Masks
Author: Karen Chance
Date: 2014-03-18 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Urban Fantasy; Vampires; Fantasy; Paranormal; Paranormal Romance; Romance; Historical; Magic; Short Stories; Historical Fiction
Description: Fifteenth century Venice is a safe haven for the masterless dregs of the vampire world, a city where they can live without the fear of retribution for violating another’s territory. Still, there are plenty of ways for a young vampire to die in the glittering city, a lesson that prince turned pauper Mircea Basarab must learn quickly. But there are opportunities, too—in the service of a secretive courtesan, in the bed of a beautiful senator, and in the hunt for an ancient assassin. As a vendetta older than Venice itself comes to a climax, Mircea struggles to evade the dangers of his current life
Publisher: Penguin

Also by Karen Chance

The Cassie Palmer Series

Touch the Dark

Claimed by Shadow

Embrace the Night

Curse the Dawn

Hunt the Moon

Tempt the Stars

The Midnight’s Daughter Series

Midnight’s Daughter

Death’s Mistress

Fury’s Kiss

Masks

Karen Chance

InterMix Books, New York

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

MASKS

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / March 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Karen Chance.

Excerpt from Touch the Dark copyright © 2006 by Karen Chance.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18293-6

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Version_1

Contents

Also by Karen Chance

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Seven Years Later

Special Preview of Touch the Dark

Author Bio

Chapter One

There were no dungeons in Venice, but they made do. Mircea sat against the freezing stone wall of a small storeroom, in the home of some condottiere who hadn’t bothered to introduce himself before turning half of Mircea’s face to mush. He had been able to feel the bones shifting under the skin for almost a day, before they finally managed to orient themselves in what he hoped was the right direction.

That was especially true considering that now was not the time to look weak.

His ran his eyes over the three figures slumped around the small space. It looked like the paid thugs of Venice’s vampire community had tended to them as well. They were dirty, their hair was matted, and the minimal clothes they’d been left after everything of value had been stripped off them did little to cover signs of rough treatment. If they’d been human, they’d likely have been dead by now.

Fortunately for them, they’d already taken care of that. Unfortunately, the condottieri didn’t see fit to feed their prisoners, and young vampires are always hungry. Even enough to attack one of their own who is thrown into their cell bloody and beaten.

They’d fallen on him before he’d made it all the way through the door.

With three to one odds, it should have been over quickly. But as a professional gambler, Mircea knew that odds didn’t always tell the whole story. And as a former professional soldier, he knew how to fight.

Unlike the three in question, who had been left to starve until their eyes were gaunt and staring and their flesh was shriveled on their bones.

So now they sat, a day later, each in his own corner of the small space. Battered and broken, no longer having the strength to heal. And silent, since no one seemed interested in conversation.

No one except him.

Every once in a while, Mircea rasped out a question, on the theory that their lousy chances were slightly less lousy together than apart. He even tried different languages because you never knew where someone was from in Venice. Half the population, it sometimes seemed to him, had come from somewhere else.

But none of his efforts had sparked a response, and after a day, he’d mostly given up. He was now recounting the story of how he came to be in their august company out of sheer pigheadedness. And because he was furious.

“It never occurred to me that my biggest problem as an undead monster would be money,” he said bitterly. “I hardly even thought about it as a human. I had other worries, many of them. But whatever funds I needed were always there, without question.”

Nobody said anything. No one even moved. Except for the one who put his head down on his knees in utter boredom.

Mircea decided he didn’t care.

“But then I died. And discovered that you do, in fact, need to take it with you! Or you can expect a very unhappy afterlife.”

He’d been forced to spend most of his money on extortionate bribes just to get to Venice. It was the European vampire community’s only open port, and therefore the only place he could live without violating another vampire’s territory. But once there, it hadn’t proven to be the sanctuary he’d been expecting.

The vampires that washed up on Venice’s beaches like the tide had come to be viewed by the locals as just another industry. The wealthy were fawned over and flattered, and given huge gifts they didn’t need as a way to curry favor with them or their powerful masters. Whereas the poor . . .

Mircea had quickly discovered that the poor, the unwanted, and the masterless might technically be allowed in in the city, but that didn’t mean they were welcome.

“Go to Venice, I was told; it’s a free territory.” He laughed. “That word must have a different definition than in my country!”

Nobody replied, but one of the vampires nodded slightly. Or maybe he was nodding off. Mircea decided to take it as encouragement.

“They subject us to bribes just to be able to live without constant harassment. Or the fear that someone will open a window one morning, and cook us as we sleep! It’s as if they expect us to give everything we make to them, as if we have no reason to exist but to make them money!”

And as if he had no other expenses. Yet Mircea had discovered that death was many things, but cheap wasn’t one of them. Especially in the not-remotely-serene republic.

On top of the bribes, he’d had to buy clothes for himself and his elderly tutor, who had followed him into exile. And then there were the expenses he’d never thought about before, which had always simply appeared as he grew up. Things like candles for his tutor’s fading eyesight. And food, for the man was human and needed sustenance. And a roof over both their heads so that Mircea’s newly cursed body didn’t burn up in daylight.

“I finally turned to gambling out of desperation,” he told his captive audience. “And discovered to my surprise that it’s much easier with vampire senses. An elevated heartbeat, slightly quickened breathing, heavier than normal perspiration—humans have a thousand tells. I thought I had finally found a way forward.”

One of the vamps, the same one who had nodded, was already shaking his head. Damned right, Mircea thought savagely. If there was a way forward in this godforsaken city, he had yet to find it.

“And so we come to last night,” he said viciously. “And the thugs the vampire community employs to harass us. The same thugs I have been paying off for months to turn a blind eye to my activities. You can imagine, then, how surprised I was to see them. Although not as much as when they stole my money, beat me up, and dragged me here!”

He’d been sitting forward, talking with his hands, but now he sat back against the cold stone again, exhausted. And disgusted. And hungry.

No, more than hungry. A vampire of his age couldn’t afford to go this long between feedings. Not without paying for it, anyway.

The pain would start soon.

And after that . . .

Mircea swallowed, trying not to think about the days following his Change, which had been via a curse instead of a bite. He’d had no master to tell him anything, including that he needed to feed—and what would happen if he didn’t. He’d spent his first days as a vampire in sick, desperate, aching torment, until the madness overcame him and he’d attacked someone.

He wondered how long he would last this time.

“Three weeks,” a slight-built vampire said hoarsely, out of nowhere. It was the one who had been interacting with him, however vaguely. He looked more like a boy than a man, with large gray eyes, scraggly blond-brown hair, and delicate features underneath all the dirt.

For a moment, Mircea regarded him blankly, confused at the apparent non sequitur. Until he remembered a question he’d asked some time ago. And which he really hoped wasn’t the one the vampire was answering.

“You’ve been here three weeks?” he asked cautiously.

He received a nod.

“And you were . . . fed?”

The vampire just looked at him.

Mircea closed his eyes. He was already starving; by tomorrow, he would be ravenous. He couldn’t imagine what he’d be after three weeks. He wasn’t sure he’d still be sane. Or alive, for that matter, since he usually fed twice a day or more. He had the impression that some of his kind had less urgency, but then, most of them had masters to loan them energy in emergencies.

He didn’t.

He also didn’t see the point.

“They bring us here merely to watch us starve?” he asked harshly.

“No. To make a profit,” one of the others said.

Mircea opened his eyes to see that it was a sallow brunet who’d spoken this time. In addition to yellowed, shriveled skin and filthy rags, he had been blessed with pock-marks and protuberant front teeth. The latter were visible because he was chewing on his remaining scrap of clothing, a long, dirty, stained camisa. Mircea couldn’t understand why, until he noticed: it had been spattered with a few drops of his blood in the fight.

Which the creature was now attempting to suck off.

Mircea swallowed, and tried not to look as horrified as he felt.

He tried harder not to imagine himself that desperate a week from now.

God, he had to get out of here.

The blond nodded, apparently oblivious. “That’s how the condottiere makes most of his money. He gets paid for patrolling the city, but he makes a lot more by collecting fines and selling off anybody that can’t pay.”

Mircea didn’t bother asking how much the fine was, since his net worth at the moment was zero. And there was a more pressing question. “Selling off?”

The vamp looked like he thought Mircea might be a little slow. “You know. As slaves?”

Mircea just stared at him.

He knew Venice had slaves, of course, of all types and varieties. Ships regularly brought in everything from red-headed Russians to curly-haired Greeks, from bronze-skinned Saracens to Nubian beauties. Most were women and girls, sought after for domestic help and to warm their master’s beds. But there were always a few strong male backs resold to Egypt as soldiers or to the plantations on Crete or Cyprus as workers.

But that was among the human population. Vampires had their own ways of acquiring the help they needed, and it was far more permanent than any slaver’s chains. Why would a vampire need a slave?

“Different reasons,” the blond told him, when he asked. “The weaker the master, the worse the slaves he makes. Some prefer to buy them to get better stock. If they end up being useful, they get added to the family.”

“Or maybe they got a job they don’t want to risk a family member on,” the brunet said, more cynically. “It takes power to make a Child. A slave just takes money.”

“Or sometimes they need somebody with special skills,” the blond said, ignoring him. “And if they can’t find him among the humans—”

“And maybe you’re kidding yourself,” the third member of their unholy trio said, speaking for the first time.

The voice was bitter and jaded, like the face that went with it. The filthy hair was half gray, the jowls were heavy and sagging with late middle age, the eyes had dark circles that turned the swarthy skin almost black, and the nose appeared to have been broken more than once. Like the creature’s spirit, apparently, because he looked resentfully at the hope in his fellow prisoner’s eyes.

But the blond wasn’t having it. “Convocation’s coming up,” he insisted.

He was talking about the biannual meeting of the governing bodies that ruled the vampire world. Or failed to rule it as far as Mircea could tell. He hadn’t seen much that resembled governance in the years since he fell asleep a man and woke up a monster.

“And that matters to us how?” the jaded vampire asked.

“It’ll bring hundreds of vampires to the city, maybe thousands—”

“Doesn’t mean any of them will be interested in us.”

“Doesn’t mean they won’t, either!”

“Go ahead and believe that,” the older vampire said. “Right up until you’re left standing at the end of the day, leftover again, unwanted again. And they come to slip a stake between your ribs since you’re not worth feeding. Then maybe you’ll learn—we are nothing. We are no one. We have no family, no protector, no guide. Your master made you by accident or threw you away—”

“He did no such thing! He died—”

“—then his vampires threw you away. Does it matter? You ended up here because nobody wanted you. And you’ll die here. Just like me.”

“I’m not like you!” the blond snapped. “I was wanted, but there were too many of us. Without the master’s strength, they couldn’t protect us all—”

“So they left you to protect yourself. Knowing that if you ventured into someone else’s territory, they’d kill you. And if you made it this far, you’d fall foul of the local constabulary, who are tired of their port being flooded by powerless vermin, and they’d kill you. Either way, they knew what they were sending you to. If they really cared, they’d have slit your throat.”

“You take that back!”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” The older vamp leaned his head back against the wall, baring his neck. “Come on, then. It’s no worse than what they’ve planned for us.”

“It is worse,” Mircea rasped, and the cynical brown eyes moved to him.

“Name one way.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Oh.” The older vamp smiled slightly. “Another optimistic fool.”

“No. Just someone who wants to live.”

“And where there’s life, there’s hope?” the vampire asked sardonically. “Give it up, son. We’re not getting out of here, any of us, except as corpses. The kind that don’t get back up again. And anybody who believes otherwise is—”

A scream of rusty hinges interrupted the conversation.

The prisoners jumped, having been too caught up in their discussion to have heard approaching footsteps. And then the door swung inward and the bare, dirt-floored room was inundated with torchlight and filled with the flutter of silks and fans and the gleam of satins, their saturated colors glowing like jewels in the gloom.

A moment later, still half blinded by the glare, Mircea was jerked off the floor and shoved roughly against the back wall. The others were getting the same treatment, as the soldiers lined them up around him, kicking the blond to make him stand up straight. He unfolded from a hunched position, looking miserable, and Mircea realized why.

He was naked except for a layer of dirt, and the room had just been inundated with women.

Mircea would have loaned him something, but he wasn’t much better off. His coat and doublet, belt and shoes had been stolen by the watch on the way here. Then his hosen and shirt, the latter—the only one he owned that was still without holes—had apparently been his jailor’s size. Mircea had been left with only a pair of linen mutande, the brief shorts the Italians used underneath their hosen, and which they purposefully kept thin and skin-tight to avoid wrinkling the outer garment.

It didn’t leave much to the imagination, and Mircea felt his face burn as one of the women came forward.

She was in flame-colored silk and rubies, with a golden net holding back a weight of dark hair. A red veil, the kind most women wore in Venice to frame their face and shoulders, had been drawn across the bottom half of her face in the eastern fashion, concealing everything but a pair of liquid dark eyes. Which suddenly fixed on him.

“Tell me about this one,” she murmured, as the condottiere bustled up behind her. And Mircea belatedly realized what the commotion was all about.

A potential purchaser had arrived.

Chapter Two

“Been in the city about a year,” the condottiere said, consulting a small notebook. He was a large man, with florid features and a belly that ensured that he didn’t have to pad his tunic to get the popular rounded front. “Lives with some old man over by the Bridge of Tits. Gambler, mostly small-time stuff, tries to keep his head down.”

“Crime?” the woman asked.

“Thought he’d make some money cheating at cards. My boys tried to have a talk with him and he attacked them.”

A dozen retorts rose to Mircea’s lips, but he bit them back. He’d attempted that when he was first brought in, and received a face full of fist for his trouble. But it didn’t look like the woman cared how he got here.

“Background?”

“He wasn’t forthcoming,” the man had the effrontery to say. “But he’s educated.”

“He told you this?”

The vampire laughed. “He told us nothing. The boys got a little too enthusiastic when he decided to resist, and he couldn’t talk much by the time they was done.”

“Then how do you know?”

Heavy shoulders raised in a shrug. “He’s been seen reading and writing at least a couple of languages, and he speaks five that we know of.”

“As do I. And I was born in an Athenian slum.”

“Yes, but you learned it after, like me. But look at him. He can’t be more than a few years out of the dirt. And no newborn has the presence of mind for something like that! So he learned it before. And his clothes were good quality, if worn. I’m thinking some noble sprout down on his luck.”

“Perhaps,” the woman said, noncommittal.

The vampire consulted his notes again. “So you said educated, noble or close enough to fake it, and pretty.” The man glanced up and looked Mircea over. He frowned briefly, probably wishing his boys had been less “enthusiastic,” but he decided to make the best of it. “He’ll clean up,” he told her jovially.

“He isn’t the usual type for Venice,” the woman said mildly.

“Type, type!” the man scoffed. “What type? He’s young, he’s well-built—and well endowed,” he added, nodding at one of the soldiers. “Your clients’ll like that.”

The woman didn’t respond. But she also didn’t stop the soldiers, who moved toward Mircea with obvious intent. He’d already been on a low boil, hearing himself being discussed like a horse to be traded. But at that, something in him snapped.

He broke the first arm that reached for him, and then lashed out, kicking the nearest guard in the stomach with enough force to send him staggering back. And into another, who was just standing there, looking bemused. It seemed that prisoners weren’t supposed to try to escape.

Fuck that, Mircea thought viciously, and lunged for the still-open door.

He never knew how close he came, just that the next time he blinked he was on the floor. And the second after that, he was being hauled up and slammed back into the wall, hard enough to have broken a human’s bones. It didn’t feel like it had done his any good, either, but worse was the sensation of shackles being clicked shut around his wrists and ankles.

Mircea thrashed against the bonds, which the triple damned guards jerked vengefully tight. But they weren’t normal metal. He could bend solid steel, one of the few perks of his new condition, but these didn’t budge. But he kept struggling anyway, jerking on the chains and cursing and panting in hopeless fury.

Which did nothing to keep his last remaining garment from being stripped down his thighs.

He was left naked and wild-eyed, and splayed against the wall like an animal up for inspection. Or gutting, for all he knew. It was not a nice thought to have as the woman stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.

The leather of her glove was strangely textured, almost reptilian. And cold, as if it still carried the chill of the streets outside. Mircea shivered as she began to trace the muscles in his torso, the vulnerable skin of his stomach, the deep V of muscle below his navel.

And then followed it down the crease of his leg, to the inevitable conclusion.

He was soft, of course, never having felt less aroused in his life. But the woman was a vampire, too, and she didn’t need his cooperation. A single finger ran down his length, calling his blood as easily as he could summon it from a human’s veins. He watched helplessly as his flesh swelled and lifted, rising eagerly up to meet her touch.

But she didn’t appear impressed. She glanced at the condottiere. “Too big.”

“First time I ever heard a woman say that!” he laughed.

“Then you must not have bedded many women in Venice.”

“I’ve bedded plenty!”

“Then you should know: women or men, they all want the same thing here. Slender boys with pink cheeks, a languid manner, and faces as pretty as a girl’s. Not muscles and body hair and a stallion’s girth.”

She looked amused as she explored the extent of the latter, pulling more blood into his already engorged heat, testing Mircea to his limit and then pushing beyond. Until he jutted out thick and aching, larger than he’d ever been, his skin stretched tight around a truly desperate need.

A small smile began to play around her lips.

“He’s pretty enough—” the condottiere insisted.

“For a commoner, perhaps. I need courtiers.”

“But he’s noble—”

“So you say.”

“He was trained as a knight! I know the kind of muscle hefting a sword builds!”

She shrugged. “Keep him for your watch, then.”

“I’ve better things to do than nurse an infant.”

“As do I,” she murmured, and began to stroke.

Mircea stared at her in disbelief, even as his body cried out for release. Did she actually expect him to perform for her, to spill himself like a whore for the amusement of her friends? It seemed impossible, ludicrous. But her actions were unmistakable, as was her power. It thrummed through him, tightening his body, escalating his need.

But there were other needs, and outrage lent them strength. In his own land, he had been a prince. Death had robbed much from him, almost everything, but it hadn’t taken that. It could never take that. And he did not perform like a trained monkey in a square!

And it seemed that in this, at least, she could not force him, because she abruptly let go.

But only to strip off her glove.

“He doesn’t need strength to roll around in the sheets,” the condottiere said contemptuously.

“But he does need refinement—a great deal of it.”

“Trimming those eyebrows alone might take a week,” a blond murmured. He was male, Mircea realized with a shock. He hadn’t noticed before, since the peacock had been dressed every bit as sumptuously as the women, with a ridiculous red velvet cape that fell in costly excess to the floor.

“And the more I have to do to make him useful, the more it costs me.”

“Damn it, Martina!” The condottiere exploded. “You told me to find you something different—”

“And you interpreted that to mean an over muscled oaf?” One delicate eyebrow went up.

“Then what do you want?”

The blond cleared his throat, and made an exaggerated bow. The condottiere cursed. And the vampire Martina grasped Mircea again, this time skin to skin.

And he’d been wrong, he realized in creeping horror. It wasn’t the glove that was scaly-smooth. It was the hand underneath.

His body shuddered as she met his eyes, revulsion battling with desperate need. And fury and shame and more than a little fear. But greater than any of those was confusion.

Why was she doing this? If she wasn’t interested, why didn’t she leave him be? Go find herself some other poor bastard who better fit her demanding specifications?

“I have other buyers—” the condottiere threatened, apparently wondering the same thing.

“Then sell him to them.”

“But I acquired him with you in mind. I wanted to give you first choice—”

They kept haggling, but Mircea was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate. Perhaps because she had turned her attention to the globes between his thighs. The horror of her touch caused them to try to retreat into his flesh, but her power forced them to drop heavily into her grasp, like two ripe fruits.

“Forty?” the condottiere was outraged. “That’s the price of a nag of a horse! I couldn’t take less than two hundred.”

“And I can’t offer more than fifty.”

“Now I know you’re joking. I could get more for a human slave than that!”

Martina said something else, but Mircea didn’t hear. She had started rolling him across her palm, as expertly as a gambler manipulating a pair of dice. And the slow, deliberate, over gentle pressure was maddening.

Until she suddenly squeezed and twisted, and he let out a gasp that froze in the chilly air between them. His fists knotted, his thighs corded, his buttocks clenched and jerked, his whole body begging for release no matter the cost. He snarled and denied it.

“Oh, this should be fun,” the blond sighed, walking off to examine one of the others.

“That has yet to be determined,” his mistress said softly, her dark eyes still holding Mircea’s.

And finally, he understood. Half of this demonstration was theatre, designed to lower the price. But not all of it. She wanted him to understand that she expected obedience. That spirit was one thing, but defiance would not be tolerated. She wanted him to prove that he would defer to her wishes, however unpleasant.

She wanted him to submit.

And if he didn’t, she would leave him here, to wither and suffer and, eventually, to die.

Mircea was a gambler; he knew a losing hand when he saw it. But he’d never wanted to play one more in his life. She recognized his reluctance, and for some reason, it seemed to please her.

But the novelty wouldn’t last, and unlike that fool of a condottiere, he knew how to close a deal.

He licked his lips. “The others . . .” His voice broke, but his eyes slid to the three castoffs beside him.

They didn’t react, probably not realizing what he was asking. The older one’s head had even slumped again, as if this was all too uninteresting to bother with. But Martina understood.

“Done.” It was immediate. It was too fast. There was something wrong here.

“What do you intend to do with me?” It came out more forcefully than he’d intended, nerves and abuse making his voice rough.

But she only smiled. “Whatever I please, vampire.”

Yes, Mircea had no doubts of that. But it wasn’t likely that he would get a better offer elsewhere. Or possibly any offer. He knew that.

But his body stayed rigid another moment nonetheless, intellect warring with abhorrence, and self-preservation with self-respect. Where there is life, there is hope, he reminded himself harshly. Even the bastardized version of life that was all that he had left.

Martina smiled, a hint of fang against carmine lips, as she felt the globes in her hand draw up again. Mircea refused to look away, refused to give her that satisfaction, even when her grip moved back up to curl around him. Even when she made it clear that she intended to feel his surrender as well as see it.

But the way her eyes darkened as his skin prickled and his buttocks clenched soon had him wishing he’d chosen differently. And the expression on her face as his body began to shudder made him want to swallow his pride. But it was her terrible smile when the moment of no return came, when he panicked at the last second and vainly tried to stop the now inevitable process, which proved too much.

Humiliated and beaten, he looked away. Only to meet the gaze of the women she’d brought with her. Somehow, he’d managed to forget about them, but they were still standing by the door, fans fluttering languidly, watching him with curious eyes.

Mircea could only stare back, utterly mortified, as the first pulse of his release surged through the cage of their mistress’s fist.

Surged and stopped, for it seemed even that humiliation was not enough.

Martina’s grip abruptly tightened, making clear that he did nothing without her permission. She would control how hard, how fast, and how much relief he was permitted. And she prolonged the lesson, augmenting his need with her power, and then denying it, again and again, until he was shivering and gasping, aching and desperate. Until he was writhing against the wall, begging for the chance he’d previously disdained. Until she had stripped him of his pride, his defiance, and almost his reason.

And then she finally released him, allowing him to spill the last vestiges of his self-respect onto the cold stones at her feet.

He stood there quietly afterwards, stunned and shaking. And stared blankly into space as she and the condottiere concluded their business. He only came out of his reverie when her fist abruptly tightened again, the golden nails biting possessively into his abused flesh.

No, he realized dully, a moment later. Her flesh. For she hoarsely threw over her shoulder: “One hundred ducats then.”

The condottiere sighed, but nodded, agreeing to accept the price of a good mule for Mircea’s mind and body, life and sex.

And just like that, the prince became the slave.

Chapter Three

The next night, Mircea stood in a small salon in Martina’s large house, being tortured in a new way.

“I’m tripping over whores!” The dramatic exclamation came from the hallway, but a moment later, a tall blond stumbled inside.

The blond’s name was Paulo, and he was normally as graceful as when he’d bowed to the condottiere the night before. But even vampire reflexes were hard pressed to navigate all the debris littering the floor of the elegant room. Or what would have been elegant if it hadn’t currently resembled a tradesman’s shop.

A very expensive tradesman’s shop, Mircea thought, still somewhat scandalized at the sight of rich silks, gleaming satins, delicate taffetas, sumptuous velvets, and glittering brocades casually strewn about, as if they were nothing. To the point that some of the precious stuff had slipped off tables and onto the floor. And into the doorway, where despite Paulo’s pronouncement, it was a bolt of shimmering bronze silk that had tripped him up.

The whores around here had better reflexes.

All except for Mircea, who was currently pinned in place.

He wondered if the torturer masquerading as a tailor had been aware of exactly the kind of establishment that had summoned him and his staff in the middle of the night. Judging by the state of his thigh, which had just taken another jab from the scandalized man, he supposed not. But pinpricks were less of a concern than certain other things.

“Must they be so tight?” he demanded, looking down at his legs. The scarlet hosen the man was pinning together—and to Mircea’s flesh—were too snug and far too thin. They hugged every muscle, every bulge, drawing attention to his lower body rather than providing proper concealment.

“Tighter,” the auburn-haired beauty lounging on a nearby chaise laughed. “There’s no money in modesty.”

Her name was Auria, and she clearly took her own advice. Her rose-colored, pearl-encrusted gown was stunning even by Venetian standards, as was the cleavage exposed by the wide neck and low décolleté. In Wallachia, she would have been flogged for a display like that. But Mircea supposed it made a sort of sense here. In a town where even the respectable women went around with painted faces, low-cut gowns, and foot-high platform shoes, a whore had to step up her game.

Unfortunately, she’d decided to do the same thing to him, and Mircea had no idea how to get her to stop.

“Any tighter and I won’t be able to sit down,” he protested.

“We’ll prop you against a wall,” the cheeky wench told him. “We’re not going to have chairs for everyone anyway, if this keeps up.”

Mircea glanced over at two of his former cellmates, who were perched on the side of a table because Auria was right—they were running out of room. The pockmarked brunet was nowhere in sight. But the older man, called Bezio, and the slighter blond named Jerome were also being tortured, although not by the devil of a tailor, who hadn’t gotten to them yet. But by some of the house maids, who were trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Thankfully, none of them had been among the group with Martina last night.

Those women had been friends of hers, on their way back from a ball, whom she’d carried along on her shopping trip as if picking up a new trinket. But she’d come home with four filthy, beat up, naked vampires instead, who Mircea had fully expected to be further abused. Instead, they’d been hustled through a back entrance, marched to the kitchen and scrubbed within an inch of their undead lives by a small cook with a vendetta against lice.

“I don’t have lice!” Mircea had told her, indignantly.

“Not anymore,” she’d replied, and dunked him under the caustic water.

He wasn’t sure what she’d had in there, but if he’d still had human skin, it probably would have sloughed off. Instead, he’d been wrapped in a blanket and shoved into a small, windowless room just as daybreak was sapping the last of his strength. And now it was night again, and he was being outfitted, if not like a prince, then at least like a gentleman.

He didn’t know what to make of any of it. He just knew he had to get out. And quickly, before Martina used a blood bond to insure that he never would.

He had been surprised that she hadn’t done it last night, but perhaps he’d been too weak. The beating, the blood loss from healing, and the lack of anything like a meal in well over a day had left him in poor shape. And he’d heard rumors that binding an ill vampire often didn’t go well.

But he’d fed this morning, on one of the human servants Martina kept to guard the house during the day. It hadn’t replaced all that he’d lost, but he was far better off than he’d been. Which meant that he was running out of time.

He needed to get out of here.

He also really needed the damned tailor to stop sticking him with pins.

The man drew one back, frowned at the bent head, and placed it on a pile with several others.

“How many is it now?” Auria asked Paulo, who had finally joined them.

“Six, as of this evening. If you mean how many new faces. This lot, one more who I don’t think even make up is going to help, and two girls Martina picked up a week ago but who just arrived. Although where she thinks we’re going to put them all, I have no idea.”

“We’ll stack ’em like cordwood in the kitchen,” Auria said cheerfully, and poked the tailor with her fan. “Tighter!”

“You aren’t helping,” Paulo told her, tugging on an auburn curl that had escaped from the elaborate bun on top of her head.

“Well you don’t want it too loose, or he’ll end up looking like those old men in the marketplace,” she told him, smiling innocently. “Or you in that green outfit.”

“There is nothing wrong with my green outfit—”

“Except saggy butt.”

“My hosen fit perfectly,” he said with dignity. And then ruined the effect by swatting at her with the notebook he was holding.

It didn’t appear to have much effect. “Saggy butt, saggy butt!” Auria sang, her youthful laughter belying her age, which Mircea had been told was closing in on a century. But she’d been changed at sixteen, and still often acted like it, to the tailor’s consternation and Mircea’s amazement.

He didn’t know what to make of these vampires. He’d met others of his kind before, of course. But none of them had acted so . . . human.

Of course, they weren’t human. He knew that. They were monsters like him. They were just well-fed, well-dressed monsters, unlike the ones he usually met. But exactly like the kind he’d run afoul of once or twice—and barely survived the experience.

Others hadn’t been so lucky.

One of his first weeks in the city he’d ventured into a gaming den run by one of the local lords of the undead. Unlike the crude market stalls and tavern back rooms where humans played their games of chance, this one occupied a graceful palazzo with an elegant atrium. Mircea had been pleasantly surprised.

Until he’d noticed what was nailed to the wall.

He had stood in the door, transfixed, and stared at the creature. Raw, red muscles and pale tendons were working, lidless eyes were staring, and a lipless mouth was open in mewling, unearthly cries as it writhed in agony. Mircea had finally realized what he was seeing when he noticed the limp skin, still in the vague shape of a man, which someone had managed to remove almost in one piece. And which had been fixed to the wall alongside the sufferer, where he could see it.

Because a vampire couldn’t die even from that much trauma.

A placard over the man’s head had explained that those who cheated in order to fleece others would have the same thing done to them, or words to that effect. Mircea hadn’t taken the time to focus on them. He’d been too busy turning on his heel and going off to find a human game, where he had concentrated his efforts thereafter.

He’d learned that day: an open port did not mean a protected one. The Watch was here to keep order and to benefit those who could pay them. Everyone else was on their own.

He had to get away.

Fortunately, he had a small stash of money at his lodgings that the Watch hadn’t found. It should suffice to get Horatiu back to Wallachia, should he choose to go, or at least safely out of the city. And Mircea—

Would manage. He was, he had discovered to his surprise, rather good at that. After a lifetime of study designed to make him fit for a palace, he had taken to the gutter remarkably quickly. He would find somewhere to go, like he had almost found a way out of here shortly after getting up, before running into the damned tailor in the doorway. And then Auria had arrived and that had been that. But maybe—

Auria interrupted him again by bolting off the chaise with a laugh and a swirl of skirts, and attacking the startled tradesman’s assistant, who had just come in with another armful of silks. She grabbed a bolt of bright crimson off the top with a crow of triumph. “This one!”

To Mircea’s consternation, Paulo was nodding thoughtfully, sizing him up with a practiced eye. “It could work.”

“I like the black,” Mircea said swiftly, nodding at a plain piece of serviceable wool propped against the wall.

“The black, too,” Paulo said. “But in velvet.”

For the first time, the tailor started to look less exasperated. Unlike Auria, who pouted prettily. “What about the blue? He needs color.”

“Blue is for girls who want to look like the Virgin,” Paulo said repressively. “Neither of which is appropriate here.”

Auria snorted, obviously completely unrepressed, and tossed bolts here and there until—

Mircea stared in horror as the girl beamed at an eye-searing piece of shiny yellow brocade. “If you want appropriate, how about the yellow? I heard Florence even makes its whores wear—”

“Why do you need so many?” Mircea blurted, as the tailor’s scandalized glance went from him to Auria and back again.

Auria blinked at him. “Well, you can’t wear the same thing every day—”

“I meant us,” Mircea said, more roughly than he’d intended. It prompted startled looks from the duo on the table, neither of whom had so far uttered a peep. But he was damned if he was going to stand there like a statue without at least asking about their situation. “Why do you need us?”

But Auria didn’t look annoyed. If anything, she seemed almost giddy. “Convocation,” she said, rolling the word over her tongue as if relishing it.

“Oh, God,” Paulo said. “Don’t get her started.”

But Auria had started, on what was obviously a favorite topic. “It’s in Venice this year—finally! It’s in a different city every two years, but it’s never us! They’ve been to every pig wallow and mud pit this side of the Arno, and every time we thought, this time, it has to be our turn—it wasn’t. But, at last, it is! The senate announced it just last week—”

“Giving us so much time to prepare,” Paulo said sardonically.

“They never announce it early,” Auria said. “They’re worried about their enemies—”

“Yes, but keeping them in the dark ’til the last minute means a ridiculous amount of work for us! Everyone is scrambling to make ready at the same time, making even basic provisions hard to obtain—”

“Well, of course. Senators have already started arriving. One of their entourages almost ran me down today—”

“—and all slap in the middle of festival season!” Paulo finished, looking aggrieved. “With the city already bursting at the seams. It’s madness!”

“Very profitable madness,” Auria said. “Or it will be, if we can get this lot ready in time.”

“Get us ready for what?” Mircea demanded, but no one was listening anymore, due to an argument that had broken out over the all-important topic of the older vampire’s beard.

“Forked,” one of the maids hovering around Bezio said decisively.

“Clubbed,” another announced, just as strongly.

“Forked, unless you want him to look old and boring.”

“Clubbed, unless you want him to look like a ship’s captain.”

“At least ship captains have some style—”

“And no class. We need him to look like he fits in a drawing room.”

“As the butler?”

“Clubbed!”

“Forked!”

“Pointed,” Paulo said, cutting in. “His face needs the length.”

And that ended that. No one asked the man himself what he wanted, of course, any more than they would ask a chair if it wanted to be reupholstered. He didn’t matter; none of them did.

“Why do you need us?” Mircea asked again, harshly.

Auria looked up, startled, from examining more of the silks. “What?”

“Why are we here? To entertain senators?”

Auria just stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

“That would be a no,” Paulo said dryly. “You’re here, along with the rest, to free us up to entertain senators.”

“Mmmmm, senators.” Auria fell back against the chaise, hugging an armful of silk to her breast. “I heard they give the most delicious presents. Ropes of pearls, barrels of them. And rubies the size of my fist, and collars of diamonds, and jeweled sleeves—”

“And you know this how?” Paulo inquired.

“I hear things,” the auburn-haired beauty said archly. “Anyway, do you think the mistress is going to all this expense for nothing? She knows—this will make us!”

“Or break us, at the rate you spend money.” He caught Mircea’s eye and scowled. “You’re here to take care of our regular clientele and the extra business from the festival crowds, to run errands, and to do whatever else makes it easier for us to attend to high profile clients. And preferably to maintain a good attitude whilst you’re at it!”

“And after?”

Mircea didn’t get a response to that, either, because one of the servants approached him, tweezers in hand.

Fortunately for the man’s health, Paulo stopped him in time. “The mistress said no.”

“No?” The man looked dubious.

“She wants him left rough around the edges. Something about having a particular client in mind—”

He suddenly cut off, at the same time that Auria’s head jerked up.

“Oh! Oh, is it—” she exclaimed, as what sounded like a stampede of cats rushed by outside. It was eerily silent except for the creak-creak-creak of the old wooden staircase under what had to be dozens of feet, all going up.

But Auria wasn’t silent. She let out a whoop that would have done an attacking Saracen proud, and rushed out the door, with Paulo on her heels. A moment later the servants stopped torturing Mircea’s former cellmates and did the same, leaving him and the others looking at each other in bewilderment.

And then as one, they hopped off their perches and headed to the door, ignoring the annoyed sounds of the tailor behind them.

Mircea reached it first, only to see what appeared to be every vampire on the property headed up the stairs, politely taking turns. Except for Auria, who had pushed her way almost to the top. And then she disappeared around a bend in the stairs, and the cat feet started not-pounding the boards above their heads.

Mircea looked up, despite the fact that there was nothing to see but a board ceiling, and then down again at his fellow prisoners, whose heads were now sticking out of the salon along with his. And then he slowly turned to stare at the front door, which was tantalizingly close.

And completely unguarded.

Chapter Four

Mircea didn’t hesitate. In an instant he was through the door, feeling vaguely ridiculous in only the skin-tight leggings. Especially when a single length of any of the costly stuff draped around the salon would have brought him a new outfit, boots, cloak, and possibly provided traveling money as well.

But not if the tailor put up a squawk about it and alerted the whole house. Mircea decided he couldn’t risk it and ran, out the door and down the embankment outside, which fronted yet another canal. If he had to, he’d swim home, he thought—

Right before a rough hand fastened onto his upper arm.

And slammed him back into a wall, almost jerking him off his feet.

Mircea looked up wildly, expecting to see Paulo or one of the servants. Or possibly a member of the Watch, who was wondering why a mostly-naked vampire was fleeing down the street like all the hounds of hell were after him. So it was a shock to see the older of his three cellmates frowning at him out of the gloom.

Bezio, he thought, relief pouring through him.

For a split second, until he was dragged into an alley. He started to protest—vigorously—when a group of the Watch ran by, shouting commands to their fellows on the opposite bank. Mircea stared at them—there had to be a few dozen at least, their armor splashed with light from the torches they carried.

It seemed a little excessive, for one runaway, he thought stupidly, before Bezio pulled him further back into the shadows.

“It’s not for you,” Bezio said, before he could ask. “The consul is coming. His flotilla is going to pass right by here, which is what has the house in an uproar. They’re all on the roof, trying to get a glimpse.”

“Perfect,” Mircea breathed. “Then we have time to—”

“Get back before anybody notices you’re gone? Good idea.”

“Like hell,” Mircea said, and tried to tear away. Only to find his back making the acquaintance of the bricks again, and a trailing bunch of vines did little to cushion the blow.

“What the—”

“Why do you think they allow us to come here?” Bezio demanded.

Mircea looked up into a swarthy face that appeared utterly serious. “What?”

“The government. The senate. Why do you think—”

“I think you’re about to take a bath,” Mircea snarled, and threw him off. Only to be pinned by two hands this time, huge and calloused, and significantly stronger than they’d been the night before.

“Do you think it’s compassion?” Bezio demanded. “Altruism? They’re not like us. They didn’t go through what we have, they don’t live like we do. And you don’t learn compassion by sitting on your ass in a gilded salon!”

No, but you get caught talking to a madman in an alley, Mircea thought. “I don’t have time for this!”

“Then answer the question: Why is this city here?”

“Get out of my way!”

“Answer the question!”

“I don’t know! It’s a port! You can’t just close it off—”

“Bullshit. They’ve closed off plenty of others. I ought to know; I had to come through half a dozen to get here.”

“You’re not Venetian?”

“Do I sound Venetian?”

Mircea didn’t know. He could barely speak the language himself, having not known a word of it when he arrived. How the hell was he supposed to tell one damned Italian from another? He also didn’t care.

“Damn it! Let me go—”

“I’ll let you go when you answer the question. And good luck trying to throw me in the canal. You overpowered me last night because I hadn’t eaten in weeks and didn’t really give a damn—”

“And you do now?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’d like to find out. Only I don’t think Martina is going to be much interested in keeping us with you gone.”

“That’s not my problem! I helped you—”

“And now I’m trying to return the favor. You can’t get away for another few minutes, in any case. Not with the Watch scouring the area ahead of the consul’s flotilla, to remove all the riffraff. If you’re smart you’ll stay here for a minute and talk to me.” Bezio eyed him doubtfully. “But then, maybe you’re not smart. You’re damned pigheaded, wherever you’re from.”

“Târgoviste.” It was out before Mircea could stop it; he didn’t know why. It hurt to say; hurt to so much as think.

“I don’t even know where the hell that is.”

“Nowhere.” Not for him. Not now.

It suddenly crashed into him, as it did whenever he thought of home, the utter enormity of what he’d lost. A family, a country, a future—all gone in one terrible night. And replaced with this half-life. This cursed body that even the sun turned her back on, and that anyone he’d even known, ever loved, would reject in horror should they ever see it.

Mircea wondered why he cared about any of this.

If this was the best he could do, let the Watch catch him and be damned to them.

“We’ve all thought that way,” Bezio told him, reading his face. “At least once. I’ve pretty much made a hobby of it.”

“I don’t care what you’ve done!”

“That’s too bad. Because I’m going to tell you.” The man took out a flask, offering it to him.

“I can’t taste that!” Mircea snapped. He hadn’t tasted food, wine, anything since that night. It was ashes in his mouth. Like every fucking thing else.

“Just as well. They only keep the good stuff for the clients, apparently.”

Mircea seriously contemplated murder for a moment, while the man drank. But if he didn’t overpower him immediately, it would almost certainly draw the attention of the Watch, and any chance he had of escape would be lost. And he supposed he did want that chance, after all, because the next time Bezio handed him the flask, he took it.

“I was a blacksmith in a little town near Salerno,” the man said, without preamble. “Wife. Two daughters, one just married. Utterly typical. And then one night, I stopped by the local tavern on the way home.”

The man’s tone was light, almost jesting. And his limbs were loose, relaxed. He might have been talking about the weather. But there was something, some clue so subtle Mircea couldn’t have named it if he’d tried, that told him that wasn’t the case.

“It was crowded that night,” Bezio said. “A troop of singers had stopped in, and were giving a show. I bought a flagon and propped up a patch of wall, thinking to stay a few moments. Maybe hit up a deadbeat for some money he owed me, if I saw him.

“I didn’t see him.”

The man took back his flask. And upended it, although it couldn’t have helped. But perhaps he found the routine comforting, because he drained it dry.

“Turns out the ‘singers’ were vampires trying to draw a large enough audience to make it worth their while,” he said, wiping his mouth. “When they decided enough of us had shown up, they attacked. No one made it out alive.”

It was so matter-of-fact, so utterly without emotion, that it took Mircea a moment to realize what he’d said.

“They . . . drained all of you? I didn’t think that was permitted.”

The man smiled humorlessly. “What is permitted is what anyone can get away with. It was probably some challenge to the local master, or some act of revenge or—I don’t know. I didn’t stay around to find out. I woke up dizzy and bloody, in a room full of bodies, some dead, some dying. And stumbled outside, trying to get home, only to collapse in the forest before I’d gone twenty yards.”

“I’m surprised you survived at all.” Mircea didn’t have experience himself, but from what he understood, that wasn’t how vampires were made.

“I hadn’t. I just didn’t know it, then. One of those bastards had turned me by accident, before passing out in a blood stupor. They torched the place after I left; I guess they realized how careless they’d been. But by then, I’d fallen into a gulley filled with decaying leaves, under a copse of trees. Dark enough, anyway.” He grimaced.

“And three days later, you woke up and found your world had changed,” Mircea said quietly.

“No. Three days later, I woke up covered in bog slime and wondering what the hell,” the man said dryly. “It was after I finally struggled home and attacked my own wife that I realized I was in trouble. I tore myself away and fled, pursued by a pack of dogs, and then by a party of townspeople looking for the murderers. I finally got away only to almost starve to death before I realized I could feed without killing someone.”

Mircea shuddered slightly, because his own experience hadn’t been so different. He’d been cursed with his affliction, not made by some careless stranger, but did it matter? They’d both ended up the same way: with no past, and no future.

“We’re all the same, here,” Bezio told him, as if reading his thoughts. “You heard Jerome’s story already—just one too many babies in a household where the master was killed. Nobody wanted him, so out he went.” He shrugged. “Sanuito, now, he’s a little different—”

“Sanuito?”

Bezio flicked a thumb behind his front teeth.

Oh, that one.

“His master just wanted to win a bet. He had an acquaintance in one of the local Were families, in the countryside near here. They got to talking in their cups one night, boasting about how one was stronger than the other. Finally decided to find out.”

“Find out?”

“You know, get a human. See who wins.”

“See who . . .” Mircea looked at him, uncomprehending. Or hoping he was.

“They both bit him,” Bezio spelled it out. “But it didn’t resolve their bet. The vamp forgot—it takes three days for us to turn. And in the meantime, the Were’s bite was weakening Sanuito. And Changing a sick or weakened person don’t make for a strong vamp. In the end, the master won his bet, but ended up with a useless servant.”

“Who he then turned out to die on his own,” Mircea said, his fist clenching.

“Who he then turned out to die on his own,” Bezio agreed. “Only, he didn’t die. He made it here instead. Which brings me back to my original question. Why do you think this city is allowed to exist? Why do you think the senate mandated it as an open port?”

Mircea didn’t answer. He couldn’t see a reason. Obviously, the lives of him and others like him counted for nothing, for less than nothing, since they were treated as little more than vermin. Why bother to have a safe port for them?

“One man’s trash is another’s treasure,” Bezio said. “We’re here because they wanted to funnel all the rejects—those smart enough or lucky enough to make it this far, anyway—into one place. Where they could look ’em over like a buyer at a secondhand market stall. Those with talent get picked up sooner or later. Those without . . .” He shrugged.

“But we were picked up.”

“We were lucky. I was a blacksmith; Jerome an errand boy; Sanuito a farmer. Not highly sought-after skill sets among the undead. But we ended up in a cell with you, and you had something the mistress wanted.”

“Yes,” Mircea said bitterly. “Something to tempt the jaded palates of a debauched court tired of pretty boys—”

“That’s something, isn’t it?” Bezio asked, undisturbed.

“No, it isn’t! I wasn’t a farmer, Bezio. I was a warrior! I was a prince!”

“And now you’re a whore, and damned lucky to be one. We’re all damned lucky—”

“The fuck we are,” Mircea said savagely, before breaking off and starting away.

Only to find himself slammed against the wall again, this time with a fist around his neck. He knew a dozen ways to break that particular hold, but he didn’t use any of them. Because one look into the face staring into his stopped him cold.

If he’d thought Bezio without emotion, he was learning better now.

“You think you’re so different from us, because you lost a palace? A kingdom?” Dark eyes blazed down into his. “Son, I lost a kingdom, too. So did every man here. Maybe our kingdoms were smaller, just a house we built with our own two hands, a wife we loved, a child. But do you think they meant any less? Do you think we mourn their loss one bit less than you?

“My wife. My Jacopa. Gone, as if she’d died that day. My girls, Sonia and Mea—gone. I’ll never see any of them again, never see the town I grew up in, the forge I helped my father build, the—”

He broke off, face full of fury, eyes brimming with tears. And Mircea was suddenly, deeply ashamed.

Because Bezio was right—he had thought he’d lost more.

It had been instilled in him from birth. Not the prevailing belief that God gave those in power the right to rule; his father, the bastard son who made good through force of arms and political maneuvering, knew better than that. But rather that those strong enough to rule had a value others did not. That they had to survive, they had to prevail, regardless of the cost. For without them, their lands would be undefended and their people nothing but prey.

And if his life had more value, surely his death did as well?

But after almost two years of seeing life—and death—from a different perspective, Mircea wondered.

Did a farmer who lost everything to a passing army care whose symbol was on the banners? Did he comfort himself with the thought that his carefully tended crops would aide a battle hundreds of miles away, the end result of which might not change his life one iota? In the harsh bleakness of winter, did he praise the names of the leaders who had decided that they, and their ambitions, required letting his children starve?

What, Mircea wondered now, had they been fighting for? Would a Turkish overlord have treated the people worse than they had? Had they really made things better, as he’d always been told, or merely better for them?

And had he really suffered any more than this man, who had also lost everything?

“My life ended the day I Changed, just as much as yours did,” Bezio told him quietly. “I was just too stubborn to accept it. To lie down like the corpse I was. I came here instead, searching for some kind of meaning in all this. For some kind of sign. There had to be a reason, I thought. It couldn’t just be random. It couldn’t just be for nothing.”

“You lit candles in churches, to saints who didn’t hear,” Mircea murmured, because he knew. He’d haunted them, too.

“Prayed, swore, grieved, drank,” Bezio agreed. “God, I drank! And you’re right, it didn’t help. Eventually, I tried the other way, thought if heaven had damned me, might as well enjoy it.”

“But you didn’t,” Mircea said. Just like alcohol, the old pleasures were dust and ashes now. Just more reminders of what he’d lost, what he’d never have again.

“No, I didn’t. By the time the Watch picked me up, I was lying in an alley in a blood-soaked haze, having attacked half a dozen people and in full view of dozens more. I was practically begging to be staked and thrown out on the tide, what was left of me. And I don’t think I’d have cared.”

Mircea didn’t doubt it. It was the first impression he’d had of the man. Someone who was tired of it all, who was ready for it to end. To finally be that corpse in reality.

But in less than a day, a transformation had taken place that he wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it. If he hadn’t been staring at a face full of passion and grief and fury and life. “What changed?”

“Some noble sprout got chucked into the lock up with me,” Bezio said dryly. “And indignant—highly indignant, mind you—of his treatment. Practically begging for some humbling, which he promptly got. Nothing surprising there.

“Not until he took us with him.”

The man’s face transformed again, going soft with wonder. They had such expressive faces, these Italians, so full of every emotion in their passionate natures. No wonder their artists are so great, Mircea thought. All they have to do is look around them for inspiration. It was written in every face, in every line. If a sculptor carved this one, it might be entitled “man looking at saint.”

It unnerved him.

Bezio didn’t care. “You stuck out your neck for people you’d just met, people who would have drained you dry for whatever scraps of stolen life you had floating around your veins, people who had just tried to do that very thing! You had no reason to take us with you. No reason to jeopardize what might be your only chance at a way out. And you knew it was likely to be the only one—we’d just told you!”

“Martina wanted me badly,” Mircea explained. “She was willing to deal—”

“That doesn’t explain why you saved us.”

“Is that what you followed me to ask?”

Bezio looked exasperated. “I followed you for the reason I said—to return the favor! To keep you from doing something stupid. But also because . . .” He broke off with a curse.

He glared at Mircea for a moment, before continuing.

“Because I’d convinced myself that I’d stumbled into a world of utter selfishness. Where there were no emotions I understood, or wanted to understand. Where pride and profit were served by bitterness and jealousy and there was nothing for a man like me.

“But then you showed up, full of bluster and outraged dignity and a different kind of pride. And calmly told a master what you would and wouldn’t do. And got away with it. Because she saw the same thing I did—that you weren’t going to give in unless she did. She could leave you there, or kill you, or rant and rave. But if she wanted your cooperation, she had to give in first. And she did.” He broke off, laughing. “She did!”

“And now I’m here,” Mircea reminded him dryly. Since apparently, the man didn’t understand anything at all. “I’m under her control—”

“Are you? Looks to me like you’re up and leaving her control. That you just decided you didn’t want to be here anymore, so you’re off.” Bezio shook his head in amazement.

“I can’t be here—”

“Of course you can. You beat her once, and frankly, I wouldn’t bet money on you not doing it again. But not now.”

“It has to be now! She’ll bind me—”

“She won’t. I asked one of the servants this morning, wanting to know what to expect. He laughed at the idea.”

“What? That doesn’t make sense—”

“And neither does this!” Bezio said, as the noise level from outside the alley reached a crescendo.

Mircea looked to the street, where a cheering crowd had blocked the alley’s mouth on that end, and where what looked like flower petals were now wafting down from the surrounding rooftops. The Watch was there; he knew it, even if he couldn’t see them. But if their attention was on the crowd . . .

“They’re all over town,” Bezio said, breaking into his thoughts. “And on the mainland, and on the roads, picking up everyone who looks even a little suspicious. This is convocation—they’re not going to take chances. But tough it out for three weeks, and when they move on, you can, too. Until then, come back with me.”

Mircea hesitated, torn between the desire for freedom and the desire not to be stupid. He had to get away, but the Watch had caught him flat-footed and he was completely unprepared. And he would only get one chance at this. If he screwed it up, if he landed back in that cold cell . . . he might well never leave it.

But damn, he wanted to try.

“Don’t be a fool!” Bezio said, yelling to be heard over the crescendo of sound outside. “Come back with me. I promise, you won’t regret it!”

Chapter Five

“Auughhhh!” Bezio screamed, looking down at his chest.

“The Venetian ideal is hairless,” a sadist named Marte said, holding a strip of cloth covered in pine resin—and a good deal of Bezio’s chest hair.

“Regretting it yet?” Mircea asked evilly, as Bezio stared in disbelief at the swath of skin that had just been uncovered.

It was a day since the fiend of a tailor had left, but the transformation continued. Albeit in another venue. The beautification routine was taking place in a large, burnt-out edifice across the small canal behind the house and down a little way.

The once-elegant structure had been built by a sugar merchant, one of Martina’s former clients, who had designed it as a home and warehouse combined. Not a great idea, as it turned out, since the sugar had been stored in the attic. And, when a fire started in the house, it had melted and dripped down, spreading the flames to the point that it gutted the whole interior.

The sugar merchant died before he could rebuild, leaving Martina her current house and a sum of money in his will, the latter of which she’d used to snap up the decaying hulk behind her.

Mircea assumed she had some sort of long-term plans for it, but for now, weeds were growing in what had been the elegant atrium, the plaster walls were flaking off in chunks, and half the roof was open to the sky. Only a few rooms were still usable, including the one they were in, which had been an office. It was now filled with shelves of strange-smelling ingredients and tables of innocuous-looking implements that Mircea didn’t trust at all.

Like the massive pile of cloth strips lying innocently on the table between him and Bezio.

Mircea looked at them, and then at the acreage left to go, most of which was on display since they were “dressed” in small linen towels. Which, in Bezio’s case, showed off a vast forest of hair on his chest, back, legs, and thighs. Most of which was doomed, if Marte had her way.

“You—you can’t mean to do it all like that,” Bezio said, his eyes flickering from her to the pile.

Marte smiled.

She was a petite brunette Mircea would have described as cute rather than beautiful. She had dimples and merrily bouncing ringlets and tinsel earrings that fascinated him as he’d thought that type of jewelry was only worn by gypsies and strange foreign traders. But they suited her, shimmering whenever she moved, which was often since she hardly ever slowed down. But she was unfailingly good tempered—if a bit overly enthusiastic about the waxing.

As she demonstrated when her eyes lit up at Bezio’s comment.

“Oh, no. We can try other things if you like.”

“What other things?”

“Well, let’s see. There’s the Egyptian way, with beeswax, sugar, and lemon—”

“Does that involve any yanking?” Bezio asked warily.

“Of course. You make a paste that is slathered on the skin, and then cloth strips are pressed into it, which removes the hair when pulled off.”

“So the same thing we’re already doing?” he demanded.

“Oh, no. The recipe is quite different.”

“Is there a method that doesn’t call for removing most of my skin along with the damned hair?”

Marte thought about it. “Well, the Romans used nut shells back in the empire . . .”

“Nut shells?” Bezio looked faintly encouraged. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Oh, it’s a really interesting process,” Marte enthused. “You heat the shells red hot and then singe off the hair—”

“Singe?”

“—but, of course, if your hand slips you can burn yourself rather badly. Which can be, er, unfortunate, considering our flammability—”

“Anything else?” Bezio asked, sounding strangled.

“Lots of things. We usually use bat’s blood or tweezers for eyebrows,” she said, sliding a look Mircea’s way.

He stared her down, and she sighed.

“And then there are pastes designed to soften the hair, so that it just sloughs off.”

“Sloughs off?” Mircea asked, perking up. Because he was next.

“Mmmhmm. You paste it where you want the hair to fall out, leave it for a short time and then just wash it off.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Bezio didn’t look convinced. “And how does that kill me?” he demanded.

“Well, they do use arsenic in the mix—”

“Arsenic?”

“—along with quicklime and rock alum, but it’s the arsenic that does the trick. Well, as long as you wash it off soon enough. Otherwise you can burn yourself there, too—”

“Burn myself, hell!” He stared at her. “I can die! Are you trying to poison me, woman?”

“You’re already dead,” Mircea pointed out.

“And don’t want to get any deader!”

“My point was that I don’t believe we can be poisoned.”

“Oh, we can be, yes,” Marte said, nodding enough to make her curls bounce. “Although it’s really rare. You’d have to ingest a great deal.” She glanced at Bezio. “Of course, considering how much hair we’re talking about here—”

“Just rip the damned stuff out,” Bezio said, scowling. “It may hurt, but at least I’ll survive the process!”

“Well, that’s what I was doing,” she said, looking disappointed that he wasn’t as enthusiastic about her hobby as she was.

“Why not just use a glamourie?” Mircea asked, talking about the spells that vampires, and some mages, used to change their appearance. “And dispense with all of this?”

“Sure, why not?” Jerome asked, a little desperately.

The slight-built blond currently had no fewer than three attendants hovering around him, probably because he was the closest of them all to the Venetian ideal. And the slender, youthful body and thin, boyish face didn’t appear to have plumped up much, even after feeding. Of course, it was hard to tell. Since it currently had cold cream slathered all over it, while some noxious smelling substance was being combed through his hair.

“It’s only lye,” a severe-looking woman told him, when he protested.

“B-but they washed me last night—”

“And you’ll wash every night, from now on.”

“Every—” he looked horrified. “My skin will come off!”

“It’ll be another few layers before we hit skin.” The voice was dry.

“This isn’t about getting you clean,” Auria told him. She was in charge of this operation, with Marte being there, Mircea had gathered, for her hirsute expertise. “It’s to take that awful color off, so we can replace it with something better.”

“W-what color?” Jerome asked, a tentative hand going to his head, only to get it smacked by the attendant.

Auria motioned to one of the other women, who had been mixing something in a small pot. “Let me see.” The pot of stuff was brought over for inspection. “More saffron,” she said determinedly. “It’s not like we can sit him in the sun until it bleaches properly.” Bright blue eyes narrowed on him. “And what about those teeth?”

The blond put a hand up to cover his discolored front teeth, only to have it smacked again. “We’ve already tried tooth powder—twice,” one of the attendants told her. “But it’s not a stain; the teeth must have been going bad when he was Changed, and now the color’s fixed. We can try again, but—”

“Enamel them,” Auria said firmly.

“Why not use a glamourie?” Mircea asked again. He was currently having his hair trimmed, to bring it to the correct, slightly-below-shoulder-length style that suited current Venetian tastes. But Marte was already eyeing him as she denuded poor Bezio, whose watery eyes were making clear how much he was enjoying the process.

“Because we have two types of clients,” Marte told him, ripping off another strip of hair. “The first is easy. Wealthy merchants or visiting pilgrims who come to us for a taste of the exotic. Or, sometimes, for cavaliers to help them entertain their wives, who are often decades younger.”

Jerome frowned. “You . . . you mean, they want us to . . .”

“They prefer to know who their wives are with,” Auria said briskly. “Wouldn’t you?”

“No!”

“You’re thinking of love matches. These aren’t,” Marte told him kindly.

Auria agreed. “Most of the men are as bored with the wives they married for money or family alliances as the wives are with them. They’re happy to find lovers to keep the little minxes out of trouble, rather than have them come up with their own—and in the process possibly ruin the family name.”

Marte nodded. “Better to choose someone for them, someone discreet, someone professional, who can be paid to go away if the relationship becomes a problem. Or who can help persuade the wives of something the husbands wish them to do.”

“Danieli managed to convince one she didn’t want a summer home in Este just the other day,” Auria added. “Winning himself a sizeable reward from the grateful husband. He hasn’t stopped crowing about it yet.”

“Of course, you need training for that sort of thing. And for how to squire the young women about town, and how to dance properly, and how to bow—”

“Bow?” Jerome looked lost.

“Oh, yes! It’s an art, really: how deeply and for which person and on what occasion—”

“And the newly rich never get it right,” Auria laughed. “Some of our gentlemen callers actually end up paying more for lessons than they do for companionship!”

“Paulo’s a bowing master,” Marte nodded. “He has a number of young men who come to him for instruction.”

“In how to bow,” Jerome said, as if he still didn’t believe it.

“Yes, and you’ll have to learn, too,” Auria told him. “You’ll be expected to accompany ladies to social events and not embarrass them—or us! And to shop for them in the Rialto, and to bargain for them with merchants . . .”

“I understand that some things have to be learned,” Mircea said, as Marte finished torturing Bezio’s chest. “But we were talking about looks, and a glamourie would surely be—”

“Too expensive,” Auria said decisively. “Illusion can smooth out small problems, yes, but the more a face or figure must be altered, the more costly it is. Particularly on an ongoing basis. Not to mention—”

But Mircea didn’t get to hear the rest of her comment, because Marte had just slapped Bezio’s thigh. “Good job. Now drop the towel and bend over.”

“What?” Bezio looked understandably confused. And then scandalized, as her meaning set in. He started backing away when she reached for his towel.

“It’s no good,” she told him, following. “You can’t go about like that.”

“Like what?”

“With thighs that hairy, there’s no way it doesn’t extend all the way up.” She motioned for a couple of male attendants when Bezio dodged another grab for his towel.

“It doesn’t!” he declared, clutching it in a panic.

“Then show me.”

“No! No, damn it! Get away from me!”

“You can’t be a proper courtesan with a hairy bum,” Marte grinned, as the attendants fanned out, blocking his only avenue of escape.

“Then I’ll be an improper one!”

“At least you get to stay mostly natural in front,” she wheedled. “We women are expected to lose it all, or be considered as common as a market girl.”

“Yes, but . . . but that’s not the same thing!”

“How so?”

“You’re women.”

Mircea winced, and Marte’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“And I won’t be made to look like a woman!”

Auria snorted, looking over his muscular, stocky frame. “No chance there.”

“Women, men—it doesn’t matter now,” Marte told him. “You’re a vampire. The only thing that matters is power.” The smile returned as the attendants pounced. “Or lack of it.”

A lot of yelling, thumping, and cursing followed, none of which daunted a determined Marte and her little spatula. Mircea looked away in deference to his companion’s discomfort. And met Auria’s smirking face instead.

“Not to mention?” he prompted.

“As Marte said, we have two types of clients,” she told him. “For humans, glamouries are fine, if expensive. But most vampires won’t permit them, not even for minor imperfections.”

Marte nodded, setting her earrings to chiming as she slathered up poor Bezio. “Too many times, some assassin has hidden under a glamourie, and then when they have someone in a vulnerable position . . .” She drew a pretend line across her neck, and then promptly ruined it by laughing at Mircea’s expression. “It doesn’t happen anymore,” she told him.

“It would if anyone thought they could get away with it,” Auria said. “But the vamps around here are too careful for that, these days. They want to know who they’re getting. And that means no glamouries.”

“Then what about Sanuito?” Jerome asked. “Without a glamourie . . .” He didn’t finish the thought, but the point was made. Between the heavily pockmarked skin and the buckteeth and the unprepossessing features, only a glamourie could help Sanuito.

“Oh, him.” Auria looked up from mixing something in a bowl to roll her eyes.

“The mistress is going to use him as her assistant,” Marte said, more charitably.

“Her assistant . . . for what?” Jerome asked, looking faintly envious.

Marte laughed. “Cosmetic making, silly! She makes most of the ones we use here.”

“She has terribly dry skin,” Auria added, with some satisfaction. “None of the stuff in the shops worked for her.”

“So she decided to make her own, and now it’s branched out into all sorts of things,” Marte enthused.

“Luckily,” Auria said dryly. “Paulo would have a fit if we had to buy all the stuff we use.”

“Why would Paulo care?” Mircea asked, eyeing Auria, who had finished her concoction and was now approaching.

“He’s Martina’s spenditore. He keeps the accounts around here,” she told him. “And tries to keep us in the black.”

“Like that ever works!” Marte laughed, doing something that made Bezio howl.

“She’ll keep Sanuito busy,” Auria added, slathering some of her noxious brew onto a long strip of cloth.

“But doesn’t that sort of thing take a long time to learn?” Jerome asked, looking envious. Maybe because Sanuito had just gotten a pass out of the rose-scented torture chamber.

“Not all of it. He was grinding some mother-of-pearl for eye shadow last time I saw him. But he won’t make much doing that.”

“And do we make much?” Jerome asked, suddenly more interested.

“Depends on how good you are!” Auria told him. She slapped the gooey length of cloth onto the middle of Mircea’s chest.

He closed his eyes.

“And whether you get a wealthy patron or two,” Marte added. “That’s what you want to work toward. Individual clients are all well and good, but real wealth comes from repeat customers. They get attached and, well, with the senate in town—”

“We’re going to make so much money!” Auria said gleefully. And ripped half of Mircea’s chest hair off.

Chapter Six

“We’re going to lose so much money,” Paulo groused, consulting his little notebook as he and Mircea hurried down the street.

“I thought . . . the idea . . . was to make money,” a newly golden-blond Jerome panted, coming up behind them.

He was pushing the cart they needed to bring home the load of items that were apparently necessary for running a quality establishment. It was empty at the moment, and therefore not remotely heavy, although that shouldn’t have made a difference. “You don’t actually have to breathe anymore,” Mircea reminded him.

“I know,” Jerome wheezed. “But every time . . . I try not to . . . I pass out.”

“You can’t pass out,” Paulo said, irritably. “You’re a vampire.”

“Yes, now,” Jerome said. “But a year ago I was human—”

“A year?” Mircea asked. For some reason, he’d assumed that he was the youngest of their group. Maybe because he didn’t see how a year-old vampire had survived three weeks in the tender care of the Watch.

But Jerome was nodding. “I was Changed shortly before my master died. It’s one reason I was . . . that is, nobody knew me all that well, and—”

“But you’re here now,” Paulo said, looking critically at the miniature version of himself, who was habited elegantly enough in a short mantle of rich brown brocade, but who, it had to be admitted, was ruining it with a fish-out-of-water expression. “You are representing our house. Stop that ridiculous puffing!”

“I told you—I’ve tried. But every time I do, I turn blue.”

“And I’ve told you, that isn’t possible!”

“Well, it’s actually more of a lavend—erp.” Jerome shut up abruptly, as his air passages were cut off by an irate vampire.

“Let’s test a theory, shall we?” Paulo asked sweetly.

Mircea leaned against the side of a wall to wait it out. The Ave Maria bell, which rang at sunset, had already sounded, supposedly signaling the close of the market day. Not that everyone always followed the official hours, particularly at this time of year, with so many eager purchasers roaming the streets. But the later it became, the worse their chances for filling their exhaustive list was going to be.

“The shops will close soon,” he said mildly.

“Not if you know who to see,” Paulo replied, as Jerome wriggled and flailed and kicked the air, because he was being held about a foot off the brick walkway. “Although it might be better for us if they did.”

“It’s that bad?”

Paulo flipped his notebook open one handed. “In the last week alone—and this is in addition to the usual expenses, mind you—we have spent: ten ducats for the fur lining to a cape, six more for six yards of Rhenish linen—highway robbery, that—eighteen ducats each for three turquoise gems, twenty ducats for a quantity of Spanish leather gloves and cedar oil for scenting them, the same for a taffeta coverlet lined with swan’s down that Marte simply had to have, and an utterly ridiculous eighty ducats for eight yards of iridescent Ormesine. And that doesn’t even count what we paid to that thief of a tailor to outfit you lot on the quick. I could have done it three times over for that price at auction—”

“But finding auctions takes time.”

“Which we don’t have, and he somehow knew it, the fiend. And we’re supposed to be the monsters!”

Jerome gurgled something.

“Oh, yes,” Paulo said. “And sixteen soldini for a quantity of perfumed toothpicks Auria insisted upon after a friend informed her they existed! This,” he waggled the small book under Mircea’s nose, “is why Venice very sensibly has men do the shopping!”

“Which we’re not currently doing,” Mircea pointed out.

“And why is that?”

“You were making a point?”

Paulo looked confused for a moment, his mind still obviously on ducats and how few of them they were about to have. But he finally noticed a bug-eyed Jerome still dangling from his raised fist. His eyes closed. Then his fingers opened and a gasping, heaving, and yes, slightly blue vampire hit the road.

And a moment later, so did they, hurrying to the Rialto before the last of the merchants packed up for the night.

“All right,” Paulo said, as they approached the biggest shopping area of Venice. “We need: white wax candles, salted cheese, a songbird because Zaneta’s died and she’s been impossible ever since, sugar, pepper, fifteen boxes of assorted sweets, three ginger pine nut cakes, two cakes with violet syrup—”

“Vampires don’t eat,” Mircea reminded him, wondering about all the foodstuffs.

Their condition made a lot of senses stronger, but taste wasn’t one of them. Vampire bodies prioritized the use of power, preferring the vital over the merely pleasant, and taste wasn’t a huge advantage. He’d heard that it returned for masters, who had energy to burn, but he didn’t think that most of the household fell into that category.

Nor that Martina was the type to feed her servants cake.

“But our human clients do,” Paulo reminded him. “As do newly minted masters. In fact, they’re the worst. Once they can taste food again, they want the best of everything. Despite the fact that half of them were peasants the last time they could taste anything and can’t tell the difference between a decent red and watered down vinegar!”

“Then why not serve them the vinegar?”

He grimaced. “Because Martina won’t let me. She says some of them do know, and we’d damage our reputation—”

“What reputation?” Jerome asked, looking confused.

Paulo stopped mid-sentence to look at him.

“We’re a brothel,” Jerome added helpfully.

Mircea cleared his throat, but the hint failed to register.

“I thought we just gave them a bit of the old, you know,” Jerome elaborated by waggling his hips back and forth suggestively, causing Paulo to look like he wanted to recommence strangling.

“We are not a brothel!” he hissed, jerking the smaller vampire out of the road so that a cart full of farmers, who had been looking at them strangely, could pass.

“We get paid for a tumble, don’t we?” Jerome asked. “So do they.” He pointed at a nearby bawdy house, of the kind that always congregated close to markets. “What’s the difference?”

“The dif—” Paulo shut his eyes. “The difference is night and day! We are cortigianes, not puttana! We discuss art. And antiquities. And literature and music. We grace palazzos and mix perfectly with the owners and their guests. Auria writes poetry—”

“Auria?”

