Chapter Forty-two

Mircea, Venice, 1458

For a moment, everything was quiet. The ship creaked, the girl snored, the footsteps of the two men echoed vaguely from somewhere overhead, their master having disappeared back through the portal. But that was all. The hold full of unconscious vampires didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move.

Except for the one with the broken arm, which finally finished twitching itself back together and then fell off to the side, pulling the rest of the vampire along with it.

He hit the boards hard, and the sound reverberated in Mircea’s brain. For a moment he didn’t know why, the panicked hurry, hurry, hurry in his veins clouding his thoughts. But then he realized: if he fell off his own stack, he’d end up sprawling either on the girl below or right beside her. He would almost certainly come into contact with her, might even touch her skin. And then—

Maybe nothing. Touch helped his mental abilities, but even at his best, he couldn’t control people with his mind. He couldn’t make them do something they didn’t want to do. But he could influence them, especially if what he was pushing for was something they wanted anyway.

Of course, he didn’t know that the girl wanted to help. She might just want to get away. In her position, he definitely would, since her life expectancy with what she knew was probably about the same as his.

But he wouldn’t know if he didn’t ask.

And he couldn’t ask if he never got off this pile!

He put his mind onto moving again, anything, anything at all, just so long as it helped his precarious position become a little more so. And when that didn’t work, he shifted his attention to a finger on the hand that lay in front of his face. Trying for a twitch that might send it sliding off the pile and possibly take him along.

He didn’t get it.

Cazzo!

And before he could try again, the two bullyboys were back, along with a number of sailors. They started carting the vampires up the ladder, quickly but carelessly. Nobody seemed to worry if a head hit a beam or struck the ceiling as they were towed through the small opening. No one seemed to mind if half-healed bones were rebroken, or if a protruding, rusty nail snagged an arm, tearing a great gash out of the flesh. No one seemed to care what kind of damage was done, and Mircea knew why.

Abramalin had told him.

Mircea had always wondered why there were so many mages in Venice. He’d understood why the vampires were there: it was a perfect feeding ground, with festival crowds regularly coming and going, most of them too drunk to notice if they lost a little blood. And, before the new consul changed the rules, it had been the only place in Europe where masterless vampires could find refuge.

But why so many mages?

He’d originally put it down to Venice’s size and wealth. A large, well-off populace meant plenty of targets for whatever scam the unscrupulous were running this time, and plenty of customers for the more legitimate practitioners. It was also a busy port, meaning that potion supplies were easy to come by.

One potion supply in particular.

Because, while he’d been right about some of the reasons for the large mage presence, he’d overlooked the biggest draw of all. That wasn’t surprising; it was almost unthinkable to him, even now. But unthinkable or not, the fact remained: the mages were in Venice because the vampires were.

Specifically, the mages were there for vampire bones.

No one knew exactly why, but vampire bones were one of the most potent potion supplies to be found anywhere. Not that they changed a potion; they didn’t seem to have any effect on the intended outcome at all. Except for one.

According to Abramalin, the addition of even a small amount of vampire bone to any potion instantly upped its power by several magnitudes. It could take a minor-level ward and make it virtually impregnable. It could take a simple love spell and bind someone with utter devotion. It could take a spell meant to light a candle and cause a raging inferno.

Put simply, it was a multiplier for magic, many times over. And as such, was worth considerably more than its weight in gold. The supply, however, was somewhat . . . challenging . . . to come by. Masters protected their families with deadly vigor, with even unimportant family members avenged lest anyone think the clan weak. Vampire bones, as magical as they might be, were a rare commodity.

Or they had been, before Venice was established as an open port. The masterless had started flocking to its sandy shores, their few belongings on their backs, desperate hope in their hearts. Hope that was soon shattered by the reality of the place. For most of the creatures who found these shores, it had proven to be merely more of the same: wealth, power, and position were the keys to success in Venice, and they had none of them.

Stubborn types like Mircea pushed through anyway, struggling to scrape a living on the bottom of Venetian society. Or to learn a skill that might endear them to one of its masters, and possibly find them a home. But others, who had pinned their last hopes on the supposed refuge, only to be disappointed again . . .

Well, suffice it to say that there was no shortage of vampire bones in Venice.

