Chapter Forty-four

Something was wrong.

I awoke in a strange bed, with a strange vampire. I had a hand on his throat before I recognized him: the powerful master from the fight. The one my twin liked.

He was in a healing trance, his many wounds bandaged but still radiating heat. Yet he was not insensate. His kind retain a low level of awareness in that state, so he knew I was there.

Yet he never so much as stirred, even with my nails digging into his flesh.

I slowly removed them; he wasn’t the source of the danger.

But something was.

I glanced around.

There was no one else here, but there had been. The room was full of scent puddles, some distant in time, days old. Servants, likely, in to clean and then out again, quickly enough that their presence barely registered. Others were brighter. Like my Sire’s, his scent unmistakable: dark, rich, and deep. Part of it clung to my hairline, where he’d pushed some damp strands away. It was an hour old, perhaps two.

I sat up.

The brightest scent in the room was around a chair beside the bed. A woman—a healer, judging by the faint traces of herbs and tinctures—had sat there for some time, and possibly fallen asleep watching over her charges. She’d definitely been the one to bandage the vampire; none of his kind would have bothered. He couldn’t get infections, and he’d heal himself soon enough, something I supposed she hadn’t known.

She’d bandaged me, as well.

Too well.

Mummy, I thought, glimpsing myself in a mirror. The comment came from my still-asleep twin. She thought we looked amusing, like a bikini-wearing mummy, the undergarments almost obscured by bandages and tape.

I didn’t care what we looked like.

I cared about the niggle at the back of my mind. Something familiar, but that I couldn’t quite place. Something wrong.

There was a door across from the bed. I walked over and opened it. No one was outside, not a single guard, which seemed unwise. Did no one here know what I was, what I could do?

But all I saw was an empty hall, and all I smelled was woodsmoke and alcohol. I followed the scents down the corridor, to where it let out into a sitting area. It was mahogany paneled and dimly lit, mostly by the flickering light of a low-burning fire. A small group had gathered around it, including two humans. I automatically synced my heartbeat with that of one of them, but may as well not have bothered. They were too caught up in their conversation to pay me any attention.

And too secure.

Because this place . . . what was this place?

The terrible fog in my head caused by the stun spell had cleared, allowing me to access my abilities again. But what they were telling me seemed impossible. I tried to contact my twin’s mind, but she was too deeply asleep, and batted away the request. It didn’t matter; I was already reaching out, in something like awe, my mind encountering what felt like every vampire on Earth. I brushed mind after mind, all crowded into one place, like a working anthill. And at the center of it all—

The queen.

I could see her in my mind’s eye, not here but somewhere close, seated on a dais in the midst of a crowd of her creatures. Silks fluttered, satins gleamed, vampires talked and laughed and moved around her, but I barely saw. Didn’t care.

How can you see the stars when the sun is out?

“—no bloody idea!” That was one of the people around the fire. There were five in all: Radu, a woman in a glittery blouse, the dark-haired master from the fight, another master vampire I didn’t know, and the human man who’d spoken. They seemed to be arguing.

“Then take a guess!” The dark-haired master appeared agitated. He was the only one standing, with an arm on the mantel when he wasn’t striding around the room. He was strong enough to sense my presence, even with precautions, but too distracted to care.

“I can’t!” the man spat. “It’s absurd!”

He was a mage; I could smell the magic on him. His voice boomed around the room as he sat forward, arguing animatedly with a creature who could silence him between one heartbeat and the next. But he wouldn’t.

The vampire wanted something.

“Don’t lie to me!” He was bending over the man now. “I know what you do, in those labs of yours. You experiment on everything! You’re telling me you’ve never—”

“That is what I’m telling you. And get out of my face, vampire!”

“Uncle . . .” That was the glittery woman. She was the healer I’d detected in the bedroom. I could just discern her scent over the smell of the fire, and the cologne her relative wore. He was still in dirty clothes, fine evening wear smeared with dust. He had been at the fight, too, then.

“Don’t ‘uncle’ me,” he told her. “I came here for you, even after everything, and now I’m being bullied!”

“No one can bully you.”

“Well he’s damned well trying!”

I was following their conversation, but it was almost background noise. I was more interested in the queen, or more accurately, in her power. It was astonishing—and strange. The strangest I’d ever encountered.

Most masters have a constant level of power. They can call up more in an emergency, from their own reserves or those of their Children. But normally, they display an average that allows you to guess at their abilities.

Not this one.

I watched the aura around her shrink and expand, shrink and expand, but not like breathing. It was wild, uneven, capricious. Instead of being smooth, it spiked and dipped, ebbed and flowed, in a pulsing, jittering rhythm. At its height, I could not have touched her. I doubted anyone could. But at its depth . . .

At its depth, I could have her.

Our eyes met, and a small smile flirted with her lips. “It would be . . . unwise . . .” she informed me, lighting a cigarette.

And, suddenly, I was back in my head, panting and confused, from what felt like a mental slap.