“—and Bianca paints. We entertain dignitaries, visiting sultans, even senators. Possibly even the consul himself!”

“Soooo, we’re a high class brothel,” Jerome reasoned.

“Gahhh!” Paulo tore a page out of his book and thrust it into Mircea’s hands. “You and Wheezer there get this half of the list; I’ll tend to the rest. We’ll meet back here after!”

He left at what would have been a run, if he hadn’t been upholding the dignity of the house. Leaving Mircea standing in the street, staring after him. And wondering what he was missing.

Jerome reached for the list. “Sugar, spices . . . two large, gilded marzipan cakes? At this hour?”

Mircea didn’t say anything. But his eyes swept the area, looking for the reason why a couple of newly purchased slaves had just been left to their own devices. And sure enough, he found it.

The Watch was everywhere.

Lounging beside a nearby barbershop, laughing at the bawdy story a local man was telling. Walking casually down the street, the light from a late-closing shop spangling their bright silver breastplates and green silks. Standing in solitary, apparently contemplative thought, at the end of a dock.

That alone wasn’t surprising. The hours after dark but before the wine bell sounded was the busiest time of day for his kind. At the moment, there were still hundreds of people in the streets, finishing their shopping, on their way to meet friends for dinner, or heading for the taverns after a hard day’s work. Nightfall seemingly meant nothing to the Venetians, who defied it with the torches affixed to buildings, the lamps on passing gondolas, and the firelight spilling out of doorways and across the faces of the vampires who were suddenly everywhere, mixing with the crowd, sizing up the population, making their choices.

The Watch was on hand to make sure they kept to the rules. Feed but don’t kill, wipe memories properly, take any duels somewhere they won’t be seen by impressionable humans. Who tended to remember things like people scaling the sides of buildings or healing almost instantaneously or somersaulting over their opponents’ heads.

But it seemed to Mircea that there were more of them than usual tonight.

A lot more.

Or maybe he was just noticing them more now. As a freeman, the Watch had been an irritation, quick to give him grief or to bleed him dry for drinking money. But now they felt more like jailors, hemming him in, making his skin tight, making him want to—

“Mircea? Are you coming?” He looked around to find Jerome standing in the road, one hand on the little cart and one on the list, looking at him impatiently. “We need to hurry if we’re going to get everything.”

Mircea nodded, belatedly noticing the signs of a rapidly closing street. A flower seller hurried past with a few wilted carnations in a basket. A secondhand shop with stained hosen flapping from the rafters and a huge display of carnival masks shut for the night, the heavy wooden shutters over the front making a thick thunk, thunk that echoed down the street. Even a lame beggar decided the day was done and got up, carting his rug and bowl off to the nearest tavern.

“We’re not going to get all this,” Mircea said, reading the list over Jerome’s shoulder.

“Sure we are,” Jerome said, ever the optimist. “An apothecary will have the sugar and the spices. And the candies and possibly the cakes. In fact, a decent apothecary ought to have most of this stuff.”

“How do you know?”

“I used to be one. Well, apprenticed anyway,” he amended, as they started off. “It’s how I met my master. He came in one day and I helped him. I guess I helped him too good, because the next night, he came back for me!”

Jerome kept talking, even raising his voice to be heard over the bump, bump, bump of cart wheels over brick pavers. But Mircea wasn’t listening. He was more interested in something else.

Like the fact that, the more he looked, the more members of the Watch he saw.

They were everywhere: on rooftops, crouching low against chimneys; in boats in the water, half hidden under the gondolas’ awnings; on porticoes, almost invisible in the shadows. And many of them were wearing blackened breastplates, instead of the usual highly polished silver, to better blend in with the night. He would have taken them for thieves scouting the area, but for the distinctive Medusa-head design stamped in relief on the front.

Mircea swallowed. Half the guards in the city had to be here tonight. But why?

Nothing unusual was happening that he could see. He spied a probably unlicensed prostitute negotiating with a customer, a cutpurse trailing a gawking tourist, and a shop selling imported carpets that remained open in defiance of the law, because the local militia could be bribed to look the other way this time of year. But nothing to attract the interest of the Watch.

They didn’t concern themselves with petty human affairs. They were there for the vampires. Who also seemed to be congregating in greater and greater numbers—

“Are you listening to me?”

Mircea looked down to find Jerome frowning at him. “Of course.”

“You looked like you were thinking about something else.”

“I was just . . . wondering what a vampire needed with an apothecary.”

The smaller vampire brightened. “I was just coming to that. He wanted a poison remedy, actually. Theriac.”

“Theriac?”

“You know, Venice treacle?”

Mircea didn’t know, a fact that seemed to shock Jerome. “Oh, come on! It’s only the most famous antidote in the history of . . . well, antidotes. They say the king who invented it took so much of the stuff while he was experimenting, that when he actually tried to kill himself years later, he couldn’t find a poison that would do the trick! Had to have some soldier run him through.”

Mircea frowned. “Are you talking about Mithridatum?”

“Yes! Well, sort of,” Jerome amended. “Mithridates king of Pontus came up with the first recipe, which was later discovered by Pompey and carried to Rome. But we’ve been improving on it ever since. Apothecaries, I mean. Venice has its own version with more than sixty ingredients. It’s very
expensive—”

“So is the cure hawked by the Spaniard down by the pier,” Mircea pointed out. “But he’ll cut you a deal if you linger until closing.”

“He—” Jerome puffed up. “That’s not the same thing! That man is a charlatan!”

“Really?” Mircea asked, going back to his pastime of watching the Watchers.

“Yes! He gets up on his stupid table, has his assistant drum up a crowd, and then he sticks his hand in a vat of boiling oil—”

“A good trick.”

“A trick is exactly what it is. I always had my suspicions, but after I became a vampire, I went back to see his little show again. With our sense of smell, it was obvious how he did it.”

“Oh?”

Jerome nodded vigorously. “He squeezes the juice of a lemon into a pan and then pours oil on top. Since oil is lighter than lemon juice, it stays there—and insures that nobody notices the deception. Then he puts the pan on the fire and bubbles from the lemon juice start coming through the oil, making it look like the oil is boiling like crazy.”

“Ingenious.”

“So he can stick his finger or even his whole hand into the pan, with no problem. And if anybody doubts him, well, he just argues with them for a minute or so, until the lemon has all evaporated. And then he invites them up—to stick their hand in a now genuinely boiling pan of hot oil! And once everyone’s convinced, he proceeds to sell them written prayers for protection from burns. And this—this is where it gets good. If they come back to complain that the darned things don’t work, because of course they don’t, he just implies that they must lack faith!”

“The cad.”

Jerome’s gray eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No. But you must admit, there’s no difference between a fraud being perpetrated by a charlatan in the square and one being sold out of an apothecary shop.”

“Except that Theriac isn’t a fraud. It really works—”

“And did it work for your master?”

Jerome scowled. “No. But that isn’t—that was different.”

“How so?”

“Theriac works best as a preventative—you’re supposed to take some everyday. Or at the least, shortly after you’re poisoned. But my master was on a trip, away from most of the family. And by the time he admitted he was in trouble . . . well, he came to me too late, is all. I did everything I could, but strong as he was, it just took him right out.”

“I’m sorry,” Mircea said, because Jerome looked genuinely upset.

“It’s fine,” the younger vampire turned away slightly. “I don’t know why I’m so—that is, I barely knew him. And he left me like this,” he gestured around, Mircea assumed at some abstract concept of vampireness. “But it isn’t like I had much to leave behind, and you know how it is with masters . . .”

“No. I don’t.” At Jerome’s look, Mircea elaborated—briefly. “I was cursed.”

“You were—oh,” his eyes went round. “You’re like the mistress then.”

“Martina?”

Jerome nodded. “We were talking about masters the other day, and Auria said something weird. But I guess that’s what she meant, huh?”

“What she meant?”

“Yes. She said Martina made herself.”

Chapter Seven

“Oh, you have got to be—no!” Paulo said furiously, looking like he’d like to stomp his elegant foot against the stones. But instead, he had to use it to jump under a nearby portico, as what looked like every vampire in Venice came stampeding their way.

Mircea and Jerome followed, barely managing to save their cart of expensive stuff from being crushed under the fanged flood.

“What’s happening?” Jerome asked breathlessly, as they flattened themselves against the wall.

Mircea was wondering the same thing. They’d just finished their shopping and met back up with Paulo, under a long portico near the Rialto Bridge. Only to find that, instead of thinning with the lateness of the hour, the crowd had substantially increased. And that was before a wall of people had come rushing at them like the tide coming in.

No, not people, Mircea corrected, feeling slightly over awed. Vampires. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, more than he’d ever seen in one place at one time.

That would have been eerie enough, all on its own. But the crowd was also totally silent, the only sounds coming from the creak-creak of the great wooden bridge as they passed over it, and the quiet tread of hundreds of soft-soled shoes. And the startled cries of the humans still about at this hour, who clearly had no idea what was happening.

Neither did the Watch, who seemed a little nonplussed by it themselves. As if this wasn’t quite what they’d been expecting. Mircea saw one on a nearby rooftop staring intently at another in the street, as if some sort of silent communication was going on. But then he shrugged and crouched back down by his chimney, as if admitting defeat.

“Some stupid senate thing, no doubt,” Paulo said irritably. “You take your life in your hands trying to go anywhere these days.”

Torchlight from the tapers held by some members of the crowd flickered against the columns of the portico, making shadows run on the bricks behind them. But in between the bursts of light, Mircea could see that the crowd extended up the street and across the massive bridge that unified the two halves of Venice. And then disappeared behind some buildings on the other side with no sign of slimming.

“We might be here a while,” he noted.

Paulo apparently decided the same, because he made another sound of disgust and knelt by the side of their overstuffed cart. “What did you get?” he asked, trying to rearrange their purchase so that he could fit his in as well.

“Most of the list,” Mircea told him, still staring at the almost silent throng.

“We had to settle for pine nut biscuits instead of cake,” Jerome said. “But there was a good variety of candies—”

“What kind?”

He knelt by the cart, sorting through a dozen large paper spills. “Sugar-coated almonds. Candied oranges, limes, and tamarinds. Comfits of ginger, cinnamon, and coriander. Dried fruit jellies. Marzipan. Nougat.”

“Good quality?”

“We went to three different shops to make sure. Try some.”

“For what?” Paulo asked. “I can’t taste them.”

“You can’t—” Jerome blinked.

“You’re not a master?” Mircea asked.

Paulo looked up, intermittent torchlight haloing his blond head. “Of course not. Where did you get that idea?”

“I thought so, too,” Jerome put in.

“Why? I never said—”

“But you hold a position of authority in Martina’s household,” Mircea pointed out.

“I’m good at what I do,” Paulo looked slightly offended.

“Yes, but . . .” Mircea paused, deciding how to phrase things. “Isn’t it more usual for a person’s position to match his power level?”

As far as he’d been able to tell, everything in vampire society was organized around how powerful you were—or were not, in his case. He’d often thought that was what was wrong with it. Power took the place of morals, of law—of God, for that matter. Everything revolved around whether you could do something, instead of whether you should. And no one seemed to have a problem with that.

Well, no one with the power to change things, at any rate.

“Normally,” Paulo admitted. “But Martina doesn’t do things that way.”

“Who is strongest, then?” Jerome asked. “It isn’t Auria?” He looked vaguely appalled at the idea. And then intrigued. Mircea was glad he didn’t know what was going on in that blond head.

And then it didn’t matter anyway, because Paulo laughed. “She’d like to think so!”

“Then who is it?” Mircea asked, curious.

Paulo continued rearranging packages. “I’m . . . not sure.”

“You’re not sure?” Mircea frowned.

“Richa has been with her the longest—”

“The cook?” Jerome asked, in disbelief.

“I said she’d been here the longest, not that she’s the strongest,” Paulo said.

“How long have you been with her?” Mircea asked.

“A little over ten years.”

“Ten—” Mircea stopped, trying to process that. Ten years in human terms might be considered a long time, but in vampire . . . it was practically an eye blink. But he didn’t ask, because the set of Paulo’s shoulders said that he didn’t want to talk about it.

Jerome, on the other hand, had no such reservations.

“What did you do before?”

Paulo didn’t answer for long enough that Mircea began to think he wouldn’t. But then he wedged the last package into place and stood up. “If you must know, I wasn’t all that different from you.”

“From who?” Jerome looked around, as if he thought another vampire had snuck up on them. “Than him?” he asked, after a minute, looking at Mircea.

“Than either one of you!” Paulo snapped.

“You mean Martina bought you, too?”

“No! She . . . found me.”

Jerome scrunched up his face, obviously confused. Possibly because the phrasing made it sound like she’d picked Paulo up off the side of the street, like a stray cat. “Where?”

“Here!” Paulo looked irritated. “Where do you think? Where do vampires go who aren’t wanted?”

“You weren’t wanted, either?” Jerome looked as if he couldn’t quite grasp that. He looked the taller vamp up and down. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Jerome,” Mircea said warningly, but Paulo didn’t explode. Instead, he rolled the huge waxed round of Parmesan cheese he’d purchased over by the wall and sat on it, to more comfortably watch the impromptu parade.

“Nothing,” he told them. “Except that my mistress Changed me on a whim. My looks appealed to her, and her consort was . . . inattentive. She thought I would be a comfort when he was away attempting to chisel off bits of other vampires’ territories. But when he returned and found me in her bed, it was my bits that were almost chiseled off.”

Mircea winced, and Jerome moved a protective hand to the front of his hosen.

“In the end, she convinced him not to stake me, but only on the condition that I go away—immediately. She gave me some money, and safe passage here with some functionaries she was sending to buy jewels for her. And . . . that was it. I found myself on my own after less than a year, in a strange city where I didn’t know the language and didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Sounds familiar,” Mircea muttered.

“As I said. I don’t know where I’d have ended up, once the last of my gold ran out, but Martina found me. In a tavern, waiting for some of the humans to consume enough that I could get drunk off their blood when I took it. She told me that, if I worked for her, I wouldn’t want to get drunk so badly. That I’d have a future again, and a home and hope. She was right.”

“And the others?” Jerome asked.

“They each have their own story, and it’s theirs to tell. But they’re not that different.”

“You mean that Martina made none of her family?” Mircea asked. He hadn’t been a vampire very long, but that sounded . . . unusual, even to him.

“I’m saying what I said before—that she does things differently,” Paulo told him. “She says that the idea that everyone needs a master is ridiculous, that it’s perfectly possible to live and thrive without one. Easier, in fact—you make your own rules. If I wanted, I could leave her tomorrow—”

“And do what?” Jerome asked.

“Whatever I chose.”

“Yes, until a stronger vampire came along and decided he wanted you. Or wanted you dead. That’s why we live in families—for protection.”

“I am protected! Martina—”

“Who you were just talking about leaving,” Jerome reminded him.

“I was not talking about leaving! I merely said that I could—”

“And I pointed out that you don’t dare. So how’s that different than being in a family?”

“It’s not—we are a family! We just don’t have a blood bond—”

“And don’t you think that’s weird? That she never bound you?”

“She doesn’t need to!” Paulo said, looking exasperated. “I stay for the same reason we all do, because we want to. We know that this is the best chance we have for a future.”

“But if she Changed you, wouldn’t that be the same thing?” Jerome asked. “Not everybody is held against their will, you know. I wasn’t. Nobody in my old family was—”

“Yes, and they proved so loyal to you, didn’t they?”

“I explained about that!”

“And I heard more than you thought. You can tell yourself whatever you like, but the fact is, they. Didn’t. Want. You. Martina does.” He glanced at Mircea and then away again. “She isn’t perfect, I know that. But she’s better than most. If you give her a chance—”

“I wasn’t aware that I had a choice,” Mircea said mildly.

Paulo flushed. “She’s . . . been a little tense lately. We all have. But when the current spectacle is over—”

“Speaking of spectacles,” Jerome said, breaking in. And sounding strange.

Mircea turned to look at the other vampire, who was staring at the crowd on the opposite side of the canal. And then at the guard on the nearby roof, who had just jumped to his feet. And then at the bridge, which had started shaking as if something, some massive thing, was crossing under its covered walkway, with heavy, clomping footsteps that echoed across the quiet night.

It wasn’t quiet much longer.

A new noise suddenly tore across the old city. One loud enough and strange enough to have Mircea flinching and Paulo making a very undignified bleat. Which no one heard over what sounded like a trumpet blast straight out of hell.

And might well be one, Mircea thought, staring in shock at what erupted from the mouth of the bridge a moment later, surrounded by the fire and smoke of a dozen torches. It was a monstrous creature, towering over the surrounding crowd, terrifying even in the glimpses revealed by the flickering light. Like something out of a nightmare: huge and misshapen and bellowing in anger.

And then stampeding—straight at them.

Chapter Eight

“Auugghhh!” Paulo dropped the pretense of elegance and knocked into Mircea, before running straight into the building behind them.

Mircea grabbed him, which only seemed to make his panic worse. But then Jerome snared his other, wildly flapping arm, and together they started to pull him away, toward the safety of the nearest alley. Only to stop when they realized that it was already full.

Of members of the Watch.

They had a few locals in there, too, as if they been in the process of moving them to safer areas. But now they, the locals, and some of the urchin children who always seemed to be about, regardless of the hour, had all frozen. To stare past Mircea in shock.

He spun around to find that the great creature had stopped in the street, just outside the portico. He couldn’t see it very well, since an expanse of weathered gray hide blocked the entire space between two columns and extended up beyond the roofline. But he could see its breath, great bellows that misted on the cold night air in front of it, like a mythical dragon spewing smoke.

Mircea stared at the nearest one, as speechless as everyone else.

Everyone except for Jerome.

“Elefante,” Jerome said, with every appearance of delight.

“What the devil is that?” Paulo squawked. And then jerked Jerome back when he started forward, as if to touch it. “Are you mad?”

“No, I—it won’t hurt you. Well, probably not. I saw one in a menagerie once, when I was a boy.”

Mircea and Paulo just looked at him.

“You know,” he prompted. “Like Hannibal had?”

Mircea vaguely recalled some lessons from childhood, which he had always taken to be myths. Legends. The kind of stories invented to keep bored schoolchildren focused on learning dull history.

But apparently not.

He looked at the great creature again. And then he slowly edged to the side of the portico, ignoring Paulo’s frantic whisperings. And looked up.

And up.

And up.

At something with legs like tree trunks and ears like sails and a huge barrel of a body. Gigantic tusks, bigger than those of a great boar, big enough to savage a man with one swipe, gleamed in the torch light. Small eyes set in heavy folds of leathery skin had an alarming amount of intelligence in them, more than Mircea liked, frankly.

Especially when they suddenly fixed on him.

And then an elongated nose, bigger than a strong man’s arm swept down before he could move—

And began to delicately snuffle around his face.

Mircea froze, unsure what to do with no weapons and with children so close—too close. In the end, he just stood there, while that strange proboscis mushed him in the face and messed about in his hair and sniffed at his clothes. As if finding him as odd as he did it.

And then it was gone, the great body wading slowly into the sea of vampires, who moved along with it, so quickly and so much in unison that it looked like the whole street was moving.

And then it was. First the street urchins broke away from the Watch, to run after the fascinating creature, followed quickly by the regular people of Venice. There had been no announcement, and relatively little noise, all things considered. But word had traveled nonetheless, in that strange, uncanny way that it did in cities.

And suddenly, in the middle of the night, people were everywhere.

Some were still in their nightclothes, or wrapped in blankets, or putting on enough to be respectable as they emerged from houses on all sides. Others were leaning out of windows and edging onto rooftops, a few dropping to the ground and jostling to find room in what was, after all, a narrow street bordering a canal. Members of the Watch were quickly discovering that humans were not so easily controlled, after all, not when what must have seemed like magic was walking among them.

It felt a bit like that to Mircea, too, who couldn’t for the life of him imagine where the great beast had come from.

“Carthage?” Jerome said, when he voiced the question aloud.

“But how did it get here? Horses aren’t even allowed in the city!”

It was true, except for the occasional joust in San Marco Square. And for good reason. The streets of Venice, where they existed at all, were narrow and slippery and fronted canals. That’s why the gondolas were so prevalent—there was no simply no room to ride horses. Which would have likely ended up in the water along with their owners had anyone tried it.

“By boat?” Jerome guessed. “They float cows over for the abattoirs that way.”

“That,” Mircea said, flinging out an arm, “is not a cow!”

“Can’t ride a cow,” Jerome agreed, about the time Mircea noticed that the strange creature did, in fact, have a rider.

He hadn’t seen him before because of the roof of the portico, and because he was frankly not nearly as interesting as his conveyance. Or as his seat, for that matter, which was a covered, gilded creation perched on top of the creature’s back, like a cabin on a ship. It mostly obscured the man inside, except for a skinny, nut-brown arm that emereged at regular intervals, to throw something at the now cheering crowd.

Some of it landed at Mircea’s feet.

He picked it up.

Candy.

Well, that explained the children, he thought blankly.

“What is that?” Paulo demanded, snatching it away from him. And then staring at it blankly.

“Hey, nougat.” Jerome swiped a couple pieces from off the bricks before the local urchins could. “We could have saved money and just waited around.”

“What the—what the hell does he think he’s doing?” Paulo demanded.

“Tossing out candy,” Jerome said, before getting cuffed on the back of the head. His handsome eight-sided hat fell off. He picked it up, looked at it, and promptly began filling it with free candy.

“Who is he?” Mircea asked, trying to get a glimpse despite the cabin’s deep shadow. But the most he saw was a strange shaped head, a flash of sumptuous robes and the wink of countless jeweled rings. And then the great mount turned its rear to them, and he lost even that much of a view.

“The consul,” Paulo said darkly. “Who else?”

“That’s the consul?”

“Didn’t you see him at the house?”

“I . . . couldn’t fit on the roof,” Mircea said, as a new clatter sounded on the bridge.

It looked like the prohibition against four-legged conveyances was being truly shattered tonight. Because the sea of vampires parted as if Moses had arrived. And let through a group of riders on horseback that made Mircea’s skin prickle from their power, even this far away.

There were five of them, four men and a woman. The woman was on the only white horse, which was possibly why she drew his eyes the most, but he didn’t think so. There was something about her that the soldier in him automatically recognized—an air of command.

As strange as it seemed, it almost made him wonder if she was the one in charge.

They stopped halfway between the Rialto Bridge and the portico, and watched, utterly silent, and without even any gestures to make their attitudes plain. And yet Mircea could read the disapproval, the tension, coming off them in waves, as easily as if they had been carrying signs. And, apparently, so could Paulo.

“All right,” the blond said uneasily. “We need to be going.”

“Who are they?” Mircea asked, unable to take his eyes off the riders.

“Senators,” Paulo said, grabbing up his great cheese.

“Even the woman?” Mircea asked. Women did not rule in Wallachia.

Paulo rolled his eyes. “Especially the woman.”

“They don’t look too happy,” Jerome said.

“Would you be?” Paulo looked from his cheese to the already overstuffed cart, and then just hiked it onto his shoulder. “With the consul swanning around Venice like this? Probably thinks he’s back in old Egypt, receiving the worship of the masses!”

“He thinks—he is mad?” Mircea asked, looking after the rapidly disappearing spectacle.

“He’s something like three thousand years old!” Paulo said. “Of course he’s mad! Now help me find a path through this mess.”

Mircea didn’t move. “Did you say three thousand?”

“And then some,” Paulo said darkly. “I don’t know exactly, but they say he used to be worshipped as a god in old Egypt, before the legions arrived and civilized the place.”

“I heard he still lives in a temple out in the desert,” Jerome added. “Built like a fortress. The only time he comes out is for convocation every couple years, when his senators have to try to control him. Only it doesn’t look like that’s going so great this time.”

“And where did you hear that?” Paulo demanded, searching the crowd for an opening that did not materialize.

“From some of the servants, when he came by the house. Rumor is there’ll be a coup soon. And since he’s easier to get to at here than anywhere else—”

“Yes, and servant’s gossip is always to be believed!”

“If you don’t believe it, why are you trying so hard to get away?” Jerome asked.

“That’s why!” Paulo said, as a group of armed horsemen thundered over the bridge. Resplendent in gold armor and bright red capes, they looked like something out of old Rome. And acted like it, too, riding straight into the milling crowd. “Senate guards!”

Mircea didn’t have to ask if that was bad. The Watch, who had been trying and mostly failing to contain the crowd, suddenly looked up. And then scattered, forgetting their duties in favor of saving their asses.

“Go up!” Mircea said, as the panicked crowd suddenly stormed toward their position, jostling and fighting to get out of the way.

“The cart!” Paulo said, trying to grab it.

“Leave the cart!”

“Do you know how much it’s worth?” the blond asked him wildly, jerking it out of the way of trampling feet. And then flailing at the vamps who got too close and kicked his precious cargo.

But that wasn’t going to work for long. And Mircea was not going to die to save a bunch of groceries, however dear. Nor was he going to watch Paulo do so.

He grabbed him by the back of the doublet, looking for a way onto the roof of the colonnade. Which would have been easier if everyone else hadn’t already been heading that way. And then a path opened up as if by a miracle, and he dragged the irate vampire—and his cheese—through it and around the side of the building.

“Up!” he commanded, pushing him onto a ladder made from a windowsill, a few protruding lumps in the brick wall, and a mass of old vines. And then looked around for Jerome, who hopefully had sense enough to preserve himself instead of the family budget.

And he did. Mircea caught sight of him in the middle of a pack of street urchins, holding his hat high above his head like a flag. And heading this way.

“The roof!” Mircea yelled. “The roof!”

He wasn’t sure the smaller vampire had heard, because just then the senate guards came back, waving burning torches at the crowd, a tactic that worked to scatter vampires and humans alike. People screamed, fire flew, and hooves struck sparks off the brick streets. And Mircea grabbed Jerome and shoved him at the makeshift ladder, along with the nearest children, the rest of whom were already scrambling up like little monkeys.

They ended up sitting on the edge of the roof, watching the guards clear the street far more effectively than the Watch had done. Vampires and humans evaporated like mist, leaving the consul with his own guards and his elefante, but with no crowd to appreciate them anymore. Soon, the great beast and its occupant turned and left, lumbering back the way they had come, the night’s entertainment at an end.

Well, most of it.

“What—” Paulo stared at the growing mound of packages at his feet. They were being deposited by a line of grubby little children, who were waiting for their reward from Jerome—and his sugar-filled hat.

“You get a handful, and you get one, and—oh, you get two, thank you,” Jerome said, as one enterprising youngster deposited two large packages in front of him.

“How—” Paulo said, still gaping, when the last little tike had jumped down from the roof, taking off with his well-earned reward.

“Never underestimate the little guys,” Jerome said, as Paulo sorted through their packages. “The candy’s not there,” he added unnecessarily.

Paulo, for once, did not complain, too busy ticking things off in his little book. For his part, Mircea watched until the senators turned around and disappeared back over the bridge, following their leader into darkness. And leaving a swirl of power behind them that shivered over his skin, even this far away.

Chapter Nine

“Drop it, vampire,” a menacing voice said, as they dragged the packages into the kitchen door an hour or so later.

Mircea tensed and looked around, half expecting another threat.

But this time, there was no need. “I was just testing it for you,” Bezio said, looking innocent.

The cook’s beady eyes fixed on the decanter of dark red wine Bezio held in one beefy hand. “Test this,” she said, snatching it back, and shoving something else into his stomach.

“Peas?” Bezio said, looking down at the bowl he was now holding. “What do you want me to do with these?”

“Drink ’em,” she said sarcastically, and pointed at the door.

“I can’t even shell them inside?” he whined.

“Do you see any room inside? Especially now?” she demanded, glaring at Paulo’s group, who were trying to fit into the crowded space.

It wasn’t easy. Servants bustled everywhere, stirring pots over the fire, mixing sauces at the main prep table, shoving past Jerome to chuck carrot peelings into the canal. And placing food on very available surface—including Mircea, who had a basket of something pushed into his hands as he stood there.

He peered inside.

More peas.

“Out, all of you. Go do something useful!” the cook told them, brandishing a spoon menacingly.

“They are doing something useful. They’re helping me,” Paulo told her, fighting his way through the crush.

“About time you got back,” she told him. “Mistress wants you at table.”

“We’ve started already?”

“About to. I’m dishing up the soup now.”

“Christ!” He ran up the back stairs.

“Wait! What do we do with all this stuff?” Jerome called after him.

A blond head popped back over the railing. “Give everything to cook. She’ll know what to do with it.”

“And I know what to do with you lot, too,” she said, looking at them evilly.

Which is how they ended up shelling peas on the rickety bridge out back.

It was weathered wood, without railings or even posts to sit against. So they emulated the old men who regularly fished off the local bridges, and sat on the edge, dangling their feet over the side. And added pea shells to the stream of garbage flowing away with the tide.

Mircea watched one of his disemboweled offerings to Poseidon land right side up, like a little boat. And then valiantly ride the currents below, dodging cabbage leaf islands and carrot shoals, until it disappeared out of sight. Jerome laughed, and then leaned over the side of the bridge, a new vessel in hand.

“Race you!”

“No, no,” Bezio said, proffering a pod with a single pea still in place. “You need to leave one little guy in it, see? Like a captain.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jerome told him.

“Want to bet?”

“It’s too heavy; it’ll sink.”

“Then take the bet.”

“What bet?”

Bezio looked at him soulfully. “I’m thirsty.”

Jerome glanced at the kitchen. “She’ll kill me.”

“Only if you lose.”

“And if I win?”

“You get bragging rights.”

“Bragging rights and your room,” Jerome said dryly.

“What do you need my room for?”

“It’s bigger than mine. I need the extra space.”

“I need the extra space. I won’t fit in yours.”

Jerome smiled, and sent his words back at him. “That’s only a problem if you lose.”

Bezio glanced at Mircea. “You’ll call it?”

Mircea nodded. And a moment later, two little makeshift vessels hit the water, almost simultaneously. And also simultaneously got into trouble when caught by an eddy in the tide.

“Oh, come on!” Bezio said. “To the left! To the left!”

“Are you talking to a pea, Bezio?” Jerome asked gently. “Is that who—”

“Shut up. To the left!”

The craft turned to the left, thereby missing a looming sea monster made out of onion skin.

Bezio grinned at Jerome. “You were saying?”

“Blind luck.”

“Like most of life, son.”

“Don’t ‘son’ me,” Jerome muttered, and glared at his tiny vessel, which had just hung up on some shrimp shells. “Damn it, move!”

A moment later, it did, when a tiny wave hit the flotsam, breaking it up and sending Jerome’s ship scooting forward.

And past Bezio’s.

“Yes, yes!” Jerome laughed.

Just before the wild movement of the tiny ripple proved too much for his ship, and it started taking on water.

“No, no,” Bezio mimicked, as his craft overtook it again.

“That’s—no. No, yours is the one that’s supposed to sink!”

“Sorry about that,” Bezio said, not looking the least bit sorry. Particularly when his boat vanished out of sight first, steered to victory by its tiny captain.

“I don’t believe this,” Jerome moaned.

“I like a robust red,” Bezio told him as Jerome got up, muttering something, and headed inside. And to Mircea’s surprise, was back in no time with an elegant decanter of red wine, and three chipped mugs.

Bezio raised both eyebrows. “Where did you get that?”

“Took it off a servant on the way into the dining room,” Jerome said, plopping back down.

“You were supposed to grab the cook’s swill, not the good stuff!” Bezio said, looking alarmed.

“After tonight, we deserve the good stuff,” Jerome told him, splashing it into cracked ceramic.

“What happened tonight?”

“Oh, just don’t,” Jerome said, and drank.

Bezio looked from him to Mircea. “We saw the consul,” Mircea enlightened him.

“Well, it is convocation, after—”

“On an elefante.”

“On a what?”

“And then we were almost trampled—”

“Wait. Go back.”

“—before a party of senators showed up and—made it worse, actually.”

“They had to,” Jerome said. “You know the law. And this is one I happen to agree with.”

“Did you say elefante?” Bezio demanded.

“What law?” Mircea asked.

“The law that says it’s a very bad idea to let the humans know we exist?”

“They already know,” Mircea argued. “I grew up with the stories—”

“But did you believe them?”

“They seem to believe them around here,” Mircea said dryly. The city was rife with cures against vampires: salt placed over doorways, garlic buried with the dead, and amulets and vials of holy water sold in the marketplace. Mircea had been surprised to find that the stories he’d grown up with, and which he’d foolishly believed had been confined to his homeland, were even more pervasive here.

Of course, there were more vampires here, too, which he assumed had something to do with it.

“Some people will believe anything,” Jerome said.

“But in this case, they happen to be right.”

“Yes, but they don’t know they’re right. They just suspect. And a lot of other people dismiss the stories as just that—stories.”

“Will somebody tell me what the devil happened tonight?” Bezio demanded.

But no one did.

“Which is good for us considering how much we’re outnumbered,” Jerome added. “If more people started to believe the myths, we’d all be staked in a week.”

“We didn’t look outnumbered tonight,” Mircea said, thinking back on the mass of vampires clogging the street, and extending as far as he could see into the distance.

It still made him shiver. The stories of his youth had taught him that his kind were loners: dangerous, deformed, twisted creatures, unlike the men they had once been in every way. Except for their appetites, which drove them out of the hills and into the towns at night, to prey on unprepared villagers.

The truth had come as something of a surprise, but never more so than tonight.

“Because of convocation,” Jerome said. “And because it’s Venice. But we’re spread a lot thinner elsewhere, and keeping the rumors from becoming fact is one of the biggest laws we have. I had it pounded into my skull as soon as I awoke. If you’d had a family, they’d have done the same for you. And yet here’s the consul, doing something a regular vampire would have been killed for!”

“But he’s not a regular vampire,” Bezio put in.

“Which makes it worse. How can he uphold the law if he doesn’t even follow it himself?”

“What ruler follows the laws?” Bezio asked cynically. “They make them for us poor bastards. And if one of you doesn’t tell me what—”

“He was riding around on an elefante,” Mircea said impatiently. And sketched it out with his hands when Bezio just looked at him.

It didn’t seem to help. “He was doing what?”

“And throwing candy to the crowd,” Jerome added.

Bezio thought about that for a moment. “Why?”

“Paulo said he’s mad,” Mircea said. “And that he’s . . . very old.” He couldn’t make himself utter the preposterous age Paulo had claimed. Obviously, he’d been exaggerating.

“Well, he’d have to be, to be consul, wouldn’t he?”

“Mad or old?” Jerome asked.

“A little bit of both, from what I’ve heard. They all are, aren’t they?”

“Are they?” Mircea asked, lowering his voice.

Bezio narrowed his eyes.

“I thought about it on the way back,” Mircea said softly. “Perhaps the European consul is mad. But there have to be others, don’t there? In other parts of the world? Unless vampirism is restricted to Europe—”

“It isn’t,” Bezio said. “I’ve heard of others. Just rumors really, but . . . they say there’s a senate in Cairo. And another in Cathay—”

“Cairo?” Mircea frowned. “But I thought our consul lives in Egypt.”

“He does,” Jerome said. “At least, that’s what I heard.”

“Well, he ought to live in Paris,” Bezio said. “That’s where the senate meets.”

Jerome grinned. “Perhaps they’re glad to be rid of him.”

“Or perhaps the problems we’re having are due to our leadership,” Mircea put in.

“Or lack thereof,” Bezio added cynically.

“Yes. But maybe the other senates aren’t like ours—”

“And maybe the sun won’t burn us. They’re vampires.”

“That’s my point!” Mircea said. “Maybe all vampires don’t live like this. They might treat their people—” he stopped, because Jerome was shaking his head. “How do you know?” he demanded. “You’re younger than I am!”

“But I had a master, and a family, for a short time,” Jerome reminded him. “I had people to ask things. You need to ask things before you just assume stuff like that. No wonder you got in trouble.”

“No wonder—you were in that cell, too!”

“That was bad luck. Can happen to anyone. But I don’t intend to go back. Like would happen if I got caught running off to join some other senate, for instance.”

“It is hard to imagine how you’d get there, Mircea,” Bezio agreed.

Mircea watched a line of pods headed off to sea. Like some of the hundreds of ships that left Venice every year. And called at ports so distant, the very names sounded like fairy tales: Alexandretta, Farmagosa, Tunis.

He’d heard their names as a boy, and more, many more, since coming to Venice. Where a merchant named Marco Polo had once set off on a journey that, they said, reached distant Cathay. He’d read Polo’s book as a child, and dreamed of one day seeing some of the same wonders. It had seemed like the ultimate adventure, to probe beyond the known world, to places so distant they didn’t yet have names. Not ones he could pronounce, at any rate.

But now . . .

“I could take a ship,” Mircea said, and felt something twist in his gut with the words.

He didn’t want to take a ship. Or no, that wasn’t true. He wanted to badly, worse than anything. But not to go away. Not to go even further from the world he’d lost.

He wanted to take a ship . . . home. Not as it was now, but as it had been, before his world had imploded. He wanted to go back—

“A ship, he says!” Jerome shook his head again.

“So you’re just going to give up?” Mircea asked harshly. “Stay here and be a whore, instead?”

“Please. Cortigiano,” Jerome corrected, rolling it around on his tongue, as if he liked the sound of it.

“And that doesn’t bother you? To sell yourself—”

“Depends on the price.”

“And to remain a slave while you do it? Subject to Martina’s whims? Sold off, possibly for far less pleasant work, if you happen to displease her?”

“I’m trying to avoid it,” Jerome said dryly. “But if she does give me something to do that I don’t like, I’ll just remember the alternative, which,” he said, raising his voice when Mircea tried to get a word in, “would be you. Huddled in the bottom of some leaky old ship, headed God knows where. Praying nobody finds you and drags you out into the sun for a better look. Or that your mind games with whoever you’re drinking from don’t backfire, and they end up staking you.”

“I made it here on a ship,” Mircea said defiantly. Although there had been differences then.

A shorter trip, for one, which had not required him to change ships or make connections overland. And Horatiu, for another. He had kept a close eye on his “cargo” in the hold, where Mircea had had to stay since the small cabin had been far too full of windows. The old man had also fed him in the longer stretches between ports.

He wouldn’t have that advantage now. Horatiu had already done more for him than he’d had any right to expect. He couldn’t ask him to risk going to the other side of the world, and possibly get stranded there if Mircea’s reception was less than warm.

He couldn’t ask him to exile himself, on Mircea’s behalf.

“Then you were lucky,” Jerome told him. “Most of us travel overland for a reason.”

“Perhaps I could make it overland,” Mircea said, although with even less enthusiasm. Overland meant going through a succession of vampire territories, and experience had shown that they were never happy to see him. He was viewed as a pest at best and a rival at worst, and either way, the response was always the same.

It was why he and Horatiu had headed for the port city of Constanta, to catch a ship for Venice, after one of the vampires hunting him for sport had happened to mention it. It had been a gamble, yes. But the alternative had been unthinkable.

As it was now.

“If it makes you feel any better, it wouldn’t have worked anyway,” Bezio said, watching his face. “I don’t know about the court in Cathay, but it doesn’t matter because you’d never make it that far. But the ones in Cairo and Delhi are said to be worse than here.”

“Worse?” Mircea really didn’t see how that was possible.

“I hear they don’t even have a city like Venice.”

“Then what do they do with people like us?”

Bezio shrugged. “Don’t know. But if I was going to guess—” He sliced a finger over his throat.

Mircea stared up at the moon, rising over the buildings on the other side of the canal. “Then we really are stuck here.”

He wanted to go back, but he couldn’t go back. The world he had left didn’t exist anymore. Yet, it seemed, he couldn’t go forward, either.

So what else was there?

“Life?” Bezio said, when he asked. “Good wine, good friends, a reason to get up every day and not kill yourself?”

“A reason not to die.”

“Yes.”

“What about a reason to live?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

Mircea stared up at the moon, pale and beautiful, reflecting silvery light into the grubby canal. And making even the old bridge and floating trash look beautiful. “No.”

“You want too much, that’s your problem,” Bezio told him, and drank wine.

“Well, I like to look at this as an opportunity,” Jerome said.

“Of course you do.”

“Why not? I’ve seen some pretty amazing things already. Like tonight.” He grinned. “You should have been there, Bezio.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t. It could have blown up in your face!”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Jerome said. “Some senators put a stop to it. Including a woman . . .”

“A woman senator,” Bezio shook his head. “What’s the world coming to?”

“She was beautiful,” Jerome said dreamily.

“They all are, son. It’s called glamourie.”

“And you’re an old cynic.”

“I didn’t say I blame them. If they have the power to spare—”

Jerome laughed. “Oh, she had it.” He caught Mircea’s eye. “Scary, huh?”

Mircea didn’t answer. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like, having power like that. He’d found it unsettling, just that brief exposure.

Not that he was ever likely to experience it again.

“Don’t worry,” Bezio said, echoing his thoughts. “That’s the closest to a senator any of us is ever going to get!”

Chapter Ten

One of these days, he was going to learn not to listen to Bezio, Mircea thought grimly, two days later. Of course, Jerome had been wrong, too. Because the woman on the chaise wasn’t strictly beautiful.

There were fine lines beside the otherwise lovely eyes, the beginnings of crow’s feet concealed beneath a line of kohl. The nose was also slightly overlarge, the forehead was too low for fashion, and the lips and chin were unremarkable. Likewise her hair, which was dark brown or black—hard to tell in the low light—and unbound, falling over the edge of the chaise almost to the floor.

It was the complete opposite of the elaborate hairstyles currently in fashion in Venice, where women often wore more jewels in their curled, teased, and dyed tresses than on their bodies. She didn’t wear jewels anywhere else, either. The smooth, olive skin was draped in some kind of shimmering silk, but it was so diaphanous it might have been merely a glittering cloud, caressing full breasts, dark nipples, a small waist, and long, shapely legs.

And a couple of glittering, jewel-like bands that slid over her body, under the robe, twining around a supple arm, or draping over a taut thigh.

In the low light of the ballroom, Mircea could almost convince himself they were merely oddly-made jewelry. Until bright eyes gleamed at him like dark diamonds, and a small ribbon of a tongue licked out, tasting the air. Scenting him.

His throat went strangely dry.

By Venetian standards, the woman seated on the daybed nearest to hers was far more attractive, with the high forehead, blond tresses, and milk white complexion so coveted by the local ladies. So, for that matter, were several of the other women—attendants, he assumed—who were scattered about the room on chairs and chaises, all of them lovely, all of them finely dressed. And none of them holding his attention for more than a few seconds.

It was impossible to look anywhere else when the senator was in the room.

Mircea didn’t know why, just as he didn’t know what he was doing here. This was an assignment for Paulo. Or for Danieli, Paulo’s swarthier counterpart. Someone else, in any case.

And yet he’d been sent instead.

It seemed like damned poor judgment on someone’s part.

And then her chin went up expectantly.

Mircea waited, but she didn’t get up. He assumed they would go somewhere, to the bedroom he’d yet to see or a private boudoir. Or at the very least that everyone else would be sent away.

But nobody moved.

The silence stretched for a long moment.

He glanced around. Servants came and went, refilling wineglasses, stoking up the fire in a huge marble fireplace, renewing the oil in lamps that swung here and there on thin golden chains, giving an exotic touch to the otherwise standard Venetian ballroom. Add in the cluster of female attendants or friends that were lounging on divans and nearby chaises and there had to be twenty people in here.

Some were ignoring him, talking among themselves or sewing or reading, but a number were not. In fact, a few of the women were openly staring. She couldn’t expect . . .

But clearly, she did.

His jaw tightened.

And then his hand went to the lacings on his doublet.

Coming from a culture in which even the men were expected to stay decently covered up, Mircea had never acclimatized to the casual Venetian attitude toward nudity. He reminded himself that the workmen here often stripped down in summer, completely if they could get away with it, in order to save their few clothes from wear. He’d seen some shortly after he arrived repairing the façade of a church, yet wearing so little he’d been surprised that the carved stone effigies beneath them hadn’t been gaping in shock.

But Mircea had.

And while he had somewhat accustomed himself to seeing workmen in such ways, even while women walked about underneath the scaffolding, or sold bread or baked apples to those same men on their breaks, he had never gotten used to it.

It was even worse now that it was him on display.

By the time he was down to those infernal hosen, he was sweating, his body reacting to stress the way Jerome’s had to the idea of no air. It was reacting in other ways, too. One of which sprang loose from the damned hosen already half hard, even before he finished stripping them down his legs.

Face burning, he tried to control his body’s response, but it didn’t help. He didn’t feel any power being exerted on him the way that Martina had. But then, there was no need. The large space with him at the center, the ring of watching women and a few men, the fact that he was the only one nude in the room—it made him feel as awkward as a boy.

And like when he was a boy, concentrating on the problem only made it grow worse.

He finally accepted the truth, jerked the last of the delicate things off his feet, and stood up, stomach clenching.

To see his client reading a letter a servant had brought her.

It threw him. To the point that he didn’t know what to do except stand there, feet planted, hands at his sides. And try to act as if nothing unusual was happening despite the problem jutting proudly out in front of him.

It didn’t work. He didn’t know how Paulo would have handled this. Perhaps he would have enjoyed the attention. Showing off his well-maintained body to an appreciative audience, like a living version of the priceless statues that lined the stairs coming up. Maybe he would have posed and preened. Maybe he would have flirted.

Mircea was wishing the floor would open up and swallow him whole.

It didn’t help that the breeze off a balcony ensured that he felt every inch of his nudity. Cool tendrils slid across his skin, ruffling his hair, furling his nipples, and causing his wayward member to bob excitedly. And a couple of servant girls by the door to giggle and begin whispering things to each other behind their hands that they thought he couldn’t hear.

Or maybe they didn’t care. Their mistress certainly didn’t seem to. After what felt like an age but was probably only a few long moments, she looked up. And appeared faintly surprised to see him there.

Her eyes moved over his body, but if there was so much as a spark of interest, Mircea couldn’t see it. But after giving the letter to a servant, she finally turned her attention to him. “Very well.”

Again, Mircea waited. Again, she did not get up. And slowly, incredulously, he realized that she wasn’t going to.

He felt his hands curl into fists at his sides.

Was she trying to humiliate him?

He thought about walking out and damn the consequences. Martina would make him pay, and pay dearly, for insulting one of the godlike senators, he had no doubt of that. But it might be worth it to wipe that look of faint amusement off the woman’s face.

Of course, there were other ways to do that, he thought fiercely, and started toward her.

Only to have her hold up a hand. “No. From there.”

Mircea stopped abruptly. “From . . . here?” He was at least ten feet away. His eyes moved automatically downward, and then back up. Making the point that, well-endowed or not, “from here” was not a viable option.

One of her ladies laughed.

His client did not. “Pleasure yourself,” she instructed, and lay lazily back against the chaise, preparing to watch.

Mircea just stood there, thrown off balance again. Badly. And it didn’t help when someone closed the doors to the balcony, apparently deciding that the night breeze was making the room uncomfortable.

And inadvertently made it more so for Mircea.

Glass, so dear at home that it was reserved for religious icons or church windows, was manufactured here. And was so affordable that it was everywhere, swinging from ladies’ waists in the form of small mirrors, hanging from the ceiling in cesendelli, the delicate lamps copied from the Byzantines, or even taking the place of wood panels in the balcony doors. Which afterward offered a view despite being closed.

But at night, it wasn’t of the dark canal and street outside, but of the comparatively brightly lit interior.

And the naked vampire standing in a puddle of lamplight.

Mircea stared blankly at the image reflected back at him, and didn’t recognize himself. Gone were the heavy robes of court, the armor of the battlefield, even the fripperies of Venice. Gone were all the outward trappings of the man he’d known, the person he’d been. And in his place . . .

Was a decadent member of Venice’s oldest profession, naked expect for the black half-mask he wore.

He hadn’t taken it off, because he’d forgotten he had it on. Masks were common when going out in Venice, especially on formal occasions. And this one was just a scrap of stiffened linen, covered with a little paint.

But the effect on his appearance was astonishing.

He wasn’t a person anymore, with a name, an identity. He was a body, polished to a high sheen and bought at a heavy price. And expected to give a good show for the money.

It should have made him furious. It should have made him violent. Instead, it just left him bewildered.

Who was he, anymore?

Who was he without the power? Who was he without the name? He didn’t know; wasn’t sure he’d ever known.

From the time he was born, he’d been trained to be one thing: his father’s heir. To put the needs of family before his own, to endure hardship uncomplaining, to set an example before the people of the strength and stoicism of their leaders. Everything in his life had been designed to mold him to think a certain way, to be a credit to his house, to act as expected. And he’d done that.

He’d done that right up until his treacherous nobles shoved hot pokers in his eyes and buried him alive.

That man had died. This one lived. But, he realized, he didn’t know this one.

He’d spent almost two years as a vampire, one on the run, one here in the supposed sanctuary of Venice, trying to scrape up a living. But he’d never really faced the fact that anything had changed. He’d been acting like a prince in exile, someone temporarily down on his luck, who would be back to claim his throne any day now.

But he wouldn’t be back. Couldn’t go back. This was who he was now.

And he didn’t know this person.

He had never really even looked at this person, turning his face away in disgust, hearing the words of the old stories echoing in his ears: cursed, damned, evil, monster. But he looked now. For the first time, he looked.

Not at the man, but at the vampire.

And saw gleaming dark hair falling onto hard shoulders. Eyes that glittered dangerously behind the mask’s almond-shaped openings. Skin that glowed golden bright, highlighted by sweat and darkened by shadow where flesh became muscle: the curve of his chest, the ladder of his ribs, the indentation of his naval.

The proud jut of his manhood as his fist curled around it.

He stood there for a moment, head swimming. Completely unable to connect the polished, nude courtesan holding his throbbing member with the man he knew. But this time, he didn’t turn away.

Instead, he watched the muscles in his arm bunch and release. Watched his hand glide down the length of his thickness, from the creamy flesh to the rosy head, pausing to caress it softly before sliding back up. Watched as he completed a simple movement that nonetheless broke the laws of his church, of his homeland, even of the dissolute city in which he now lived, which equated self-pleasure with the crime of sodomy.

Watched what he had never actually seen, because such things were considered shameful and hidden away.

But it didn’t look shameful. It looked strangely beautiful. And even more so when he made the first, tentative thrust.

He’d never before noticed the way his whole body joined in the motion. How it started with tension in his calves and thighs, moved up to tighten his buttocks and back, and then rippled outward as he completed the movement. How each isolated action blended with the one before as he fell into a rhythm, melding into a sinuous wave, an erotic dance—

Performed for the pleasure of a group of strangers, some harsh voice from his other life reminded him.

Yes, he thought vaguely, but didn’t stop. Even though, this time, there were no bonds to restrict his movements, nothing to keep him from turning around and leaving. Or from finishing quickly and technically completing his assignment, while rendering his audience frustrated and unsatisfied.

And yet, perversely, he found that he didn’t want to.

It felt like there was something in the air tonight, heavy and languid. Like the soft sound of rain starting up outside. Like the flowering vine growing on the balcony, perfuming the darkness. Like the light from the lamps that left the corners of the room in shadow, but fell warm and honey thick across his skin.

It slowed his movements, made them languid, too.

Made him pause to slide his hands up his torso, enjoying the feel of hard muscle and smooth skin and rigid nipples before moving back down. Made him arch his back, gliding his hands over the tense muscles of his buttocks, then smoothing around to the front. And following the deep V of muscles to the heavy globes hanging between his thighs. Made him linger on their heat and velvet softness for a long moment before resuming his former occupation.

He searched his emotions again, looking for the smallest suggestion of influence. Of any sign that he was being controlled by the woman watching from the chaise. But there was none.

She had paid to be entertained, not to perform herself.

No, this was all on him.

Whoever he was.

He could change his name, he suddenly realized, speeding up. He could become anyone, he could do . . . well, not anything, but a great deal more than he had. The human laws didn’t apply to him anymore. The human restrictions and prejudices had been left behind with his life. Along with the expectations and duties and heavy mantle of authority that had passed to him too soon.

Because he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d been so busy contemplating all he’d lost, that he’d utterly failed to see what he’d gained. Freedom of a sort he’d never known, could never have known in life.

It seemed amazing to him now, almost as amazing as the timing of his epiphany. But then, how better to see yourself clearly than when there were no barriers? No clothes to hide behind or names to live up to. Just sweat-slick skin and undulating hips and rasping breaths as the most primal of needs built toward a climax.

The women draped over the couches had started murmuring, discussing him among themselves, the soft rise and fall of their voices like the lap of waves in the canal outside. But it didn’t bother him now, any more than the feel of their eyes on his body. Somewhere along the line, he’d stopped thinking about being on display for them. And started noticing other things.

The flutter of soot-black lashes against honeyed skin. The dark purple stain on a pair of perfect lips. The swell of a breast above creamy silk.

The feel of a dozen hands sliding over his body.

The women hadn’t moved, much less their mistress. In all the room, nothing did. Except for the flicker of lamps, the slide of raindrops, and the erotic shadows he threw on the wall.

But moving or not, he felt them, some part of them, everywhere. Fingers soft as air combed through his hair, explored his ribs, ghosted over the tense muscles of his backside. Invisible teeth nipped the peak of a nipple. Phantom tongues followed the curve of his ear, skimmed down his collarbone, dropped to trace patterns in the sweat on his now heaving chest.

And then slid underneath the mask he wore, and started to push it up.

It ripped the first sound from his throat, a desperate, keening cry. It also finally broke his rhythm when he hunched over protectively, he didn’t know why. It was such a little thing, when he had revealed so much already.

But it was also his last.

The last bit of him still hidden. The last taboo still unbroken. The last, most private part of him, far more so than his body.

He felt that heady sense of freedom evaporate in an instant. That man in the mirror could be anyone, anyone at all. But once he showed his face . . .

Then it wouldn’t be an anonymous courtesan doing these things anymore. It would be him. It would be Mircea.

But it seemed that his audience was determined to have everything.

Unseen hands pulled his own away from his face. Leaving him with no way to hide as the soft touches returned. Sliding through his hair, tugging at the silken straps, undoing the soft knot. He could have fought them, could have resisted. But emotions were roiling in him too fast and hard to know how to respond as they pulled away his last remaining defense.

And laid him bare.

He stood there, watching the last of his old self die as the mask fell away. As he transformed from a living statue, to be admired for adherence to ancient aesthetics, to a flagrantly sexual being. One standing tall and proud and utterly exposed before the room.

And before his client. Who kept him like that for a long moment, her eyes going over him. From the convulsively working throat to the glistening chest to the proud jut of his manhood. And then back up to meet his eyes.

She studied his face, that last forbidden area. She took him in, she took all of him. Until he was trembling, his head was spinning, and his body was teetering on the brink.

“Now.”

She’d barely said the word when he was caught in a furious cloud of invisible lips and tongues and teeth. They dropped him to his knees, with delicate, razor-sharp fangs that slid into the bulging veins at his neck, his breast, his wrists. They bent him backward, leaving him arching and thrusting into the air, before piercing him at his thigh, his groin, even the vein running down his length.

They tore another cry from his throat, and then another and another, pulling them out of him as if on a string. Each sounded shockingly loud in the silence, but he didn’t care, couldn’t care. Caught in the middle of a sensual assault unlike any he’d ever imagined.

And then finally, finally, the pain gave way to sweet, yielding flesh, to the demands of a dozen bodies sliding against his, their need mingling with his own to send it spiraling higher and higher and higher. Until his orgasm erupted out of him, along with a roar that crashed through the well-mannered stillness and echoed off the walls.

And announced his climax to the room.

Chapter Eleven

Mircea staggered through the back door of Martina’s house, along with a burst of rain and wind that set the candles guttering and someone cursing. Someone else went running, and something hit the floor with a clatter, scattering in a thousand rolling pieces. Which hurt like the devil when he fell on them.

He decided he didn’t care and hugged the rough wooden floorboards gratefully. Whoever had been swearing did it some more. And then tugged the sodden cloak off him, which had proven worthless when the clouds opened up halfway back.

Fortunately, he’d been in a gondola, being too weak to walk. Unfortunately, the gondolier had decided that he wasn’t being paid enough for this, and had dropped him off at the end of the street. Which Mircea had never before realized was quite so long.

But he’d made it, and now someone was pulling him into a slumped sprawl against the nearest wall, giving him a strange angle on the large room. Or maybe that was him. He had the feeling he might not be entirely level.

Thankfully, the kitchen was the one room where nobody cared if you sprawled in the corner. The rest of the palazzo felt alien with its glass this and inlaid that. The house Mircea had grown up in wouldn’t have been thought fit for a self-respecting tradesman in Venice, much less one of the wealthy merchants, who lived like the princes they thought they were.

But the kitchen was better, with its rough, open board ceiling, plain plaster walls, and plainer furniture. There was an old, scarred table, a few wooden stools, rows of shiny brass pots, and a couple pieces of cracked pottery that the cats ate out of when they weren’t feasting on Zaneta’s bird. And a big stone fireplace belching out enough heat to warm him, even now . . .

Mircea liked the kitchen.

He liked it better a few seconds later, when something appeared under his nose. Something that smelled better than . . . than . . . oh, God. His fangs broke through fresh young skin, sliding in cleanly, but still wrenching a gasp from whoever was providing such wonderful, such amazing, such—

His brain shut down, and for a few moments, he just fed.

At some point, the lovely arm went away, to be replaced by another, hairier version. It didn’t matter; it was wonderful, too. And slowly, he managed to identify the little things he was sitting on.

Of course.

They were peas, dried ones. Which had been in a bowl, being prepped for someone’s dinner. But which were now mostly squashed. He sat there and blinked at them for a minute. Until someone burst in through the doorway and jerked him up. Someone with angry blue eyes and a familiar face that he couldn’t quite—

Oh, yes.

Paulo.

“Damn it! I knew we should have sent someone to get you!” the blond said, shaking him.

“Why didn’t you?” a harsher voice asked. It was the one that had been swearing earlier.

Bezio, Mircea thought vaguely.

“Martina said he’d be fine!”

“Martina seems to take a lot of liberties with other people’s lives!”

“Master?” Paulo reminded him tightly.

“That doesn’t give her the right—”

“It gives her every right,” Paulo snapped. “Will you stop thinking like a human?”

“So she bought him just to kill him?”

“No. Something must have gone wrong, gotten out of hand—”

“Out of hand, he says!” Bezio made a disgusted sound. And then somebody stuffed Mircea into a spare chair.

He thought that was a bad idea, considering the magnetic quality of the floor. But surprisingly, he stayed put, although he didn’t feel any of the strength that usually came from feeding. He felt more like he might just float away at any moment.

He felt odd.

He must have looked it, too, because suddenly, there were two concerned faces peering into his own, looking strangely funny this close.

“Are you all right?” Bezio asked.

“Yes,” Mircea said, trying to swat him away. And failing, because his arm didn’t seem to work. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“And tonight?” Paulo added. “How did it go?”

“She said I should come again,” Mircea told him proudly. “And then . . . and then I asked . . . I asked her—” he broke off, gasping in memory.

“You asked her what?” Bezio looked concerned.

“I asked . . . do you mean now?” He broke into peals of laughter.

Bezio let out a grunt that might have been exasperation or relief. “I worry about you,” he said, shaking his head.

“I don’t,” Mircea said, and for the first time in a long time, it was true. He didn’t know what had happened tonight, but something had. Something important. Something that had left him feeling lighter, although he supposed that could be from the blood loss.

“They bit me,” he told them.

“We noticed,” Paulo said dryly.

“I think they might have taken too much.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Do we have anyone else?” Bezio demanded, while Mircea was still trying to come up with an answer to that.

“No. And he couldn’t usefully absorb anymore right now anyway. Not at his age.”

“You’d think they’d have damned well thought about that, before they all but drained him!”

“They’re nobles. Just be glad they didn’t kill him.”

“That’s yet to be determined,” Bezio said darkly.

And the next thing Mircea knew, he was being slung over a brawny shoulder and carted up the back stairs. Which were a good deal narrower and shorter than the ones in front, which probably explained why his head kept hitting the ceiling. Or maybe that was him.

“Stop trying to get up,” Bezio told him irritably. “We’re not there yet.”

“Where?” he asked, his tongue feeling thick and heavy in his mouth.

And then he had his answer, when he was flopped down on his own bed, so soft, so comfortable, so . . .

“What’re you doing?” Mircea asked, not wanting to open his eyes to find out why Bezio was tugging on him.

“Getting your boots off!”

“Damn,” Paulo added. “The color has run all over his shirt—”

“Would you stop worrying about his damned clothes?”

“I’m not worried about them! But that crook of a tailor assured me that the color was fixed—”

There was some more swearing, and some more conversation Mircea couldn’t manage to follow. They talked so fast. It all became a blur of sound, a ribbon spiraling off into . . . into . . .

Someone slapped him. Hard. Mircea’s eyes flew open to see Bezio kneeling over him, hand raised. “What—”

And then he hit him again.

Mircea tried to put an arm up to block the assault, but it didn’t work. “Stop it,” he slurred.

“Then stay awake,” Bezio said harshly.

“It’s almost dawn—”

“It won’t be dawn for another two hours.”

“Don’t care. Want to—”

“Go to sleep; I know. But you can’t.”

Mircea stared at him, the waves of exhaustion pulling at him, threatening to drag him under. “Why not?”

“Because you’re a vampire!”

“If a human falls asleep hungry, their body just uses some of their stored fat,” Paulo explained. “They wake up the next morning a bit thinner, that’s all. But if a vampire goes to sleep without enough reserves to make it through the day, he doesn’t wake up at all. Understand?”

Mircea blinked, both at the candle Paulo was holding, which seemed impossibly bright in the darkened room, and at the implication. “I’ve been hungry before—”

“Yes, which was your body trying to force you to feed. It’s too weak to do that now. But you have to—”

He stopped abruptly, Mircea didn’t know why. Until someone else bent over him, golden nails sliding down his cheek to cup his chin. Martina.

She looked like she’d just come from a client. Dark hair down and reaching almost to her feet, makeup slightly smeared, embroidered silk robe loosely tied, revealing a vee of smooth olive skin going all the way down to her naval. Dark eyes assessing as she looked him over.

Mircea stared up into them, wondering what they reminded him of. And then the shiny black eyes of the senator’s living armbands came to mind. It really was alarming how similar they were, he thought, more than a little disturbed.

And then his mistress smiled. “You did well tonight. I’ve already been informed, she wishes to see you again.”

“That might be hard,” Bezio rasped. “If he’s dead.”

“Bezio,” Paulo said warningly, but Martina didn’t look angry.

“He will live,” she said, dropping Mircea’s chin.

“He’s not even hungry,” Bezio protested. “He should be starved, crazed even—”

“He was fed, was he not?” Martina’s dark eyes slid to Paulo.

He nodded hastily. “Yes. As soon as he returned. As much as he could take, that is. But at
his age—”

“See that he feeds again before morning.”

“Yes, of course. That is, we’ll try. I’ve already sent for Roberto. He was off today, for his sister’s wedding, but we should be able to—”

“It won’t matter how many humans you bring in, if he can’t absorb the blood,” Bezio argued.

“What’s the alternative?” Paulo demanded. “I’d feed him myself, but it wouldn’t help. My blood isn’t that much stronger than—”

“But yours is,” Bezio said, cutting him off and looking at Martina. “You could feed him.”

For a moment, there was silence.

“It . . . it might be wise,” Paulo said, tentatively. “He won’t be able to absorb that much more tonight; there’s not enough time. But yours, being so much richer—”

“No.”

“But it wouldn’t take much,” Bezio argued. “And it could save him!”

“He doesn’t need saving. He will live.”

“But you could ensure that, with nothing more than—”

Bezio cut off because his audience suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Martina had turned and left, as abruptly as she’d come. Leaving the bearded vampire staring after her.

“And you could ensure a longer life if you learn to hold your tongue,” Paulo hissed, grabbing Bezio’s arm as he started after Martina.

“But a couple of drops might—”

“She said no.”

“Why? What on earth—”

“It doesn’t matter why.”

“You didn’t expect her to agree, did you?” Bezio accused, scanning his expression. “You knew she’d refuse!”

Paulo closed his eyes, looking stressed. But he didn’t let go of Bezio’s arm. “She doesn’t feed anyone.”

“Why not?” Bezio persisted. “She doesn’t have to bind them. She isn’t taking on any responsibility. She’s giving away a little power, that’s all. And it isn’t as if she can’t spare it!”

He rubbed his arms, as if the electric flow of Martina’s power was still coursing over them. Mircea could feel it, too, where she’d gripped his chin. It felt like the indentation of her fingers was still there, as if she’d painted him with some kind of indelible ink.

But it wasn’t enough to shut Bezio up.

“A human won’t be enough!” he argued. “You know that. He’s too far gone—”

“I don’t know that—”

“Look at him!”

Harassed blue eyes slid his way. Mircea didn’t know what Paulo saw, but when he spoke again, it was harsh. “Martina won’t. We’ll have to come up with something else.”

“Then who else do we have? You said Auria—”

“She’s out with a client.”

“Then call her back!”

“She isn’t Roberto! And she’s with someone important. I can’t just—”

They kept talking, but Mircea couldn’t seem to follow it anymore. The brief euphoria from downstairs was gone. His chest felt heavy, as if someone was sitting on it. His limbs were like iron, impossible to raise. If he’d been breathing, it would have been labored. He just needed . . . he needed . . . he . . .

Someone slapped him again. His eyes flew open, but he didn’t see who it was. But a soft, dimpled, perfumed arm slid under his nose. It didn’t look like Martina’s. It didn’t smell like hers, either. She used neroli, a musky, bitter orange scent that complemented her exotic good looks. This was lighter, fresher, sweeter . . .

If laughter had a scent, Mircea thought, his head swimming, it might be something like this.

“Are you going to drink,” someone asked, amused. “Or sniff me all night?”

He knew that voice, but he couldn’t place it. Didn’t try. He did try to feed, but couldn’t seem to raise his head enough, couldn’t even seem to remember—

“Help him!” Someone said harshly, and then he was being pulled up, and held to a neck too short to be Martina’s, next to tinsel earrings that were swept aside along with a wealth of dark curls. And then—

And then Mircea stopped caring about anything, because blood was coursing down a sweetly scented neck, as a perfectly manicured nail broke the surface for him. He watched it, mesmerized, until the first drop touched his lips, slid over his tongue, found its way into his starved body. And then he was gripping her, harder than he’d thought he was able, harder than could have been comfortable, because she let out a surprised “oh!” But he barely noticed with sparkling, wonderful, life-giving power bursting on his tongue.

And then everywhere else. He could feel it coursing through his veins, filling him in a way he’d never been able to define, but which was unmistakable. Nothing else felt like taking blood, nothing else came close. Alcohol, drugs, even sex paled in comparison when he was this starved. Blood was everything; blood was life. Without it, there was nothing else. But with it, oh, with it, oh, with it . . .

The dark room suddenly flooded with color. The scent of the woman’s cologne became richer, more enticing. The sounds of the old house—creaks and groans and sighs of the wind outside—had a depth and resonance unknown to mortal ears. The whole world was suddenly vibrant and alive. And so was he.

Mircea drank, and drank and drank, until his body could stand no more, until he was laughing, no, giggling, against a perfect set of breasts, beneath a fine linen shift that was never, ever coming clean after this.

“You owe me a chemise,” someone agreed, as he was lowered back into bed.

Someone threw a blanket over him, and someone else tucked it in, as if he was a child needing tending. Mircea scowled, and started to protest. But then he noticed how cozy everything was, with the rain pattering on the roof just above his head, and the wool covering warm, and the bed so, so soft . . . like the lips that found his forehead.

He really hoped they weren’t Bezio’s.

“Not quite,” someone said.

And then, finally, finally, he was allowed to drift off to sleep.

Chapter Twelve

Mircea awoke between two plump country lasses, with pink cheeks, round bottoms, and generous bosoms. And fine blue veins that he substantially lightened before getting out of bed. Yet he still managed to stagger and have to grab the bedpost, like an old drunk.

He stood there, swaying, for a long moment, caught between weakness and a strange elation.

The former was familiar enough—the sickening lurch of having too little blood in reserve. He had no idea what to make of the latter. But the combination made him feel like he might simultaneously fall over and fly away, and resulted in roiling nausea he had no way to relieve.

He was never going to understand vampire bodies, he thought grimly, stumbling over to the wash basin. And resisting with difficulty the urge to stick his whole head inside. And then deciding to hell with it and doing it anyway.

It felt amazing. So much so that he ended up pouring the entire pitcher of water over his hair. It seemed to help, God knew why.

He just stayed there for a while, arms braced against the sides of the basin, dripping. And wondering why the water had a taste and the wall had a smell and the basin seemed to be rippling around the edges, like it was laughing at him. And then somebody else was, too.

He looked back over his shoulder to see one pert miss frankly enjoying the view of his backside. All of it, he realized, because he wasn’t dressed. He walked back over and pulled the blanket off the girls and around himself. Which left him warmer but otherwise no better off, since they were already falling asleep in each other’s arms. And the amount of blood they’d donated meant they would probably stay that way all night.

Mircea pulled the second blanket over them both and stumbled downstairs, still hungry. And wondering where his clothes were. And what the hell he’d been doing to make him feel like he had the world’s worst hangover.

He found out the answer to one question, at least, as soon as he entered the kitchen.

The cook was stirring something in the large, three-legged pot she used to cook pasta. Bezio was occupying a stool churning butter. And Paulo was bending over the big worktable, where the pieces of Mircea’s red outfit had been laid out in all their splotchy splendor.

