Touch the Dark

  “But didn’t Louis-César say he was here that year, in 1661?” I looked around nervously. That was all I needed, a homicidal maniac or a bunch of fed up townspeople to come busting in with pitchforks, ready to slaughter everybody.

  Mircea didn’t look overly concerned. “Yes, he was moved around to many prisons through the years, staying in captivity until shortly before his brother died, when the last of the friends he was protecting passed away. Then he took off forever the velvet mask they had made him wear so no one would notice his strong resemblance to a certain narcissistic English duke, who had left portraits of himself all over Europe. He told me once that his jailers only forced him into the iron mask after he was turned, and even then only when he was transported from one prison to the other.” He grinned at me. “It was a precaution, you see, so that he didn’t eat anyone en route.”

  I gave him a dirty look—now was not the time for humor—and tossed him the robe I’d used during my previous visit. “Get dressed. We need to get out of here.”

  He caught the robe in midair. Nothing about the possession seemed to be bothering his reflexes, but then, I’d already found that out. “I have told you, Cassie; you are panicking for no reason. They will come to us, and after we dispose of the sybil, we will save my brother.”

  I blinked. I hoped I hadn’t heard right. “What do you mean, dispose of her? She was kidnapped, Mircea! She may not be any happier about being part of this than I am.”

  He shrugged, and the casual indifference made me cold. “She aided our enemies and is indirectly responsible for the deaths of at least four Senate members.” He saw my expression, and his face softened. “You have grown up as one of us, but I often forget, you are not vampyr.” He gave it the Romanian pronunciation. It sounded better that way, but the implication behind his words hit me like a sledgehammer. “She is the key to all this. Once she is gone, there will be no other way for anyone to slip through time, and therefore no more threat.”

  I began struggling into the woman’s clothes, which were scattered everywhere, and tried to come up with a response that would make sense to Mircea. I thought about the four Senate guards who had been killed. By the look of them, they had been with the Consul hundreds of years and must have served her faithfully or they wouldn’t have been entrusted with protecting the Senate chamber. They may not have decided to betray her: the sybil had interfered with their transition and Rasputin was a powerful master who might have been able to force their obedience. It seemed unlikely that they would have chosen to essentially commit suicide by taking me on in front of such an audience if they had had a choice. But that fact hadn’t saved them.

  Vamp law was very simple, if a little on the medieval side, and intent wasn’t nearly as important as in human courts. Nobody cared why you did something. If you caused problems, you were guilty, and the guilty had to pay. If you were in a quarrel with another master, your own might intervene to save you if you were useful enough to make it worthwhile, either by a duel or by offering reparations, but no one could do anything about a threat to the Senate. There was no higher power to which to appeal.

  After only a minute, I gave up trying to figure out how the unbelievably complicated dress worked and threw on the lightweight slip instead. It was too thin, but at least I was covered. I crawled under the bed and retrieved the woman’s shoes, then sat looking at them in annoyance. So, high heels weren’t a modern invention. I couldn’t believe women had been putting up with these torture devices for centuries.

  “Would you like me to help, dulceaţă?” Mircea was holding out a peacock-colored dress that I assumed the woman had been wearing at some earlier time. “It has been some time since I played lady’s maid, but I believe I remember how.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. I bet he did. After five hundred years, Mircea probably couldn’t remember all the boudoirs he’d been in. “You forget,” I told him, as he helped me on with the heavy dress, “that there will still be a way into time, even if the sybil dies.”

  His hands were warm on my shoulders as he pulled the gown into place. He adjusted the low neckline, and his hand lingered on the exposed flesh. “The Pythia is old and sick, Cassie. She will not last much longer.” I looked up into his face, and there was tenderness there, but also implacability. Mircea was willing to talk me around to his point of view, but not to really listen to mine. He had already decided how to deal with this—find the sybil, kill her, go home. It was utterly practical, if absolutely cold-blooded.

  “But I will,” I reminded him. “Or were you planning to kill me, too, after Radu is saved?”