They were as plentiful as seashells on the shore, literally washing up on the sand after the daily immolation. Every morning, the wretched and the damned went down to the sea, to await the fearsome embrace of the sun. And every night, the mages and their assistants feasted, courtesy of the haul they’d made after scouring the beaches.

Until the current consul came to power, that is.

And the once-plentiful bones were suddenly less so.

There were still some poor souls, unable to cope with eternity in what they viewed as hell, who were willing to end it all. But for many, the change in regime had made a marked improvement in their situation. There were new safe zones in several areas, including the glittering capitol at Paris. There were rights-of-way being marked out between them, allowing safe-ish travel through jealously guarded territories. And, most of all, there were laws against littering vampires around the landscape that you weren’t planning to be responsible for.

Masters were now expected to account for every child they made, and those who became too careless risked their own lives and positions. So the masterless had less competition finding themselves a family, more places to search for one, and an elevated position even if they chose to remain on their own. For there were jobs where the unaffiliated were preferred, and they were becoming a rare breed.

For the first time, the unwanted hordes of Venice had a real reason to hope.

Of course, for the mages, the shoe was on the other foot. Not only was the supply of masterless vampires drying up, but the ones who did arrive weren’t even killing themselves anymore! The once-plentiful commodity, which had made the great mage families of Venice filthy rich, was suddenly rare once again.

And then things became worse.

Because somebody had started hunting vampires, taking by force what was no longer being given. And worse still, the bastards weren’t sharing. Abramalin had been very clear on that point.

“There’s nothing,” he’d told Mircea, his various beards quivering in indignation. “Not a scrap! The only shipments going out these days are remnants of old stock from some of the bigger traders—at triple the price! But nothing new. Nothing at all!”

“That’s . . . unfortunate,” Mircea had said, trying for diplomacy while wondering if Abramalin was planning to augment his stock with him.

But if the idea had occurred to the old mage, he gave no sign. “Unfortunate? Unfortunate? It’s like having your magic cut down to a tenth of what it was!” he raged. “Everything has to come from us now, doesn’t it? And we don’t make nearly as much as we use!”

“I can see how that would be troubling.”

“Can ye now?” Black eyes had glittered at him behind falls of grizzled hair. “Then imagine this. Some of us aren’t interested in workaday spells. We’re innovators, visionaries, inventors! We are the future of the magical community, keeping it on a par with—well, you lot, for one. And any other rivals we find out there.”

“Yes, I under—”

But the old man hadn’t been listening.

“Come up with a spell, and somebody finds a way around it. So you have to come up with another. But it’s trial and error, isn’t it? Twenty, fifty, a hundred times I might have to attempt the same spell before it works, and then I have to refine it! And where does that power come from, hmm? I don’t generate enough—no single mage does! So, without our shipments, innovation has slowed to a crawl, and will soon get worse when the old stock is used up. We must have that trade reestablished!”

“I’m not going to help you kill anyone,” Mircea had snapped, fear giving way to anger. “I’m not going to help you collect anyone’s bones!”

“Have I asked ye to?” Abramalin sneered. “We aren’t the ones butchering your kind, boy! But if it’s found that some damned fool mages are trying to manipulate the price or whatever the hell they think they’re doing, and murdering your people in pursuit of it, what do you think is going to happen then? To all of us?”

“Then do something about it! Find these murderers—”

“Don’t ye think we’ve tried?” The old mage threw his hands up. “We’ve had people in Venice for months—good people—but found nothing.”

“How is that possible? I thought you had ways—”

“It’s possible, young vampire, because whatever mages are involved, they’ve got themselves some help. Your kind of help. They must have; it’s the only magic we can’t trace. Your kind don’t do magic; ye are magic, and damned near invisible to our eyes!”

“You’re saying you can’t detect them?”

“Not in a city full of you, no! And whatever magic, if any, is being used to support them, it’s subtle. Too much for us to identify when half the mages in Christendom are also packed into that damned city, and working spells all the time. It’s impossible!”

“Then go to the Senate. They have resources—”

“Oh, yes, why don’t we do that?” Abramalin said sweetly. He’d been pacing back and forth, waving his arms and basically looking like a madman. But when he whirled around, the old eyes were shrewd. “Perhaps I’ll do it meself, walk in and inform her scalyness that, oh, by the way, there’s some rogue mages and a vampire or two committing mass murder in Venice, and interferin’ in the trade of your people’s bones. Can you help us get this sorted out so we can get things back to normal?”

