Shadow's Bane

  “What if we could?”

  “You wouldn’t. Go back to being human?” I laughed, because that comment deserved it. “No vampire would do that.”

  “You might be surprised. But that isn’t the offer on the table, is it? Not you becoming human but Dorina becoming vampire. Fully, completely, with no human side to hold her back, to rein her in. You’ve thought about it—don’t you think she has, too?”

  “Damn it, Mircea! You can’t just—” I stopped the explosive comment I’d been about to make, tried to compose myself. Arguing with him made me see red faster than anything else on earth, and then nothing productive happened. “She could do it,” I admitted, after a moment. “I know she could.” I met his eyes. “But she hasn’t. And she’s had plenty of time.”

  Mircea didn’t even blink. “She’s had a few weeks. To our kind, that is nothing. To her, it is nothing. Her viewpoint today—if she even knows it yet—may not be the same tomorrow. Or next week or next month or next year. The fact is, she can banish you at any time, force you out and take over, and you have no defense against it. Save one.”

  “You mean by doing the same thing to her.”

  “Not the same thing. She will still be alive.”

  I looked at him, and wished I had his way with words. Wished I had a way to make him see. “That’s not living.”

  It never had been.

  But I didn’t have the words, and maybe there weren’t any, because Mircea was as stubborn as I was. He’d found a solution once, at great cost to himself, when everybody had told him there wasn’t one. It hadn’t been perfect, but from his perspective, it had kept both versions of his daughter alive.

  Why change it now?

  But for me . . . it wasn’t that easy. I hadn’t known what was happening before, hadn’t even known Dorina existed. Much less the price she’d paid for my continued survival. And now that I did, how could I send her back to that? What right did I have to send her anywhere?

  “You have the right of any creature to survive.”

  “Get out of my head!” I turned away, furious and frustrated, and afraid—more than I wanted to admit. And angry at myself for feeling that way.

  Because she’d never given me cause, had she? Not once. And she’d helped me, all those times she’d fought for me. Maybe I hadn’t needed it, but maybe I had. Maybe there’d been things she’d picked up on that I hadn’t seen, dangers I hadn’t noticed.

  Like tonight. I’d been sleeping, dead to the world. The faint static of that creature’s mind hadn’t even registered. I would have slept right through everything, and awakened to the death of a queen and a world in chaos.

  But Dorina had heard.

  And while I might have been the one to throw that knife, she’d gotten me there.

  Or maybe she’d just done it out of self-preservation, since our losing the war would hurt her, too. Like maybe all those times she’d helped me in the past were because she thought me weak and incapable, and hadn’t been willing to risk it. I just didn’t know.

  And neither did Mircea.

  I turned back around. “I want to talk to her.”

  “Dory!”

  For a moment, Mircea looked like he was about to lose his cool. The eyes flashed amber bright; the nostrils flared; the hawklike aspect of his features became a little more pronounced. Because I have the same effect on him that he does on me.

  But he reined it in.

  “That would be unwise,” he told me tightly. “If she knows what we’re planning, she could, and likely would, evade it—”

  “We aren’t planning anything—”

  “But you should be! Now, while she’s asleep. When she wakes up, we won’t be able to talk. When she wakes up—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. It was drowned out by a burst of noise, shockingly loud, only it wasn’t. Just the usual soft music, idle conversation, and click, clink of glasses, which I hadn’t realized had been blocked out until it suddenly broke over us again.

  I stared around, like Mircea himself was doing. Something had cut through the sound barrier his masters had created, but I didn’t know what. And I couldn’t see what was happening in the room, because there were still two rows of vamps in the way.

  Until, suddenly, there weren’t. They parted, straight down the middle, leaving a long, cleared path lined with vamps on either side. And at the end—

  Was a woman.

  No, make that a fey, beautiful and golden haired, her shining locks cascading to the floor and explaining the consul’s current hairstyle. But there was no Goth vibe here, no reds and golds and vague creepiness. There were only big blue eyes and a simple blue gown and a peach and pink complexion, like something out of a Victorian painting of the perfect woman. Or girl, because she looked about sixteen.

