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“First?” Marlowe said sharply.
“My contact with…Dorina…has been limited,” Mircea said. “She does not trust me. I am what she preys upon. But yes. That would be my estimate of her power.”
“A mad first-level master,” I murmured. “Haven’t we been here before?”
“No.” That was Louis-Cesare.
“Yes. I suppose I have more in common with Christine than I thought.”
“You are nothing like Christine!”
“Funny. That’s not what my victims say.”
“What victims?”
“Or, I guess I should say, Dorina’s victims. She piles up quite the body count.”
“As do we all, when need be. If you had not ‘piled up’ the bodies last night, my Sire would be dead. You are efficient at killing; but that is not in itself an evil. Or else every nation on earth with an army is evil. Every police officer who has killed in the line of duty—”
“Police kill to protect!”
“And how do you know that she—that you—do not?”
“Stop calling me that! I am not her! I don’t kill for sport.”
“And again I ask, why do you believe she does? When have you seen her—”
“I don’t see her! I’ve never…almost never…seen her.”
“Then how do you know?” he persisted. “You wake up surrounded by bodies, but you were not awake when they were attacked. You do not know what the provocation may have been. Only that they are dead. Had Dorina suddenly woken in Central last night, after you went in, might she not have thought—”
“That’s not the same! I had no choice!”
“And perhaps neither did she. We won’t know until we speak with her—”
“I’m not going to speak with her!”
“Then I will,” Louis-Cesare said simply.
“What?”
“I have done it before. I have spoken with her once, perhaps twice—”
“When—?”
“The last time was in your garden, two nights ago. I made a mistake, and she was…displeased.…”
“She wanted to attack those fey,” I said, remembering. “Wanted to…to find out if she could beat them.”
“And who would not? Many of our people, given the chance, would like such an experience. So little is known of them…a new enemy, whose abilities are not entirely, or even mostly, understood. Whose skill set may equal our own, and whose lives are long enough to have been—”
He stopped, probably because everyone was staring at him.
“I did not say I intend to do it.”
“That would be best,” Mircea said, drily. Then he looked at me. “It is your choice. We need the information, and it is possible that Dorina may have it. But I will not force the issue.”
Marlowe started to erupt, and Mircea’s voice sharpened. “It is your decision. Your risk. It can be no other.”