“—wanted to, how would we obtain any?” The mage was asking. “We’ve experimented with fey flora, now and again—even use some of it on the regular. They have a root that’s a damned good stabilizing agent, better than anything we had before. But their bones? Are you mad?”

“You’re saying you can’t get them?” The dark-haired master sounded skeptical.

“I’m saying I haven’t tried! I’m not a murderer—or an idiot. The Light Fey—”

“I didn’t say anything about the Light Fey. I don’t expect you to go hunting the highborn, but some of the Dark? The type nobody would miss? You’re telling me—”

“I’m through telling you anything!” The man was on his feet now, and furious. I felt his heart rate spike, saw the flex of his fingers at his waistline. They must have taken his weapons before letting him in here.

Probably just as well.

“Uncle, please—” That was the glittery woman, who had put down her drink to jump up and grab his arm.

“Perhaps I should summon Lord Mircea?” the other vampire asked.

“I don’t need Mircea!” the dark-haired master snapped. “I need answers—and I will have them!”

“What you’ll have is nothing if you don’t shut up!” That was the woman, putting herself between her family member and the dark-haired master. She looked at her uncle. “Forget about him. Will you answer a few questions for me?”

He scowled, but after a moment he relented. “Make it fast. Your aunt was still in hysterics when I left, after that damned farce tonight. You’re lucky we got shields up in time, vampire!”

“I would hope you could manage that much,” the dark-haired master sneered. “When we were saving your lives upstairs from some of your own kind!”

“That’s it.” The man’s fury had coalesced into grim resolve. “I won’t stay here and be compared to a bunch of damned black magic users—”

“You think that’s what they were?” the woman asked.

“What the hell else would they be? Normal mages don’t go around experimenting with ground-up bits of fey!”

“Just ground-up bits of vampire,” the dark-haired master said, showing some fang.

“Damn it, man! That was hundreds of years ago!”

“Officially, maybe.” That was the other master, commenting in a smooth, unruffled tone. He sounded like a bureaucrat, and had some sort of device he kept checking. “The traffic continues, in small amounts—”

“Maybe among the Black Circle—”

“That’s always the excuse!” The dark-haired master flushed. “Every time we catch you lot in anything. ‘Oh, it wasn’t us—it was the bad type of mages!’”

“Because it usually is!”

“Not tonight! The Black Circle attacked us several times recently—here and at a stronghold in Las Vegas. They suffered enormous casualties, yet didn’t use these powerful new weapons—not even once. Which makes me suspicious—”

“Are you accusing me, vampire?”

“I’m asking for an explanation! Your own life was imperiled tonight, and your family’s. I’d think—”

“Something that would not have been the case if you’d taken precautions!”

“We did! Those spells tore through them like they were tissue paper! Who the hell is making them? And how and why and where? I want to know and I will!”

I stopped listening. The master was wasting his time; the man didn’t know anything more than he’d said. I could see the bewilderment in his mind, along with fear and anger. The vampire would get no answers tonight.

But perhaps I would.

I followed the annoying niggle back down the corridor, to where a dining room lay behind a door. There was a fireplace in here, too, but not for heat. I pushed my head through the illusion and found what I’d expected: a secret passageway, a spy tunnel, and a way for she-who-saw-everything here to move her servants about quickly.

No one surprised her in her own home. Not even me. I would be spotted in moments by one of the masters I could feel roaming the pathways that snaked through this great house. I would never make it to her, not through all this.

Well.

Not without some help.

---

I woke up in a strange bed, with a familiar vampire. And in alarm, but not because Louis-Cesare was looking like a corpse. But because—

What the hell?

Dorina, I thought blankly, and fell out of bed.

And then proceeded to go snuffling about, like my counterpart was currently doing. Because she wasn’t in my body anymore. She was—

“Ew!”

“Dory?” Louis-Cesare peered at me blearily, from over the side of the bed.

It was the consul’s, or at least one owned by her, because we were in her house in upstate New York. The ants-on-skin feel of the place, the result of my dhampir senses being assaulted by the presence of hundreds if not thousands of vampires, all at once, was unmistakable. It literally made me want to scratch my skin off, and Dorina . . .

What the hell would she make of a place like this?

Shit.

Why did I think I knew?

“Dory?” Louis-Cesare said again, looking at me strangely.

I sat up, trying to ignore the taste of whatever my counterpart’s avatar had just found in a dark corner. It wasn’t going so well. And now it was on the trail of something else, scurrying about in the dust, because housecleaning was not a priority in secret passageways.

“Dory?”

“I’m fine.” I looked around. “Have you seen some clothes?”

“What clothes?”

“Any clothes!”

Louis-Cesare caught my arm. “What is wrong?”

For a moment, I didn’t answer, because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t supposed to be able to do this, to feel Dorina when she was away, to know what she was doing. Except for that moment at the end of the car chase with Caedmon, when I’d had that terrible split-screen view of the world.

