Chapter 23

A short ley-line trip later and we stood before a thick oak plank with a brass doorknocker in the shape of a dragon consuming its own tail. I blinked at it blearily. Was the thing following me? Mircea let it thud against the door a few times, but no one answered.

"Most of my servants are at my country estate," he told me, knocking again, louder this time. "But there should be a caretaker here. He doesn't like to travel."

I stared at the house, which looked completely deserted, and wondered if he was sure about that. With the master away, maybe the caretaker had left for parts where there weren't daily decapitations. "I don't think anyone's home," I ventured, peering in the window. I couldn't tell much about the inside since there were sheets thrown over all the furniture, but it felt as empty as the cathedral.

Mircea only smiled. "He's a little slow."

"So when you said you lived in Paris—"

"I meant here." Mircea paused to pound on the door, actually shaking the heavy wood. "Before I joined the North American Senate, I belonged to the European one. And it has been based in Paris since the early Middle Ages."

He started to knock again, but the door was wrenched open by a tiny old man with a large nose and watery blue eyes. He peered at us myopically from under an oversized wig, while spewing a string of angry French. He punctuated whatever he was saying with wild waves of his cane, but without its support he lost his balance and would have toppled down the stairs if Mircea hadn't caught him.

"Demmed young ruffians!" he raged, in between attempts to bite Mircea's wrist. But despite being a vampire, he seemed to have only one fang, and it never managed to connect with anything.

"Horatiu! It's me!" Mircea's voice echoed up and down the street as he practically screamed in the old man's ear.

"Eh?" the vamp squinted, but apparently it didn't help his eyesight.

Mircea sighed. "I gave you a cord for your spectacles," he said, rummaging around in the old man's coat. "Why aren't you wearing them?"

"'m a vampire. Don't need spectacles!" Mircea was informed, as the man slapped at his hands. Mircea ignored him and finally came up with a pair of pince-nez. He settled them on the vamp's long nose and smiled at him encouragingly. "It's me," he repeated.

"I know that!" the old man said tetchily. "Might have sent word you was coming. Got nothing prepared," he bitched, but he did let us in the door.

We walked at a snail's pace through a hall and up a large staircase. Horatiu was carrying a candle that wavered and flickered, casting leaping shadows on the walls, and it gave me my first clear look at Mircea. Despite the earlier libations, he was still missing half his outfit, had dirt and dust all over the part remaining, and a strand of something suspiciously like seaweed was clinging tenaciously to his hair. Seeing him like that was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I'd treasure it.

"You're going to need to change before you see the other me again," I said, trying not to laugh. "Something that looks as much like your old outfit as possible."

Mircea shot me a look that said he'd noticed my amusement. "I have several black suits."

"But the shirt—"

"I also have quite a few of those."

"Really. It didn't look off-the-rack to me."

"It wasn't. Ming-de sends me one every year, on my birthday."

"How kind of her. Any particular reason?"

Mircea blinked lazily. "I don't suppose you would like to tell me what the mage meant by ‘outraged modesty'?"

I licked my lips, feeling a residual tingle on my tongue that tasted suspiciously like a certain psycho war mage. "Not really."

"Then I think I, too, will keep my secrets, dulceata?."

"Yeah, but you have more than me," I muttered.

He quirked an eyebrow. "I am beginning to wonder."

We ended up in Mircea's rooms, which were composed of a small dressing room and a larger bedroom. The painted wardrobe I'd seen at MAGIC had pride of place, beside a silk tapestry showing a green dragon eating its own tail. I stared at it in exhaustion. It was starting to get creepy. "The ouroboros."

"The symbol of the S'ark'any Lovagrend," Mircea corrected me, his eyes on Horatiu.

"What?"

"The Order of the Dragon," he translated, moving closer to his servant. The old man was doing something near the fireplace that faced the large bed. It took me a moment to figure out what, because the paper spill he was holding was pressed to a soot-covered brick several feet to the left of the grate instead of to one of the dusty logs. "It was a society set up in Hungary by King Sigismund. My father became a member and…Let me do that," Mircea offered, his eyes on the rapidly burning paper.

