lost a shoe. It had been bright red, not shell pink, and had looked brand new, but otherwise it was the twin of this one. Luckily, Mircea’s body mostly blocked me from view, because I doubt I managed to keep my face under control. The theatre. I’d lost that shoe more than a hundred years ago in a London theatre.
“Cassandra?” The Consul did not sound pleased at the delay, which was ironic considering her habit of fading out at inopportune moments. I didn’t answer, remembering the spark I thought I’d imagined in that other time. The Mircea of that era had not been under the geis, but I had. The spell must have recognized him as the needed element to complete itself, and made the connection on its own. The implication hit me like a sledgehammer. I’d inadvertently laid a spell on him that had had more than a century to grow.
“How long?” the Consul repeated in the voice of someone not accustomed to having to say anything twice.
“I’m not sure,” I finally said. My voice was hoarse, but I couldn’t seem to clear my throat. “Possibly . . .” I finally managed to swallow. “It may have been the 1880s.”
Someone uttered a profanity, but I didn’t see who. It was as much as I could do to keep even part of my concentration on the Consul. The heat of Mircea’s body and the horror at what I’d done to him were causing chaos in my emotions. Passion and guilt struggled for dominance, but fear was making a strong showing, too. My stomach contracted viciously.
The Consul did not look pleased. “The geis went dormant after you left, unable to complete itself without you,” she mused. “And when the two of you encountered each other again, you were only a child—too young for it to manifest. But when you met as adults, it activated and its power began to build.”
I managed to nod. Mircea had been caressing my hand to keep contact between us, stroking the bones in my wrist and sliding down to massage my palm with his thumb. But now he’d graduated to running his hands up and down my arm, as if craving more contact. And everywhere he touched left what felt like liquid pleasure behind. It soaked into my skin, making me as giddy as if his touch was an intoxicant, and maybe it was. I didn’t know how the spell worked, only that it was far too good at what it did.
All I wanted was to stay there forever, the geis flowing around us like a dazzling waterfall. I knew it wasn’t real, that it was just a spell that had had far too long to take hold, but it was very hard to care. When in my life would I ever feel like this again? I’d had twenty-four years of reality and never even come close. Wasn’t a lie this good worth something? My body’s answer was a resounding yes. Only, some tiny voice whispered, that wasn’t really the question, was it? Not was it worth something, but was it worth everything, because that was what the spell demanded.
And that it couldn’t have.
“The person who initiates the spell controls it,” the Consul was saying. “But you left it untended for more than a century.”
“Not intentionally!”
She arched a perfect eyebrow and repeated the unofficial vampire code. “We are discussing outcome, not intent.” Vamps are extremely practical about such things. The results of an action are always more important than whether or not harm was intended. And the result of my action was catastrophic.
“What about the original spell—the one Mircea put on me?” I asked desperately. “If he removes it, maybe the . . . the effects will lessen.” And buy us time to find a mage who could lift the duplicate.
“That has already been tried, Cassandra,” the Consul informed me patiently. “The spell is proving remarkably . . . resilient.”
“It won’t break?” I tried to wrap my mind around that, but Mircea was making deep thought impossible. I tried to step out of his embrace, just long enough to clear my head, but he gave an inarticulate sound of protest and pulled me closer.
“It will not,” the Consul said mildly.
I gave her a look meant to scald, uncaring for the moment how stupid that was. If she wanted to help Mircea, she was doing a lousy job of it. According to Casanova, the spell would grow faster with Mircea and me in close proximity, and we couldn’t get much closer than we currently were. Soon, neither of us would care about anything else. And that meant there would be no one to stop Myra. I was beginning to see how my vision could easily come true.
For a moment, I contemplated trying to explain the situation to the Consul, but I doubted she’d believe me. I had zero proof to offer, and vamps aren’t exactly known for taking things on faith. I moved slightly so that I was momentarily hidden from her sharp gaze and met Mircea’s eyes. He’d thought to bring the shoe, which meant that, at some point, he must have figured out what had happened. I just hoped he remained lucid enough to understand what I needed to tell him.
“Myra,” I mouthed. The mages were out of earshot, and with no magic they couldn’t use enhanced hearing. But the vamps would hear any conversation just fine.
Mircea gazed at me for a long moment, and I could almost see him putting the pieces together. How much he understood I didn’t know, but he’d been with me when Myra and I first met. He knew she’d tried to kill me and that she’d gotten away. And he’d heard me call her by name in London, assuming he remembered so minor a detail after so long. I frankly doubted it. He would probably guess that she was up to the same tricks, but not that he was her new target. And I had no way to tell him.
Not that there was much he could do even if he did know. Mircea might be able to defend himself in the present if forewarned, but Myra could attack him in the past. The fact that he was still here was proof she hadn’t yet succeeded, but if I didn’t remain sane enough to stop her, that wouldn’t be true for long. History would rewrite itself, without Mircea in it. And with Myra as Pythia.
After what felt like a year, Mircea gave a slight nod. “Two minutes,” he said silently. I stared at him in confusion until I figured out what he meant. He was telling me when the null bomb would wear off.
He was going to let me go.
I gazed at him in disbelief. “What about you?” I mouthed. He shook his head. I didn’t know whether that meant he couldn’t tell me with such
limited communication or whether he didn’t want me to know. I realized I was gripping his arms hard enough to bruise, had he been human. But it was only when I let go that a spasm of pain crossed his face. I felt an echo of it myself, a physical ache from the lessened contact, and had to force myself not to reestablish it.
“You must go,” he said silently.
I swallowed. The second geis was new to me, but it had had a century to take hold of Mircea. If I felt like this, and the spell had had only a day to get its claws into me, what was he experiencing? Even if the Consul was right, and it had toned down after I returned to my own time, it had still been there, slowly maturing over decades. And judging by his reaction, when it woke up, it had done so with a vengeance.
The thought of deliberately putting him back in that hell was excruciating, but what other choice was there? I had to deal with Myra or we were both dead, and I couldn’t take him with me and risk continued exposure. I looked up at him, letting my remorse show on my face. “I know.”
He closed his eyes and his arms clenched around me for a long moment. I pulled him to me, kissed him and immediately the pain receded. The geis was satisfied as long as we were in close contact, and I knew why. I could almost feel the bond between us strengthening, the energy humming happily everywhere we touched. It was contented now, but what would happen when I left? I’d felt the agony he was in when I arrived and doubted this brief meeting would relieve the craving for long. In fact, it might make it worse, like offering a starving man a single bite of bread.
Mircea slowly opened his arms and pulled back. I had been expecting it, but the pain still almost drove me to my knees. I somehow kept my feet, but only half stifled an agonized noise. Wild shudders of shock radiated from my center, shaking me violently, and my hands went ice-cold. I hunched my shoulders against the blaze of longing that shook me, and wrapped my arms around myself to keep them from dragging him against me.
