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Poking at the half-glimpsed images was like raking cold fingers through my brain, but I pushed it. I didn’t want to be told; I wanted to remember. “I didn’t get all the facts straight… Everyone just said it belonged to the voivode.” It was a title, that of the local strongman, not a name. I had assumed Drac was my sire—I’d learned from the Gypsies that my father was a son of the old voivode—and gone looking for some revenge. But I found Mircea instead.
“You were almost dead already. Why?”
“Vlad knew his story had not convinced me, knew that I was searching for the truth, and he was afraid he had missed something. He decided to strike at me before I could do the same to him. Only he didn’t dare attack me directly, in case he failed. He used assassins, and they found me somewhat more… resilient… than they’d expected.”
“Why not kill him?” I demanded. “Once you’d gotten enough from me to figure it all out, once you knew, why protect him?”
A tender hand brushed my hair. The caress was as light as a kiss of wind, soft and infinitely comforting, but it was the soothing peace that followed it that I fought with all my might, determined not to lose myself. “I told you, Dorina. Death would have been ridiculously inadequate recompense for his crimes. Thousands had died, murdered so that he might gain or retain power. It was a bloody time, and some of those he killed undoubtedly deserved their fate—but not all. Not most. Not her.”
“So you locked him up? If death wasn’t bad enough for him, why was imprisonment?”
“It wasn’t only about finding something ‘bad enough.’ Justice said that he should die once for each of his victims, but how do you kill someone more than once?”
I thought about Jonathan and Louis-Cesare, but said nothing. “I do not see how any imprisonment could be worse than death.”
“You forget, Vlad spent most of his childhood locked a
way—he hated confinement more than anything. For him, there was no greater punishment.”
“But Drac wasn’t a vampire then. You couldn’t trap him without having him age and die on you. And you were only a newborn yourself, and not strong enough to change him—”
“I took you and fled, before Vlad could decide to kill us both. We went into hiding, and I… adjusted… your memories. I was afraid that if I did not, you would return to make another attempt on his life and be killed yourself.”
I listened to the faint sounds of traffic, and fought against the bone-deep sense of well-being and rightness that Mircea’s presence evoked. He was spending a lot of energy to soothe my volatile emotions, to make this talk possible without my descent into comfortable, familiar madness. But it had the side effect of also making his answers sound oh-so-reasonable. Of blunting the truth with his usual ease. That wasn’t going to work. Not tonight.
“Or perhaps you were afraid I’d mess up your plans and give him an early death.”
“Perhaps.” Mircea’s voice was light, giving nothing away. “In any event, I waited several decades, until my power had grown, and returned to pluck him off a battlefield, before the Turks could behead him or the nobles assassinate him.”
“So why kill him now, after so long? Why give him what he wanted?”
“Every time he escaped, Vlad tried to hurt me by attacking those I loved. I finally had to ask myself how much I was willing to risk for his continued pain.” I numbly watched Radu through a crack in the office blinds. The wake had reached the maudlin stage, and he was being crushed against the huge bosom of a sobbing troll woman who made Olga look petite. He took out a handkerchief and gently dried her eyes, as Mircea’s voice caressed my painfully tattered nerves. “I realized… some things are worth more than revenge.”
I abruptly stood up. I was so angry I could barely see straight. “Well, I’m thrilled you had that epiphany!”
“Dorina—”
“How many people died for your revenge? How many suffered? You could have ended this centuries ago, spared us all, but no. The great Mircea is always right!” I raged at him, finally giving voice to everything I’d known for years and that he had stubbornly refused to see. I’d waited for this moment, dreamed of it, and now that it was here… it rang strangely hollow.
I could still see Louis-Cesare’s mutilated body, with Jonathan tenderly stroking the multiple wounds he’d inflicted. I understood what Mircea meant; one death was far, far too good for him. I’d have loved to give him one for each and every scar, but wasn’t sure I’d given him even one. He’d fooled me with the illusion that Louis-Cesare was dead. No vamp healed an almost decapitation in a couple of minutes, not even a master. Especially not a master so drained of power he couldn’t even stand up. What I’d taken for a challenge had been Jonathan’s attempt to convince me not to risk my neck trying to save a corpse. Too bad for him that I don’t reason well in the midst of a killing rage.
Now I was faced, just like last time, with cleaning up the mess Mircea’s revenge had left behind. Was Jonathan really dead? Or had it been another illusion? We’d found several charred bodies that might have been his, but could just as easily have belonged to one of his little helpers. No one seemed to know exactly how many mages he’d brought along, how many bodies we should expect to find. I had no choice but to play it safe and assume that I now had a revenge-crazed dark mage after me, along with who knew how many other people. All because Mircea had to do it his way.
He started to get up, a hand outstretched toward me. “Don’t,” I warned him. “Just. Don’t.” The hand fell to his side.
It was too much, after centuries of ignorance, to have this all dumped on me now. Along with Louis-Cesare’s memories, I probably had nightmare material for at least the next millennium. Even worse, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about any of it. It was over, except for the mopping up. And suddenly I was so very tired.
We stared at each other for a heartbeat. Despite the gloom, I could see the faint lines of exhaustion etched onto that ageless face. Mircea looked as tired as I felt, and the sad, almost defeated look in his eyes was one I’d never seen. My hands clenched, and it was with a kind of horror that I saw one fist come up, the knuckles brushing lightly across the smooth line of his cheek. Then I whirled on my heel and started for the door, desperate to get away before I showed a weakness I’d regret.
“Dorina. Where are you going?” The voice was soft, careful.
“Back to New York. Back to my life.” I paused, my hand on the aluminum facing of the door. “And Mircea—the next time you need a favor… don’t call me.”
Postscript
He didn’t call. He wrote instead. Although I almost didn’t get the letter.
Ever since an unfortunate incident involving a lack of morning coffee and the postal uniform’s uncanny resemblance to Byrthinian demon battle dress, my mail is thrown in the general direction of the house while the carrier books it down the street. This morning, I fished one piece out of a hydrangea bush and another off the porch roof. Then I prized Mrs. Luca’s poodle away from Stinky and took him back inside.