Horatiu smacked him on the shoulder. "Didn't I teach you anything about respecting your station?" he demanded. "Always running about, playing with the servants' children, thinking that cheeky grin of yours was going to let you get away with all sorts of irresponsible behavior."

"So nothing's changed," I murmured.

Mircea sent me a wounded look while wrestling the old man for the spill. "What a nice blaze," he said loudly, managing to get the paper away from Horatiu just before it set his hand on fire.

Horatiu regarded the cold interior of the fireplace proudly. "Yes it is, isn't it?"

After a few moments, Mircea managed to coax the logs to life. "I don't suppose there's anything to eat?" he asked. He didn't look hopeful, but my stomach grumbled expectantly anyway.

"Eat?" Horatiu peered at me blankly. Apparently he'd assumed that Mircea had brought takeout.

"She is my guest!" Mircea said emphatically.

Horatiu muttered something that sounded disappointed. "Well, I suppose I could go out and try to find someone," he said doubtfully. "But with all the troubles nowadays, the streets are often deserted after dark."

"I meant for her."

"Eh?"

"Is there any food suitable for a human?" Mircea asked patiently.

"Well, if you'd sent word," Horatiu said huffily. "I can't be expected to know you'll be bringing home one of them, can I? Not to mention that the shops are mostly empty in any case, what with everything going to the army!"

"A ‘no' would have sufficed," Mircea said. His glance at me was rueful. "My apologies. My hospitality is usually somewhat more…hospitable."

"Not a problem." I sat on the plush rug in front of the hearth and stretched my hands out to the fire. For the first time that night, I was almost warm and I didn't have to worry about someone sneaking up on me.

"The cellars are intact, I believe?" Mircea inquired.

"Yes, yes. Plenty of wine." Horatiu just stood there. So did Mircea. "Do you want me to go get some?" the old man finally asked.

"That would be nice," Mircea said politely. Horatiu tottered off, still muttering to himself, just loudly enough to be understood. Mircea sighed and started searching a squat cabinet in a corner.

"It is an ouroboros, though, right? The order's symbol?" My eyes had wandered back to the tapestry. The dragon's scales were green, and its eyes, picked out in gold thread, seemed to move in the low light of the fire.

"Yes, I suppose," Mircea said absently. "It is an ancient protection symbol, of a girdle of power encasing something precious. And that's what they were trying to do—guard Europe from Turkish invasion. Why?"

"I keep seeing it lately, everywhere I go. It's starting to weird me out."

Mircea laughed. "The ouroboros is the mages' emblem. It is ubiquitous in our world."

"But they just use a plain silver circle," I protested. I'd always thought it showed a real lack of imagination. The oldest magical organization on earth, and that was the best they could do?

"The older version of their symbol was an ouroboros. It was stylized over time into something easier to reproduce. They say they chose it because it is the alchemical symbol for purity, and silver stands for wisdom." Mircea's tone left no doubt as to what he thought of that claim.

"Protection, purity and wisdom." A lot of things came to mind when I thought of the Circle. Those three weren't on the list.

Mircea held out a dusty bottle. "Burgundy," he said triumphantly.

"But you just sent Horatiu for wine."

"Yes, a fact he'll remember for perhaps five minutes." He filled a couple of glasses that looked reasonably clean and passed me one.

"Thanks." I took a sip. It was good. "What happened to him?"

"Horatiu?" I nodded. "I am afraid I did."

"What? But isn't changing someone that old considered kind of…inadvisable?"

"Very much." Mircea ignored his wine in favor of rummaging around in the wardrobe. He soon produced a paper-wrapped package that smelled like sandalwood. "Yes, I thought I would have another." He lifted up a corner of the paper. "And it's in white."

I narrowed my eyes at it. Ming-de's little gift, I assumed. "You look better in color," I snapped.

He sent me a sultry look over his shoulder. "Really? Most women think I look better in nothing at all."

I backpedaled fast. "So why did you change him, then?"

Mircea shrugged. "He was my childhood tutor. I visited him on his deathbed, to find his skin as pallid as the sheets but his mind as sharp as ever. He knew he was dying, and he was highly incensed about it. He lay there, his body failing, and demanded that I do something, in the same voice he'd used to terrorize me as a child—"

"And you caved?"

