“Mircea!”
“You do not understand the situation.” Mircea’s voice was calm, but I knew him well enough to recognize the thread of anger running through it.
“What is there to understand? If he had insulted one who belonged to me in such a fashion, I would crack his skull like an egg!”
“And thereby give him exactly what he wants!”
Jack used fine, even stitches, I noticed in something like a daze. He’d have made a good tailor. “If he wants to die, he has merely to say,” Augusta whispered viciously. “There would be no lack of volunteers to grant his wish!”
“And they would be slaughtered for their trouble. Why do you think he provokes me—threatening Radu, attacking Dorina? He wants to die by my hand and no other.”
“Then give him what he wants!” I would have echoed Augusta’s sentiment if I’d had the strength.
“No.” Mircea’s voice was hard as stone. “Let him live and remember, not die and forget!”
I heard him stride away and a moment later, Augusta slammed back into the room. “She will live, master,” Jack told her, unruffled. “I swear it.” He patted my hair almost fondly. “I am not surprised that the count did not like this one. There is no fear in her.”
I wondered, as I finally allowed myself to pass out, how anyone could be so wrong.
“Dorina!” Hands were clenched frantically on my shoulders. Whoever was holding me was shaking. I gripped strong arms in both hands, struggling to reconnect with the present. “Are you all right?” someone demanded.
I was back, I realized. Shocked to the core, but back. “Never better.” My laugh sounded thin and ragged even to me. I let it peter out.
My eyes focused enough to see Louis-Cesare staring down at me. He didn’t look much more composed than I felt. Panic had washed the color from his face, leaving his eyes insanely blue. “You are
not
all right.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said, still half-confused about where we were. My eyes saw grass and stars and fireflies, but my brain kept telling them they were wrong. Only the lighting was right: the dim glow from the house approximating candle flame. “He wanted to be sure I lasted long enough to deliver the message….”
Louis-Cesare said something extremely rude in French. I blinked at him. It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about Drac. But how did he know…? “You saw.”
He nodded grimly. I felt the flex of strong biceps under my palms as his grip tightened. “As if the memories were my own.”
I peeled a wet strand of grass off my cheek. It felt clammy, like the touch of Jack’s hands. “Sorry about that.” It seemed pretty inadequate, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
I managed to sit up. The hands gripping my shoulders dropped away, but the fingers dragged almost reluctantly down my arms. It was a tiny thing, lasting the space of a heartbeat, but it sent something weightless coiling through my stomach.
I leaned against the water-slick side of the fountain for support, but it wasn’t enough. The scene around me telescoped without warning and I sagged face-first into more wet grass. Louis-Cesare pulled me back into his arms. I should have protested, but the heat of his chest at my back was soothing. I’d get up and face whatever had just happened; I’d force my body to a strength I didn’t feel, in a minute.…
We sat there not saying anything. I was too confused to speak. I hurt, but not in the right places. I wanted to clutch my stomach, even though it was one of the few parts of my body that didn’t ache. But it felt like it should, like those stitches were still being punched through my flesh. Like it had really all just happened again. And then there was the feeling of Louis-Cesare’s heart beating against my back, his legs solid on either side of mine. He had dropped his head to my shoulder, and the sound of his breathing in my ear was steady and sweet. “I’m sorry, too,” he whispered, and I found I couldn’t talk at all.
His thumbs began digging into the knotted muscles of my shoulders, kneading the tension expertly away. After traveling from my neck to the small of my back, they worked their way up again, wringing the aches from my body. I closed my eyes, feeling my muscles relax one by one, and my head dropped forward. I heard my own murmur of contentment, but it sounded impossibly far away, lost in the hypnotic stroking of Louis-Cesare’s hands.
There was a sharp callus along the side of his index finger. He flinched a little when I reached out and captured that hand, held very still while I stroked lightly over it. The skin was uneven, just a little rough, and the flesh beneath was hard. He was watching me touch him, and I could hear his breath halt in his throat.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sat like this with anyone. Kindness after cruelty, warmth in a cold place, tenderness instead of suspicion: none of it was supposed to come to me, and certainly not from a vampire. Uncertainty fluttered through my stomach. What was I doing? I dropped his hand and started to move, to pull away, when his voice stopped me. “Why did Dracula torture you?” he asked softly.