Before he could ask what Paulo was doing with them, a servant with a prominent Adam’s apple burst in through the back door. He had two dead herons tucked under his arm, their feet flopping about comically. Especially after he saw Mircea and abruptly turned around, trying to fit back through the door, birds and all.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” the little cook demanded, snagging him by the arm.

“He’s hungry,” the man said, staring over his shoulder at the big bad vampire wobbling on the stairs.

“And?” she asked, relieving him of one of the herons, looking it over with a frown. “Fresh caught?”

“Yes. But I have to—”

“Does that smell fresh to you?” She shoved the bird into his face.

“I—it’s what Guilio said—”

“I told you to buy from Zuane. Guilio’s a crook. And his wife’s a damned rivenditrice. She buys leftovers from genuine farmers and then resells them along with stories of how she just dug them out of the earth this morning—when they’re days old already! Bah.”

“Yes, but these aren’t vegetables—”

“And they’re not fresh, either. Looks like her husband is trying the same trick with meat.”

“S-should I go back—” the man asked, looking frankly hopeful.

“Oh, they’re long gone by now,” she told him impatiently. “And there’s no way to prove where you got ’em, in any case.”

“I can try—”

“You can try to make me a Saracen sauce without spilling anything,” she said sternly.

“S-Saracen?” The man looked at her blankly.

“You made the same one just last week! Almonds, currants, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, galangal, grains of paradise. And nutmeg. Grind it all together and splash with verjuice—and don’t stint this time! I need extra to cover the smell on those two.”

“A-all right,” he said, but he didn’t go anywhere.

The cook poked him with a long handled spoon. “What’re you waiting for? A blessing?”

“No, just—” he looked at Mircea. “I gave last night,” he blurted out, shrinking back.

“It’s all right, Lucca,” Paulo said, with a sigh. “He fed already.”

“But he’s hungry. Look—his fangs are showing!”

“And he’ll be hungry for a few days. But that’s nothing to you.”

“Nothing? He half drained me last night!”

“I was here, remember?” Paulo said patiently. “And he did nothing of the sort.”

“But I wasn’t supposed to give again, not so soon. I fed Danieli two days ago. And Besina three days before that—”

“It was an emergency.”

“—and I’ve been stumbling about all day, as a result. Pure dizzy with it I was,” he announced dramatically.

Which was somewhat spoiled when he gave an energetic hop, courtesy of the cook applying a broomstick to his posterior. “Liar! You were whistling coming down the road. Think we’re deaf?”

The man hiked up his feathered accessory with a sniff. “I was trying to keep my spirits up,” he said. “And I deserve compensation.”

Paulo crossed his arms. “And what, pray tell, do you feel would be adequate recompense for the horrors you’ve suffered?”

The man’s expression brightened. “An extra day off would help me recover my strength. And an extra chicken would feed me back up. And an extra—”

“Done,” Paulo said quickly, before he could add anything else.

Lucca looked like he was going to argue, but decided to quit while he was ahead. “I’ll just be on my way, then—”

“Tomorrow,” Paulo said, catching him by the back of his shirt. And neatly managing to avoid the dirty bird feet when he dragged him back from the door. “You know we’re entertaining tonight. Now go make that sauce.”

The man edged around the cook and through the door leading to the pantry, keeping as far from Mircea as possible all the while. The cook looked at Paulo. “He steals a chicken a week anyhow. Robs us blind during the day, like the rest of ’em.”

“And I am supposed to do what about it, exactly?”

“Find us some better servants!”

“Yes, I’ll get right on that,” he said, going back to attacking Mircea’s doublet with a brush. “As soon as you tell me where these paragons can be located, who cook and clean and don’t go screaming into the night at the idea of feeding a houseful of fiends.”

“Watch your tongue. Or I’ll be applying the broom to a new backside,” she warned, turning back to her pot. “Fiends,” she muttered. “Only fiends I know are in the marketplace.”

Paulo sighed, but wisely said nothing. Until he looked at Mircea. “Why are you still standing there?”

Mircea decided this was a fair question, and managed to transition from step to table without incident. Which he was feeling rather proud about—until someone snapped their fingers in front of his face. And he realized that he’d been staring at the contents of the other end of the table for minutes.

He tore his eyes away from the rose-like spiral of a bowl of shrimp, the liquid silver of a spill of sardines, and the gleaming jet beads of a platter of risotto with squid ink. And fell instead into admiration for a pair of sapphire blue eyes. Someone laughed.

“Be careful, Paulo!” the cook said. “He’s silly with it.”

“How much did you take?” Paulo frowned, scrutinizing Mircea’s face.

“The usual. They are well,” he added, as Paulo cocked his head, listening for the soft sounds of snores from above.

“And you are?”

“Wondering what happened,” Mircea said honestly, before the events of the previous night came rushing back. He dropped his head into his hands. “And why they felt the need to almost drain me.”

“If they don’t, you aren’t getting to them,” Paulo said wryly.

“But what was the point?” Mircea demanded. “I couldn’t feed them. At my power level, the taste—”

“Metallic,” the cook said, sticking out her tongue. “Like old leftovers.”

“Then why bother?”

“’Cause they weren’t after the taste, were they?” Bezio asked, showing the cook the butter he’d just finished.

She nodded and handed him the less-than-fresh birds. “Dunk ’em, pluck ’em, gut ’em, and spit ’em,” she instructed. “And use a lot of olive oil in the roasting. It covers a multitude of sins.”

“Then what did they want?” Mircea asked, but Bezio wasn’t listening.

He’d paused, birds in hand, to peer into a baking dish. “Stop that!” the cook swiftly replaced the lid.

“Then stop making it smell so good. What is this?”

“Chicken pie with dates.”

Bezio took a deep whiff. “Smells like pork.”

“It’s the pancetta.”

“There’s pancetta?” He looked pathetically ravenous.

“Then what did they want?” Mircea repeated, but Bezio was busy getting bopped with a spoon, and didn’t hear.

“You’re a vampire,” the chef told him. “You don’t get any.”

“You’re a vampire,” Bezio retorted. “How the hell do you cook?”

The little woman tapped her head. “Recipes are still up here, aren’t they?”

“But how do you taste?”

She just smiled. And then shouted: “Lucca!”

The hapless wonder of a manservant stuck his head out of the pantry, and had one of the cheesy pancetta balls left over from the pie popped into his mouth. He choked, chewed, and swallowed. “Good,” he rasped out. And then quickly disappeared back into his sanctum.

“That’s how,” the cook said. “Now, get those birds on before they add raw to their list of problems.”

“Bezio,” Mircea said grimly.

“They wanted the sensation,” Paulo said, looking up with a frown. “What else?”

Mircea didn’t say anything.

“And you,” the cook turned beady brown eyes on Paulo. “Go help in the dining room.”

“Don’t we have people for that?”

“Yes, you. And take him and his clothes with you.” She pointed the spoon at Mircea.

“He isn’t working tonight,” Paulo protested.

“I didn’t ask you to have him do cartwheels. But he can set the table, can’t he?”

Which was how Mircea ended up dressing outside the dining room upstairs, while Paulo retrieved the beautiful maiolica dishes used for company. They were exquisite work, blue and gold on a white background, depicting various frolicking goddesses. They were the sort of thing that most people, had they been able to afford them at all, would have displayed proudly in the main hall, where they could be seen as soon as anyone entered the house.

Here, they were just stacked in a chest.

Mircea shook his head, amazed as more and more of the expensive stuff was added to a cart. He tried to help as soon as he was dressed, but the area around the chest was small and Paulo just waved him out of the way. “Stand over there,” he said sourly. “And answer my question.”

“What question?” Mircea said, pressing back against the wall to avoid a line of servants, who came by bearing cloths for the table and the great salt.

“Why you don’t seem to know that vampires bite during intimacy.”

“I—” Mircea stopped, not wanting to discuss this. But not really knowing how to get out of it.

But it seemed that silence wasn’t the solution, either.

Blond eyebrows came together. “Don’t tell me that was your first time—”

“Of course not.”

“Since the Change?”

Mircea sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Then we don’t have much to discuss, do we?” he admitted.

Paulo paused to glare at him. “Why the devil didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I didn’t think it relevant. I’m hardly a virgin—”

“From our perspective, that’s exactly what you were!” Paulo banged some expensive dinnerware onto the cart, more forcefully than it deserved. “I can’t believe—”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“It matters!” He stopped and took a breath. “Do you remember my telling you where Martina found me?”

“You were in a tavern.”

“And why was I there?”

“You said something about getting drunk. Or trying to.”

“Yes, trying to. Only it’s not so easy anymore, is it? Not for us. The only way to get the same effect is to drink from a human who has had too much. The blood magnifies the alcohol, allowing us the same escape they have. Well, it does if you take enough.”

Mircea frowned. “So I feel this way because of what happened last night?”

“Feel what way?”

Mircea waved a hand helplessly, unable to put into words the strange sensations he’d experienced since waking up. And still was. “Like the fact that the birds on the dish you’re holding look like they’re moving?”

Paulo looked down at it, and frowned. The birds following some goddess about didn’t seem to like that, with a few fluttering off to the plate’s border to chirp quietly to themselves. He looked back up and tried the expression on Mircea, who didn’t like it any better. “What?”

Mircea sighed and gave up. He would have to hope it just wore off in time. “I haven’t been feeling myself today,” he settled for saying.

“Obviously,” Paulo said dryly. “And that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“That taking blood while doing anything heightens the effect. You’ve been a vampire for two years; don’t tell me you haven’t noticed!”

“I’ve noticed that my senses get better after feeding,” Mircea said slowly. “But that’s because I’m stronger.”

“And more emotional?” Paulo asked archly. “You didn’t have a master, so you don’t know. But there are certain things young vampires are taught. You don’t take blood when you’re depressed, or you might just walk out into the sun in the morning. You don’t feed right before a battle, or you’re likely to try some damned fool stunt and get killed. And you don’t exchange blood when you’re intimate unless you want to end up besotted!”

“But I didn’t take blood,” Mircea pointed out. “They did—”

“And they damned well knew better! I thought you’d agreed! I thought you’d permitted it, and they just took too much. But you didn’t, did you?” Paulo glared at him. “Did they even ask?”

“I—no, but—”

Paulo slammed the chest, hard enough to rattle every plate on the cart. Mircea put out a hand, afraid they were about to have to explain the loss of a fortune in tin-glazed pottery. But thankfully, everything stayed put.

“I’m a little confused,” Mircea told Paulo, after a moment.

“Then allow me to clear it up for you,” the blond said, starting to push the cart down the hall. “Older vamps—some older vamps—have a problem experiencing emotions. It’s like with us and alcohol—the old methods just don’t work for them anymore. The only way they feel what they used to, the only way they experience anything with intensity, is if they feel it through somebody else. And the younger that somebody is, the closer to human, the better.”

Mircea frowned and hurried to keep up. “Then why not just use a human?”

“Some do. Those who don’t mind a fleeting sensation. Or leaving a trail of bodies behind them.”

“A trail of—”

“Could a human have lasted as long as you did?” Paulo demanded. “Could they have taken as much blood without killing him?”

“But they only fed from me for a short time. A moment—”

“They only fed for a short time that you noticed.”

“I think I would have noticed a room full of vampires biting me!”

“Those at their level don’t have to bite, Mircea. They can draw blood to themselves through the air, in tiny pieces too small to see. Too small for the victim to even notice—”

“I wasn’t a victim!”

Paulo looked at him, and then swiftly looked away. “I didn’t say you were. Not in the usual sense. But they were riding your emotions, which meant they were feeding from you, whether you knew it or not. And blood exchange creates a bond, if only a temporary one.”

Mircea stopped, and swallowed. “They . . . felt everything I did?”

“Yes.” Paulo shoved the cart roughly around a corner.

“But . . . I wasn’t feeling love. Even passion . . . well, not at first. It was a tangle—”

“All the better for them. A veritable feast!” The cart hit the dining hall, where it click-clacked over the separations between the tiles.

Mircea lagged behind, trying to comprehend what he’d been told. That he’d served in the place of a drunk human to allow a group of bored women feel something again. Only they hadn’t received what they’d paid for, had they? Most of the time, he hadn’t been feeling passion, at least not primarily. He’d been wondering who he was. Where he fit in now that his old life was gone, and the new one seemed so strange, and so unforgiving.

Only, suddenly, it hadn’t, had it?

Suddenly, it had seemed wonderful.

“Were they influencing me?” he asked, catching up with Paulo.

The blond paused by the table, his shoulders tight. “No. Not . . . exactly. You felt what you felt sincerely. But as I said, they magnified it. Broke down walls, brought things to the surface you might not have wanted to face, forced you to look instead of turning away. Because they received more of a response that way.”

Mircea thought about that for a moment. “Then any insight I had, was my own.”

“Which you shouldn’t have had to share with a roomful of strangers!” Paulo looked frustrated. He started to run a hand through his hair, remembered that they were about to have guests, and stopped. And looked more frustrated. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You shouldn’t have been sent out, much less on an assignment like that, before gaining some experience. I’ll do what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“It can’t happen again,” Mircea pointed out. “I have experience now.”

Paulo’s lips twisted. “And what a way to get it!”

Chapter Thirteen

Mircea was getting more experience the next day, although not in any way he’d ever imagined.

He tried to force his thoughts off what he was feeling, and onto the battle taking place in the water below. It should have been easy. The rooftop terrace where he stood offered a breathtaking panorama of a lagoon, where two huge barges, each bigger than the one the Doges used, were battling for supremacy amid the cheers of thousands.

And battling for real, it seemed to him.

The participants, drawn by lot from the families of the leading senators, were fighting for the amusement of the consul seated on the brightly decorated pier below. And to impress visiting leaders of from the other senates, who occupied positions of honor around him. In other words, it was supposed to be a mock contest.

Only someone must have forgotten to mention that to the two sides.

Or else the excitement of crashing into each other a moment before, after a headlong race about the lagoon, had caused them to forget it. The brilliant peacock blue and fiery orange-red costumes were now mixed in opulent splendor as they swarmed each other’s decks. And engaged in an all out brawl to prove their and their master’s superiority in front of the font of all patronage.

Mircea, who had spent two years hiding in the shadows, would have laughed a short time ago, had anyone told him that such a spectacle could be staged in full view of the city. Even on La Guidecca, a spur of land to the south of Venice, where wealthy merchants had built garden homes to escape the bustle of the busy port. He didn’t know how they were doing it.

He also didn’t care.

He stood at the railing, in the black velvet finery the tailor’s apprentice had finally delivered, struggling to look like he fit in. Struggling to nod and smile and act as enthralled as the rest of the onlookers. Struggling to do anything but stare.

But not at the battle.

His hands gripped the stone railing in front of him, hard enough to impress the shape of his fingers as he fought to contain the emotion that threatened to swamp him. He swallowed, calling on everything he had, on all those years of his father’s training, to stay outwardly stoic, visibly calm. But a greater battle than anything happening below was taking place inside him as he stared at his hands.

And at the sunlight spilling over them like a flood of gold.

“Quite the spectacle, isn’t it?” the voice, smooth as silk, rich as red wine, came from behind him.

Mircea didn’t turn around.

It was appallingly rude, not to mention incredibly bad business, to ignore his client. But he couldn’t move. He didn’t know what would happen if he did. It felt like he might burst open at the seams, might start running or screaming or—he didn’t know.

He didn’t know.

So he stayed in place in their corner of the terrace, where white draperies had been stretched between columns to provide shade of a sort. It didn’t provide much. The wind was high, causing the panels to drift about like tethered clouds, splashing those below with bright morning sunlight every few moments. And making Mircea flinch despite the fact that he knew it couldn’t hurt him.

Not with his client providing shade of a different kind.

He didn’t know how she was doing it, either. He should have been burnt to a crisp by now, like the bodies found on the beach each morning by the Watch. Or transformed, like the remains of a vampire he’d seen at the condottiere’s house, stacked in a corner.

Most of the time, the Watch simply used the heavy boots they wore to crush such remains to powder, allowing them to float out with the tide. But this one must have burned brighter than most, or had landed on a patch of unusual sand. Because instead of disintegrating, it had fused into a strange conglomeration of rock and ash and pale green glass, glittering in the candlelight.

Mircea had stared at it for a long time while waiting to be questioned. In places, it had reminded him of a fossil he’d found as a boy: a ridge of bare, blackened ribs protruded from the rock on one side, a hand, still bone-pale, lifted as if in supplication on the other. But the rest was more like an opal, fresh dug from the dirt, with beauty gleaming through in odd places.

A perfectly preserved ear was encased in a bubble of natural glass. Splotches of what looked like gold leaf had adhered to the pitted surface, which Mircea had finally identified as the remains of a line of buttons. And then there was the face . . .

Like the ear, the features had been oddly preserved, although not by a bubble. They looked more like they had turned to glass themselves, not green but chiseled obsidian, darkened from the ash that had settled into them. As if the vampire, whoever he had been, had died lying face down, not even wanting to catch one last glimpse of the sun.

Mircea had been unable to understand that kind of passivity. Of lying there, waiting for a dawn you would never see to come and take you. Of letting them win, these forces that had stolen his life from him, and that now seemed determined to take what was left.

Or to use it, for their own purposes.

“Are you feeding from me?” he suddenly asked, voice harsh.

That was appalling, too, or it should have been. Mircea might be ignorant of much of vampire life, but he knew court etiquette. And one did not speak to a superior in such a way.

But if she was offended, it didn’t show.

“No.” The voice was calm.

Mircea wasn’t. His hands slid on the railing, leaving sweaty prints on the pale stone, despite the cool spring air. “They said . . . they said you can do so without me knowing. They said you can feel what I feel.”

“They say much.” The voice was clear, with no amusement that he could discern. Although right now, would he know?

“Is it true?” It was loud—too loud.

He couldn’t bring himself to care. Not standing in the sun that had so long turned its back on him. Not staring at everything he’d once taken for granted: the light dancing on the water, the iridescent flash of a hummingbird’s wings as it fed off a nearby vine, the clouds spreading over the sky like a lacy veil. The colors . . .

They made him catch his breath, so vivid as to be shocking, the shimmering underbelly of a cloud, the thousand colors of blue, green, and turquoise in the lagoon, the blush on a servant girl’s cheek. They never looked like this to him now, even after feeding. He almost wished she hadn’t brought him here. It seemed a cruel joke, to remind him, in beautiful, anguished clarity, of all he’d lost.

“There is beauty in the night, too,” the voice was softer, slightly sad.

“Not like this. Not like—” He stopped, his throat working.

“I do not need blood to feel your emotions,” she told him, after a moment. “You radiate them like the sun.”

“Then you’re getting your money’s worth,” he said, choking.

She sighed, and he heard her settle back against the pillows, the almost imperceptible slide of silk on silk, the soft chink of her bracelets. “You remind me so much of myself.”

He turned to see her stretched out on a divan piled high with white cushions. The bright sunlight behind her highlighted the faint crow’s feet she didn’t bother to hide, the honey-bronze skin that told of a mix of bloodlines, the rich emerald of the dress she wore. It wasn’t in the Venetian style, but in the more flowing, easier manner of an earlier century.

Much earlier.

He supposed it didn’t matter.

There was no one to fool here.

“We’re nothing alike,” he said, marveling that she should think so. An ancient queen and current senator, at the height of vampire society. And he . . .

Well, it would be harder to get any lower, wouldn’t it?

She smiled and made no gesture he could see, but the small boy holding the peacock feather fan behind her suddenly scurried off.

Mircea watched him go, confused. There were other people around, privileged guests strolling along the extensive terrace, the sun gleaming off their fine silks and flashing off their heavy rings as they raised glasses or gestured. As if it cost them nothing to stand in the day.

They stayed down the railing somewhat, as if sensing the sphere of his client’s power, and choosing to remain beyond it. Or perhaps it wasn’t a choice; Mircea wasn’t sure. But they were certainly not beyond the range of vampire hearing.

Yet she sent the human child away?

“No one can hear us,” she told him. “Not unless I permit it.”

“Why would you care?” he asked, still confused.

“I have a reputation to maintain,” she said lightly, and moved over slightly so he could sit.

He did so just as the crowd sent up a massive shout. They paused to look through the railings at a much deteriorated scene. The blue team’s barge was already on its side, and slowly flipped over as they watched, like a breeching whale. Not that it caused the blues to surrender. Half of them had been on the orange barge in any case, and now the rest were climbing or jumping on as well, heedless of the ruin of their fine clothes, determined to eke out a victory.

Mircea’s client lay back against the chaise and studied him for a moment, dark eyes unreadable.

“I was so angry,” she told him abruptly. “When I found out what had been done to me. Despite the fact that it had been my salvation, despite the fact that I was facing death or dishonor otherwise . . . still. So angry.”

“You didn’t choose?” For some reason, that surprised him.

“I wasn’t asked,” she said dryly. “And when I awoke, I didn’t feel saved. I felt . . . betrayed.”

She smiled lazily at his expression. “Oh, did you think you were the only one? To have hopes and dreams and plans, and to find them suddenly gone? The only one to tell yourself, ‘but I would be dead otherwise, they would be gone in any case?’ The only one not to care. To discover that being saved from the grave is a hollow victory when the circumstances conspire nonetheless to deprive you of life—the one you loved and hated, the one you cursed and adored, the one you sacrificed for, risked everything for, the one you were owed?”

He stared at her, unable to speak. Not because she was right; he hadn’t believed he was the only one. Not even before he talked to Bezio. He might have foolishly believed he’d lost more than some others, but he had never been so self-centered as to believe he was the only one in pain.

But because he’d never before heard it expressed quite so well.

Yes, that was exactly the way he’d felt, had been feeling for two years now. Betrayed. As if he’d won the battle and died anyway.

“Do you know, I had never really thought about death?” she asked. “Strange, being steeped in a culture that so focused on it. But my palace didn’t face the ancient tombs and their contents, far away in the desert wastes, but the sea. It was built on a spar of land, serene and beautiful. And in the distance, mighty Alexandria, huge and busy and overflowing with life.”

“A port city,” Mircea said, trying to keep up. “You . . . must feel at home in Venice.”

She sent him a look. “Not a port, the port—the greatest in the world, in its day. In any day. The port that made empires . . . and destroyed them.”

The liquid dark eyes looked casually around the beautiful palazzo. And suddenly, Mircea saw it as she did: small and shabby, with its statues poor copies of Greek originals, its mosaics childishly unsophisticated, its people draped in trinkets that they thought great jewels. And dwarfed, in utterly every way, by the palace that rose out of another sea, gleaming before his eyes like a great pearl.

He blinked in shock, but it only grew more vivid. Its marble columns so large four men could not have stretched their arms around them, its terraces larger than this house, their sweeping expanse overlooking a port dotted with hundreds of ships. And a towering lighthouse rising above it all, huge and gleaming white, rightfully deserving of its place among the world’s wonders.

And then, abruptly, the image was gone. Leaving Mircea reeling on the chaise, thankful that he was sitting down. And wondering if the sun had addled his brains as his client raised her head.

And looked at the elegant man that bowed to her from across the terrace.

He seemed like someone who would have fit better into that strange vision than here, Mircea thought dizzily. His skin was burnished dark by the desert sun, contrasting with his flowing white robes unadorned with jewels. He didn’t need them, not if the purpose of jewels is to draw the eye. He did that all on his own.

Mircea felt his spine tense as the eyes of a hawk swept over him. But the senator merely inclined her head. Mircea wondered for a moment how she saw the man.

He didn’t have to wonder long.

“The African consul,” she murmured. “Hassani, they call him. Hails from Persia, but spent his formative years in Cairo.”

“Cairo?” It kept coming up, although Mircea knew it only as a distant trading partner for Venice. It sent swarthy men in turbans to buy Parmesan cheeses, luxury textiles, and furs, paid for with spices, fine woolen carpets, and some of the delicate glass objects that had so influenced the artisans on Murano. But it had never been of concern to him, not being a part of the Turk’s growing empire.

“Established by a group of uncivilized Bedouin as an army base,” she told him. “It was mud brick and camel dung until they stripped the great pyramids of their facing stones, to give it some stolen beauty. But as it is in Egypt, Hassani thinks it gives us a bond.”

“And what do you think?”

Those dark eyes met his, and to Mircea’s surprise, they were brimming with amusement. “I think he matches his city!”

Mircea must have looked as bemused as he felt, for she actually laughed.

He didn’t. He couldn’t believe someone would speak about a consul in such a way, much less dare to say it a dozen yards from where he was standing. But she didn’t look worried. She also didn’t look interested, her eyes sliding off the arresting figure to the golden bracelet she wore, one of several, this one with the winged figure of a woman.

“I never thought about death,” she continued, returning to her earlier theme. “Why should I? I had been told all my life that I was a goddess descended from Isis, my conception divine. Propaganda, of course, for the common people. But when you hear a lie so often, even you come to half believe it. And while young . . . well. Do any of the young believe that they will die?”

“I didn’t,” Mircea said hoarsely. Even in the midst of battle, even with his side badly losing, he hadn’t really believed it. And he’d been proven right. He had lived, and his men with him, despite all the odds.

Only to return to die by treachery at home.

“And then I became immortal,” she said lightly. “I became Isis reborn, in truth instead of fiction. But I did not wake to the power of a goddess, did I? Nor even to that of my old self. I awoke a slave, starving, desperate, dependent.”

Mircea stared at her. Her voice hadn’t changed. It was light, with a tinge of the former amusement still threading through the words.

It was also a lie.

There was no lack of passion here, despite what he had been told. No more than there had been earlier, when she spoke of her Change. It was a fact he found frankly terrifying.

“They told me—” he began.

“They again. You must introduce me to these oracles.”

Mircea refused to be deterred. When would he have this chance again? And he had to know.

“I was told that the pain goes away in time. Not in so many words but . . . that those of us who live long enough, that we forget—”

“Perhaps I will not seek out these prophets, after all.”

“—that I will feel less,” he persisted doggedly. “That it will become easier—”

She laughed again, just as a finely dressed couple was passing by. The man looked startled, the woman actually jumped. They both hurried away.

Mircea ignored them. “Is it true?”

His client looked at him, not unkindly. But the answer was stark. “No.”

He got up abruptly and went back to the railing.

Chapter Fourteen

The battle was still raging, although the blue barge had all but sunk from view. A few pairs were fighting on its overturned hull, but with apprehensive glances at the rising waves. Mircea felt a little like that as well, as if his ship had capsized and he couldn’t swim.

“Then why did you need me?” he demanded. “Unless you cannot feel?”

“That night was a gift to my ladies, who find few amusements here.”

“Then why did they need me?”

For a long moment, there was no answer. Not that he’d entirely expected one. She had been indulging him, he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps for the novelty of it; he had the impression that there were few who were daring enough, or foolish enough, to talk back to her. But there was sure to be a limit and he had likely reached it.

And then she surprised him again.

“It is not lack of feeling,” he was told slowly, as if she was searching for the words. “You feel as much as you ever did, possibly more. But where your emotion centers, what it focuses on, often changes.”

“To what?” he asked softly.

“To whatever was most important to you in life. Other things fade, not into insignificance, but they fade. Like colors after dark. But that one thing blooms . . . like the moon against the night sky.”

To his surprise, she joined him at the railing. He doubted it was for his own benefit; if she wished him to turn around, she had only to command it. Perhaps she wanted to see the battle’s finale, too.

“My master, for instance,” she told him. “Began life as a potter’s apprentice in a small village long reclaimed by the sands. Outside Abydos, if that means anything to you, before there was an Abydos. Before . . . there was much of anything.”

Her eyes came to rest on the consul, still sitting on his throne-like chair amid a throng of hangers-on. But despite that, it took Mircea a moment to realize what she meant. “The consul . . . is your master?”

“As he is known now,” she agreed. “He was called by another name then, meaning little. And that is how he was thought of—small, insignificant, valueless. He was born into a large family, the runt of the litter, you might say. But his father dutifully found him work with a potter when he was old enough. Where he broke as many items as he made, and constantly angered his master. Eventually, famine came to the area, and no one wished to feed a useless boy. He was driven out, to fend for himself or starve.

“He did neither, as it happened. For he met something else that wished to feed.”

“Some . . . thing?”

“I do not know to this day who bit him—or what. He always said it was a god, but who can say? He never heard a name. All he could tell me was what he remembered, blurred by time, so much time. Stumbling into the wastes, just as a great sandstorm was building. It would likely have been the last of him, leaving only a pile of bones to bleach under the desert sun, like so many before and since . . . if he hadn’t met something under the stars.”

Mircea looked at the little creature on the throne. He still couldn’t see him very well, just a slightly misshapen head unburdened by hair or hat or turban, dark as a nut. And a small, bent body, wrapped in a robe so ornate that it completely concealed the form within.

He could not for the life of him manage to see him as a god. In truth, he was having difficulty seeing him as a consul. But based on how everyone was treating him, he supposed it must be true.

“And thus he Changed,” she continued. “And grew, even without a master to teach him. But something else grew, too. The old desire never fulfilled in life, now become an obsession in death. The simplest of human needs: to be loved.”

“We all want that.”

The wind picked up, ruffling the long dark hair she hadn’t bothered to bind as the Venetians did. She brushed it back, her bracelets flashing in the sun, almost blinding. “Yes, we all want that. But he wanted more. All the love. All the adoration. He wanted to be worshipped like the god he believes himself to be. He lusted after it, demanded it—”

“And still does?” Mircea guessed, remembering that strange night in the Rialto.

“And still does.”

Mircea was silent for a moment, trying to process all she’d told him. He wasn’t sure if any of it helped. All he wanted to know was that this pain, this longing, this terrible guilt he felt every time he thought about the past, was going to lessen, perhaps one day to stop. All he wanted was a reason to go on.

“I can’t give you that,” she told him, somehow knowing his thoughts. “No one can. You have to find that for yourself.”

“And what did you find?” Mircea asked, wondering how anyone could find things to live for, over such a span of time.

Her eyelids closed, the heavy malachite dust on them like brushstrokes over honey. “Many things.”

“But the first?” He was pressing and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Not like this. Not without an answer.

“The first . . . ,” she murmured. “Oh, yes. That . . . was a surprise.”

Mircea didn’t say anything. He was afraid to move, to so much as breathe. She hadn’t planned to discuss this, he would swear to it. And yet she was, for the moment at least. If nothing interfered . . .

A young couple approached, looking as if they might actually breech the sanctum, to have a word. But Mircea gave them such a glare that they hurried away again. His client laughed and opened her eyes.

“I will tell you, if you like,” she said. “But you may not find it particularly helpful.”

“I will. You said it was a surprise?”

She resumed her seat, leaning back on her elbows, looking up at him. “Yes, but not in the way you are probably thinking.”

A trumpet sounded, signifying a winner to the tournament. The other guests began to file down a nearby staircase, Mircea supposed for some sort of ceremony. He didn’t move.

Neither did his client, except to lay back against the cushions, and stretch her arms over her head. It was a deliberately sensual act, the slide of gold against honey dark skin, the deep emerald sheen over sooty lashes, the sensuous feline arch of her spine, stretching thin silk tight over full breasts.

He still didn’t move.

A smile teased her lips.

“It was a surprise in that it wasn’t about me,” she told him. “For a decade, I had been consumed by my lost ambitions, my old dreams, my pain. To the point that I couldn’t see anything else. Not even the people right in front of my face, who needed my help.

“And, frankly, the woman I had been wouldn’t have cared. Once, I wouldn’t have thought that a single life, even a rash of them, mattered in comparison to my ambitions. Once I thought that people lived to serve me, to worship me, to die for me. Once, I acted like the goddess I never was, not the queen I should have been.”

Mircea didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t expected such blunt honesty. He supposed the fifteen hundred years she was rumored to have lived, which he hadn’t believed until today, would give a person a chance for self-reflection. He wondered what clarity it would give him.

And then he almost laughed; he’d be lucky to make it to thirty.

“Nothing really changed after death,” she continued. “I was too sunk in horror at what I had become to learn anything. And too angry to have managed it even had I not been. I was consumed by thoughts of revenge, on the enemies I had had in life, on the creature I was forced to call master, on anything and everyone. I was sinking into the depths of the angry madness that consumes so many of us, and there seemed nothing that could change that.”

“But something did.” It was out before Mircea could stop it, and he wished he could have bitten his tongue off as soon as the words left his mouth.

But she merely looked at him, amused, letting her eyes drift over his features. “A decade or so after my Change, a vampire was brought into court. Or dragged, I suppose I should say. She was filthy, ragged, half mad, but not a revenant. A Finder had brought her in, looking for a bounty. Nothing surprising there—until he made it clear that he expected to get it from me. I asked him why, for I had put no price on anyone’s head, much less a strange girl’s.

“He said he thought I would like my daughter back.”

“Daughter?” Mircea frowned. “But you said a decade . . .”

“That was my question. I wasn’t powerful enough to make a Child, was still one myself. I am not sure at the time that I even knew how. And I was furious with this pale reflection of life, as it seemed to me then. Why would I have tried to force it on another?”

“Then she was lying.”

“She did not appear to have enough mind left to lie. But we would have thought her mistaken—had she not borne the family mark.”

“The mark?”

Dark eyelashes fluttered, and her head fell back. “Dear gods, so young. I am going to pay for this.”

“My lady?”

She sighed and shook her head before lifting it to look at him again. “All vampire families have an . . . energy pattern . . . visible to us if we concentrate. It’s part of the blood bond. Our master’s blood animates us, therefore we bear some of his power. In time, as ours grows, our pattern differentiates from his, remaining similar, but not the same. When we make a Child, they gain our pattern, and eventually form their own from it. Likewise, the humans we take as servants, if they are important to us, are marked, so that everyone knows to which family they belong—and who will avenge them should they be harmed. Even a Child traded to another family will always bear a memory of our mark alongside his new master’s.”

Mircea blinked. “Do . . . I have a mark?”

“No. You are masterless. Cursed?” she guessed.

He nodded abruptly.

“Then there was no one to give you power, no one to mark you.” Her eyes narrowed on him. “There is no pattern I can see, but the color is pale flame. It may turn white in time. You are too young to tell, at this point.”

Again, she shook her head ruefully.

“But this girl had a mark?” Mircea persisted.

She waved a hand, making her bracelets clink. “It was indistinct, muddled, as it often is with the very young. But it was there. That is why the Finder who ran across her believed her story enough to make the trek all the way out to see us.”

“Then someone in the family had made her.”

“Someone, yes. But no one stepped forward to claim her.”

“But I thought the mark—”

“None of them matched.”

Mircea thought. “Then perhaps one who had died—”

“The family had lost no masters recently, not in more than fifty years. And the girl was clearly younger than that.”

Mircea wrinkled his forehead. He usually liked puzzles. But this one . . .

“But she also did not match your pattern?”

She shrugged. “I was young then, too. And my energy pattern was so weak, it was impossible to say if the girl’s matched it or no. But I assure you, as I did them, that even had I been able, I had made no Child.”

“So a mystery.”

She nodded.

“And the girl could tell you nothing?”

“We tried questioning her, but she was delusional, her ravings that of a madwoman. She just kept calling me master and saying that she had been looking for me. And screaming and trying to attack anyone who came near me. I nonetheless kept her at court, waiting for my master to return from a trip, in order to ask him about her. But it became increasingly difficult to control her. She ran away one night, fleeing into the desert after a fit.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. I never saw her again.”

“Then . . . that’s it?” Mircea asked, confused.

She smiled. “Were you expecting something more dramatic? I am sorry to disappoint you. I could tell you stories that would be more so, but you wanted the first.”

“And . . . that helped you?” He didn’t see how.

But she nodded again.

“It did, yes. It was a brief interlude, but for the first time since the Change, I spent energy thinking about someone else. Worrying about her, even. Trying to help her. I failed, but the process reminded me of a time when I had lived in a whirlwind of action, instead of brooding about my room. It also forced me to speak with many people about court who I had never before bothered to meet. Individuals, in some cases, centuries older than I, with more knowledge than I had ever known existed. My search didn’t give me the answer to my question. But it made me think . . . that someday, I might perhaps find one.”

Mircea thought about that, and found it both useful and not. Useful, in that it highlighted something he’d already vaguely understood: that those who succeeded at this life had more than raw power. They had something to live for. Something so compelling that it made them willing to struggle on, despite whatever obstacles were placed in their way, rather than take that early morning walk along the beach.

And not useful, because he wasn’t sure that he had anything similar himself.

He looked up suddenly, to find her watching him. Her expression was unreadable, but he didn’t need it. She’d been more generous than he could possibly have expected, almost . . . kind . . . although he didn’t understand it.

“Why did you tell me this?” he asked, half in wonder.

“My ladies and I knew that you were young, but not so young. It is often hard to tell, with those newly Changed. We guessed . . . wrongly. And assumed you had reserves that you did not.”

“Then . . .” Mircea took a moment to get his head around the idea. “Then this is an apology?”

A fine eyebrow went up. “I never apologize.”

“Then why help me?”

“I am aware that perhaps sometimes I should do,” she laughed, and pulled him down to her.

Chapter Fifteen

“I don’t think you’re cut out for this lifestyle,” someone said, as Mircea swam groggily back to consciousness.

He blinked his eyes open, not that it helped much. All he saw was pillow. Until he flipped over—and damn, that hurt—and saw a cracked mug instead. One that was dripping cold, clear, wonderful water onto his upturned—

Mircea grabbed the thing desperately and drained it dry before he bothered to look around. “Why is that?” he finally croaked.

“Well, one thing would be, every time you go out, you almost die.”

Mircea managed to focus his eyes enough to see Jerome sitting on the foot of his bed. At least, he thought it was Jerome. “What did you do?” he asked, staring at the man’s head.

“It’s the latest thing,” Jerome told him, pausing to admire himself in the small convex mirror over the washstand. “What do you think?”

“That it looks like you’ve lost your damned mind,” Bezio said, from the doorway.

“I wasn’t asking you.” Jerome sniffed, and looked expectantly at Mircea.

Mircea thought it looked like a terrified poodle had climbed onto the vampire’s head. And died. Because, in place of his former sleek locks, Jerome now sported a wide shock of frizzy blond hair, with a shaved neck that virtually forced the two sides to stick out like, well, like a dog’s ears.

“Isn’t it fun?” Jerome asked.

“It’s . . . stunning,” Mircea said truthfully, and rolled out of bed. And went to his knees, but not because of blood loss. But because—

“What happened to me?” he whispered, wondering why everything hurt. And then he caught sight of himself in the little mirror and just stared. For a moment, he was terribly afraid he was about to be told that this was also “the latest thing.”

“I told you,” Jerome said patiently. “You almost died again. You need to stop doing that.”

“I’m sure he’ll keep that in mind,” Bezio said dryly. He looked at Mircea. “You really don’t remember?”

Mircea shook his head, and then immediately regretted it. His skin felt too tight, and looked it, too. It was also slick, shiny, and bright red. If he hadn’t been a vampire, he’d have thought he had a bad sunburn.

But that was clearly absurd.

“I could explain but . . . I’m not sure I could do it justice,” Bezio told him. “It’s better if you see it.”

“See what?”

Jerome laughed, and slid off the bed. “That’s right! He can watch it with us. Come to Marte’s room when you get dressed,” he told Mircea. “But don’t wait too long. It’s about to start!”

They left. Mircea gingerly walked over to the wash basin and repeated the performance of the previous day. The water felt as good as it had then, better even. And without the need to breathe, he could keep his whole face in the cool, cool liquid, waiting for it to stop feeling like it was going to combust.

The gown was secured by a jeweled clasp on each shoulder. Mircea didn’t bother removing them. He pushed the material aside, impatient, greedy, suddenly ravenous. And found sweet, firm flesh that pebbled under his tongue as she arched up, heedless of the nearby crowd.

Possibly because it was no longer there.

A glance showed him the final guests heading down the stairs, glasses in hand. A few paused to look back at them, and then to whisper something to each other, before hurrying away. To join the crowd beginning to assemble in the gardens below, as the contest drew to an end.

He decided he didn’t care.

“There’s to be a ceremony,” she said, as he slid the dress off the other shoulder.

“You’re going to miss it,” he told her.

Coral lips curved. “I’ve had ceremonies.”

He stood up, efficiently stripping off his cioppa, the short velvet robe worn over the doublet on formal occasions. Too efficiently, as it happened.

“Slower,” she told him, as he threw it over a nearby table.

He stopped, realizing what she wanted.

And an insane, mischievous urge caught him. He slowed his movements to a crawl, undoing the several dozen small buttons on his doublet with excruciating deliberateness. He then carefully folded the expensive garment, so that the tiny jet beads on the embroidery were inside and protected, before finding a spot for it on the table with his robe.

His client watched him through lowered lids, and said nothing.

He toed off his shoes, biting back a smile, before carefully lining them up beside the chaise. He decided they weren’t quite straight, and nudged them into line with a silk-covered toe. Better.

The shirt he left in place, the mass of embroidered linen as long as a tunic, the extra needed for pulling through the slashes in the doublet. The belt and hosen were easily dealt with, but he stretched out the process, being as careful with them as Paulo could have hoped. He was still dithering about, trying to find the best way to fold a garment that was in no way square, when he heard bracelets clink.

And looked down to find a beautiful face—and yes, it was beautiful, how had he ever thought otherwise—staring up at him from a few inches away.

And then the shirt was torn in two, leaving him wearing only a few scraps of expensive linen.

“I thought you wanted a show,” he said, in mock protest.

“I’ve had shows, too,” she said, and jerked him down.

Mircea surfaced, hard enough to send a plume of water splashing against the wall. It left a large mark on the old plaster, which he watched soak in as he tried to summon the memory again. It didn’t work.

The last thing he recalled was being pulled down onto the chaise. And catching his breath at the implication that she’d had shows but not him. And his immediate resolve to correct that deficiency.

He stood there for a moment, naked, dripping, and quivering in frustration, waiting for more. Which stubbornly refused to come. He scowled at his reflection, but stopped because it hurt. Even tiny movements did. Not too surprising, since the sunburn or whatever it was had not been confined to his face.

Mircea twisted in front of the small mirror, frowning. If it had been the sun that left him like this, shouldn’t his face be the worse off? Or his hands? They’d been exposed for far longer, after all. But they were actually less of an issue than the back of his body, which was several shades darker and far more painful than the front.

He looked like a pig on a spit that a careless servant had left to roast for too long without turning. He hadn’t blistered, or if he had, his body had already taken care of it. But he understood why he’d been sleeping on his stomach.

He finally started dressing, using the shirt from his red outfit in place of the one designed for the black. It matched well enough, although he was certain Paulo would notice the difference. Not that Mircea would have cared if he could just remember—

The smooth, olive-skinned body was draped in acres of shimmering silk, so diaphanous that it might have been merely a glittering cloud. It concealed well enough when bunched together, but offered tantalizing glimpses of the treasures below whenever she moved. Or stretched, or arched up shamelessly, destroying the last of his resolve.

Mircea feasted on the silken purity of a long throat as he worked his way through the excess fabric. “I hadn’t planned . . . on this today,” she laughed, as he fumbled with her belt.

“But you did . . . plan on it,” he said, still kissing her, as the stubborn thing finally came free.

“It crossed my mind. When you’d recovered.”

“I’m recovered.”

“So it would seem,” she murmured, pressing up against him. “Your mistress fed you well.”

She hadn’t, but Mircea didn’t feel the need to point that out. Or anything else, for that matter. Not when the gown parted, revealing, as he’d suspected, that she wore nothing underneath.

He paused a moment, transfixed by the smooth, olive-skinned body, the full breasts, the dark nipples, the small waist.

And the long, shapely legs that parted to allow him room between them.

Mircea knelt beside the chaise, his lips finding the taut flesh of her inner thigh. And moving up in a slow, dragging caress. She was like honey warmed in the sun, he thought dizzily: sweet, fragrant, and, finally, liquid.

She arched up at his every movement, flagrantly passionate, directing him with her body and the soft sounds she made where she wanted him to go. Mircea followed the hints, gave her what she wanted, but it was so goddamned hard. Hard to go slow, hard to wait for the gradual buildup of passion when he was already there, hard to enjoy part of her and not have all of her.

He didn’t want to go slow. He wanted to make love in the sunshine, as he hadn’t in so long. He wanted to feel alive again, just for a little while. He wanted to find out if such a thing was even possible.

He wanted . . . he wanted.

He growled and moved closer, hands gripping her hips, his body sprawling half over the chaise in his eagerness. He heard her laugh above him, and then felt his head being pulled up to meet a pair of amused dark eyes. “Enjoy it,” she murmured. “Next time is on my terms.”

He didn’t understand what she meant by that, but for some reason, it sent a shiver down his spine.

But the “enjoy it” part he understood perfectly.

“Are you coming?” The voice was jarring, and unwanted enough that Mircea snarled as he spun toward the door.

Jerome jumped back, blinking. And then stayed where he’d landed, hidden partly behind the door, with just his head protruding around the jamb. His usually big gray eyes were huge.

Mircea put a shaking hand up to massage the bridge of his nose, but jerked it away when that hurt, too. He stood there, panting, for a moment, in pain. And frustrated enough to have punched through the damned wall.

He wasn’t sure what he believed about the Divine anymore, after all that had happened to him, but he knew there was a God.

Because He hated him.

“I—it’s just—it’s starting,” Jerome squeaked. And then scampered away, like a frightened rabbit.

Mircea stood staring at the door for a long moment. And at nothing else. He finally sighed and finished dressing, pausing to run a comb through his hair briefly before following after the smaller vampire out the door.

He tried to call up the scene again as he navigated down the narrow, twisting stairs: blue, blue sky, soft breeze, drifting curtains letting through glimpses of dazzling sunlight.

Although not as dazzling as the sight spread out below him.

Dark hair spilled out around her, a sort of reverse halo. Sunlight glistened off skin that looked like it had been oiled, soft and supple and begging to be touched. She stretched invitingly underneath him, the ripple of lean muscle under golden skin made liquid by sunlight.

The sight was almost painful.

But she wasn’t ready, wasn’t even close, and Mircea had never hurt a woman. He didn’t intend to start now. So he stayed in position, shaking, breathing hard, eyes searching the small area fruitlessly.

Until a pot of some sweet-smelling lotion appeared as if my magic beside his hand.

He didn’t know where it had come from; didn’t care. He accepted it gratefully, using his teeth to pull out the cork. He spilled it out quickly with shaking hands, smoothing it over his quivering shaft.

“Hurry,” his client ordered. And Mircea’s brain, which was clearly attempting to ruin his life, threw up a comment wondering what had ever happened to slow.

He ruthlessly suppressed it, but her lips twitched anyway.

He responded by sliding a gentle, seeking finger into her wet heat.

He was rewarded with a small gasp, and an undulating arch that took more of that finger inside herself. He swallowed and added a second, and a bone-deep shiver went through her, before he felt her deliberately relax around him. Allowing him to stroke deep inside, to hear her groan as he touched just there, to feel her hips shift and rotate as he began a slow circular caress over the sensitive spot, pleasuring and stretching at the same time.

He drew back and added a third finger, before beginning to thrust carefully, seeing sweat begin to gather and glisten in the hollows of her throat, between the full breasts, down the center of the taut stomach. His need was now great, to the point that he was shaking with it, but he continued until she began to rock harder, arching up to meet every thrust, her breath making low growls in her throat. Until the growls finally formed words.

“I’m not going to break. Do it.”

Mircea didn’t need to be told twice. He slid smoothly into her, trembling with the effort of restraint, his hands curling over her hip bones, pulling her onto him. She gasped and tightened convulsively around him, and he bit his lip, struggling for control. Before drawing back with agonizing care and then thrusting forward, a little harder than at first.

The sensation tore through him, as much mental as physical. For two years, he had been dead, in every sense of the word. He had thought he would never be anything again, never do anything. That he had been cursed to a hopeless existence, little more than a shade, doomed to walk in darkness, cold and alone for whatever time he had left.

And yet here he was, making love in the sunlight.

It seemed impossible; it seemed absurd. But he could feel it on his shoulders, like a rich mantle. Could taste it on the warm air that blew over them. Could see it glisten on a few strands of his hair as they blew in the breeze. And in the sheen in her eyes as she looked up at him, knowing and strangely compassionate. He uttered a choked cry, and made another thrust, more powerful yet, bringing his hips up tight against her.

She met him hard, with a hot, needy stare that destroyed the last of Mircea’s composure. He began to pump furiously even as his eyes slid shut, allowing him to savor the tight, slick friction of their joining. He knew he was going to finish fast, but he couldn’t seem to hold back anymore, driving his need and wonder and pain and joy into the body beneath him.

She bared her neck for his kisses, her fingers tangled in his hair, freeing it to curtain their faces as she pulled him down again. Their mouths fastened hungrily on each other as she writhed beneath him. Her tight heat pulsing around him in a way that was designed to take him over the edge.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, against his throat. “Finish for me.”

And Mircea did. Bracing himself above her and thrusting with all his strength, feeling some cold, hard knot inside him crack and break as he neared release. And then burst apart when he came, along with the rest of the world, vanishing in a shock of heat and light and all-consuming fire.

Chapter Sixteen

“Mircea?”

His foot slipped out from beneath him, and Mircea felt himself falling. But he was too disoriented to stop before the floor did it for him. He landed in a sprawling heap at the bottom of the stairs, which would have been bad enough.

But then he looked up to find Bezio standing there, frowning at him. “You all right, son?”

Mircea didn’t reply for a moment, dizzy with the impact, half blind from the sudden lack of sunlight, and preoccupied with feel of her moving beneath him, the scent of her in his nostrils, the taste of her on his tongue. And then that burst of light, as if the sun had exploded around them . . .

And then nothing.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember a thing beyond that point.

“Mircea?” Bezio was starting to sound worried.

“I . . . don’t know,” Mircea replied unsteadily. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

Bezio put out a hand. “Then come and find out.”

That would have been easier, if half the house wasn’t already crowded into a large suite at the end of the hall. Even Cook was there, along with several of the other servants, sitting on stools they’d brought up from the kitchen. But most were on the massive bed, where Marte was holding court amid a flutter of silks and feminine laughter.

“There’s always room for a few more!” she called gaily, as they entered the room.

And then he and Bezio were being pulled into the throng, amidst a lot of good-natured groping that, in Mircea’s case, hurt like hell. But he finally found a spot near the center of the bed, beside the hostess. Bezio seemed fine with that, considering that it left him with an armful of buxom redhead in the form of Zaneta, her henna dyed locks fitting perfectly under his chin as she rearranged herself.

“Snuggle up any closer and we’re going to have a problem,” he warned her, as she settled between his legs.

“That’s not what I call a problem,” she laughed, and deliberately pushed back against him.

He gave a leer, but didn’t try to move away. Although that could have been because a pert blonde named Bianca was snuggled up right behind him, on her knees so she could see over his head. Which left said appendage firmly ensconced between two pert breasts barely covered by a piece of pink silk.

“All right there?” Mircea asked him sardonically.

“I’ll make do,” he said, and leaned back, making Bianca laugh.

“You keep that up, I’m going to charge you,” she warned.

“Alas, I haven’t any money. But perhaps we can work out a trade,” he offered, looking up and waggling his eyebrows.

“That’s what I charge for,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder, which had no effect at all that Mircea could see.

“All right, all right, settle down,” Marte called, from Mircea’s other side. “It’s starting.”

“What’s starting?” he asked, understanding no more than he had upstairs.

“Not that way,” she sighed, and gripped his head, turning it from her to the wall opposite the bed.

Or, to be more precise, the huge mirror that took up half the wall.

Despite everything, Mircea stared at it in surprise. The mirrors at home were like the one in his room: small pieces of convex metal, usually brass or occasionally silver for the wealthy, that had been polished to a high shine. It wasn’t until he came to Venice that he’d seen actual glass mirrors, although they, too, were usually small and at least somewhat distorting.

This one was flat. And huge. Enough to reflect the image of almost the entire bed.

And the rube gaping at it from on top.

Mircea shut his mouth, and slowly noticed that the flat surface wasn’t entirely so. Tiny lines showed where smaller pieces of glass had been fitted together to make a massive square, almost floor to ceiling. He flushed at the thought of what use Marte might have for such a thing, but he was already so red that nobody noticed.

“Why are we looking at your mirror?” he asked Marte, trying not to sound as off-kilter as he felt.

Only to have the item in question answer for her.

The surface suddenly rippled and changed, as if a pebble had been thrown into a pond. And when it coalesced again, Mircea wasn’t looking at a bunch of expectant faces on a bed. But at a bunch of expectant faces by a pier.

He swallowed, partly because the sudden, unexpected movement had made him dizzy. But more because he’d seen that pier before. He’d seen that whole scene before: the blue, blue sky, the bright, sunlit sea, the manicured grounds of an elegant palazzo.

He just didn’t understand how he was seeing it now.

“What—” he began, just as a voice began talking in rapid Venetian, too fast for Mircea to have any hope of keeping up. It wasn’t anyone on the bed; wasn’t someone he knew. He looked around, tensing—

And realized that it, too, was coming from the mirror.

And now he was able to catch a few words: “much-awaited,” “excited crowd,” and then “tragedy.”

“Never say they’re not going to show the whole thing!” one of the girls piped up, disappointed. “I wanted to see the clothes!”

“They’re showing highlights,” Marte told her. “But I’m sure they’ll—there. I knew they’d show the gallery. They always do.”

“Ooooh!” A feisty brunette named Besina practically crushed Mircea while trying to get a closer look at something in the mirror.

It was a woman strolling along a covered colonnade, the kind the Venetians called loggias. It ran along the front of the palazzo the consul was using, and overlooked the sea. A number of onlookers had gathered there, who Mircea hadn’t been able to see from the terrace above.

“What are those—oh. Golden bees,” Besina said thoughtfully, as if making a note of the raised embroidery on the woman’s silver gray satin dress.

“Oh, oh! Look at that one!” A blond Mircea didn’t know crowded him on his other side.

Marte shot her a look, but the girl was too enthralled to notice, staring with unabashed lust at a maroon velvet gown. It had a golden net of embroidery that reached from the wearer’s waist to bodice, and then continued on beyond the fabric all the way up to the woman’s neck. The embroidery over skin look was created, Mircea assumed, by some type of lace effect.

“Jacopo told me that couldn’t be done, the bastard,” she muttered.

A crimson gown that looked like patterned cloth was appraised next, because the “pattern” was intricate gold embroidery over every square inch of cloth. And then a dark blue velvet with golden ram’s heads embroidered into the shoulders in high relief. And then a pale blue satin so encrusted with pearls as to be stiff even when the woman wearing it walked.

There were others, causing oohs, and aahs and, occasional “what was she thinking”s out of the girls. Mircea barely noticed, because Bezio had pulled him back within earshot. “Stunned me the first time I saw it, too,” the older vamp murmured.

“How are they doing this?” Mircea whispered, in wonder. He was looking at a picture, clear as day, of the day. More specifically, of earlier this day. He recognized some of the people who had been at the regatta, and the throne, yet to be occupied out on the pier, and the decorations and banners ruffling in the wind. He just didn’t understand—

“It’s some kind of spell,” Bezio told him. “Some of the people at an event agree to have it placed on them, so that we can see what they see. It lets those of us who can’t walk in the day experience some of what happens while we sleep.”

“A . . . spell?”

“Stole it from the mages,” Bezio affirmed. “I don’t know much more about it, but it seems to work. And they say they can put it on any—”

He broke off as the scene tilted and juddered. And did an odd hopping bounce for an instant that had Mircea’s head bobbing, too, as if trying to compensate. And then suddenly soared upwards at an alarming rate, as if headed straight for the brilliant sun overhead.

Mircea gasped, and several of the girls gave out little shrieks. Which turned into not-so-little ones as the scene abruptly turned and banked and rushed straight down again. Sending several of the girls tumbling to the floor, and Mircea himself clinging to the bed as if it had tilted, too.

“Oh, I hate it when they do that!” someone said.

“What is it?” Mircea demanded, looking about frantically, surprised to see that the room wasn’t moving, too.

“They put the spell on a bird,” Marte laughed. “Oh, I love it!”

“I don’t!” Zaneta said, looking through her fingers as the bird soared out over the lagoon. “It makes me seasick!”

“You can’t be seasick on land, silly,” Marte told her.

“I can if my stomach says I can!”

Mircea stopped listening, being too fascinated by the dips and turns of the bird. And by the size of the mirror and their closeness to it. And by the spell, which was so amazingly lifelike, that he almost felt like he was flying, too.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, and then he laughed. “It’s wonderful!”

And it was. A view he’d never thought to see opened up underneath him, truly a bird’s-eye view of brilliant water that shaded from deep indigo out at sea, to paler shades closer to shore, to sunlit aqua right on the beach; of the clouds, which seemed close enough to touch; and of tiny, tiny ships far below, which he knew to be huge barges. . . .

It was enough to take his breath away.

And then the bird dove, in a single, heart-stopping plummet that had girls clinging to him on every side and Bezio chuckling and Mircea having to clamp his teeth on a delighted scream. Only to land on the edge of a roofline, in a flutter of wings and small, reaching feet. And have the vast panorama suddenly replaced—

By a fat lizard?

The creature took off just as a flashing beak reached for it. Leaving the group on the bed treated to an up close, scurrying chase along the edge of the roofline for a few dizzying seconds, until the scene changed again. To a slightly harried-looking vampire waving his hands in the air.

Until he noticed that whoever was controlling the view was now looking at him.

He smiled a little weakly, and then the scene flashed to a view of the house that must have originated from near the end of the pier.

“There’s Mircea!” Zaneta squeaked, grabbing his shoulder. “Look! There you are!”

She was pointing at a small upper section of the mirror. Where, sure enough, Mircea saw himself standing next to the balcony railing. And thankfully not looking as gormless as he’d expected.

“Look at you!” Marte laughed, hugging him. “You look like a senator!”

“Standing in sunlight,” someone said from the door.

Mircea looked over to see Auria, wearing a beautiful blue satin robe. It was a good choice with her auburn hair, which had been allowed to tumble freely down her back. It didn’t do anything to help the expression on her face, however.

“She used some sort of shield,” Mircea said.

“Obviously.”

“It . . . must not have worked too well,” he added, gesturing at his face.

“It worked a little too well, if you ask me,” she said, and abruptly left.

“Don’t mind her,” Marte told him. “She’s just jealous.”

“Of what?” Mircea asked, confused.

“Of what, he asks,” Marte said, rolling her eyes.

“Shh, shh!” one of the other girls said. “It’s starting!”

Mircea looked back at the mirror, but it looked more like it was ending to him. Suddenly, there was a crowd of people at the end of the dock, the ships were out in the center of the lagoon, and the battle was well under way. What had taken perhaps an hour in real time had been sped up considerably.

Or shown intermittently, he supposed, because the next scene, along with more rapid talking, was of the blue team’s barge in the middle of capsizing. And then another jump, to things that Mircea had never seen, or at least not noticed. The blue barge sinking completely out of sight, the orange barge rocking madly back and forth, threatening to overturn as well with all the tumult now taking place on top of it. The orange team finally deciding to take the initiative and begin shoving the blues into the water, and then starting to row away.

This led to the slightly comical effect of a trail of blue, and some orange, combatants trying to swim to catch up to the fight. Or flailing about because they didn’t know how. Most of the latter soon began flailing toward shore instead, along with more and more of the former, as they realized that they’d been left behind.

The orange team’s shouts of triumph could be heard as far away as the pier, where the latest point of view seemed to be located. The cheers of the crowd only added fuel to their enthusiasm, and they began waving and shouting back. And then someone made the decision to do a victory lap around the lagoon.

“This is it,” Marte said, gripping Mircea’s arm, maybe because she realized that he couldn’t follow the increasingly rapid commentary coming from the mirror.

Only Mircea didn’t see what “this” could possibly be.

The fight was over. The orange team had won a decisive victory, and must have even succeeded in throwing the rest of their blue opponents overboard. Because they weren’t even fighting anymore.

They were lining up along the side of the boat, with more standing atop the covered section near one end of the ship, threatening to capsize their own craft as they sped about the lagoon. Only the rowers managed to keep it counterbalanced enough that the rest of the team could wave and call and lean precariously over the side, trying to catch the flowers being thrown at them by enthusiastic spectators, some of whom were running through the water, trying to catch up to the ship as it passed just outside the shallows.

“Idiots,” Marte murmured. “But then, who knew?”

“Who knew what?” Mircea asked.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” she asked, amazed.

Mircea shook his head mutely, barely able to hear her over the now truly deafening roar of the crowd. As the barge passed each clump of viewers, either on shore or in the flotilla of ships that had dropped anchor in the bay, the cheers grew louder, the jumping, waving crowd became more enthusiastic, and the victors turned more dramatic. Until someone among the latter brought down the flag they flew, a black standard with a coiled silver serpent in the middle, and sent up one fashioned from the team banner that had graced the side of their craft.

It had gotten soggy from the fighting and splashing and almost capsizing, but it didn’t matter. Not with the large amount of orange team members climbing up to join the crew on the covered area, and holding the banner out for all to see. It was a beautifully embroidered piece of orange silk, with fringe as long as a man’s forearm. The embroidery and the fringe were both gold and flashed blindingly bright in the sun, like the broad smiles on the victors’ faces.

And like something else, which suddenly gleamed in the sky overhead.

Mircea couldn’t see it clearly, couldn’t see much of anything, because the mirror abruptly whited out. As if the person guiding it had suddenly decided to stare straight into the sun. Which wasn’t far from the truth, he realized, when the image returned.

But with a very different scene.

The victorious barge was now gone. In its place was a gutted, smoking hull, still moving through momentum toward the flotilla of boats. Which were just sitting there, not even trying to get out of the way, the onlookers appearing frozen in place by shock.

They didn’t stay that way for long.

Some dots in the water surfaced, in some cases floating motionlessly on the waves, but in others screaming, pleading for help. Help which several of the ships made tentative motions toward giving. Until something gleamed against the clouds again, bright as a mirror in the heavens, or a diamond flashing in the sun.

And then a ripple of heat tore through the air, turning the nearest would-be rescue ship into a tower of flame.

Chapter Seventeen

The crowd in the room watched the gruesome events play out in complete silence. Unlike the crowd on the docks, who screamed, almost in unison, as everyone broke out of the frozen shock that had briefly rooted them in place. And started to run.

Suddenly, richly dressed people were jostling, fighting, and scrambling back down the dock, heedless to the damage to their fine attire. Or to their persons. Or to other persons who happened to be in the way.

Clothes were ripped, flesh was clawed, and fists connected to vulnerable noses. A number of the dainty sex were knocked to the ground in the confusion. Only to jump back up, snarling, because there’s no such thing as a dainty vampire. As they demonstrated by jerking their attackers, and anyone else they could reach, behind them. Or, in a few cases, knocking them off the side of the pier entirely. The person controlling the spell was one of the latter, who was sent flying by some woman’s elbow.

Luckily, he landed in the soft sand beside the dock.

Unluckily, he thereby demonstrated a faster exit to the increasingly panicked crowd.

The view juddered again and again as he was half trampled by a flood of people leaping in front, beside, and in a few cases, on top of him. And then it blanked entirely when his face was smashed into the sand by someone’s clumsy foot. For a minute, Mircea was afraid that they would see no more.

But then they were treated to an inverted, death mask impression of a face carved out of sand, and then to a grainy, up-close view of the panicked beach as the man raised his head. Mircea knew it was a man because a pair of male hands had become visible, grabbing the wet sand ahead of him. And then throwing it behind him, startling the crowd enough to give him a brief second of respite.

Mircea assumed he would use it to run like everyone else, and just hoped they would see a few glimpses of what was happening as he looked around. But he seemed more dedicated to his job than Mircea had expected. Instead of trying to flee, he dropped to the ground out of the main path of the escaping horde, and then rolled—under the dock.

It was low to the ground, leaving him with only a few feet of clearance above his head, even when lying down. And visibility was poor due to the lack of light, and the bodies jumping down on either side, blocking the view. But there were flashes between the running legs and swirling skirts, and bright sunlight that streamed down from tiny cracks in between the boards, striping his, and thus their, view. But it gave enough light to see by as his eyes adjusted.

After a moment, he began to crawl. Giving them first a view of overgrown weeds, then of waves hitting the beach, and then, finally, of the open ocean as he reached the end of the dock. Where a gap in some reeds showed a scene of utter chaos on the water.

Three of the ships packed with partygoers were now aflame, with the others in full flight. Or trying to be so. But like the people on the dock, many of whom could be heard still running and thumping around above the watcher’s head, they were all trying to leave at once. Resulting in almost as much damage as the strange sunbolts were doing.

Mircea watched as ships scraped the sides of each other’s hulls, ran into each other in mid-flight, and became tangled in one another’s anchor lines. People shouted commands and, in some cases, boarded other people’s ships to argue their point, where miniature versions of the official fights quickly broke out. And all of this amid a forest of oars that sprouted here and there, as rowers tried to push off from the surrounding vessels, only to find that there was nowhere to go.

Then a fourth ship went up like a candle.

A few vampires managed to jump free of the exploding hulk in time to avoid being completely incinerated. But the sight of burning flesh and flying debris was enough to cause complete panic. All of a sudden, the ships were forgotten, with people abandoning them to jump into the water in all directions, not caring if they were facing land or not, just so they distanced themselves from what looked like the wrath of an angry god.

It wasn’t far from the truth, Mircea realized, as the watcher turned his eyes up. To where a small creature could just be seen through a knothole in the boards, still sitting on his throne. Alone except for a phalanx of bodyguards he clearly didn’t need.

His face was visible now, and it was nothing like the rest of him. His body was small, bent, unassuming. Other than for the fine robes he wore, Mircea might have mistaken him for one of the beggars that flocked to Venice in festival season. But the face . . .

“He’s something like five thousand years old,” Marte whispered, into Mircea’s ear.

“Five—” Mircea twisted his head to look at her. “Paulo said three.” Which had been hard enough to believe.

“Paulo is wrong. They say he was born before the pyramids, if you can believe it.”

Mircea thought about the senator’s comments on the reliability of the mysterious “they,” but didn’t voice them. Because he also remembered her saying something else. Something about her master existing “before there was much of anything.”

Mircea stared at the small creature, trying to wrap his head around that kind of age. It didn’t work. He’d never even thought in terms of such a stretch of years before. But if he had . . .

That face might have been what he’d have imagined.

It was the color of old mahogany, but burnished, like petrified wood. It had high cheekbones, a nose that would have done a pharaoh proud, a high, intelligent forehead, a square jaw, and a resolute chin. But none of those were what had Mircea’s skin feeling as though it would like to crawl off his body.

No, that was down to the eyes.

Huge and dark, they glittered under heavy brow ridges like black diamonds, flooded with power. Mircea wasn’t there anymore, and even if he had been, the events he was seeing were long over. He knew that, reminded himself of it strongly. And yet . . . he felt the power of that gaze.

Across space, across time, he still felt it. In the suddenly heavier air in the room, like a storm had blown in. In the nervous twinges that crawled up his spine, the ones that felt a lot like fear. In the pressure that seemed to be pinning him to the bed, holding him down.

He fought against it, forced his limbs to respond, but they were sluggish. As if they knew he couldn’t stand against something like that, even if he didn’t. The senators’ combined aura had been frightening, that night in the Rialto. But this . . .

“If he isn’t a god, he should be,” Mircea muttered.

“A vengeful god,” Bezio said, from behind him. “Look at him—he’s enjoying it!”

There was no denying it. The eyes might hold millennia of accumulated power, but they were full of something else, too. Excitement, joy, even glee as he watched the spectacle, one there was no doubt at all that he was causing. The same light that glittered in the heavens was reflected in those terrible eyes, and every time they flashed, the screams intensified.

Mircea was suddenly glad he couldn’t see what else was happening.

“They say he can magnify sunlight,” Marte told him unnecessarily. “Concentrate it in one area. Like a child holding a shard of glass over an anthill.”

“Yes, but we’re the ants!” Bezio said, as the chaos on the water finally reached the shore.

New screams broke out, and the view shifted as the watcher jerked his head around. And allowed them to see a dozen or more of the orange team struggling up on shore. No, Mircea thought, gripping the bed coverings, not now.

“No, no, run!” one of the girls by Marte yelled. And then looked around, embarrassed, because of course they couldn’t hear.

“What the hell were they doing?” Bezio exploded. “Did they want to die?”

“They must have been the ones knocked clear before the catastrophe,” Paulo said, from near the headboard, his usually pink complexion pale.

“That doesn’t explain what the damned fools are doing there now!” Bezio said, as vampires waded or crawled out of the sea, onto wet sand. “They could stay under the waves, try to hide, at least!”

But they weren’t hiding. They were standing. Or kneeling in a few cases, looking about in confusion. As if wondering where their reception was. They’d just won, hadn’t they? They’d just defeated their rivals and won the acclaim of their peers, along with bragging rights for the next two years. Plus whatever gifts the consul had in store. Yet all they saw were fleeing people, expensive banners trodden in the grass, and an almost deserted pier.

Almost, but not quite.

“They couldn’t swim,” Mircea said, his lips numb, because he knew what was coming. “And with no air in their lungs, they wouldn’t float as easily as humans. They probably walked along the bottom.”

“They don’t know,” Zaneta said shrilly. “My God, they don’t know! Why doesn’t somebody get them out of there?”

That’s why, Mircea thought, as what looked like the breath of a dragon rippled through the air, from right above where the watcher was hidden. It flooded his view, giving the whole scene an ironic underwater quality for a moment. Ironic, because through the distortion, they saw the first survivor flare up like a Roman candle.

He burned with a brilliant fire, in a strangely beautiful column of incandescent light. But he didn’t burn for long. A moment later, what had been a living being guttered out in a flutter of ash, leaving nothing but an ugly mark on the sand.

