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 something 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—

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.

“Here.” Something was shoved under his nose, while Mircea was still trying to figure out if he dared to put on anything else. He was leaning toward no, and that was before he realized that the thing Horatiu was holding wasn’t the drink he could have really used right now. Instead, it looked like one of the allegorical warnings against sin that pious pilgrims to the city were always snatching up after visiting the brothels, and before stopping by the taverns to drink themselves insensate.

Only hellish painted monsters didn’t blink.

Mircea took the little mirror and examined his face. Half of it was more or less normal, the side turned away from the sun, he assumed. But the rest . . . Mircea swallowed again, taking in the naked skull bubbling with blisters, the reddened, peeling skin of his jaw, and the liquid pus oozing out of a corner of one eye, which was so swollen and puffy that he was surprised he could see at all.

And, frankly, wished he couldn’t.

“It’ll heal,” he croaked, and ignored the expletive that sentiment won him.

He turned back to the table, his eye over a bowl, trying to force out as much pus as possible. Horatiu muttered something just outside Mircea’s damaged hearing as he cleaned up the latest mess. When he was finished, he pulled out a chair and sat down, with an audible sigh.

“All right,” he said, after a moment. “All right.”

“All right what?” Mircea asked, feeling pained and put-upon and grateful and irritated, all at the same time. He appreciated all his servant did for him—he truly did—and he didn’t blame the man for looking disgusted. Mircea had felt his own lip curl at that brief glimpse of the creature in the mirror, so how could he blame Horatiu for a similar expression? But in that case, why didn’t the man leave him alone? Go look at something more attractive, and leave Mircea to what passed for his ablutions?

“We have to talk,” Horatiu said ominously, and Mircea sighed.

Oh, that was why.

“About?”

“About?” Horatiu looked like he was about to smack him again. “What d’ye think? Ye almost killed y’damned self. I hope it was worth it!”

“It was.”

Mircea gave up on the eye and sat back against the wall, feeling about as good as he looked. Horatiu got up again, fetching them both flagons of ale and tossing out the little bowl. Guess that was another thing that couldn’t be saved. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case with other things.

“I have it,” Mircea said, as a tankard was put in front of him.

“Have what?”

“What have I been looking for? The solution.”

“That’s what ye said about the blessed kerchief of the many gold pieces,” Horatiu muttered, and drank ale.

“That was from a shyster—”

“And this isn’t?”

“No.” Mircea drank, to wash the feel of burnt flesh out of his mouth. “No.”

“And how do ye know that?”

Mircea told him.

It took a while, and at the end, Horatiu was staring at him in consternation. Or maybe that was the wonky eye. He couldn’t see out of it worth a damn.

“Are ye mad, boy?”

Or maybe not.

Mircea frowned. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Pleased? Ye’re talking about killing her!”

“Killing—” Mircea paused, because he obviously hadn’t explained well enough. “No. Just the disease. Vampirism is—”

“What you are!”

“What I have,” Mircea corrected sharply. “A magical disease that I passed on to Dorina, and which is killing her. You know this.”

“What I know is that ye’re not taking her to some lunatic in the damned desert—”

“I will do what I must!”

“—and letting him carve her up—”

“He isn’t—will you listen?” Mircea grabbed the old man’s wrist, because he’d jumped to his feet, as if he planned to spirit Dorina away while Mircea was too weak to stop him. “He isn’t going to carve up anything. He’s going to cast a spell that divides her mind, walling off the vampire-based insanity and allowing her to live a normal life. Isn’t that what we’ve wanted?”

“No! That’s what ye’ve wanted! Ye hate what ye are, even now, after all this time. Ye can’t accept it, blame it for costing you—”

“Careful.” They didn’t talk about his deceased wife. They just didn’t.

Except for tonight, apparently.

“Why careful?” Horatiu demanded harshly. “Elena’s dead because of that damned murderous bastard of a brother of yours, not for anything ye could have—”

“She’s dead because I left her! Alone and unprotected! Just like I left Dorina—”

“Ye didn’t even know she existed!”

“And that makes it better?” Mircea got up, despite the fact that there was no room to pace in their closet of a kitchen. Or in the rest of the shack he called home these days. A dainty old lady dipping her toes in the surf, the man who sold it to him had said. When the reality was that it was a roof and little else, one that looked like it could collapse into the sea at any moment. He should be glad to have it nonetheless; plenty had less. But he resented it, like he resented having to fawn and crawl to the praetor, to the wealthy so-called healers who had yet to heal a damned thing, to the whole world!

When he was alive, he’d led armies in suits of armor that cost more than this house, possibly more than the whole street. He’d returned to palatial dwellings, servants, the finest of food. And gold, so much that he’d become careless with it, and had to be chastised by his father, because too much liberality could be viewed as a sign of weakness.

He didn’t miss the money—most of the time—or the trappings and finery. He didn’t mind living in poverty, in mended clothes and patched shoes, in a city where ostentatious wealth was the only birthright anyone cared about. He didn’t even mind the contemptuous glances—

All right, that was a lie. They burned almost as hot as the sun, but he could deal with them. He couldn’t deal with this. Watching his daughter die, eaten alive by the curse that had already stolen his life, his wife, everything he cared about. And was now determined to deprive him of the last thing of value he had left.

It wouldn’t succeed.

Not this time.

“I can’t kill it,” he told Horatiu. “It’s part of her now. But I can trap it, imprison it, wall it away. This mage said he’s done it before, but it takes a fantastic amount of power, more than he possesses or I can afford—”

“Then this is over.”

“Like hell it’s over!” Mircea rounded on the old man. “He doesn’t have the power now, but I’m going to get it for him. And when I do, the vampire part of Dorina will never be a problem again.”

“The vampire part.” Horatiu’s rheumy eyes met his, and there was fire in them. “D’ye hear yourself? Has this latest charlatan rattled your brain, or did the sun cook it?”

“Have a care—”

“I am! I do! And the sense that has somehow left you.” The old man gripped his arms, and Mircea allowed it, despite the pain. Because Horatiu looked pained, too. And worried, more than Mircea thought he’d ever seen before. “She’s your daughter—all of her—aye, the vampire part, too. How d’ye think we found you tonight? Do ye think a human could have tracked you in time, through the maze of streets around here?”

“She is human.” Mircea pulled away, furious that Horatiu couldn’t understand. “She has abilities, yes, because of the disease, just as I do. But it’s killing her—”

“And this mage won’t? Men like him prey on the desperate, telling ye what ye want to hear, to gain what they want in return. He’s fed you a story!”

“He’s also the first decent chance we’ve had! The first to hold out any real hope—”

“Aye, that’s how they get you. They’re purveyors of hope, of dreams—and nothing else!”

“And how would you know?”

“How would you? Because he told you?”

“No. Because she did.” Mircea looked up, in the direction of the room where his daughter slept. “Dorina followed me tonight, to the praetor’s. Not in body,” he added, because Horatiu was looking alarmed. “Mentally. You were right about her gifts.”

“Mentally?” The old man’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. But she was there. And when I asked her how she managed it, how she could do anything after what she went through last night, do you know what she said?”

“I’m going to find out,” Horatiu muttered, also looking at the ceiling.

This time, it was Mircea who took him by the arms. “She said, ‘It’s only bad when we’re both awake at the same time.’ She knows, Horatiu. She knows there’s two of her, a light and a dark. The girl she should have been, and the monster I made of her.

“A monster I’m going to shut away—forever.”