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I nodded. Jonathan might still have some tricks up his sleeve, but then, so might Olga. And his magic would be a lot less effective on a Fey than on someone from our world.
I dragged myself to my feet using the wall for support. I swayed like a tree in a hurricane, but my legs held. I stared into the fog resentfully. The only real advantages I have, other than faster-than-human healing, are enhanced senses. That’s all; that’s it. I’ve heard of others of my kind that developed additional abilities with age, but I wasn’t among them. It’s the main reason I hate the dark—or anything else that deprives me of even one sense. It takes away one of the few weapons in my limited arsenal.
What the hell. There’s always a last time for everything. I took a deep breath and moved cautiously forward.
The unnatural gray blanket almost immediately cut off sound and light as if a door had been dropped shut behind me. Weird flickers of flame from below occasionally broke through the fog, like hell’s version of the northern lights, but were not bright enough to see by. My eyes were useless, so I closed them. I concentrated on feel, moving away from the current of slightly cooler air drifting in from outside.
Smoke mixed with the fog, acrid and sharp, making it hard to breathe. I counted steps, trying to ignore the brittle feel of the boards beneath my feet. I passed what I guessed was a quarter of the distance, a third… I hadn’t made it quite to the halfway point when something moved across the current of air I was using as a guideline, disrupting it. I lashed out with the knife, but encountered nothing but air. Then a billow of fire erupted behind me, turning the boards I’d just crossed into charred, papery things that collapsed in a cascade of particles.
Backing away from the dangerous edge, I tripped over something on the floor. I looked down to see the outline of a man, surrounded by faint flickers of what looked like electricity. It cast an ethereal light against his face where indigo eyes, fierce as the wildest storm, met mine. Louis-Cesare.
The room swayed. The sudden pounding of my heart was making me dizzy. I dropped to my knees, and reached out to cup one bloodstained hand around his cheek before drawing it down, curving around the skin of his throat, whole and smooth and warm. I didn’t understand it, but I was not about to question fate. “I thought I told you to get some pants on,” I said, my throat threatening to close on the words.
Pain showed all over his face and in the lines of his body, but a weak smile lifted the ends of Louis-Cesare’s mouth. I could detect the small movement because another billow of flame had erupted on the other side of us. I could see Jonathan silhouetted against it for a moment, safe on the somewhat sturdy side, until the boards he’d just set ablaze collapsed into dark dust. The piece of catwalk remaining to us groaned and started pulling away from the wall, the heavy screws that helped to hold it in place overtaxed without the support of the beams on either side.
“Jonathan doesn’t lose gracefully,” Louis-Cesare said.
I watched the shadow of a man dart along the far wall, the flames from below catching and magnifying him to giant size. “Neither do I.”
I pulled Radu’s knife out of my boot and weighed it in my hand. It wasn’t my preferred size for throwing, but it was heavy and solid. More so than my arm, which felt alarmingly like jelly. But at this range, I could hardly miss. I tracked Jonathan until he paused at the sight of Olga in the doorway. With her weight to consider, she was staying well clear of the weakened causeway, preferring to balance on the stone threshold. But her bulk almost completely filled the opening, barring his retreat. I took my chance and threw.
A shudder went through the wood below us as it slipped another inch or so. It wasn’t much of a movement, and I should have been expecting it. But my whole attention had been on the mage. It shook my arm at exactly the wrong moment. Jonathan hadn’t seen me move, but the vibrating knife sticking out of the wood only an inch or so in front of his nose caught his attention. He and I both stared in disbelief at it, quivering in the side of a support beam. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blown a throw that easy.
Jonathan recovered first, and laughed, wrenching the knife out of the wood. And I realized that I’d essentially tossed away our only weapon. Louis-Cesare had struggled to his knees, his head dropped forward, panting harshly. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him flat again. “Stay down!” I hissed as the mage’s arm went back. I could only hope his aim was as bad as mine.
I never found out. The boards under his feet suddenly crumbled. He grabbed desperately for the railing, which miraculously was still in place due to the more solid boards on either side. But the charred wood splintered under his weight, sending him reeling over the edge. It happened so fast, I never even heard him scream.
A second later, the room tore apart. The mage had made no sound, but a shredding howl of torment spiraled up from below as if formed from wind and fire alone. The power he’d stolen boiled up like a cauldron bubbling over, spilling out, filling the room with a cold silver glow that cut through the fog and smoke like a sear
chlight, putting the light of the fire to shame. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I saw a snake of pure energy, hovering like a vast and brilliant cobra, ready to strike.
I stared at it, mesmerized by more power than I’d ever seen manifested at one time. I had a chance to think, So that’s what’s inside a master vampire, before a shattering hammer of light crashed down. It sank into my bones and blood in an ice-hot blast: Louis-Cesare’s stolen power, all coming back home to roost. And it didn’t wait for me to get out of the way first.