  She wasn’t.

  Efridis was almost as old as her brother Caedmon, and he was ancient by human standards. But looking at her, it was almost impossible to believe. The air of innocence was palpable.

  Which was why it was so strange to feel the tide of rage suddenly pouring through me.

  I had time to say, “Uh-oh,” not that I could hear it over the roaring in my ears. I had time to look at Mircea, who was staring back with alarm on his face. I had time to feel the strangest sensation, like I was about to vomit up the world.

  And then Dorina tore out of me, as I’d seen her do in Mircea’s presence once, barely a ripple on the air, almost invisible unless you knew what to look for. But I did. And even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered.

  I’d have caught on when Efridis started screaming.

  Everything after that happened really fast. I saw something emerge from the fey queen, another ripple in space. But not one rising calmly or charging out determinedly, but ripped out of her by Dorina, right before they went writhing into the air, and what felt like a couple extra atmospheres descended on the room. Mirrors shattered; vases toppled; fey and vampire alike hit the floor. Except for Mircea, who grabbed me right before something smashed into us like a freight train.

  It sent me flying back against the wall for the second time that night, something I wasn’t sure my body could take. But Mircea had gotten behind me and absorbed the blow. And then held me as I screamed and fought, feeling like my insides were being ripped out, because Dorina was back—and she’d brought company.

  Whatever she’d planned, it had gone horribly wrong, because the creature was far more powerful than her, than both of us. I felt Mircea invade my mind, trying to help, but it easily flung him out as well. But it obviously didn’t know my father, because the next moment he was back, and he’d brought company, too.

  A lot of it.

  I didn’t know all of Mircea’s masters, but suddenly I could see them, and not just the ones gathered around us. A brunet sat on a sofa a few floors down, a book falling from his suddenly motionless fingers; half a dozen beat-up guards, drinking around a table in Washington State, looked up all at once, as much in sync as if they’d been practicing for weeks; a few dozen more dropped what they were doing in Las Vegas, heads turning unerringly toward New York—

  But it wasn’t enough.

  This thing, this fey queen’s power, was like nothing I’d ever encountered. Shocking, cutting, cruel. And pervasive.

  It felt like every cell was being attacked at once. I tasted blood in my mouth, saw it spurt from my lips. Felt my heartbeat start to slow—

  And then my field of vision abruptly widened—or “pulled back” might be more accurate. Because, suddenly, I could see beyond the confines of the country, Earth like a blue ball spread out beneath me. One with golden sparks lighting up everywhere.

  Mircea’s family, spread around the globe, a lightning storm of power all coming online at once at their master’s call.

  And while the thing inside Efridis was strong, so were we. Everywhe
re she looked now were faces, staring at her. Every move she made was countered, not by the power of one or two, but by dozens, hundreds, thousands. I’d had no idea Mircea’s family was so large, no idea at all—

  And then the globe caught fire, as a few million more sparks flared in the darkness.

  “The Senate,” someone said, but I didn’t know who. I was watching a globe full of light come screaming at us. A ball of fire roaring with the combined fury of all the Senate’s masters and their families, all at once.

  I didn’t feel it when the blow landed, because it didn’t land on me. But I felt the creature get torn out of me, felt it go flying back to its home, saw the fey queen get lifted off her feet by the force of it and slammed back against the wall, hard enough to go crashing through it.

  And then they were gone, all those minds, all that power, leaving me panting in Mircea’s arms as Caedmon dove for his sister, as the consul stepped daintily forward, as Louis-Cesare ran for me. And as Marlowe’s voice boomed out from somewhere across the room.

  “I believe we have our second senatorial witness, majesty!”

  “You know, I do believe you’re right,” the consul said, peering through the hole in the wall at her currently unconscious guest. She looked at her guards, streaming at her from all over the room, and bared some fang. “Take her.”

  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 te
ar 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—