Masks

  He tried to call up the scene again as he navigated down the narrow, twisting stairs: blue, blue sky, soft breeze, drifting curtains letting through glimpses of dazzling sunlight.

  Although not as dazzling as the sight spread out below him.

  Dark hair spilled out around her, a sort of reverse halo. Sunlight glistened off skin that looked like it had been oiled, soft and supple and begging to be touched. She stretched invitingly underneath him, the ripple of lean muscle under golden skin made liquid by sunlight.

  The sight was almost painful.

  But she wasn’t ready, wasn’t even close, and Mircea had never hurt a woman. He didn’t intend to start now. So he stayed in position, shaking, breathing hard, eyes searching the small area fruitlessly.

  Until a pot of some sweet-smelling lotion appeared as if my magic beside his hand.

  He didn’t know where it had come from; didn’t care. He accepted it gratefully, using his teeth to pull out the cork. He spilled it out quickly with shaking hands, smoothing it over his quivering shaft.

  “Hurry,” his client ordered. And Mircea’s brain, which was clearly attempting to ruin his life, threw up a comment wondering what had ever happened to slow.

  He ruthlessly suppressed it, but her lips twitched anyway.

  He responded by sliding a gentle, seeking finger into her wet heat.

  He was rewarded with a small gasp, and an undulating arch that took more of that finger inside herself. He swallowed and added a second, and a bone-deep shiver went through her, before he felt her deliberately relax around him. Allowing him to stroke deep inside, to hear her groan as he touched just there, to feel her hips shift and rotate as he began a slow circular caress over the sensitive spot, pleasuring and stretching at the same time.

  He drew back and added a third finger, before beginning to thrust carefully, seeing sweat begin to gather and glisten in the hollows of her throat, between the full breasts, down the center of the taut stomach. His need was now great, to the point that he was shaking with it, but he continued until she began to rock harder, arching up to meet every thrust, her breath making low growls in her throat. Until the growls finally formed words.

  “I’m not going to break. Do it.”

  Mircea didn’t need to be told twice. He slid smoothly into her, trembling with the effort of restraint, his hands curling over her hip bones, pulling her onto him. She gasped and tightened convulsively around him, and he bit his lip, struggling for control. Before drawing back with agonizing care and then thrusting forward, a little harder than at first.

  The sensation tore through him, as much mental as physical. For two years, he had been dead, in every sense of the word. He had thought he would never be anything again, never do anything. That he had been cursed to a hopeless existence, little more than a shade, doomed to walk in darkness, cold and alone for whatever time he had left.

  And yet here he was, making love in the sunlight.

  It seemed impossible; it seemed absurd. But he could feel it on his shoulders, like a rich mantle. Could taste it on the warm air that blew over them. Could see it glisten on a few strands of his hair as they blew in the breeze. And in the sheen in her eyes as she looked up at him, knowing and strangely compassionate. He uttered a choked cry, and made another thrust, more powerful yet, bringing his hips up tight against her.

  She met him hard, with a hot, needy stare that destroyed the last of Mircea’s composure. He began to pump furiously even as his eyes slid shut, allowing him to savor the tight, slick friction of their joining. He knew he was going to finish fast, but he couldn’t seem to hold back anymore, driving his need and wonder and pain and joy into the body beneath him.

  She bared her neck for his kisses, her fingers tangled in his hair, freeing it to curtain their faces as she pulled him down again. Their mouths fastened hungrily on each other as she writhed beneath him. Her tight heat pulsing around him in a way that was designed to take him over the edge.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, against his throat. “Finish for me.”

  And Mircea did. Bracing himself above her and thrusting with all his strength, feeling some cold, hard knot inside him crack and break as he neared release. And then burst apart when he came, along with the rest of the world, vanishing in a shock of heat and light and all-consuming fire.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Mircea?”

  His foot slipped out from beneath him, and Mircea felt himself falling. But he was too disoriented to stop before the floor did it for him. He landed in a sprawling heap at the bottom of the stairs, which would have been bad enough.

