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It felt like every cell was being attacked at once. I tasted blood in my mouth, saw it spurt from my lips. Felt my heartbeat start to slow—
And then my field of vision abruptly widened—or “pulled back” might be more accurate. Because, suddenly, I could see beyond the confines of the country, Earth like a blue ball spread out beneath me. One with golden sparks lighting up everywhere.
Mircea’s family, spread around the globe, a lightning storm of power all coming online at once at their master’s call.
And while the thing inside Efridis was strong, so were we. Everywhe
re she looked now were faces, staring at her. Every move she made was countered, not by the power of one or two, but by dozens, hundreds, thousands. I’d had no idea Mircea’s family was so large, no idea at all—
And then the globe caught fire, as a few million more sparks flared in the darkness.
“The Senate,” someone said, but I didn’t know who. I was watching a globe full of light come screaming at us. A ball of fire roaring with the combined fury of all the Senate’s masters and their families, all at once.
I didn’t feel it when the blow landed, because it didn’t land on me. But I felt the creature get torn out of me, felt it go flying back to its home, saw the fey queen get lifted off her feet by the force of it and slammed back against the wall, hard enough to go crashing through it.
And then they were gone, all those minds, all that power, leaving me panting in Mircea’s arms as Caedmon dove for his sister, as the consul stepped daintily forward, as Louis-Cesare ran for me. And as Marlowe’s voice boomed out from somewhere across the room.
“I believe we have our second senatorial witness, majesty!”
“You know, I do believe you’re right,” the consul said, peering through the hole in the wall at her currently unconscious guest. She looked at her guards, streaming at her from all over the room, and bared some fang. “Take her.”
Chapter Fifty
Mircea, Venice, 1458
Mircea crawled desperately through a punishing storm. It would have been hard enough with the streets of the Rialto running like rivers, splashing mud and muck in his face to match the torrent bucketing down from the skies. And with two broken legs dragging behind him, torturing him with every move. And with a hysterical woman pulling on him, when he was already going as fast as he could!
But then a voice sounded an alarm.
He jerked his head up, panic spreading through him. But it hadn’t come from a party of foot soldiers, running at him with bare blades, as he’d been expecting. This voice was as pure and clear as a bell, and echoing as loudly inside his head—along with that of every other vampire in Venice.
Because that’s the kind of power the praetor possessed.
He stared around in shock as he listened to her low, husky tones order the entire city to find and kill him.
“Come on, come on!” The red-haired woman was tugging at him, half out of her mind with fear even without hearing the latest disaster. “We have to go!”
“We have to hide!” Mircea snarled back, because the pain was excruciating, and his head was spinning, and something very like horror was spilling through his veins. “The praetor just called for my death!”
“Well, of course she did.” The woman looked at him like he was mad. “What did you expect?”
“Something else!”
He crawled into the shadow of the great bridge, not having strength enough to pull shade around him just now, and hoped it was enough. The angry skies had lowered a black veil over Venice, blocking out the moon, the stars, everything except the lightning storm, like a bunch of devilish sprites dancing through the clouds above them. Mircea watched it through a haze of shock and pain.
Or, he tried to.
“What’s happening? Why are you stopping? What—” Mircea grabbed the red-haired woman’s skirts and jerked her down.
A moment later, they huddled together in silence, watching a group of five vampires come running out of the square. But instead of looking around, searching for them, they were looking at the Grand Canal, which currently had as many white peaks as the ocean. One of the biggest slammed into the quay a moment later, drenching the vampires and sending them staggering back. And then a voice called out—a normal one this time—from a side street.
“Over here! I think I saw them!”
The vampires didn’t pause to argue. They ran in the direction of the voice, not least because there were porticoes and colonnades that way to provide shelter from the storm. And a moment later, Mircea felt Dorina flit back to him.
“That was you?”
“Yes. I planted an idea in one of the guards, but it won’t fool them for long.”
