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“There!” I grinned at it triumphantly. “Now try to move, damn you.”
Radu sighed and stood up to get a refill. “That’s all very well, Dory, but how are you going to sit on it now?”
One of the tassels waved about, giving the distinct impression that it was flipping me off. Fine. It could stay like that until it rotted. I dropped into Radu’s abandoned chair and glowered at it. “Were you trying to make a point, Uncle?”
He propped himself against the bar and regarded me somberly. “Only that I was weak. I was offered a way out, and I took it. Vlad never forgave me for that, for sleeping with the enemy, as they say these days. And then, of course, he thinks I betrayed him and stole his throne—”
“You did betray him and steal his throne.”
“Well, yes, but only after he went barking mad,” Radu said impatiently. “I wasn’t stupid, Dory. I knew the Turks were trying to use me, but something had to be done about Vlad. I’ve never forgotten the sight of the corpses, thousands of them, staked alive on the fields around Tirgoviste. In all the years since, I’ve never known anything like it.”
“There were more killed in some battles in the world wars.”
“Yes, but not with the… the precision, the intent. You remember—he had the stakes laid out in geometric patterns, so he could climb that tower of his and gloat over the pictures they made.”
“No, I don’t recall that. I’d been given to a bunch of Gypsies, remember?”
“Oh, yes.” Radu looked at me vaguely. “How did that turn out for you, then?”
I stared at him. Five hundred years later and he finally thinks to ask. “Oh, peachy. They kept cats around to keep mice off the food, and me to kill any vamps that tried to munch on them. Fun times.” Until they all ended up dead, anyway.
“Oh, good.”
I bit back a retort. I was fast recalling why I usually avoided conversations with Radu. “My point, if you’ll let me make it, is that we both have the same enemy. Okay”—I held up a hand to avoid another waltz down memory lane—“Drac may be planning a more elaborate send-off for you, but me being dead still figures in his plans somewhere. It doesn’t in mine.”
“Then you had best tell Mircea you won’t be going after him. He needs to know, in order to plan something else.”
I regarded him through the heavy, cut-crystal glass. A dozen little Radus looked back at me, each as clueless as the last. “And what, exactly, do you think his backup plan is? Who would be crazy enough to face Drac? Even if there wasn’t a war on, I think it’s safe to say that’s one commission most people would pass up.” I actually knew a few bounty hunters who might be stupid enough to try, for the right fee, but I doubted they’d do more than make Uncle feel insulted that they’d been sent against him. Right before he turned them into meat.
“Mircea would deal with it,” Radu offered unhelpfully, “but he’s trying to arrange a meeting of the six senates.”
“Why?” Having one group of crazed senior vamps around was enough.
“The war, of course. It’s becoming quite bothersome.”
I decided to let that conversation wait for another time. The less I knew about what Mircea was doing, the better I tended to sleep. “So, anyway, we have a common enemy—”
“You’ve said that.”
I took a deep breath and tried one more time. “The way I see it, we have two choices. We can cower in here until Drac raises enough of a force to come in and get us, or we can go on the offensive. I prefer the latter, since letting him call the shots is a good way to end up dead. Or worse,” I added, considering that Radu was probably right about his brother’s plans.
“And how do ‘we’ do that? I told you, I’m not a fighter, Dory. That army I led was Turkish, and so were its commanders. I was mostly there as a figurehead, so the people had someone from one of the old families to consider their ruler instead of a Turkish prince. I didn’t make many decisions.”
“You won’t have to fight him,” I assured Radu.
“Oh, good.” He looked relieved.
I drained my drink and patted him affectionately on the leg. “You’re the bait.”
Chapter Eight
As I’d expected, the rub came more from Louis-Cesare than Radu. Uncle was smart enough to realize that if the only choice was either to face Drac when he was unprepared or wait for him to gather more followers, the former was infinitely preferable. The only thing we could come up with that was likely to force him to act before he was ready was the prospect of catching both of us together in an undefended area. And that meant a change of venue.
Not surprisingly, Louis-Cesare wasn’t pleased. He didn’t like the idea of Radu leaving the relatively safe confines of MAGIC for his country estate, despite the fact that said house and grounds were a maze of magical traps that Radu had spent years developing. It seemed that every time he invented something new for the Senate, he tested it out at his place. For our purposes, it was perfect. Drac would find us a hell of a lot more prepared than he expected. Louis-Cesare seemed unable to grasp that simple point, however.
“I absolutely forbid it! Gamble with your own life if you must, but not with his!”
“That’s up to Radu to say, don’t you think? Is he your master, or vice versa?”