  But then he looked up to find Bezio standing there, frowning at him. “You all right, son?”

  Mircea didn’t reply for a moment, dizzy with the impact, half blind from the sudden lack of sunlight, and preoccupied with feel of her moving beneath him, the scent of her in his nostrils, the taste of her on his tongue. And then that burst of light, as if the sun had exploded around them . . .

  And then nothing.

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember a thing beyond that point.

  “Mircea?” Bezio was starting to sound worried.

  “I . . . don’t know,” Mircea replied unsteadily. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

  Bezio put out a hand. “Then come and find out.”

  That would have been easier, if half the house wasn’t already crowded into a large suite at the end of the hall. Even Cook was there, along with several of the other servants, sitting on stools they’d brought up from the kitchen. But most were on the massive bed, where Marte was holding court amid a flutter of silks and feminine laughter.

  “There’s always room for a few more!” she called gaily, as they entered the room.

  And then he and Bezio were being pulled into the throng, amidst a lot of good-natured groping that, in Mircea’s case, hurt like hell. But he finally found a spot near the center of the bed, beside the hostess. Bezio seemed fine with that, considering that it left him with an armful of buxom redhead in the form of Zaneta, her henna dyed locks fitting perfectly under his chin as she rearranged herself.

  “Snuggle up any closer and we’re going to have a problem,” he warned her, as she settled between his legs.

  “That’s not what I call a problem,” she laughed, and deliberately pushed back against him.

  He gave a leer, but didn’t try to move away. Although that could have been because a pert blonde named Bianca was snuggled up right behind him, on her knees so she could see over his head. Which left said appendage firmly ensconced between two pert breasts barely covered by a piece of pink silk.

  “All right there?” Mircea asked him sardonically.

  “I’ll make do,” he said, and leaned back, making Bianca laugh.

  “You keep that up, I’m going to charge you,” she warned.

  “Alas, I haven’t any money. But perhaps we can work out a trade,” he offered, looking up and waggling his eyebrows.

  “That’s what I charge for,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder, which had no effect at all that Mircea could see.

  “All right, all right, settle down,” Marte called, from Mircea’s other side. “It’s starting.”

  “What’s starting?” he asked, understanding no more than he had upstairs.

  “Not that way,” she sighed, and gripped his head, turning it from her to the wall opposite the bed.

  Or, to be more precise, the huge mirror that took up half the wall.

  Despite everything, Mircea stared at it in surprise. The mirrors at home were like the one in his room: small pieces of convex metal, usually brass or occasionally silver for the wealthy, that had been polished to a high shine. It wasn’t until he came to Venice that he’d seen actual glass mirrors, although they, too, were usually small and at least somewhat distorting.

  This one was flat. An
d huge. Enough to reflect the image of almost the entire bed.

  And the rube gaping at it from on top.

  Mircea shut his mouth, and slowly noticed that the flat surface wasn’t entirely so. Tiny lines showed where smaller pieces of glass had been fitted together to make a massive square, almost floor to ceiling. He flushed at the thought of what use Marte might have for such a thing, but he was already so red that nobody noticed.

  “Why are we looking at your mirror?” he asked Marte, trying not to sound as off-kilter as he felt.

  Only to have the item in question answer for her.

  The surface suddenly rippled and changed, as if a pebble had been thrown into a pond. And when it coalesced again, Mircea wasn’t looking at a bunch of expectant faces on a bed. But at a bunch of expectant faces by a pier.

  He swallowed, partly because the sudden, unexpected movement had made him dizzy. But more because he’d seen that pier before. He’d seen that whole scene before: the blue, blue sky, the bright, sunlit sea, the manicured grounds of an elegant palazzo.

  He just didn’t understand how he was seeing it now.

  “What—” he began, just as a voice began talking in rapid Venetian, too fast for Mircea to have any hope of keeping up. It wasn’t anyone on the bed; wasn’t someone he knew. He looked around, tensing—

  And realized that it, too, was coming from the mirror.