I didn’t have it now, but I had something.

“Dory, talk to me!”

“This might sound a little weird,” I warned him.

“Trust me, it already does.”

Louis-Cesare was looking at my nose. I grabbed it. It was snuffling again.

Goddamn it!

“I think there’s a chance Dorina plans to kill the consul,” I told him quickly.

“What?”

“I told you it was going to sound weird!” I broke away.

Louis-Cesare’s pants were on the back of a chair. I pulled them on. And then pulled them off again, because I’d do a Marlowe in the damned things and break a leg! Damn it, I didn’t have time for this!

I settled for a sheet, wrapped it sarong-style, and headed for the door.

“Wait.” Louis-Cesare was suddenly beside me, which wasn’t a problem. And leaning on the door, which was. “Explain this to me.”

“I already did!”

“Explain it to me again.”

“I don’t have time!”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

I looked at him. He should have been in bed. He had healing scars all over his body, and even a few seeping wounds. I could smell the blood, thick and strong, under all the bandages.

It should have been reabsorbed by now, like the wounds should have closed. Hell, they should have closed instantly! But there’d been a minute or so when he’d been fighting a whole coterie of mages all on his own, ones armed with weapons that killed most vamps on contact. How many times had he gotten hit?

“How many times were you hit?” I demanded.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters!”

“Why?” Blue eyes suddenly burned into mine. “I thought you no longer cared for me?”

I glared back at him. “This? This is the moment you take for that conversation?”

“Why not? According to Claire, there are things I do not understand.”

“The only thing you need to understand right now is, there’s the bed.” I pointed. “Get in it!”

“No.”

I glared at him some more.

It didn’t seem to help.

“I’m coming with you,” said the most stubborn creature on earth.

Make that the second-most stubborn. “No way in hell.”

“And why not?”

“Because I’m not sure you can take her!”

I opened the door; he shut it again. And splayed a hand over it to keep it that way. “That’s what this is about? You think she is stronger?”

“She’s a first-level master!”

He arched an eyebrow at me.

“And she has freaky abilities—”

“The same could be said of any of us.”

“Not like this!” I tried to open the door again, but it may as well have been cemented in place.

“Like what?”

“Let go of the damned door!”

“Answer the question. Like what?”

I turned on him. “Like inhabiting a rat scurrying through secret passageways, looking to kill the consul!”

Louis-Cesare blinked at me a few times. “I’m . . . going to call somebody.”

“Call Marlowe. He’s just down the hall. Or he was. He can get her away before Dorina finds her—”

“Get who away?”

I stared at him. “Are you listening to me at all? The consul!”

Louis-Cesare licked his lips. Then he pulled me into an embrace I didn’t want, but when a first-level vamp decides he wants to hug you, you just go with it. We stayed there for a moment.

I don’t know what he was doing, but I was debating eating some rat bait. The rat was in favor, but Dorina was trying to talk him out of it. They were still arguing when Louis-Cesare pulled me over to the bed and sat us down.

“One more time, with a bit more explanation?”

I sighed. “Dorina has some kind of weird master power. You know, the one Caedmon mistook for a fey ability?”

He frowned at Caedmon’s name, but didn’t comment on it. “But it is not.”

“No! It’s . . . Look, I just found out about it, so I don’t have a huge amount of info here. But she can separate from my consciousness and . . . tag along . . . with other people. And things.”

“Things?” He frowned. “You mean like a—”

“Rat, yes. She didn’t think she could make it to the consul in my body, so she borrowed another one.”

“But you’re a senator. You can go wherever you wish. She didn’t need—”

“But I don’t think she knows that. We’re having communication problems, and I don’t think she understands everything.” I sure as hell didn’t, I thought, feeling queasy.

Probably because my avatar had just eaten a bellyful of poison!

“Crap.”

“What?”

“Never mind. We just have to tell Marlowe—”

I started to get up, but Louis-Cesare pulled me back down. “Tell him what?”

“That the consul’s in danger!”

“Yes, I do not think we will be doing that,” Louis-Cesare said, grabbing his trousers off the chair.

I watched as the world’s best butt, bruised and bloody though it was, disappeared into the rumpled leftovers of a once-nice suit. “What are you doing?”

“I told you. Going with you to find Dorina.”

“Why? We’ll just tell Marlowe—”

Louis-Cesare turned on me. “What? That your alter ego is about to kill his Lady?”

I frowned. “Well, we won’t put it like that—”

“It doesn’t matter how you put it. He will very likely attempt to kill you to ensure her survival.”

“I’m not trying to kill her!”

“But you and Dorina share a body, do you not? He may well decide that killing one would dispose of both.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but yeah. That sounded exactly like something Marlowe would do. And, bonus, I wouldn’t be besmirching his beloved Senate anymore, either.

“All right,” I told him. “We won’t say anything to Marlowe.”

“You don’t have to,” somebody said. And shot me.