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.”

“I’ll heal in a moment,” Mircea said, hoping it was true. But the vampires who mended hurts so quickly were far older than he, and had large families from which to draw strength. He had a hysterical woman, the disembodied consciousness of his daughter, and half a body. He was going to die, wasn’t he?

And then he felt like an ass, because if it hadn’t been for his little group, he’d be dead already.

Dorina had been with him on that awful ship, something he would have given a great deal to spare her. But he had reason to be grateful for her presence: she’d been the one to flit down to the hold, to wake the red-haired woman, and to persuade her to reactivate the portal. And then to help Mircea break through that strange paralysis long enough to crawl a few yards, near to where a group of unconscious vampires lay slumped by the mainmast.

He hadn’t been much better off himself, dizzy and prone to body parts suddenly going unresponsive. And he’d been confused as to what, exactly, he was doing here, instead of finding a way to slip into the water without anybody noticing. But that wasn’t likely, and he assumed Dorina had a reason—

And then he’d felt it, the dim thrum, thrum, thrum of the portal’s energy, radiating upward from the ceiling of the room below.

For a moment, his eyes had widened and his heart had leapt, because portals didn’t have sides, did they? They weren’t like doorways: they could be entered from any angle, and still dump you out . . . wherever they went. It wasn’t guesswork. He’d used one before; he knew how they worked!

So, if he could just break through these boards . . .

But he couldn’t.

They were nothing special, just normal boards, sturdy yet weathered by sun and sea. Normally, smashing them to bits would have been the work of a moment. But today, nothing was normal. And if Mircea’s limbs were clumsy, it was nothing compared to his hands.

They flopped against the deck like two beached fish, all but useless. He couldn’t get any strength behind them, and even if he did manage to break through the damned planks, how was he supposed to remove them in his current state? How was he supposed to pry up the deck of the ship without bringing every sailor on board down on his head?

It was impossible!

He lay there, furious and terrified, feeling the portal’s power quite literally just below him, but having no way to access it.

Dorina, he thought, his gut twisting. He had to find a way to persuade her to leave, before she saw . . . what she was going to see. He didn’t want her to remember him like that. He didn’t want—

And then something hit his face.

A single drop of water ran down his cheek, distracting his thoughts. And then another, and another, the soft patter steadily growing harder. It cut through the greasy feel of that terrible smoke, still billowing this way even as the winds picked up and the rain came down and the ship began to rock slightly, side to side. And as Mircea looked skyward . . .

At a miracle.

He’d felt like laughing, even in that awful place. Because God—and yes, there was a God; he knew that because the Divine delighted in tormenting him—had decided he’d suffered enough. And sent him salvation in the form of one of Venice’s famous November storms.

A big one.

The skies hadn’t cracked open so much as torn asunder, suddenly deluging the small ship with a solid sheet of rain. Along with wind and lightning and cresting waves that sent the vessel sliding around on its anchor. And mages yelling and rushing to get their cargo secured, so that it didn’t tip into the sea.

Mircea barely noticed. He had started scrabbling at the deck, desperate to break through, and failing because his hands still didn’t work. But his elbows did. Enough, at least, for him to punch through the boards with brute force, and then to tear at them with teeth and elbows and wrists, heedless of the sound now, most of which was covered by thunder in any case.

Speed was all that mattered.

Yet he still hadn’t been fast enough.

Somebody saw him; he didn’t know who, but it didn’t matter. Not with hands suddenly grabbing him, dragging him back. But the portal had seized him, too, catching the fist he’d accidentally dangled too low and pulling, pulling, pulling.

Hence the broken legs—or shattered, more like—that had resulted from the tug-of-war between a powerful magical object and half a dozen men. The portal won, in the end. But it was safe to say that Mircea still lost.

Maybe God wasn’t finished toying with him, after all.

But then, as he was dumped onto the flooded streets of the Rialto, still desperately fighting to get away, he received his second miracle: the portal shut down. Not correctly or properly—at least, he assumed not. Since it cut several mages and a vampire in half in the process, when the shortcut through space they’d been using suddenly disappeared.

The two mages were human; they had not continued to move for long.

But the vampire was different, and he wasn’t one of the poor sods destined for the rendering pots, but one of those putting them there. Worse, he was a master. And even half a master, Mircea had discovered, was far more powerful than he.

The vamp might be trailing half his intestines behind him, but he still had two good arms. And an excess of shattered boards that had followed them through the portal. Quicker than Mircea could parry, almost quicker than he could see, the master grabbed one of them, snapped off the end to give it an edge, and—

Looked down in alarm, at the similar piece of wood sticking out of his own chest, the bloody tip glistening in the latest lightning blast.

Mircea had a second to see the red-haired woman standing over the body, her eyes huge, her hands still gripping the other end of the piece of wood. And then the master was hacking at him again and again and again, trying to finish the job. And Mircea was grabbing up a shard of his own, his fingers suddenly quicker, steadier, with the feel of an invisible hand covering his own.

Dorina, he thought, and she was savage, slashing across the creature’s throat, releasing a torrent of black blood, sticky as tar. It flooded over him—them—as he panted in shock and pain. And struggled to get away with the creature’s body pinning his legs.