  Mircea widened those borrowed blue eyes, but there was none of Louis-César’s innocence in them. His hands turned me around so he could reach the lacings at the back of the dress. “I have told you, dulceaţă; you are mine. You have been so since the age of eleven. You will be so forever. And no one harms what is mine. You have my word.”

  It sounded frighteningly like Tomas’ speech. I had known, of course, that that was how he saw me. It was how any master would see a human servant, as a possession. In my case I was a useful, and therefore highly prized, possession, but that was all. But it was still hard to hear it stated so flatly. “And if I don’t want to be owned? What if I want to decide for myself what I do?”

  Mircea kissed the top of my head tolerantly. “I cannot keep you safe if I do not know where you are.” He turned me around, the lacing completed, and lifted my hand to his lips. His eyes burned brighter than the room’s candles. “You do see that, do you not?”

  I saw, all right. I saw a life lived in thrall to one of the circles, to the Senate or to Mircea personally. Whatever he might say about the respect and influence my power would bring, the truth was that I would never be viewed as anything except a pawn to be used. If I became Pythia, I would never be free. Damn. I hoped metaphysical sex didn’t count.

  “Yes, of course.” I sat down on the bed while he took my foot in his hands and drew on one of the woman’s long, white stockings. I let him finish dressing me, and tried to think of some way to save the sybil, since arguing obviously wasn’t going to cut it. I had to get him somewhere out of the way until I could find her and figure out whether she was in this voluntarily or not. Otherwise, the very practical vampire I was with would simply kill her. While that would solve the problem, I didn’t think it was a solution I could live with.

  Something occurred to me by the time he slid the last garter into place. “Mircea, you told me that your brother made Louis-César. That was why what Tomas and I did didn’t change anything. Instead of being cursed with vampirism by Françoise’s family, he was brought over the usual way by Radu, right?”

  “Yes, it would seem our Frenchman had a destiny that would not be denied.”

  “Then Rasputin doesn’t have to go after Louis-César directly, does he? If he destroys Radu, no one bites Louis-César and he dies at the end of a normal life, instead of living to become a master. Radu must be restrained somehow or they wouldn’t have been able to keep him here. And killing someone tied down and helpless would be a lot easier for a spirit than attacking a strong, free man, wouldn’t it?”

  Mircea had grown pale. “I am a hundred times a fool, Cassie! Come, quickly! They may already be there!”

  I resisted as he tried to draw me to my feet. “You go ahead. In case I’m wrong, I should stay here to catch them if they come.”

  “Rasputin is a master vampire! What could you do against him?”

  “He’s a master in our time, but he’s only a spirit here. I have a body, so I’ll be the strong one. Besides, I think Radu is a far more likely target, don’t you?”

  Mircea wanted to argue, but worry about his brother overcame his usual caution, and finally he went. I waited thirty seconds, then slipped out after him. I made my way to the corridor where I had encountered the swarm of ghosts and, with effort, managed to feel them even inside borrowed flesh. I couldn’t see them as I had in spirit form, which was annoying, but they definitely
knew I was there. I stood in the middle of that cold stone hallway and felt them crowd around me like a chill fog. A second later, the door to the torture chamber started to open and I stepped into the shadows that lined the walls. “Hide me,” I whispered, “and I will help you.”

  The shadows wrapped around me like an invisible cloak, shielding me from the dazed eyes of the mutilated woman who appeared to be hovering in the doorway. She was suspended three feet above the ground, but although I couldn’t see them, I knew who carried her. I waited until her body floated down the stairs, carried in Tomas’ invisible arms, then started as a puzzled voice whispered a question in my ear.

  “In English, please,” I told him impatiently. In this woman’s body, I could understand French if I concentrated, but it took effort and I needed my strength for other things. Slowly, Pierre appeared before me. He was nowhere near as clear as before, but I didn’t feel like complaining.

  “How is it that you can sense us, madame?”

