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“I hate you!” I yelled, even knowing she didn’t care. “I’ve always hated you! You take every good and decent thing and you destroy it! You’re the monster they always called us, not me, not me, and I hate—”
And just like that, the world fell away.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Mircea, Venice, 1458
Mircea was racing the sun, and losing. He’d gotten back late from his visit to Abramalin, but there had been no offer for him to stay at the praetor’s. He’d pointed out that he didn’t need a safe room, one of the special retreats his kind used to ensure that stray sunbeams didn’t set them alight while they slept. Anything would do, he’d assured her servants, even a closet. But the lady was abed by the time he returned, and none of her people gave a damn.
Leaving him fleeing into darkness as death flirted with the horizon. And while his own body betrayed him, because this close to dawn, nothing worked right. Or at all, Mircea thought, clipping a wall at a dead run, and taking half of the damned thing along with him.
Dizzy and confused, he stumbled out of the cloud of dust and debris, only to stare around at a world gone mad.
Buildings loomed inward, as if bending from their foundations to see this most curious of curious things: a vampire about to face the day. Shadows reached for him, cool islands of relief that beckoned him away from the streets, where the thinning night was starting to eat at his skin like acid. But they lied. The sun was coming, and the shadows would dissipate, leaving him to die screaming in their absence. He couldn’t stop. . . .
But it was becoming harder and harder to find his footing, as his depth perception fled along with his power. Even worse, his mind was starting to suffer, leaving him looking at a city that no longer made sense. Bricks appeared to float up from under his feet, tripping him, and then sailed overhead, as the street dissolved around him. The shutters of a nearby house detached from the wall and flew into space, like a giant moth. Strange noises called out to him from passing houses, a sibilant whisper one moment, a deafening warning the next, making him jump and stagger and fall. And then lie there, gripping the bricks in confusion, not even sure which way was up anymore.
All he knew was that he wasn’t home, and he was out of time.
The first notes of the Marangona rang out over the city. The hauntingly beautiful bell was named after the carpenters who started work at first light. It heralded the beginning of the workday, so dawn couldn’t be that—
It exploded behind him, all at once, releasing its terrible fire. The first beams began spreading across the city, brightening old bricks, picking out gilt decorations on palazzos, eating across pathways between buildings. Including the one behind him.
Mircea screamed, and clawed at the street, stumbling back to his feet and into the shadow of a building, away from the terrible light. But it wouldn’t help for long, and he didn’t know what to do. The bells were deafening, the shadows were fleeing in front of him, the city was falling into fire, and there was nothing, nothing to save him—
Until someone took his hand.
“This way.”
The voice was a dark whisper in his mind. Mircea didn’t know anything, barely even knew his name at that point, but he recognized that voice. Soft yet strong, and calm, so calm. As if there was nothing to fear and the world wasn’t falling apart.
“Come.” A tug on his hand, and it was constant, too, even though it felt like his skin was sloughing off. He followed along behind, blind now, as the approaching day stole his sight along with everything else. “No, this way. Hurry.”
He changed his course, following the voice. His feet stumbled, and he almost went down again, because how could you walk on a street that was dissipating like smoke? But the voice beckoned him on, and the hand steadied him, and he staggered onward into nothingness. Until—
“You found him!” A new voice.
“Yes, but he’s hurt.”
“Of course he’s hurt! It’s almost day!” Someone grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Mircea didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure that the new voice was talking to him. He wasn’t sure of anything.
And then the pain became agony, as if he’d been dunked in a vat of acid.
“Run,” the first voice told him urgently. “We have to run!”
He ran. The city raged around him, crashes and lightning bolts and thunder like the feet of a thousand horses, like a battle, one he was losing because his skin was fire, his eyes were flame, the moisture in his mouth dried up and flew away, so that his next scream was silent, the desiccated remains of his throat unable to form words or even sounds anymore, just endless, silent screams—
“Shut it! Shut it!” Someone else was screaming now. Something slammed behind him, and some
thing was thrown over him, a heavy, enveloping weight.
“Up to his room. It’s still too light in here,” the first voice said.
“D’ye mind if I put out the flames first?” The second, irascible voice asked, and Mircea suddenly felt himself being pummeled. Something was burning; he vaguely realized that it was him. And then he was being shoved at what felt like a set of stairs when he fell into them. And pushed and heaved and dragged upward, because his limbs didn’t seem to be taking his commands anymore.
But, somehow, he reached the top, and was pushed forward again, and then—