  And now he was able to catch a few words: “much-awaited,” “excited crowd,” and then “tragedy.”

  “Never say they’re not going to show the whole thing!” one of the girls piped up, disappointed. “I wanted to see the clothes!”

  “They’re showing highlights,” Marte told her. “But I’m sure they’ll—there. I knew they’d show the gallery. They always do.”

  “Ooooh!” A feisty brunette named Besina practically crushed Mircea while trying to get a closer look at something in the mirror.

  It was a woman strolling along a covered colonnade, the kind the Venetians called loggias. It ran along the front of the palazzo the consul was using, and overlooked the sea. A number of onlookers had gathered there, who Mircea hadn’t been able to see from the terrace above.

  “What are those—oh. Golden bees,” Besina said thoughtfully, as if making a note of the raised embroidery on the woman’s silver gray satin dress.

  “Oh, oh! Look at that one!” A blond Mircea didn’t know crowded him on his other side.

  Marte shot her a look, but the girl was too enthralled to notice, staring with unabashed lust at a maroon velvet gown. It had a golden net of embroidery that reached from the wearer’s waist to bodice, and then continued on beyond the fabric all the way up to the woman’s neck. The embroidery over skin look was created, Mircea assumed, by some type of lace effect.

  “Jacopo told me that couldn’t be done, the bastard,” she muttered.

  A crimson gown that looked like patterned cloth was appraised next, because the “pattern” was intricate gold embroidery over every square inch of cloth. And then a dark blue velvet with golden ram’s heads embroidered into the shoulders in high relief. And then a pale blue satin so encrusted with pearls as to be stiff even when the woman wearing it walked.

  There were others, causing oohs, and aahs and, occasional “what was she thinking”s out of the girls. Mircea barely noticed, because Bezio had pulled him back within earshot. “Stunned me the first time I saw it, too,” the older vamp murmured.

  “How are they doing this?” Mircea whispered, in wonder. He was looking at a picture, clear as day, of the day. More specifically, of earlier this day. He recognized some of the people who had been at the regatta, and the throne, yet to be occupied out on the pier, and the decorations and banners ruffling in the wind. He just didn’t understand—

  “It’s some kind of spell,” Bezio told him. “Some of the people at an event agree to have it placed on them, so that we can see what they see. It lets those of us who can’t walk in the day experience some of what happens while we sleep.”

  “A . . . spell?”

  “Stole it from the mages,” Bezio affirmed. “I don’t know much more about it, but it seems to work. And they say they can put it on any—”

  He broke off as the scene tilted and juddered. And did an odd hopping bounce for an instant that had Mircea’s head bobbing, too, as if trying to compensate. And then suddenly soared upwards at an alarming rate, as if headed straight for the brilliant sun overhead.

  Mircea gasped, and several of the girls gave out little shrieks. Which turned into not-so-little ones as the scene abruptly turned and banked and rushed straight down again. Sending several of the girls tumbling to the floor, and Mircea himself clinging to the bed as if it had tilted, too.

  “Oh, I hate it when they do that!” someone said.

  “What is it?” Mircea demanded, looking about frantically, surprised to see that the room wasn’t moving, too.

  “They put the spell on a bird,” Marte laughed. “Oh, I love it!”

  “I don’t!” Zaneta said, looking through her fingers as the bird soared out over the lagoon. “It makes me seasick!”

  “You can’t be seasick on land, silly,” Marte told her.

  “I can if my stomach says I can!”

  Mircea stopped listening, being too fascinated by the dips and turns of the bird. And by the size of the mirror and their closeness to it. And by the spell, which was so amazingly lifelike, that he almost felt like he was flying, too.

  “It’s wonderful,” he said, and then he laughed. “It’s wonderful!”