"I agreed to his proposition," Mircea said with dignity.

"You caved."

He sighed and pulled on the shirt. "I'm afraid so."

"But why is he like that? If you turned him, shouldn't he have vampiric sight?" Not to mention hearing, sense of balance and the ability to cross a room faster than a meandering caterpillar.

"Normally, yes. But Horatiu was dying when he went through the transformation; had I hesitated at all, he would have been gone. And changing someone in such extremely poor health is, as you said, inadvisable."

"Then why do it?" An eternity like that wouldn't have struck me as a great gift.

Mircea poked at the fire, not that it needed it. The room was already warming up nicely. "Because I did not know what I was doing," he admitted, having tortured the logs to his satisfaction. "You forget, I was not chosen for this life; I received it because of an old woman's hatred for my family. I was cursed."

"What does that have to do with Horatiu?"

"Everything. I had no one to advise me, dulceata?. No one to give me any knowledge of my new state. Perhaps in another time it would have been different. Today, the Senate itself oversees such masterless vampires as are created, few though they are. But then…nothing was so simple then. I didn't know this would be his fate."

"I never thought about what it must have been like for you," I said slowly, "to suddenly wake up changed."

He smiled grimly. "It did not happen as quickly as that. It was a week before the transformation was complete, and even then…Such things were fables, stories told to frighten children! How could such a thing have happened? To me, a good Catholic?"

"But vampirism is a metaphysical disease. It doesn't have anything to do with—"

"But I didn't know that, Cassie. I didn't know anything. I could enter a church, pray the rosary, do things I had always been told were impossible for the damned. And yet the sunlight I'd walked in all my life suddenly burned me, the food of my youth no longer nourished me, and even my body was changing in ways that, at the time, appalled me. I did not wish to see more than everyone else, to hear things better left unknown, to toss and turn in my bed, feeling every heartbeat within a mile calling out to me…"

"You accepted it in time, though."

"I don't know that that is quite the word I would use," Mircea said dryly. He unself-consciously stripped off the bedraggled trousers, laying them on the bed, where he tackled them with a brush. "I was in denial, refusing to admit, even to myself, what was happening."

"When did that change?"

"When the nobles caught up with me. Ours was an elected monarchy—anyone with the correct bloodline was a candidate—and they had decided to support a rival branch of the family. And in those days, the common way of changing power was to kill the ones who currently had it."

I'd heard the story of his change long ago, but he'd made it sound like a grand adventure. It wasn't sounding so much like that now. I was beginning to suspect that the version I'd received as a child had been a highly selective account.

"They killed Father first. He'd sent me on an ill-fated crusade against the Turks, and despite the fact that the troops I led had acquitted themselves well, we lost the war. I was…less than popular…thereafter, with nobles who had not bestirred themselves to help in the fight. Making me watch his death was intended as retribution."

He paused to tackle a particularly tough stain, then continued. "They scalped him, a trick we'd learned from the Turks. It involved peeling away the skin of the face while the victims still lived, torturing them and making them unrecognizable at the same time. When they finished, they blinded me with hot pokers so his mutilated body would be the last thing I ever saw. Then they buried me alive."

"Oh, my God."

"I lay there, hearing the clods of earth falling onto my coffin, and assumed it was the end," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull his trousers back on. "I waited for my air to run out, for death, for judgment, for something…but hours passed and nothing happened. Nothing except that my eyes mended, allowing me to see despite there being no light. I finally had to face the fact that something a little…strange…was going on."

"What did you do?"

Mircea shrugged. "I dug my way out. It had rained overnight, making the ground soft. Otherwise I might not have managed it. Afterwards, I lay on the wet earth, gulping in air that I clearly no longer needed, and wondered what to do. I was a monster; I'd finally accepted that. But I was a damn weak one. I hadn't had any nourishment since the change and my body had had to repair considerable damage from the fight and the torture that followed it. I knew I was in no fit state to face them again."