I found out real fast why it was possible to get addicted to power. A hot silvery rain poured around me, into me, energizing my tired body with a rush. Suddenly, I could feel everything, all my senses hyperfocused, hyperaware. The brush of a piece of ash against my arm felt like a slap, the heated air rushing into my lungs was fire, and all around me, ripples of blue-white energy arched over my body.
I fell to my knees, trying to ride out the sensations, bracing myself against the rough wood of the floor. It was not a good move. Under my hands, the old boards came alive. It felt like I was sinking into them, able to sense for a moment what it was like to be a tree. Only, with my usual luck, I was lying on a section that had been struck by a bolt of lightning before being cut. And I felt it, knew the way it had spread like liquid fire through the tree, searing living tissue into dying, charred cinders…
Louis-Cesare pulled my shaking body against his chest: one arm around my waist, the other in my hair, tucking my head protectively under his chin. It didn’t help. Along with the writhing, boiling mist of power came memories. I couldn’t even start to comprehend all the images that rushed into my mind. Unlike the tree’s one searing impression, this was centuries of love and hate, triumph and loss, dreams attained and hopes dashed and, beyond everything else, the feeling of being bereft, abandoned, lonely. Or maybe those were just the memories that made the most sense to me, that my mind could most easily process. The energy storm raged around us, but I could barely see it anymore. Vivid pictures slid across my vision, scenes captured once by another pair of eyes; then the world streamed away into brightness.
A little child with golden curls tottered on unsteady legs toward a richly dressed woman in embroidered satin. She picked him up with a delighted laugh. “My little Caesar. Someday, you will outdo your namesake!” Other images in the fast-moving stream showed the boy listening, day after day, for the sound of horses’ hooves on a dirt path that would announce her return visit. A visit that never happened from a mother who had prudently forgotten he ever existed. Because he hadn’t fulfilled the prophecy—he hadn’t ruled, imprisoned instead by a brother he had never met.
A new scene, a pair of turquoise eyes in the darkness, a gasping breath that forced air into lungs that had lain unused for days. An elegant, pale hand on his brow, feeling hot next to his chill, smoothing tumbled auburn curls out of his eyes. A slow understanding dawning of his new state, disbelief giving way to hope of belonging, of acceptance, of finding in death what had eluded him in life. Only to discover that this new father wanted him no more than the old. Memories of tracking him across the continent, of finding him repeatedly, only to see him turn away again and again.
I jerked away from Louis-Cesare, hoping the loss of contact would also stop the flood of memory. But it didn’t seem to help. The pale body was still limned in fire, but the power was fading fast, withdrawing back into him, becoming part of him again. Yet the memories didn’t go with it. They soaked into my skin, saturated my mind, bearing down on me with the weight of centuries.
The wood shuddered beneath us, the power that had spilled into me also shaking the overburdened catwalk. I had a moment’s lurch of dizzying vertigo as we slid sideways, toward the hellish pit the winery had become. But I couldn’t seem to move, could barely breathe, as Louis-Cesare’s memories melded with my own.
Another century, a pair of flashing hazel eyes, a brief, heady affair, only to have her taken from us. Tracking her through the streets of Paris, to an old door, pulpy with rot, that hid far worse decay inside. Finding Jonathan, a mage who hid centuries of cunning behind a boyish face. He’d prolonged his life by seeking out the unprotected, by stealing the power that flowed through their veins. Christine should have been protected from such as him, by the one who said he loved her, yet had allowed this to happen.
We made the bargain, agreed to return, to become a victim once more for her sake. We took her to safety, only to learn that the doctor’s couldn’t save her, that we had arrived too late and failed once again. Making the decision to change her to save her, only to see the horror when she awoke and realized what she was. What we were. Monster, she called us, and damned and wicked, before fleeing into the night, leaving us behind.
Louis-Cesare caught me as I started to tumble over the edge. He had a one-armed grip on the last support beam still clinging to the wall and the other hand grabbed my wrist. But the strain on his face was evident; he’d lost too much blood to hold for long. I tried to climb up his body to get a hand on the beam myself, but another wave of memory crashed into me.
Going back to Jonathan almost felt right. Perhaps the jailers had spoken truth when they whispered in our ear—it was all we were good for. We’d believed it, even when the blistering agony of a blade thrust through our back stuttered up our spine. We’d looked down to see a blood-slick blade sliding back inside our chest as a hand shoved between our shoulder blades, drawing it back out. We watched the pulsing arc shimmering in midair, like a spill of rubies, until the mage sang to it and it dissolved like smoke. We’d believed, because night after night, the torture continued. And night after night, no one came.
Until a voice out of the darkness, shrill with fear. Until a lone figure stood over us like a wolf protecting its young, snarling with a rage and possessiveness that was close to demonic, until the mages ran. Until Radu took us away, hid us while we recovered—and then left us once again.
“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare’s voice cut through the fog, and I gulped in a deep breath of hot air. I met eyes full of pain, but not enough. Not nearly enough. I stared at him, dumbfounded. The wine had worn off; he didn’t know what I’d seen. “I can’t hold you!”