“You’re afraid she’ll shut you down.”

“I’m afraid she’ll declare war! Mine and your kind are always teetering on the brink of it anyway, and this is the sort of spark that could set it off. And even if it doesn’t, she’ll doubtless view this as an intolerable slight, and yes, shut us down! Which rather puts us right back where we started, doesn’t it?”

“But if you explain,” Mircea continued stubbornly, “as you have to me, and if it’s just a few of your people—”

“But we don’t know that, do we?” Abramalin pointed out. “We have no idea who’s behind it, nor how many are involved. If it’s someone with the right sort of connections, this could spiral out of control very fast. We need one of your kind, someone who can keep his damned mouth shut, to go in and find out how they’re doing this, and who’s behind it! We’ll take it from there.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

It came out dryer than Mircea had intended, but the feeling in his gut wasn’t sarcasm. It was dread. This was even worse than he’d expected, and he hadn’t expected anything good. But the praetor was already on the search, and with pressure coming from the consul, that wasn’t going to change. She had only him on it now, not understanding the seriousness of the problem, but if he didn’t find out something soon . . .

Mircea didn’t want a war, either. He just wanted to save his daughter. And helping Abramalin could do that, and possibly stop a serious conflict, too.

It was repugnant, working for people who traded his people’s body parts like so many trinkets. But the trade predated him, and would continue whether there was a war to stop it or not. The last thing people give up is power.

Especially power like this.

“All we want from you is information, boy,” Abramalin had said, his voice taking on a wheedling tone. “There’s no need for you to be in any danger yourself.”

Yes, Mircea thought now, staring around at the cargo of vampires.

That was working out well.

And then it got worse, when a couple burly sailors stopped beside his stack of bodies, shoved the sleeping girl to the side, and picked him up. A moment later, Mircea was experiencing the pain of being dragged carelessly up the ladder and tossed onto a rain-slick deck, along with piles of other corpses. Corpses that were too insensate to see what hell lay ahead of them.

Unlike him.

He’d landed facing the port, giving him a perfect view of the activity on shore. Not that he needed it. The stench would have been enough, all on its own.

It was a smell he was intimately familiar with, from both halves of his life. The metallic thickness of spilled blood from the battlefield, cloying and strangely sticky in the nostrils. And the unmistakable smell of burning human flesh, half roast pork and half something that made your skin ruffle and crawl and shudder, because it was wrong, it was wrong, it was wrong.

He’d smelled that often enough since coming to Venice, when plague visited the town or was suspected, and the authorities ordered burnings instead of proper burials. The people had complained so much that the government had started restricting the burnings to the small island of Lazzaretto, where plague victims were quarantined if found still alive. And yet, when the wind was right, you could still smell them, roasting in their own fat.

People tried to pretend the stench was from the local taverns’ cook fires, but they knew. They always knew. Like Mircea did, even before the clouds of smoke parted, and showed him a glimpse of the carnage on shore.

For a moment, he froze, not only his body but his mind, too, refusing to understand what he was seeing: piles of living corpses, strewn about here and there; other piles of dismembered yet still-living body parts, because vampires didn’t die just because you hacked them up; stacks of bones, gleaming pale in the moonlight; and the massive kettles they were piled beside, where the steam was rising, rising, rising . . .

Along with the silent screams of the damned as they were boiled alive.

And then it did register, oh, yes, it did, and the overwhelming flood of panic that came with it was wild enough to wash him off the pile, to send him scuttling like a wounded crab across the deck, to leave him with his head pushed through a railing, so desperate to get away that he forgot his shoulders wouldn’t fit, too.

That was partly the fault of the spell, still dragging at him, and partly his own. Every time he tried to focus on a limb, it stopped working, as if remembering that it wasn’t supposed to be doing that. He wouldn’t get away like this; he could barely even think! And, at any moment, the ship was going to dock, and the sailors would be back, and after that—

Mircea was a soldier. He’d faced death many times. But not like this. Not butchered like an animal, and sold like a piece of flesh in the market. He wanted to tear at his throat, to let in air he couldn’t use but suddenly, desperately, needed. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think—

And then a voice was in his ear, familiar, but bizarre in this damnable place.

“Hush. Be still.”