Zaneta screamed, others gasped, a few cursed. But Mircea sat transfixed—horrified, but unable to look away. Even as columns of fire bloomed everywhere, catching the suddenly running vampires as they scattered across the sand. Like ants under a shard of glass, Mircea heard again, as one by one, they were picked off.

And so were the stragglers in the water. For a moment, the sky was filled with twinkling stars, and the air was filled with crisscrossing bands of deadly heat. And they didn’t seem to care what they caught in the search for their elusive goals.

Water boiled in spots, sending up vast geysers of steam into the sky. An olive tree, in between the consul and one of his victims, was bisected, the incinerated leaves falling around the burning trunk. The mast of one of the ships was likewise sliced clean in two, before falling over onto another ship, setting several of the passengers aflame in the process.

And then there was the palazzo.

Marte’s hand tightened on his shoulder, hard enough to hurt, as one of the enhanced sunrays suddenly sheared off from the rest and struck the building. Or no, Mircea realized a moment later, it struck something on the building. Specifically, on the terrace, where a dome of energy crackled and spit under the sudden attack.

Crackled and spit . . . but held.

And then the watcher, whoever he was, decided that dedication was one thing, but this was starting to look more like suicide. He looked around frantically, left and right, making his audience dizzy. And then he took off, scrambling like a crab underneath the dock as far as he could fit, and then crawling out the opposite side and sprinting for who knew where. Because the images blanked out briefly, before shifting back to the bird’s-eye view, likely the only one left.

But even the bird wasn’t sticking around. The group on the bed received one last skewed view of smoking ships, fleeing people, and crackling bursts of power. . . . And a lone senator standing at the terrace railing, dark hair flowing in the wind, staring expressionlessly down at her master.

And then the spell abruptly winked out.

Chapter Eighteen

A few minutes later, Mircea was lying on the slope of the roof, staring up at the vast array of stars overhead. Marte had broken out the wine as soon as the broadcast ended, and everyone else had seemed ready to hunker down for a good gossip. Or a good sketch in the case of some of the girls, who had wanted to get the dresses down while they were fresh in their minds.

“Life goes on,” Paulo had said cynically, watching them. Before he left with the cook, to inform the servants that they’d be dining alone tonight. It appeared that everyone else had lost their appetites.

And so had their clients, apparently. A few long-term patrons would be seen individually later on, but the majority of the clientele had found other things to do tonight. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, business would resume as usual. In fact, Marte had said that she expected a rush of people eager to reaffirm their status among the living in the most primal way possible. But for tonight, the house was as quiet as it ever became.

Although not nearly enough for Mircea.

He had declined the wine party, to cries of disappointment from people eager to pick his brain for juicy details. He didn’t have any details—they’d just seen more than he had—and he’d needed to get away. From the stuffy, too full room, from the babble of conversation that had immediately broken out, and from the questions that swirled in his mind.

Although the latter hadn’t proven possible.

He had a thousand questions, but not about the orange team’s blunder, which seemed to be what everyone else wanted to discuss. Despotism was apparently one of those things that outlived the grave, and while the attack had been shocking, it had not been all that surprising. At least, not to him.

Perhaps the victors had been caught up in the moment. Perhaps they hadn’t thought about how it would look. But ripping down the banner of a five-thousand-year-old madman with delusions of godhood in favor of your own was not a healthy choice, any way you looked at it.

No, it was other questions that were bothering Mircea. One in particular that wouldn’t leave him alone, even though there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. But his brain didn’t seem to know that.

And his brain wanted to know: Why had the consul gone after his own child?

And he had gone after her—there was no doubt of that. Perhaps he had intended to pass it off afterwards as a mistake, something done in the heat of the moment, a single bolt gone wild. But it hadn’t been a mistake. Not unless Mircea was supposed to believe that it just happened to take place in the instant when she was most distracted, in the one moment when anyone would be least likely to be on guard?

Not to mention that he’d seen the accuracy of the creature’s other blows. He’d picked off single vampires under the water a third of a mile away. He could control his gift with frightening precision.

And he had deliberately sent it against her.

But why? There had been no provocation on her part that Mircea had noticed. Even if her master’s overweening pride demanded that she be on hand to witness the ceremony, it hadn’t begun yet. And in the end, there had been no ceremony, had there?

By the time he was finished, there had been no victors left to crown.

In any case, if her presence was expected, Mircea doubted she would have been lingering on the terrace with him. They’d had all day for a dalliance. There had been no reason for it to take place then unless she assumed she was free to do as she liked.

No, she hadn’t provoked it. And there had been no fleeing orange team members on the rooftop. So why the attack?

The only time he had seen the two of them together had been at the Rialto, when she’d helped to curtail the consul’s idea of fun. But surely, he wouldn’t kill her for that? For chasing off a few street urchins?

Unless it wasn’t the first time. Unless she’d made a habit of trying to rein in his excesses. Unless . . .

Mircea shook his head in frustration. He didn’t have enough information to know. But he knew one thing: That attack hadn’t been meant as a warning. It had been meant to kill, and it had very nearly succeeded.

His hand crept up to his still burning face.

Very nearly.

The window beside him suddenly opened and Bezio’s curly head stuck out. They looked at each other for a moment, not saying anything. Then the older vamp sighed and climbed out.

He didn’t ask if Mircea wanted company. Or wine. He just set a decanter on the grimy old tiles, pulled the stopper, and filled one of the two glasses he carried, the delicate stems looking strange next to his work-callused hand.

Mircea took the wine. He told himself that it was because Bezio couldn’t pour his own until he’d passed over the other glass, but in truth, he wanted some. Useless, as far as taste went, and it certainly wouldn’t get him drunk. But tonight . . . tonight he needed a drink.

They sat in silence for a while, the quiet city becoming quieter as candles were snuffed out in more and more windows. But there was still plenty of light from the arc of stars blooming overhead, the Via Lactea as the Italians called it. Not that they relied on it to light their way.

Man-made lights softened the darkness in patches all along the horizon. As they would most of the night in some quarters. The Venetians stayed up later than his own people, who preferred to be indoors as soon as the sun went down.

He’d often wondered how vampires managed in the old country. Where could you go, after dark? There were scattered taverns, of course, and a few inns and bathhouses in the cities. But for the most part life stopped at dusk.

His people knew what walked in the night.

But he’d heard stories, even as a boy, of a different world. A world where night burned as bright as day. A world of wonders.

His hometown of Sighisoara, and later his father’s capitol of Târgoviste, were both important trading centers. And Venice was one of his country’s main trading partners, with an insatiable appetite for Wallachian grain and meat, honey and wax. In return, the fleet of ships they sent each year brought beautiful cloth, luxury goods, and the finest of weapons. One of his earliest gifts from his father had been a Venetian crossbow, made in the famous Arsenal shipyard.

And, of course, the sailors on the ships had talked, as sailors always do. And the merchants who dealt with them had carried their tales back to dull Sighisoara, with its high walls and looming fortress of dark gray stone. To enchant a little boy with tales of a different kind of city.

A city with no walls, no guard towers, and no battlements. A city lying open and gleaming among the sapphire waves, like a glittering jewel. A city said to be the richest in all Europe yet protected only by the sea—and by its fantastic fleet of three thousand ships, a wooden wall stronger than anything built out of stone.

They spoke of a city so clean that it seemed to gleam in the sunlight, washed clear of the scents he was used to by the daily tide. A city of lacy pink stone palaces built in the Byzantine fashion, so light they appeared to float on the water, their arches picked out with real gold leaf. A city of warm winds and flowering vines and wealth beyond his wildest imaginings.

A city that never slept.

Wide-eyed, he’d listened to tales of masked balls taking place in brilliantly lit palazzos that shed ribbons of light onto dark water. Of gaily decorated barges and flotillas of smaller boats that ferried partygoers in between them. Of banquets to rival those of old Rome, with so many courses that the diners couldn’t possibly finish before midnight. Of firework displays that turned night into brilliant day.

He hadn’t believed most of the stories, of course, assuming that they were being exaggerated to entertain him. Arsenal couldn’t produce a ship in a day—everyone knew that took months! And a few silt mounds at the mouth of the Po River couldn’t support a population of 150,000—only Paris had so many! And the peasants, was he really expected to believe that they ate beef, and sugared sweets, and had paintings decorating their houses?

It was absurd.

It had been a shock, then, to find out that not only were the stories true, but that he hadn’t been told the half of it. Venice was a city unlike any other in the world. And a vampire’s dream.

Or it should have been.

Mircea drank wine.

Along with the abundant nightlife, there was the plus of having a constant stream of people coming and going. Carnival lasted nearly six weeks, from the day after Christmas to Ash Wednesday, and other feasts and saints’ days dotted the calendar, well into the summer. And even in the “quiet” months, merchants and sightseers came and went, along with sailors from the thousands of ships that used the harbor each year.

There was no need to drink from the same person twice. No need to fear anyone suspecting you. Add to that the fact that Venice was the most diverse city in all of Europe, the most cultured, the most urbane . . .

If ever a city was designed for his kind, it was this one.

And yet what had he found when he finally arrived? Not a dream but a nightmare. And one that, apparently, never ended.

Mircea had spent two years believing that it was his weakness that kept him constantly wary, perpetually afraid. He had assumed that those of his kind who were able to gain enough wealth and power could insulate themselves from that sort of thing. He had clung to the hope that perhaps, if he somehow managed to survive long enough, he, too, might find some kind of peace.

Until tonight had shattered that last illusion, and left him reeling.

“No one person should have that much power,” Mircea said harshly, finally breaking the silence.

Bezio shot him a glance over his wineglass. “That’s something I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

Mircea frowned at him. “Why?”

“Didn’t your father have that much power? Don’t nobles in general? They make the wars; we fight ’em. It’s how the world works.”

“This wasn’t a war.”

“People died.” Bezio shrugged. “For one man’s whim. Call it what you will, it’s the same to those poor bastards on the shore—or what’s left of them.”

“It wasn’t a war,” Mircea insisted, more strongly. “You called it rightly—it was a whim. The jealous whim of a madman who wanted all the applause, all the adoration, for himself.”

Or one who wanted an excuse to remove a problem, he thought darkly. Could the consul have killed all those people, dozens of them—people who had assembled to honor him no less—just as an excuse to attack one of his senators? He didn’t know, but he grimly decided it was possible.

In fact, knowing court politics, it was more than possible.

“And your point is?” Bezio asked.

“That no one should have that much power! Yes, people die in war, but at least it has to be debated, nobles have to be convinced, supplies assembled, negotiations made for safe passage for an army. . . . A hundred chances to turn back, to rethink—”

“Which no one ever does.”

“Some do. And even when they don’t—” Mircea shook his head. “At least there’s usually some point to it. That was slaughter today. Senseless, thoughtless, a useless waste of life! What will become of us if this is the best we can do?”

“What becomes of the humans?” Bezio asked cynically. “They slaughter each other all the time, yet they stumble on, year after year—”

“But don’t you want to do more than stumble?” Mircea turned to him abruptly, enough to make the old terra-cotta tiles underneath them shift dangerously. “To be more than what we were?”

“Careful, son,” Bezio said. “Or we’ll finish our drink in the drink.”

“I don’t want to be careful!” Mircea said passionately. “I’m tired of being careful! Of hiding in the dark, of waiting . . . for what? To continue in death the same patterns I knew in life? To see centuries come and go and the same stupidity repeat itself?”

“As opposed to?”

“Something new, something better! We have all eternity, and this is what we do with it? Refine our cruelty?”

“Seems to be a popular choice,” Bezio said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Mircea didn’t smile back. “We should be better,” he insisted. “We could be better.”

“Not with that creature on the throne,” Bezio said, suddenly serious. And so softly that Mircea could barely hear him. Even right beside him, even with vampire hearing.

Because Bezio wasn’t stupid. And he was afraid. So was Mircea, and he was sick to death of it.

He just didn’t know what to do about it.

Chapter Nineteen

Business was still slow the next night, although that turned out to be a good thing. Mircea laid his head back against the doubled towels behind him, letting his body relax into water hot enough to have scalded a human. To him, it just felt good, the steam rising all around him and wafting into the cold night air, making patterns as it twisted and turned and eventually dissipated among the stars, far above.

He could see them because he wasn’t bathing in the kitchen. The cook/housekeeper had decided to use the slowdown as an opportunity to give everything a good scrubbing—and that had included the new arrivals. They had been banished to the sugar house, where large tubs had been set up in the overgrown main hall, with orders to get clean.

This part of the house was largely roofless, thanks to being gutted by the fire, although a few blackened pieces of flooring still jutted out here and there. But mostly, it was open up four stories, where large gaps in the roof allowed the stars to shine through. It was a calm, beautiful, idyllic scene.

Or it would have been.

If not for one small irritation.

“What about this one?” Jerome switched out the contraption on his head for another, equally as extravagant.

Mircea closed his eyes and sighed. He’d run out of things to say three, or was it four, options ago. Unlike Bezio, apparently, who had just come in with two more pitchers of steaming water.

“I think it looks ridiculous,” Bezio told him, setting one of the pitchers down on the overgrown ground.

“I don’t recall asking the water boy,” Jerome said.

“Oh, is that so?” Bezio removed the hat to dump the contents of a pitcher over Jerome’s blond frizz.

Jerome went under, the shock causing him to lose his footing and his head to disappear under the waterline. He came up sputtering, and mad as hell. “Now look! I have soap all in my hair!”

“Easily remedied,” Bezio told him, and poured on the other pitcher.

Jerome had a good deal to say about that, but Bezio wasn’t listening. He’d finished his voluntary service for the night, and stripped down, scrubbing himself all over before settling into his own tub with a deep sigh of heated bliss. Jerome eventually tapered off and resumed perusing a somewhat stupendous hat collection, which he had dragged out of the main house and put on a table beside his tub.

Mircea had no idea why.

He decided he didn’t care and settled in for an enjoyable soak.

Despite Jerome’s initial fears, the usual method of bathing at the house was of the sponge variety, done over the basins in their rooms with one of the “scented waters”—liquid soaps gentler than those used for laundry—that were popular in Venice. But once a week a full bath was required—and very much appreciated, in Mircea’s case.

He never ceased to be amazed at the ingenuity of the Venetians, who had settled on salt marsh flats with no source of drinking water, the kind of place that would have been lucky to support a fishing village. And yet they had built an empire. Although they never would have done it if some genius five hundred years ago hadn’t come up with a way to use the town squares for rainwater collection.

The rain drained through channels in the slightly sloping stones of the thousands of courtyards spread throughout the city. And from there into central marble grills, below which was a thick layer of fine white sand. The sand cleaned the water as it slowly filtered through, and directed it into a well. Like the one that had been built in the courtyard of his new palazzo by the sugar magnate.

It gave Martina’s house all the clean water they could use, and all the baths that anyone wished to take.

Not that everyone seemed to appreciate the luxury.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Bezio asked sleepily, only a few moments later.

Mircea cracked an eye to see Jerome trying to climb out of his tub.

“I’ve had enough. I’m turning into a prune!” Jerome told him.

“I just finished bringing out the hot water.”

“I bathed in cold.”

“Liar. You were busy trotting out all those things,” Bezio waved at the colorful array of headgear. “Although why you were, I have no idea.”

“It’s my new hair,” Jerome said, stopping to grab one of the pitchers of cold water the servants had left by each tub, and made a face. “I can’t wear half my hats now.”

“And that matters because?”

“Because of those tiny rooms they gave us,” Jerome said, busily rinsing off. “Paulo said I can’t buy anymore hats until I clear out some of the old ones. So I have to decide which ones to keep.”

“I can help you with that. None of them.”

“You wouldn’t know fashion if it bit you on the ass,” Jerome said, frowning at him from under dripping bangs.

“I know you couldn’t pay me to wear that,” Bezio said, nodding at one of the more bizarre specimens, near the table’s edge.

It was round and brown and made of felt. Fairly standard except for a much wider brim than was usual in Venice. But it redeemed itself with a deep fringe around the edge in a bright, screaming yellow, which shimmied whenever the wearer moved.

“I bought it off a sailor—” Jerome announced proudly.

“Who saw you coming.”

“—who said they’re all the rage in Portugal.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Heads turn when I wear this hat!”

“Yes. In horror.”

“Shows what you know.” Jerome scrubbed his wiry mane with a towel. “I saw another man with one in the Rialto the other night.”

“So the sailor duped two of you, did he?”

Jerome made a face and looked at Mircea. “What do you think?”

“I—” Mircea stopped, searching for something that was neither an insult nor a lie, while Bezio smirked at him. “I would keep it over that one,” he finally said, nodding at easily the worst offender on the table.

But Jerome frowned. “Really?”

He picked up a hat with no brim but with a greatly exaggerated crown. It was called a sugarloaf, after the shape of the cones of sugar Europe imported from the east, and had to be almost two feet tall. It would have looked ridiculous even in black.

But of course, it wasn’t.

“My eyes,” Bezio said, only half jokingly, and disappeared under the water.

Coward, Mircea thought, as Jerome turned to look at him. “You don’t like it?”

“I—it’s not that.”

“It came all the way from Burgundy,” Jerome told him. “It’s really rare.”

Bezio glugged something underwater that was thankfully indecipherable.

“It’s . . . certainly . . . bright,” Mircea said.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Jerome looked pleased. But then he frowned. “But after yesterday, I don’t think orange is a smart choice, do you?”

“Probably not,” Mircea said gratefully. “Perhaps it would be best to set it aside for now.”

Jerome sighed, and relegated the terrible thing to the empty side of the table. Of course, that still left the other side piled high with a mound of the small brimless caps popular in Venice, several chaperons, with their surfeit of cloth copied from eastern turbans, and more than one six-sided Spanish cap cut out of velvet. There had to be a dozen in all.

“Why do you have so many hats?” Bezio demanded, emerging from the water like a bearded Aphrodite.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Jerome said, picking up the orange thing again and patting the felt. “There was a cappellaio—a hat maker,” he added, for Mircea’s benefit, “who set up shop just across from the apothecary where I worked. Every day, I had to sit on a damned stool with a wonky leg, grinding ingredients for hours, until the fumes made my head swim and my arm felt like it was going to come off and I was practically hunchbacked. And the whole time, in and out they went, right across the street—rich young men in velvets and furs, spending more on some small accessory than I’d make in a month.”

He smiled at the hat, and put it back in the pile with the others. Making a grand total of zero in the discard pile. Not that it mattered, since Mircea couldn’t see how he’d afford a replacement.

Of course, he didn’t see how he’d afforded these, either.

“Where did you get the money for all these?” Mircea asked, somewhat in awe. They’d only been here two weeks.

“My clients. Where else?”

“But . . . I thought Martina keeps that money.”

“She keeps the fee, yes,” Jerome said. “I’m talking about the tip.”

“The—”

“Gratuity? Emolument? Thanks for a good time?” He paused, a bright crimson hat in hand, to narrow his eyes at Mircea. “Don’t tell me you didn’t get one?”

“I—”

“You were with a senator!”

“Well, yes, but—”

“What did you do?” Jerome demanded accusingly, as Sanuito came in, carrying a tray of oils, pomades, and lotions.

“I . . . nothing.”

“Well, that would explain it!”

“No, I—” Mircea stopped, wondering why he was defending himself. Or even discussing this. “Everything was fine,” he said stiffly.

“Fine,” Jerome rolled his eyes. “That’s a ringing endorsement.”

“Maybe she just forgot,” Bezio offered.

“Then he should have reminded her! Admired some jewel she was wearing—she might have given it to him. Or mentioned how much he liked one of the outfits the men had on. Something.”

“Did you see what happened?” Bezio asked. “He was almost killed!”

“Better to be almost killed and rich, than almost killed and poor,” Jerome sniffed. “Auria says never let them get away without giving you something.”

“Auria.” Bezio shook his head.

“What? She’s rich—and she’s right. You want to be poor all your life?”

“So the senator should have stopped after all that to find some trinket for Mircea?”

“No, but she could have sent something over, couldn’t she? She’s had a whole day.”

“She did give me something,” Mircea said, finally managing to get a word in edgewise.

“What?” Jerome perked up. “Show us.”

“You already saw it.” The blond looked puzzled. “The sunlight. We . . . met in sunlight,” Mircea said, finding it hard to put into words what that had meant to him.

Particularly with Jerome rolling his eyes again. “Sunlight. Yes, that will buy a lot of hats.”

“I don’t want hats!”

“Well, whatever you do want.”

“I don’t want anything!”

Jerome sighed. “You,” he said seriously, “are a terrible whore.”

“Thank you?” Mircea said, just before the hall was flooded by a bevy of non-bearded Venuses, who weren’t wearing much of anything else, either. And what little they were, they doffed and started scrubbing down, their intentions to join the men made clear.

And there was no way that many were going to fit in Jerome’s abandoned tub.

Mircea hastily grabbed a sheet.

“Cook said you boys slipped off for a soak,” Marte said, testing the water temperature with a look of appreciation.

“What’s the matter?” Zaneta asked, watching Mircea get out of his tub. “There’s plenty of room.”

“I’ll say,” Bezio said, smiling appreciatively.

“Don’t—no. No, no, no, not the hats!” Jerome said, as a couple of giggling girls splashed about, climbing into his tub. “Don’t get the hats wet!”

“I’ve finished,” Mircea answered Zaneta, managing to grab one side of the hat table, to help Jerome move it back, while still holding up his sheet.

“You just started,” Bezio complained, accepting an armful of attractive redhead. “Why did I drag all that hot water from the kitchen?”

“I’m sure it will be appreciated,” Mircea told him.

“You’re a strange man,” Bezio sighed, as a pair of soft arms grabbed Mircea from behind. And pulled him back into a softer embrace.

“There’s plenty of room in my tub,” Besina whispered in his ear.

“Another time,” Mircea said, trying to pull away.

And failing.

“I’ll even scrub your back,” she promised.

“It’s scrubbed!”

“Aww, he’s shy,” one of the other girls said, as he extricated himself with difficulty.

“Or infatuated,” Marte teased. “Never fall for your clients, pretty boy.”

“I’m not a boy,” Mircea snapped, before realizing that that was exactly what a boy would say.

She laughed, and leaned back against the side of Mircea’s abandoned tub. “Prove it!”

The chant was taken up by the other girls, one of whom tried to tug off his towel. Mircea somehow managed to extricate himself from that, too. And then grabbed a jug of water and made a hurried exit, to rinse off in privacy.

“Come back,” they laughed, calling after him. “We were only joking!”

“I’ll prove it, girls,” he heard Bezio offer.

“Oooh, manly man,” someone said, followed by more laughter and several whistles.

Mircea found a corner of the courtyard and rinsed off, still annoyed. Not at the laughter as much as the accusation. It was infuriating for a number of reasons, not least of which that it wasn’t true.

The senator was . . . intriguing. Dangerous. Erotic. It was hard to completely define her, since he’d never met anyone remotely like her. But it wasn’t infatuation he felt when they were together. Under other circumstances, he’d have almost called it . . .

Respect.

He paused a little at the revelation, surprised. But it felt right. It had taken him a moment to realize it, simply because that wasn’t an emotion he’d ever thought to feel for a woman.

Not that he’d hadn’t respected women in the past, but it had been of a different kind. Admiration for their beauty, their compassion, their way of lighting up a room when they walked into it. For their ability to add grace and gentleness to a world that desperately needed more of both.

But for all that, it wasn’t the same kind of respect as he’d give to a man—a fellow warrior or a canny ruler. For women did not fight and they certainly did not rule. Not in Wallachia, and not in most places in his old world.

But in the new . . .

From what he’d seen so far, it seemed that the women in the vampire world had as much influence as the men. He supposed the difference between the sexes seemed less important when either could make a Child, and when power was no longer determined by the size of one’s body. And alone among the elite of his new race, she hadn’t run.

Mircea saw her again, standing at the railing, in full view of one who had just turned a bevy of master-level vampires into powder. And staring him down. Daring him to make the attack overt, and declare them open enemies.

And the consul had backed down first. If he hadn’t, Mircea doubted he would be here, since he had no illusions about his odds of surviving a battle between those two. Unless, of course, she had.

And, somehow, he didn’t think she had.

Chapter Twenty

Mircea had just finished rinsing off, and was trying to find a dry spot on the sheet to use as a towel, when someone handed him one. He turned to see Sanuito in the doorway, holding more towels and a sadly depleted tray. But the girls had left a few items, which he offered silently to Mircea.

Mircea dried off and then knotted the towel around his waist while perusing the contents. There were the usual perfumes that the Venetians put on everything from gloves to linens to shoes to themselves: rose water, orange water, jasmine, and lemon. A bit of scattered makeup, which was used in Italy by men as much as women, who rouged their cheeks and dyed their hair to look younger. And a pot of some noxious smelling ooze that Mircea quickly passed over.

He passed on most of the rest, too, but accepted a tooth powder and a mouthwash, both flavored with cinnamon, and a cloth and toothpick to apply the former.

For some reason, Sanuito lingered, glancing back over his shoulder, Mircea assumed at the beauties splashing around in the tubs. They’d brought torches with them and placed them in the few old sconces that still clung to the walls. And the flickering firelight reflecting off beads of water and glistening young flesh and wicked grins was enough to hold any man’s attention.

But when he turned back around, his expression wasn’t what Mircea would have expected.

“Can—can I get you anything else?” he asked, voice low.

“No, thank you.”

He glanced again over his shoulder, the firelight on one side of his face making his pockmarks stand out starkly. Then he turned back to Mircea and spoke hurriedly. “I—they say you’ll see her again. Is it true?”

“See who?”

“The senator.” His voice was barely a whisper now. “Will you?”

“I’m not sure,” Mircea said slowly, wondering why Sanuito cared. “I think she might have more important things to concern herself with, just now.”

“I know, but—”

“Sanuito!” one of the girls called to him from the house.

The vampire jumped, and then looked quickly back at Mircea. “But you might?”

“Yes, I suppose it’s—”

“Then you’ll need this,” he whispered, shoving something into Mircea’s hand. And then he ran back inside without another word. Leaving Mircea holding the pot of nasty-smelling substance.

And wondering what the hell.

“He’s like a frightened rabbit, isn’t he?” Someone laughed.

Mircea looked up to find Marte silhouetted in the doorway, the firelight behind her making the thin yellow robe she’d put on almost superfluous. For a moment she looked like someone else, a siren with slanting almond eyes, heat reddened lips and a body that explained why she merited one of the house’s finest suites. But then she moved into the garden and became just Marte again, of the dimpled smile and bouncing curls and tinsel earrings that caught the light.

And Mircea’s attention.

“It was you,” he said, startled.

“Probably.” She grinned cheekily. “Depends on what ‘it’ is.”

“You fed me. The night after . . .”

She dimpled. “Drop the towel and maybe I’ll tell you.”

Mircea did a double take, and then stared at her, outraged. And she dissolved into peals of laughter. “Oh, ye gods, oh help,” she said, leaning against a low stone wall and gasping.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, love, you’re always funny. You just don’t realize it. Which is half the fun.”

“But it was you,” he persisted. He’d assumed that Martina must have changed her mind and come back, but Martina didn’t strike him as the compassionate type. And she didn’t wear tinsel earrings.

“And single-minded, let’s not forget that,” Marte added wryly. “You know, you could have a much better time if you’d just . . . unclench . . . a little.”

Mircea just looked at her.

She sighed again and rolled her eyes heavenward. “Yes, I fed you. Don’t you remember?”

“Not very well. I was—”

“Bad off,” she said bluntly. “I don’t know why Martina didn’t get me earlier.”

“Martina?”

“She fetched me—from under a client, no less! I thought she was exaggerating, until I saw you.” She cupped his chin. “Poor baby.”

He covered her hand with his, and then brought it to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

She smiled again. “You know, a few more years of experience, and you’ll be devastating.”

“If I have those years, it will be due to you,” he said, amazed that she could dismiss saving his life so easily. “Although I don’t understand why Martina didn’t just help me herself.”

“No one knows why Martina does anything,” Marte said. “Least of all me.”

She used a flowerpot as a step up, and seated herself on top of the low wall, heedless of the fine silk of her robe.

She had painted toenails. The sheer decadence caught him by surprise. Although not as much as when questing, naked toes slipped beneath the waistline of the towel.

And goosed him.

“Stop that!”

She laughed. “If you really wanted me to stop, you’d move away.”

He promptly started to, only to have her hook both feet around his backside and pull him in. He ended up with a nice view of a taut stomach and pert breasts under the thinnest of silks. But it was the feet sliding up and down his thighs, pushing at the boundary of the towel, which was making it hard to concentrate.

Even in Venice, a city where it wasn’t unheard of for dresses to be cut low enough to bare nipples, feet were still properly covered up. A flash of ankle was scandalous, an unshod foot, particularly on a young, attractive woman, unheard of. And the Venetian women knew it, wearing ridiculously high platform mules when they went out. It was ostensibly to keep their skirts out of the street, but in reality to showcase what was locally agreed to be the most erotic part of their bodies, albeit still properly covered by thick stockings.

There would have been a riot over this, Mircea thought, as a certain body part predictably perked up, pressing against the stone between her legs.

“Mmm, very nice,” Marte said, as if she realized she had him trapped.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, looking up into amused dark eyes.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Let’s see. It’s a cool night. There’s a warm, fresh-smelling boy in front of me.” Her feet jerked him closer. “I get urges.”

He braced his arms on either side of her. “And do you always follow your urges?”

“Mostly.” She smiled impishly. Probably because she’d just managed to pull the towel free in back. “You know, I was wrong. I like you clenched just fine,” she said, as she explored the territory in question.

Mircea pressed hard against the stone, to keep the rest of the towel in place. And because he didn’t have a choice. Reawakened from a two-year drought, his body was ravenous, and Marte looked good enough to eat.

And tasted it, too, when she thoughtfully bent down, putting wine-colored lips within reach. They were plump and sweet when she pressed them against his for a moment, before sliding them down to the chords in his neck. “Mmm. Virgin territory,” she murmured.

“Hardly.”

She chuckled, and mouthed his Adam’s apple. “I meant, she didn’t bite you.”

“Who?”

“Your senator, of course. Who else?”

“No.”

The lips paused against his skin. “Well. We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

She pulled back and looked at him. And for once, the brown eyes actually appeared serious. “If she doesn’t bite you, she isn’t hooked. She’s just playing with you.”

“Isn’t that the idea?”

A slender eyebrow went up. “The idea is to engage her emotions. Make her want it. Nuzzle her neck. Let her feel your heartbeat against her skin. If she doesn’t get the idea, put your mouth on her, just over the pulse—”

“You expect me to take her blood?” Mircea asked, incredulous. One didn’t even do that to an equal without permission. He’d never heard what the penalty was for feeding—or attempting to do so—from a senator.

But he could guess.

“Not unless you’re tired of living,” Marte confirmed dryly.

“Then why—”

“Who said anything about blood?” she asked. “Or teeth? Use your lips. Taste her skin. Roll her heartbeat under your tongue. Let her feel your need grow, your hunger. If she doesn’t object, start to suck—without teeth. Raise your own bloodlust; make her feel it. If you’re lucky, your need will ignite hers.”

“And if it does? Say she bites me. Then what?”

“Then, my dear, you might have just won yourself a patron—and a powerful one.”

“You sound like Jerome.”

“Yes, I heard what he said to you. He has a point.”

“For him, maybe. I don’t want money—”

“This isn’t about money,” the voice sharpened. “If you play your cards right, this could be about a master.”

“I don’t want a master, either.”

“You want to take advantage of your opportunity, while you have it,” Marte snapped.

Mircea looked at her, confused and a little angry. “I think that’s my affair—”

“Yes, and a hash you’re making of it. Look at Auria. She’s been waiting for a chance like this for the better part of a century—”

“Then perhaps Martina should have sent her,” Mircea said stiffly.

“Perhaps she should,” Marte said, and then sighed when he started to turn away. A small hand found his shoulder, and turned him back. To where a rueful smile greeted him. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I like you. I don’t want to see you ruin this for yourself.”

“I’m not.”

She shook her head, hard enough to make the curls bounce. “You are, you just don’t know it yet. Like you have no idea how fortunate you’ve been; no idea what a patron like that could do for you.”

“I can make my own way.”

“You can’t.”

“You seem to be doing all right.”

“Seem being the word,” she responded, and there was no humor in her face this time. “That’s all any of this is, Mircea. All any of us are—an illusion. We wear fine clothes, live like our betters, tell ourselves we don’t have to be like all the rest. That we don’t need a master; we’re better, more capable, more independent than that.”

“Maybe we are.”

“We’re not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The illusion can be stripped from us, all of it, anytime, with no warning. Merely for angering the wrong person.”

“There are laws—”

“Yes, and how well did they protect you?”

Mircea had no answer to that.

“The only law our world understands is power. You either have it, or you’re under the protection of someone who does, or you are defenseless.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I lived like that for two years—”

“Two years. Try two hundred. Try forever,” Marte said, her eyes dark. “We live on sufferance, and we toady, and we crawl, and we take whatever they dish out because we know, and they know, that we don’t have a choice. Most of them pay us, but they don’t have to. Most of them don’t hurt us, but they can. We know it, they know it, and it colors everything between us, every thought, every action, every emotion. Everything . . . that might have been.”

Mircea didn’t ask who she was thinking of when she said that. But he did put a hand on her shoulder—and had it abruptly shrugged off. He still wasn’t used to that, to just how strong frail looking women could be when they were also vampires.

Angry ones.

“This isn’t about me,” she told him heatedly. It took him aback, because he’d never seen that expression on Marte’s gentle face. “Right now, everything you have, everything you are, should be concentrated on one thing. Don’t waste the opportunity because it came too early, and then spend the rest of your life regretting it!”

“I don’t know what chance you think I have,” Mircea said, more quietly. “I’ve seen her all of twice—”

“Exactly. And the second time never would have happened if you hadn’t intrigued her. Now you just need to pull her in. Remember, a plaything can be cast aside, forgotten like the momentary amusement it was. But a lover . . . stays with you.”

Chapter Twenty-One

A lover stays with you.

The cottage was swathed in darkness like the rest of the tiny village, except for the pale, formless mass hovering above it, softly lit by moonlight. The smoke from cook fires streamed out of chimneys and straight up into the air, becoming indistinguishable from the low hanging fog. To the point that it looked like they were creating it.

There was no other light, except for the little golden rectangle of a doorway.

And the two people silhouetted within it.

No. No, he didn’t want to do this again. He didn’t want to see this again. Mircea struggled, trying to move.

As always, it didn’t work. He didn’t have the strength to rise during the day, unless someone much more powerful was aiding him. Not even for long enough to throw off a dream.

It left him trapped inside his head.

And with his memories.

Mircea couldn’t see inside the room behind the softly talking couple, other than for a red flicker from the rough stone hearth. But he didn’t have to. He could close his eyes and let his newly sharpened senses paint the scene he knew so well.

There were scents of wood and smoke, of fried pork fat and cabbage rolls, of wet leather from her boots. There were traces of the sweet grass and flower sachets she made up in summer, the sharp bite of a mug of plum wine, the scent of basil from a pot she kept in the window to keep it growing in the colder months. In spring, it would be on the cracked earth just outside the door, the traditional sign that the owner was awaiting a visit from her lover.

A lover who would not come.

But he could see it—God, so well. He could see himself walking over the crunching snow and fallen limbs, ducking under the low lintel not made for someone who topped six feet, and into the one room where he felt at home anymore. He could see the heavy woven hangings that covered the walls, in the warm hues that were her favorites. The bright copper and earthenware pots that hung from the rafters. The old table that sat near the hearth, protected by a cloth she’d embroidered herself and covered by a fragrant meal.

There were touches of him in there, too. A bright red kilim rug he’d given her took pride of place in the room’s center. And, as usual, it had the fold marks from where it had been hurriedly spread-out and placed on the newly scrubbed floor just before he arrived. At all other times, it resided in an intricately carved wooden chest, another gift, well away from spills and dust and dirty feet. And no amount of persuasion on his part had been able to change that.

But other things were used. A pretty wooden ladle he’d bought her at a fair, now on a nail by the fire. A pile of scented soaps. An ivory carving of a camel that she kept on the mantle but refused to believe was real.

“You lie to me,” she’d declared from on top of him, her dark hair falling about his face, shielding him from the firelight, the rest of the room, the world.

“I don’t.” His hands moved up her back, marveling as always at the satin texture of her skin. “I bought it in a bazaar—”

“Then they lied to you.”

“—from a man who had worked on a caravan in his youth. The Turks use them as pack animals, and sometimes in combat, too—”

“Nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense,” he grinned. “You act like it’s a dragon.”

“I have the only dragon I want here,” she said, making Mircea’s hands tighten. “And anyway, dragons are real.”

“Of course they are.”

“It’s true! My mother saw one once.”

“Far be it from me to dispute a lady’s word.”

She sat up, giving him a view of her beautiful breasts painted with firelight. “If you ever saw one, my dragon, you wouldn’t bring me a statue of this kam-el!”

Mircea hadn’t had a response to that. Except to roll her over into the furs. And to stop their argument in the usual way.

He had tried to give her other things, expensive things, but she didn’t want them. Said they would only cause her problems in the village, which already suspected that her suitor wasn’t the traveling merchant he claimed to be. Of course, it wouldn’t matter for long. Soon, when things calmed down a little, he would tell his father about her, and this clandestine life would end. And then she would have everything he’d ever wanted to give her, everything she deserved; he would see to that.

But at the moment it was too risky. When you took a throne by force, as his father had, there were always going to be those who felt they had a right to do the same to you. His father was more worried about foreign threats: the growing power of the Turks, the increasingly insane demands from his suzerain in Hungary, the fluctuating politics of the surrounding states. But Mircea . . .

He was more worried about internal dangers.

Like distant family members with claims to the throne easily as good as his father’s. Like nobles with too much power, who were susceptible to bribes from those who offered them even more. Like courtiers who smiled and charmed and pleaded absolute devotion, yet could turn on them at a moment’s notice.

And while family was where a man took refuge, it was also where he was most vulnerable. Mircea wanted the country settled, pacified, calm, before he brought her anywhere near that snake pit of a court. And it was nowhere near that now.

But one day, it would be.

And then this would be his life, instead of a few stolen hours whenever he could break away.

A chunk of wood in the hearth shifted with a soft hiss. Fingers of light and shadow jumped over the bright wool blankets and soft gray furs heaped high on the bed, and highlighted the softer body snuggled against his. Mircea spread out his hands, to close them on velvet skin—

And felt only cold tree bark instead.

For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Didn’t understand why it was suddenly dark, with only the dim shapes of trunks all around. Didn’t understand where she’d gone.

Until he saw her, still standing in the doorway, talking to Horatiu. Not even knowing he was there. And it all came back again in a rush, the pain like a knife blade shoved between his ribs, the shock enough to knock the breath out of him and leave it hanging on the air.

Snow was falling, thin and icy. He hadn’t felt it. Could still only just feel it if he concentrated. Cold didn’t matter now, to what he was.

He leaned his head against the rough bark of the tree, panting. Trying to find something to rest his eyes on besides that seductive rectangle of gold. He didn’t find much, just boughs hanging heavy with yesterday’s snow, the boiling gray mist overhead, and, through it, the pale circle of the moon, fuzzy and indistinct.

The peasants told a story about the moon. They said she was once a beautiful girl, the sister of the sun. In fact, she was so beautiful that the sun was jealous of any other suitors, preferring to marry her himself. But as this was a sin, God stopped the wedding. And set them to rule over different parts of the day, so that they should never meet again.

Mircea had never thought much about the story. Until he had suddenly found himself living it. Only the positions were reversed: he couldn’t walk in day and his lover—how could he ask her to share this?

The hand resting on the trunk beside his face was a rash of red and flaking skin—healing blisters. Although they weren’t healing very fast. His new body seemed to prioritize, and it had needed most of its strength for clawing its way out of the grave his nobles had kindly dug for him.

And for other things.

His fingertips tentatively traced the red sickle of a wound that curved across his right cheekbone. He could still feel the bite of heat, still smell the smoke where the poker they’d used had scored his face, gouging a line almost to the bone. That was how his hand had been hurt, pulling it out of one of his captor’s grips, trying to shield himself. But they’d wrestled him to the ground, tied his arms behind his back, fisted a hand in his hair.

And used the poker to burn out his eyes.

The wound hadn’t become a scar yet. Still livid and puckered, it felt like a line of fire across his skin. But after a night of sightlessness and then another of grainy blur, his vision had returned. Too soon.

He could see her if he tried. Concentration seemed to focus this strange power of his, redirecting it however he chose. But he’d deliberately kept things soft. As vague as the forest seen through the fog.

Like what was left of his emotions.

He’d spent most of the last three days half mad, horror-struck and terrified. His nobles were still scouring the area for members of his family; he had to get away. But once he met up with his old tutor, he’d had presence of mind enough to send him to her before he fled. Along with most of the money he’d had with him when he was taken.

He wished it could have been more, but he couldn’t risk going back for anything. Not in his current shape. But it was a fortune by peasant standards, enough to keep her well for years to come.

Not that that seemed to matter.

He heard her cry, and his head came up, unthinking. And, in his panic, he forgot to blur his vision. Or maybe it was deliberate, the desperation of a man wanting one last glimpse of the life he’d lost.

And the woman he loved.

Despite the cold, her skin was as pale as the snow on the hillside. She looked so small, even next to Horatiu, who had never been a tall man and was now starting to bend with age. With her hair tumbled down her back and a blanket wrapped around her for warmth, she almost looked like a child. But there was a woman’s pain in her eyes as she listened to the old man’s soft words.

Mircea should have been able to hear them; he could hear them, their voices muffled by the trees and the falling snow, but audible for all that to his new senses. Yet he couldn’t seem to make out the words. It felt like it had on the battlefield once, when a Turk had gotten close enough to bring a heavy sword down on his helmet, half bashing in his brains.

He’d kept his seat on his horse somehow, and gotten away. But he hadn’t been himself the rest of the day, and his men later told him that, when he’d spoken to them, it hadn’t made sense. It felt like that now, their voices washing over him, waxing and waning, but mostly unintelligible.

“You lie!”

Until the words, flung at Horatiu, finally broke through the fog, coming clearly to Mircea’s ears.

“No, my dear, I promise you—”

“You promise me nothing. You tell me the truth!”

“I have—”

“Liar! You tell me what happened to him. Is he dead? You tell me!”

Horatiu said something. It was lost in the roar in Mircea’s ears, but he was probably reiterating the story they’d arranged. It was even half true—nobles in the pay of another claimant to the throne had attacked his family, he’d been forced to flee for his life, he didn’t know when he would be back . . . or if he would. Things were too dangerous for him here, and for anyone who knew him. For her own safety, she must pretend they’d never met. . . .

She listened white-faced, one hand gripping the doorframe. She held the purse Mircea had sent with the other and cried, silent tears that streamed down her cheeks. And then she threw it, sobbing, at Horatiu, only to have him pick it up and press it gently back into her hands.

Mircea’s fingers sank into the tree.

But he couldn’t go to her; couldn’t take her with him. And he couldn’t bear to tell her why. Couldn’t tell her of the girl he’d attacked the previous night, when the bloodlust overcame him, the hunger of a newborn combined with the staggering amount of energy it had taken to repair the damage his new body had taken.

He couldn’t tell her of the girl who looked like her. Or of the body he’d left crumpled in the snow, barely alive. And only because in his madness he had hunted near a town, and they’d been discovered.

The hunting party had returned late, the freshly killed deer they bore having slowed them down. He remembered the way the torchlight had thrown moving shadows on the ground, on the girl, on him, with his extended fangs and gory face. And on the men’s expressions as they stared at him, their horror, fear, and disgust hitting harder than their weapons as they drove him away, like the animal he now was.

He couldn’t bear see that look on her face.

He couldn’t risk her being that girl, the next time the hunger took him.

He couldn’t ask her to share his life when he had nothing left to offer but danger and want and a cursed night, and she deserved the day.

He had therefore let Horatiu go in to see her instead, while he waited in the forest outside. And left the bloody imprint of his hands in the bark of a tree, so hard had he gripped it to keep himself still. Especially when she stood, silhouetted in the doorway, after Horatiu left.

And cried his name into the night.

It echoed in his ears, even when the dream snapped. Mircea found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, panting, his hair stuck to his cheeks. One hand knotted in the bedclothes, and one extended, reaching out for someone who was no longer there.

And who would never be there again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Business remained slow the next night, although you couldn’t tell it to look at the house. Every window burned brightly as the storm of cleaning continued, with the cook on a positive rampage. And ordering the “useless ones,” as she termed everyone not under her iron thumb, into the city to get them out of the way.

“Beats scrubbing pots,” was Bezio’s only comment.

“I know a good tavern,” Mircea offered.

“Tavern, hell,” Marte said, coming down the stairs with a gaggle of girls in tow. “We’re going to see the fireworks!”

And so they had.

Everyone except Jerome, who insisted that he hated fireworks. “They give me a headache.”

“You’re a vampire,” Bezio reminded him.

“A vampire who doesn’t want a headache.”

“So you’re going to do what? Stay here and help clean?”

“Maybe. If they ask nicely enough.”

Bezio shook his head and gave up.

But everyone else went. Even Paulo who, of course, tried to organize everything. But the excited group was beyond even his abilities. “Like herding cats,” Mircea heard him mutter, as the brightly dressed throng of giggling girls tumbled into a gondola, leaving no room whatsoever for the boys.

Until Zaneta pulled Bezio down into her seat near the back of the boat, and then sat on his lap. “Mmm, so much softer,” she said, wiggling around coquettishly.

“Not if you don’t stop doing that,” he warned, grabbing her around the waist.

She shot him a glance over her shoulder, blue eyes mischievous behind the silver half-moon mask she wore. “I was talking about old hard wood.”

“So was I.”

She laughed and continued squirming, while the rest of them tried to find seats. Mircea was pulled into a flutter of silks and hooded cloaks, his black and gold mask coming loose and almost landing in the canal before he managed to catch it. And then Danieli, in the big-nosed mask of a fool, was squeezing in alongside.

Even Sanuito had come, Mircea was surprised to see. A mask might cover the marks on his face, but not on his hands as he gripped the side of the boat, white knuckled. Mircea briefly wondered if he was afraid of water.

And then it was too late when they cast off, joining the queue of other gondolas crowding the small canal, all of them filled with masked revelers.

“I thought it was supposed to be illegal to wear masks after dark,” Mircea said, staring around at the sea of anonymous faces. People flouted the convention all the time, of course, especially during carnival. But he’d never seen so many all at once.

“It’s illegal to do everything,” Danieli said, in the world weary voice he cultivated. “Everything fun anyway.”

“They just wanted a law on the books to let them prosecute anyone causing mischief,” Bezio explained, fighting yards of velvet to peer at Mircea from behind his well-dressed armful. “Young idiots used to go around throwing eggs at people while masked—”

“Eggs?”

“They were filled with rose water, but they could still ruin an outfit,” Zaneta said, disapprovingly.

“And, of course, some people used the anonymity to commit crimes,” Danieli added. “That’s why they throw the book at you if you get caught with a mask and a weapon—”

“But otherwise, it’s carnival!” Zaneta grinned. “What are they going to do, arrest the whole city?”

Mircea decided she had a point, and lay back against the back of the boat, watching the beautiful, surreal scene spread out in front of him. Dancing flames from the torches affixed to surrounding buildings highlighted old bricks and new flowers, dark water and bright smiles, flashes of real gold and fake jewels. And a surrounding flotilla no less contradictory, filled with regular people pretending to be creatures out of myth and legend.

He’d heard that an early Doge had carried the idea of mask-wearing back to Venice after a visit to Constantinople, where he’d been fascinated with the veiled faces of the local women. Of course, he’d also heard that it was an ancient Roman custom, popular in some of the pagan festivals like Saturnalia, on which some said carnival was based. And yet again that it was done for pragmatic reasons: gamblers used masks to hide their expressions, merchants to make deals under the table, and young gallants to sneak into the numerous local convents—and not for prayer.

All were plausible, he supposed. Especially the latter, since masks were worn almost year-round in Venice, instead of just at carnival time. But he thought there was more to it than that.

It seemed fitting that masks had grown up around a festival that celebrated the world turned upside down, the reversal of roles, the throwing off of the usual rigid social restraints. Inside a mask, the rich man tired of his responsibilities and the poor man tired of his poverty could switch places. So could the proper lady and the courtesan. Or the staid merchant and the adventurous sailor. Or even women and men.

After all, inside a mask, you were whoever you said you were.

Like Auria, in her fine clothes and jeweled half-mask, pretending to be the elegant lady she so wanted to become. Or Bezio, the once upstanding pillar of the community hiding behind the façade of a leering satyr, enjoying his newfound freedom from expectations. Or Paulo, with the soul of an accountant concealed by the mask of an Adonis.

Or Sanuito . . .

Mircea wasn’t sure what statement Sanuito was trying to make. He was sitting at the other end of the boat beside Auria, wearing one of the eerie, full-face ghost masks the Venetians called larve. And, somehow, the blank, anonymous features and dark holes for eyes managed to be more unsettling even than Bezio’s mask, with its grotesque features and gilded horns.

Mircea had stood looking at it for a long time back at the house, while it was still in its case, the blank, white wax features both repelling and attracting him. He’d briefly thought about wearing it himself, since he hadn’t found any others that were more appropriate. And that was despite the several dozen on offer after the girls went around gleefully raiding storage chests.

He had stood for a moment holding two of the most elaborate—a prince with a golden crown sliding drunkenly over one cut out eye, and a red-faced demon with snarling, evil features. And felt nothing for either. Except a vague sense of appreciation for the artistry that had created them.

But neither had called to him, not the fair features of the man he’d been, nor the snarling visage of the monster he had become. He was caught in between, no longer one thing, nor yet the other. He couldn’t even have said what he wanted to be, and thus pretend with everyone else.

He’d been thinking that perhaps the larve fit him best, after all, with its anonymous features meant to represent a ghost, a spirit standing outside any world. But then Besina had come over with the decorative half-mask he was wearing. And, finally, something in him had responded.

Unlike the full-face varieties made of papier-mâché or molded leather, this one was simple. Just stiffened linen decorated with black and gold paint and a single paste jewel, held on with ribbons that tied behind the head. It reminding him of the one he’d worn to perform for the senator’s ladies, and didn’t really look like much of anything.

But then, neither did he, at least not yet. And it was what he’d been wearing when he started this strange journey, from what he’d been to whatever he was becoming. He thought that it fit him better than the cold, white features of the other, which seemed frozen in time as he no longer was.

And so Sanuito had worn the larve.

He looked as quiet and wraithlike in it as he did when ghosting around the house, an unseen, barely there presence that seemed to melt into the furniture. Mircea suddenly realized that, except for their brief, odd encounter in the courtyard, he’d not spoken to Sanuito since their arrival. It hadn’t been deliberate; they’d just been occupied with different things.

He made a resolution to fix that, as soon as he got the chance.

And then their small craft was spilling out into the Grand Canal, and total pandemonium.

It was a working mass of boats, with what looked like half of Venice on the water. And in everything from simple rowboats and gondolas, to the floating palaces of the rich—molded, gilt-covered barges with rowers in the lower story and a party deck above, modeled on the Bucentaur the Doges used. They reminded him of the ones that had been used in the consul’s entertainment, only these were decked with flowers and covered with tents erected from brightly colored silks.

But that was only part of it, for the Venetians seemed endlessly creative with their water conveyances. There were boats called piatti that seated forty, covered in crimson satin and carpeted with tapestries. There were the elegant ganzara—sail-type vessels that also sported thirty oars. There was something Mircea wasn’t even sure should be called a ship, more like a floating platform, where musicians were trying to set up amidst the chaos.

There was everything and anything that would float, all bobbing about, cheerfully ignoring the fact that they weren’t actually going anywhere.

Neither was anyone on Mircea’s boat, where wine had been brought out and mugs were being passed around. They were supposed to be headed for the home of a pepper merchant Martina knew, who had offered his balcony for the occasion. But they weren’t headed very fast. In fact, Mircea thought it might actually be quicker to walk, had there been anything to walk on.

But then he looked at the shore and revised that opinion.

The throng on the water was nothing compared to the crush of people lining both sides of the canal. Some were jostling for a better view or watching the fire-eaters, jugglers, and jesters trying to part the crowd from their coins before the real entertainment began. Others were being conned by men working hastily assembled, and quite illegal, monte games, like the new three-card variety, while lookouts kept watch for the authorities. Still more were crowding the vendors selling dried fruit, chestnuts, and galani, the fried pasta strips sweetened with honey or sprinkled with cinnamon sugar that were practically a carnival requirement.

“Oh, I want some!” Zaneta cried, as they passed a pier where a particularly mobbed seller was about to be forced into the canal.

“You can’t taste them,” Bezio pointed out.

“I don’t care. It’s carnival!”

Zaneta seemed to think that phrase excused pretty much anything, but she pouted so prettily that Bezio grinned and gave up. And snared the beleaguered pastry vendor as they passed, pulling the surprised man into their gondola and causing the girls to squeal in protest, since there really wasn’t room.The relieved man handed out pastries to placate them before taking his leave on the next pier.

Where he was immediately mobbed by the diminutive audience of a nearby Punch and Judy show.

Mircea had heard that Venice was possibly the largest city in the world, now that mighty Constantinople had started to decline. But even after living there almost a year he hadn’t really believed it. Until now.

Everywhere he looked—crowding the banks, hanging out of windows, piled on top of surrounding buildings, and floating in the water—were people. Laughing, talking, flirting, occasionally fighting, or dancing to the ensemble that had finally gotten itself sorted and started to play. The whole panoply of human life visible in one huge vista. And in between, bewildered-looking tourists stood, as awed and slack-jawed by it all as he was.

Until the gondola suddenly bumped into something. Mircea looked around to find that it was a pier. He supposed they must have been moving, after all.

And then he was tumbling out along with the girls.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The pepper merchant turned out to have a fine view of the parade route, which would wend its way by water from the Rialto all the way to San Marco. He also had a double loggia, the colonnaded galleries popular in Venice, on the front of his house. It allowed him to accommodate a large group, and he’d taken full advantage. To the point that the lower loggia was so packed by the time they arrived that they could barely squeeze through and into the house, where an inner staircase led to the less populated upper floor.

But they’d arrived in time, finding places at the railing at almost the same moment that the faint scent of burnt gunpowder filled the air.

“Look, look!” Besina grabbed his arm, as excited as a girl, as a dim glow appeared over some buildings in the distance.

A moment later, the rest of the crowd saw it, too, and abandoned their other amusements to mob the banks. That resulted in several people ending up in the water, only to be fished out dripping and cursing while everyone else laughed. Everyone except for the people on the official-looking ships coursing through the canal, shouting for people to hurry up and get out of the way.

People did. Although less, Mircea suspected, because of respect for the law than out of fear of being set aflame by the floats headed their way. Boats pulled up onto embankments and crowded the piers, extending the viewing area out several more yards in all directions. Which was promptly taken advantage of by more than a few spectators, who swarmed the boats much to the owners’ outrage.

But no one cared. Least of all Mircea. Who was caught up in the same amazement as everyone else when the floating procession finally came into view.

He’d heard it said that the Venetians held displays on the water to awe visiting dignitaries, who would then go home with a profound respect for the power and wealth of the Serene Republic. But he’d never had a chance to see one. And had frankly always wondered how a simple thing like a parade could have such an effect.

He didn’t anymore.

“How the hell do they do that?” Bezio asked, crowding in beside him. Mircea had no answer, too busy staring at the magnificent miniature castle, if something almost two stories tall could be called that, which was first in line.

It was amazingly intricate, adorned with real-looking turrets and gates, pennants and fountains. Along with less expected elements like a bunch of wildly spinning wheels and a cheerful-looking sun that wobbled over the whole in a less than reassuring manner. Especially considering that it, and most of the rest of the castle, was busy shooting out bright orange sparks.

It took Mircea a few moments to notice the short wall around the bottom of the structure, which partially concealed darting figures, their naked bodies covered in soot. It made them all but invisible against the night as they ran about, frantically lighting fuses.

“There,” Mircea said, trying to point them out to Bezio, but the older vampire wasn’t listening.

Or perhaps he was, but the collective gasp of thousands of people managed to render even his ears deaf. And no wonder. Coming down the water after a few smaller edifices was a massive barge carrying an equally massive marine monster. Or possibly a snake. Mircea wasn’t exactly sure what the long, flowing, scale-covered body was supposed to be—until the gaping maw on the huge head slowly opened.

And a shower of sparks erupted, so forcefully that it set the stern of the preceding boat on fire.

“Dragon!” Bezio yelled at him, over the sound of thunderous applause.

“Thank you,” Mircea said dryly, while the soot-covered men ran around on their cheerfully burning boat, hysterically putting out flames.

Next came an edifice designed to mimic the bell tower of St. Mark’s, with a wheel on top. It looked like the ones on the castle float, except that it was mounted horizontally and was perhaps ten times as large. And far more powerful. When the gunpowder in the open ended tubing attached to it was set alight, it propelled it around in a blur of speed, throwing out sparks so furiously that it looked like a ring of fire was hovering in the air.

Next was a comparatively plain looking barge that seemed out of place in the brilliant throng. Until it suddenly sent a burst of military rockets high into the sky, which had been modified to create showers of gold and silver sparks when they exploded. Thankfully, they burned out safely above the host of smaller ships accompanying the spectacle, which were resupplying the gunpowder that the barges were using up at a fantastic rate.

And on and on, in a long line that stretched down the canal as far as Mircea could see, like a glittering snake winding its way through the heart of the city. It sent light shadows leaping over the surrounding buildings and the enthralled crowd, especially whenever a shell exploded overhead. And the whole glittering panoply was mirrored exactly in the dark water of the canal, doubling the effect.

And finally Mircea understood what those visiting diplomats were supposed to see: the unity of earth, air, and water by fire. The Venetians managing to show mastery over all four elements at once. And making their city insanely beautiful in the process.

“Enjoying yourself?”

The words were spoken close enough to his face to make Mircea flinch. With all the noise and applause, he hadn’t heard anyone approach. He looked around to find Martina watching him, from behind a glittering half-mask.

“Yes,” he said, slightly confused. He hadn’t expected her to join them, since she rarely went out of the house.

Or to look so angry if she did.

“Good. I, on the other hand, am not. Would you care to guess why?”

“There is a problem?” he asked carefully.

“Oh, no.” Carmine lips stretched into something that in no way resembled a smile. “Not unless you consider the fact that I haven’t heard a peep from the senator since your last appointment. You should have an offer by now. I should have one. Yet, not only has she not attempted to acquire you from me, I haven’t heard a thing from her in days.”

“Three days,” Mircea pointed out.

“Yes, and last time, it was less than three hours.”

“I think she’s had rather more on her mind than last time—”

“It isn’t your job to think! It’s your job to seal the deal, something you appear incapable of doing. So allow me to add to your motivation. Convocation will be over at the end of the week. When that happens, I won’t need extra help, will I? Especially from one who has already thrown away the chance of a lifetime.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, that if you’re still here in a week, I’ll throw you back where I found you.

“Auria!” The girl stepped out of the shadows. “He will service you tonight. See if you can discover why our princeling continues to disappoint.”

Martina departed in a swirl of black skirts, leaving Mircea staring at the beautiful redhead.

The latest burst of fire from below made her hair almost seem to glow. The parade sent light shadows to highlight her high cheekbones, to spangle her décolleté like jewels, and to enhance the naturally bright blue of her eyes. She would have been a lovely sight—if it hadn’t been for the cruel slash of her mouth.

“What’s the matter? Forget you’re a slave?” she asked, before turning and following her mistress.

Mircea stood in the dark, feeling the magic abruptly drain out of the night. The light from the show still painted his face as the spectacular parade continued, but he couldn’t seem to see it, except as a stream of shifting shadows. Meaningless, like everything else.

“What’s wrong?”

Mircea looked up at the sound of Bezio’s voice, to see concerned eyes looking at him out of a leering satyr’s mask. It was as odd as seeing hate he hadn’t earned on Auria’s angelic features. He supposed there was a lesson there somewhere, but he didn’t seem able to grasp it at the moment.

“Nothing.”

Bezio sighed. “Everybody’s acting strange tonight. I think Sanuito must have spent some time in battle.”

“Why battle?”

“He’s flinching at every loud noise. He might have done better to stay home.”

Mircea glanced over to where the slight figure in the larve mask was standing, near the end of the loggia. And wondered if he’d overheard. And if he’d come to the obvious conclusion that, if Mircea was sent back, it was likely to be with company.

If so, he might have a better reason for shaking than the explosions.

Mircea started toward him, when Bezio dragged him back. “Listen, I heard what Martina said—”

“I won’t let them take you back there. I’ll come up with something—”

“You may not have to.”

Mircea looked a question, and Bezio moved closer, but lowered his voice at the same time, to the point that Mircea had to strain to hear it.

“I’ve been asking around,” Bezio told him. “Seems the night convocation concludes, there’s some big party. All the glitterati will be there, so security has to be tight. In addition to the senate’s usual guard, practically the entire Watch has been pressed into service as extra help, just to make sure that one of the groups the senate has pissed off doesn’t try to take ’em all out at once.”

“And?”

“And the place for this big party of theirs just happens to be the palazzo where the consul has been staying. You know the one you were at the other day? The one all the way out on Giudecca?”

“That will leave the city virtually unguarded,” Mircea murmured.

“Except for the human authorities, if they count. But for our kind, yes. Anybody wanting to leave could just . . . walk out.”

“And go where?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

“You’ve been busy.”

Bezio chuckled. “I’m not as popular as you. I had time. But it seems to me there is one place we might go that nobody ever thinks about.”

“We?”

“Like I said, I’m not really cut out for this life. I don’t think I have a future in it.” His lips twisted sardonically. “But I’ve started to think, maybe I could have a future . . . someplace.”

Mircea raised an eyebrow.

“Someplace beautiful,” Bezio elaborated. “Enough to rival Venice. Someplace with plenty of people, even more than here. Someplace where a powerful acquaintance of yours just happens to have her main court—”

“Paris?”

“Why not?”

“Why not? The senate meets there! There are guards every five feet!”

“Which is all to the good. Look,” Bezio said, when Mircea began to protest again. “Even if she doesn’t make you an offer, she might be willing to provide a little protection. Just a word from her and the guards would lay off. And it’s not like we’re a threat to anybody . . .”

Mircea stared at him, utterly flummoxed. And, God help him, more than a little intrigued. It was insane; no one in their position went to Paris. As the permanent home of the European Senate, it was crawling with the most powerful vampires for a thousand miles and their entourages, the least member of which was certain to be far more powerful than he. He’d heard that even master-level vampires hesitated before going there, into the danger and intrigue, and the intricate dance of court etiquette where it was so easy to put a foot wrong.

And a foot was all it took.

But then, they wouldn’t be at court, would they?

He looked back out over the parade, which appeared to have reached the allegorical phase. It was hard to tell since this was Venice, where more was never enough and even solemn, church-related displays tended to become filled with sparkly things. But he thought the nearest barge might be meant as some sort of metaphor on carnival.

A luxuriously dressed, hugely fat man sat atop a wine barrel with a jousting pole tucked under one arm, dueling with a skeletal creature holding a platter of sardines. Mircea assumed the thin man was supposed to be Lent, although he appeared to have been drinking. And seemed rather jolly for someone who was supposed to be observing a period of restraint.

Below them, partygoers costumed as kings and fine ladies danced amid cripples who could barely get about on crutches and beggars on their knees, in some sort of commentary about . . . the brevity of life? Too much hubris? The love of money as the root of all evil? Mircea didn’t know. But he thought it was telling that the revelers never even seemed to notice that the poor were there.

Yes, that about summed it up, he thought fiercely. And he, for one, was tired of always being on his knees. He’d spent two years there—hell, it sometimes felt like he’d spent his whole life there. Always at someone’s beck and call, always having to worry about his duty, his family name, his position, rather than anything he actually cared about.

Or anyone.

But maybe it wasn’t too late to start over. Maybe he could make a new life in a new city. Maybe all of them could. He wondered what Jerome would do with the shops of the French capital at his fingertips.

It boggled the mind.

And sent a relieved smile breaking over Mircea’s features for the first time in a long while.

“I might be going mad,” he told Bezio, “But I think—”

“What’s he doing?” Bezio asked, cutting him off abruptly.

“What?”

“Sanuito,” he said, looking past Mircea. “Hey. Hey!”

Mircea turned in time to see the small figure in the ghost mask balanced on top of the narrow railing, clutching a column. He looked like one of the monkeys the street performers used, who regularly perched on whatever part of a building they happened to be near. With one important difference.

The monkeys didn’t fall off.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sanuito let go, Bezio swore, and Mircea dove—too late. He missed him by inches, reaching the rail in time to see him hit the concrete below. And then tear off like a madman into the crowd, where the eagle-eyed Watch was sure to see him at any moment.

And second offenders rarely survived to offend again.

Mircea vaulted over the railing, Bezio close behind him, but they were almost immediately separated by the huge, jostling crowd. As one of the best on the parade route, their vantage point had been mobbed, with people from both sides pushing in to get the best possible view as the parade’s climax neared. And it didn’t help that half of them were also wearing the damned larve masks.

A sea of white faces looked back at Mircea as he stared around, the shiny surfaces running with reflected flame, the eyes pitch dark and frightening. But none were Sanuito. Foolish boy! This was not the time to run, not when they were so close—

“There!” Bezio’s roar came a second before a beefy hand grasped Mircea’s shoulder, and another pointed off to the right of where he had been looking.

Because to the right was in the water.

Or, to be more accurate, on a barge. One spewing wheels of sparks at a wild-eyed vampire who didn’t even look like he knew where he was. He’d ripped the mask off, or perhaps it had fallen when he did. But his face was almost as pale, and the eyes were darting everywhere in absolute panic.

He wasn’t going to get himself caught, Mircea realized, his stomach falling.

He was going to get himself killed.

“A Dio!” Bezio said, apparently coming to the same conclusion. He may have said more, but Mircea didn’t hear it. He was already moving, his eyes on Sanuito, his mind calculating the distance even as he jumped—

And landed on the very edge of the barge, wobbling after a leap of perhaps three boat lengths. The distance that would have been absurd for a human was nothing to his new body—except that he didn’t usually land on a platform that bobbed heavily up and down with his added weight. But he managed to fall forward, instead of back, catching himself on his hands and knees.

Only to have one of the cursed spinning wheels go off practically in his face.

He scrambled away from the rain of deadly fire, rubbing his sleeve frantically across the tiny burns on his skin, and repressing a strong desire to scream. Before he could recover, he was grabbed by one of the soot-covered men. A glance showed that another was reaching for the already seriously panicked Sanuito, and no, no, no—

Sure enough, before Mircea could react, the man went flying. And then so did Sanuito. Leaping to the next boat even as Bezio landed heavily on this one.

“What the hell is he doing?” Bezio roared, as they took off after the madly fleeing vampire.

Mircea didn’t answer. Both because he didn’t have any idea, and because it was taking all his concentration not to lose his footing on a pathway that was made up as much of wildly bobbing boats and too short docks and moving platforms as land. With screaming, laughing, or cursing people getting in the way, and fire raining down at unpredictable intervals.

But he somehow managed it, and so did Bezio. And they even began to gain slightly since Sanuito was dodging here, there, and everywhere, as if possessed, with no clear goal that Mircea could see. Until he suddenly threw a man into the canal and pushed off in his boat.

That would have been bad enough, since they didn’t have a boat of their own to use to catch him. But then Bezio gripped Mircea’s arm, hard enough to hurt. “Dio can!” he swore, employing one of the stronger local profanities.

“What?”

“The stern!”

Mircea didn’t know what he meant for a second, until his eyes managed to focus through the drifting clouds of smoke. And latched onto something small and unobtrusive, a dull brown next to all the color and dazzling light. Just a small barrel.

Like the ones the accompanying ships had been using to resupply the barges.

“Dio can!”

“I think I said that,” Bezio muttered, and then bent over to lift a couple of men out of a rowboat moored beside the pier.

They were young and burly, and looked like they planned to protest the theft robustly. Until they noticed that the creature under the devilish satyr mask was holding each of them off the ground by one hand. Bezio sat them carefully on the dock and he and Mircea quickly clambered into their boat.

The men quietly watched them leave.

Mircea had the absurd idea they might wave.

And then he forgot about them as Bezio grabbed the oars, sending them shooting across the surface of the water, like cannon shot.

“No,” he said, when Mircea tried to grab a paddle to help. “Grab him. You’re nimbler than I am.”

Perhaps, Mircea thought, but not nimble enough. Not for a leap from a standing position across twice as far a distance as last time. “Get me closer.”

“Trying,” Bezio grunted, but it wasn’t easy. Mainly because of the smoke, which was worse out here, but also because they’d been spotted.

Fortunately, it was only by the human forces, namely the boats meant to keep anyone from doing what they were attempting. But they still had to swerve out of the way to avoid one and then swerve again to slip between two others, scraping the side of one as they came too close. And by the time they’d corrected—

“No,” Bezio said, eyes widening.

Mircea whipped his head around to see that Sanuito’s vessel had also come in contact with a boat. Or to be more precise, with two of them. A fake naval battle was taking place between two ships, which were shooting geysers of sparks out of their cannons instead of shot. They were far enough apart that they couldn’t harm each other, the embers falling harmlessly into the canal.

Until Sanuito sped right through the middle of them.

And emerged on the other side with half his boat on fire.

