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I had never really understood the old “ton of bricks” analogy, but I did now. It felt exactly like that, like some massive weight had just descended on me, crushing me. I didn’t even try to stay on my feet; I went to my knees, and prayed I wouldn’t be on my face next.
But the pressure wasn’t the worst of it. “A pretty little monster. I had forgotten about this one, Mircea,” a female voice said.
And with those words, a hundred voices slipped into the spaces between my thoughts, skittering like bugs into the dark corners. I could feel them, writhing inside my skull—spiders, snakes, every small, dark thing prying into every small, dark space inside me. If I hadn’t already been on my knees, that would have done it.
“She was just leaving,” Mircea said tightly.
“Oh, do let her stay,” the counsul said, bending down to me. “It appears she knows all our secrets, in any case.”
“She knows nothing that is not known to the meanest of our servants.”
Lustrous black hair slipped over a bare shoulder, and a few strands clung to the sweat on my face. Until a slim bronze hand wiped them away, gently. Her skin was papery, almost scaly, and finely abrasive. I could almost feel my own skin crawling up my face, trying to get away from that inhuman touch.
“She is not a servant, Mircea.” A single finger tipped my chin up, so that I was looking into a bronze face, beautiful and cold. “Yet she may prove helpful.”
I stared into dark, kohl-rimmed eyes, and felt a coiling tightness reeling out from my gut
to my spine. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt it sing in my ears, as my dhampir sense reached new heights. It was screaming—but not a warning. This time, it was a siren song, a pure driving need, breathtaking in its simplicity. For one brief moment, I had no other wish, no other purpose, no other reason for existing, than to sink my teeth into that slim throat.
And that didn’t make sense. I’d met her once before, and I hadn’t had this reaction, hadn’t even come close. I didn’t know why, but the consul was trying to bring on one of my fits. And she was doing a damn good job of it. I wanted to kill her so badly, I could taste it.
She laughed, a sound like the scrabbling of claws against glass. “Yes, I think she will do very well.”
“Do? For what purpose?” Mircea asked.
The consul’s lovely face turned up to his. “To help us locate our problem Frenchman, of course.”
CHAPTER 31
The pressure released so abruptly that I fell. But I was already rolling as soon as I hit the floor, my hand reaching into my coat for a stake, my feet coming under me—and then I was picked up around the waist and crushed back against an unyielding body.
I didn’t know whose arms held me, didn’t care. I wanted her, like I’d never wanted another kill in my life. I wanted to feel that smooth flesh ripping under my hands, wanted to taste her blood, wanted to—
“Dorina! Do not—”
“Silence.”
Mircea shut up, but the arms around my middle tightened. I could feel his power, soothing, calming, but it couldn’t reach me, wasn’t enough, not against the red tide pulling at me. The dhampir strength that comes only in my fits was rising. With that amount of strength, all poured into one hard, swift lunge, I could have her. I. Could. Have. Her.
And as soon as I did, I was dead. The thought cut through the writhing echoes, going straight to my core. I didn’t know if it was my thought or Mircea’s, but it was true, either way. She’d kill me, and if she didn’t, the guards would. I could feel them, hovering nearby. Ten, twelve—I couldn’t tell but enough. More than enough.
But it was so hard to care.
“I’m right here.” The words, low, sibilant, taunting, ripped through my brain, seething like fire ants, tearing like shrapnel. Squeezing one eye shut, I flattened a hand against my ear, but it did no good. The words were inside my head.
“She is stronger than I expected. Or perhaps you are helping her, Mircea.”
“No, Lady.”
“Release her, then. Let us see what manner of control she really has.” The arms around me didn’t budge. “You would defy me on this?”
“With… regret, Lady.”
And suddenly, the snakes were back, and this time, they’d brought friends. It felt like my body had been invaded by a sea of tiny spiders. I could feel them seething underneath my skin, in my head, every movement of their hair-fine legs displacing some of my flesh. The tiny erosions were multiplied by thousands, millions, until my skin was cracked and running and my flesh was flaking off the bone.
Someone squeezed my shoulder, and spiders scurried outward from the touch, crawling up through cracks in my flesh to scuttle across my skin. I considered screaming, but my lungs were teeming with them, too, sloughing away like the rest of me, and drawing the necessary breath would only split me open like a rotten fruit. So the spiders seethed and I didn’t scream.
“Enough!”