"How did you survive?" I asked urgently. I really wanted to know. Our situations weren't identical, but there were enough similarities for me to hope for a nugget of wisdom. Mircea hadn't known how to be a vampire any more than I knew how to be the Pythia. Yet he'd managed.

His eyes narrowed slightly at my tone, and I cringed inwardly. I was tired and not guarding my voice as well as I should. I'd probably just told him a lot more than I'd intended.

"By luck and some timely help," he said after a pause. "My clothes, other than the filthy ones I had on, money and possessions were in Tirgoviste—where many of those who had just tried to kill me resided. I had to risk going back there, and as luck would have it, I was seen by one of my attackers. He didn't realize how weak I was and did not dare to take me on himself. But he ran to summon the others."

"But if they'd just buried you, why did they believe him?" Most people would ask anyone who came bearing tales of the walking dead if maybe he'd been drinking a little too much.

Before answering, Mircea came to join me. Since I was still sitting by the hearth, far too near the fire's random sparks for a vampire's liking, the move worried me. So did the casual smile on his face. "Spoken like a true modern woman," he said lightly. "But at that time, many people accepted the old legends about nosferatu as fact. And they knew how to deal with any of us who dared to show our face."

He sat down and relaxed, digging his bare toes into the deep, rich carpeting, and his eyes fixed on the hem of my gown. I looked down only to realize that the dirty ends of Pritkin's boots were peeking out from under the silk. I'd forgotten I was wearing them, just like he'd forgotten to search them. I felt myself blushing at the memory of exactly why we'd been so distracted.

I tried to tuck my feet back under the material, but it didn't do any good. Mircea knelt in front of me and pulled my foot into his hands, staring at the dirty, clunky boot incredulously. "Where did you get this?"

"Um." It was about a size ten, and obviously a man's. Mircea scraped at a bit of mud coating the heel and a knife popped out. It fell to the floor, making a small ringing sound, and we both stared at it for a beat.

"You're wearing the mage's shoes?"

"Technically, they're boots."

Mircea's eyes narrowed. "Yes, I can see that. Why are you wearing them?"

"My feet were cold."

"And he made a gentlemanly gesture?" His tone dripped sarcasm.

"Not exactly."

"You stole his shoes." Mircea sounded like he didn't quite believe it.

"Boots. And I didn't exactly…I mean, he wasn't using them at the time."

"And why not?"

"Um."

Mircea pulled the other offending boot off and tossed the pair of them to the other side of the room. They landed with a crash against the heavy wood paneling, sending a shower of caked dirt scattering across the floor. Which left him staring at Pritkin's socks.

They were woven from a coarse gray wool that in no way matched my dress and, like the boots, were oversized. Mircea didn't comment this time, just yanked them off and threw them after the shoes. "My feet are going to get cold," I protested.

"I will find you something more appropriate," he informed me tightly, pulling my feet into his lap.

He hadn't yet buttoned the shirt, and when he moved, the firelight did amazing things to the muscles on his chest. He started rubbing my arches, just too hard to tickle, and it felt so good I had to look away. It was a mistake, letting him know he was getting to me, but it was either that or get up and move—an even bigger red flag.

"How did you get out of there?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Out of where?"

"The town."

"With Horatiu's help," he said, rubbing my instep with hot, firm strokes. He had incredible hands—long, slim and skilled—and the warmth of his touch through the filter of my silk stocking was more than a little disconcerting.

"I take it he was younger then?"

"By quite a few years. The family's hold on the throne had never been completely secure, and we had been trained from childhood to be ready to flee at a moment's notice. Horatiu retrieved my emergency funds, some clothes and a horse, and hid me until nightfall. I was getting ready to go when he rode up, insisting on coming with me as far as the border. I tried to dissuade him, but he was as hardheaded as ever. And fortunately so. I wouldn't have made it alone, not in those first few months. Even with his help, there were some very close calls."

I caught his hand, needing to break contact in order to think. "Is there anything you'd do differently?"

Mircea let his hand lie still in mine, although the other kept hold of my leg, those long fingers curled around my ankle. "At the time, I believed that I was doing the only thing I could. I was leaving until they stopped searching for me, until I grew strong enough to defend myself and the political winds changed once again. But I departed too quickly, with too much left undone. Some of my mistakes I rectified later, but others…could not be redeemed."