“Jump!” Mircea yelled at him, and Bezio seconded it in his deep baritone. Even if Sanuito couldn’t swim, the water wouldn’t kill him. But the flames would, especially since he didn’t appear to have the presence of mind to put them out.

“Jump! Jump!”

But between the exploding shells and the applauding crowd and the yells and curses from the ships around them, Sanuito didn’t hear. But he did panic, using vampire strength to propel his small craft through the water as if he thought he could outrun the flames. And thereby only made them flare up brighter.

Mircea cursed and grabbed an oar, after all, and he and Bezio put their backs into it, trying to catch up to the fleeing vampire before his boat burned up underneath him. But the rowboat was small, and not designed to be handled by two, and Sanuito had momentum they lacked. And then, just when they finally began to gain, Bezio dug his oar into the water, stopping them so abruptly that it swung the boat around.

“What are you doing?” Mircea demanded, as the older vampire grabbed the oar from him and started rowing backward.

He didn’t get an answer, but he didn’t need one. Because he’d just looked up, and seen Sanuito’s boat headed straight for a nondescript barge. The one that also happened to be launching all those rockets.

“No,” Mircea said, his heart in his throat, and grabbed for the oar again.

Only to have Bezio knock his hand away. “It’s too late!”

“He’s not going to die!”

“That’s not up to us!” Bezio said, getting an arm across Mircea’s chest. “Not anymore!”

“Like hell it isn’t!” Mircea threw off his friend’s hold and dove over the side of the boat.

The water was cold, but he barely felt it. The problem was more the skim of ash floating on top of the canal that got in his eyes when he surfaced, half blinding him. For a moment, there was only an insane blur of streaming lights and saturated color and frenzied motion.

And leaping people. The soot-covered men on the barge had spotted the burning boat headed straight at them. They apparently didn’t trust the authorities to stop it, because they were diving over the side, swimming away from their vessel even as Mircea closed in.

And he was closing fast. He kept forgetting his new abilities, so rarely did he use most of them. But he was faster in the water than out of it, vampire strength allowing him to cut through the waves quicker than any boat.

But not quickly enough.

His vision cleared just in time to see Sanuito’s craft plow into its target, the momentum carrying it up and over the side and onto the low platform, sending the paraphernalia the artificers had been using flying.

Mircea flinched, expecting the worst. But nothing happened. Except that the boat came to rest in the middle of the platform, still burning, but also still intact.

Mircea felt his spine relax slightly. Maybe they would be all right. Maybe there were some sort of safety precautions he didn’t know about. Maybe—

And then the world exploded.

The powder keg on Sanuito’s boat ignited in a fireball that sent burning wood half as high as the former shells, turning night into day. The larger explosion was quickly followed by a thousand smaller ones, when every shell on the ship ignited at once. Mircea dove, desperate to get away from the surface as a thousand flaming pieces, each far larger than the deadly sparks, went flying everywhere.

Debris pattered the water over his head, including a large piece of wood that speared the waves just where he’d been swimming. Mircea outran it, flailing backward, the roar of multiple explosions echoing in his ears. It would have been faster to turn around, but he was unable to look away, staring upwards at a world burning through ripples of water.

And at the silhouette of two boats, passing just overhead. Together, the hulls formed what looked like nothing so much as the dark eyes of a carnival mask made out of flame. Staring down at him as he sank into darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“No. With Auria.”

Mircea turned, halfway up the landing. He was filthy, his hair still dripping with sooty canal water, his velvet clothes a sodden ruin. A livid burn cut across the fingers of his right hand that he couldn’t recall getting, but which must have happened in the split second before he dove, when he raised his hand to shield his face.

He was also starved, exhausted, and hurting, in more ways than one.

And yet Martina stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at him impatiently.

“Not tonight,” he said harshly.

“Yes, tonight. What if she calls for you tomorrow?”

“And I thought you said she wasn’t interested.”

Mircea didn’t bother to keep the contempt out of his voice, and Martina flushed angrily. But Paulo stepped forward before she could respond. “Perhaps tomorrow would be better,” he murmured. “We’ve all had a shock. Sanuito—”

“Is dead,” Martina said bluntly. “Fortunately for him.”

“Fortunately . . .” Mircea stared at her.

“It was quick. If he’d survived, the Watch wouldn’t have been so kind. He caused a fortune’s worth of damage, disrupted the entire spectacle—”

“It was only a parade—”

“No, it was half a parade. The rest is probably still burning. How anyone didn’t get killed—”

“Someone did!”

“Yes, someone did. And now it’s over. As long as the Watch doesn’t find out who else was involved.”

The threat was palpable. So was Mircea’s disgust as he pushed past her, back into the hall. Only to be brought up short.

But not by Martina.

“No.” The voice was soft, and it took him a moment to realize who was speaking. The small entryway was crowded with returning revelers and servants busy helping them out of their cloaks. But everyone suddenly paused to look back—at Auria, standing alone by the front door.

Martina came slowly through the crowd. “What did you say?”

“I said it can wait.”

“It can’t—”

“And I say it will have to.” There was a tone in Auria’s voice Mircea hadn’t heard before. Instead of the usual throaty contralto, it was shrill, almost brittle, and shook slightly, like the hand still gripping the throat of her cloak.

“If this is because of some animosity between the two of you—”

“No. This is because a man died tonight!” Auria spat, and fled.

No one else moved, servants and masters alike frozen in a tableau so still it might have been a painting labelled “shock.” Except for Mircea. Who pushed past the others and followed the running girl down the hall.

He couldn’t imagine where she was going. The finest bedrooms of the house were located on the piano nobile, the floor above ground level, as was common in Venice. Upper floors had better views, and avoided the dampness and odors of street level. Marte, Martina, and Paulo all had their rooms there, along with the more elegant reception rooms and the dining hall. Danieli, Zaneta, and most of the rest of the household were housed on the floor immediately above that, in smaller, but still fine rooms, with balconies to make them feel bigger.

Mircea’s own bedroom was in the warren of small attic rooms on the top floor, used by the servants. It did not have a balcony. Or much of anything else, except a roof that sloped sharply enough to insure that he regularly hit his head when getting up in the morning.

It had never occurred to him to wonder where Auria slept. But he wouldn’t have assumed that it was on the work-like street floor. Other than for the small salon used for tradesmen, where they’d met the tailor, it mostly contained workrooms—kitchen, pantry, a study where Paulo wrestled with the accounts . . .

And, he discovered as he neared the end of the hall, a bedroom easily twice as large as Marte’s, and far more opulent.

Mircea paused for a moment in the doorway, staring at what looked less like a room and more like a treasure chest.

Frescoes of wooded glades peeked out from between tapestries of Mars and Venus. Fine cambrai cloth framed a four-poster bed with exquisite carvings. A painted and gilt casket on a table overflowed with pearls. Ivory fans and ebony combs were scattered carelessly here and there on more tables, some covered with exquisite Turkish carpets, along with belts set with gold and gemstones. And alabaster bottles filled with perfumes. And stockings and slippers of silk and velvet. And vases, and cameos, and an ostrich egg decorated all over with pictures of birds . . .

And those were just the things in view. Numerous chests, coffers, and the strongboxes the Venetians called forziere lined the walls of what Mircea assumed was once a storeroom, since some of the chests were set into purpose-built niches. And held what were presumably more gifts from grateful clients.

Not that the abundance seemed to be making its owner very happy.

Auria was sitting at a small table, putting a beautiful strand of coral beads into a box. At least, she was until it snagged on a corner, and she jerked it hard enough to break the string and send the beads flying. The coffer followed, as she swept it off the table with a cry, sending it tumbling across the tiled floor and spilling a line of glittering contents halfway across the room.

She didn’t go after them.

She sat there, her head in her hands, visibly shaking. Until Mircea took a tentative step forward. Then she looked up, the pale cheeks flushing with anger.

“I already told Martina, not tonight!”

“I’m not here for Martina,” he said, crossing the room and going to one knee in front of her. It put them on a level, allowing him to see her face through the dim moonlight filtering through a single, multipaned window. Judging by the puffy and bloodshot eyes, she had been crying silently behind the mask she’d just removed. Probably all the way back.

“Then why are you here?” she demanded shrilly.

“To see how you were.”

“Well, you’ve seen!” She got up in a sweep of skirts, only to kneel a moment later, to collect the scattered beads. But her hands were shaking and she dropped almost as many as she picked up. Considering how graceful her actions usually were, that told him more than the previous outburst about her state of mind.

Like when she suddenly threw them across the floor, scattering the rest of the strand. And then brought her wrists up to her face, a sound halfway between a sob and a curse emanating from behind them. “Auria—” Mircea said quietly.

“Get out!”

“No.”

“No?” She looked back at him, confusion and anger on her lovely face. “You dare—”

“Yes, I dare.” He tried to help her up, but she slapped his hand away.

“The arrogance of the prince!” she spat. “I suppose it’s hard to learn to take orders, after growing up in a palace!”

“I didn’t grow up in a palace.”

“Compared to where I did? Compared to where Sanuito did?” She laughed, and it was ugly. “Yes, a palace!”

“Perhaps. But we’re all the same now.”

“The same? We’ll never be the same! If you spend the rest of your life a slave, it won’t make us the same! You can’t know—”

She broke off, turning her face away. And tried to get up. But her heel caught on the edge of her gown, and she sat down on the tile rather abruptly.

And then just stayed there, staring at her hands.

And then up at him, looking strangely lost.

The antimony she’d used to outline her eyes had run, leaving what looked like dirty tracks down her face. Her lipstick was smeared; her hair in unusual disarray. But it was the eyes that caught him, large and dark and haunted.

“You can’t know,” she said again.

“Then tell me.”

She laid her head back against the carved front of a chest at the end of the bed. And stared at the boards of the ceiling above. Where the frescoed decadence of the walls gave way to the more rustic, bare bones look of the old storeroom.

“You wouldn’t understand if I did.”

Mircea looked around. There were two folding chairs under the window, but she didn’t look like she felt like moving. And neither did he.

He hadn’t fed in hours, and the small reserve he’d had had been expended on the chase. He was so tired, even the floor felt like goose down as he settled in front of her, in the small puddle he’d already managed to shed and didn’t care about since he couldn’t get any wetter. She didn’t object.

“Wouldn’t understand what?” he asked softly.

She shut her eyes. “What it’s like to be powerless. Truly powerless.”

“I think I know everything about that,” he said, thinking back over the last two years.

But Auria was shaking her head. “You know nothing about it. And if you live to be as old as that senator of yours, you’ll never really understand it. For that, you have to grow up with nothing. You have to be hungry most of the time and anxious all the time, never knowing where your next meal is coming from. Or if you’ll have a roof over your head tomorrow. You have to wear rags that get smaller as you grow because you can’t replace them, to the point that men start accosting you in the street, mistaking you for . . . something you’re not. Not then, at least. You have to have your mother sell you anyway, to the first one who offers to pay. You have to run away, and discover that it doesn’t matter, that they just drag you back, and make you . . .”

She cut off and they sat there, silently, for a long moment. Mircea wanted to say something to take that haunted look off her face. But he somehow knew it would only make things worse.

She didn’t need platitudes; she needed to be heard.

So he sat there. And dripped onto her floor. And listened.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, and then laid her head on them, looking suddenly childlike. “Do you know who Sanuito was, before he met you?” she asked, after a while.

“Bezio thinks he might have been a soldier. That he’d been traumatized in battle at some point, and that was why—”

Auria shook her head. “He was never in battle. He was never much of anything before they found him, his old ‘master,’ and that creature. You heard about the bet?”

Mircea nodded.

“That’s why they chose him. Sanuito was nobody, would be missed by nobody. He’d never been anybody, born to a whore, raised as a cut purse. At least until the smallpox, which left him too scarred to be forgettable and too weak to run away. Or to gain employment from people who only wanted strong backs. But alms, too, are hard to come by unless you’re young and attractive or old and crippled, and he was neither. Just hungry and desperate, with no one to turn to. Until he met you.”

“I didn’t do anything for him,” Mircea said harshly. Except watch him die.

She smiled wryly. “Oh, no. Nothing. Other than standing up to a room full of the Watch and Martina’s demands, with no weapons and no leverage—not even any clothes! He told me about that, in something like awe. Said he wouldn’t have done the same for you. Wouldn’t have even done it for himself.”

“I think he might have been wrong about—”

“You think that, yes!” Blue eyes flew open. “Because that’s what you would do. What you were trained to do—to stand up for yourself, to take control, to lead. We don’t think like that, Sanuito and me. Life’s taught us to keep our heads down, to stay out of trouble, to avoid making a fuss. He told me he was too afraid to move that night, like I was when—” She broke off abruptly.

And then got up and began putting her jewels back in their case.

“Like I was tonight,” she finished.

“There was nothing you could have done, Auria.”

He’d meant it to be comforting, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

“Nothing?” She rounded on him. “I’m a century older than you! And I’m faster. Stronger. More resilient to all that fire that was being flung around. I might even have caught him! But we’ll never know now, will we? If I’d had time to think—”

She broke off, and threw the last of the precious items back into the cask. “But you didn’t need it, did you? You didn’t have to think about it.”

“There was no time, and I didn’t know what he might do—”

“No, you didn’t.” She stopped to look at him. “That’s my point, Mircea! You didn’t know what he might do, yet you went anyway. Immediately. While the rest of us stood around gaping: passive, accepting, useless. Oh, shocked, yes; horrified even. But we did nothing. Except watch the great lord go charging after him—”

“Followed closely by the blacksmith,” Mircea pointed out.

“That doesn’t count.” She brushed it away. “Bezio jumped because you did. He would have followed you into hell if you’d asked him. They all would, him, Jerome, even Sanuito. . . .”

She made a sound between disgust and distress, and got to her feet, putting the jewel cask back in place. “I’m sick of this, of being helpless. I’ve been sick of it for . . . as long as I can remember. I always thought, when I got older, when I gained power, that it would be different. That I would be different. But then tonight . . . I may be weak by vampire standards, but I had enough power to save him. I had enough to do that! And I didn’t use it. I didn’t do anything.”

Mircea watched her for a moment, torn. But he couldn’t allow her to believe something that wasn’t true. That was, in fact, pretty much the opposite of the truth.

“You were shocked and frightened, Auria,” he finally said. “And had never been trained to react in a crisis. Of course you hesitated. If I’d had more time to think about it, I . . . might have acted the same.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You should,” he said bitterly. “Sanuito had a lead, and with the thickness of the crowd and my power level—I should have known I wouldn’t catch him. I should have stayed put. Should have remembered . . .”

“What?”

“That I’m not that man anymore!” he said angrily, gazing up at her.

She returned the look for a moment, through a fall of auburn hair. And then she squatted in front of him in a pool of velvet, dignity forgotten. “What man?”

He waved a hand, suddenly too tired to think up the words for all that he had been, or was supposed to have been: the heir that secured his father’s dynasty, the hedge for his people against the Turks, the husband of a loving woman, maybe someday the father. . . .

Too many things to count.

All of which he’d managed to disappoint.

Like he had Sanuito, tonight.

“The man you described,” he said wearily. “The one trained to lead. You were right; I was trained—from birth. But now . . .”

She cocked her head, watching him. “But now? What happened?”

“You know what happened,” he said, lip curling in disgust. “This—” He waved a hand again, this time at himself.

“You mean the Change? Do you really think that matters?”

He stared at her. “Of course it matters!”

“Does it? In our world, you’re an infant, barely two years old. If you were in a normal family, you wouldn’t even be let out of the house at your age. Much less be jumping through fiery hoops and diving into canals and almost getting blown up. Yet you did it, without a thought. Just as I . . . stood there.

“Power is more than strength, Mircea. It takes more than that to be a leader. More of . . . whatever it is you have, and I don’t.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

“And I think you would have done the same thing tonight, if you’d had a year to think about it. It’s in the moments when we don’t have time to think, that we show who we really are.”

She laughed suddenly, and it looked strange, considering the tears still glistening on her cheeks. “Sanuito told me you were the strangest man he ever met. And I can’t say he was wrong, Mircea Basarab. But don’t blame the Change for that!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“You survived.” Mircea looked up to see Bezio’s head sticking out of the salon on the ground floor, where a wedge of candlelight was flooding the area in front of the stairs. He appeared surprised.

He motioned Mircea into the room, where he found Paulo, Jerome, and Danieli passing a decanter around the table. Mircea drew up a stool and joined them. The place was almost frighteningly clean, to the point that he hesitated to put his elbows on the gleaming surface of the table, for fear they might soil it.

But he was tired enough that he did it, anyway.

“All right, that’s one point established,” Danieli said. “And he has all his limbs, so that’s number two. Now for the big one—”

“Don’t,” Bezio said, looking at Mircea’s face. “I’ll concede.”

He tossed a silver soldino into the air, and Danieli caught it without looking up from his drink. It vanished into his purse, but he wasn’t to be deterred. “So how was she?” he demanded.

“She’s upset.” Mircea took a sip of wine. And judging by the smell, was happy he couldn’t taste it. “What would you expect?”

“No, I mean, how was she?”

Mircea looked up.

“Danieli—” Paulo said.

“Oh, like you don’t want to know. She must command those kinds of fees for some reason, and it’s not like the rest of us have ever gotten close enough for a taste—”

“And you never will,” Paulo assured him.

“—except for the man who just spent an hour with the most expensive whore in Venice. So, we all want to know: how was she?” he asked again, with an exaggerated leer.

Which turned to an expression of surprise when his back hit the nearest wall, hard enough to knock a pot off its nail.

“Hey! What are you—” The voice cut off abruptly.

Mircea made a note: Collapsing a windpipe seemed to be a good way to shut someone up.

Someone else appeared at his shoulder, not touching him, but close enough that Mircea could feel the warmth through his wet clothes. “His comment was tasteless and crude,” Bezio’s voice said softly. “But he was rattled. We all are.”

Mircea turned his head. “I suppose you want me to let him go.”

“It’ll be hard to drink your wine otherwise.”

“It’s lousy wine.”

Bezio’s lips quirked. “True. But your arm will get tired eventually.”

That was also true. In fact, it was already starting to shake slightly. Mircea scowled and let the vamp go.

And immediately regretted it.

“You’re defending her honor?” Danieli spat, scrambling up from the floor. “She’s a whore. For that matter, so are you! What the hell—”

Of course, Mircea thought, knocking someone through a door worked pretty well, too.

He looked at Bezio, who was massaging his hand ruefully. “That hurt.”

Considering the blacksmith’s muscles under the thin linen shirt, Mircea thought it might have hurt Danieli more.

Good.

He sat back down.

Paulo sighed, looking at the ruined door to the hallway. He pulled out the small book he used to record their extravagance and made a note. Mircea waited for the inevitable, but tonight seemed determined to break all the rules.

“You aren’t going to tell me off?” he asked, after Paulo finished and put the book away.

The blond drank the lousy wine. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because Bezio was right. It was crude. And because it’s Auria. If you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

Bezio sat back down. “I always thought you had a soft spot for her.”

“She’s high-strung, avaricious, pushy, and conniving.” Paulo shrugged. “And a pretty good person, once you get past the acerbic tongue.”

“I heard her master was the worst,” Jerome said, topping up his glass.

Paulo frowned. “Where did you hear that?”

“From her. I was telling her about mine, and how his masters threw me out after he died—”

“I thought they reluctantly let you go,” Bezio said, lifting an eyebrow.

Jerome rolled his eyes. “Oh, who are we kidding? I wasn’t strong enough or smart enough or whatever enough, so I got the boot.”

“And you had this epiphany when?”

Jerome shrugged. “I guess I’ve always known it, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

“Why? It’s no reflection on you—”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” Bezio said staunchly. “If they couldn’t see quality, that’s their loss.”

Jerome smiled at him. “You’re going to be proposing next.”

“You’re too ugly.”

“Coming from the man the girls call ‘the great bear’?”

“The great bear?” Bezio thought it over. “I like it.”

“You would. Anyway, that wasn’t why.” He passed the decanter around. “I didn’t want to admit it because . . . well, then you have to do things, don’t you?”

“Things?”

Jerome waved a hand around. “Life things. Once you admit the real situation you’re in, then you have to deal with it, to build a new life. Somehow. And that’s a daunting prospect when you’re all on your own and nobody gives a damn and you’re about as powerless as a kitten surrounded by snarling dogs—”

“Not dealing with it doesn’t change that, though,” Bezio pointed out.

“No, but it makes you feel better. More in control. As long as I kept telling myself that this whole thing was just temporary, that my old family was coming to get me any day, that they’d realize their mistake once some of them got settled and reconsider . . . well, it helped me get up in the morning. Or, you know, our morning.”

“You do what you have to do,” Bezio said philosophically.

Mircea didn’t say anything. But it never ceased to amaze him how he always assumed that his situation was unique. That no one else knew his pain, understood his loss. And yet, he continually had evidence of the contrary.

All of them had suffered, in one way or another. All of them had known rejection, the loss of home, family, the ruin of the life they’d planned to have. Just like the hundreds of unwanted vampires that somehow found their way to Venice every year, most of whom would end up ashes on the tide.

Like Sanuito.

“Anyway,” Jerome continued. “Auria told me that her master used to pick up a bunch of people at a time, Change them, and then wait to see who got strongest the fastest. Then he’d ditch the rest and do it again.”

“Ditch?” Mircea asked.

Jerome ran a finger across his throat. “They’d dig a big hole in the forest somewhere, and toss ’em in once they were dead. Auria said she got away by luck. The stake missed her heart, and the cut on her throat wasn’t deep enough to keep her from feeding.”

“Feeding . . . on what?” Bezio asked warily.

“On the cooling corpses they threw in around her—”

“God!” Bezio got up from the table abruptly. Only to realize he didn’t have anywhere to go and sat back down.

Jerome nodded. “That’s what I said. But there was no other way, and she didn’t want to die. So she fed until she was strong enough to claw her way out.” He took a drink. “If I was Danieli, I’d think twice about crossing her.”

“God,” Bezio said again, and drained his glass.

Mircea leaned across the table. “Her master killed his own family? For nothing?”

Jerome shook his head. “Auria said he didn’t consider them family if they were weak. He was trying to build up his strength—he had some kind of quarrel with another vampire, and needed soldiers.”

“But he could have sold the others on, to someone else—”

“Yes, only nobody wants baby vamps, do they? We found that out in the condottiere’s cells. Anyone can make a baby—any master, that is. So they don’t have much value. He thought it easier to just bury the problem.”

Literally, Mircea thought, his hand clenching on his glass.

“Maybe he thought he’d get in trouble,” Bezio said. “Technically, masters are responsible for the vamps they make—”

“Like that’s ever enforced,” Paulo said darkly.

“Well, it damned well ought to be! People like that should be made to—”

“People like that shouldn’t be masters at all,” Mircea rasped. “If they’re that irresponsible, they shouldn’t be anything.”

“Well, yes,” Bezio said, looking a little startled. “But you can’t just go around killing off all the bad masters. You wouldn’t have anybody left!”

“Of course you would. Jerome’s master died, and his senior servants took over his property and his territory. The same would be true anywhere.”

“Well, yes, maybe. But you’re talking a lot of deaths. I sometimes think there’s more bad masters than good ones. And killing off that many would cause, well, chaos—”

“For a while,” Mircea agreed. “But after, you would have a group of people you could work with.”

Bezio looked at him strangely. “Did anybody ever tell you, you’re kind of scary?”

“You have to be when dealing with creatures that powerful. Make it clear enough times that the penalties are severe and will be enforced, and soon you won’t have a problem.”

“But for that you need somebody at the top who gives a damn. And from what I hear, the current consul likes things as they are.”

“Your senator has tried to change things,” Paulo put in suddenly, looking at Mircea. “In fact, she’s probably the reason they haven’t deteriorated any further. But then whoever she’s opposing just goes running to the top, and fawns and flatters until the consul tells her to back off.”

“Then perhaps he needs to go, too,” Mircea said, thinking of the lives lost for nothing, except a madman’s caprice.

“All right, maybe we should change the subject,” Bezio said, looking worried.

“Maybe that’s what too many people do—”

“Maybe they like living.”

“You call this is living? What happened to Auria—”

“She survived—”

“And how many didn’t?”

“I know one who’s trying his best to add to that number,” Bezio said, scowling. “You’re not a prince anymore, Mircea. And people like us don’t have any say in what happens at those levels.”

Mircea sat back, seething. Bezio was right; he knew he was. But Auria was right, too. You didn’t just stop being who you were because of the Change. It had altered his body, yes, but in his mind . . . he was still the same person he’d always been. One born to power and trained in its uses—and its pitfalls. And he hated, hated, seeing it used to destroy lives while he sat back and did nothing.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Bezio repeated strongly. “Things . . . will sort themselves out.”

Not with the same creature on the throne who had caused the problem, Mircea thought, but didn’t say.

“So, what does everyone think happened to Sanuito?” Jerome asked, as Mircea tried to blink the red haze in front of his eyes away.

It didn’t work.

It took him a second to realize the reason for that. And by then Paulo was on his feet, knocking over his chair and staring at the window, where the ghostly moonlight filtering in off the canal had been replaced by a reddish haze. As if dawn had come early.

Only dawn didn’t smell of smoke and send feet running into the hallway.

Paulo flung open the door to a hall already filled with panicked humans and wild-eyed vampires. “What—” Mircea began.

And then stopped because he was talking to himself. Everybody else had gone, running through the door fast enough that it almost looked like they disappeared. But he could see them in the crowd ahead as he ran after them, down the remainder of the short hall, through the pantry, and into the kitchen. Which looked like an inferno. Bloody light was everywhere, spilling through the windows, staining the floor, and reflecting off the pots the cook kept shined to a high gloss. It flooded through the doorway when someone flung it open, along with a wall of heat and the smell of burning wood.

And the sight of the sugar house, engulfed in flames, going up like a great candle.

Or like the biggest firework of them all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Is this everything?” Mircea asked, looking around.

It was the next night, and he and Marte were in the room on the ground floor, which was usually used to store casks of wine. It was now holding the bottles and jars that had been rescued from the remains of the sugar house. Most of which Marte was having to try to identify by sight, since the labels had been singed off.

“So far.” She sighed and wiped her dirty hands on her apron. “They’re still bringing them in.”

As if in reply to her comment, a couple of servants staggered in under the weight of several huge baskets of once expensive perfumes, lotions, and cosmetics. They now looked like ancient artifacts, covered in ash and, in some cases, melted together. They were dropped with a chiming crash onto a pile of similar baskets, making Marte sigh.

“Are these all from the work room?” Mircea asked, picking up a still-warm jar of something that might have been olive oil, before the fire reduced it to a blackish sludge.

“Mostly.” Marte sorted through the nearest basket, giving a small yelp when her fingers encountered one of the hotter specimens. “They’re trying to get to the storeroom behind it, which we think may have fared better, since it wasn’t as close to the center of the blaze.”

“Trying?”

“The roof fell in, and the door’s completely blocked.”

“One of us could clear it for them.”

“If one of us had a death wish,” she said sardonically. “I was out there as soon as the sun set, and almost ended up being baked alive for my trouble. There’s smoldering piles all over the place, plus I’m pretty sure the center is still burning.”

Mircea glanced out the open window behind her. To where the blackened ribs of the sugar house clutched at an almost full moon. The spectral quality was increased by the faint wisps of smoke that still rose from what was essentially a giant banked fire.

The blaze had burned most of the night, while the local militia and the Arsenalotti—workers from the Arsenal shipyard—argued over who had jurisdiction. The militia usually handled small fires, and tended to be territorial since it gave them a chance to parade their skills in front of the local girls. The Arsenal workers, on the other hand, who were used to dealing with fires at the great shipyard, were normally only called out when a blaze looked likely to spread.

But neither had arrived until the fire was burning completely out of control, and it had been more of a contest to get the other group to take responsibility than to claim any glory for themselves. Eventually, they’d had to join forces, although not to save the house, which even Mircea had been able to see was a lost cause. But to use hooks to pull down sections of the building that looked likely to fall on its neighbors, and to drench the outer edges with water drawn from the canal to douse errant sparks.

No one had tried to go inside what by then had resembled a gateway into hell.

“What about the courtyard?” Mircea asked, picking up a small jar. It was the right size and shape for the one Sanuito had handed him, and colored about the same, a milky green.

But it opened to reveal only half melted cold cream.

“What about it?” Marte asked, cautiously sniffing something in a jar.

“I’d think a courtyard would be easier to get to.”

Marte’s lips twisted. “It would be—if the building hadn’t collapsed on it. There’s no door into the storeroom on that side, anyway, but even if there were—”

“How is it going?” Paulo asked, bustling in the door.

“Even if it were?” Mircea persisted.

“It’s buried under about eight feet of rubble, much of which is still smoldering,” Marte told him.

“So what’s the verdict?” Paulo asked. He looked like he’d been sorting through the wreckage, too, his usually impeccable clothes exchanged for a stained linen shirt draped over a pair of old hosen, both of which were dusted with fine black soot and white ash.

“Dismal,” Marte said, proffering a jar.

Paulo peered inside and his nose scrunched up. “What is that?”

“Saffron, or it used to be.”

Paulo took a pinch between his fingers, and watched it crumble away to nothing in the air. He scowled. “Are they all like this?”

“Mostly. Half the stuff was wiped out when the roof collapsed, and much of the rest was spoiled in the heat. I’ve found maybe half a dozen jars so far that look to be all right, but that’s out of forty.”

“Damn.” He flipped through his book, his forehead wrinkled under a stray lock of blond hair. “Martina is not going to be happy. Replacement value, even for the ingredients is . . . unfortunate.”

“It may look better when we get to the storeroom. The ambergris was back there. And most of the musk—”

“Cinnamon oil?”

“Some, although much was in the front. I’d just been using it.” She grimaced. “But the Indian sandalwood—”

“Did either of you noticed anything unusual about Sanuito?” Mircea cut in.

They both stopped to look at him.

“What?” Paulo asked.

“Sanuito?” Mircea repeated, forcing his voice to remain pleasant. “The man who died last night?”

“Sanuito was always unusual,” Paulo said, frowning. Apparently, Mircea’s tone hadn’t been as pleasant as he’d thought.

“In what way?”

“In every way.” He tapped his head. “He wasn’t all there.”

“He’d been starved,” Marte protested. “Can you imagine? Being that age and going without feeding for weeks?” She shivered. “I don’t know how he was sane.”

“Well, clearly he wasn’t,” Paulo said testily.

“He always seemed all right to me. A little timid, maybe—”

“Sane people don’t go running into a crowd, steal a boat, and promptly get themselves blown up.” Paulo’s notebook shut, a little more forcefully than necessary. “And put all of us in danger in the process!”

“The only person he endangered was himself,” Mircea said angrily. “Bezio and I chose to go after him—”

“And very nearly got yourselves killed. But that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what—”

“We exist on the sufferance of the Watch,” Marte explained softly, as if trying to set a good example for the two hotheads she’d been afflicted with. “Martina pays them to ignore our existence, and since we’re not a threat to anyone, they mostly do. But when one of our group starts bringing attention to themselves, like interrupting a major spectacle—”

“Or burning houses down!” Paulo added.

“That wasn’t Sanuito,” Mircea pointed out. “One of the firemen told me it was likely a stray rocket—”

“A stray rocket, yes. And can you think of a reason why a number of stray rockets were suddenly released all at once?”

“That was nowhere near here—”

“A fact which would be pertinent if the damned things had been fired into the sky as intended! But when they’re set off unexpectedly, in many cases while still lying into their boxes, they go where they will. And where they willed was all over town! It wasn’t enough the damned boy had to kill himself, he had to try and take half the city with him!”

“That’s why the firefighters took so long to get here,” Marte explained. “There were a dozen small fires last night—”

“Small?” Mircea repeated.

“Ours was the worst; that’s why we ended up with the Arsenal boys—”

“Much use they were,” Paulo muttered.

“How much worse?” Mircea asked.

“I believe ours was the only structure to collapse—”

“After the damned Arsenalotti pulled it down!” Paulo said indignantly.

“You know they didn’t have any choice,” Marte told him. “The whole street could have gone up—”

“You mean, out of all the rockets fired, ours was the only house destroyed?” Mircea repeated.

Marte smiled ruefully. “If you can call it that when the house in question was ready to fall down anyway.”

“But—” Mircea paused, trying to get his head around that.

“It wasn’t about to fall down,” Paulo protested. “The main structure was solid. Martina had plans to refit it as our main residence eventually, and keep this one as her personal home.”

“It would have been nice to have some extra space,” Marte agreed.

“And a larger dining room. We keep having to limit the number of guests, since you can only expect someone to tuck their elbows so much—”

“Doesn’t it seem strange to either of you,” Mircea interrupted, “that the only major structure destroyed was the one where the man who died happened to live?”

They both turned to look at him again.

“You’re saying Sanuito set it before he left?” Marte asked, surprising him.

“No, I just meant—”

“You know that wouldn’t surprise me,” Paulo said. “Set the damned thing, then go off with us as if nothing was happening, all the while knowing the fire would spread the whole time we were gone!”

“Sanuito had no reason to burn the house down!”

“He had no reason to kill himself, either,” Paulo pointed out. “Except for being a crazy son of—”

“He wasn’t crazy!”

Paulo looked taken aback. “Well, I’d hate to see your definition of the word.”

“Was he acting differently at all?” Mircea asked Marte, exasperated. “Just in the last few days?”

She shook her head. “Not that I noticed. But then, I didn’t work with him that much. Nobody did, really, except for Auria.”

“Auria?”

“Martina’s been teaching her perfume making. She’s getting quite good at it, too. In fact, she’s been making more of the perfumes we use lately than Martina has—”

“And Sanuito’s been helping her.”

“Yes. She might be able to tell you more. Poor Sanuito,” Marte added, looking sad.

“Poor us,” Paulo muttered, going back to his notes. “We never should have taken him in.”

“As opposed to leaving him to starve?” Mircea asked.

Paulo looked up and scowled. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but the Watch isn’t all bad. Yes, half of them strut around, acting like they’re God, and a good percentage are as corrupt as hell. But if it wasn’t for them, the city would be overrun by crazy vampires doing their own version of a Sanuito!”

“It’s true, Mircea,” Marte agreed. “Most of the vampires the Watch pick up aren’t like you—”

“Or Bezio or Jerome?” he asked pointedly.

“Your group was unusual, possibly because the Watch has been extra vigilant lately, leading up to the consul’s visit. Anyone who looked even remotely suspicious was picked up, on the assumption that they could be sorted out later. But most of the time they have to be showing some sort of odd behavior to be taken in the first place—”

She broke off when another servant came in, with a basket dripping some sort of brackish ooze onto the floor.

“Did you just trail that through the whole house?” Paulo demanded.

The man looked at him, blinking.

Marte sighed. “Come on. We’re putting the leaky ones down the hall.”

“The leaky ones?” Paulo asked, following her out. “What exactly are you bringing in here?”

“Martina said everything.”

“Everything salvageable. I don’t think she expected . . .”

Mircea waited a moment, until their voices faded, then hurriedly looked through the baskets. But all the smaller jars he found were cracked and leaking. Ruined.

Which probably explained why the majority of the containers were the larger ones, the kind normally used to refill the smaller vessels. They had thicker walls and had thus survived the heat better, although that didn’t help with identification. They looked more like the ones on an apothecary’s shelves than the one Sanuito had given him . . .

A moment later, Mircea stuck his head in the kitchen, and found Jerome sitting at the main table, shelling more blasted peas. With most of the servants busy on the salvage mission, it looked like he had been pressed into service. A fact that did not appear to be making him happy.

“Have a minute?” Mircea asked.

“Why?” He looked up hopefully.

“I have an errand.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Hurry up!” Jerome said nervously. “We should have been back by now.”

Mircea sneezed into a handkerchief, instead of replying. At the rate things were going, he’d be lucky to make it back at all. His head swam. His throat burned. He thought even his vision might be blurring.

“And then we have this one,” the genial apothecary said, bringing over yet another maiolica jar.

Martina was a notoriously late sleeper, even when she hadn’t spent half the day dealing with a burning house. It had given Mircea reason to hope that he might complete his errand and be back before she knew he was gone. But that was before he realized the extent of the medicaments on offer—or the enthusiasm of the proprietor who had sold him so many and such expensive things, less than a week ago.

The man was clearly hoping for another big sale.

Mircea was hoping to identify the substance in the little pot Sanuito had given him before he fell over.

It wasn’t going so well. He’d gone through half the items in the shop, and he wasn’t even sure he recalled what the damned stuff smelled like anymore. Or what he thought it had before perfumes and spices, sugars and exotic ointments had surrounded him in a cloud of different scents, some whispering, some screaming, but all working to drown out even a vampire’s scent memory.

He looked up from the handkerchief, eyes streaming, only to have the owner shove something citrus-scented under his nose. A human would have probably needed it that close. But to a vampire, it was akin to having a bucket of lemon juice thrown in his face.

Mircea gasped and reared back, colliding with one of the boys who had been bustling about, cleaning up the shop after hours. And, of course, this one was carrying a large and probably quite expensive maiolica jar. Which equally predictably, he dropped.

Mircea caught it—just—a hair’s breadth before it hit the floor.

The shop owner gave a little bleat. And then clutched the jar to his apron-covered chest after Mircea handed it over. He looked faintly ill, his face red, his forehead beaded with sweat.

“Oh, gràsie, dòmino! Gràsie! Stupid boy,” he added, glaring at the young man, who stood there with his mouth hanging open in horror, until his master yelled at him. “Go, èrce! Do you think I trust you with this again?”

The boy scurried off, and the shopkeeper carefully placed the beautiful jar on the nearest counter, his hands shaking slightly.

“What’s in that one?” Mircea managed to wheeze.

“Nothing, dòmino. Well, nothing you would be interested in.”

“How do you know?”

“You said cosmetics, dòmino. And aromatic waters and body powders and scented soaps—”

“That’s not soap,” Jerome said, sniffing the air.

How he could still smell anything was beyond Mircea. A boy was peeling a great mass of ginger root just behind him, and just beyond that, a man was crushing mint. Not to mention the golden haze that hung in the air from a bag of crushed mustard one of the boys had turned over, and the . . . the . . .

Mircea sneezed, and then gratefully accepted a cup of water from one of the apprentices.

“How do you dhow?” he repeated, through his nose.

“’Cause I helped make enough of the stuff in my time, didn’t I?” Jerome asked, leaning on the counter. “It was a specialty of the apothecary I used to work for. Pound, pound, pound, cook, cook, cook, mix, mix, mix. The stuff takes forever—”

“But worth it, young master,” the apothecary said, giving Jerome the stink eye. Whether for outing himself as something other than the noble his clothing would suggest, or because he was damaging a potential sale, Mircea didn’t know.

“If it’s made right,” Jerome began, only to be cut off as the man drew himself up.

“We take great pride in our work! We use only the finest of ingredients—and no shortcuts, as you’ll find in so many of the lesser shops.”

The water hadn’t helped much, but the apprentice returned with a damp towel, and Mircea buried his face in it.

“Yes, but they all say that,” Jerome pointed out cynically.

“They may say whatever they wish!” the man fumed. “But we are not known as Venice’s premier apothecary for nothing! We follow the recipe as Galen set down—”

“You’re using Andromachus’s version?” Jerome asked, sounding surprised.

“Yes, of course. It has been repeatedly proven to be the most efficacious—”

“And the most expensive.”

“—if properly prepared as Andromachus instructed. He was the Emperor Nero’s personal physician,” the man added, presumably for Mircea’s benefit, since the tone had changed to oiled deference. “Such a learned man.”

“Nero—didn’t he die young?” Jerome asked.

“Of stab wounds! He was never successfully poisoned—”

“Unlike everyone else around him.”

“—because he knew that the value of a good antidote is beyond price,” the shopkeeper said, smiling at Mircea, who had raised his head, blinking.

“He should do, considering how many times he caused others to need one,” Jerome muttered.

“Had they had this,” the apothecary said, proudly patting his potbellied jar, “they would have lived.”

“Hmmph,” Jerome said, unimpressed. “Where do you get all the vipers?”

“Vipers?” Mircea asked, trying to catch up.

“My shop frequently had to substitute lizards,” Jerome added, helping him not at all.

The shopkeeper smirked. “Why am I not surprised?”

Jerome’s eyes narrowed. “As the original recipe allows.”

“The original recipe was flawed,” the apothecary said. “Do you want to save money or your life? Such matters are not the place to economize—”

“Says the man trying to make a sale,” Jerome murmured. “And you didn’t answer the question.”

“The local fishermen bring them to us, of course,” the man snapped. “They often catch them in the shallows. They know we offer the best price, so they give us first choice—”

“When only the finest snakes will do.”

“Yes, because lizards are preferable,” the shopkeeper replied sarcastically. “They may give it the same taste, but they render the mix useless—as do weak or old vipers. The finer the ingredients, the finer the end product. And that includes the poison!”

“What poison?” Mircea asked, since they’d both ignored his previous question.

They did this one, too.

“Weak poison makes a weak antidote,” the apothecary continued. “We take only the best vipers, in their prime, you understand,” he said, glancing at Mircea, who understood exactly nothing. “We slice them small, place them in a solution of sal ammoniac, add the specified herbs, flowers, and wine, cover the pot with clay, and set it on a fire. When the vipers are properly cooked, the roasted remains are taken out and pounded—”

“Always with the pounding,” Jerome sighed.

“—until they are reduced to powder. After ten days, the powder is combined with fifty-five herbs, including myrrh, black and white pepper, turpentine resin, and poppy juice, all at the prescribed intervals—”

“Which is why it takes forever,” Jerome interjected.

“—and then the result of that is added to lemnian earth and roasted copper, bitumen, and castoreum—the secretion of beaver,” he said, seeing Mircea’s frown. “Well-aged, of course—”

“Of course,” Mircea murmured.

“—and finally it is all blended with a good quantity of honey and vetch meal. It takes a minimum of forty days to prepare properly, assuming all the ingredients are to hand.”

“But isn’t it supposed to be aged thereafter?” Jerome asked slyly. “Twelve years, wasn’t it?”

“That is considered optimal,” the man sniffed. “And we recommend as much to those buying it as a precaution. But in emergencies, it can be used sooner. Galen records that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius consumed the preparation within two months of its being prepared without ill effect.”

“It also increases the profit, if it can be shipped right out.”

The apothecary’s eyes narrowed. And a moment later, he was unstoppering his prized jar and summoning one of his boys with a snap of his fingers. “Wine. The Malvasia.”

“Yes, let’s be completely authentic,” Jerome said, but he looked intrigued.

“I’m not using it because it is Greek,” the man retorted. “But due to its naturally sweet taste, which compliments the mixture.”

“What mixture?” Mircea asked, and finally, the two men turned to look at him. Which would have been more gratifying if they hadn’t been staring at him incredulously.

He scowled. He’d like to see how attentive they were after inhaling three or four dozen potent concoctions. And damn it, he still couldn’t smell anything.

Until a diminutive glass of sweet wine was pushed under his nose a moment later. Just the fumes would have been enough to open a dead man’s head. And yes, Mircea recognized the irony, but he didn’t care.

Because the scent was hauntingly familiar.

He looked up and met the apothecary’s proud smile. “You see?” the man said gently. “Quality will out.”

“What is this?” Mircea asked, as Jerome took the cup, sticking out a tongue to taste the mix.

He made a face.

It obviously wasn’t sweet enough.

“That, dòmino, is only the finest Galene in all of Venice.”

“And Galene is another name for . . . ?”

“Why, Theriac Andromachus, of course,” the man said, looking confused. “What have we been talking about?”

Five minutes later, Mircea and Jerome hit the street, where even the late closing shops had now shuttered for the night. “So much for going back there again,” Jerome said, brushing himself off.

“We won’t need him again. We have what we went for.”

“We have nothing, which is why he was annoyed,” Jerome pointed out. “Would you like to tell me why I almost got beaten up over something neither of us can use?”

“If you can answer a question for me first.”

“Such as?”

They stopped and pressed against the building to let a peddler, with a cart full of leftover fish, down the narrow sidewalk. “Such as, where did Sanuito get a pot of outrageously expensive poison antidote when he was totally destitute?”

“Sanuito?”

“And why did he have it on a tray of soaps and cosmetics? And why did he offer it to me a day before he suddenly went mad and killed himself?”

“That’s three questions,” Jerome said, looking troubled.

“Yes. And I don’t have an answer to any of them,” Mircea said grimly. “But I know someone who might.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Is this really necessary?” Mircea asked, as two robust farm girls approached. They were the ones who had fed him a week ago, and he’d seen them a few times since, although wearing rather more than they had on at the moment.

Not that he was about to be doing any better.

“I bathed this morning,” he pointed out, as he was efficiently stripped by a couple of fiends with nimble fingers and laughing brown eyes.

“And now you’ll bathe again,” Auria said, reclining on her bed, examining him as the girls set to work.

He closed his eyes briefly. He didn’t need this right now. He needed to talk to Auria, preferably alone.

And clear-headed.

But neither option appeared to be on offer. “I need to ask you something, about Sanuito,” he said, trying not to react as the girls went to work with warm, wet rags.

“Not now.”

“Yes, now. I need to know if he was acting strangely in the last few days.”

Auria shrugged. “Sanuito always acted—”

“Yes, so I’ve been told. I mean moreso.”

“Not that I noticed. He seemed much the same. Quiet, assiduous, smart—”

“Smart?”

“Yes, why?”

“No one else seemed to notice that about him.”

Auria shrugged. “No one else paid attention.”

“But you did.”

“It’s my job to notice men. How they think, what they’re like.”

“And what was Sanuito like?”

She started to say something, and then paused, a small frown creasing her lovely forehead. “Damaged. Skittish. Afraid. But also intelligent, hardworking, eager to prove himself. I’d had an assistant a while ago, but I stopped using him. You know Lucca?”

Mircea thought back to the gormless servant wrestling with the heron’s feet. “Vaguely.”

“Be glad. The man’s an idiot. I’d show him simple recipes time and again, and he never remembered them. I finally told Cook she could have him, because it was easier doing everything myself!”

“But Sanuito wasn’t like that.”

“No. I never had to repeat a recipe, but he never got one wrong, either. I’d show him how I wanted something ground, and it was perfect every time thereafter. I will miss him.”

Mircea blinked. It was the first time he’d heard anyone say that, too. “Did he ever come into contact with poison?”

“Poison?”

“Of any kind. You said he helped you in the—that isn’t necessary,” Mircea said, glancing over his shoulder at the girl behind him, who was becoming a little overly familiar.

She just gave him a grin and went back to work.

“It’s necessary,” Auria said, drawing his attention back to her. “And, no.”

“But he assisted you—”

“To create cosmetics.”

“The ingredients of which are sometimes dangerous, are they not?”

“Sometimes. To humans, if used indiscriminately. Not to us.”

“But some are poisonous,” Mircea insisted. “You told me once that there was arsenic in some of the depilatories—”

“Which is washed off before it does harm to anything but hair!”

“But if it wasn’t? Isn’t it supposed to be hard to detect?”

“The kind poisoners use, perhaps. But the kind in cosmetics comes from orpiment, which is bright yellow and smells terribly of sulfur. Even to humans it reeks, and to us . . . well, no one is going to ingest any by accident, I assure you.”

“Vermilion, then,” Mircea said stubbornly.

Auria tilted her head. “Where are you hearing about all this?”

“From Jerome. His master was poisoned, and he learned a great deal about them afterward. He says there’s all sorts of things used in cosmetics that can kill someone.”

“If you eat an entire jar of it, perhaps,” Auria said dryly. “As far as I know, Sanuito didn’t. And in any case, we don’t use vermilion.”

“But your lips—”

“And my cheeks. And any other part of my anatomy I choose. I’m a vampire, Mircea! Blood goes where I want it.”

And didn’t he just wish that were true of him, Mircea thought, swallowing. And trying to keep his mind on the conversation. How long did it take to clean someone who was clean already?

“In any case, vermilion isn’t harmful unless overused,” Auria said. “And even for humans, it’s more likely to cause a rash than death. It wouldn’t harm a vampire at all. Most poisons won’t.”

“Jerome’s master was poisoned with something—”

“But I doubt it was his rouge that did him in!”

Mircea sighed and gave up. “Belladonna?”

“Is used in a weak tincture, a drop or so at the time, to cause the pupils to expand. It gives women that doe-eyed expression some men like.”

“And can result in blurry vision, hallucinations, poisoning,” Mircea recited from memory.

“Again, only in excess. It isn’t dangerous unless greatly overused—except to men’s purses.”

“But someone has to make that tincture,” Mircea persisted.

“We don’t make it here; we buy it.”

“But if Sanuito spilled some on himself—”

Auria sighed. “Then he would have been chastised for clumsiness, not poisoned. And in any case, Sanuito didn’t die of poison, did he?”

“I don’t know what he died of. I only know—” Mircea cut off, because one of the girls had stopped the bath he didn’t need, and had gone to her knees in front of him. And now she was—

“What are you doing?” he demanded, in shock.

“Ignore her,” Auria said.

Mircea looked up incredulously. “Ignore—”

“We need to work on your self-control.”

“I have self-control!” he said, jerking away.

“Apparently not. Unless you planned to almost die every time we sent you out!”

“That had nothing to do with me!”

“It had everything to do with you, and the decisions you made.” She nodded at the girl, who resumed her former occupation. “You are in charge on any assignation,” Auria’s voice snapped, bringing his attention back to her despite everything. “Whatever your client may believe. To stay that way, you must remain clear-headed, regardless of the distractions. You dictate the terms, you decide the duration, and if something goes wrong, you take the blame.”

“So you’re telling me I could have . . . could have somehow kept myself from almost being drained?” Mircea demanded.

“Yes, easily.”

“How?”

“By specifying no blood. Or by limiting the amount to be taken. Or by simply mentioning your age! As it was, you set no boundaries, so naturally they assumed you had none.”

“I wasn’t told to negotiate anything—”

“And you never asked?”

Mircea flushed. “We’re—you know what we are—”

“You can’t even say it.”

“—and I didn’t think we had any rights.”

“And as long as you act like that, you won’t. What happened to the man who leapt over the balcony and went charging after Sanuito?”

“That was different—”

“How different?”

“That was—damn it!” Mircea looked over his shoulder again, at the girl behind him. Who had just passed familiar and was heading into uncharted waters.

“Ignore her,” Auria’s voice snapped again. “And concentrate. How is it different?”

He looked up, angry and exasperated. “I don’t know—”

“Then let’s try another one. The second trip. You were being called back, which alone told you something. Didn’t it?”

“I . . .” Mircea paused. He was having a hard time concentrating even on easy questions at the moment, much less the hard ones.

“It told you she was interested,” Auria said, with a sigh. “Anyone could have been sent out the first time. Martina selected you because she knew something of the senator’s preferences. She has no use for callow schoolboys, or for men who have never been tested by anything more strenuous than a rousing debate. She likes soldiers, and you were the only one we had. But there was no way to know that she would like you.”

Mircea nodded, hoping like hell that would be good enough, because he was pretty sure he was incapable of actual speech at the moment. The warm, wet caress from the girl in front was bad enough, not being the sort of thing he had ever been expected to concentrate through. But it had just been joined by—

“God!” he cried out, shuddering all over. No wonder they’d been so assiduous with the washing!

“Pay attention,” Auria snapped. “This is exactly the sort of mistake you made before.”

“I made no mistake!”

“Then what would you call it? You received no offer, even for a future assignation. And that was despite clear indication of interest.”

“She—that’s—you don’t understand. She felt badly—”

“About what?”

“About—can we stop this?”

“No.”

Mircea glared at her. “She wasn’t interested in me! She felt badly about what her ladies
had done—” Auria rolled her eyes. “It’s true!”

“Did she have sex with you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then I think we can safely say her contrition was limited,” she said dryly.

Mircea knew there was an appropriate response to that, something suitably cutting, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of it. Or much of anything else. Except the obvious.

“Don’t you dare,” Auria told him sternly.

He stared at her desperately, wondering if she had any idea—

Her lips quirked. “Leave us,” she told the girls.

“We, er, we don’t mind finishing,” the one in front of him said breathlessly.

“I’m sure. Out.”

They went, closing the door behind them. And leaving him standing ridiculously in front of the door, naked and aching and unfulfilled. And then it got worse.

“Come here.”

Mircea hesitated, but although her face was as serenely beautiful as ever, the blue eyes were laughing at him. His back stiffened. He started walking, despite knowing how he must look.

“Stop.”

The tip of a lace-edged fan came to rest at the center of Mircea’s chest, halting him halfway across the luxurious bedroom.

He blinked; he hadn’t even seen her move.

He also hadn’t seen her undress, because she hadn’t. She was wearing a blue gown that brought out her eyes, slashed to show the fine linen chemise below, with a strand of pearls woven through her thick auburn hair. She even had on shoes instead of slippers, dainty, low-heeled mules in a matching blue, decorated with delicate silver embroidery and seed pearls.

She looked like a duchess.

It made Mircea feel even more vulnerable as she walked around him, and trailed the scratchy lace fan across muscles that jerked and bunched, following her in a ripple of movement.

“So, to summarize,” she said mildly. “You knew she was interested. You knew you had the upper hand. You knew you could have asked for anything—”

“I couldn’t—”

“You could. You can always ask. Do so prettily enough and they won’t mind, even if they turn you down.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“But Martina does.”

“And she really thinks she’s going to get a fortune for me?”

“She thinks she’s going to get something, but not necessarily a fortune.”

“Then why does she care so damned much? She likely already made back what she spent—”

“This isn’t about money. A senator has abilities others do not.”

“Such as?”

“To accuse . . . or to pardon.”

“And why . . . does Martina . . . need a pardon?” he gasped, trying not to react as the fan trailed down his stomach, and caused the muscles to clench convulsively. Whether they were trying to pull away or go toward her, Mircea wasn’t sure.

Until she ran the edge of it down his sex, causing him to shudder violently.

She raised him with the end of her open fan, watching him fill and swell against the delicate black lace.

“What Martina does is her business,” she told him softly. “Mine is to make you understand that the mind is one thing, but the body . . . is something else. It has its own wants, its own needs, and its own language to express them.”

She didn’t give an example. She didn’t have to. Mircea did that for himself, lifting off the platform and into the air, hard and aching without even a touch.

Auria went up on tiptoe, putting coral lips next to his ear. “Once you learn the body’s language, it won’t matter what a client says. Or even what they think they want. Their body will tell you the truth. Their need will tell you. And you will find that you can get them to agree to almost anything, once their body is on your side. Do you understand?”

Mircea swallowed. Nothing like an object lesson. “Yes, I—”

The fan abruptly snapped shut, hard enough to make him flinch.

“We’ll see. Get on the bed.”

Chapter Thirty

Mircea started to comply, but something stopped him. Some clue in the tension in her spine, the look in her eyes, he didn’t know. He wasn’t as adept at reading this language of the body as she was, but he knew desire when he saw it.

And hers wasn’t for unquestioning obedience.

Which worked out well, since neither was his.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded when, instead of complying, he started circling her slowly. Examining her as she had him.

Hair a true auburn: not brown, not red, but a perfect combination of the two. It complimented her complexion, which was naturally the pearlescent white so prized in Venice that some women were known to paint egg whites on their faces to emulate it. Breasts high and firm, and shown off to advantage by the low cut dress. Sweet rounded neck, delicate jawline, dainty, feminine features—

And large blue eyes snapping at him angrily.

In short, she was beautiful.

But he doubted it was her looks that made her so sought after. There was an underlying sweetness about Auria. She mostly managed to hide it behind a tough outer shell, but he’d caught glimpses of it on occasion. And not just when she’d cried for Sanuito—the only one who had. But in the flutter of thick black lashes, in the edge of a lip caught between snow white teeth, or like now, in a flash of uncertainty in blue, blue eyes.

Until she saw him notice, and her brows drew together. “I said—”

“I heard you. And I am acceding to a lady’s wishes.”

“The lady wishes you on the bed.”

“No,” Mircea said, watching her.

“No?”

“No, the lady doesn’t,” he elaborated. “The lady doesn’t want me here at all. That’s why she had others here to start with. Why she wore such formal attire—”

“I didn’t dress for you.”

“Didn’t you? You usually wear Turkish dress about the house,” Mircea pointed out, referring to the long, open sided robes the ladies of Venice had borrowed from their eastern sisters. Worn over a loose chemise, with simple flat-soled slippers, it was a far more comfortable outfit that that considered suitable for the street. “Yet today . . .”

“This is what I felt like wearing.”

“It’s lovely.”

“Get on the bed.”

“You seem insistent.”

“And you seem stubborn!”

“As you said, I never did learn to take orders well.”

Beautiful blue eyes narrowed. “A fact that will soon change.”

“But not here. Here is where you work, where pleasure is turned into a business—”

“That’s the business we’re in, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“—so you can’t be yourself here.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I think I am. In that bed you’re not Auria. You’re Venice’s most expensive courtesan. In that bed, you’re whoever your clients want you to be, so that they do what you want them to do, whether they realize it or not—”

“You’re damned right they do.”

“But none of them give you what you really want.”

“Don’t they?” An eyebrow arched. “Look around.”

“I have. But amassing a fortune . . . that’s what the lady wants. What the courtesan wants. What does Auria want?”

Mircea saw her face shut down. “Auria doesn’t want anything.”

“Everyone wants something.”

“Auria doesn’t.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“I think perhaps Auria hasn’t been asked what she wants, in a long time—”

“Auria doesn’t exist anymore! This,” she gestured around. “This is who I am now!”

Mircea caught her hand. “Here,” he agreed. “So let’s not stay here.”

“What?” She looked at him half in anger, half in confusion.

“We’ll go to my room.”

“Your—that cubbyhole?” She was clearly appalled.

“It has a bed.”

“And fleas, most like!”

“Not that I’ve noticed. But I’ll check for you—”

“No need.” Auria pulled her hand back and crossed her arms. “I’m staying here.”

“Afraid?”

“Of what?” She snorted and looked him up and down. “Of you?”

“No, of you. Of Auria. Of what she may want.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Oh. Then you’re afraid you can’t work your magic in less . . . salubrious . . . surroundings? That you won’t be as alluring in a garret as in a palace?”

“Trust you to know about palaces.”

“Castles, in my country. And a garret here is far more comfortable.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true,” Mircea said, repressing a smile. “They’re terribly uncomfortable, castles. Great, ugly, gray stone things, with a perpetual chill, even in summer. Tiny rooms, to make them easier to heat. But it doesn’t work, because most don’t have fireplaces, so you have to make do with braziers. Which leaves them smoky and drafty and still cold.”

Auria was looking like she didn’t believe him. Mircea decided to up the ante. It wasn’t as if he was lying.

“Miniscule windows, for defense, you know. And great hulking walls beyond them, so everything’s always gloomy. And the stench!” He made an elaborate face. “The garderobes let out straight into the moat—if you’re lucky enough to have a moat—and unlike in Venice, there’s no tide to carry anything away. Oh, and speaking of garderobes—”

“Let’s not.”

“They’re damned inconvenient. Wherever you are, it’s almost guaranteed they’re on the opposite side of the castle, down some narrow, freezing, uneven corridor, which you have to navigate in the middle of the night, desperately needing to relieve yourself—”

“Stop it.”

“—clutching your blanket around your freezing, naked body, because you waited too long to get dressed—”

“Stop it!”

“—and stubbing your bare toes and bashing into walls in your hurry. And then cursing fit to make a sailor blush when you find somebody already in there—”

“There are chamber pots!” she said, giving up and laughing.

“Small rooms, remember? Trust me, the garderobe was preferable.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about this!”

“And then there were the fleas—”

“There were no fleas!”

“There were always fleas. The damned dogs went everywhere, including curling up in the middle of your bed whether you wanted them there or not. Although, on cold nights, the fleas seemed a small price to pay for the added warmth.”

“I had a dog as a child. It had fleas.” Auria smiled. “I don’t recall minding.”

Mircea didn’t recall it, either. “In short, if you want the true castle experience, my room is really much more—”

“Oh, all right!”

Mircea blinked. “All right?”

“What’s the matter? Didn’t you expect that to work?”

“Not . . . really.” It was the first time he’d persuaded a girl into bed by mentioning the possibility of fleas.

Then he noticed something.

“Why are you getting undressed?”

“This may come as a shock to you, but it’s generally considered customary.”

“But . . . here?”

“You live in a garret,” she said, pulling off her embroidered, pearl encrusted sleeves and tossing them on the bed. “There’s no room up there.”

Mircea opened his mouth to argue the point, and then shut it quickly, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.

Fortunately, she was sliding the dress over her head and didn’t see.

The dress pulled her hair down along with it, including the strand of pearls that Mircea caught just before they followed the fate of the coral. He put them carefully on the dressing table, beside the overflowing cask of other jewelry, and looked up. And froze.

Auria had gotten rid of the chemise, too, apparently finding the wrinkles too much to bear. She stepped out of the mules as he watched, leaving herself nude. Except for a rippling veil of auburn hair that cascaded down her body, half concealing a shape that Aphrodite might have envied.

And a pair of fine white silk stockings held on by pink ribbon garters.

“Are you coming or not?” she demanded, peering out the door.

“I—a robe,” Mircea choked.

“No robes.” She looked at him over her shoulder, pink cheeked and laughing. “Ready?”

“I—we can go up the back—”

“And hear about it from Cook for the next month? No, thank you.” She paused, and then grinned like a girl. “Let’s make this interesting.”

Mircea was personally finding it plenty interesting enough. “Interesting?”

“If you reach your garret before I do, you can have me. Otherwise . . . I get to have you.”

“There is a difference?”

She smiled, and the quality of it changed enough to send his heart racing. And then she was off, streaking down the corridor and past a servant with a tray, who upended it in shock as she bolted by. And then bent to retrieve it only to have Mircea almost crash into him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mircea muttered, dancing around the bemused man, and then streaking on, past the parlor where he really hoped no unsuspecting tradesmen were waiting, through the entryway and up the stairs, almost crashing into Paulo coming down.

“What the—”

“Martina’s orders,” Mircea breathed, and ran on, knocking over a vase and grabbing it. He settled it back on its plinth with hands shaking hard enough that it fell back off again. “Damn it!”

“You’re losing.”

He looked up to see Auria looking down on him from the floor above. And probably giving anyone behind her a heart attack as she leaned over the landing to taunt him. And then she disappeared, followed by the sound of lightly pattering feet.

Mircea dropped the damned vase and ran—right into Marte, who had come out of her room to see what the fuss was about.

“Well, well,” she said, grinning.

“I—excuse me,” Mircea breathed, dodging around her.

He felt a sharp slap on his backside as he bolted off again. “Don’t mention it.”

Damn it! But he didn’t even have time to turn around and glare at her, because he was racing up the stairs at vampire speed, which was probably cheating since Auria hadn’t been using it. But she hadn’t specifically exempted it, either, and a man had to do what a man had to—

“Goddamnit!”

Mircea glared at a very startled Bezio, who had been coming out of the door of his room, only to be stopped by collision with a speeding vampire. And then by the sight of who was lounging against the wall, just in front of Mircea’s room, looking amused. Bezio’s jaw dropped.

Auria stepped across the threshold, just down the hall from where Mircea was clutching his friend. “I win.”

The door shut, and Bezio looked at him. “Looks to me like you won, son.”

Mircea swallowed.

Time to find out.

Chapter Thirty-One

Naked and spread-eagled, Mircea fought uselessly against the invisible bonds that trapped him. Muscles bunched in his arms, his thighs bulged and strained, and he exerted enough force to punch through a brick wall. Yet nothing changed. Except that a slide of invisible strength tightened around his upper thighs, squeezing a warning as Auria approached the bed.

She looked him over critically.

“How are you doing this?” he demanded.

“Age has its privileges.” She ran the back of a single nail up his length, adjusting it slightly, making it perfectly perpendicular. “As does youth.”

Mircea wasn’t seeing a lot of privileges right now. The power that held him held all of him, making it impossible for him to do anything but lie there and shudder all over, uselessly. And watch as she put a dainty, silk-covered foot on the bed, and toyed with the ribbon holding up her stockings.

They were fine white silk, instead of the more common linen or wool. And were knitted to better follow the shape of the leg, instead of woven. They had a pattern of vines and flowers across the tops and more down the sides, and had probably cost a month’s salary for a laborer.

But that wasn’t what had his mouth going dry.

He wanted to pull those garters off with his teeth. He wanted his hand to be the one to roll down the stockings, revealing dimpled knees, sweetly rounded calves, and trim ankles. He wanted his fingers to caress the arch of the foot before slowly pulling them off, exposing dainty white flesh, so sweet and so forbidden—

The toenails were gilded.

He closed his eyes.

“The secret of passion is to make her want it,” she murmured. “Bring her to the brink and then deny her, over and over again. Until she is almost mad with desire. Until she can think of nothing and no one else.”

“Is that what you do?” Mircea gritted out.

“Of course.

“It’s torture.”

“It works.”

“So does shared passion. So does genuine affection. So does mutual respect—”

“That is for when you care about someone. Not for what we do.”

“You don’t care about your clients?”

“No. And neither will you, if you’re smart.”

Mircea started to reply, but then the stocking, still warm from her body, was draped around his length.

And the words died in his throat.

“Make her forget the other men she knows,” Auria murmured, sliding the soft mass slowly around him. “The other experiences she’s had. They pale in comparison with this. There is only her, and you, and the need . . . growing . . . aching . . . desperate. . . .”

Oh, he was desperate, Mircea thought, straining with everything he had against the hold she had on him.

And going exactly nowhere.

“. . . yet unfulfilled,” Auria said, sounding amused. “Give just enough to madden, never enough to satisfy.”

“How about enough to live?” Mircea snarled, because a human would have had a heart attack by now.

“I don’t think sexual frustration is one of the ways to kill a vampire.”

“Maybe they need to update the list!”

“Maybe you should tell the senator that, when next you see her.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be seeing her—”

“It’s only been four days,” she told him. “Just wait.”

“—nor that I want to.”

It was the truth. An inconvenient one, since convocation would be over soon and he was supposed to make his escape. An escape that would not work if he didn’t have a patron willing to protect him—and Bezio, and Jerome, if he wished to come—in Paris. He needed to see her, needed to somehow convince her to take them on, three useless vampires.

But it wasn’t what he wanted to do. She was too powerful, too overwhelming. He was afraid of what she might want, and what he might get drawn into as a result.

Mircea might not know what he wanted from this new life, but he was very clear on what he didn’t. And he didn’t want to be drawn into another political dynasty. To be under someone else’s control, to have their rules hedge him in, their decisions move his hand. To have their ambitions supersede everything he might value.

He’d been that; he’d done that. His whole life had been as a pawn, being moved about by someone else’s will. His death wasn’t going to be, too.

“I don’t want a master,” he said, and Auria laughed.

“I think you actually mean it.”

“I do. Why is that funny?”

“It’s not. It’s . . . ironic. You don’t care anything about the opportunity you’ve been given, while I would give everything I have—”

“For what?”

“For a master’s touch,” she said, and straddled him.

“You could have any master you want.” Mircea might not know vampire society, but he knew men. And, hell, probably most women. He couldn’t see too many people kicking Auria out of bed—or denying her whatever she asked.

But she didn’t seem to agree.

“Not any.”

“Who would turn you down?”

“One who already did.”

It took Mircea a moment to realize what she meant. “But he threw you out! Tried to kill you—”

“Doesn’t matter. It is our nature.”

“It wouldn’t be mine!”

“You don’t have a master,” Auria pointed out. “How would you know?”

“But others here have. And I don’t see any of them mourning the ones who threw them out!”

“I think Jerome does, a little. Although at least he has the consolation of death. His master is gone; he cannot get him back. They say it makes it easier.”

“But . . . Paulo—”

“And Zaneta and Danieli and the rest. Yes, I know. It doesn’t take everyone the same way.”

“It would seem to be damned rare!”

“Not really. I would say the opposite, in fact.”

“Then where are all the heartbroken vamp—” Mircea began, before seeing the truth in her face.

“Where do you think? You know how many die here, every day. How many more never make it this far? And many of them are not hunted. There are those who find that sort of thing amusing, certainly. But others simply find them . . . sad. They don’t want them, but they don’t want to harm them, either. Some even help them get this far.”

Trust him not to have found any of those, Mircea thought, grimacing. But he should have known there would be some. Vampires weren’t the two-dimensional monsters of his childhood fables, mindless, greedy, and savage. But a complicated mix, some decent, some anything but, just like the humans they had once been.

It had been Auria’s luck, and his, to see the worst side of the race. But there was good in it, too. He’d seen that as well, recently. And there could be more of it, much more, if—

His thoughts broke off when she suddenly took him inside her, in a single, unexpected movement that left him gasping.

But not in pleasure. After being deprived for so long, after aching for so long, the overwhelming wash of sensation was almost another form of torture. One made worse by the fact that he still couldn’t move.

He couldn’t slide his hands up the back of her thighs, and grasp the taut mounds above. Couldn’t kiss the softer mounds in front, or mouth the pale pink nipples. Couldn’t touch the long line of her body as she stretched up, finding the ring at the peak of his sloping ceiling, which had once supported a lantern.

And which now supported the weight of a beautiful courtesan as she began to undulate.

She closed her eyes, one slender arm holding the ring, the other draped behind her head, holding back the glorious weight of her hair. Letting him see everything he couldn’t have. Like the faint sheen of sweat that began to slick her skin. . . .

In desperation, Mircea looked away, but it didn’t help.

There was nothing else like the feel of a woman’s body. No other pleasure came close to the supple, yielding strength of it, the warm, satiny feel of it, the rich, intoxicating scent. He didn’t think he could ever get enough of the little sounds they made, the feel of them squirming against him, the surge of pride that came from making them—

“God!” Mircea almost came off the bed when a small tendril of her power suddenly coiled around his base, denying his release.

