Fury's Kiss (53 page)

“He said he thought someone was using you for an anchor,” Radu told me. “That they were narrowing in on you as if you were their guide. In order to attack you.”

“What? How?”

“He didn’t say. He was concentrating on finding you; his reports were…sporadic. I’m sorry, Dory; I don’t know any more. When he wakes—”

“If he wakes,” Marlowe said, and then stopped.

As if there was nothing left to say.

No.
NO
, I thought, and shook the limp body in my arms, causing the head to fall back onto my shoulder. Tears splashed his face, mingled with the blood, streaked the perfect features that were marble-like in their beauty. And in their coldness. The tears were mine; I didn’t care.

“Drink,” I begged him, as the room grayed out and the rushing in my ears got louder and he just lay there, draped across my lap, Radu’s blood cascading down his chin.

So much power, so much life,
right there
, and he wouldn’t take it.

My anger suddenly found a target, and it was the man bleeding on the sofa. “Marlowe’s right. He should have left me,” I said harshly.

“You know he wouldn’t do that,” Radu admonished.

“Then he’s a fool.” My head was spinning, my temples pounding, but I didn’t care. I only cared about the man on the sofa. And the anger. So much anger bottled up for so many years, and finally spilling over.

“Coward,” I spat. “Fool and coward!”

“Dory!”

“It’s the truth. Five centuries of life, of fighting and conniving and scheming and clawing and
this
? This is how it ends?”

Nothing.

And it utterly enraged me. Like all those years, loving him and hating him and being drawn to him but being afraid to get too close, because it always, always ended the same way. With him leaving. Either physically walking away, or withdrawing behind an icy facade until I did.

And now he was doing it again.

Now he was doing it permanently.

But the bastard wasn’t getting away with it this time.

I already had him in my arms, and now I shook him. A great clot of blood, his own by the color, fell from his lips, staining my already gory shirt. Like I gave a damn.

“Is this how it ends, Mircea? Is it?”

Nothing.

I threw him down on the sofa, straddled him, slapped him, hard.
“Is it?”

“Security,” I heard Marlowe mutter, behind me.

Fuck him.

“I’ll kill the first one who touches me,” I snarled.

And then I slapped Mircea again.

“Five centuries,
five fucking centuries
, only to die a
puling coward while this thing gets away. What about revenge? What about pride? Don’t you care?”

Nothing.

“So many years, and for nothing,” I told him scornfully. “If you were going to die like this, going to just give the fuck up, you should have done it then. You should have died with
her
.”

Radu was looking at me, horrified. And then he seemed to remember what he was doing, and stuck the bloody arm to Mircea’s lips again. Not that it mattered.

“She waited,” I said, staring down at him, the blood pounding in my ears. “You didn’t come. She bled out, on one of your own brother’s stakes, worse than a damned crucifixion, only it was your name on her lips as she prayed. And as she died, still calling for you. Sobbing, begging…but you weren’t there.
You were never there!
”

I shook him again, he and Radu together, because as terrified as he was looking, Radu didn’t move. “She needed you; you didn’t come. Now
I
need you. Are you going to abandon me, too?
Are you going to leave me, too?
”

Nothing, except the tick of the clock and my harsh breathing.

Nothing.

Until…a movement. Tiny, tiny. Just a tick in his throat.

Or possibly…a swallow.

“Mircea…Mircea,
please
,” I whispered, as the light in the room, brilliant only seconds ago, dimmed, narrowed to just his face.

Please.

And then nothing.

I tried to push him out, but the Scream had taken all my strength, not that I’d had much to begin with. And he was strong. So strong, this strange creature of light.

“Why are you doing this?” The voice was warm, deep, gentle. Inexorable. “You are hurt and exhausted. And at the moment, weaker than the things you stalk. This is not about the Senate…is it?”

I fought back, knowing it to be futile. I didn’t succeed in driving him out, but for the moment, he didn’t push any further. He was waiting for me to tell him.

I’d be damned if I told him.

But something must have leaked through, anyway.

“The child?” He sounded surprised. And then forbidding. “What do you know?”

I didn’t answer.

“Tell me!”

It was sharp, the tolerance completely gone from his mental voice. But I still said nothing. I couldn’t.

“Then show me,” he said grimly.

And the darkness became dazzling.

The ballroom was a swirl of light and color and sound, stunning, overwhelming. I was almost glad I couldn’t see much of it, yet I yearned for more. I dug my fingers a little farther into the lines of mortar between the bricks, hitched my toes a little higher on the faint edge of an ornamental frieze, and stared.

The pose left me clinging to the side of the palazzo like a barnacle on a ship, and hurt after only a very few
minutes. But there were no other safe perches. Gaily costumed people were constantly coming and going on the balcony around the corner, or arriving in gondolas at the pier just below that. And there were lights in every window.

There were no lights here, the shade from another balcony directly overhead offering a wedge of darkness in which to hide. I liked the dark. It allowed me to see others before they saw me. It was cool, comforting, safe.

But the light…

The light was irresistible.

They
were irresistible, the very things Mircea had warned me about. Terrible and beautiful, alien and hauntingly familiar, repellent and oh so seductive. I could never get enough of them.

And they had taught me things, things he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t, for I did not think he knew much about them, either. My favorite game was called Families, where I tried to guess how they all fit together.

At first I thought it was easy. Vampires of a single line all burned with the same unearthly fire. If the master wore green flames like a cape, then his Children did, too. Only in smaller, lesser, darker hues: moss instead of emerald, olive instead of jade.

But then I started to notice that that wasn’t always true. Sometimes there would be different colors, some jarringly so, within the same family line, and it confused me. Until I overheard a conversation, and realized that some vampires were adopted into families from other lines. Or traded or sold or acquired a hundred different ways.