  I realized that he saw the woman I was possessing, and not myself. “It’s a long story, and we don’t have time for it. Bottom line is, we both want vengeance, and I think I know a way to make that happen.”

  A few minutes later, my ghostly army and I descended on the lower dungeons. I thought I had already seen the worst Carcassonne had to offer, but I was wrong. These chambers made the upper levels seem almost attractive by comparison, at least to me. They probably would have appeared deserted to most people, merely old, damp stone rooms too far below the waterline to be used even for storage. But to me the mossy walls and slippery floors teemed with ghostly traces, remnants of once powerful spirits who had haunted here for more centuries than I could name.

  I tried to strengthen my shields, but I couldn’t raise them all the way or I wouldn’t be able to contact my allies. As a result, impressions crowded me from all sides, wispy pieces of lives long gone and tortures endured. I Saw Roman soldiers whipping a young boy the full number of lashes of his sentence, despite the fact that he was already dead. Right behind them, a medieval witch hunter threatened a young woman, who was heavily pregnant and pleading for the life of her unborn child. I tightened my defenses a bit more to keep the worst of the faded horrors out, but I caught an occasional one here or there. And everywhere I looked, in long, crisscrossing, glowing lines, were ghost traces. They covered the floors and walls and wove patterns through the air so thick it was like walking through a sickly greenish mist. They lit the lower dungeons to the point that I abandoned the torch I’d lifted from an upstairs sconce. I didn’t need it.

  The worst was saved for last. I followed my guides to a tiny, inner room. I could hear sobs before I opened the door. They abruptly cut off at my approach and the heavy latch was wrenched out of my hand. The door flew open and Louis-César stared out at me. For a minute, I wondered whether something had gone horribly wrong. The robe had parted to his navel, and beside the heavy, cherry red brocade, a darker color gleamed. He was bleeding heavily from bites on his neck and chest, and his face was ashen. When he recognized me, he swayed, and I barely caught him before he hit the ground.

  I looked behind him to see a figure kneeling in a puddle of darkness that I identified after a moment as a hooded cloak. Slowly, it raised its head and I saw what seemed to be a bearded skeleton. Skin the color of moldy Swiss cheese covered the fine bones of his face, and only the burning amber eyes made him seem real. I took a guess. “Radu?”

  A bony hand pushed the hood back. I looked at the thing that had once had the nickname “the Handsome,” and wanted to be sick. They’d kept him under control, all right, but they hadn’t used restraints. They hadn’t needed them after they’d starved him almost to death. I hadn’t heard that blood deprivation could kill a vamp, but the thing huddled across from me didn’t look alive. I had never seen anything like it.

  “Um, we’re here to help. Did Mircea tell you?” The creature huddled in the corner didn’t reply. I hoped Mircea had been right about the sanity thing, although I was beginning to doubt it. “We, uh, should probably go. Can you walk?”

  “He cannot walk, dulceaţă,” Mircea said in a dull, expressionless voice. He sat on the floor beside the door and his head flopped back against the wall as if he no longer had the strength to hold it up. “I have given him all the blood I can without risking this body’s life, but it is not enough. He has been starved for years, kept conscious only by catching an occasional rat. No one visits him for weeks at a time, and when they do, it is only to bring torment.”

  I forced myself to look carefully at the wasted figure. It was hard to tell with the cape in place, but I could probably carry him if it came down to it. The body I inhabited was slight, but he was barely more than skin and bones. But I really preferred an alternative that didn’t require me to touch him. The thought of those sticklike hands on even my borrowed body was enough to cause me to break out in chills, not to mention that I didn’t like the idea of becoming dessert. Radu might not be able to feed from afar in his current state, but if he got close enough, that wouldn’t be an issue. I wasn’t sure if it was because his face was so emaciated that the skin had drawn back from his teeth, or if he was still hungry, but his fangs were fully extended and I didn’t like it.

  “What now?”

  Mircea hung his head, breathing in great gasps of air as if he couldn’t get enough into his lungs. “Allow me a few moments to recover, dulceaţă, and then together we will take him from this place.”