That might have been true, but it wasn't what I needed to hear. "If you were going to give the old you some advice, what would it be?"

Mircea was silent for a long moment. "That when you become something more, you must often give up something to claim it."

"That doesn't sound very helpful!"

"Perhaps not, but there are no hard and fast rules in survival. I did what we all do when faced with something we believe beyond our abilities."

"And what's that?"

"The best I could."

"And when that wasn't good enough?" I whispered, finally admitting what I'd been trying not to think about. That I wasn't good enough. That the former Pythia had said it herself, in what I was beginning to think had been a prophecy: that I'd be either the best of us or the very worst. I had no idea what that first part meant, but I could really see the latter as a possibility.

"I found help."

"Such as?"

"The family," he said simply. "They stood behind me. Gave me something to fight for besides my own survival. Helped me believe that we would triumph, even when I sometimes doubted it myself."

"The family," I repeated dully. The very thing I didn't have.

"Not the one of my birth. It was shattered, first by Father's death and later by Vlad's betrayal. But in time, I built a new one. I had Horatiu, then Radu and, eventually, others."

Great advice—for another vampire. But I couldn't just go out and make a family for myself. And every one I'd ever had had disappeared through murder or betrayal or bad luck.

"Well, some of us don't have a family to fall back on," I said bitterly.

"You have a family, dulceata?" he told me, pulling me close. He moved slowly, giving me time to protest, to move away. When I didn't, one hand circled my waist, the other cupping the back of my neck, his touch careful but sure. "You've always had one."

"The family is loyal to you, not to me."

"But as I am loyal to you, it amounts to the same thing."

"Are you?" I searched his face. It was beautiful, flames dancing in those dark eyes, shining on his hair. And as usual it told me exactly nothing. "I'm a seer, not a telepath, Mircea. I'm not even as good as a vamp at telling when someone is lying."

"What do you feel?" He was breathing softly through his mouth and I felt it on my lips, warm and heavy. For a second, the memory of his mouth was so vivid I wasn't sure we weren't kissing right now. It was all too easy to imagine loving Mircea. It was even easier to imagine the problems it could cause.

"The last things I can trust are my feelings!" I told him unsteadily. "Especially for you!"

"Ah, dulceata?" he murmured. "You will learn as I did: family are the only ones you can trust."

He took my face in his hands and smiled against my lips, and when I felt it, I couldn't help smiling, too. I could feel his chuckle where my hand rested against his chest, and the thud of his heart picking up speed. I clung to him, my hands finding warm skin under his shirt, spreading across his back.

When he finally kissed me, it was nothing like Pritkin's touch. Mircea was certain, but unhurried. Instead of bruising strength and dominance, he used a gentle, sure pressure that caught at my senses just as thoroughly. His hand stroked over my cheek as his tongue teased mine, warm and silky, transforming sweetness languorously into heat. The only word for the way Mircea kissed was "lush."

"Your skin is cold," he murmured, settling me against him. His body heat was at my back while the fire warmed me from the front. My dress had ridden up, above my knees, and the dry heat of the flames felt good on my legs.

I knew I couldn't let this continue, but I was exhausted and my defenses were low. And that familiar voice was back, the one that told me I could put a stop to this, in one more minute. Nothing would happen in just a minute, I'd be so careful…One of Mircea's hands stayed on my waist, while another found its way underneath my skirts, skimming up my left calf before sliding around to the back of my thigh. He began stroking lightly, rubbing small circles through the silk stocking. Suddenly my pulse was pounding, my vision going blurry, my skin warming all over.

"We can't," I told him unsteadily, trying to remember why that was important.

His fingers had found the band at the top of my thigh-high. They tightened, flexing and unflexing, scraping blunt fingernails over the lace. When they dipped under the top, I couldn't help but shiver. "Oh, I am fairly certain we can," he said.

I met his eyes, brimming with heat and humor, and felt something inside expanding, decompressing. It was as if it had been there all along but there hadn't been room for it until now. I was suddenly afraid that we could, too.