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God! Blessed, soft darkness; cool, cool air; pain, so much, so hot, but lessening, drifting away. Like his consciousness. He tried to hold on to what was left of it, tried to get his eyes to work, so that he could see that he was safe. But the darkness had him, and closed relentlessly over his head.
And he was gone.
* * *
—
“Daft!” Horatiu’s hand slapped the back of his head again, hard.
“Are you trying to beat my brains out?” Mircea huddled over the little table in what passed for a kitchen. It was a small room on the ground floor of their house, one that stuck out over the sea that raged against the rocks below like a demon. Or maybe that was just his mood.
“Someone ought to, as they’re clearly defective!” the old man snapped, and ripped off another piece of Mircea’s hide.
Mircea bit back a scream, because it wasn’t manly. And because his throat felt as raw as his back, which Horatiu was relieving of a wealth of ruined skin. The stuff had to come off; the charred reminder of yesterday’s activities was clinging in places to the new growth trying to come in, and keeping Mircea from healing. But the old man didn’t have to be quite so enthusiastic about it.
“Like a damned snake,” Horatiu muttered, throwing the latest piece into a bucket.
Mircea tried not to look at it, or at the clothing that had literally melted to said flesh, and was being removed along with it. He stared at his arm instead, the one cradling his throbbing head. It was pale and whole and perfect, having already been dealt with. Only a few reddened patches, where the outer flesh had been stubborn and ripped some of the new away with it, gave witness to how close he’d come. So very close. If Horatiu hadn’t—
“Augghhh!”
“That’s the last of them,” Horatiu said, having just stripped the ruined flesh off the rest of Mircea’s back. He slapped the newly revealed skin. “Get up and drop your breeches.”
“I can’t drop them; they’re melted to my legs!”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Horatiu said, and pushed him up against the wall.
Mircea had a response on his lips, but it died at the sight of the knife the old man was wielding, like a butcher coming after a fat young calf. A half-blind butcher, because Horatiu’s eyes were getting worse every year. “I’ll do it myself,” he said, alarmed, and Horatiu thrust it into his hands.
“See that ye do,” he sniped, and took the flesh bucket out the back, and tossed it into the sea.
“You didn’t have to throw in the bucket, too,” Mircea said, watching him.
“As if I could ever use it for anything else!” the old man said, and slammed back inside.
No. Mircea supposed not. But they weren’t finished, and now they had no bucket.
He decided not to mention that. Horatiu was more incensed than Mircea had ever seen him, and not without cause. He and Dorina had spent the hour before dawn scouring the streets for him, and only found him at the last possible moment. If they’d been even a little later . . .
Mircea cut off that train of thought, and swallowed, tasting ash. He felt nauseous and really unwell, but thought it unwise to mention it. Horatiu stomped into the main part of the house, on some errand Mircea didn’t question, perhaps to give him some privacy. Which was appreciated, since the burnt flesh on the lower part of his body came off like a pair of hosen, in one, excruciating piece.
Mircea lay on the floor afterward, naked and uncaring, panting at the ceiling. He was bleeding from a few dozen new wounds, and probably looked like a plague victim. He felt like one, too, although he would live. By late tonight or tomorrow, the reddened flesh would be pale and perfect again; the broken rasp, which was all the fire had left of his voice, a mellow tenor; and his stiff and reluctant muscles smooth and strong.
It was the one thing you could be sure of as a vampire: what didn’t kill you would leave you exactly as you were, with no scars or other reminders of how close you’d come. Not that Mircea needed them. That experience had been seared into his memory, possibly literally.
“Are ye done yet?” Horatiu’s voice demanded, from outside.
Mircea sat up, feeling dizzy. “Yes, I—”
A pair of hosen hit him in the face, cutting off the comment. They were followed by a shirt, a belt, and a hat.
“What is this?” Mircea asked, looking at the latter.
“A hat,” Horatiu told him sweetly. “Ye wear it on yer head.”
“I know what it is! Why do I need it?”
Horatiu didn’t answer. He just left again, while Mircea struggled into the huge old camisa his servant had provided, which was threadbare and patched, and so voluminous that he’d taken to wearing it as a nightshirt, since it drooped well past his knees. Even the soft, weathered weave stung his skin in places, but nowhere near what tight hosen or a fitted doublet would have done.