And then things became stranger still when it began to move as she did. Expanding and contracting, forcing him to meet her thrust for thrust. Making his own participation in this almost irrelevant.

I’ll take you, she’d said, and he suddenly, vividly, realized what she’d meant. He was there for her pleasure, not the other way around. And it felt . . . he couldn’t . . . this wasn’t how . . . unhh.

“The ones you see here are those who do not feel that way,” she told him, continuing their former conversation as if nothing was happening. “Or are those who decided to live in spite of it.”

Mircea stared up at her. The damned woman wasn’t even breathing hard!

“Perhaps . . . it will fade . . . in time,” he said, because if she could, he could.

“It doesn’t. How can it? It’s part of you, they’re part of you—literally, for they gave you life. It is their blood that animates you, that called you back from death. You are meant to be together, your whole being knows it.”

“I can’t . . . imagine feeling . . . that way.”

“Can’t you?” She changed position suddenly, forcing a groan out of him. “It’s something like that,” she told him. “But all the time. But not just physical; it’s mental, emotional—almost spiritual. An utterly helpless longing to touch him, to be beside him, just to hear his voice. Even when you know he doesn’t care as you do, even when you realize that it’s all on your side, it doesn’t lessen the need. It’s the worst thing in the world when they reject you.”

“Anyone . . . who could reject you . . . is a fool,” Mircea snarled.

“Then the world is full of fools,” she said lightly.

And the next second, she was at his throat.

Soft lips instead of hard teeth, but still, so close. It sent a shiver through him that resonated from his body and up into hers. He knew she felt it when she smiled, ferally.

“Which do you want more,” she asked. “Blood or sex? And think carefully, for you can only have one.”

Mircea opened his mouth to say sex, because clearly.

But then he closed it again as that long, white throat slid along his. He could feel her heartbeat, a quick flutter against his skin, and then slower, heavier, until it synchronized with his own. Until it felt like his own, like his blood was in her body, was in her body and was waiting to be reclaimed.

He felt his fangs descend.

But it was hers that scraped against his skin, not tearing, not even pricking. Just brushing, delicate, teasing, maddening. He heard himself growl, a frightening sound. He hadn’t lost that much control since—

He tried to rein himself in, but she was doing it again. Sliding her throat along his, her pulse along his, and now her body as well. Slick, wet friction and undulating muscles and a pulse pounding, pounding, pounding in his throat, in his head, in his—

“Only one,” she whispered, and it was absurd.

“I can’t—”

“You can. You did it with the senator, did you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“Sex without blood is meaningless for most of us. Blood magnifies everything in our world, including pleasure. But, apparently, you are different.”

“I’m not—”

“But you are. You’ve demonstrated that twice now. So, for you, only one.”

Her lips caught his, in a sweet caress that was nothing like what he wanted. It was soft and gentle when he wanted hard, when he wanted piercing, when he wanted warm and metallic and—

“Only one,” she told him, sucking right over his pounding pulse, pulling it into her mouth, letting him feel her hunger, her need—

Only to let it out again, unbroken.

“Only one,” she murmured, as he choked.

“Only one,” and she sped up, taking it from torture to something for which he had no words.

“Only one,” she warned, as finally, finally, she released him, the power snapping that had held him down, that had kept him captive, that had kept him from—

“Only one,” she laughed, as his fangs slid into her skin, at the same moment that his body surged into her flesh, as he took from her and spilled into her in equal measure. This was how it was supposed to be, this was what he was, what he’d been driven mad for, this, and this, and this. . . .

Moments later, she had finally lost her breath, but not the wicked sparkle in her eyes. “You really are . . . bad . . . at taking orders,” she told him.

“And not likely to get any better,” Mircea growled, and rolled her into the sheets.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The wait ended the next night.

Mircea awoke to the feel of something hitting his chest. And to Paulo’s voice saying: “Get up. She wants you.”

He blinked his eyes open to find himself clutching a large, linen wrapped package—for an instant. Until it was snatched from his grasp and torn open. And something softer than down, something like a cloud in cloth form, was spilling over the bed.

“Oh,” someone breathed, as Mircea’s eyes finally managed to focus.

He sat up, finding himself clasping a doublet of deep, midnight blue velvet. The pile was shot through with tiny threads of silver, and scattered along the threads were glittering objects that gleamed in the candlelight, like dark fire. He ran his fingers over them, and finally realized that he couldn’t see them well because they were the same color as the cloth—a blue so dark they were almost black.

As sapphires often are, he thought dizzily.

And then Jerome—and it was Jerome, sitting on the bed, gray eyes huge—pulled out a length of snowy white linen—a shirt. It was massive, easily using as much material as a woman’s chemise. But it needed to be, to fit through the dozens of slashings on the doublet.

And then a matching suede and velvet cioppa appeared. And then a pair of hosen so fine and light that Mircea was concerned he might rip them just by holding them. But they stretched when he gave a tug, with a tensile strength he hadn’t expected.

There were other things, too—belt, shoes, gloves, even a hat. A velvet slouch with a jeweled buckle, the centerpiece a sapphire the size of his thumbnail. The whole together was an outfit a Doge might have envied—or a prince. And quite, quite illegal for someone of his current status to wear.

Fortunately, Venetians treated the sumptuary laws with the same respect they did the rest of the legal code.

“These are for me?” Mircea asked, looking up.

Paulo frowned at him. “Who else?”

“They’re from the senator?”

“Again, who else? Over there.” The last was directed at two maids who had just come in bearing hot water and towels, and making the tiny room exceedingly crowded.

Paulo looked at Jerome pointedly, but the smaller vampire didn’t budge.

“You said you didn’t ask for anything,” he said, looking covetously at the expensive pile on the bed.

“I didn’t.”

“You never said a word, and yet she sends you this?” Jerome clearly didn’t believe him.

That was all right; Mircea didn’t half believe it himself.

“She sent it because she wants him to look like he belongs at her table,” Paulo said, ducking his face into the basin.

Mircea finally noticed that the blond was only half dressed, and that his hair looked like birds had been nesting in it. He was also trying to shrug on clothes and make his ablutions even while bossing the two of them around. “Her table?” Mircea asked.

“We’re going to a party. Along with half the senators in town, apparently. So are you,” he added, scrubbing his face at Jerome. Who looked up, blinking.

“Me? Me? She asked for—”

“Don’t be absurd. She asked for him, and for two other courtiers to balance out her table. She’s having a banquet, and has too many women.”

“Senator . . . banquet . . . too many women . . .” Jerome’s eyes glazed.

It did not make Paulo happy.

“This could make us,” he said, snatching the other vampire up. “Or the opposite. If you can’t behave tonight—”

“Why would you assume that?” Jerome asked, affronted.

Paulo made a disgusted noise.

It was Jerome’s turn to scowl. “If you’re so concerned, why are you asking me?”

“You’re the only one left!” Paulo let go of Jerome to attack the rats nest on his head with a comb. “People of a certain station don’t trouble themselves with how much inconvenience they cause others. We were only just now informed, and the banquet starts in an hour! Danieli already left for an appointment, and there’s no way to fetch him back in time.”

“But I don’t have anything to wear—”

“You have two new suits!”

“—one of which needs mending and the other isn’t nearly fine enough for a senator’s table. But if I could borrow your green one—”

“The olive?”

“Don’t be silly, can you see my complexion in olive? The brocaded silver.”

“The hell you’re wearing the silver.”

“I need to send a note,” Mircea said, sitting up. And yawning.

“What? To who?”

“To a mage Cook knows—”

“A mage?” Paulo looked disgusted. “What do you want with one of them?”

“Nothing,” Jerome said, apparently seriously.

“And why is that?” Mircea asked.

“I met some of them, when we were investigating my master’s death. They’re . . . creepy.”

“We’re vampires.”

“Yes, but we’re not weird.”

Mircea stared at him.

“You know what I mean,” Jerome said crossly. “We’re humans with a disease. Like leprosy—”

“Speak for yourself,” Paulo said.

“—but we started out as normal people. They didn’t. And they only get worse with age.”

“But Cook says they deal in poisons, curses, that sort of thing,” Mircea said stubbornly. “And Sanuito wouldn’t have just gone off like—”

“Sanuito again,” Paulo rolled his eyes.

“—that for no reason. Not without so much as a note—”

“Are you sure he was literate?” Jerome asked.

“I don’t know what he was. But something set him off, made him crazed—”

“Well, it wasn’t poison.”

“He had an antidote!”

“Yes, so why didn’t he use it?”

“Who cares?” Paulo demanded. “Stop this nonsense and get dressed! The only place you’re going tonight is the senator’s table.”

“You may as well,” Jerome told him. “The mages won’t be any help.”

“How do you know? Cook says poison is one of their specialities,” Mircea said. “And there can’t be that many things that can kill one of us—”

“Well, of course there are,” Jerome said. “We still have a body, don’t we? It might not work the same way anymore—”

“That’s my point. We . . . we don’t need to breathe,” Mircea said, looking for an example. “Therefore anything that interferes with respiration—”

“Like cyanide.”

“Yes. It wouldn’t have an effect—”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Jerome leaned back against the bedpost. “Sure, we don’t have to worry about the same issues a human would. But just because it doesn’t affect us the same way doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful. Cyanide makes it harder for us to utilize the energy we get from blood. If a vampire takes enough of it, he’ll starve to death—unless his master can feed him what he needs until he recovers.”

“But Sanuito didn’t have a master.”

“He al’o din ‘tarve t’def,” Paulo said, around a mouth full of tooth polish.

“What?”

He spit into the water bowl. “He also didn’t starve to death. He went mad. Or something. And why aren’t you getting dressed?”

“Because I want to understand this!” Mircea said, frowning. “All right, are there any poisons that could drive a vampire mad?”

“Not that I know of,” Jerome said. “But that’s not really the question.”

“Then what is?”

“When we were trying to determine who killed my master, one of the questions we asked ourselves was how it was done. And we couldn’t figure it out. Take arsenic, for example. An amount the size of a pea will kill a human. And to them it’s colorless, tasteless, odorless—virtually undetectable. It’s why it’s so popular these days with cuckholded husbands and impatient heirs—”

“And your point?”

“That it’s tasteless to humans. Odorless to humans. We can detect it just fine, though, and in far smaller amounts than it would take to kill one of us.”

Paulo was nodding. “I heard about this duke—or prince or bishop, I don’t remember. But one evening at dinner, he picked up his wineglass and took a sip—and promptly went berserk. He jumped up and started screaming for an antidote, dancing around, claiming that somebody had poisoned him. His servant finally managed to calm him down by explaining that he’d cleaned the wine flask with vinegar earlier that day and forgotten to rinse it out, and that’s what he was tasting!”

He looked at them, smiling—until he noticed that they were just staring back. “What? It’s pertinent.”

“It is, in a way,” Jerome said. “Your duke, or whatever he was, was human, but a vampire would have reacted the same way to anyone trying to slip him something. Well, he’d have reacted that way and then slit their throat, but you get the idea. We had a group of our masters, the ones strong enough to resist minor poisoning, line up, and then we gave them wine that had miniscule amounts of various toxins in it, hoping to find out the smallest dose that could get through undetected.”

“And?” Mircea asked.

“We never did. We ran out of the ability to make the amounts any smaller before they ran out of the ability to taste them.”

“But Sanuito wasn’t a master. He couldn’t taste anything—”

“But he would have smelled it, Mircea—”

“—and your masters were expecting it. They were looking for it.”

Jerome shook his head. “We thought of that. So we tried it again a few weeks later, without telling them. And they had about the same reaction as your duke,” he told Paulo, who looked vindicated. “That’s why we finally decided it had to be magic.”

“And that’s why I need to see the mages.”

“You don’t need to see the mages,” Paulo said, irritably. “The bastards never tell anyone the truth. And, besides, nobody would have wanted to hex Sanuito! Any more than they would have wanted to poison him. You kill somebody you fear, somebody who’s a threat—”

“Yet he’s dead.”

“Yes. And you’re going to have to accept that, sooner or later—”

“Then what is your explanation?” Mircea asked stubbornly.

Paulo sighed. “Either that you’re wrong: he did want to kill himself, like the others who can’t adjust to this life. Or else the three weeks he spent starving in that damned cell turned his mind. It happens that way, for some.”

Mircea looked back and forth between the two of them, but Jerome was slowly nodding. “It makes the most sense, Mircea,” he said gently.

And it did; Mircea knew that.

But he’d also seen Sanuito’s face the night he died. And the previous one, when he’d tried to talk to an idiot who was too caught up in his own problems to listen. And he hadn’t been suicidal. He’d been afraid.

The question was, who had been afraid of Sanuito?

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Auria was right,” Jerome complained, adjusting himself. “These hosen have saggy butt.”

“Don’t touch yourself,” Paulo hissed, slapping Jerome’s hand away.

“I wasn’t touching myself, I was trying to pull up these damned—”

“Don’t touch your clothing, either! Don’t touch anything!”

The gondolier, an African who looked like he’d been in Venice long enough to have heard it all, still grinned.

Mircea didn’t.

Now that he was awake, it had occurred to him that it was a damned strange time for a party. Not that convocation wasn’t usually filled with such things, by all accounts. To the point that Mircea had wondered how anyone managed to get any work done. But it seemed a little odd right now, with dozens newly dead and a rift between the consul and his senior child.

But what did he know? Perhaps it had already been planned, and would have been awkward to cancel. Or perhaps things weren’t as grim as he’d imagined. It certainly didn’t look like anyone was mourning the newly dead as they approached the house, which was festooned in flowers and had torches burning outside in welcome.

“Remember your manners,” Paulo hissed at Jerome, as they approached the dock.

“About what?” Jerome asked.

“About everything! Cut your meat into small pieces, not great gobbets—”

“What’s a gobbet?” Jerome asked, stripping off his gloves.

“Are your nails clean?” Paulo asked, snatching up the glove-free part in question.

“Yes.”

“See that they stay that way. And remember to cut your bread with your knife, instead of tearing it into messy hunks. And never put meat in the salt cellar—”

“Then how am I supposed to—”

“Take a little salt on the tip of your knife—your clean knife—and put it on your food. Never put spilled, dirty salt back in the cellar.”

“Do people do that?”

“You did that at dinner last night!”

“You must be mistaken.”

Paulo’s eyes narrowed.

There was a cluster of other boats ahead of them, requiring them to wait. They bobbed gently on the waves, watching gondola after gondola of richly dressed men and women getting out. But the guests’ fine clothes did not appear to impress the two guards at the entrance, or the six more positioned along the loggia at regular intervals.

Mircea couldn’t recall seeing them the first time he’d been here. But maybe they remembered him. Because unlike the scrutiny they’d given the other arrivals, his group barely received a glance.

Of course, they may have just been trained to look for threats, he thought cynically. And it would be hard to imagine any group less threatening than theirs. Especially with the conversation the other two still had going.

“Don’t slurp your soup,” Paulo was saying, as they finally made their exit. “Don’t throw your bones on the floor—”

“Then where do I—”

“The voiding bowl!”

“But what about the dogs—”

“Forget about the dogs! And if there are any cats, don’t scratch them at the table.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. They might have fleas,” Jerome said, absently scratching himself, until Paulo jerked his arm down.

“Don’t scratch yourself at table, either!”

Jerome sighed.

“Don’t rinse your mouth with wine and spit it out, in fact, don’t spit at all unless you’re going to do it properly—”

“There’s a proper way to spit?”

“Don’t stuff your mouth, pick your teeth, make rude noises, scratch yourself, blow on your food, spit in the washing basin, spit up food into your dish, talk with your mouth full, or fall asleep at the table.”

“I don’t do any of those things. Well, hardly ever. I know how to behave.”

“I’ve yet to see any sign of it,” Paulo said, as they entered the home’s beautiful atrium.

Unlike most of Venice’s houses, the ground floor wasn’t devoted to workrooms, tradesmen’s entrances, and unloading cargo. Or perhaps some part of it was, since the place was huge, with four wings built around an open courtyard. But here in front, the impressive display didn’t wait for someone to make a trip up the long staircase to the beautiful rooms above.

The awe started as soon as a guest’s foot touched inlaid marble.

“This. This is how you live,” Jerome whispered, appearing almost cross-eyed as he tried to take in everything at once.

Mircea had seen it the last time he was here, but he looked around now with new eyes. The seascape murals on the walls had seemed oddly bare to him before, just vast stretches of different shades of blue—sky, sea and distant horizon—with none of the heroically battling ships so preferred by the Venetians. But, in retrospect they made more sense, designed to mimic the views of another palace, seen through painted columns long lost to time.

Along with the murals, statuary he was now certain was genuine stood in niches, people in togas and ancient gowns looking down on him, and his civilization, with barely concealed disdain. Two impressive clusters of delicate cesendello lamps hung overhead instead of ancient braziers, and the long expanse of marble underfoot was of Venetian design. But otherwise, it almost felt as if they had just stepped back in time.

And that was only the architecture.

The people were no less fascinating. Paulo continued his whispered instructions to Jerome, but Mircea doubted the young vampire heard. He was too busy staring slack-jawed at ladies in thick Chinese silk, in diaphanous Grecian robes that would have gotten them arrested on the street, in costumes Mircea couldn’t name from times he didn’t know. At men in the turbans and the flowing robes of the east, or ancient armor, or glittering costumes in the Byzantine style, with high necks and opulent embroidery. At both sexes in more common Venetian styles, if you could call outfits a Doge might envy common.

And all of them wearing enough jewels to buy another palazzo.

“Jerome,” Paulo said suddenly, through his teeth.

“What?”

Paulo looked pointedly at the servant standing in front of them, proffering a bowl of water.

“No, thank you,” Jerome said politely.

The man stood there, blinking at him.

“Wash. Your. Hands,” Paulo hissed.

“But I already washed at home.”

“Just do it.”

Jerome did it, perfunctorily, and then so did Paulo and Mircea. Afterward, the crowd opened up a little and they slipped through to a slightly less crowded area, where more servants were passing around trays of candied fruit covered with gold leaves. And a caper, truffle, and raisin salad in bite-sized pastries. And slivers of fine Friuli ham on slices of melon. And tiny pies of baby eel and octopus. And fried dough shaped like pine cones and smothered with honey. All washed down with a fine white trebbiano from the hills of Romagna served in delicate painted glasses.

“They’re making us eat standing up?” Jerome asked, looking confused.

“The first course is often served standing,” Paulo informed him, as a tray of the candied fruit was offered to them by a tunic-clad servant.

“I’m eating gold,” Jerome told Mircea a moment later, with an air of wonder. And then opened his mouth to prove it.

Mircea stifled a smile, while Paulo blanched and jerked them behind a statue.

That turned out to be fortunate, because it appeared that they had just beaten the rush. The room began to fill up over the next few minutes, as a long line of boats emptied their contents into what was no longer feeling like a large space. In fact, it was quickly becoming too hot, too close. Almost stifling.

And not just from the press of bodies.

Power shimmered in the air, so thick that Mircea could almost feel it. He could taste it, dense and cloying on the back of his tongue, threatening to suffocate him. Had there been this much at the consul’s house, when he was there? If so, the sun must have addled his brains, because he didn’t remember it.

He didn’t remember it from the last time he was here, either. Of course, he’d been a little too overwhelmed by his personal battle to have been paying close attention, but he thought he’d recall the feeling of raw power like a haze in the air. Or a fog that he took in with every breath, and that seeped in through his pores like a caustic lotion, threatening to burn him just from the overflow.

It made him itchy, restless, and nervous as hell. Like a rabbit in a field of foxes. Hungry ones, he thought, noticing the bared-teeth smiles between several guests, two predators meeting and acknowledging one another, before moving on. And sending currents swirling through the room as they passed, like sharks scattering schools of fish.

It was less than reassuring when he was fairly sure he didn’t even qualify as a minnow. There was a distinct feel of another world coexisting with this one, but just out of reach. A world composed of brief touches, half heard whispers, and colors that seemed to stay in the air when people moved, blurring behind them in lines that didn’t go away, no matter how hard he blinked.

He was increasingly sure that what he could see was only half of what was happening, and not the more important part.

A trumpet sounded nearby, glaringly loud, and Mircea jumped. His hand went automatically to his hip where a sword should have rested, but found only the softness of his hosen. He swallowed, and looked around to find Paulo glaring at him.

“Not you, too,” the blond hissed.

Mircea straightened up, and noticed that the guests were now filing toward the banquet room. Including Jerome, until Paulo jerked him back. “Guests are seated according to precedence.”

“I knew that.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!” Paulo whispered furiously.

“I was just—”

“And don’t fill it so full that your cheeks swell out! And don’t drool onto your shirt! And don’t—”

Paulo cut off abruptly, staring at something on the exquisitely set tables in the room just ahead. And looking stricken. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

He grabbed Mircea’s sleeve. “Oh, God.”

“What?”

“Forks.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

The forks were the least of Mircea’s problems.

“I thought we’d be at the lady’s table,” Jerome said, glancing enviously at the raised area at the front of the banquet hall, where the senator would soon take her seat.

Mircea didn’t say anything.

The itchy, nervous sensation from outside had increased tenfold once they entered the close confines of the hall. Waves of pure power shot by him, over him, and in some cases through him. He put a hand out to return his glass to the tray a passing servant was carrying, and received a jolt hard enough to make him snatch it back.

The servant gave him a strange look, but Mircea didn’t care. It was starting to feel like a lightning storm had been trapped in between the walls. Had been trapped, and was eager to get out.

But not half as much as Mircea was.

Jerome shot him a glance. “You all right?”

“Yes.”

“You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” Mircea said, and closed his eyes.

And still saw the crowd, glowing with power, in his mind.

A shining nimbus hovered about the guests, outlining their shapes far better than the dim lighting. It was so faint around some of them that he had trouble seeing it, but bright as a flame around others. Forming glowing ribbons that streamed out behind them whenever they moved, like the tail of one of the kites he’d flown as a boy. Together, the senator’s milling guests wove a lattice of light across the room, a glowing tapestry of power that—

“Are you sure?” Jerome asked, sounding less than certain himself. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine,” Mircea repeated, a little breathlessly.

Because the scene had just changed. In his mind’s eye, a rainbow swirled about a figure who had just entered from some door he hadn’t noticed and didn’t care about. Because the senator’s presence lit up the room like the sun rising through stained glass.

Or perhaps the Murano variety would be more accurate. The enhanced colors allowed him to see that the strokes of power weren’t just monochrome, as he’d first thought. But shaded, striped, and speckled in a hundred different ways, in colors that overlapped and tinted each other.

And formed a picture of family alliances more distinctive than any coat of arms, Mircea realized, as he finally understood what he was seeing.

These had to be the energy patterns she had talked about, the ones all vampires were supposed to have. He didn’t know how he was suddenly able to perceive them when he never had before. But they were beautiful, beautiful . . . almost mesmerizing. . . .

Until he caught sight of his own hand, which he had unconsciously raised as if to touch one of the passing bands.

And saw it as a dark silhouette against all that power, his own strength so negligible as to be almost invisible, even when he moved.

His hand fell back to his side, abruptly.

Of course. He didn’t have a master. He didn’t belong to anyone. And, he realized, every vampire of any strength had known that, immediately, upon first glance.

No wonder he’d been attacked so many times, on the way to Venice. No wonder he’d been hunted for sport, by those who knew there would be no reprisals for his death. No wonder the Watch had been able to identify him as a blackmail target so easily and so quickly.

He advertised his vulnerability just by walking into a room.

“Mircea?” Jerome was sounding genuinely worried now.

Mircea opened his eyes to see a face that matched the voice looking at him nervously. He put a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder, then realized it was shaking. “I need some air,” he said hoarsely.

“But—” Jerome glanced at Paulo, who was busy being charming to one of the senator’s ladies a little way off. “But the senator is here. They’re going to start seating any—”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Mircea said. And then he was pushing through the crowd, half blind from two types of vision fighting with each other, and heedless of the fine guests except as obstacles in his way.

He somehow reached the courtyard, and then kept on going, the burn of power dissipating behind him. It was replaced by cool night breezes, the sound of a fountain in the distance, and the smell of growing things. And velvety darkness that enveloped him like an old friend.

He felt his muscles sag in relief, almost to the point of causing him to fall down. He was in a cleared area with a statue he didn’t bother to look at before closing his eyes. And thereby gaining even more relief from his too-sharp senses, which might be useful at times but could also be utterly overwhelming.

Like his whole world these days.

He had a sudden, almost physical ache at the thought of home. Of snow-covered hills and fir trees. Of crisp winter air and fresh baked bread. Of a language that he didn’t have to struggle to understand. Of soft arms and a sweet scent that enveloped him while he slept beneath a mountain of furs. Of a familiar voice, whispering in his ear—

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

And that was not it.

Mircea’s shoulders slumped and he sighed before looking around. And saw a vampire with short brown hair standing just behind him, gazing at something past his shoulder. It was the statue he’d barely noticed before and had to look up to see now, since it was more than twice his size.

But that wasn’t what had his jaw dropping.

“That’s porphyry,” Mircea whispered. He was almost sure of it. And then he was sure, when the light from the doorway caught the distinctive flecks in the stone.

“Yes.”

“It’s . . . huge.”

“Yes, well. No point in half measures, is there?” the man said jovially.

Mircea just looked at him. And then back at the statue, where the senator’s lovely features had been rendered in perfect detail. And in the most expensive material on earth.

Or no, it wasn’t expensive as such, since it was practically impossible to buy. He had never met anyone who had actually seen a piece before he came to Venice, and it was rare even here. The only mine where it had ever been found had been lost centuries ago, so all that remained was what had been unearthed in ancient times. And due to the extreme hardness of the stone, there had been damned little of that.

Even in wealthy Venice, porphyry was exceedingly rare, with the smallest piece viewed as a sign of vast wealth.

And here he was, staring at half a ton of it.

“It’s stunning,” he said. There simply was no other word for it.

“And telling, if you know the history.”

The man looked a question, but mostly what Mircea knew about was the rarity. “It came from a mine in Egypt,” he said, scouring his memory. “It was used by the ancients as an accent stone, in floors, columns, sculpture. . . .” He trailed off. That was literally all he remembered. But the vampire didn’t seem to mind.

“Quite,” he said cheerfully. “It was prized for its durability. Other stones wear away over time, but even exposed to the harshest of conditions, even over hundreds of years, porphyry looks the same as the day it was sculpted. But I was talking about the political significance.”

Mircea could only shake his head. He wasn’t sure how a type of stone could have political significance.

“It started with the color,” he was told. “It’s the same shade of purple as the stripe on the togas of the senatorial class. In old Rome,” the man added helpfully.

Mircea nodded. And then noticed, for the first time, that the man was wearing an old fashioned toga himself, blindingly white. Except for the thick purple edge around the bottom.

He swallowed.

“So, the Caesars became fond of it,” the man continued, baring teeth as white as his toga in what might have been a smile—on the face of a feral wolf. “You know how they were—well, you don’t, I suppose, but take it from me, those bastards never lost a chance to make a statement. Everything was politics, everything was symbols. Well, of course it was, half the damned people couldn’t read. But it was more ego than anything else. They wore purple, therefore their palaces must be purple, or have purple accents, at least. And the fact that the damned stuff is so hard that the only way of cutting it required destroying some of the best steel—well, that made it all the better.”

“It became a symbol of their power,” Mircea guessed, because some answer seemed required.

The man nodded. “You’re a quick one, aren’t you? But then, I expected that.” He clapped Mircea on the back, a little harder than necessary.

Mircea managed to catch himself before he hit the ground.

“So on to the tosspots in dear Constantinople,” the man continued, “pretending to be Roman emperors despite the fact that half of them never even saw the place. But they had an entire room covered in porphyry, oh yes, they did, where their empresses gave birth. Allowed the royal brats to take the title Porphyrogenos, ‘born to the purple’, didn’t it?”

“I . . . suppose.” There was a strange undercurrent to this conversation Mircea didn’t understand, and didn’t like. But what the man was saying was interesting in light of what had recently happened.

A woman born to the purple, long before it was called that, with the blood of conquering generals and ancient pharaohs in her veins, met a boy who had not even been able to hold a job as a potter. Yes, he was no longer a boy when she met him, and yes, he was far more powerful than she. But surely, that would make it even worse? That she had to take orders from someone she would consider beneath her?

And had to keep on taking them, for centuries?

Perhaps, Mircea thought, staring into that beautiful carved face, the consul had some reason to be concerned.

“Now, of course, the mine is lost,” the man said, “And so is the secret to the steel needed to cut it. Know how they work it these days? When they can get their grubby hands on a piece, that is?”

Mircea shook his head.

“By grinding it down with another piece of itself!” He laughed. “Takes forever; no wonder they mostly loot it. Damned popes almost destroyed the Pantheon to get porphyry for their churches. And the dear Venetians—pirates, every one—pillaged once-great Constantinople, a fellow Christian city, I might add. And for what? Gold and porphyry!”

“They wanted it for a symbol,” Mircea said, still staring at the face on the statue. “Of greatness past.”

“Oh, it’s more than that. It’s the opposite, in fact. It’s a sign of greatness returning. Of empires to be built, of ancient glory to be reclaimed. He who has porphyry has the imperium of the ancients.” The lips quirked in brief humor. “Or so it’s believed.”

Not a symbol so much, then, Mircea thought dizzily, as a promise. “I can’t believe I overlooked this, the last time I was here.”

“You didn’t.” Whiskey dark eyes met his. “It was moved in here two days ago.”

The man walked off, and Mircea turned to see Paulo silhouetted in the doorway as he glared around the garden. And then at Mircea, when he caught sight of him. “I. Am going. To kill you,” Paulo whispered, grabbing his arm.

Only to have his grabbed back. “Who was that?”

“Mircea! They’re seating.”

“The man I was just talking to,” Mircea persisted. “Who was he?”

“Oh, for—another senator—”

“Which one?”

Paulo looked at him as if he might be slow. “The one they call Antony.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Things did not improve at dinner.

Mircea had hoped that his time outside would clear his head. And it had—in a way. He found that, if he kept his eyes on his plate and concentrated very deliberately on his stuffed squid, he could just about ignore the colors flickering at the edge of his vision.

The sounds, on the other hand, were a different story.

“—not possible,” someone with a bass voice said. “Not with every master in Venice—”

“And it will be any more possible later?” A woman asked. “He grows in power every year—”

“He doesn’t need any more power,” another man’s voice chimed in. “If he never gained . . . still be millennia ahead of us . . .”

The faint whispers Mircea had heard in the atrium were becoming clearer, fading in and out like voices in a strong wind. But there was no wind. And, as far as everyone else was concerned, there were no voices.

Mircea glanced cautiously to the left, and saw Jerome a few seats down, chatting with a sloe-eyed woman in a flowing gown. She looked like an ancient queen—and might be, for all he knew. But while she wore pearls the size of grapes, she only glowed faintly, with a sweet pink haze that was suffusing the air around Jerome. And putting a silly smile on his face.

He did not, Mircea decided, look like someone hearing phantom voices in his head.

Paulo was on his right, pretending he knew how to use a fork. They were silly things, a strange Venetian affectation that Mircea was surprised the senator had bothered with, but perhaps it was expected. But they only had two prongs, and the beans Paulo was trying to eat were small and kept slipping through the middle.

He finally gave up and started spearing them instead.

He didn’t look like he was hearing things, either.

Neither did anyone else, as far as Mircea could tell. Of course, it was a little hard to be sure out here in the wilds, which didn’t boast the best view. Or the best food—the lady with Jerome kept shooting envious glances at the roast pheasant and suckling pig on the head table, while she made do with pigeons in puff pastry.

Theirs was the last table on the left, in the large U taking up most of the space in the great banquet hall. The senator’s table formed the center of the U, in front of a huge sugar sculpture of three rearing cobras, her personal symbol. The most important guests were seated on her right, with the further someone was away from her, the lower their status.

And their group was about as far as they could get and technically still be in the same room.

Mircea, for one, didn’t mind. In fact, he was grateful they’d been seated here, instead of at the main table on the dais. In his mind, the swirl of power at that end of the room was like staring into the sun—impossible to distinguish anything but bright. And when he opened his eyes, it wasn’t much better, although not because of the light.

But because it was like looking at another age.

On the senator’s immediate right was the man Mircea had been talking to outside. He had a proud, patrician face, more rugged than handsome, with a nose that would have looked good on an ancient coin. And had graced a few, unless Mircea was very much mistaken.

Beside him was a woman in a Grecian gown, looking uncomfortable in one of the rigid, high-backed chairs popular in Venice. Mircea assumed the eating couches of past centuries wouldn’t have all fit, even in a room of this size. But she looked like she wanted one, and maybe a lyre.

There were a number of other men and women on that side of the senator in ancient armor, flowing silks, and a few in more normal clothes, mostly German or French attire. On her left were what appeared to be foreign guests, including the man Mircea had seen on the consul’s terrace. The hawk-bridged nose and sharp eyes were the same, although he’d dressed up for the occasion in a green robe heavily embroidered in gold.

“That’s Hassani, the African consul,” Paulo whispered, seeing the direction of Mircea’s gaze. “Young, ambitious, and ruthless, or so they say. Started out the leader of a group of assassins—”

“Assassins?”

“Hm. And rumor has it, he just returned to old habits a few decades ago, when he engineered the early demise of his own consul. I’m surprised to see him here, frankly. Gossip has it that he and the senator are not on the best of terms.”

“They are enemies?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But the consul—ours, that is—prefers his palace off in the deserts of Egypt to what he calls the stench of Paris. It works out well for Hassani, who they say has the consul’s ear more than any of his own people do. But it leaves the European Senate leaderless much of the time, and when they do want him to rule on something—”

“He takes his good friend Hassani’s advice,” Mircea finished.

Paulo shot him a surprised look. “Did someone already tell you this?”

“No.”

“Then how—”

“I know politics,” Mircea said shortly. It seemed that ambition was something else that survived the Change.

“In any case, no one was happy when Hassani accompanied the consul to convocation. Not that they don’t usually have guests from other senates here, but . . .”

He let it hang, but Mircea could finish that thought, too.

They didn’t usually have guests who acted more like masters.

Paulo prattled on, happily identifying more famous guests for Mircea. Including a Carthaginian general, an ancient poetess—he’d been right about the lyre, Mircea thought vaguely—and a man with a red beard and a scowl on Hassani’s side of the table.

“He’s always like that,” Paulo dismissed it. “He keeps telling everyone he discovered some vast new land far to the west a few hundred years ago, but nobody believes him. But then on his left, you’ll see—”

He continued gossiping enthusiastically, but Mircea didn’t hear.

Because he was too busy hearing something else.

“—like an idiot! How do you fight a god?” a shrill voice demanded.

“He’s not a god,” the bass voice intoned.

“Close enough—”

“And how do you know that?” A new voice cut in, stronger than the others. Instead of a murmur, it was a bellow, and loud enough that it caused Mircea to drop his fork.

Luckily, Jerome had been doing that in between almost every bite, so nobody noticed.

“How do I know?” The shrill voice reached new octaves. “Did you see what he—”

The voice chopped off abruptly, but the new, louder one picked up the thread. “Did I see him butcher twenty of my vampires, do you mean? Did I see when he took what should have been a day of celebration and drenched it in blood—again? Did I see him make a mockery of his position, and a farce of ours? Is that what you meant?”

“I—didn’t think—”

“Clearly. But I did. And my question stands. How do we know?”

“We grieve for your loss, Sergei,” the bass voice said. “And for yours, Gregor. But the lesson, harsh as it was, was unmistakable. His power remains . . . overwhelming.”

“In the day!” A new voice said, and by the accent, Mircea assumed this was Gregor. “When we are weakest and his strange power is at its height. No one has seen him act in the night in a millennia! What if there is a reason for that?”

“The reason is that no one tests him,” Sergei said.

“You think his power fades?” The bass voice asked.

“Why not?”

“Why not?” the bass voice seemed taken aback. “You know time does not ravage us as it does the humans. They grow weaker as the years pass; we grow stronger. And he—”

“Has passed the point of our knowledge,” Sergei said. “He is old—older than any vampire in memory. We don’t know what rules still apply to him. We cannot know how time treats one of that age when no one knows of another who has reached it!”

“Are we really eternal?” Gregor added. “Or are our lives merely much extended? Perhaps we, too, can grow old and feeble in time.”

“Wind and water can wear away even a mountain,” the bass voice agreed. “Perhaps what you say is true. But even if so, there is no way to know.”

“There is one way.”

There was a hush for a moment, but Mircea didn’t fool himself into thinking that the conversation was over. Or that his strange powers had suddenly disappeared. Because the tension in the air was palpable, to the point that he found himself holding a breath he didn’t need.

“Be careful, Gregor.”

Mircea glanced at the dais, where the senator was chatting casually with the woman on her right. Her body was relaxed, her face unconcerned. It was impossible to tell that she’d been listening to the same conversation he had.

But that voice was unmistakable, as was the authority in it.

But apparently, Gregor didn’t agree.

“We’ve been careful! We’ve been careful for centuries! We scraped and crawled and kissed his shriveled ass—”

“Gregor.”

“No! No, I will have my say! I have kept quiet too long. He took my people, my children—” The voice broke.

“You are in mourning, old friend. This is not the time to act.”

“According to you, it is never time!” Gregor said, as a gray haired man in German dress stood up so quickly, he knocked over his heavy chair. He’d also spoken aloud, something Mircea only realized because the whole room suddenly went deathly silent.

Mircea glanced around to see Jerome blinking, his lady friend looking faint and Paulo frozen with a speared sardine quivering in front of his lips. They looked shocked by the outburst, but also bewildered. As if this had come out of nowhere.

As if they hadn’t been somehow overhearing what was supposed to be a private conversation within the senator’s family.

Mircea didn’t know how he was, either, but it didn’t matter now.

Because if it had been private, it was no longer.

“Sit down, Gregor.” The senator’s voice was soft, but it carried. And while Mircea might not know much about vampire etiquette, he knew a direct order from a superior to a subject when he heard it.

So did Gregor, but he didn’t stop, although tears were running down his face, and into his beard. “I have waited,” he said, his voice trembling. “We have all waited, to see what you would do. But it has been five days! And our people remain unavenged!”

“And what would you have me do?” she demanded. “I have remonstrated—”

“Remonstrated! When has that ever done any good?”

“And you think this will?” She didn’t so much as glance at Hassani, but she didn’t have to. Mircea imagined the entire conversation would be relayed to the consul by his friend later that night, assuming he wasn’t hearing it already.

“No.” Gregor was shaking his head wildly. “The time for talk is over. It ended when he butchered some of the best of us in cold blood. If we are to be rid of him, rid of this plague, this demon—”

“Don’t be a fool, Gregor!” That was Antony’s voice, raised in a final, silent plea.

But too late.

“—then we must act, and act now!”

The senator slowly stood up, her face as still as a carved statue. “Gregor. What have you done?”

“What you wouldn’t,” he cried, and the room fell away.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The dining hall was abruptly replaced by another scene, one equally as familiar. The graceful lines of the consul’s mansion rose up in front of Mircea’s mental vision, framed by poplars and silhouetted against a star flung sky. It looked peaceful, but not static, jittering a little around the edges, like a painting someone had decided to shake.

Or like the field of vision of someone who was quivering, although whether from excitement or fear, Mircea didn’t know.

He realized that he was seeing through someone else’s eyes, as he had that night in Marte’s room. And like that night, he didn’t feel the watcher’s emotions. But in all other ways, it was far more real than that other experience—almost like being there.

He could see the man’s breath ghosting on the cold night air, feel the wind against his face as he darted across an open field, smell the night-flowering vine on a trellis on the side of the house as he started climbing, heading for the roof.

There were others with him, too. Mircea could see them, vaguely, out of the corners of his eyes, dark shapes in form-fitting attire, dim against the night and quiet as shadows. They were climbing with him. He could feel the trellis shake beneath him, and see others going up by fitting their fingers and toes into the shallow cracks between the stone blocks of the wall, agile as monkeys.

And far more deadly.

A sentinel or soldier on top of the flat roof peered over, alerted by some small noise, and a moment later came falling past, almost knocking Mircea off his makeshift ladder. The man hit the grass far below, almost silently and unmoving. And then Mircea was over the edge of the roof and running for the opposite side.

Like many in Venice, the palazzo was built around a large, central courtyard filled with fruit trees and flowering bushes. A central fountain caught the moonlight in silver flashes, the only light to be seen other than for a few dim candle flickers behind half closed shutters. But it was enough.

Their prey was seated at the edge of the water, as if enjoying the change from the arid desert heat. Having just seen the auras put off by the senator’s dinner guests, Mircea was surprised to find no similar glow surrounding the small figure. He was dark as a human, just a vague, star-limned shape, like the diamond-studded nets ladies sometimes wore over their hair.

But there was enough light for Mircea to see the man’s chin rise, and his neck turn slightly in their direction.

For a long moment, there was no other movement. The master vampires ringing the roof, several men deep, the small creature in the garden, the occupants of the house—were all so still that a late working bird fluttered back to its nest in between them, unconcerned. And then the consul slowly rose to his feet.

“Welcome,” he told them, in strangely accented Venetian. “I have been waiting for you.”

***

“Mircea, Mircea!” Jerome’s voice came to him, as if from far away. “We have to get out of here!”

“Good luck with that!” Paulo snarled, and lashed out at someone.

Mircea could see him, vaguely. He fought off the images of that starlit garden and tried to focus. But it didn’t help much.

A moment later, he realized why when the heavy Turkish carpet that had been cushioning the tabletop was pulled up. And a panicked-looking servant tried to crawl underneath, where Mircea was half-sitting, half-lying on the floor. Along with Jerome and Paulo and the lady with the pink aura he’d seen Jerome talking to earlier.

But the servant’s attempt to join them failed when Paulo, who had broken off one of the sturdy chair legs, promptly whacked the poor man upside the head with it.

“Paulo!” Mircea said, only to have the blond turn to stare at him out of slightly mad eyes.

He’d seen that look on new recruits’ faces a few times, when they were first exposed to battle. It usually came just before they panicked and did something stupid, like running straight for enemy lines. Mircea wasn’t clear on who the enemy was here, although apparently there was one.

At least, he assumed they were under the table for some reason.

The shouts, screams, sounds of running feet and breaking things would tend to bear this out. He grabbed Paulo’s arm in one hand, and cautiously lifted the tablecloth with the other. And saw a scene of pure pandemonium.

Finely dressed people were clustered at the doors to the atrium, pushing and shoving each other in their desperation to get out. Servants were standing around the dining area, holding platters of food and looking unsure what to do with it. The only ones eating were the dogs running underfoot, barking excitedly and cleaning up the fallen bounty from several knocked over tables.

And from the huge sugar sculpture of three rearing cobras that had been in the middle of the U of tables. But which was now on its side, with great chunks scattered over the floor and glittering in the candlelight. And sending the stench of burning sugar into the air, because a fallen candelabra had started to melt it into a sticky sugar sea.

“What happened?” Mircea asked thickly.

“They happened!” Paulo said, staring at the large number of people clustered around the senator’s table, in what looked like some sort of uniform.

Mircea couldn’t see much, but it was enough. There was only one group he knew who wore long crimson capes and gold helmets and caused this kind of panic. And since the senator was talking to them instead of trying to calm her guests, he assumed it was serious.

“What are they doing here?” he asked, but didn’t get an answer. Because a group of guests had decided to hell with the crush around the doors, and had come running back this way.

Mircea assumed they were headed for the small hall at the far end of the room, which the servants had been using to bring in the food. But if so, they never made it. In the bottleneck between several upturned tables, someone came a little too close to the burning sugar—with predictable results.

And if Mircea had thought it was pandemonium before, it was nothing next to a bunch of vampires with flaming hems trapped inside a room with no way out.

“Well . . . damn,” Jerome said, as a group of now genuinely out-of-control master vampires began screaming and running and falling and flailing—

And, in one case, sliding—right underneath the table.

“Aaaauggghh!” Paulo said, rearing back with his table leg.

“No, no, no!” Mircea said, wrestling with him, before he could bring it down on some master’s skull.

“Put it out! Put it out!” the pink lady screamed, because the flaming man had just set the tablecloth on fire.

And then the world fell away again.

***

Mircea felt himself falling, the explosion that had destroyed half the roof behind him having sent him flying. He landed after a three story drop in a roll that left him unhurt, and scattering along with the rest of his company. Until one of his men grabbed his arm.

“What’s happening?” A panicked whisper echoed in his mind.

“Residual power from the day—”

“Then we’re dead!”

Mircea’s man shook him off. “He can’t top it up at night! Scatter until he expends his reserve, then proceed as planned!”

The man nodded and flew off to the left, while Mircea’s man dimmed his power as much as possible, to make himself harder to see. And then flattened against the building, melding what was left with the energy being thrown off by someone inside. He waited for the inevitable rush of guards to come pouring into the courtyard in defense of their master.

And kept waiting, because none came.

Instead, the initial volley, which had carved a huge bite out of the top floor of the building, was soon joined by similar explosions around the perimeter. But despite that, and unlike the others, who made themselves targets by moving, Mircea’s man stayed where he was. Moving only enough to stay aligned with the actions of the servant inside.

And, slowly, the hits grew more erratic and less powerful. The crushing blows became severe, then serious, and finally glancing. And then stopped all together, allowing Mircea to see burning trees and a pockmarked building through drifting clouds of smoke.

“Get ready.”

Mircea’s man sent the thought around to his people, and received back flickers of acknowledgement from dozens of minds. Mircea felt the man’s hands clench, but he tamped down any and all physical signs of tension. His heart did not beat; his breath did not flow; his palms did not sweat. The only discernable sign of his intentions were the slowly bunching muscles in his calves, preparing to spring—

And then knotting painfully, when he suddenly stopped, and urgently sent hold, hold, hold, to his people.

They held. Mircea thought they might have anyway. Or, if they had been running, it would have been in the opposite direction.

Because something unholy was happening in the middle of the garden.

The small figure of the consul was small no longer, churning and twisting and swelling—exponentially. But not in any kind of understandable way. Mircea stared because he had to, because the man whose eyes he’d borrowed was doing so. But if it had been up to him, he’d have looked away.

Because whatever was in the garden wasn’t human any longer.

A coil of scale-covered strength pushed up and out, black even in the firelight that splashed it. It rose two, three, four stories into the air, higher than the walls around it, and simultaneously swelled up wider than five men could have reached around. And that was before a great serpentine hood spread out easily three times wider than that, blocking out the stars.

Mircea felt the vampire he was shadowing swallow, but then stiffen again, probably knowing that they had no choice but to attack. They had already committed treason; there was nothing behind them but death. And so they went forward, Mircea’s man leaping from the shadows with a mental scream: “Now!”

***

Mircea came back to himself in a sea of people. There was smoke, and screaming, and jostling; someone dug an elbow into his side; someone else stepped on toes that already felt mangled. And then someone yelled: “No, No! Grab him—grab him!”

And then he fell down some stairs.

It hurt, because he was still too disoriented to catch himself properly, but it was nonetheless an improvement. Because he fell out of the crowd surging down a large hall above, and into a small landing with an open window. An open window belching smoke, but still. He’d take what he could get.

Mircea concentrated on remembering how to move his own arms and legs, instead of someone else’s, and finally got it sorted out. He staggered to his feet just as three more people came tumbling down the stairs after him. Well, Paulo and Jerome had been running, until the pink lady lost her footing behind them, and knocked them down along with her and then into Mircea.

“Hello,” she said breathlessly, from atop his stomach.

Jerome pulled her off, but Mircea, who had hit his head and bruised his butt on impact, stayed down for a moment.

Paulo didn’t. He had spied the window, and he scrambled to his feet, running over to stick his blond head out. “I think we can get down this way!” he said excitedly. Which was good.

And loudly.

Which was not.

“Uh oh,” Jerome said. And then jerked himself and his lady friend out of the way, as the crowd in the bigger corridor upstairs paused, turned, and then came stampeding their way.

Mircea found that he could move, after all. And then he dove after Jerome, who was pulling his lady past an outraged-looking Paulo and down the rest of the stairs. And then into a hall, because bodies had flooded the landing and were surging after them, despite Paulo’s vociferous protests.

“In here,” Mircea said, and pulled them through a door down the hall that proved to be a pantry, and then into a kitchen. Which was deserted, the servants having already departed, probably through the open door on the other side of the room.

“Oh, thank God!” Paulo said, and then shut up abruptly, looking behind him. But the hall had branched in two ways, and it looked like most of the people had gone the other, because nobody was following them this time.

“What are we doing?” Mircea asked.

“Trying to find a way out, what does it look like?” Paulo demanded, striding across the room.

“Then why were we upstairs?”

Paulo said a very bad word, but Mircea didn’t think it was directed at him. He was staring at something outside, and in a moment, the rest of them were, too.

“Because of them,” Jerome said, looking at the ring of red caped guards that had now surrounded the huge palazzo, as far as they could see in both directions.

A group of partygoers, who had managed to make it as far as the street, were being corralled like cattle. And forced back against the house, despite the fact that part of it was still on fire. More red capes lined the canal, including the area in front of the small flight of stairs that was their only exit.

Paulo said that word again.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” the pink lady asked, quivering.

“Nothing,” Jerome breathed. “They’re senatorial guards. Crossing a line they’ve formed is a death sentence.”

“But . . . but we didn’t do anything wrong,” she cried. “Why are they doing this?”

“This isn’t about us,” Mircea said, and Jerome nodded.

“It was a setup. They were here too fast.”

“A setup for what?” Paulo demanded, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Not what,” Mircea said, as his world started to gray out again. “Who.”

***

There were bodies everywhere, some motionless, others writhing in agony. Mircea’s vampire landed hard on the graveled path right in front of one, and saw death, limned by fire, reflected in the corpse’s open eyes. Not yet, he thought savagely, and rolled, just as the great head struck down, the huge fangs piercing dirt, gravel, and the body of his fallen comrade, all at once.

The monster reared back, whipping its head around, trying to dislodge the body, and Mircea’s vampire saw his chance. He jumped, not away, for there was nowhere to go, but straight at the muscled coil, landing and sinking his sword deep. Several of his men joined him, and for a moment, he thought perhaps they had a chance.

Until his hand started burning, flesh and then bone dissolving away as bloodlike acid ate through sword, glove, and body with equal ease.

He jerked back, stifling a scream, and pulled a crossbow with his good arm. But he didn’t fire. Because the great wound he’d just made, which had sunk half his arm in the thing’s red guts, closed as he watched, the skin rippling and churning as it had when the body was formed.

And then stilling again, without even a scar.

He looked up to see his men staring at him, both close and far, waiting for orders. For answers. For the way out he’d always found in the most impossible situations.

But he didn’t have them; he didn’t have them.

He saw when it registered, when they gripped their weapons tighter, because there was only one thing left to do, and it wasn’t to die like puling cowards, running away.

“For the Lady,” he said silently, and heard it echoed around the garden.

And then shouted when they charged as one man, almost drowning out the slithering, scraping hiss of the great body, turning lightning fast to meet them, still hampered by its gory prize.

But the great tail wasn’t.

Mircea’s vampire managed to loose his arrow into one of the thing’s eyes, just before what felt like a giant’s fist threw him back against the side of the house, along with the half dozen men who had been in its path. He tried to get up, but nothing worked; even armor couldn’t absorb that much force. And the blow had torn his last weapon away, sending it hurtling into the darkness, where he didn’t know.

Not that it mattered now.

He lay against the house like a broken doll, feeling his system trying to repair the damage, even as the cause loomed up over him. It had identified him as the leader, and so he would die first. He was vaguely grateful for that, for not having to see the rest of his men . . .

The man’s thoughts trailed off as that dark hood swallowed the sky. Swallowed speech. Swallowed everything.

Except the slight, spectral figure that stepped in between them, shedding a puddle of light over the ruined ground, and raising a hand.

“No.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Bezio said, the next night. “The senator’s challenged the consul, the city is in an uproar, the fate of vampire kind lies in the balance, and what are we doing?”

“Going to visit the mages,” Mircea said.

Hopefully, he didn’t add.

Luckily, he’d committed the directions the cook had given him to memory, because there was insufficient light to read by, even for a vampire’s eyes. There was insufficient everything else, too: air, garbage disposal, and a pen for the pigs that were running around freely in the crowded neighborhood, rooting in the residents’ leftovers. But the main thing they were short of was room.

Since coming to Venice, Mircea had become used to narrow lanes, multistoried buildings, and streets that dead ended in odd places, requiring him to backtrack. Unable to expand unless they went through a lengthy and expensive process of reclaiming land from the sea, the Venetians had learned to use what they had to full advantage. Pedestrians were just expected to make do.

But even by Venetian standards, this was ridiculous.

The current lane was so narrow that he scraped his elbows against the walls unless he kept them tucked against his body. To make matters worse, local homeowners in search of more room had built their second and third floors out over the street, to the point that the roofline of the surrounding buildings almost met overhead. The result was something akin to a tiny, dark, enclosed tunnel.

So much for a quick exit, if anything went wrong.

“I don’t like this,” Jerome said, echoing Mircea’s thoughts. “I thought I was doomed last night, until those guards just up and left. I don’t want to push my luck.”

“They didn’t just ‘up and leave’,” Mircea said, scowling in memory. “They were there to force the senator’s hand. With both her men and her guests in danger, she almost had to challenge.”

“No, she didn’t,” Jerome argued. “And they weren’t her men. They belonged to one of her servants. She could have blamed everything on him and cut her losses—”

“That’s cold,” Bezio said.

“It’s practical. So, hurray, she saved some lives last night. But without her to curb the consul’s insanity, how many more are going to die?”

“How do you know she can’t defeat him?” Bezio asked.

Jerome made a disgusted sound. “If she could do that, why not challenge before this?”

“Perhaps she didn’t want to risk it.”

“And perhaps she knows it won’t work!”

“Then why challenge at all? As you pointed out, she could have just walked away. It doesn’t make sense—”

“It does when you recall that this is the second time they’ve come after her in two weeks,” Mircea said, as they paused to scramble over a pig. “Why wouldn’t they keep coming? Clearly, the consul views her as a threat—”

“So she deals with that by giving him what he wants?” Jerome demanded.

“What’s the alternative? Let him keep attacking her, whittling down her supporters until—”

“No, but she could have . . . gone on the offensive. Ordered an assassination—”

“Isn’t that what someone just tried?” Mircea asked.

Jerome frowned. “I’m just pointing out that there must have been a better way.”

Maybe there was, but Mircea didn’t see it. And, frankly, he agreed with the senator. If he was going to go out, it would be fighting.

Not waiting around for an execution.

It looked like the servant’s gossip had been right, after all. A coup had been planned for this convocation. But it had been the consul behind it.

He’d planned to take out a child who was growing over powerful, and given the statue Mircea had seen in her garden, possibly overproud. Or perhaps that had been her subtle way of hinting to her master: you have to follow the law, like everyone else, or there are forces that will make you. Perhaps she thought the warning would be enough, that he wouldn’t risk this.

If so, she’d thought wrong.

It was the clash of two titans: the consul refusing to be curbed by his own child, and steadily growing more and more erratic. The senator growing simultaneously more and more dissatisfied under his rule, chafing beneath the yoke of a tyrant. It had to come to a head sooner or later, and he had decided to act first.

Mircea didn’t know if he’d planned that insult at the regatta, mentally controlling the man who had pulled down his banner, or if he’d taken advantage of a chance opportunity. But killing that many of any master’s family was virtually sure to provoke a reaction. He must have had people watching the masters involved, waiting for them to do something stupid.

Which of course they had.

Mircea felt like throttling both of them. How could they be so old, and not know how the game was played? This was politics, plain and simple. The same maneuvering, conniving, and backstabbing he’d grown up with and hated with a passion. And if he could read the signs, why couldn’t they?

As it was, to avenge those they couldn’t bring back, they’d put their lady’s life in danger. Because Mircea agreed with Jerome: if she thought she could win, she would have challenged before now. She might have used the possibility of it for years, as a way of curbing some of his excesses, but he didn’t think she’d actually planned to do it. Not now; not yet.

But thanks to the consul’s maneuvering—or his good friend Hassani’s more like—she now had no choice.

He is going to kill her, Mircea thought, his fist clenching.

And there wasn’t a goddamned thing anyone could do about it.

“Well, I think she should have swallowed the insult,” Jerome said. “Challenging him only makes things worse.”

“Maybe,” Bezio said. “But it doesn’t matter anyway—”

“Doesn’t matter?” Jerome said incredulously. “How do you figure that?”

“I meant, it doesn’t matter to us. This is high politics. It isn’t the sort of thing we have any business being concerned with.”

“I’ll be concerned with what I like,” Jerome said. “And you should be, too. Do you want to have that creature in charge of us?”

“It’s more likely to be Hassani in charge,” Mircea put in. “He seems to be running things already.”

“My point stands,” Jerome said. “How much do you think Hassani will care what happens to us? He doesn’t have to live here. And you can be damned sure he’ll be more interested in using us to serve his needs than in proper governance.”

“Proper governance,” Bezio scoffed. “There’s no such thing. There’s the bastards and then there’s us, and you try to keep your head down and hope they don’t notice you. It’s the same no matter who sits in the big chair. And it always will be.”

Jerome opened his mouth to reply, but by then they’d arrived at the rundown tavern the cook had talked about. They paused outside the door, or what would have been the door if it had had one. A tattered curtain had to do the job instead, since there was no room to swing anything out into the tiny excuse for an alley.

“Stinks like magic,” Bezio grumbled.

If magic smelled like body odor, alcohol, lightning, and strange herbs burnt over a fire, Mircea agreed.

“There’s still time to turn back,” Jerome said, eyeing the ominous emblem set into the bricks over the door.

Most Venetian shops had symbols over or beside the entrance, as a way of identifying themselves to illiterate customers. They were usually cheerful things, designed to be attractive and easy to remember: sun, moon and stars; stylized mythological beasts; plants and animals. It was common to give directions by telling a servant to pick something up at the sign of the galloping gryphon, or beside the leaping lizard or near the merry maiden.

This was none of the above. Just a jumble of intricate, foreign symbols that seemed to squirm and twist and change as Mircea looked at them. They felt less like a welcome than a warning, and made turning around even more tempting than it had already been.

And it had been tempting enough.

Mircea had an extremely limited acquaintance with magic, mostly involving the woman who had cursed him over one of his father’s peccadillos. Considering how well that had gone, he had made a habit to actively avoid it ever since. But tomorrow convocation ended and they were leaving Venice. If he wanted to find out what had happened to Sanuito this was his last chance.

And he did want to know.

Because Bezio was right. As much as he sympathized with the senator’s dilemma, Mircea couldn’t do much about the schemes and plots, treacheries and betrayals of the ruling class. But maybe he could do something to avenge Sanuito.

Or at least he could try.

“Come on,” he told them, and they went inside.

Inside wasn’t much bigger than outside, just a small, dark, oddly-shaped room lit mainly by the red glow from a fireplace. The ceiling was low, and either it was sagging or it had been built slightly off kilter to begin with, because the part farthest away from the fire was a good two feet lower than the rest. Which probably explained why it boasted an open table.

They took it, crowding together onto a single bench with the wall at their backs. Mircea stopped breathing, in order to help with the smell, but poor Jerome didn’t have that ability and was looking fairly revolted. And that was before a man came over carrying three tankards they hadn’t asked for, and that cost a small fortune Mircea didn’t have.

Jerome paid, with his sour expression tipping into a scowl, and Mircea enquired after Hieronimo.

The barman said something in a language none of them understood, or could even identify, and shuffled off. Leaving them looking at each other. And then at the expensive contents of their tankards.

“I think it’s vinegar,” Jerome said, sniffing it. And then he put his tankard back down with the air of a man who did not intend to pick it up again.

Bezio eyed it unhappily, but after a moment, he manned up and tried a small sip.

“Well?” Mircea asked.

“I . . . think I could actually taste that,” Bezio told him, in wonder.

“How was it?”

“I’m not sure. But I think I might have just found your poison.”

They mostly sat and looked at their tankards after that.

Long minutes went by.

There was a creeping chill from the doorway that occasionally fluttered the curtain and painted a cold line right up Mircea’s spine. Or maybe that was something else. Like the fact that nobody had said a word since they came in.

Or that one of the men seated directly opposite them was wearing a necklace of what looked a lot like human finger bones.

Or that a man in a corner had taken one look at them and started muttering something to himself, and adding things from greasy pouches into a circle on the table in front of him.

Bezio noticed him, too.

“He’s just a nutter,” Mircea said, hopefully too low for human ears.

“They’re mages. They’re all—” Bezio stopped himself in time.

But he clearly wasn’t happy.

Mircea wasn’t, either, and he was also starting to think that maybe they had the wrong bar. “If this Hieronimo doesn’t show up soon, we’ll go, all right?”

“Define soon,” Bezio muttered.

“How about now?” Mircea asked, tensing, as the nutter in the corner got up and came staggering over—

Into a man seated at their table, who hadn’t been there a second ago.

Bezio cursed and jumped up, only to hit his head on the low ceiling, causing him to curse some more. Mircea flinched, but remained seated. Jerome did, too, but he edged over slightly, since the stool the man was sitting on—which also hadn’t been there until it suddenly was—had ended up a little too close for comfort.

The man held out a hand. “Give it to me,” he said dryly.

It took Mircea a second to realize that he wasn’t talking to any of them.

The nutter did some insane muttering.

“Don’t make me ask again,” the man told him, and snapped his fingers.

The creature, which had such long, filthy gray hair that any features were completely obscured, put out an equally filthy hand. It had long, thick, cracked, and yellowed nails. And held something that it dropped into the mage’s palm.

Something that gave a little gasp and then curled up into ashes as it spontaneously combusted.

Suddenly, Mircea really wanted to get out of there.

“Banned for a month,” the mage said shortly.

The creature gave a shocked cry and started arguing. Mircea didn’t catch much, but the gist seemed to be that there were three of them so there was plenty to go around. Bezio cursed and got up again, this time going around to the door.

“If you leave, he’ll only ambush you in the alley,” the mage said, as the gray thing turned to look at Bezio with renewed interest.

Bezio sat down.

The gray creature finally shuffled out, still muttering, and the mage turned to look at them. “I was with another client. My apologies.”

Mircea didn’t much like his tone, which belied his words, or the oily smile that went along with it. But at least he looked fairly normal. Just a man in his early forties, too pasty to be local, with a short trimmed brown beard and pale blue eyes.

Mircea didn’t like them, either.

But he needed information, and clearly this man was a mage. And if he was the right one, he knew his business. According to Cook, anyway.

“You are Hieronimo?” Mircea asked—doubtfully, because the man didn’t look Italian.

“Sometimes,” he said easily.

“What kind of an answer is that?” Bezio demanded.

“We take turns.”

“What the—”

“The pub—excuse me, tavern—was started by a man of that name, oh, two hundred years ago now,” the man told them. “When he died, he left it to his assistant, who kept using the name out of respect. The . . . association . . . that controls it now has kept up the tradition, but no one’s here all the time so we trade off. I’m Hieronimo for this evening.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is this what you came to ask?”

“We came to ask about poison,” Mircea said, and the man suddenly beamed.

“Oh, good. One of my fields of expertise. Who—or what—do you wish to kill?”

“No one!”

“Oh,” he looked slightly disappointed. “Then how can I help you?”

“We want to know about poisons for vampires. Poisons that would work on vampires, that is.”

“Most of them will work, if you can get them into the bugger,” the man said cheerfully.

Bezio growled something under his breath.

“I meant undetectable poisons,” Mircea said.

“There aren’t any.”

“None?”

“Not for your kind. Not that we’ve ever found, in any case.” The man looked wistful.

“There has to be,” Jerome said. “My old master was poisoned, and we never knew how.”

“Oh, I never said it couldn’t be done,” the mage told him. “Simply that there are no poisons a vampire can’t detect if he’s paying attention. But there are always ways if you’re determined.”

“Such as?”

“A dart or arrow, dipped in an appropriate concoction, can work, but there are considerable risks. Vampire reflexes might knock it away before it connects. If it does connect, but you don’t hit a major artery, the poison can be sucked out or the affected limb cut off—which will, after all, grow back in time. Such an attack also requires getting a little closer to their prey than many people are comfortable with. Which is why most prefer to hide it.”

“Hide it how?”

He shrugged. “Various ways. The best is to feed the poison to a human, and have the vampire bite him.”

“He’d taste it.”

“Possibly,” the mage agreed. “But the feeding instinct does tend to be somewhat . . . overwhelming . . . for your kind. And blood has a magnifying effect for you, so the amount needed would be much reduced. The main problem is keeping the human alive long enough to get him to the vampire.” He smiled.

Mircea wished he’d stop doing that.

“So how do you do it?” Jerome asked, with more interest.

“Jerome,” Mircea said, because this wasn’t getting them anywhere.

“I need to know, Mircea. My master—I need to know.” He looked back at the mage. “How?”

“Again, various ways. Overriding a human’s mind, to persuade them to ingest the stuff shortly before they are to be bitten, might work. But self-preservation is a hard thing to completely negate, and even a strong suggestion may not be enough. They may also be seen taking it, or searched and the potion found, or it may be smelled on them—”

“You said various ways. There is another?” Jerome broke in.

“Oh, yes. The best bet, especially if your target is particularly cautious, is to prepare your carrier ahead of time, and then do something to slow down the poison. Give it to him with a large meal, for example. The digestion process will retard the effects—possibly for hours, depending on which poison you use—giving the carrier time to reach his destination. Or you can give him an antidote—”

“An antidote?” Mircea asked sharply.

The mage nodded. “Not a complete dose, of course, just enough to delay the poison’s effects for a short time.”

“An antidote like Theriac?”

“Theriac?” The man’s eyebrow raised.

“Mithridatum. A friend of ours had some in his possession, just before . . .”

“Interesting.” He leaned his chair back on two legs. “What would a vampire want with a useless remedy?”

“Theriac isn’t useless!” Jerome said indignantly.

“No, it’s very good at parting fools from their money.” The mage smiled.

“It seemed to work for Mithridates!”

“Actually, the old legends state that Mithridates was saved by drinking the blood of ducks that fed off poisonous plants—the kind his subjects used in their king-killing efforts. Over time, the ducks developed a resistance that they passed onto him.”

“And that . . . works?” Bezio asked, sounding skeptical.

“No, not at all,” the man said, and then laughed at Bezio’s expression. “But the legend persists because it contains some truth. Animals who regularly take in small amounts of a toxin, or who produce it themselves—snakes, spiders, and the like—develop an immunity to it, an immunity that shows up in their blood.”

“That’s why they had us cut up vipers into Theriac,” Jerome said, as if something finally made sense. “They wanted the blood.”

“Yes.”

“But you just said Theriac doesn’t work,” Mircea pointed out.

“It doesn’t. Drinking immune blood, even assuming it could survive the cooking process, would do a human no good at all. The digestive process would destroy it. But if someone didn’t have that problem. . . .”

“Someone like a vampire?” Mircea asked.

The man smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Your, ah, bodily functions, are completely different from ours, especially in the absorption of blood.”

“So a vampire could take an antidote,” Bezio said, frowning, as if he didn’t see where this got them.

“Or make one,” Mircea said quietly. He looked at the mage. “And if the . . . animal . . . in question, the one slowly building up an immunity to a toxin, took too large of a dose? Or took them too close together?”

“Well, then.” The mage smiled. “You’d have to get yourself another animal, wouldn’t you?”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“What a huge waste of time,” Bezio said, as they came in the kitchen door.

“And of shoe leather,” Jerome said tiredly. “I can’t believe we had to walk all the way back.”

“Not a damned gondola in Venice tonight,” Bezio agreed.

Cook and Lucca were by the fire, where something was bubbling in a pot. “You didn’t find him?” she asked, turning to look at them.

“Oh, we found him,” Bezio said heavily. “That’s why it was a waste!”

“Huh. Place has a decent reputation.”

“For what?” Jerome demanded, sprawling at the table.

“Charms, poultices, love potions . . .”

“And a little something to take care of things when love goes wrong,” Jerome added sourly.

“He asked about poisons,” she jerked a thumb at Mircea. “They’re good at that.”

“If that’s good, I’d hate to see bad,” Bezio said, peering hopefully into the cupboard where she kept the wine.

Wine came to the house in big barrels that Paulo kept under lock and key. But cook always had some on hand, for soups and stews, and a nightcap for herself—and for them, when they could find it. But she’d gotten better at hiding it lately, having learned of their thieving ways. And Bezio came up empty-handed.

Mircea strolled casually toward the pantry and she rolled her eyes at him. And stuck a spoon of something in Lucca’s mouth. “Is that good?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Doesn’t need salt?”

He shook his head.

“All right then. Tell the rest to wash up and come help themselves. I’m not waiting on you lot.”

He nodded and ran out, and Jerome glanced at the pot. “Is that dinner?”

“Why, you hungry?” she asked sardonically.

“No, but this place is usually covered with food by now.” He looked around at the pristine tabletop, the unused cutlery, and the massive frying pan gleaming on its nail by the fireplace.

And then back at the pot of what smelled like bean soup that appeared to be the sole item on the menu tonight.

“No dinner party,” the cook confirmed.

“But what if a client gets hungry?”

“No clients, either. Everybody’s out.”

“Out where?”

“Where do you think?” she asked, taking off her apron.

“I don’t think anything—”

“As we always expected,” Bezio put in, peering into a crock where they’d been lucky before.

But not this time.

Jerome made a face at him. “—since we’ve been out, too,” he finished.