  And it was. A view he’d never thought to see opened up underneath him, truly a bird’s-eye view of brilliant water that shaded from deep indigo out at sea, to paler shades closer to shore, to sunlit aqua right on the beach; of the clouds, which seemed close enough to touch; and of tiny, tiny ships far below, which he knew to be huge barges. . . .

  It was enough to take his breath away.

  And then the bird dove, in a single, heart-stopping plummet that had girls clinging to him on every side and Bezio chuckling and Mircea having to clamp his teeth on a delighted scream. Only to land on the edge of a roofline, in a flutter of wings and small, reaching feet. And have the vast panorama suddenly replaced—

  By a fat lizard?

  The creature took off just as a flashing beak reached for it. Leaving the group on the bed treated to an up close, scurrying chase along the edge of the roofline for a few dizzying seconds, until the scene changed again. To a slightly harried-looking vampire waving his hands in the air.

  Until he noticed that whoever was controlling the view was now looking at him.

  He smiled a little weakly, and then the scene flashed to a view of the house that must have originated from near the end of the pier.

  “There’s Mircea!” Zaneta squeaked, grabbing his shoulder. “Look! There you are!”

  She was pointing at a small upper section of the mirror. Where, sure enough, Mircea saw himself standing next to the balcony railing. And thankfully not looking as gormless as he’d expected.

  “Look at you!” Marte laughed, hugging him. “You look like a senator!”

  “Standing in sunlight,” someone said from the door.

  Mircea looked over to see Auria, wearing a beautiful blue satin robe. It was a good choice with her auburn hair, which had been allowed to tumble freely down her back. It didn’t do anything to help the expression on her face, however.

  “She used some sort of shield,” Mircea said.

  “Obviously.”

  “It . . . must not have worked too well,” he added, gesturing at his face.

  “It worked a little too well, if you ask me,” she said, and abruptly left.

  “Don’t mind her,” Marte told him. “She’s just jealous.”

  “Of what?” Mircea asked, confused.

  “Of what, he asks,” Marte
said, rolling her eyes.

  “Shh, shh!” one of the other girls said. “It’s starting!”

  Mircea looked back at the mirror, but it looked more like it was ending to him. Suddenly, there was a crowd of people at the end of the dock, the ships were out in the center of the lagoon, and the battle was well under way. What had taken perhaps an hour in real time had been sped up considerably.

  Or shown intermittently, he supposed, because the next scene, along with more rapid talking, was of the blue team’s barge in the middle of capsizing. And then another jump, to things that Mircea had never seen, or at least not noticed. The blue barge sinking completely out of sight, the orange barge rocking madly back and forth, threatening to overturn as well with all the tumult now taking place on top of it. The orange team finally deciding to take the initiative and begin shoving the blues into the water, and then starting to row away.

  This led to the slightly comical effect of a trail of blue, and some orange, combatants trying to swim to catch up to the fight. Or flailing about because they didn’t know how. Most of the latter soon began flailing toward shore instead, along with more and more of the former, as they realized that they’d been left behind.

  The orange team’s shouts of triumph could be heard as far away as the pier, where the latest point of view seemed to be located. The cheers of the crowd only added fuel to their enthusiasm, and they began waving and shouting back. And then someone made the decision to do a victory lap around the lagoon.

  “This is it,” Marte said, gripping Mircea’s arm, maybe because she realized that he couldn’t follow the increasingly rapid commentary coming from the mirror.

  Only Mircea didn’t see what “this” could possibly be.

  The fight was over. The orange team had won a decisive victory, and must have even succeeded in throwing the rest of their blue opponents overboard. Because they weren’t even fighting anymore.

  They were lining up along the side of the boat, with more standing atop the covered section near one end of the ship, threatening to capsize their own craft as they sped about the lagoon. Only the rowers managed to keep it counterbalanced enough that the rest of the team could wave and call and lean precariously over the side, trying to catch the flowers being thrown at them by enthusiastic spectators, some of whom were running through the water, trying to catch up to the ship as it passed just outside the shallows.