“What did Jonathan do to you?” I shot back, expecting that to end the conversation.
He surprised me. “Something similar. Someone important to me… a witch… was taken by the Black Circle. They intended… you know they steal power, from whomever they can?” I nodded slowly, barely moving my head. I didn’t say anything, afraid to break the mood, afraid that he would disappear back inside that shell of his and I’d never find out what was going on. “What you may not know is that, taken to extremes, it kills their victim.”
Actually, I did know that. A normal human isn’t simply someone with no magic; he is a completely different species. If magical creatures lose all their magic, that doesn’t somehow transform them into norms. It kills them, by draining away something they need to exist as much as humans need blood.
“What happened?” I asked cautiously.
Louis-Cesare shrugged, and I could feel the movement along my back. “I offered myself in exchange.”
“You did what?” I was sure I’d heard wrong.
“Jonathan is addicted to magic the way some humans are to drugs. But, as with drug addicts, he has difficulty finding a steady supply. Powerful magic users—the only kind that can appease his hunger—are not easy to catch. And even when he is successful, the sacrifice can only provide one ‘hit.’ Then the subject dies, and another must be obtained.”
“I don’t understand.” So why did I suddenly feel chilled?
“A master vampire can heal almost any injury, even a total loss of magic. He can be drained every night, yet still rise the next, as long as his head and heart are intact. He is the perfect, unending sacrifice.”
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe; the chill had expanded and everything was frozen, including my brain. I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t
want
details. I was suddenly hugely grateful that if we’d had to share a memory, it had been mine.
I swallowed. “How long?”
“I was his captive for a month. We had agreed to a week, but Jonathan refused to let me go. He said… he said he liked my taste better than anyone he’d ever had.” I turned in his arms so I could see his face. One look in those eyes and I knew he wasn’t kidding. In the dim light they shimmered crystal, like sapphire viewed through ice, reflecting perfectly every emotion. “If Radu hadn’t found me, I might still be there.”
“
Radu
found you?”
“Yes. As my master, he was able to track me. I was in a stone-walled cell, too weak to break out during the day, and subject to Jonathan’s attentions every night. I had almost given up hope, until one afternoon I heard a voice outside my window telling me to step back. I didn’t recognize it—I had not seen Radu in years—but I thought it prudent to comply. Just as I did so, the entire wall broke away, leaving me staring at a dust-covered man trying vainly to control the rearing horse he had chained to the window bars.”
“That sounds like Radu.”
“Then the roof caved in.” It was said so deadpan that I wasn’t sure if I was being teased. But Louis-Cesare’s lips twitched, softened and curved into a smile. I laughed in relief. “It did,” he insisted.
“I’ve no doubt.” ’Du was many things, but a master engineer wasn’t one of them. “But I still don’t understand what happened at the plane. Why was Jonathan trying to blow you up?”
“He wasn’t. He has been trying to recapture me ever since I escaped, but had to be careful lest he risk making war on the Senate.”
“We’re already at war.”
“Giving him the perfect excuse. By destroying the Senate’s jet, he hoped to convince the family that I had been destroyed, too—that there was no need to search for me this time.”
“But… why haven’t you told the Senate? Why not let them take him out for you? As you said, we’re already at war with his Circle. What’s one more dead mage?” I’d be happy to do the honors myself.
“To pull resources away from the war for a personal vendetta would require my explaining the charges against him.”
“So?”
Louis-Cesare just looked at me. “How many people have you told about what happened to you that night, Dorina? How many know why it is you hate Dracula so intensely?”
I got the point. “No one. Mircea threatened Augusta with bodily injury if she ever so much as breathed a word. As far as I know, she never did.”
“And there was no one else?”
“No. Except for Jack. But as his master, Augusta’s word spoke for him, too. Why?”
“The spell we encountered in the caves… the only ones I know of are localized—linked to a specific place. We should have left it behind us when we came here. But those were your memories, were they not?”