“You didn’t hear?” Cook started grinning.

“Hear what?”

“The challenge is tonight. They moved it up.”

“What?” Mircea had been shifting sacks of rice about in the pantry, but at that he came to the door.

“Tonight?” Jerome repeated. “But I thought it was tomorrow—”

“Everybody else did, too,” she told him. “Makes sense, last night and all. But I guess they didn’t want to interfere with the closing ceremonies—”

Or they didn’t want to give the senator more time to prepare, Mircea thought grimly.

“—so they called it for tonight. Teach you to run off.”

“Everybody went?” Jerome asked, looking stunned.

“Mostly.” She shrugged. “And the rest have the night off.”

“But . . . but how are they getting in? That’s got to be, well, everybody’s going to want to be there—”

“I don’t want to be there,” Bezio said, as the cook shrugged.

“Oh, of course you do,” Jerome said irritably.

“No, I don’t. And neither do you. If the senator loses, it’ll be depressing, and if the consul does . . . you really think his supporters are going to take that lying down?” He shook his head. “This could blow sky high. I’m good here.”

“Me, too,” the cook agreed, and plucked the decanter of wine Mircea had found out of his hands. “I have plans.”

She toddled off, a small wizened figure in a lumpy black dress, and Bezio grinned. “You ever wonder what her plans are? I mean, she knew about love potions . . .”

“Whatever they are, they’re probably more exciting than ours,” Jerome said, sounding aggrieved. “I wonder if we could—”

“No.”

“But there might be standing room—”

“No.”

“We won’t know unless we—”

“No. Listen to papa.”

“You’re not my papa.”

“I’m old enough to be.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Jerome snapped.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He frowned at Mircea. “I thought you were getting us drinks.”

Mircea sighed and went back to the pantry.

“Get extra,” Bezio called after him. “I have the strangest taste in my mouth.”

“Your fault for being crazy enough to try anything in that place,” Jerome said grumpily.

“You bought it.”

“Not by choice. And you’d think people who deal in alchemy could make decent wine!”

“Wine making isn’t alchemy; it’s art,” Bezio argued, getting down a trio of mugs, then sitting at the table and putting his feet up on the wood pile. “And none of those creatures tonight would know anything about that.”

“I told you they were creepy,” Jerome reminded him.

Bezio nodded. “Did you see the guy with the bones?” He shivered.

“I thought that Hieronimo, or whatever his name was, was worse. Talking about how to poison people, like it was nothing!”

“Crazy, like I said. Not to mention that he didn’t make any damned sense.”

“He did to me,” Mircea said, coming back in with a decanter of decent red that had been well hidden inside a sack of beans.

“Really?” Bezio stuck out a mug. “Enlighten us.”

“He offered a possible explanation for what happened to Sanuito,” Mircea reminded him.

“Guess I must have missed it.”

“He implied that someone could have used Sanuito’s blood to make a workable version of Theriac. A vampire version—”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. But if they did, it might explain what he was doing with that pot of antidote. Maybe he was trying to hint to me about what was happening—”

“First of all, bollocks,” Bezio said. “And secondly, bollocks.” He drank wine.

Jerome sniffed his mug dubiously. “Does this smell all right to you?”

Mircea inhaled. Sharp, fruity, maybe a little musty, but Cook sometimes forgot where she hid the decanter so it could have been in there a while. “Yes?”

“I must still have mage funk up my nose.”

“Why bollocks?” Mircea asked Bezio.

He shrugged. “First of all, because it sounds fantastic. And second—if Sanuito had something that important to tell you, why didn’t he just tell you?”

Mircea took a stool. “There were a lot of people around that night. Maybe he was afraid.” He’d certainly looked it.

“Maybe. But if I’d been getting a daily dose of poison, I think I’d have found a way. And I’d have wanted to keep the antidote handy!”

Mircea pursed his lips, trying to remember the exact phrasing. It didn’t work. “He said something like he thought I might need it.”

“That you might?” Jerome asked.

Mircea nodded.

He frowned. “Did he say why?”

“He didn’t say much of anything. But if someone was giving Sanuito poison, and if they accidentally gave him too much . . . or tried to move too fast . . .” He frowned in frustration.

“You can’t even make yourself believe it,” Bezio pointed out. “And anyway, who here would want to do that?”

Mircea sighed, and drank his wine. “I don’t know.”

Maybe they were right; maybe he was imagining it all. He didn’t know anymore. And he didn’t suppose it mattered, since they were leaving soon and all he had was . . . well, nothing.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He felt like going to bed, despite the fact that he hadn’t been up that long. He also needed to feed. But the servants didn’t usually feel like obliging them until they’d fed themselves, and they’d just started filing in.

“Did you learn anything helpful about your master, at least?” Bezio asked Jerome.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible he was poisoned the way the man said. He had a stable for feeding, of course, but you know how it is. There’s always exceptions. You’re away from home and all your servants have donated recently. . . .”

“You’d think you’d take along enough to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Well, you do. But what if you have to expend a lot of energy for something? An attack on the road, for instance. You’re going to need to recoup that somehow.”

“And did that happen to your master?”

Jerome shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

The table went quiet. They were all waiting for the same thing. Mircea passed the time helping to drain the decanter and wishing he could taste the soup bubbling over the stove.

It smelled good, like Cook had thrown in a ham bone along with the beans. And there was a crusty loaf of fresh bread to go with it, which she’d left on the cutting board. It was the kind of meal he’d always preferred: hot, simple, and filling. Peasant food they’d probably call it here, like they’d disdain drinking the wine used to cook with. But it had never bothered him.

“Well, maybe he had someone in,” Bezio offered, when the last of the servants had come and gone.

“Why would he do that?” Jerome asked. “I told you, we had a stable—”

“Yes, but a man likes a little variety, now and again. If you know what I mean.” Bezio waggled his eyebrows at them over his mug.

Jerome apparently didn’t know. “Blood is blood,” he pointed out.

“But a vampire doesn’t live by blood alone,” Bezio said, grinning. “Maybe he had a girl in.”

“For what?”

Bezio raised an eyebrow. “Where do we work again?”

Jerome shook his head. “The master was old—”

“I’m old, and let me tell you—”

“You’re human old,” Jerome said, rolling his eyes. “And not even. In vampire terms, you’re practically a fetus.”

“Says the twinkle in his master’s eye,” Bezio said. “And anyway, when it comes to sex, old doesn’t mean dead. There’s plenty of us who still enjoy a roll in the hay. Or better yet, in fine linen sheets—”

Mircea looked up. “What?”

Bezio laughed. “You’ve never tried taking a tumble in a haystack? Here’s some advice—don’t. It hurts!”

“No, I—before,” Mircea said. “What were you saying before?”

Bezio shrugged. “Just that, if somebody had wanted to get to Jerome’s master, all he’d have needed was a pretty girl he didn’t expect to see again. Then load her up with some poison, feed her a good meal to slow it down, and send her off.”

“Or a pretty vampire,” Jerome said thoughtfully.

“Naw, vampires don’t eat. Or, you know, it doesn’t do anything for them if they do. A meal wouldn’t work.”

“No,” Mircea said blankly. “But an antidote would.”

“Oh, for—we’re not back to that, are we?”

Mircea didn’t answer, his head spinning.

“That wouldn’t insure that the master would feed off her, though,” Jerome pointed out. “What if he wasn’t hungry?”

Bezio rolled his eyes. “Like that would matter. You know how it is. A vampire always bites during—hey!” he called after Mircea. “Where do you think you’re going?”

But Mircea was already out the door.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Well, he’d figured out where all the gondolas went, Mircea thought darkly.

It was less than half an hour later, and he and Jerome were standing on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the great promenade adjacent to St Mark’s Square. It usually fronted the Guidecca Canal, the mile wide waterway separating St. Mark’s from the island of Guidecca. But not tonight.

Tonight, it fronted a sea of boats.

Big boats, small boats, and everything in between, including what looked like a thousand gondolas, filled the water as far as he could see. And unlike the joyous mood of the crowd on the night of the fireworks, these people were . . . unhappy. Possibly because they were about to miss the greatest spectacle of the age.

And so are we, Mircea thought, jaw clenching.

Bezio jogged up, looking flustered. “Not for love, not for money,” he told them. “I was cursed at just for asking!”

“So much for hiring a boat,” Jerome sighed.

“It wouldn’t do any good, even if we could,” Mircea said, looking at the shouting, swearing, manic crowd in front of them.

“They can’t all be invited,” Jerome frowned.

“We’re not invited, and we’re trying to go,” Bezio pointed out.

“But it doesn’t look like they’re even being allowed to land,” Jerome said, squinting. “Not most of them, at any rate.”

“The senate probably has guards stationed at the dock. And crawling all over the island. And then, if you somehow get past all that, there’s the small matter of—”

“Let’s concentrate on getting there first,” Mircea said tightly, cutting in.

“Son, I hate to break it to you, but we aren’t getting there.”

Mircea didn’t say anything. After a moment, Bezio sat on the edge of the pier, dangling his legs over the side. And a minute after that, Jerome joined him.

Mircea didn’t blame them. They hadn’t fed tonight; they’d already run halfway across Venice; and they didn’t believe his crazy theories. But they’d come with him anyway. And they hadn’t mentioned going home, where the servants had had their meal by now and would be willing to offer as much to them. And where there were soft beds and good wine and rooms with heavily boarded up windows where no morning sun could disturb their slumber.

Or rain hit them in the face, he thought, looking up.

The crowd in the boats started murmuring a moment later. And then shrieking a moment after that, when the heavens opened up, as they so often did in Venice. And began drenching the holy and unholy alike.

Mircea sighed and sat on the pier.

Holy, he thought, lips twisting. As if this city knew the meaning of the word. Where convents were regularly used as brothels, and brothels as inns; where taxing the whores made up a sizeable chunk of the government payroll; where the “good girl” down the street turned tricks for pin money and where noble women were escorted to church on the arms of their lovers, to take the Eucharist with pious smiles on their lovely, painted faces. . . .

Well, holy took on a somewhat different meaning.

He still recalled his shock on arrival a little over a year ago, fresh from a country where even a glimpse of ankle was a rare and thrilling sight, only to find himself staring at the rightly named Bridge of Tits. And at the whores hanging over the side, brazenly baring their charms as they laughed and jeered and called challenges to the men in gondolas passing by underneath.

And in some cases, more than called. “Where are you staying, pretty one?” a black-haired siren had shouted down to him.

“I don’t know yet,” he’d called back, before he’d thought. And had been rewarded with a flash of white teeth as his gondola passed under the bridge.

He hadn’t understood why until it emerged on the other side—and was suddenly rocked by the weight of the half-dressed girl who jumped off the bridge and into his arms.

“Well, then. I suppose I’ll just have to take you home with me!” she’d said breathlessly, as the boatman cursed and the crowd laughed and the girls behind them broke into cheers. But because of the theatrics, not because it was anything unusual.

Mircea had watched in amazement as other girls jumped from canal side to boat, and then sometimes to boat again, their too-short skirts held up around pretty ankles, their unbound breasts bouncing along with their curls, their dimples flashing and dark eyes laughing. All while managing feats of balance most knights of his acquaintance couldn’t have copied, just to reach some likely punter with a few spare coins in his purse.

He later discovered that the city fathers encouraged such displays, supposedly to combat homosexuality in the city’s young men. But, of course, it didn’t hurt its reputation either. The tourists who flooded La Serrinissima during the festival season knew it as a place where one could attend to one’s religious duty all day, and then spend that heavenly credit in the bars and brothels and gaming dens all night.

“A prayer and a poke,” as Paulo had put it, in one of his less refined moments.

It had been a memorable introduction to the city.

Mircea looked out over the string of bobbing, lantern-lit boats, many of which were still decked out in festival finery. They were laid almost stem to stern because of the crush. Closer, in fact, than the gondolas had been on that evening a year ago. . . .

“Come on,” he told the others, getting up. “I have an idea.”

***

“Gahhhh!” Bezio screamed, charging straight ahead like a stampeding bull.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Jerome said, stepping daintily behind him and looking chagrined.

“Just passing through,” Mircea assured the outraged lady under the soggy blue canopy, which two burly servants were trying to raise over her head. He wasn’t sure why, since her elaborate hairstyle and fine silk gown were already pretty much ruined. And the three uninvited guests clomping along the length of her all but stationary boat clearly wasn’t making her any happier.

“We’re never going to make it all the way there,” Jerome said, hesitating at the prow of the boat, where a good three-foot jump separated them from the next one.

Mircea glanced behind him, at the two huge thugs the lady had just sent to help them on their way.

“I’ll take that bet,” he said, and tossed Jerome over the gap.

A club whistled through the air a second later, detaching a pretty curled ferro and sending it spinning into the water. But it didn’t detach anything from Mircea, who had already jumped. And scrambled to his feet. And grabbed a confused Jerome and started dragging him along, because the boatmen had just jumped, too.

He heard Jerome give a yelp when he also noticed, and then they were both running flat out, just blurs of motion against the bobbing, swaying, almost capsizing, angry bunch of would-be partygoers all around them.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Jerome yelled, getting into the spirit of things, leaping six feet from an elegant piatti onto a barge. Where he accidentally upended a tray of drinks onto an already annoyed-looking man in damp crimson velvet.

“Sorry!” Mircea said, which helped not at all.

But jumping up onto the wooden roof did. Jerome whooped and joined him a second later, and they pounded down the length of the boat over the heads of more irate guests, then leapt back down to the first floor and, in Jerome’s case, somersaulted to the next barge in line.

“I think you’re getting the hang of it,” Mircea told him.

“It’s a gift.”

“You know, you’re not panting anymore.”

“What?”

“Like on the way to the Rialto that day.”

Jerome shot him a look. “Imagine,” he said, and suddenly forced Mircea’s head down, in order to sucker punch the vampire about to bash his brains in from behind.

The vampire fell into the drink, and then so did his companion when Mircea lashed out with a kick.

“We’ll talk later,” he said hurriedly.

Jerome glanced at the mass of angry boat owners fast closing the gap behind them, and nodded. “Good idea.”

They ran.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bezio said, when they caught up with him a few moments later. “Now what?”

The island was looming up ahead, and Bezio had been right: there was a phalanx of the red-caped guards at the pier, and more spread out in regular intervals all along the sand. Flickers of red also moved among the trees, farther inland. No doubt to guard the back approach to the consul’s palazzo, which faced the water on the other side of the island.

Mircea wasn’t able to concentrate enough to do a count, but it didn’t matter. It added up to way too damned many. But there was no way to stop, not with what now amounted to a huge, club-wielding army fast coming up behind—

Mircea’s feet kept going, but his thoughts skidded to a halt. He wrenched his neck around. Then he looked at Jerome, who grinned.

Bezio suddenly noticed the massive problem headed their way. “What the hell have you two been doing?” he demanded.

“Nothing. Why?” Jerome asked innocently, as Mircea put on an extra burst of speed.

A moment later, they disembarked, if a flying jump onto a wet dock and a bounce onto wetter sand deserved the term.

And a second after that, they were being pinned down by very sharp looking spears wielded by very unhappy looking senatorial guards.

“Now what?” Bezio said, but very softly, so as not to upset the man holding the spear against his jugular.

“That,” Mircea said, and covered his head a second before an angry mob descended on them like a tidal wave.

It washed him off the beach. It washed him off the grass. It washed him almost to the tree line before it petered out, dissolving into a bunch of bewildered looking boat owners who didn’t seem to understand why they were suddenly on land.

The guards didn’t understand it, either, but they knew they didn’t like it. They were converging on the area, trying to round up the recent mob and to simultaneously deal with the fact that the mass of boats at the shoreline had taken the opportunity to start landing. There weren’t enough guards to attend to all of it, and while Mircea was absolutely sure that more were on the way, he didn’t intend to stick around and find—

“Why are you just lying there like that?” Bezio demanded, dragging him up.

And the next moment, the three of them were pelting inland, leaving the mess on the beach behind and heading for the one in the house just ahead.

Chapter Forty

“Okay, this is not going to work.”

It was Bezio who said it, but it was what Mircea had been thinking. They’d eluded the guards at the pier, made a mad dash across the interior of the island, and finally arrived at the forested perimeter of the house. Only to discover that they might as well have stayed home.

Because things were even worse on this side.

The house was ringed by red-caped guards, the pier in front was lined by a double row of them, and parties of two were ranging across the grounds. All of whom were senior-level masters on high alert. Whereas his little group was powerless, weaponless, and, at least in Mircea’s case, clueless.

Because if there was a way in, he didn’t see it.

“Would you stop saying that!” Jerome snapped.

Mircea looked at him. “Stop saying what?”

“Not you, him.”

“Me?” Bezio asked.

“Do you see anyone else here?”

“What did I do?”

“You keep saying things like that—”

“Like what?”

“Like ‘this isn’t going to work; we’re not getting in there.’ You’ve been doing it all night!”

A bushy eyebrow raised. “And are we in there?”

“You said we wouldn’t get here, either—”

“By anything approaching sane means, we wouldn’t have. And I defy you to find me even an insane way in there,” he gestured at the brilliantly lit house.

It was easy enough to see because they were standing approximately where the assault had started the night before. Mircea knew why the leader had chosen it now: the place had a decent view of both house and dock, and enough thick cover to provide a retreat if it was needed. And it was starting to look like it might be, because he had no idea.

“What’s the plan when we do get in?” Jerome asked, ever the optimist.

“I talk to the senator,” Mircea said.

“And?”

“And I tell her what’s happening.”

Jerome frowned. “You’re going to tell her that someone’s been trying to poison her? How is that supposed to help?”

“Because someone might still be trying it!” And everyone at Martina’s was here tonight, and probably already inside.

How convenient.

“If someone wants her dead, seems to me all they have to do is wait around,” Bezio said.

“Maybe that’s the idea,” Mircea said grimly. “If she does survive, she’ll be weak, vulnerable. And in the confusion after the duel . . . well, it would be the perfect time to strike. To make sure that, even if she wins, she loses!”

“But what if she doesn’t believe you?” Jerome asked.

“She will.”

“But what if she doesn’t?”

“I’ll . . . come up with something.”

“You’ll come up with something?” Now Jerome was the one sounding skeptical. “Don’t you think—”

“I think we need to get in first, and then worry about it!”

“Yes, only we’re not going—” Bezio stopped at a vicious look from Jerome.

“There has to be a way,” Jerome said, studying the house.

“There is, but we can’t get to it,” Mircea told him.

“Can’t get to what?”

Mircea pointed out the trellis the leader had used the night before, which he’d seen in his vision, or whatever that had been. From this angle, the small, vine-draped framework was almost obscured by a clump of trees. But it was visible if you knew what you were looking for.

“He didn’t choose it by random,” Mircea said. “He obviously spent some time examining the house before the assault. And noticed that the poplar trees block the view of the trellis from this side, and that ridge in the masonry obscures it from the other. Unless you’re standing right in front of it, you simply don’t see it at all.”

“But I’m guessing there weren’t this many guards last night, either,” Jerome said, as several headed in their direction, then veered off to the right, to check a small garden surrounded by hedges.

“They’re on a patrol,” Mircea said. That was the second time they’d taken that same route.

“Are you sure?”

He watched them leave the garden a moment later, and take a walk along a reflecting pool to check a fountain near the back of the property. Also for the second time. “Pretty sure.”

“I don’t see how that helps us,” Bezio said.

“Thus speaks the voice of doom,” Jerome muttered.

“It’s doom I’m trying to avoid, actually. And there’s still too many damned guards.”

“He’s right,” Mircea said. “We’ll never make that trellis.”

“See there?”

“Unless we draw some of them off first.”

“Draw some of them—” Bezio stopped.

Jerome looked vaguely green. “You know,” he told him. “I think you can go ahead and be pessimistic now.”

***

“She said it should be right around here,” Jerome said, staring at the ground.

“Well, obviously, it isn’t,” Bezio told him.

“I’m just telling you what she said. Why would she say it was here if it wasn’t, in fact, here?”

“You know how masters are. She probably left it back home, but now she’s said it, so she’s committed.”

“No, we’re committed—to searching this whole damned field all night. And it’s going to rain again.” Jerome looked upward. “I can feel it.”

“Well, it’s not like we can get any wetter.”

“No, but I think my shoes are coming apart.”

They stopped to examine his shoes.

There were no less than twelve guards in view, most of whom couldn’t be bothered with the likes of them. And that included the patrol, but only because it was currently on its third trip to the fountain. But they’d be back in less than four minutes, if they stuck to form. And, as the roving guard, they would probably be expected to dispose of the riffraff.

Although hopefully not permanently.

Mircea scowled, dropped to his knees, and started digging around in the dirt.

For about ten seconds, until a pair of gleaming boots backed by a bright crimson cape stopped directly in front of his face. “What are you doing?”

He looked up, squinting, because the moon was right behind the golden helmet of an annoyed-looking master. “Wha?” he asked, and squinted some more.

“Oh, don’t bother,” Jerome told the guard, and kicked Mircea in the ribs. “Stop that. It’s not there.”

“And that’s another thing,” Bezio said. “Why is he even here? Biggest thing going, practically the biggest thing ever, and she brings the family idiot?”

“Masters,” Jerome said, and took off his shoe.

“You can’t be back here,” the guard told them. “Who is your master?”

“Lucilla,” Jerome said, frowning at his sole. And naming his lady friend from the previous evening.

“Senator Marcellus’ wife?” The guard looked doubtful.

It was understandable. Their hair was straggling around their faces, their clothes were damp, and their shoes were muddy. Or, in Jerome’s case, coming apart. Not to mention that, collectively, they probably had about as much power as the servant who had shined those glossy boots, which explained why the guard hadn’t even drawn a sword yet.

They weren’t worth the effort.

Or maybe he just didn’t want to get it dirty. Despite the unexpected downpour, the man was pristine. In addition to the boots, his armor shone, his cape looked freshly pressed, even his helmet feathers were perky.

How the hell did he do that, Mircea wondered, and resumed digging in the mud.

“Is there another?” Jerome asked, with a longsuffering sigh.

“Well, you still can’t be here,” the guard said, albeit with a slightly moderated tone.

“Friend, I don’t want to be here,” Jerome told him. “I was ordered to be here. The lady lost a ring—a very, very expensive pearl ring—”

“Or so she says,” Bezio commented.

“—at the regatta the other day. She took a turn in the gardens before the competition, and the next time she looked, the ring was gone.”

“But the next time she looked was at home,” Bezio pointed out, ranging farther afield. “I’m telling you, she probably lost it there.”

“I think she’d know where she lost her own ring,” Jerome said grumpily, and then jerked when Mircea suddenly grabbed his leg. “What are you—no, no, you idiot! That’s a rock! A filthy rock! And look what you just did to my hosen!”

Mircea flinched back, leaving a muddy handprint on said hosen. And put his hands protectively over his head, the truly filthy rock dripping mud onto the grass in front of him—and then flinging it in an arc when Jerome kicked him again. The guard jumped back, just missing having his outfit ruined, and shot Mircea a look of pure disgust.

“Stupid boy!” Bezio said angrily. “Go stand over by the house, where we can keep an eye on you!”

Mircea slunk off to the sounds of outrage from the shoeless and now muddy Jerome, the renewed objections of the guard, and Bezio’s low grumbles. And then his excited exclamations when he suddenly spotted something. “Hey, is that it?” Bezio asked, running through the sight line of several more guards, who were then forced to go after him.

Mircea stepped quietly back into the shadow of the poplars, swiftly checking in both directions. But the nearest guards were busy accosting Bezio, the rest were watching their areas, and the patrol wouldn’t be back for another minute. And that was more than enough.

In seconds, he was up the trellis, moving almost silently. Not that it mattered with outraged yelling from Jerome and Bezio helping to cover his ascent. As well as the sounds of the crowd above, which blotted out even his own hearing halfway up, with a murmur like the roar of the ocean.

He realized why a second later, when he hopped over the top.

And into a crowd of thousands.

The palazzo was creaking under the weight of a solid mass of people. It was literally shoulder-to-shoulder all over the vast expanse of roof. Where the cream of the vampire world were fighting and jostling and elbowing and generally acting in ways that a well-dressed throng shouldn’t.

Nobody cared. Not tonight. All that was on anyone’s mind was finding the best vantage point overlooking the garden, which explained why nobody standing nearby had noticed his less than normal entrance.

They were all facing the other way.

Mircea snagged a view for himself—briefly—by grabbing a tray of drinks off a passing servant. And then by climbing up the steps of a nearby covered platform, where the senators had their seats, well above the rudely shifting crowd. He didn’t get in, of course; a guard relieved him of the tray at the top. But he took his time coming down, trying to get his bearings.

He could see over the edge of the wall now, down into what had once been a beautiful garden. And which at present wasn’t much of anything. The stone pathways and grassy areas were still intact, more or less, along with the fountain. But most of the trees and bushes had been dug out and removed.

The garden now matched the rest of the house, which currently resembled a ruin, albeit an odd one. In addition to the group on the roof, vampires hung out of windows, crowded doorways and loggias, and even sat along the floor lines that had been revealed by missing chunks of wall. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, in Mircea’s line of sight.

But none of them was the one he needed to see.

And he was fast running out of time.

The consul was already in place, standing beside an official of some kind in the center of the enclosure. He was back to human form, a wizened little figure looking vaguely ridiculous in a rich aquamarine robe. But for some reason, Mircea didn’t feel much like laughing as he went back to searching the crowd, trying to find the senator.

And found Martina instead.

She was standing on the ground floor, inside a door to the right of the newly made arena. He couldn’t see her face, since the doorway shadowed it, but he recognized the flame-colored gown dotted with golden pomegranates, one of her favorites. It was unique; the material woven somewhere to the east and then smuggled into Venice, where it was illegal due to laws forbidding competition with the local silk industry.

As if Martina cared about the laws.

But there simply couldn’t be two of them.

A swift check of the other entrances to the arena turned up more and more familiar faces. Paulo was standing on a balcony above a door directly across from Martina. Zaneta was just inside another on the wall to the right of him. And then Mircea spied what looked like Danieli’s favorite yellow outfit on a loggia above the door to the far left. Mircea didn’t see anyone else, but he’d bet money they were here somewhere. Possibly loitering somewhere near the last door, just below him, where he couldn’t see what was happening.

Until the senator suddenly walked through it.

Chapter Forty-One

Damn it! Mircea had assumed there would be some fanfare, some announcement, some something to indicate that the event of the century was about to start. And to give him an idea of where to find the senator. But there was nothing, except the sudden hush of thousands of voices, and the abrupt stilling of an ocean of people.

Into utter silence.

It was so quiet that he could hear her footsteps, light as they were, over the scattered gravel. She looked a little different from the last time he’d seen her, when she’d been dressed in the height of Venetian fashion. Tonight she was a slim figure in white, wearing the elegant draperies of an earlier age. Her hair was in a hundred gold-tipped braids, more gold shown around her neck in a wide, antique collar, and still more glittered in bands on her lovely arms.

The modern Venetian lady was gone.

The ancient queen remained.

Her face was calm, composed. If she was worried at all, it didn’t show. Mircea felt his own anxiety level jump up, but it was already so high, he hardly noticed.

Because there was no way to reach her now.

Guards circled the arena and dotted the crowd, as well as occupying posts at the top corner of each of the walls, weapons at the ready. Mircea had no doubt what the penalty would be for anyone who dared to enter the ring besides the combatants. And while a senior master might survive having a few dozen wood-tipped crossbow bolts slammed into his body all at once, Mircea would not.

She was beyond his reach.

She was beyond his reach, so he had to come up with something else.

Now.

This would be the time for Plan B, if he had one. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and every one he tried to formulate hit the brick wall of his own obscurity. The story he had to tell was fantastic, but someone of power, of position, might have been believed. Or at least been indulged long enough for an investigation to be made.

Mircea would be lucky if he was just locked up—after the requisite beating, of course.

No one was going to listen to a slave. Not even the senator’s family, if he knew where to find them, which he didn’t, or if they weren’t too busy biting their nails to the quick to listen, which they surely were. And yet, what else was there?

“Don’t they need you back in the kitchen?” someone asked, and Mircea turned around to find one of the guards looking at him steadily.

Or maybe not a guard. The man was dressed in the same overall design, but his cape was dark blue, as was the plume on his helmet. And his breastplate, belt, and sword were of far higher quality than any Mircea had seen on the guards.

An officer, at a guess.

“I—yes, yes, dòmino,” Mircea bowed his head and bent at the waist, to the point that he was almost doubled. And then scurried down a couple of steps—until the man turned and headed up again, forgetting the bedraggled servant as soon as he was out of sight.

Down in the garden, the official who had been standing by the consul moved forward. “You have a petition, senator?” he asked pleasantly.

“No.”

“If you wish to ask forgiveness for the actions of your men, the consul will hear—” The man stopped. “No?” he repeated, as if the word had just registered.

“I come not to petition, but to rule. I hereby make formal challenge for the right to lead our people.”

The man appeared flustered, why, Mircea couldn’t imagine. Every damned person here had known that was coming. Unless he’d actually expected her to crawl.

He didn’t know her very well, Mircea thought grimly.

“And what grounds do you bring for your challenge?” the man demanded.

The lovely eyes slid to the consul. “Madness.”

The collective crowd sucked in a breath, and even Mircea felt a bit shocked. He hadn’t expected her to just come right out with it like that.

Of course, he hadn’t expected to be grabbed by the arm, either. “Are you hard of hearing?”

It looked like the officer hadn’t forgotten his presence, after all. And wasn’t that just his luck? Everyone else in the whole damned place was focused on the drama down below, except for one man.

And, naturally, he would have to be the one who spotted Mircea.

“El me scuxa, dòmino. Your pardon,” Mircea said, and tried groveling again.

But this time, it didn’t work.

“You’re very dirty for a servant,” the man said, taking a closer look at him. “And, yet, also too finely dressed.”

His fingers rubbed the nap of Mircea’s black outfit thoughtfully. It was a little worse for the wear even after the servants had dried it out and given it a good brushing. And it had some mud and grass stains here and there, from this night’s activities. But even with everything, the man was right—it wasn’t a servant’s attire.

“My lady, she likes to dress us well—”

“Your lady?”

“Lucilla, the wife of—”

“I know who she is.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have the look of one of Lucilla’s men.”

“I’m new, dòmino—”

“And if you belong to Lucilla, why were you delivering drinks just now, like one of the house slaves?”

“She asked me to, dòmino. She wanted a drink for her husband—”

“Indeed?” The man stared into the distance for a moment, dark blue eyes narrowed. And then back at Mircea. “That is strange. She doesn’t seem to remember it.”

Damn it, trust them to have the more intelligent guards inside, Mircea thought furiously.

He tried to look both stupid and innocent, as well as cowed and servile and unthreatening. But judging from the man’s expression, he didn’t think it was working. But then the officer’s head jerked up, as a drawling voice rang out across the crowd.

“Don’t tell me I’m late.”

Mircea’s head turned along with everyone else’s, thousands of eyes searching and then focusing on a spot on the opposite wall.

Where Antony stood atop a broken cornice.

He was in ancient golden armor now instead of a toga, and holding a sword instead of a wineglass. But he somehow looked the same. Especially when he leapt over the side, falling three stories to land in a perfect crouch at the feet of his queen.

And then looked up, grinning. “I challenge!”

The official, who had been halfway through an explanation of the rules, looked annoyed. Although not nearly as much as the senator, whose lips tightened into a single grim line. But her inner voice was not affected, and it was scathing.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“What did I just say?” Antony asked, getting to his feet.

“This is not your fight!”

“And yet I believe I’ve just made it mine.”

Mircea, who was willing to try anything at this point, tried a tentative mental message of his own. On the theory that if he could hear, perhaps he could also be heard. The senator had certainly seemed to be picking up on a few of his thoughts that day on the terrace.

But maybe that was simply the effects of fifteen centuries of observing people. Or maybe there was some trick to it. But if so, thinking really hard in her general direction did not seem to be it.

Because his message either wasn’t received, or was completely ignored.

“Don’t be a fool,” she snapped. “You cannot defeat him!”

“And you can?” Antony demanded.

“I have a better chance than you. You have no offensive skills, not against an opponent of his level.”

“And yet I am supposed to be almost impossible to kill.”

“It’s the almost that concerns me!”

Mircea tried to focus his power on his message, since that had always expanded his sight and hearing considerably. But it didn’t appear have the same effect here. Either that, or he didn’t have enough power left to help. Because neither party so much as twitched, even when he gave the mental equivalent of a scream.

“And are you concerned, my dearest?” Antony asked.

“If you dare to make a joke of this” —her mental voice shook with anger—“I swear to you—”

“I assure you, I am not joking. And offensive skills do you little good if you don’t stay alive long enough to use them.”

“As you will not!”

“We shall see.”

“I hereby issue formal challenge,” Antony repeated aloud. “Will the lord honor me or no?”

The official’s bald head gleamed in the moonlight as he looked back and forth between the three of them. He didn’t appear to be getting any help. “I—that is—this is unprecedented—”

“Nonetheless, I challenge.” Antony looked straight at the consul when he spoke this time. And while his voice was unexceptional, the sneer on his face contained all the haughtiness of an empire.

And also something else.

Something that made Mircea pause, because he’d seen it before. He’d seen it on the faces of his men, the night before the Battle of Varna, the last chance to save once great Constantinople from the Turks. The Hungarian king had decided to stop them; his troops had known he never would.

And yet they’d fought anyway.

Not for victory, or for glory. Certainly not for a king they didn’t know or respect. But for their homes and families. Their crops and fields. Their religion, for those who believed in it. For all they thought might perish if the Turks took the last bastion of Roman might, and swept into Europe.

They had gone expecting to die, but hoping that they might thereby purchase something that mattered more to them. Mircea had sat with them around their campfires the night before the battle, had shared their wine and bread, had listened to the stories they wanted to tell. And he’d seen their faces.

Antony had the same look, that of a soldier going into a battle he knew he couldn’t win. But like Mircea’s men, he would sell his life dear. Perhaps he could save the woman he loved, because yes, he loved her. Looking at them now, there was no doubt of that. Perhaps he could help her to kill the creature they both detested. Perhaps he could keep his world from descending into war or something that might be worse, the rule of a savage heart with no curbs on its power.

No, he couldn’t win.

But he would fight anyway.

Mircea saw it on his face, and so did the monster masquerading as a toothless old man. Who suddenly smiled. “You were born together,” he whispered, in strangely accented Italian. “It is only fitting you should die the same way.”

“I—but,” the official blinked. “You will face them both, my lord?”

“Si.” It had the sibilance of the snake, but Mircea barely heard, because the crowd erupted.

And he’d been wrong—it hadn’t been loud before. The groundswell of noise following the announcement would have been deafening to a human’s ears; to a vampire’s, it was almost debilitating. And that was before they began stamping their collective feet.

The motion was hard enough to shake the building—and the hastily erected stairs. They started swaying underneath him, almost throwing Mircea off his feet. But it was the dais that partially collapsed, slumping onto the stairs and pitching him and his captor abruptly back into the crowd.

The fall wrenched the guard’s grip loose and half buried him under a pile of wood and a throng of screaming people.

And Mircea scrambled away into a sea of legs, looking around wildly.

The wall was right in front of him. He could be back over it in an instant. And as tense things were about to get, there was a good chance he could get away while the guards were distracted. Or he could disappear into the crowd, and then walk out when this was all over in the train of someone’s entourage. He could even hide somewhere in the palazzo, and wait until the next night, when convocation was over and nobody cared anymore. . . .

He could do a good many things, but he didn’t want to. To get away, yes, but not to leave, although he didn’t know what good he could do if he stayed. He couldn’t reach the senator, couldn’t communicate with her, couldn’t defeat the opponent she didn’t even know she had. He couldn’t do anything but land back in the cell where this whole thing had started.

The only smart thing to do was to escape.

But perhaps Bezio was right, and he wasn’t all that smart. Or perhaps it was as Auria had said: The Change didn’t really change you, not in the ways that mattered. Because he found that he couldn’t simply walk away.

It was ironic. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about selling his life for a cause he believed in. Would have welcomed it as the best possible end to his current situation. But now . . . now he wanted to live.

But not at the price of everything that he had ever been.

Or still was.

Mircea stood there, vibrating in thought, for a moment. And then darted back through the crowd, to where the beleaguered guard was still half buried in shoddy construction. And grabbed his sword.

And then he headed for the nearest staircase going down.

Chapter Forty-Two

The ground level of the house appeared largely deserted, with wide, deep hallways devoid of guests, guards or anyone except for a few servants darting here and there with trays. None of whom seemed be paying any attention to Mircea. And that was despite the fact that he was lurking in the stairwell and holding a naked sword.

Vampires, he thought, and paused a moment to admire his new acquisition.

It was a beautiful weapon, gold chased and fine edged, the kind of sword he’d once owned, until he’d been forced to sell it once his money ran out. It had hurt his heart, but what did a vampire need with a sword? That was probably still true, but its weight nonetheless felt good in his palm.

Of course, it would feel a lot better if the officer came along to wield it.

Not that Mircea wasn’t competent with a sword. But as the servants were currently demonstrating, there was a different standard in place now. He could probably run at one of them, brandishing the weapon and screaming, and merely get a strange look.

Until he got close enough to be wadded into a ball.

In his old world, Mircea was a trained warrior and a fearsome threat. In his new one . . . well, he wasn’t even sure he counted as a nuisance. That was normally a problem, but now it was an absolute menace, since he didn’t know exactly what he was dealing with.

Who, yes. How, possibly. But the what was bothering him as he started down the long hallway.

Was he facing a trained assassin? Someone hired to give the consul an added edge? Hassani led a group of such people, and he might well have decided to have someone in place to hedge his bets.

At the very least, he might want to make sure that he wouldn’t have to deal with his longtime rival as the new senate leader. And at best . . . perhaps he meant to make a bid for the power himself, in the confusion. Mircea didn’t know.

But if he was facing a trained assassin, this was about to be a big waste of time.

Of course, he was hardly likely to fare better against a run of the mill vampire-with-a-vendetta. When a delicate courtesan could best him in a fight, the world really had turned upside down. But he was pragmatic enough to accept it, and to come up with a workaround.

At least, he was if his solution didn’t kill him first.

He hazarded a glance over his shoulder, but the officer was nowhere in sight.

Mircea frowned. If it was him, he’d damned well want his sword back. He just hoped the officer felt the same. And that, if he did show up, he could somehow convince him to—

A servant dropped a tray, in a clatter of metal and a tinkle of glass. It made Mircea jump. And then jump again when two others did the same, at almost the same moment. And then they added to the confusion by shrieking and bolting for cover.

Mircea looked around, sword raised, trying to locate the threat. But there was nothing. Just echoing, empty tiled floors, a long corridor with windows fronting the garden, and the usual scattered tables, tapestries, and knick knacks.

Some of the latter of which had started to chime.

Mircea watched a couple of figurines, a man and a woman dressed in festival finery, jitter down the length of a dark wood table. They almost looked as if they were dancing. Until they fell off the end, shattering on the hard glazed tiles in a puff of plaster.

No one had touched them.

But then, no one was touching the rest of the corridor, either. Yet it had also started to shake noticeably. Little siftings of plaster had begun falling from the ceiling. A brass platter on shelf followed the dancers, hitting the floor with a metallic clang, clang, clang that was swallowed up by a roar that came out of nowhere, louder than the screams of the crowd, louder than anything Mircea had heard outside the battlefield. And which seemed to be coming from all directions at once.

And then the multipaned windows whited out.

Mircea stared at it, seriously confused, because it looked like a winter storm had blown up in an instant. A violent one. The metal latch started jittering against the small glass panes, the window itself began knocking back and forth against its frame, and then a single, diamond-shaped pane suddenly popped out, and went skittering over the floor.

That was not so strange; perhaps it had been loose. But something had started blowing through the opening, something that didn’t look like snow. Something that scattered across the floor, pale against the dark tile and the darker tops of Mircea’s shoes.

He knelt down, feeling something hard and gritty under his fingertips for an instant. Before he jerked his hand back, startled and confused. Because the tiny grains were also burning hot, like desert sand that had baked all day under a merciless sun.

But this was nighttime. And Italy. And it had just been raining fit to float Noah’s—

The lights went out.

Mircea’s head jerked up to see that all the windows were now black, the light from above having been blotted out by the growing storm. It left the corridor lit only by flickering torchlight and ominous, leaping shadows. And a vampire who suddenly decided that he could live with a bit of mystery.

He got back to his feet and started to run—

And then hit the floor again when the window abruptly blew out.

Glass panes went flying, glittering diamond bright in the torchlight, and a flood of something shot through the opening with the force of cannon shot.

It was sand, he realized, as a river of the stuff blasted over his head, overthrew the table, and exploded against the wall. And sent a burning, stinging rain spewing everywhere, including down onto the floor. Where Mircea lay in horrified disbelief for an instant, before starting to crawl—fast.

Until he was suddenly jerked backward.

“I’ll have that back, if you don’t mind,” someone told him.

Mircea looked around wildly and saw a hand on his ankle. A sapphire plume. A golden helmet running with reflected fire—

A fist in his face.

He felt his cheekbone shatter, and his lip split. Making him lisp slightly when he snarled, “You’re early.”

And then he flipped and kicked out—and smashed his foot into the officer’s face, hard enough to break that patrician nose.

Trust him to show up in the middle of a desert sandstorm, or whatever the hell the combatants in the garden thought they were doing. Mircea preferred to deal with one crisis at a time, but the man seemed to have a different idea. Although he didn’t appear to have expected the servile creature he’d met above to put up much of a fight.

Because the maneuver had worked.

The guard let go, cursing, blood spurting from the wound, and Mircea scrambled away.

Straight into a mass of overheated sand.

It had piled up in the short time the struggle had taken, already coating the ground an inch thick. He felt his hands start to burn, along with the knees of his hosen, and the panic of a vampire confronted with excessive heat start to rise. He ruthlessly suppressed it. And scurried ahead, half blind and deaf from the howling winds, flesh burning, hands searching. And finding—

Not a way out, but something almost as good.

His palm encountered wood, a good three inches thick, still cool and solid despite the conditions. The tabletop, he realized, old and black and carved—and ruined, when he ruthlessly snapped off the heavy legs. He left the crossed supports under the bottom for a grip, not knowing if they’d be needed, since the slab was almost as long as him and built of Spanish hardwood. It would have taken at least four men to lift it.

Or one desperate vampire, he thought, getting back to his feet and staggering a bit under the weight.

But it was still a blessed relief, cutting off much of the stinging sand and allowing him to see a way forward. Or it would have, if the torches hadn’t guttered in the wind. But he found his way by the direction the sand was blowing, and finally lurched into one of the relatively quiet areas between the windows.

Only to find the same thing happening everywhere.

Plaster was pouring down now, from a fissure that had opened in the ceiling. The whole corridor was shaking. And rivers of sand were spewing in from half a dozen windows.

Dim moonlight spilled across the scene from a distant window to the outside, lending the rivers a silvery quality, like water flooding through the portholes of a sinking ship. Only this ship would have already sunk by now. Even the walls between the windows were riddled with sharp-edged debris, their jagged ends glinting palely in the low light.

Mircea stared at them, wondering at the force it took to stab a piece of tile through a solid wall. Probably about the same as it would take to do it to a tabletop. And while most of the shards were stone or tile, some of them were wood.

The remains of the garden’s few trees, he supposed.

But he was going to have to risk it, nonetheless.

For more than one reason, he thought, as an old battlefield instinct kicked in. And alerted him a bare instant before a fist crashed into the shield he swung around. And then through it, to punch the air in front of Mircea’s wide eyes.

The fist became hung up there, as the table held and the jagged shards around the officer’s arm bit into his flesh when he tried to pull it out.

He wrenched Mircea’s makeshift shield around, staring at him over the slanted top. Then grabbed for his throat, before Mircea jerked back, swinging them around again. They suddenly reminded him of the dancing figurines; he only hoped this wasn’t going to end the same way.

But it was beginning to look like it, he thought, as he was suddenly jerked far too close to a bloody face and a fanged-filled mouth.

But despite everything, Mircea decided this was the best chance he was likely to get.

“I’m here to help the senator—” he began, right before the maniac jerked on his shirt again, slamming their heads together with a crack.

“That’s interesting,” the man said, looking with satisfaction at Mircea’s bloody face. “I foolishly thought you were here to steal my sword.”

“That was—I need it—”

“What a coincidence. So do I.” The man twisted them around and started pushing.

“No, you don’t understand. Someone is trying to—gaaah!” Mircea’s breath went out with a whoosh, when the man shoved him heavily into the wall.

And then backed up and did it again.

Mircea snarled and stabbed out with the sword he still held before the bastard could try for number three.

He had a limited range of movement thanks to the table, and he couldn’t see what he was doing. But he could feel it when the blade sank through the thick leather of the man’s boots, into the vulnerable flesh below. And hear it when he cursed and fell back—too far.

And since he didn’t let go, Mircea and the tabletop went with him.

That gave Mircea a captive audience, for the moment, and he used it.

“Someone is trying to interfere with the contest!” Mircea said quickly, as the man thrashed and bucked and growled beneath him. “I’m not sure of the plan, but I think the idea is to—”

The trapped fist closed around Mircea’s throat.

“To attack her . . . when she’s vulnerable . . . after—urk.”

He found himself once again jerked close to narrowed blue eyes. “And a little sneak thief like you is going to stop them.”

“I’m not a thief!” They both looked at the sword he still held. “Usually.”

“You’re not going to be anything in a moment, boy.”

“No, listen to me—”

But the officer didn’t appear to be in a listening mood. Perhaps he should have tried diplomacy before breaking his nose, Mircea thought wildly, as the man gave a roar, and flipped them over, table and all. He then jumped back to his feet, in a display of strength that would have been impressive if he hadn’t followed it up by jerking his bloody arm out of the wood. And then used it to land a blow on Mircea’s jawline hard enough to send him staggering.

Mircea stumbled back, directly into the path of one of the last intact windows.

Right before it blew out.

He was blown off his feet and sent hurtling backward, smashing hard into the opposite wall. Where he stayed, pinned by the force of a raging torrent of stinging sand. He was trapped between the wall and his makeshift shield, which appeared to be trying to crush him to death.

But as it was also keeping him from burning up on the spot, he didn’t like to complain.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to do the same for everything else. As demonstrated by the tapestry hanging on the wall behind him. Which promptly burst into flames around the protective barrier of the door, surrounding him in a choking ring of fire.

And then he was grabbed by an even more irresistible force and sent hurtling down the hallway.

Mircea hit the ground hard, panting in pain, watching the officer casually walk through the burning stream toward him. No shield, no concern for the blast of heated sand, nor even for the knife-like shards of flooring, rubble ,and garden tiles that lay hidden in the mix.

Without a shield, Mircea would have been scoured to the bone in seconds.

The officer didn’t even look like he noticed.

Mircea swallowed. Good. Great. That’s . . . what he’d wanted.

Now all he had to do was stay alive long enough to lead his champion to his target.

He spat out a mouthful of sand, grabbed the burned and pitted top of his shield, and ran.

The windows and wall areas were almost equally spaced, giving him brief respites in between the hell.

They didn’t come often enough.

Blood spurted across his vision as something cut his forehead, sand scoured more skin off his ankles and legs, and then a shard of something ricocheted off a wall and tore through the muscle on his left knee, cutting it almost to the bone.

Mircea staggered into the wall, hamstrung. But he started forward again anyway, hobbling as fast as he could—until he saw what lay just ahead. Something, which he vaguely recognized as the remains of the fountain, had been thrown through the side of the house,leaving a massive hole through which a shrieking, slashing, deadly storm was scouring the opposite wall.

For a moment, Mircea just stared at it, watching as the remaining plaster was flayed off, leaving bare studs behind. Which were quickly being worn away themselves. The only reason the whole thing hadn’t collapsed yet was that the outer walls were solid stone.

But Mircea wasn’t.

And shield or no, there was no way he would survive that.

And then bad matters became infinitely worse when a massive black tail appeared out of the blowing sand, and destroyed the remainder of the wall. The blow sent columns from the loggia, glass from the windows, and sharp-edged bricks tumbling like pins in a giant bowling game—and straight at Mircea. Who hit the ground, huddled under his makeshift shield, and waited for the end.

Only to have the ceiling fall on top of him.

That should have pretty much been that. But a few moments later, when a much flatter Mircea peered out from under his tabletop, he didn’t see an open space filled with howling winds and biting sand. Instead, he found himself looking at a quiet, dark tunnel formed from heavy oak beams, and fronted by the equally solid wood flooring of the corridor above. The ceiling had only half collapsed, which had actually been a good thing, since it cut him off from the terror on the other side.

At least, it did for the moment.

Mircea pulled himself out from under a mass of debris, choking and bleeding. And then hurried down the new tunnel, limping and then crawling past furniture, fallen columns, and destroyed statuary. Before stumbling out the other side—

Into blessed quiet.

Chapter Forty-Three

Mircea paused, panting, and stared around.

He was at the front of the house now, on the edge of the wide atrium that served as an entrance hall. It was a thick rectangle bisected by the massive front doors down and to his right, and a wide hallway leading to the garden opposite them on his left. Either the walls were thicker here, or something about the architecture muffled sound, because the roar of the storm had just become a low background hum.

Likewise, the almost darkness had been replaced by puddles of light, one falling around a delicate cesendello lamp on a table near the wall.And two more from the torches burning on either side of the main doors. Together, they cast a warm glow over a wood ceiling, beautiful tapestries, and a large expanse of tiled floor.

And a slight figure in a dark yellow dress.

She was standing with her back to him, at the entrance to the corridor leading to the garden. Despite the hallway’s length, it was close enough to leave her enveloped by the outer edges of the storm. Mircea would have been writhing in pain at that range, but she appeared unconcerned, the outer bands drifting across her body like golden veils wherever the torchlight touched them.

“You should have been here earlier,” she told him, as he approached. “You’d have had a better view.”

“It’s not the view I’m interested in,” Mircea said softly.

“You should be. You’ll never see its like again.”

She turned to look at him, and it was the same face—why did that surprise him? The same quick smile. The same Marte.

“How often do you witness the death of a god?”

“Will I witness it?” he asked. “What if he wins?”

“He won’t.” She shook her head, making her curls bounce. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know you. I realized on the way here: yours was the only story I never heard.”

“You heard it,” she told him, not even trying to dissemble. “You heard hers. It is the same.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” She walked toward him, her footfalls on the tile as silent as the senator’s had been. “Then why are you here?”

She stopped well short, as if she didn’t want to scare him.

It didn’t work.

Mircea badly wanted to glance over his shoulder, but his instincts told him there was no one there. He had moved quickly, expecting the officer to be right behind him. But perhaps he’d been a little too quick.

Or perhaps the man wasn’t coming at all.

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how well even a senior master would do, when a massive section of wall came flying at him unexpectedly. Maybe he’d had the reflexes to dodge it, or had found something to hide beneath and survived the same way that Mircea had. In which case, he should be along shortly. Or maybe he hadn’t, but was strong enough to heal and would be along eventually. In either case, Mircea needed to stall until he arrived.

But then, maybe he wasn’t coming at all. Maybe he’d been killed by a blow that would have taken out a giant. Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious, and the fire was slowly eating away at him. Maybe—

Maybe Mircea should say something before she got bored and killed him.

“A lot of little things,” he said hoarsely. “The earrings . . .”

She smiled and shook her head, making the tinsel dance. “I should have given them up, shouldn’t I? Women don’t wear them much in Venice.”

“They don’t wear them at all,” Mircea corrected. “Not unless they’re a gypsy. Or . . . from somewhere else. But you’re supposed to be Italian, and young. Auria was said to be the oldest, but even she is only a century. Where would you pick up a habit that has been out of favor with the women here for at least twice that long?”

She sighed. “I’ve had them so long, they feel like a part of me. But it was careless.”

“And the jars, the ones they pulled from the wreckage. Why were you sorting through them? Martina and Auria are the ones who worked with them all the time. Wouldn’t they better know the ingredients?”

“I volunteered.”

“Because you knew what Sanuito had given me.”

She passed him, almost close enough to touch, causing him to flinch back. She didn’t seem troubled by the sword he still held. She didn’t seem troubled by anything. She sat on the table and swung her legs over the side, the way she had that night in the courtyard. Like a girl.

“Yes,” she told him. “I knocked it behind the wall that night, when I climbed up there, and then retrieved it later. But I didn’t know what else he might have. I checked his room, and there was nothing. But when I asked him point blank, he evaded. . . .”

“Is that why you killed him?” Mircea asked harshly, struggling to stay in control.

“It didn’t have to be that way,” Marte told him. “I wanted the antidote from his blood; that was all. If he had done as I instructed. . . .”

“I wouldn’t have thought he had a choice.” Mircea thought back to the scrawny figure he’d first met in the Watch’s cells, sucking a few drops of spilled blood off a filthy rag.

Sanuito had had no power. Sanuito had had nothing, except his life. And yet even that—Mircea cut off his thoughts abruptly.

“He shouldn’t have,” Marte agreed. “He was as close to powerless as a vampire can get. But something was . . . off about him. Maybe the way he was Changed. Getting that Were blood at the same time as the vampire interfered with the process—and possibly gave him something of their attributes, as well. And Weres are notoriously hard to influence.”

“He was able to shake off your suggestions?”

“Not entirely. But he found ways around them. He couldn’t tell you about the antidote, but it never occurred to me to forbid him to give it to you! And he talked to Auria about you, tried to convince her to help you get away . . .”

“So he had to go.”

Marte frowned. “I would have left him in peace. I had what I needed. But after he gave you the antidote something had to be done. I had too much to concentrate on; I couldn’t watch him every minute. And I couldn’t risk him using his blood to make more of the stuff. There are mages who might have been able to tell you what was in it.”

A mage did, Mircea thought. “But Sanuito beat you to it.”

She grimaced. “I thought it would be best to do it away from the house, and how better than in a crowd of thousands? But he must have realized what I intended, and decided that, if he was going to die anyway, he would make it as spectacular as possible.”

“And give me cause to wonder about it,” Mircea said, his hand tightening on the hilt.

“All he had to do was stay away from you,” she told him. “He knew that. But he idolized you. He couldn’t believe it when you took him with you—” She broke off at his expression. “Don’t look at me like that. He would have died anyway. Do you really think anyone else would have rescued him? At least he didn’t die alone, in a cold cell, half starved—”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Mircea rasped.

“Oh, come off it,” the dark eyes flashed. “You barely knew him. He was nothing to you. He was nothing to anyone. He had no future in our world or in that of the Weres. He would have been an outcast, a freak, his whole life. I didn’t kill him—I saved him!”

“As you planned to do for me?”

She sighed and sat back against the wall, her anger evaporating as quickly as it had come. “It was the only way.”

“To reach the senator.”

It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t take it as one. “I’d tried everything else,” she told him quietly. “But she’s too well-guarded. Her own family, the senatorial guards, the court in Paris—it’s like an armed camp. There was simply no way to get to her.

“Except for one.”

She smiled slightly. “There’s one time when even the most well-guarded person is allowed some privacy. I realized, if I found the right person: someone weak enough that her guards wouldn’t worry about him, someone attractive enough to tempt even her eye, someone without a future . . .”

“And you get to decide that for me?” Mircea asked.

He received a defiant look in return. “Yes. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t want to hear. You haven’t been there yet. I have. You don’t know what lies in store for those with no master in our world. I do. You might end up wishing I’d succeeded—”

“I doubt that!”

“Yes, now. But a hundred years from now?” She sat forward. “You won’t understand this, but I was paying you a compliment. Allowing you a death that would have purpose, meaning, instead of what you face now: a slow spiral into bitterness and despair, and a long walk into the sun.”

Mircea didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself.

“But in your own way, you were as difficult as Sanuito.”

“Because I wouldn’t push her to bite me,” he said tightly.

She nodded. “It was the only thing I needed from you; the only task you had. Something any other vampire would have done instinctively. But not you.”

“And you couldn’t give me the poison without making sure it would be delivered.”

“I had everything ready,” she said, looking aggrieved. “The antidote to slow it down, to allow you time to reach her. The perfect opportunity—convocation usually involves mass debauchery, and you’re exactly the type of man she likes—”

“I think there might be another.”

Marte’s lips twisted. “There always is, with her. And they all seem willing to die for her. I wonder if they would feel the same, if they knew what she’s really like?”

“And how is that?”

She looked at him, dark eyes assessing, for a long moment. And then they shifted, going back to the storm. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why me? Because I wear earrings and play around with pots? Why not one of the others?”

“Is that why you brought them here tonight? And stationed them at different doors? To confuse me?”

She shrugged. “I knew you suspected one of us; Sanuito had seen to that. But I was under the impression that you didn’t know which. I didn’t want to expose myself by being the only one here tonight. So I used a connection of mine to make sure we all received invitations.”

“And then waited to leave until I was gone, so I wouldn’t be among them.”

“Yes, although I thought it was an unnecessary precaution. I foolishly thought you suspected Martina.”

“I did, briefly. She was the one who bought me, the one who set up the first meeting with the senator, the one who seemed the most concerned that my efforts weren’t progressing fast enough.” He paused, but it was true—even now. “And she makes a better villain than you do.”

Marte laughed suddenly, and the transformation was amazing. In an instant, the pragmatic killer was gone, replaced by the merry girl he knew. It shook him more than her anger had done.

“She does, doesn’t she?” she asked. “Of course, that might be because she is one. She gave me the idea, you know. About the senator, and you.”

“Martina?”

Marte nodded, and drew her feet up, hugging them with her arms. As if they were having a casual chat back at the house. As if Mircea wasn’t holding a knife-edged sword on her.

“She was a perfumer back in Athens, before she discovered that she could make much more by dabbling in poison. She used her expertise with cosmetics to make a deadly face powder. During the course of an evening, her suitors—all rich, all foolish enough to leave her something substantial in their wills—would get a dose every time she kissed them. Or rubbed her cheek against theirs, or . . .” Marte waved a hand.

“I’d think that would be as dangerous for her as for them.”

“She fixed her faced with an egg white base as a barrier, before applying the powder. But she’d also built up a good deal of resistance through the years by taking in a little poison at the time. That’s why she couldn’t feed you that night, after the senator’s women almost drained you. Her blood would have killed you! As it did her master.”

“I thought vampires weren’t able to kill their Sires.”

Marte smiled gently. “Now, we both know that can’t be true, don’t we?”

Mircea frowned in confusion, and she laughed.

“In fact, she didn’t intend to do it,” she told him. “She had accumulated a nice fortune over the years, and he decided to change her in order to get control of it. She objected; there was a struggle. And violence can increase blood lust as much as sex does. He prevailed, of course, but by then he was too preoccupied to notice the poison he was taking in along with her blood. By the time she awoke, he was dead.”

“She made herself,” Mircea murmured, remembering something Martina had said to Jerome.

“Hardly,” Marte said dryly. “He made her, she just killed him afterward. But she heard me say the term one day, and liked the sound of it.”

“You made yourself?” Mircea said, but she ignored it.

“So why not Martina, then?” she asked. “As you said, she makes a good villain. And she bought you.”

“At your instigation?”

She inclined her head.

“You can influence someone of her age?”

“Is that a backward way of asking how powerful I am?” He didn’t answer, and after a moment, she smiled. “I didn’t have to. I planted the idea that, if she could find the right man, perhaps the senator would be willing to grant her a pardon.”

“For killing her master? But that was his fault—”

“Not according to vampire law. It’s more concerned with outcome than intent, and the outcome was a dead master and a broken family. His vampires are still hunting her. It’s why she fled Athens, changed her name, and eventually came here. And took up the only profession she could without a family or the ability to make vampires of her own.”

“Because she would poison anyone she tried to Change.”

Marte nodded. “We met when she noticed I was masterless, and tried to recruit me. I eventually learned her story, and realized that what worked once might work again, in a slightly different manner. But you still haven’t explained why you cleared her and suspected me.”

“Your blood,” he said simply.

“Ah.” Marte sat back against the wall again. “So now we come to it.”

Chapter Forty-Four

There was silence for a moment. Mircea didn’t know what she was thinking, but he was worried. About a whole list of things: the seeping blood from several of his deeper wounds, which was sapping his strength just when he needed it most. The sound of the wind from the garden, which had lessened enough that he had started to be able to hear the crowd through it. The fact that, if the officer hadn’t come by now, he probably wouldn’t. Although that might be just as well—for him.

Because Mircea had started to put things together.

Things like the fact that the senator’s symbol was not one cobra but three: a large one with two smaller ones flanking it on either side. Things like that story she’d told him on the day of the regatta: Had she been feeling something that sparked a long buried memory? Things like Marte’s quip about children and masters.

But mostly things about what he’d seen and heard the night before. All of which should have been impossible for him. It should have been impossible for anyone, except a member of the senator’s family.

Or someone who had recently ingested a large quantity of their blood.

Marte had been watching him, with a little smile. Now she tilted her head. “But then, why not suspect Auria?”

“Auria wasn’t the one cataloguing the remains of the storeroom. Auria wasn’t the one who interrupted Sanuito and me in the courtyard. Auria wasn’t even there. But you were. And he wouldn’t talk in front of you.”

“Mmm. True.”

“And then there was the fact of why you were there: to tell me to make sure that the senator bit me the next time we were together.”

“But Auria told you the same.”

“Because you reminded her to include it.”

Marte’s eyebrow raised. “Or perhaps she asked me to talk to you that night.”

“But that wouldn’t explain my reaction to your blood, would it?”

“Blood I gave you when I saved your life.”

“Yes, because you had to,” Mircea said viciously. “You couldn’t let your carrier die, not when it would be impossible to find another in time. I remember feeling positively drunk off your blood the next day, for several days. The low-level vampire you were pretending to be couldn’t have caused that sort of reaction. Even Auria—supposedly older than anyone else in the household—didn’t affect me like that. Didn’t come close. I felt perfectly normal after drinking from her.”

An eyebrow went up. “You call what happened at the senator’s last night normal?”

Mircea licked his lips, and came out with it. “No. But we both know why that was don’t we?”

“Do we?” The slight smile was back. “That day at the regatta, which was the day after I bit you, you saw nothing.”

“And you know that how?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

She laughed and leaned her head back against the wall.

“In any case, I wouldn’t have,” he said, wishing they could drop the pretense. “I hadn’t seen the sun for two years. It completely dazzled me. To the point that I barely noticed anything else.”

“But you were right next to the senator,” she murmured.

“Yes, so that she could shield me. I was inside her power from the time she woke me, just before the entertainment started. Of course I wouldn’t notice it—or anyone else’s through it. And I only started to notice auras last night after it began to be crowded. But I was on the roof at the regatta, where it was not at all crowded. . . .”

“And now? Are you still seeing them?”

The question was deceptively mild, but there was something in the tone. . . .

Or maybe Mircea was being paranoid. But considering the circumstances, he rather thought he’d err on the side of caution. And be very careful how he answered.

Or avoid it altogether.

“I’ve already answered some of your questions,” he said evenly. “You haven’t answered mine.”

Marte looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, but then smiled. “All right, then. After all, you’ve already heard one side. . . .

“I was like all the others: born into a slum in one of the richest cities in the world, which only made me feel poorer. Every day, fascinating people poured through the port of ports, come to trade, come to sightsee, come just to be able to say they’d seen it.”

“But not Venice,” Mircea said, and felt his mouth go dry.

Maybe he didn’t want his suspicions confirmed, after all.

“No, not Venice,” she said gently.

She leaned back against the wall, with a sigh. “So long ago, but I remember it so well, great Alexandria. Although to me, it was mostly just a beautiful slum. Without money or connections, its opportunities stayed well out of reach.

“Until one day, my father did a favor for some minor bureaucrat, and he returned it by getting me a job at the palace. Not a good job, mind you. Not a handmaiden’s job. But a job nonetheless. And being ambitious—ye gods, I was so ambitious in those days—I worked and schemed and flattered and cajoled, until I was assigned to the queen’s own apartments.

“I still cleaned floors and emptied chamber pots, but I did it for her.

“And, in time, I thought perhaps I would be given more responsibilities, a larger role, a good match. . . . I hoped for so many things. But there was war, and she went away. And when she came back, she was changed. Moody; mercurial. Laughing one minute and throwing things in anger the next. Letters were sent and received. I didn’t know what was in any of them, but I knew they displeased her, for her temper became . . . so much worse.

“She had a tomb made for herself, out in the desert. A lavish thing, more like a small palace. She moved us to it, me and Iras, her hairdresser, and Charmion, her handmaiden. And, for a while, she seemed happier. I thought things must be going well. The rumors that had been swirling around the city were bleak, but rumors lie. And she seemed so calm. . . .

“And then, one night, she asked for me. I hurried into my clothes, ran to her room, not knowing what to expect. Had there been news? Were we going back to the city? Had her charms ensnared yet another general, brought yet another Roman to his knees?”

“No,” Mircea said, remembering his history.

“No,” Marte agreed. “Not this time.

“This time, great Cleopatra had gambled and lost. Both her bid to lead the world, and her navy, at Actium. Our fleet had been routed, and Octavian, Caesar’s heir and the victor on the day, had offered her only her life. Not her kingdom, which was to become a province of Rome. Not her lover, who was condemned for treason to the new lord of Rome. Not even the son she’d had with old Julius, who was too much of a threat to Octavian’s ambitions. But her life.

“In exchange for walking in chains through the streets of Rome, humbled before the city she had once hoped to rule. Just another prisoner in his triumphal parade.”

“She refused.”

“Of course she refused. As Octavian had known she would. Had she accepted, she would have been assassinated at the first opportunity anyway, as her son would later be. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. She would die by her own hand, she had decided, but how to do it?”

“An asp,” Mircea said. “Or so the stories say.”

“The stories are wrong. It was poison she planned to take. I can attest to it personally, for what did the great queen want with me? Why, to test it, of course. To make sure the concoction she’d come up with was as painless as she thought.

“There were three of us there that night. The legends say two, because that’s all they found the next day, but there were three. And three different brews that she administered herself, in cups of wine. I don’t know if the others knew what was in them, but I didn’t. I had no idea.

“Until we started to die.

“I was the last. I don’t know what she gave me—I never knew. But it wasn’t painless. It felt like fire in my veins and it took a long time to finish the job. The others died, she prepared her own cup, and still I lingered. And thus saw the creature who came for her, in the darkest hours of the night, the one who had determined to cheat great Caesar of his prize.

“I heard what he whispered to her, as she lay dying from his bite. What he promised. Life, and power, and riches, all the things I’d ever wanted. Why do you suppose they think only queens are ambitious? Or that only queens want to live. . . .

“He Changed her, as I lay dying. Changed her, but never once looked at me. She was a prize, a jewel, a feather in his cap. And what was I?

“Nothing. But still I lived.

“And I lived after he was gone.

“I lived when all was still and morning was hours away and there was no one there to tell me to keep to my place. Not anymore. Not ever again.

“And so I dragged myself over to her. And I found the puncture wounds, the ones all the ancient stories mention, the ones that made them assume she was bitten by an asp. She wasn’t so stupid—asp bites are painful. She meant to die by gentler means.

“I meant not to die at all.

“And so I took it from her, the blood he’d given. I closed my mouth over the wound and I sucked it out, like the wine she’d given me. I drank it down until I could drink no more, until my head was spinning and my body was so light that it felt like I might fly away.

“I’m not sure what happened then. I remember thinking I had to get away, some instinct telling me to get underground, quickly. I only know that I woke days later, buried in the desert sand, alone and confused. And so very, very hungry.”

“You really did make yourself,” Mircea said, in disbelief.

“Yes, but in my ignorance, I had botched it. She had been Changed correctly, by a being who had done it a thousand times before. I had . . . improvised. It wouldn’t have worked at all with anyone else. It’s against every law we know. But his blood was so old, so rich, even then, even fifteen hundred years ago . . .”

“But she told me that she was your master—”

“She is nothing to me!” Marte snapped, face flushing. “Just as I was nothing to her! Merely someone to be used. But her blood had mixed with his; it was impossible to separate them. I took in both.”

“But you went to find her—”

“I went to kill her! By then I had found out the truth of what I was—and what I wasn’t. What I would never be. Vampires are nothing without family. But I could never have one. My bite was poison, even to my own kind. Something to do with the poison in my system when I was created, or an attribute I acquired from my Sire, or how I was made—I didn’t know.

“All I knew was that I would never be able to make children, or bind ones that others had made. And a vampire without a family is nothing. All those things he promised—power, riches, position—they only come with family. Alone, we are weak, poor, nothing. All my ambitions, all my hopes, everything came crashing down around me. I had eternity, yes. But an eternity of the same thing I’d known in life. And more than that, an eternity of being hunted, once the fine elders she took me to see realized what I was.”

“They knew?”

“Oh, yes,” Marte said fiercely. “She hadn’t recognized me. It had been less than a decade since she’d killed me, but she didn’t know who I was—or what I could do. I wasn’t important enough to remember, just some servant child. But they knew. My little ability had cropped up once or twice before, you see, when the master Changed someone, and his decision had always been the same.”

“They planned to kill you.”

She nodded. “I heard two of them speaking of it. How they had communicated with him, how he had ordered it. Mine is a rare gift, and a rare danger. He wouldn’t risk anyone around him with the power to hurt him.”

“So you ran.”

“Yes. And I’ve been running ever since.”

“Until you came to Venice.”

“Until I came to Venice. And gave my blood to a young man who has been seeing very strange things ever since. But who, I suspect, isn’t seeing them anymore.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Marte slid sinuously off the table. Mircea moved back, but only to give himself more room. And he kept the sword up.