And although the new master’s power bled over into the old, it never quite erased all of it. So some of the most formidable-looking vampires had halos of purple-striped green or red-dotted gray or, my favorite, a stern old man who walked about with a shining outline of pink-, blue- and brown-flecked orange.

At first it was funny. And then it made me wonder. My aura was blue. Mircea’s was white. Why was mine not white, too?

“And what did he tell you?” the voice asked softly.

“That I was part of his physical family, but not of the vampire. No dhampir ever is. Mircea could control me to a degree through his mental gifts, but there was no bond of blood. There was no formal tie.”

“And how did you feel about that?”

I didn’t answer.

“Vampires are, by nature, social creatures, some of the most I have ever encountered,” he mused. “They live in large, active families, constantly in the company of others, right down to the sharing of thoughts. I have never met a lone vampire. I do not think they exist, other than for revenants.”

“And dhampirs,” I said hoarsely.

The visits to the palazzos had become less and less frequent over time, not due to Mircea’s prohibition but to my own pain. The yearning grew as I aged, to the point that it became torture to watch them laugh and dance and scheme and belong in a way I never could. For I was not vampire; I could not make a Child. And the human part of me…

“Could not have a child, either,” he guessed softly.

“No.”

“And so you were alone. Vampires are family-oriented by nature, driven to unite with others, to form binding ties. But that is the one thing you could not do.”

I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. I felt him flip through my memories, like someone paging through a book. Scene after scene of failure, of watching lovers leave, friends flee—

“Even the other part of yourself,” he murmured. “Cut off. Walled away.”

I turned on him, impotent, furious. “Why are you doing this? Does your kind take pleasure in the pain of others?”

“Some do,” he admitted. “But I am not among them.”

“Then why?”

“I needed to understand you. To know why you wanted the child. And I am satisfied that it was not for a weapon, or for your Senate. But for family, connection…loneliness.”

“What does it matter?” I asked harshly.

“Because you may be the only one who can help me find her.”

I woke in another sumptuous bedroom, judging by the feel of the linens. But it wasn’t Louis-Cesare’s. I could feel the pressure of the consul’s house holding me down, like a dozen hands trying to push me through the bedding, even before I opened my eyes. And then I blinked the room into view and had it confirmed.

It was a nice room, blue and brown and beige, with lots of iridescent satins and thick velvets and a few furs warming up the ever-present marble. All of which my eyes glossed over because they were busy looking at something else. But I didn’t feel like getting up, or even moving, so for a few minutes I just lay there.

And watched E.T. float around in my wall.

The expanse opposite the bed was mostly unadorned, except for subtle striations in the marble. And a few pieces of museum-quality art. And some glowy blobs that, yes, kind of looked like E.T.

I turned my head—slowly, because it made the room do some convoluted spinning thing otherwise—to look at the wall to the left. The blobs sort of reminded me of reflections, like people passing in front of stained-glass windows. And having their shadows distorted before being cast on the opposite wall.

There was only one problem: there were no windows.

Not too surprising. Regular old vampires had to make do with regular old houses and modify them to suit. But the consul didn’t have to put up with that crap.

I hadn’t had an opportunity to do much exploring last time I was here. But from what I’d been able to tell, her house was built like an onion, with an outermost skin that opened onto long, shallow hallways that kept it from looking strange to anyone who might happen by and wonder why anyone would build a house with no windows. But that’s essentially what it was after you penetrated the first layer.

And I guess I was past that. Because all I saw was some shelves and a table-and-lamp combo. None of which could be throwing light shadows, including the lamp, which wasn’t on.

I turned my head back again—slowly, slowly—and looked at the wall. But E.T. must have found me pretty boring, because he was gone now. Or maybe my brain had decided not to go
schizo
right at the moment, although I didn’t know why. It had done everything else.

Including possibly killing Mircea.

That whole horror scene came back to me in a rush, hard enough to leave me gasping. I abruptly sat up, and just as quickly regretted it when the room telescoped and threatened to collapse. But I wasn’t going to lie back down.

Not until I found out what had happened.

I threw off the covers and went almost a yard before my knees gave way, throwing me onto a very nice carpet that probably didn’t need any puke stains. I stayed down for a moment, breathing, waiting for my head to accept the idea that, yes,
we were doing this
. And then I got to my feet and stumbled toward the door again.

And got halfway there before I realized I was naked.

Of course I am
, I thought angrily, and went back to the bed for a sheet. God forbid I actually wake up dressed anymore.

I made a sixteen-hundred-thread-count sarong and wobbled back to the door. And poked my head out. And was immediately glad that I’d had enough working brain cells to think of the sheet. Because there were no fewer than six huge vamps outside, all spit and polish in shiny faux Roman gear, eyes expressionless pools of disapproval even without being exposed to a naked dhampir.

But one of them wrinkled his nose anyway, as if he smelled something bad.

Yeah, well, fuck you, too, buddy
, I didn’t say, because I wanted to see Mircea more than I wanted to piss them off.

I started out the door, only to have two long spears crossed in front of my face, one from each of the guys framing the door. I looked at them, but they didn’t even bother to look back. They were staring straight ahead, just like the two on the opposite side of the hall, who apparently found something fascinating on the door over my head.

“Really?” I croaked, not gesturing at my sheet-covered form or the dried blood flaking off my upper lip or the fact that my eyes kept trying to roll up in my head. Because I was afraid if I let go of the doorframe, I was going to end up on my knees again.

And because nobody was looking at me anyway.

I cleared my throat and decided to try again. “I just want to see my father.”

And okay,
that
got a reaction. Not verbal, because I didn’t rate that. But the stony look in the vamps’ eyes got a little stonier.

“Sorry,” I said drily. “I forgot that it’s bad taste to mention that
he
is my father
, but there you go. And I’m going to see him.”