But he was too clumsy and it was too heavy. Leaving him nowhere to go as the master slowly raised his head, the dark slash in his throat mirroring the grinning rictus on his face. And grabbed for his makeshift stake again, because the horror hadn’t bled out yet!

“Die! Die! Die!” Mircea was yelling and stabbing and scrabbling back, agony shooting up his spine as the true state of his legs became apparent. And as the master got the makeshift stake in him, more than once. And as Mircea kept twisting and turning and scuffling and slashing, to make sure it didn’t hit his heart—

And then watching as the master’s head went bouncing across the cobbles and fell into the canal, when a lucky strike finally finished the job.

He lay there, watching it bob among the waves for a moment, his mind blank with shock.

Until somebody slapped him.

The red-haired woman, Mircea realized, staring up at her.

“Move!” she screamed.

He moved. Not running or even walking, both of which were out of the question now, but crawling, if dragging himself by the arms counted. Because passing out, or cursing, or any of the other things one usually did in these cases, wouldn’t get him anything but dead. And he didn’t want to be dead.

But several hard minutes later, he could still see the space where the portal had been, sandwiched between the two stalls that had fallen over in the gale.

And right after that, the praetor’s voice had shaken whatever tiny hope he’d had left, leading him to his current state, sprawled against the side of the bridge, wondering if the booming sounds from above were God’s hysterical laughter.

Then the woman slapped him again.

“I said, where are the rest?” she screeched.

Mircea blinked up at her, mud and water and gore dripping off his face. “The rest of what?”

“Your companions! When are they coming for us?”

Mircea started wondering if fear had driven her mad. “Would I be in this condition if I had companions?”

She stared at him. And then she shook him. “What are you talking about? Where is the Circle? Where is Abramalin?”

“You know Abramalin?”

She stared at him some more, although he wasn’t sure how well human eyes could see in this light. But she must have seen something, because she managed to slap him again. “You weren’t sent to get me out?”

“Cease attacking me, woman!” Mircea snapped, and pushed her.

From his perspective, he’d barely touched her, but he sometimes forgot vampire strength. Or perhaps she slipped on the torrent raging across the cobblestones—he didn’t know. He knew only that she hit the side of the bridge, bounced off, and fell down the embankment.

Cazzo!

He scrambled after her, afraid she would drown. And she might have; the canal was roiling like the ocean, as if the whole city had somehow floated far out to sea. But she wasn’t in it.

“Abramalin! È un figlio di puttana! Un porco demonio, un miserabili pezzi di merda!”

Mircea blinked. He didn’t know if Abramalin was the son of a whore, but he was absolutely spawn of the devil and a miserable piece of shit. “He sent you in and then abandoned you,” he guessed, as she floundered around in a boat full of fish.

“He said he just wanted information! He said I wouldn’t get hurt!”

“Sounds familiar.”

She wiped her face, which didn’t help because the rain was still pelting down. “You, too?”

Mircea nodded, before remembering that she couldn’t see it. “Yes. And now we’re both in desperate danger, but if you’re with Abramalin, you must be a witch. You can get us out of this!”

Sprawled among the fish, she looked up at him for a startled moment, her face blank. And then began laughing hysterically. Mircea went back to worrying for her sanity.

“I’m what’s known as a scrim,” she finally managed to gasp, as if that made things any clearer.

“What?”

“You know, like the curtains?”

Mircea scowled. “I’m not a mage! I don’t know what that means!”

“It refers to my kind being like curtains that block out the sun, leaving a room dark inside. Magicless.”

“Then you’re not a witch.”

“I’m a witch as much as any of them!” she snarled, probably because she’d just tried to get out of the boat, slipped on fish, and landed on her backside. “But I don’t make enough magic for anyone to detect it. My kind make good spies.”

“So you’re a spy?” Mircea said, because frankly she didn’t look like one.

“I’m an idiot,” she spat. “I came to Venice because I have one talent, one I hoped to turn into a fortune and spite them all, everyone who always told me how useless I was! But, instead, I listened to Abramalin, and his stupid stories about the future of the magical community—the same one that always despised me! And now look—”

Mircea cut her off. “What talent?”

“Glamourie.” She was thrashing about in fish guts, in what to her was probably total darkness, but that didn’t seem to have dampened her spirits any. “‘Go to Venice,’ they said. ‘The courtesans there live like queens,’ they said.” She slipped again, and ended up draped across the side of the craft, cursing. “If this is a queen, I’d rather be a commoner!”

“Glamourie,” Mircea repeated, hope dawning. “Then you can disguise us!”

“I could disguise myself,” she corrected. “I don’t have enough magic for two. And it doesn’t matter, anyway, when I can’t disguise my scent. Or don’t you think I’d have walked away before this?”

Mircea felt like battering his head against the boat, but he was hurt enough.

“Abramalin, the bastard, was supposed to send someone to get me,” the woman continued, ripping her skirts to get them free of a nail. “But the damned praetor changed locations, and I couldn’t get to the rendezvous for a week or so. She didn’t want anyone getting wise to her little scheme—”

“To kill the consul and take over,” Mircea said, as things finally made sense.