She smiled. “Aren’t your arms getting tired?”

“Vampire.”

“True. If only barely.”

“The same could be said of you,” he said, and watched it land.

“Be careful, Mircea.”

“Why? We both know you’re going to kill me—if you can. You have to, or you aren’t getting back down that hall.”

“If that was so important, I could have just stayed there.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You couldn’t. You’re not that powerful. In fact, since there is no possible way you didn’t hear me coming, I’d be willing to bet you only moved there right before I arrived.”

“Did you not hear what I just said? I’m fifteen hundred years old—”

“Yes, but still, not powerful. If you were, you’d have killed her before now. It doesn’t take fifteen centuries to get an opportunity. Unless, of course, your bite is all you have.”

“You had my blood! You felt my power—”

“But it manifests in odd ways, doesn’t it? In your bite; in your ability to hide your age. But not in raw power, Marte. Otherwise, why would you need me? Why would you need this whole farce? If you are as strong as that—” he gestured back at the still raging storm “—her guards wouldn’t matter!”

“But she would. I would have to get past them, and then take care of her—”

Mircea shook his head. “I don’t believe you. In a life as long as yours, you could amass a fortune—look at Martina! You could hire a mercenary army, if you had to, to take care of the guards. No, Marte. You haven’t gone after her because you couldn’t. Because your one great ability wouldn’t do you any good if you couldn’t touch her, and you knew you’d never get close.”

“I was close at her court! I could have taken her then—”

“Then why didn’t you?”

She didn’t say anything, but she moved, lightning fast, going for his throat.

And met a flash of steel that left a thin, bloody line across her cheek, before she jerked back.

“You know, I can see you at court,” he said, watching her dispassionately. “I can see you thinking it would be easy. Act the fool, tell them nothing, and wait for your time to strike. But it never came, did it? You could feel it, already, how fast she was gaining strength, how quickly she was outstripping you. You hated her, but you feared her, too. You could have risked it then. It might have worked, a full out assault when she wasn’t expecting it. But if it didn’t, you’d never get another chance.

“The same is true now.

“And while I may not be much of a vampire, you’ll find that I’m a damned good swordsman.”

“Noble blood will out,” Marte sneered. “But I don’t have to best you. You said it yourself; I only have to get close. And you’ve lost your protection, Mircea. Snakes are immune to their own bite, something in their blood assures it. And you had a great deal of mine. But that was a week ago. You aren’t immune any longer. Get out of the way, and I will let you live, since your miserable future seems so important to you. But she dies.”

“No.”

“No?” She laughed bitterly. “Ye gods! Always, some fool falls in love with her—”

“I’m not in love. Not with her.”

“There is another, then.”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you return to her? Go! Be with your lady—”

“I can’t be with her. I’ll never be with her, not now.”

“She’s human.”

“Yes.”

“Then gain strength enough to Change her, or bribe someone else to do it for you. There are ways—”

“And what do I have to offer her? A penniless, powerless vampire, with no future. Wasn’t that your assertion?”

“Then find someone else! Why die here defending a monster?”

“She isn’t a monster, and I have no intention of dying.”

“Isn’t a monster?” She gestured wildly. “What about the thousands who fell fighting for her ambition? Do you think everyone in those wars wanted to be there? Half of them were slaves, forced to fight—”

“I think that was a long time ago.”

“So it doesn’t count?”

“No. It counts. And it weighs—heavily. I’ve done things in war I’m not proud of, because I was told to do them, trained from a young age to do them, to think that that was how a prince behaved. Told that winning would benefit everyone, and that if lives had to be lost in the process, it was the price that had to be paid.

“But I learned differently. Before death, and especially after. I grew to regret what I had done. As she has.”

“Is that what she told you? Is that the story of the hour?” She laughed. “That’s what she does, Mircea! She finds men’s weaknesses, and exploits them. She wasn’t a child when she did what she did, she was a woman grown—selfish, ambitious, murderous. Remember what she did to me? She killed me, took everything from me, from one who had done nothing except to serve her faithfully! And why? She used me like a dog—”

“As you did Sanuito?”

The eyes flashed, genuine anger showing for the first time. “That wasn’t the same thing! I had a life—”

“And perhaps his life was worth as much to him as yours is to you! Perhaps he had dreams, too. And ambitions, and hopes, and loves. But we’ll never know, will we? Because you decided, as she once decided, that only your life mattered. That everyone else lives to serve you, and when they are of no more use, they can be discarded like trash. But we’re not trash, Marte—we’re men. Whatever may have happened to us, we’re people, just the same. And you murdered him—”

“I explained that!”

“—just as she murdered you.”

“Yet you would kill me to save her! Why?”

“Because last night, I saw that murderous woman save a group of men she didn’t have to save. Because, for the last two weeks, I’ve had people who know a great deal more about this world than I do, telling me that she’s long been the only curb on her Sire’s behavior, the only one upholding the law he would flout, and doing it at the risk of her life. Because she’s here today, fighting him—”

“For her own sake! She wants the power, can’t you see that?”

“Perhaps she does. I’m more concerned with what she’ll do with it. And I think there’s a good chance she’ll be a better ruler, this time around.”

“Why? Because she fucked you?”

“No. Because she’s out there, facing him according to our laws, when she didn’t have to be. If you can order an assassination, so could she. And I doubt she’d have made the ham job of it her servant did. But if she did that, she’d be no better than the consul is, using the law when it suits her and flouting it when it does not.

“I wouldn’t serve a queen like that. But I will serve her.”

“You won’t,” Marte sneered. “You’ll just be another in a long line of idiots—”

Mircea spun and clashed swords with someone behind him.

“—who died for her!”

Mircea had to spin out of the clash quickly, because Marte went for him again at the same time. And was almost decapitated by the other sword in the process, which came down onto the tabletop hard enough to rend it in two. “Get out of the way!” the officer told her. “I’ll deal with this.”

Marte got out of the way.

“You’re late,” she told him, circling around to the side.

“Sorry about that.” The officer smiled at Mircea. “Had to get another sword.”

No wonder Marte had been so willing to talk, Mircea thought, furious. They’d both been waiting for the same man . . .

Who attacked again, using his much greater strength to his advantage. Or trying to. But Mircea hadn’t been bragging earlier; he’d practically been born with a sword in his hand, his father had seen to that. And the battlefield hones even sharp reflexes to a knife-edged sheen.

At least it does if you want to survive.

So half the hammer blows didn’t land, and most of the rest were repelled. But a few got through, because a few always get through: nicks on Mircea’s shoulder and hand; a more serious cut on his thigh; torn muscles from countering the sheer power of those blows. Whereas his best efforts in return involved a ripped shirt and a small wound to the man’s left arm, which healed almost before he’d finished cutting it.

And Mircea was getting tired.

He hadn’t fed before he left the house, not expecting to have to fight, and desperate to get here before the battle began. But that, combined with the blood loss from his earlier wounds, had already sapped him. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for long.

Just as bad was the fact that the battle in the courtyard was winding down. He could tell it in the sounds of the crowd, now clearly audible again. He could tell it from the house, which had quieted, with no more shuddering blows. He could tell it from Marte’s face, glimpsed in instances between ducks and dodges: excited, eager, savage.

The senator was running out of time, and so was Mircea.

And then the officer grabbed one of the torches.

He must have noticed Mircea’s vulnerability to fire in the corridor earlier. Or maybe it was his fear he wanted. Because he laughed when Mircea stumbled back, closer to the cleaved table.

“Worried, infant?” He swung the torch in a wide arc, causing sparks to rain down onto the stones around him. “You should be. I’d sooner see you burn than put any more nicks in that sword.”

Mircea didn’t have an answer for that, and had frankly never seen the point of witty comments in battle anyway. He didn’t want to impress the man; he wanted to kill him, before he tired of this game and just drained Mircea where he stood. Or where he stumbled back, having almost tripped over something.

Something that cracked slightly under his heel.

He didn’t look down. He didn’t have to. There was only one thing capable of cracking in the entire room, other than his bones. An example of exquisite workmanship that might do him no good at all, since the officer had seemed pretty impervious before.

But there was only one way to find out.

Another deliberate stagger, a toe under a delicate glass lantern, an upward fling, just as the man made another of those fiery slashes—

And, no, it seemed that older vampires weren’t impervious to fire, after all.

The cesendello hit the officer dead center of the chest, exploding in a burst of expensive glass and gleaming oil, and the sparks he was slinging around did the rest. That and vampire flammability. The whole top half of the man’s body went up like a human torch, in an audible whoosh that had the hair on the back of Mircea’s neck raising in horror, and his feet stumbling back.

He’d seen men burning on the battlefield, and found it a disturbing sight. But it had been nothing like this. A man on fire had time to put it out. To drop to the ground, to roll in the sand, to possibly save himself.

A vampire did not.

At least, one caught off guard did not, and once he was aflame, the instinctive panic of their kind gripped him, too hard for rational thought. But fury isn’t rational. And the officer rushed at Mircea, body suffused with running flames, face set in a snarl that was mostly bones and gaping fangs, because the skin and flesh had already burnt away, hands reaching—

And then Mircea threw a chair, the only defense he had to keep from touching the creature, and jumped back.

And thereby missed the explosion when it connected.

Burning, crisping, already-turning-to-ash-as-they-fell body parts exploded everywhere, in a gory rain that Mircea thought he would remember as long as he lived.

Which wouldn’t be long, he realized, as he was knocked to the floor by a smaller, but no less deadly, opponent.

Chapter Forty-Six

Mircea managed to get the sword up in time. But a vampire’s bite is the strongest part of their body, almost impossible to break, and the result was . . . not as he’d intended. Venom slid along the blade, like elongated golden teardrops, milked from fangs that had bitten the metal so delicately they hardly seemed to be touching it.

And yet had stopped it cold.

Mircea looked up into cold, dark, expressionless eyes. They had about as much life in them as the featureless voids in the larve mask Sanuito had worn. The ghost mask he’d chosen on the night he knew he was to die.

Mircea had never killed a woman before. Had always forbidden it to his men, thinking it barbarous, unthinkable, cruel. That had held true even on the rare occasions when they had been combatants.

He found that he had no trouble at all with the idea of killing this one.

The problem was not of will, but of strength, as Mircea soon realized. Marte’s hands slid to either end of the sword, closing over his own. Keeping the blade motionless as she pulled back, licking the blood from the only wound he’d managed to inflict—a tiny cut on her lips.

And freeing her fangs for other things.

But biting him required getting to him. He saw her puzzle it out, leaning forward, trying to reach first his neck, and then either hand. She only needed the tiniest bit of exposed skin—anything would do. But nothing was close enough to reach without either letting go of her hold or loosening it by contorting her body awkwardly.

And as soon as she did, she was dead.

Or at least decapitated. It wouldn’t kill one as old as her, at least according to everything Mircea had ever heard. But that was all right.

He thought it might be a little difficult to bite the senator with her head on the other side of the room.

So Mircea was pushing upward with everything he had, but all he was doing was managing to keep the status quo. She couldn’t come closer, couldn’t release the blade, but he couldn’t seem to move it, either. Not even the short distance needed to cut her throat.

And so they stayed, locked in combat, equal in strength and determination. But with one big difference. Marte was unharmed, unbloodied, save for the small cut that had already healed. Whereas Mircea had given everything he had to the fight, to the point that he couldn’t even close the wounds the officer had inflicted.

He could feel them leaking on the stones underneath him, a sluggish, steady flow, and the last of his strength was draining away with them.

All Marte had to do was wait.

He, on the other hand, had to come up with yet another idea, with a mind fogging over and the edges of his vision starting to pulse and his hands already beginning to shake.

And, of course, she noticed, and a slight smile curved the crimson lips.

“You should have left,” she told him, bearing down. “Such a waste.”

“Like your life?” Mircea asked, panting in the effort of holding her off.

“My life is just beginning. Once she’s dead—”

“You will be, too. Do you really think they’ll let you live? The assassin of a senator?”

“I think . . . it may not be an issue,” she said, tilting her head.

A moment later, a voice rang out, unnaturally loud and echoing. There was no one there, no one in the cavernous space but the two of them. But Mircea could hear it as clearly as if someone had been standing over them.

“Great Antony is dead. Great Antony is dead. The contest resumes with the remaining contenders.”

“It seems I may have overestimated her,” Marte said, pleased. She looked back down at Mircea. “But even if she does survive, it won’t matter. I’ll be waiting. A weak servant, little more than a human, no one to worry about. Just a charming child, running to assist her exhausted mistress—”

“Running how?” Mircea snarled. “The moment you move, I’ll take your head. You can bite me, but you can’t prevent that.”

“Can’t I? You haven’t seen my bite.”

“But you have seen my swordsmanship. I only need an instant—”

“You won’t get it. Why do you think I put so much effort into that damned antidote? Without it, you not only wouldn’t have gotten to her, you wouldn’t have gotten out the door! You won’t have the time—or the strength—to do any—”

She cut off as a commotion started up somewhere nearby.

“You puling pustule on a donkey’s arse,” a man’s voice roared. “Let me go!”

From the corner of his eye, Mircea saw a terrible, misshapen creature appear at the end of the hall leading from the arena. It was backlit by swirling sand, too tall to be a human, with unnaturally elongated arms and an odd, shambling gate. Which he finally realized was caused by one person being carried across the shoulders of another.

One exasperated other who dropped his burden unceremoniously in a heap just inside the hall.

“Enough!” a man said, and Mircea recognized the bald head of the official who had been presiding over the contest earlier. “Didn’t you hear the announcement? Great Antony is dead!”

“I’m not dead, you maggoty piece of scrofulous pig flesh—”

“For the purposes of the contest you are. Once you can no longer move on your own, the rules clearly state—”

“I can move, you stupid son of a whore! I can crawl, if I have to. Where’s my sword? Somebody give me a sword—”

“If you can crawl, then crawl out of here,” the official said nastily. It was obvious who he favored in the contest. “And your sword was thrown clear of the arena.”

“Then go get it, you bastard!”

“Get it yourself. There’s nothing in the rules requiring me to—”

“There’s nothing preventing it, either!”

“Your legs are crushed,” the man hissed. “Your right arm lies useless. You are dead, my lord. And soon your lady will be, too. I have taken my last command from you!”

The official left, disappearing back into the arena. But only because he’d passed into an area not visible from the doorway. The blowing veils of sand were too thin now to hide anything.

Marte noticed, too. “To think, I went to all this trouble, and he may kill her for me. But either way . . . it’s over, Mircea. My venom is deadly enough that it only takes a scratch. And I don’t think you can hold out much longer.”

Mircea didn’t think so, either.

But through the gathering fog in his mind, he did think something else.

“The venom . . . is on the blade. Perhaps . . . I’ll knick you first.”

She laughed. “Idiot. I already told you. I’m immune to my own poison!”

“Yes,” Mircea rasped, staring for the last time into those dark, dark eyes. “But you hadn’t told him. Antony!”

The brunet at the end of the hall had been looking this way, squinting into the darkness. And then a hand shot up, to catch the sword Mircea was struggling to throw him. But Marte had more strength than he’d had expected, or he was weaker than he’d thought, because she hung on. And then she wrenched the sword away, knocking him back brutally when he lunged for it and swinging it up—

Only to pause, mid-movement, with a strange look on her face. And then to glance down, where something protruded from the front of her gown. Something red-tipped and wood-hard, tearing the fabric of her dress right over the heart.

And drenching it red.

“Go!” someone yelled, from the shadows behind Marte.

It looked like Auria’s auburn head, but he couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t matter. Only one thing did. He scrambled back to his knees, grabbing the sword as Marte struggled with the assailant behind her. Who went staggering back a moment later, from a blow hard enough to have killed a human.

But the movement had cost Marte purchase on the weapon. And with the last of his strength, Mircea wrenched it away and threw it, in a tumbling arc. Light flashed along the blade, and it was a beautiful thing, gilt edged and running with reflected fire.

“No!” Marte screamed, at the same moment that Antony’s fist closed around the pommel. And then sent it flying again almost immediately, into the huge tail that whipped by, throwing up an arc of sand.

But not so thickly that Mircea couldn’t see the sword pierce the heavy hide, like one great fang sinking deep.

Mircea felt smaller ones slide into his throat at almost the same instant, felt his veins start to burn, felt consciousness slipping away.

But not before he saw the huge creature in the arena begin to flail. And fall. And writhe in apparently agony as a slim figure in white approached.

She never lifted a hand. Never did anything that Mircea could see. But the sand-filled wind gathered around the great body, in swirling, lashing exuberance. In seconds, it was black no more, but red, the skin scoured off by the relentless assault. And then there was too much sand to see, wrapping the colossal form in a swirling mass of gold, like a great cocoon.

Or perhaps a mummy’s wrappings would be more accurate. For, when the winds howled their last, and the dust faded, and their work was revealed . . . There was nothing left but an elongated skeleton, still rearing into the sky.

And then falling to earth, the bones rattling apart to rain down on the sand at the senator’s feet.

No, not the senator, Mircea thought, as she looked up and then around at the screaming, hysterical crowd, her beautiful face as impassive as ever.

The consul.

Chapter Forty-Seven

“It’s dual consuls, actually,” someone said, as Mircea struggled back to consciousness. “There’s going to be two of them, just like in old Rome.”

“Two of them?” someone else asked. “Oh, that should be fun.”

Mircea didn’t know where he was, or what was happening. It was dark and he was in pain—so much pain. And when he tried to sit up—

He was immediately hurting even more, when his head came into contact with a familiar low ceiling.

He was home, he thought dizzily.

Or what passed for it, these days.

And that made no damned sense at all.

“He’s awake! He’s awake!” Jerome’s voice, excited as a boy’s, came from somewhere above his head. And then the bed began to shake as someone jumped up, making Mircea grab it like the sides of a boat in a storm tossed sea. Oh, God.

“He’s gonna be sick,” Bezio said, grabbing him. Which definitely did not help.

And then he thrust a clean bedpan under his nose, which did.

Oh, God, Mircea thought again, moments later. What the hell had he been drinking?

“Something Sanuito left for you,” Bezio told him, when he gasped the question out loud.

“San . . . uito?”

The older vampire nodded. “Remember that shitty wine?”

Mircea frowned.

“The one you pulled out of the bean sack? The last time we were in the kitchen?”

Mircea vaguely recalled something about looting Cook’s latest stash. “Yes?”

“Sanuito left it for you. Or maybe he planned to give it to you, we’re not really—”

“He’s up?” Paulo asked, sticking his blond head in the door.

“Yes!” Jerome said proudly.

“Sort of,” Bezio countered. “And I’m trying to explain—”

“Mircea?” Zaneta shoved in behind Paulo, causing him to push Jerome onto the bed.

And Bezio to growl. “All right, all right, give him some room.”

“Why does it reek in here?” Zaneta asked, her nose twitching.

“Because he’s sick!” Bezio said. “Damn it, he almost died! Now, if you’ll hush up, I’m trying to—”

“Is it Mircea? Is he—oh,” Auria said, from the doorway, where she must have been on tiptoes. Because her auburn head was just visible over Paulo’s.

“The gang’s all here,” Jerome said, grinning.

“Oh, not even,” several more voices laughed, from the hall. And then from inside the room, as Danieli, Besina and the two blonds whose names Mircea could never remember started trying to fit into a space that was already bursting at the seams, half of them falling on the bed in the process.

“All right, that’s it!” Bezio bellowed. “Everybody out!”

“Even me?” someone said, from the doorway.

Bezio started to curse and looked up, only to swallow whatever he’d been about to say. And to choke slightly. And then to start doing something that Mircea couldn’t quite—

Oh. He was trying to bow. But there wasn’t room so he mostly looked like he’d just collapsed beside the bed.

Antony eyed him for a brief moment, a single brow raised. He was still in armor, a golden breastplate framed by the dark red draperies of a distant age, a golden helmet stuck under his arm. How the hell he’d walked through the streets like that, Mircea didn’t know. But it was Antony, and the rules didn’t seem to apply to him.

He regarded Bezio a moment longer, and then apparently decided he didn’t care and came forward to slap Mircea. Or perhaps it was supposed to be a friendly cuff on the arm. But the way Mircea felt at the moment, he was surprised he didn’t fall off the bed.

Of course, that would have required more room.

“There’s a good sturdy fellow,” Antony said heartily, while Mircea struggled not to be sick again.

“I—thank you, consul.”

Antony grinned. “That never gets old. Consul,” he rolled it over his tongue. “Mmm, yes.”

Mircea lay there awkwardly, trying not to rub his arm.

And trying to remember the thought he’d had a second before, the one that had seemed . . .

“W-would you like some wine?” Bezio’s muffled voice came from somewhere near the floor.

Wine, Mircea thought, that was it. “What were you saying just now?” he asked. “About Sanuito’s wine?”

But Bezio appeared too awed to answer. Luckily, Jerome had no such trouble. “Sanuito had two containers of the antidote,” he explained, as Antony bumped him over and sat down on the end of the bed. “Either there were two to begin with or he made another after Marte saw him give you the first one, on the assumption that she’d take it. It wouldn’t have been difficult; it was made with his blood, after all.”

“And he put the other . . . in the wine?” Mircea didn’t know if it was because he was at considerably less than his best, but that sounded a little . . . odd.

“He didn’t have much time,” Auria pointed out. “He had to know she’d come looking for him as soon as she left you.”

Jerome nodded. “And he must have known she’d check his room, so that was out. And mithridatum is . . . pungent. She might have been able to find it by smell alone if he put it anywhere in the house. Unless, of course, he dissolved it in something that already had a strong odor.”

“I told you he was smart,” Auria said, looking sad and proud at the same time.

“But it was hidden,” Mircea pointed out.

“Well he couldn’t just leave a decanter of wine lying around,” Jerome said.

“Not in this house,” Paulo added.

“Sounds like a fun place,” Antony put in.

“And everyone knew we raided the cook’s stash,” Jerome finished. “He might have thought it was the best way to get some of it into you. Or, more likely, he just needed a place to put it where Marte wouldn’t find it. And the sheer volume of stuff in the pantry made it a good hiding place.”

Mircea lay there for a moment, feeling sick for a different reason. “So he stuck it in a bag of beans.”

Jerome nodded.

“And if I hadn’t stumbled across it that night—”

“Oh, you’d be stone cold dead,” Antony said cheerfully. “Like that damned Anoubias.”

“Anoubias?”

“He means Marte,” Jerome said. “That was her real name.”

“Named after the god of the dead,” Antony agreed. “And I don’t care if it was a common name at the time, as a certain someone tells me. That’s prophecy if I ever heard it!”

“But . . . she’s dead?” Mircea asked, trying to remember what happened. But it was mostly a blur. “I didn’t kill her. I don’t think . . .”

“No,” Jerome said, glancing at Auria. “But you weren’t alone.”

“Lucky thing, too,” Antony added. “I sent troops to help you, but I doubt they’d have arrived in time. The damned woman’s venom was strong enough to render you unconscious, antidote or no, and heart blow or no, she was still mobile. Fifteen hundred years gives one certain . . . advantages.”

Considering that Antony wasn’t dead even after having most of the bones in his body crushed, Mircea assumed that to be true.

But then . . .

“You killed her?” he asked Auria.

She nodded, silently.

“But . . . how?”

“She was distracted with you. I think she thought I was done for. But she hadn’t killed me, just stunned. And there was shattered glass from the lamp everywhere, and her neck was unprotected as she attacked you. . . .”

“But why were you even there?” Mircea asked. “I didn’t think anyone could find me.”

Auria scowled. “She made the mistake of sticking me on the ground floor, near the back stairs. We were scattered all over the place, to serve as distractions for you, if you showed up before they closed off the place. But either she was in a hurry, or a hundred years has a few privileges, too. Because the suggestion she used on me started to wear off.”

“And you went looking for her.”

Auria nodded angrily. “I didn’t know what she was doing, but I damned well intended to find out. But by the time I found her, you were fighting that guard and I was afraid if I distracted you . . . and then she jumped you before I could do anything, and the sword was so close to your neck. . . .” She shuddered.

“It was very brave,” Mircea said, only to have her look at him heatedly.

“It wasn’t brave! It was like with Sanuito, all over again. I heard what she said—enough anyway. I knew what she was! And I was so afraid—that I’d get you killed, that she’d turn on me, that I’d only make things worse and we’d both—” She broke off.

“But you did it anyway.”

“I couldn’t just stand there! The last time I did that . . . and there was no time to go get anyone else, and you . . . you weren’t even as powerful as me, but you were fighting her. You were fighting!”

“I was trying,” Mircea corrected ruefully, but it didn’t seem to affect Auria’s euphoria.

“It’s something I never thought I could do,” she told him. “To fight back. But . . . it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. It’s easier, in fact, than all those years I spent so afraid. So sure I couldn’t do anything about what happened to me. That because I didn’t have strength, I’d never be anything. But I helped!”

“You did more than that,” Mircea said. “But I still don’t understand how you reached me. I barely made it down the hall on the other side, and that was through luck as much as anything. It couldn’t have been easier on yours.”

She nodded. “The winds were appalling. I think that’s what helped me shake off Marte’s suggestion, as much as anything.”

“Then how did you manage?”

She blinked at him. “I didn’t.”

“Then how—”

She looked at him oddly. “I just went up a floor.”

Mircea stared at her, and Antony burst out laughing.

And then he got up.

“Well, this has been fascinating, like so much these days,” he said, looking satisfied. “But I have to be going. I’ll let an . . . acquaintance . . . of yours know that you’re all right, shall I?”

Mircea nodded. “Thank—”

“And that you’ve regretfully declined her invitation to join us in Paris.”

“In . . . Paris?”

“She thinks you’d do well at court. I, on the other hand, see you prospering better here. I’ve had a word with the Watch. Don’t think they’ll be troubling you in the future.” He dropped a heavy purse on the side table. “Lovely place, Venice.”

He clapped Mircea on the shoulder again.

It was the same one.

He left.

Jerome stared after him, openmouthed. “I . . . think you were just warned off,” he said slowly.

“That’s . . . and with his reputation . . . I just . . . oooh,” Auria said, scowling. “The consul—the other consul—is right. Mircea would do wonderfully at court!”

“Yes, but he’ll live longer here,” Jerome said cynically.

“But think of the possibilities! So many patrons—so much wealth!” Her face shone. “We should all go!”

“I have an errand.”

“An errand, he says,” Bezio muttered, from the floor.

“You can get up now,” Jerome told him. “That government type that you don’t respect at all is gone.”

Bezio looked up. “I didn’t respect the old government—which was run by a madman,” he pointed out. “Maybe this one will be different.”

“Sure it will.” Jerome rolled his eyes.

Bezio frowned at him. “Did anybody ever tell you, you’re awfully cynical?”

“Me? I’m cyn—all right. Yes, sure. Then maybe I’ll just have to take you with me, so you can bring me out of myself.”

“Well, someone needs to. You’re too young to be that jaded.”

“For the last time, I have two centuries on you, ‘old man’!”

“Two centuries?” Mircea asked.

“Later,” Jerome told him. “Rest now.”

They left, still arguing, and took the others with them. Leaving Mircea alone with Auria, who was smiling at him tearfully. “We got her, didn’t we?”

He nodded.

“I still can’t quite believe it. I always thought . . . I was always told that I couldn’t do anything alone. That without my master, I was nothing. But the bad things—they can be fought. They can be fought, and we can win!”

“Sometimes,” Mircea agreed.

“A lot of the time. But even if we don’t, it feels so good just to try. It makes me angry that I spent so much of my life fearing the bad that I couldn’t enjoy the good things that were there, too.” She leaned over, and kissed him softly. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

She left, and Mircea lay back against the sheets, exhausted from just that quick exchange. But strangely euphoric, too. Some of Auria’s seemed to have rubbed off.

Or maybe it was something else.

It feels so good to try, he thought. Yes, yes it would. Mircea felt sleep claiming him, but not before he saw himself again at that house in the woods. But this time, he didn’t wait in the trees. This time, he went in. To warmth and life and a woman who deserved the truth she’d asked for, and the chance he’d never given her.

Even if it didn’t work, he was tired of living in fear, too.

Maybe . . . it was time to try.

Seven Years Later

The small house was set in a row of narrow, ramshackle buildings spilling candlelight onto the dark water of a small canal. It had a sagging chimney, warped shutters, and peeling yellow paint above discolored, crumbling bricks. It had always reminded Mircea of a faded, but still fastidious, lady, holding her skirts up out of the wet.

It was no better than the workmen’s homes that surrounded it, except that it was situated at the end of the little canal, where an old wooden bridge connected the island to another spar of land a few yards away. As such, it had a little more privacy than most, with the only neighbors on that side the seagulls who perched and cawed and shat on the pilings. The local urchins amused themselves by throwing the birds scraps, which was why the place typically smelled of fish guts—and rotting vegetables and raw sewage, since the canal served as the local trash heap until the tide came in and washed it all away.

But the tide had been and gone, and the predominate smells even to a vampire’s nose were of a nicer variety: olive oil, spices, and roasting meat.

He pushed open the warped wooden door and went inside.

He felt a burden lift from his shoulders immediately, despite the fact that they’d just been saddled with a warm, talkative bundle. “Did you get it?” she demanded. And then, when he merely stood there, looking innocent, “Did you, did you, did you, did you?” while she crawled around him like a little monkey, riffling through his clothes with the same speed she used to pick other men’s purses in the marketplace.

Not that he was supposed to know about that.

Of course, he also wasn’t supposed to feed her insatiable sweet tooth, either, lest it and the rest of her teeth rot out of her head. But Mircea wasn’t very good at denying his daughter anything. Not after the life she’d led. And not that it would have mattered, since those nimble fingers found, identified, and liberated the small package of sweets inside his shirt before even vampire reflexes could react.

And then she was gone, disappearing back into the heart of the house, the swinging curtain to the kitchen sending a blast of enticing smells blowing through the outer room. Mircea hung his cloak on a hook and left his muddy boots by the door. And then he followed.

And promptly tripped over a cat.

This was a bit of a surprise, since he did not own one.

Yet, he thought, seeing Dorina’s face.

“She’s pregnant,” Dorina told him quickly, around a mouthful of marzipan. And snatched the creature up only to look at him over its mangy head. The cat was white and tan, not brunette, and had big blue eyes, not black. But there was something very similar in the looks he was getting from the two of them, nonetheless. “She needs a safe place to sleep.”

“And to litter with fleas, no doubt,” the old man at the turn-spit said resentfully.

Horatiu had reinvented himself as Mircea’s self-professed steward, if such an establishment as this could be said to need such a thing. And he did his best to keep the house tidy. But the usually derelict creatures his young charge often brought home made that even more of a challenge than the man’s fading eyesight.

“She doesn’t have fleas! Well, not many, anyway,” Dorina protested, trying to pet the creature. But sugar-coated hands just came back matted with fluff. And, yes, there were fleas. Dorina saw Mircea notice the small, leaping creatures that her hands had disturbed and tried to cover them with her skirts. “And she’ll help with the rats—”

“We don’t have rats!” Horatiu looked affronted at the very idea.

Dorina rolled her eyes. “Everybody has rats. And she won’t need much else to eat, once she’s had the babies, and I’ll take care of her and you won’t even know she’s here!” Her eyes had returned to Mircea, to look up pleadingly. A thin little girl, because no amount of sweets ever seemed to put weight on those bones, dressed in the tattered rags she wore to play in, with dark eyes so much like her mother’s that they took his breath away.

Mircea sighed. He knew when he was beaten. And, apparently, so did Horatiu.

“Greedy bloodsuckers,” the man grumbled.

“Then they should fit in well enough around here,” Mircea said. “But what about the kittens?”

But Dorina’s mind, no less nimble than her fingers, had already scurried off on another subject. “You’re not greedy,” she said, her small dark head tilting. “But you are hungry. Why?”

Due to a small detour on the way home, he thought, wondering how she knew. He wanted to ask, but he found it disconcerting, like so much about this strange existence. Did he look more human after he’d fed, or less? Was he better able to keep up the façade after stealing blood from some unsuspecting person, or did their energy only bring out more clearly what he was? He hesitated, but there was no fear in her dark eyes, no loathing. Just a child’s curiosity.

“Dinner isn’t ready yet,” he said lightly, dancing around the issue.

“But you don’t eat din—”

“And don’t change the subject.”

She gave a dramatic sigh. “Raniero said he’d take one for his boat, and Rigi’s dad could use one for the church, and Lucca’s grandma’s old girl just died and he wants to surprise her for her birthday, and, well, if there’s any more . . .” She broke off, obviously thinking hard.

“We’ll come up with something,” Mircea said, ruffling his daughter’s hair.

Dorina ran out, carrying the mushed bag of sweets and a smug-looking feline, and Horatiu shot him a glance. “We’re about to be overrun with cats,” the old man predicted darkly.

“There are worse things,” Mircea said, getting down a bottle of wine and glasses for dinner.

After the meal, when the rest of the house was in bed, he settled down with the letter that had come to his old residence. And had excited him enough that he’d forgotten to feed. It was written on fine paper, but in the rustic hand of a five-year-old, since Bezio had only taken up the art of penmanship recently. But the contents were clear enough.

Thought you’d want to know: we finally caught up with her in Rome. She led us a merry chase, because apparently she’s good at that. And because we were looking for her in the vampire community, and she’d switched to living among humans. But you know how persistent Jerome can be.

Mircea smiled. He still had trouble thinking of Jerome as a senior master, who had been in disguise like half the household. Only in his case, it had been with good intent—to investigate the woman he was convinced had killed his master and broken up his family.

It seemed that what Jerome had told them had mostly been true—except that it had happened almost two centuries ago. When the then human Jerome had been working in his apothecary in Athens, only to have a dying master vampire come in desperately seeking help. He’d managed to clear the tainted blood from his system, as evidenced by the fact that he succeeded in Changing Jerome later that day. But the damage had already been done.

But while his last child might not have been able to save him, he could avenge him. Because Jerome had grown up with a rare gift—the ability to hide his true age and power level. As such, he’d been the perfect candidate to infiltrate Martina’s establishment after the family finally traced her to Venice.

And to find out if they were right, and the prey had somehow managed to kill the predator.

He had spent weeks trying to figure out how to get a foot in the door without arousing suspicion, but hadn’t come up with anything. Until he was contacted by the condottiere he had bribed to get information on her. Martina had asked the man to keep a look out for likely slaves, and Jerome had quickly paid to make sure that he was among those shown to her. And then had spent every available moment, including the night of the fireworks when he’d stayed home, ransacking the place for evidence of how she’d done it.

He hadn’t found it.

But he had at last found her.

Anyway, we’ll know more soon since it looks like we’re going to Paris in a few weeks, along with everybody else these days. It’s still a dog’s own mess, of course, and likely to remain so for a long while. But that’s where the patronage is, and Jerome’s got this crazy idea of becoming a senator one day!

I don’t try to talk him out of it much; I figure court life ought to do that for me. I often wonder if our dear co-consuls would have wanted the job, if they’d known just how bad it was going to be. Cleaning up a court that’s been run on bribery, extortion, and corruption for hundreds of years, imposing a tough new law code, executing the worst of the worst offenders. . . . Sometimes, I think maybe they’d have had it easier if they’d lost!

I keep telling Jerome we’d do better to join Auria in her new establishment. You should see it, Mircea. We passed through Paris a year or so ago, and damn. People fight over invitations to her dinner parties, her salon (as she’s calling it) has senators and dignitaries and the like reading poetry at each other and talking politics. They say the recent treaty with the African Senate was worked out in her drawing room! I’m telling you, it’s hard to tell that the damned thing’s a whore house.

In fact, I’m not sure you can call it that anymore, since you need an invitation to get in the door. Apparently there’s a waiting list! I keep telling Jerome, we got out of the business too soon.

Speaking of Auria, she asked about you, when we saw her. She always does. You know, I don’t think you’d need one of those invitations, if you happened to show up.

Mircea remembered the last time he’d seen her, standing at the pier in the midst of bags and parcels of all types. Paulo had been buzzing around, prodding Cook to hurry, hurry, hurry. Their ship was about to depart and half the luggage wasn’t even on board.

“And neither are half their passengers! They’ll wait,” Cook had said, and swatted his backside.

“There’s room for one more,” Auria said, looking at Mircea. Although her expression said she already knew what his answer would be. And then she abruptly dropped decorum and grabbed him by the front of his doublet, burying her face in the fabric. “Oh, God, I’m an idiot!”

“Why?”

She looked up, laughing and tearful, all at once. “Because I’d stay if you asked me.”

“Auria—”

“But you’re not going to, are you?”

Mircea looked down into some of the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. And said nothing. What was there to say?

She shook her head. “She’s lucky, whoever she is. And there is someone, isn’t there?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

She suddenly hit him, in the chest, with both small hands. “What are you doing here, then? Go get her!”

“I am. But with Constantinople now in Turkish hands, the Black Sea ports are closed to us. I plan to go overland, as soon as I’m allowed. The consul has promised safe passage, but only after the rebels are pacified. No one’s being permitted to travel through the disputed areas right now—”

“Idiots! Do they really think they’re going to win?”

“They haven’t done so badly so far,” he pointed out.

“Because the consuls have had too much to deal with in more important areas. But they’ve crushed the rebellion in Russia, and Spain will follow within the year. Even Hassani has stopped helping the rebels for fear of causing open war. They should give up and beg for mercy while they still have the chance.”

Mircea blinked in surprise. “You sound very current.”

“I found I quite like politics. I think I’m going to enjoy Paris!”

And it sounded as if she had.

Mircea’s trip, on the other hand, had been somewhat different.

I heard things didn’t go as you’d hoped back home, Bezio wrote. I know there’s nothing that can ease pain like that—there wasn’t for me when I heard that my Jacopa had passed. But I hope you know you always have a home with us. I also hope you find—how did you put it? Not just a reason not to die, but a reason to live.

Or something like that. I don’t have your gift for words. But I’ve thought about what you said, and I think you were right. There is a diff—

A cry broke through his thoughts before he could finish Bezio’s letter. Mircea got up, moving swiftly to his daughter’s small room. And found her on the floor, in front of the cat basket, looking with concern at three tiny, mewling pink things squirming around in front of their proud mother.

Mircea thought it might be the blood worrying her, but apparently, it was something else.

“Look!” Dorina said, turning to him fearfully. “There’s something wrong with them!”

Mircea squatted on the floor beside the basket. “They look all right to me.”

“But . . . they’re all red. And wrinkly. And they haven’t any ears—”

“What did you expect? Sweet, fluffy kittens?”

“Yes!”

“That comes later. Along with the ears.”

“Then . . . they’ll be all right?” Worried dark eyes met his.

“Yes.”

She sagged back against him as the mother cat began cleaning up her brood. “Oh, good. I thought—”

“What did you think?”

She swallowed. “That they might be made wrong. Like me.”

Mircea pulled her back against him. “You were made perfectly. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

She sent him one of those looks, over her shoulder. The one that always made her look older than her few years. “Mother was human, before she died. You’re a vampire. You know what that makes me.”

“Yes,” Mircea said, hugging her fiercely. “It makes you my daughter.”

And my reason.

Read on for an exciting excerpt from the first book
in the Cassie Palmer series by Karen Chance

TOUCH THE DARK

Cassandra Palmer can see the future and communicate with spirits—talents that make her attractive to the dead and the undead. The ghosts of the dead aren’t usually dangerous; they just like to talk . . . a lot.

The undead are another matter.

Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires. But when the bloodsucking Mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with vengeance on her mind, she’s forced to turn to the vampire Senate for protection.

The undead senators won’t help her for nothing, and Cassie finds herself working with one of their most powerful members, the dangerously seductive master vampire Mircea Basarab—and the price he demands may be more than Cassie is willing to pay . . .

“A grab-you-by-the-throat-and-suck-you-in sort of book with a tough, smart heroine and sexy-scary vampires.” —

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author Patricia Briggs

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw the obituary. The fact that it had my name on it was sort of a clue. What I didn’t know was how they’d found me, and who the guy was with the sense of humor. Antonio has never been much for comedy. I’ve never figured out if that has something to do with being dead, or if he’s always been a morose son of a bitch.

The obit was on my office PC’s screen in place of the usual travel agency logo. It looked like part of a newspaper page had been scanned and then set as the computer’s wallpaper, and it hadn’t been there when I’d gone to get a salad half an hour earlier. If I hadn’t been so freaked out, I’d have been impressed. I didn’t know that any of Tony’s goons even knew what a computer was.

I scrambled around in a filing cabinet for my gun while I read the joker’s description of my gruesome death later that evening. I had a better gun at my apartment, along with a few other surprises, but going back there probably wasn’t my best move. And unless I was expecting enough trouble to make it worth the risk of carrying concealed, the only thing I kept in my purse was a small canister of mace for potential muggers. After more than three years of relative safety, I’d started to question the need for even that. I’d gotten careless and could only hope it wasn’t about to get me killed.

Under my name was a paragraph-long description of an unfortunate incident involving me, an unknown rifleman and two bullets through the head. The paper had tomorrow’s date, but the hit was to occur at 8:43 tonight on Peachtree Street. I glanced at my watch; it was twenty to eight, so I’d been given an hour’s head start. That seemed too generous for Tony. My best guess for why I wasn’t already dead was that killing me outright was too easy for a guy who had people killed all the time. In my case, he wanted something special.

I finally found my Smith & Wesson 3913 under a flyer for a cruise to Rio. I wondered if it was a sign. No way did I have the kind of cash to get out of the country, though, and a chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed blonde might look a little obvious next to all those sloe-eyed senhoritas. Plus, I didn’t know if Tony had associates in Brazil, but I wouldn’t put it past him. When you’ve been around long enough to remember drinking Michelangelo under the table, you make a few contacts.

I fished a pack of gum out of the gun compartment in my purse and shoved the Smith & Wesson in. It fit like it had been made for it, which it had. I’d bought the gun, my first, and three of the handbags almost four years ago on the recommendation of a Fed named Jerry Sydell. Like a lot of people, he’d thought I was a nut case, but since I’d helped to cripple one of the biggest crime families in Philly, he was willing to give me some free advice. He helped me pick out the 9-mm semiautomatic pistol, which combined a grip small enough for my hands with the power to discourage anything on two legs. “Except for the ghosts and ghoulies,” he’d said with a grin. “You’re on your own with them.” He’d also taken me to a practice range every day for two weeks, and got me to the point that, even if I still couldn’t hit the side of a barn, I didn’t miss it by much. I’d kept up the practice sessions whenever I could afford them, so now I could definitely hit a barn—if it was a big one and I was standing within about ten feet of it. I was secretly hoping I’d never have to shoot anything besides a target. It wasn’t my fault it didn’t work out that way.

I think Jerry sort of liked me—I reminded him of his eldest kid—and he wanted to see me go straight. He thought I’d got in with the wrong crowd when too young to know better, which was truer than he knew, then wised up and decided to turn state’s evidence. How he explained the fact that a twenty-year-old orphan knew all about the inner workings of a major crime family I’ll never know, but it sure wasn’t faith in “that witchcraft crap,” as he put it. Jerry didn’t believe in the supernatural—any of it. Since I didn’t want him to lock me in a small padded cell somewhere, I didn’t mention my visions, or how close he’d been with the ghosts and ghoulies comment.

I’ve always been kind of a ghost magnet. Maybe it’s part of the whole clairvoyance thing; I don’t know. Tony was always careful about what he let me study—I think he was afraid I’d figure out some way to use my abilities against him if I knew too much—so I’m not very knowledgeable about my talent. Of course, it might be that my attractiveness to the spirit world is simply because I can see them: it must be a downer haunting someone who doesn’t even know you’re there. Not that they haunt me, exactly, but they do like showing off when I’m around.

Sometimes that’s not a bad thing, like with the old woman I met in an alley as a teenage runaway. I tend to see ghosts as solid much of the time, especially if they are new and powerful, so it took me a while to realize what she was. She was there to act as a sort of guardian angel over her grandson, whom she’d helped to raise. She died when he was ten, and her daughter’s boyfriend started beating him as soon as he went to live with them. The boy ran away in less than a month. She told me that she hadn’t spent a decade watching over him to abandon him now, and she was sure God wouldn’t mind waiting on her a bit. At her request, I gave him enough money to get on a bus to her sister’s place in San Diego before I moved on. Naturally, I didn’t mention that sort of thing to Jerry. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, touch or put a bullet in, kind of limiting subjects for conversation. Needless to say, he also didn’t believe in vampires, at least not until a couple of Tony’s guys caught up with him one night and tore his throat out.

I knew what was about to happen to Jerry because I Saw his last few seconds as I was getting in the bath. As usual, I got a vivid, full-color, up-close-and-personal ticket to the carnage, which almost made me slip and break my neck on the slick bathroom floor. After I stopped shaking enough to hold a phone, I called the Witness Protection Program emergency number, but the agent who answered got suspicious when I wouldn’t say how I knew what was about to happen. She said she’d get a message to Jerry but didn’t sound too enthused about disturbing his weekend. So I called Tony’s lead thug—a vamp named Alphonse—and reminded him that he was supposed to find out where the government had stashed me, not risk angering the Senate by killing humans who didn’t even know anything. Jerry was useless to them because his information was about to be old news.

I’d never been very successful in altering my visions’ outcomes, but I was hoping that use of the Senate’s name would be enough to make Alphonse think twice. The Senate is a group of really old vamps who pass laws that the less powerful ones have to obey. While they don’t think any more of humans than Tony does, they like the freedom of being only a myth and go to a lot of trouble not to draw mortal attention. Killing FBI agents is the sort of thing that tends to piss them off. But all Alphonse did was give me the usual runaround while his boys traced the call. In the end, the only thing I could do was make sure that by the time anybody got to my door, I was already on a bus out of town. I figured that since the government won’t even admit that vampires exist, its chances of keeping me safe from them wasn’t too good.

I thought my odds were better on my own, and for more than three years I’d been right. Until now.

I didn’t bother to grab anything from the office except the gun: one thing about running for your life—it really narrows your priorities. Not that my 9 mm would do much to a vamp, but Tony often used human thugs for minor errands. I really hoped he hadn’t thought me worth calling in actual talent. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of taking a few bullets to the brain, but I liked even less the prospect of ending up as one of his permanent acquisitions. He’d never let me be turned because he’d had a psychic once who became a vamp and was completely psi blind afterwards, and he thought my gift too useful to risk. Now I was worried that he’d take the gamble. If I lost my talent after the change, he could stake me and get payback for some of the hell I’d caused him. If not, he’d have an immortal adept with guaranteed loyalty, since it’s really hard to go against the wishes of the vamp who made you. It was a win-win situation from his perspective, assuming he saw past his rage long enough to figure that out. I checked the gun and made sure it had a full clip. If they caught me, I wasn’t going down without a fight, and if worse came to worst, I’d eat the last round before I called that bastard master.

Unlike last time, there was something I had to do before I caught a ride to yet another new life. I slipped out of the agency ASAP, just in case Tony’s boys decided to fudge a little on the deadline, and avoided the front door by squirming through the bathroom window. It always seems so easy when people do that on TV. I ended up with a scraped thigh, torn hose and a bitten lip from trying not to swear. I finally managed it, ran down a dingy side street to a parking garage and cut across to a Waffle House. The trip was short but nerve-racking. Familiar alleys suddenly looked like perfect hiding places for Tony’s thugs, and every noise sounded like a gun being cocked.

The Waffle House had bright halogen lights in the parking lot, making me feel terribly exposed as I crossed it. Mercifully, the bank of phones was in shadow near one side of the building. I parked myself in front of the one that worked and dug some change out of my purse, but no one picked up at the club. I let the phone ring twenty times while I bit my lip and told myself it didn’t mean anything. It was Friday night—probably no one was able to hear a phone over the din, or had time to answer if they did.

It took a while to get there on foot, since I was trying to stay out of sight and to avoid breaking an ankle in my new, over-the-knee, high-heeled boots. I’d bought them because they matched the cute leather mini a salesgirl had talked me into, and I’d planned to wow them at the club after work, but they weren’t exactly made for speed. I’m supposed to be this powerful clairvoyant, but do you think anything popped into my head earlier about maybe wearing tennis shoes, or at least flats? Hell, no. Just like I never win the lottery. All I See is the kind of stuff that nightmares and serious drinking problems are made of.

It was one of those hot Georgia nights when the air feels like a heavy blanket against your skin and the humidity is off the charts. A thin mist showed up in the glow of the lampposts, but most of the available light came from the moon gleaming off rain-slick streets and turning puddles silver. The night had bleached the color from the buildings downtown, fading them a soft gray that blended into the shadows and hid the tops of the skyscrapers. The historic district was like something out of time that night, especially when I passed the Margaret Mitchell House on West Peachtree. It seemed perfectly natural when one of the horse-drawn carriages that cater to the tourist trade came around the corner—except that it was going at a full gallop and almost ran me over.

I had a second to see the frightened faces of the tourists who were hanging on for dear life in the back seat, before the carriage ricocheted off the sidewalk and careened down the street out of sight. I dragged my mud-covered self out of the gutter and glared around suspiciously. Merry laughter from behind me explained how that fat old horse had been convinced to try for a new speed record. A trail of mist, almost indistinguishable from the light rain, drifted by. I grabbed it, metaphysically speaking.

“Portia! That wasn’t funny!”

The laugh tinkled again and a pretty southern belle complete with swinging hoopskirts materialized in front of me. “Oh, yes, it was. Did you see their faces?” Mirth sparkled in what had once been eyes bluer than mine. Tonight they were the color of the churning clouds overhead.

I fished around in my purse for a tissue to wipe off my boots. “I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore. If you scare off the tourists, who will you play with?” There aren’t a lot of companies willing to pretend that Atlanta, like Savannah or Charleston, has enough of a historic district to make horse-drawn tours worthwhile. If Portia kept up her games, whatever southern charm had managed to survive the urban sprawl—which offered such time-honored favorites as the World of Coca-Cola, the CNN Center and the Underground Atlanta mall—was doomed.

Portia gave me a pout so attractive that she must have practiced it in front of a mirror when she was alive. “You’re no fun, Cassie.”

I shot her an unhappy look as I tried to clean the mud-splattered leather, but all I managed was to streak it. Never once had I made a run for it looking chic. “I’m plenty of fun, just not tonight.” It had started to rain, and the droplets were falling through Portia to spatter on the concrete. I hate that; it’s like looking at a TV through too much interference. “You haven’t seen Billy Joe, have you?”

I call Billy Joe my guardian spirit, but that isn’t entirely accurate. He’s more of a pain in the ass who occasionally turns out to be useful, but right then I wasn’t feeling picky. Billy is what remains of an Irish American gambler who failed to lose the right hand of cards in 1858. A couple of irate cowboys, who correctly assumed they’d been cheated, shoved him into a sack and tossed it in the Mississippi. Luckily for him, he’d recently relieved a visiting countess of a large, ugly necklace that served as a sort of supernatural battery, collecting magical energy from the natural world and storing it until needed. When his spirit left his body, it came to rest in the necklace, which he haunted the same way other ghosts did more conventional things, such as crypts. It gave him enough power to continue to exist, but it was my occasional donations of living energy that made him as mobile as he was. I had found the necklace in a junk shop when I was seventeen, and Billy and I had been a team ever since. Of course, he couldn’t take a message to the club for me so I didn’t have to go in person, but he could serve as lookout in case any bad guys got too close. Assuming I could find him, that was, something that required a little ghostly help.

There are a lot of ghosts in Atlanta, and most are your run-of-the-mill, let’s-haunt-something-until-we-work-through-our-issues-or-fade-away types like Billy Joe. There are also a few guardian spirits and an occasional psychic imprint, not that the latter are technically ghosts. Imprints are like a supernatural theater that shows the same movie over and over until you want to scream. Since it’s usually something traumatic, running into one isn’t fun. I’d spent my free time for a couple of months after I moved in learning the streets in the area, and one of the main things I’d been looking for was imprint zones. I’d found about fifty dealing with the burning of the city during the Civil War, but most were too weak to cause me much more than a twinge. But there was a big one between my apartment and the agency where a slave had once been ripped apart by a pack of dogs. I started taking the long way around after I got caught in it one day. I have a lot of memories I’d just as soon forget; I don’t need other people’s nightmares.

Portia, however, isn’t an imprint. Sometimes, I thought she was worse. Portia is one of those ghosts who relive the tragic parts of their lives over and over, but not like a mindless movie. They’re haunters with a fixation, similar to an obsessive human who wants to wash her hands fifty times a day. And they’re mobile, so they can follow you around and run on about whatever is bothering them 24/7. I broke Billy Joe of that early—he’s upset because he died young, but I can handle only so many choruses of “the life I should have had” before I start to get crabby.

Unfortunately, I’d caught Portia in a talkative mood, and it took more than ten minutes to find out—after a detailed description of the ivory buttons she’d sewn onto her never-used wedding gown—that she hadn’t seen Billy Joe. Typical. I spend most of my time wishing he’d go away, but he never gets lost until I need him. My level of aggravation must have shown on my face, because Portia stopped in the middle of the story about a party where two officers had fought each other over the last place on her dance card. It was one of her favorites and she was clearly not pleased to see my attention wandering. “You aren’t listening, Cassie. Is something wrong?” An angry snap of her little lace-edged fan said there had damn well better be.

“Tony’s found me and I need to get out of town. But I have to go by the club first, and I need a lookout.”

I knew as soon as I said it that I should have kept my mouth shut. Portia’s eyes got even bigger, and she clapped her dainty gloved hands together delightedly. “Oh, what fun! I’ll help!”

“Um, that’s really generous of you, Portia, but I don’t think . . . I mean, there’s a lot of ways into the club, and you couldn’t cover all of them.” But Portia got a familiar, steely glint in her eyes and I immediately relented. Most of the time she was sugar sweet, but get her upset at you and things could get bad fast.

“I’ll find help,” she promised. “It’ll be like a party!” She disappeared in a swirl of petticoats, and I sighed. Some of Portia’s friends were even more annoying than she was, but any lookouts were better than none. And I didn’t have to worry about Tony’s boys noticing them. Even if he’d sent vamps, they wouldn’t see a thing.

As strange as it sounds, a lot of people in the supernatural community don’t believe in ghosts. Oh, some will agree that there is the occasional troubled spirit who hangs around its grave for awhile before accepting the inevitable, but few would accept it if I told them just how many spirits stick around after death, how many different types there are, and how active some of them can be. Spirits like Portia and Billy Joe are, for the supernatural community, like vamps are to the human—old stories and legends that are dismissed without proof. What can I tell you? It’s a weird world.

I arrived at the club a few minutes later, out of breath and with aching arches, but intact. Showing up was, of course, a really bad idea. Even if nobody had followed me, a dozen people at the agency and my apartment building knew I worked there part-time. It was also only a block from Peachtree, which was not a coincidence I liked. If it ended up getting me killed, I planned to come back and haunt Tony. But I couldn’t leave without warning my roommate and making some kind of arrangement for him. I had enough guilt without adding another messed-up life to my total.

The club, with its high ceiling of exposed steel joints, graffiti-covered concrete walls and massive dance floor, was larger than most, but that night, there were enough gyrating figures under the hanging disco lights to make it almost claustrophobic. I was grateful for the crush, since it made it less likely that anyone would notice me. I slipped in the back way and didn’t encounter any problems—at least, not of the gun-waving, homicidal variety.

One of the bartenders had called in sick, so they were shorthanded, and Mike tried to talk me into subbing as soon as he saw me. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, since my usual job as one of his novelty acts didn’t provide much in tips. I read tarot three nights a week, although I’ve never liked the cards. I used them because it’s expected, but I don’t need to squint at archaic images to know what’s about to happen. My visions come in Technicolor and surround sound, and are a lot more complete. But most people would have preferred a standard reading to what I gave out. Like I said, I’m better at Seeing the bad stuff. Tonight, though, I declined the chance to make a few bucks. I didn’t think bartending was the way I wanted to spend my last hour.

“What’s the word?” Mike yelled at me cheerfully, doing a Tom Cruise with the liquor bottles to the rowdy appreciation of the crowd.

I sighed and dug in my purse. My fingers clenched around the greasy tarot deck that had been a tenth-birthday gift from my old governess, Eugenie. She’d had a charm put on the cards by some witch with a sense of humor, and I kept it with me because it was good for entertaining customers. But the predictions—which acted like a kind of karmic mood ring—had an eerie habit of being right on the money. I held it up and a card popped out. It wasn’t one I wanted to see. “The Tower,” a booming voice began, before I shoved it back in the pack and deep into my purse.

“Is that good?” Mike asked, before getting distracted by a pretty blonde’s cleavage. I merely nodded and hurried off, losing myself in the crowd before he could hear anything else. The voice was only a muffled croak from my overcrowded bag, but I didn’t need to hear it to know what it said. The Tower signifies a huge, cataclysmic change, the kind that leaves a life completely altered. I tried to tell myself that it could have been worse—it could have been Death—but it wasn’t much comfort. The Tower is probably the most feared card in the deck. Death can have many meanings, most not the literal one, but the Tower always indicates trouble for anyone who wants a quiet life. I sighed— what else was new?

I finally located Tomas in the Dungeon—Mike’s nickname for the basement room—wading through a sea of black-clad bodies with a tray of used glasses. He looked edible, as usual, if your thing is slender muscles, skin like honey over cream and sable hair that brushes his waist when he doesn’t keep it pulled back. His face should look too rugged to be handsome, all high cheekbones and strong angles, but the delicacy of some of the features make up for it. His hair was off his face in a thick braid, a sure sign he was working, since he prefers it loose, but a few pieces had worked free and billowed about his head in fine strands. Mike had picked out the outfit: a black silk shirt knitted in a cobweb design that revealed more than it covered, sleek black jeans that fit him like a second skin and black leather boots that climbed halfway up his thighs. He looked like he ought to be headlining at a strip club instead of waiting tables, but the exotic, melt-in-your-mouth sex appeal pushed a lot of buttons for the Goths. I didn’t exactly find it hard on the eyes, either.

Mike had decided about a year ago that Atlanta had enough country-and-western bars, so he turned the family drinking hole into a progressive haven upstairs and a Goth dream in the basement. Some locals had grumbled, but the younger crowd loved it. Tomas looked like he’d been designed for the place right along with the decor, and he brought in a lot of business, but it worried me that he spent half of every night fending off propositions. At least, I assumed he fended them off, since he never brought anyone back to the apartment. But I sometimes wondered, given his background, if getting him that particular job hadn’t been one of my dumber moves.

Tomas looked a lot better than when I first saw him, hanging out at the local shelter with the kind of dead eyes that I was familiar with from my own street days. Lisa Porter, the manager and self-designated mother hen of the place, introduced us when I stopped by for one of my erratic volunteer sessions. We got to talking while sorting the newest donated clothes into piles of the usable, the need-repair and the good-only-for-cleaning-rags. It says something about Tomas’ personality that I mentioned him to Mike that very night, and that he was hired after a brief interview the next day. Mike said he was the smartest hire he’d ever made—never sick, never complained and looked like a dream. I wasn’t so sure about that last part: the look was striking all right, but I personally thought he needed a pimple or a scar, some mark on all that pale gold skin to make him seem more real. He resembled the undead more than most vampires I knew, and had their unconscious poise and quiet assurance to boot. But he was alive, and as long as I got my seriously jinxed self away from him, he’d probably stay that way.

“Tomas, got a minute?”

I didn’t think he heard me over the music, which the DJ kept painfully loud, but he nodded. I wasn’t supposed to be there yet, so he knew something was up. We carved a path through the crowd, which earned me a dirty look from a woman with purple dreads and black lipstick for stealing off with the main attraction. Or maybe it was my happy-face T-shirt and earrings she didn’t like. I usually did the Goth thing, or as close as I could get without looking truly awful—strawberry blondes don’t wear black well—but that was when I was working. I found out pretty early that no one takes a fortune-teller seriously if she shows up in pastels. But on my days off I reserved the right not to look like I was going to a funeral. My life is depressing enough without help.

We ducked behind the bar to the back room. It was quieter there, which meant we could hear each other if we stood close and shouted, but the noise was less of a problem than looking into Tomas’ face and figuring out what to say. Like me, he’d been on the street early. Unlike me, he’d had nothing to trade but himself. I didn’t like the look that came into his eyes whenever I asked about his past, so I normally avoided it, but it was probably a variation on the usual theme. Most street kids have the same story to tell, revolving around being used, abused and thrown out with the trash. I’d thought I was doing him a favor, letting him stay in my spare room and getting him a real job for a change, but a share in Tony’s wrath was a high price to pay for six months of stability.

Our relationship was not close enough to help me figure out how to keep Tomas safe without looking like I was bailing on him. Part of the problem was that neither of us liked opening up, and it didn’t help that we’d gotten off to a rough start. I came out of the bathroom the night he moved in to find him lounging nude on my bed, his hair spread out like an ink blot against my white sheets. I’d stood there, clutching my Winnie the Pooh towel and gaping at him, while he stretched like a big cat on my feather comforter, all sleek muscles and boneless grace. He was completely unselfconscious and I could see why; he sure didn’t look like a starved street kid. I’d never asked his age, but assumed he was younger than me. Which made him way too young to have that particular look in his eye.

I hadn’t been able to keep from following the path of one long-fingered hand as he traced a line down the side of his body from nipples to groin. It was a blatant invitation, and it took me a second to stop drooling and realize what was going on. I finally figured out that he thought he was supposed to pay for his room in what he considered the usual way. On the streets, there’s no such thing as free, so when I refused to take money, he assumed I wanted payment of another kind. I should have tried to explain, to tell him that my whole life had been about being used and that I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it to someone else. Maybe if I had, we’d have started to talk and cleared up a few things. Unfortunately, what I did instead was to freak and toss him out of the bedroom, along with the blanket that I’d quickly thrown over him. I don’t know what he thought about it all, since we never discussed that night. We eventually fell into a more or less relaxed routine, splitting the housework, cooking and shopping like any two roommates, but both of us guarded our secrets. I’d catch him watching me with a strange expression sometimes, and I figured he was waiting for me to abandon him like everyone else. I really hated it that I was about to do exactly that.

“Did you get off early?” He touched my cheek and I stepped back, wanting to be farther from those trusting eyes. There was no escaping what I had to do, but I wasn’t looking forward to seeing his face shut down, and watching whatever faith he’d regained in people bleed away because of me.

“No.” I shifted feet and tried to think how not to make this sound like a rejection. It wasn’t his fault that my life was spiraling down the toilet. Again. “I have to tell you something important, and you need to listen and do what I ask, okay?”

“You’re going.” I don’t know how he knew. Maybe I had that look. He’d probably seen it before.

“I don’t have a choice.” By mutual consent, we moved out the back door to the paved surface surrounding the stairs to street level. Not much of a view, but at least it was quieter. The air smelled of rain, but the downpour that had been building all afternoon was holding off. If I hurried, maybe I could make the bus station before getting soaked. “You know how I told you that I had some bad things happen a while ago?”

“Yes, but there is nothing to worry about now. I’m here.” He smiled, and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. I didn’t want him fond of me, didn’t want him to miss me. Damn, this wasn’t going well. I decided to quit trying for subtlety; it wasn’t my strong suit.

“There’s some serious stuff going down soon, and I have to be gone before it hits the fan.” It wasn’t much of an explanation, but how do you tell someone that the vampire gangster who raised you and who you tried your best to destroy has put a price on your head? There was no way Tomas could understand the world I came from, not if I had all the time in the world to explain. “You can have the stuff in the apartment, but take my clothes to the shelter. Lisa will put them to good use.” I had a momentary pang for my carefully assembled wardrobe, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Cass . . .”

“I’ll talk to Mike before I go. I’m sure he’ll let you bunk here for a week or two, in case anyone drops by the apartment looking for me. It probably wouldn’t be good for you to go back there for a while.” There was a studio apartment at the top of the building left over from the era when owners sometimes lived over their businesses. Mike had used it fairly recently, so it should be in decent shape. And I would definitely feel better knowing Tomas was staying there. I didn’t like the idea of a bunch of enraged vamps descending on our place looking for me and finding him instead.

“Cassie.” Tomas took my hand gingerly, as if afraid I might snatch it away. He thought I was uptight about being touched since that initial misunderstanding. I’d never corrected him because I didn’t want to give the wrong impression and, frankly, it was easier to behave myself if I kept a little distance between us. He didn’t need to be hit on at home as well as at work. “I’m coming with you.” He said it calmly, as if it was the most logical thing in the world.

I didn’t want to hurt him, but I could not stand there and argue the point with an assassin after me. “You can’t. I’m sorry, but two people are easier to find than one, and besides, if I’m caught . . .” I stopped because I couldn’t think how to tell him how bad it would be and not sound like a raving lunatic. Of course, he’d probably seen enough weird things on the streets to make him more open-minded than the cops, who treated anyone who started talking about vampires as a druggie or a psychotic. But even if I could figure out a way to tell him, there wasn’t time.

“I’m sorry; I have to go.” That wasn’t how I wanted to say good-bye. There were a lot of things I hadn’t told Tomas because I was afraid it would sound like I was coming on to him. And now, when I could say whatever I wanted, I had to leave.

I started to pull away, but he held on to my hand and his grip was surprisingly strong. Before I could insist that he let me go, I had a very familiar, totally unwelcome feeling creep over me. The muggy night air was suddenly replaced by something colder, darker and far less friendly. I don’t know what nonsensitives feel around vampires, but all my life I’ve been able to tell when they’re near. It’s like when people say that someone walks over their grave—kind of a shiver down the spine combined with a feeling of something being wrong. I never feel that way around ghosts like norms sometimes do, but it hits me with vamps every time. I looked up to see a dark shape silhouetted against the glare of the streetlights for an instant, before it melted into the night and was gone.

“Damn!” I drew my gun and pushed Tomas back into the storeroom. Not that it helped much; if Tony had sent vamps after me, we needed more protection than a simple door could give. I’d seen Tony rip a solid oak plank off its hinges in one movement of his delicate, ring-covered hands, just because he couldn’t find his key and was in a mood.

“What is it?”

“Somebody I don’t want to see.” I looked at Tomas and got a vision of his face streaked with blood and his serene gaze empty with death. It wasn’t a Seeing, just my brain coming up with its usual worst-case scenario, but it was enough to help me prioritize. The vamps wouldn’t come in and slaughter half the club looking for me. Tony was too afraid of the Senate to okay mass murder, but he wouldn’t think twice about removing some street kid who got in his way. It was the same attitude he’d demonstrated when he orphaned me at the age of four to ensure himself complete control over my abilities. My parents were an obstacle to his ambition, so they were removed. Simple. And the Senate wasn’t likely to fuss over something that could be passed off as regular old gang activity. Priority number one, then, was to get Tomas out of the line of fire. “I have to get out of here or I’ll endanger everybody. But now they might come after you since they saw us talking. They’ll think you know where I’m going.”

I dragged him back through the storeroom, trying to think. I’d been a fool to come here, to let them see Tomas and me together. Despite being told otherwise on a regular basis, half the people at the club assumed he was my lover. If Tony’s thugs started asking about him and anyone told them that, they’d torture him to death trying to find me. I should have known better than to get involved, even platonically, with anyone. I was like some kind of poison—get anywhere near me, and you’re lucky if you just die. Somehow, I had to get Tomas away as well as myself and, like me, he could never hope to return. Some life I’d helped him build.

There was also the problem that the vamp had let us go. I’d seen them look like they dissolved into the wind, they could move so quickly. He’d had more than enough time in those few seconds to strike, swift as a snake, or to shoot me from a nice, safe distance. Vamps didn’t really need guns against mortals, but the Senate preferred hits to look as natural as possible, so most of Tony’s guys carried them. He might have suspected I was armed, too, but I doubted he feared my gun even if he didn’t know how bad a shot I was. The best I could hope for would be to slow him down. No, I was alive because whoever was out there had been ordered to play the game. The obit had said 8:43, and 8:43 it would be. I could hear Tony telling the family that he’d arranged a last little Seeing for his prophet, and this time, she didn’t even have to do the work herself. I wondered if they planned to kill me here and carry me over to Peachtree, or if they’d simply overwhelm my mind and have me walk there like the proverbial sheep to slaughter. I wasn’t real keen on either plan.

I licked suddenly dry lips. “Okay, here. Put this on and get your coat. Tuck your hair up.” Mike had left one of his many baseball caps on a storage shelf and I grabbed it, but no way was all that hair going underneath it. “We need to find somebody who has a coat with a hood you can borrow. You’re too easy to identify.” Maybe one of the Goths would loan us a cape. If I could make Tomas look different enough, he might be able to sneak away while the vamps were concentrating on me.

“Cassie, listen. There is—” I never found out what Tomas had been about to say, because the door we’d just entered slammed open as if the lock wasn’t even there, and five huge vampires rushed into the room. They looked like a bunch of linebackers who had joined a grunge band—all bulging muscles and shoulder-length, greasy hair.

For one frozen moment, we all stared at each other. Size is pretty much irrelevant when you’re undead, but Tony likes them big, I guess for the intimidation factor. It worked—I was intimidated. The fact that they weren’t bothering to hide their real faces under polite masks didn’t help. I knew what a vampire looks like when hunting—I’d seen it enough times—but it was still the stuff of nightmares. I had time to wonder if I’d live long enough to need to worry about bad dreams before they moved in a blur of motion. I got a shot off into one in the general area of his heart, but it didn’t stop him. I hadn’t thought it would. Not that it mattered: I hadn’t expected to rank five vamp assassins, and no way could I deal with those odds. Tony must be even more pissed than I’d thought.

Karen Chance has lived in France, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, but always comes back to America. She currently lives in Central Florida, the home of make-believe, which may explain a lot.