I hesitated. Part of that scene had been familiar enough—the aftermath of Drac’s little torture session in London. But the last bit… that was new. I’d always assumed that Mircea wanted Drac kept alive because of some misguided sentiment. Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe the old guy had more backbone than I thought. “Most of it. Maybe all of it. I don’t know—I wasn’t exactly at my best at the time.”
“Some legends say the Fey can induce visions. That they influence people in such ways.”
“Caedmon couldn’t have brought on that nightmare, even if he had a reason.” I slowly got to my feet, testing my body, relieved that it responded, if sluggishly. I was going to have to try to avoid getting beaten up for a few days. “There’s no way he could have known about it. No one could.”
I reached for Radu’s tunic, wanting to get on something a little warmer than a tattered T-shirt, but moved the wrong way. A bolt of pain shot through me—from the shoulder Drac’s boys had tried to wrench off. “Son of a bitch!”
“You aren’t healed.” Louis-Cesare stood up beside me, without his usual fluid grace. I bit back a wry grin—and we were Mircea’s invincible champions!
“I’m okay.” That Fey magic was something else, but it hadn’t replaced the considerable blood loss—only time would do that—not to mention that I’d had plenty of aches and pains even before the fight. But that was nothing new.
“Are you certain? I may have overlooked something.”
I didn’t answer. A hand had come to rest beside my left breast, and a warm finger was caressing the damp cloth, tracing the almost invisible indentation left by one of the bullets. I started to say something, but my throat felt oddly constricted. Then both his hands were moving over my body, searching for hidden injuries. One finger accidentally brushed across a nipple, shooting sparks all the way to my toes. Calluses, I decided vaguely, can feel very good.
“Your reaction in the caves was worrisome,” he informed me.
I was more worried about my reaction now. I found myself wanting to suck those fingers into my mouth, to see Louis-Cesare’s eyes grow dark with lust and want. “You can see I’m fine,” I told his shirt, fighting a strong urge to take the delicate material in my teeth and rip it off him. It was so intense for a moment that I had to close my eyes and concentrate on why that would be wrong on so many levels: he was Daddy’s little spy, there to insure that Drac didn’t get everything he had coming, a vampire and a Senate member. None of those spelled lover in my book.
So why did my hand reach out to push a stray curl behind his ear? To my surprise, Louis-Cesare leaned into the feel of my hand. There was a slightly pink line, warmer than the rest of his skin, on his cheek. The fast-healing injury ran from his jaw nearly to his eye, adding to the pirate effect of the clothes. I traced it lightly with a finger. We were close enough for me to count the shades of blue that blended in his eyes, to see the way the strands of gold and brown and red mingled in his hair. To note the network of lines near his eyes, the fine traces of bitterness at his mouth. It must be the blood loss, I decided, reaching up to press my lips to his.
He went completely still at my touch, then, after a startled moment, gently tugged away. “Dorina, what are you doing?”
“If you don’t know, you’re the densest Frenchman I ever met.”
“You are not well.”
“Let me worry about that.” My hand tingled faintly where it rested against the flex of his bicep. I moved it to his thigh, finding hard muscle beneath the smooth leather. No softness anywhere, except the velvet of his skin, the touch of his mouth…
“You are in no condition to worry about it,” he told me, his voice oddly tender. He caught my hands in his. “I had to use power on you earlier, and I am not certain—”
“I can’t be influenced.” I tried to tug my hands away—there were far more interesting things they could be doing—but he laced our fingers together, tightening his grip.
“If your shields are in place, perhaps not. But they were not up earlier. And the residual effects of a powerful suggestion can be—”
Need washed through me, rough and wild. I didn’t want a lesson on mind control, damn it! I cut him off by reaching up on tiptoe and sinking my teeth into that lovely full lower lip, the one that had been driving me crazy ever since I met him. I barely had time to taste the blood on my tongue before his arms went around me, pulling me hard against him. But he didn’t kiss me, and with his height, I needed his cooperation. He also didn’t let go of my hands, so I was effectively immobilized, my arms trapped behind my back, our fingers still enmeshed. That strength that had so irritated me before held me fast, and I suddenly found it extremely erotic that I couldn’t get away unless he released me.