  I was about to agree when it became obvious that we didn’t have a few minutes. Into the corridor behind us poured a dozen humans and a wind composed of too many spirits to count. I knew who they were even before they coalesced. No mere ghost, however newly dead, has that much power. A young woman, maybe in her late teens, appeared first and stepped in front of the crowd. She had a ghostly dagger in her hand that looked something like the ones that came out of my bracelet. Her eyes focused on me for a moment, and I didn’t like their expression, but then they fixed on Radu with an almost hungry look. A shadow behind her pushed her forward.

  “That one! In the cloak! Kill him quickly!”

  I stood there, gaping at them for a second. It was disconcerting to discover that my diversion had been right on target. I put myself between Radu and the girl, but she merely walked through me. I wasn’t used to a ghost being able to do that without my permission. I had unconsciously put up a hand to ward her off and my bracelet decided it was show-time. I spun around, and the next second she was screaming as two gaping holes appeared in the hazy outline of her body. She didn’t bleed, of course, but she was obviously in pain. Great. I’d ended up hurting the person I was trying to help.

  The dark presence behind her drew back behind a wall of humans, who surged towards me as a single entity. My daggers went back to work, but there were too many of them. Three were dropped by those flashing knives, but most got through. The first to reach me grabbed my shoulder, and my ward flared, throwing him across the room to slam against the hard stone. I stared at him in amazement. I wasn’t in my body, so how had my ward tagged along? The mage couldn’t tell me, since he’d slid down to the floor and lay still.

  Another mage spoke something that sounded like the word Pritkin had used on the were at Dante’s, and a curtain of flame leaped up all around me. I flinched back before I realized that it wasn’t touching me; the fire stopped about a foot away, behind the golden tracery of a pentagram on the floor. My ward had to be using a huge amount of energy to stop a word of power, but I felt no drain. Whatever was powering it, it wasn’t me.

  Through the flames I saw a tall, dark shape start to ease around the wall. He was trying to get behind me, and that would not be good. Mircea was in no shape at the moment to fight off a two-year-old child, much less even the spirit of a master vamp. I glanced at the army behind me and nodded at him. “He’s all yours.”

  A storm of shadows descended on the ghost like a swarm of bees, and he disappeared from sight with a choked scream. They might not be
able to do anything to humans, but spirits were fair game. A few seconds later they reformed at my back, and the enemy specter was nowhere to be seen. “They ate him,” I clarified for the tall figure who stood behind the mages, surrounded by his fellow spirits. No heroics for Rasputin. Smart, if not real brave. “Leave or I’ll give them another course.”

  “They can’t feed on humans, sybil,” he said, echoing my thoughts. He moved slightly and I caught the impression of a pale face framed in greasy black hair. There was nothing handsome about it, but there was an odd, hypnotic quality to the eyes. “Even you cannot win against a dozen mages of the Black Circle. Let us have the vampire. We mean you no harm.” The deep voice was heavily accented but strangely soothing. His vamp powers were weakened when he was no longer in his body, but they obviously weren’t gone. He was trying to influence me, and it was working. I could suddenly see his point. Why die here, hundreds of years and thousands of miles away from anything familiar? Why give my life for someone I didn’t even know and who, in any case, would be better off dying quickly than living to face centuries of torment? It seemed almost a kindness to let them past, to let Radu die. Rasputin would make it quick, and then I could—I literally slapped myself. It hurt, but the pain cleared my head. Damn! Even in spirit form, he’d almost gotten to me.

  “Twelve mages?” I looked at the body of the mage by the wall, who hadn’t moved a muscle; his neck was lolling at an angle that said he probably never would again. Three others had been taken out by my knives, which had returned to hover beside me, one on either side of my head. None of the three on the floor looked dead, and their buddies must have agreed because they were pulling them back towards the stairs instead of leaving them where they fell. But they also didn’t look like they would be returning to the fight. “I only count eight still active, Rasputin. Ask your friends which one wants to die next.”