The woman nodded. “The weapons she was making from all those bones would give her the edge she needed when they dueled, and she wasn’t taking chances. I found out everything, but no one ever came to get me out! Just left me for dead. Who cares about a damned scrim? I should have known—”

She cut off when Mircea shook her. “Wait! You’re saying you can do magic, you just need more power?”

“I—yes. Something like that. Why?”

He looked behind him, up the little stretch of beach.

“I have an idea.”

---

“Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God—”

“Be silent!” Mircea hissed.

“I’ve never done anything—oh God!” And then the witch grabbed him, her eyes reflecting the lightning above them. “I’m going to be sick,” she told him calmly.

And then she was.

All over him.

Mircea didn’t care. He was already waist-deep in water, with waves crashing into him on the regular, washing away worse things than that. Much worse.

He held on to the little boat full of fish. And tried to keep the waves from slamming the damned thing into his half-healed legs. Something he couldn’t very well prevent and hold on to the briccole, the wooden pillars used for docking, at the same time!

He and the witch were down a little way from the bridge, near where the vampires had been doused earlier. The side of the canal was built up here, to make a decent pier. Enough to hide them from eyes on the quayside, if they didn’t look down. And they wouldn’t, not with what they were about to see.

That was the hope, anyway, Mircea thought, fighting with the boat. It was an old hulk of a thing, a repurposed gondola with its once-shiny paint now mostly gone and the wood beneath cracked and splitting. Which was less of a problem than whether it would stay afloat!

“They’re coming.” He felt Dorina rejoin him, after briefly flitting about the nearby streets.

Mircea was surprised it had taken them this long. The first five vampires had been nobodies, just hunting in local taverns and rousted out by the urgency of the praetor’s command. But her real troops were out now, and augmented by whomever they could press into service. There must be literally thousands of vampires on the streets, looking for them.

And thanks to Dorina’s whispers in the leaders’ ears, most of them were now coming this way.

How long? He asked her mentally.

Now.

Damn! He grabbed the witch, who had been hugging a briccola to stay upright. “Do it!”

She swallowed and looked at the boat, which had a mage and a vampire in it. Or, to be more precise, half of each, two of the bodies from the fight at the now-vanished portal, wedged in and weighted down by piles of fish and nets to look like they were sitting up. One wore Mircea’s face, the other her own. And either she was low on power, or she had overestimated her gift, because Mircea’s doppelganger had one eye higher than the other, and a terrifying grin on his face, while hers . . .

Well, that would cure a man from going to brothels, he thought wildly.

But perhaps it would be good enough from a distance.

“I’m going to let the boat go, and then you do it, all right?” He repeated the plan, because she wasn’t looking all right.

“I hope this works,” she told him rapidly. “I haven’t done this much. Or any. I mean, when I was younger, before they realized . . . I had the usual training, but I don’t actually use . . . I mean, I never—”

Mircea fought an urge to shake her. “It’s all right. Just try to concentrate.”

“Yes.” She swallowed again. “When—when did you want me to—”

“Now.”

“Now?”

Mircea’s head jerked up, because all of a sudden he could feel them. And by God, it was an ocean of vampire power surging their way. Irresistible, unstoppable, overwhelming. They were both going to die!

“Yes, now! Now, now, now!”

“All right—”

“Now!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“NOW!”

“Then launch the damned boat!”

He didn’t have to launch it so much as let the sea take it. He shoved it, nonetheless, as hard as he could, out into the swollen canal. Which grabbed it like a child with a new toy.

Mircea grabbed her, jerking the woman back among the briccole, and slamming them both up against the canal, where the raging sea had carved a shallow channel into the side.

He couldn’t see the vampires, assembling somewhere above them. Could barely even see the boat, through the water that kept hitting him in the face, and the mountainlike waves. Couldn’t see anything—

But someone else could.

“There! In the boat! They’re getting away!”

He had a brief moment to hear the shout taken up by what sounded like an army. And then swords being dropped and boots being shed, as the praetor’s guards prepared to jump in after them. And yet still the witch did nothing.

And neither could Mircea, for fear of being overheard.

Wait, she mouthed, as he glared.

Wait! as he shook her.

Wait, a pox take you!

And then a lightning bolt flashed, blindingly bright, and thunder boomed, so close and so loud that Mircea almost jumped out of his skin. And finally—finally—the witch threw out a hand, while everyone cowered in fear and the elements roared and the little boat, storm tossed and tempest rocked—

Went up like a powder keg had gone off.

Make that a hundred powder kegs, Mircea thought, pushing the woman the rest of the way into the water. And shielding her as best he could as explosion after explosion tore through the night. They displaced the waves in a huge trough around what had been the boat; they sent what looked like burning orange fireworks into the formerly darkened night; they lit up the entire expanse of waterfront, including the witch’s amazed face, resurfacing with a gasp, because she hadn’t expected that, either.

So that’s what half a skeleton’s worth of vampire bone gets you, Mircea thought, as the praetor’s men shouted, and the winds blew, and what was left of the little craft sank beneath the waves, to be carried away by the tide.