Fury's Kiss (46 page)

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, I thought grimly. It was my head and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. And why did I think I wasn’t going to like it when I figured it out?

“Dorina…she is you as you would have been, had you been born fully vampire,” he finally said. “Therefore there are…variations…in approach, in the way you think, react, fight—”

“So, virtually identical, then.”

He frowned at me. “In essence, yes. In your sense of honor, your humor, your innate goodness—”

I laughed.

He frowned more. “It is true. In all the ways that matter, you are the same.”

Yeah. That was what I was afraid of.

“Now, please. Stay close while I attempt to contact your father again.”

“Okeydokey.”

I wasn’t going anywhere. But the thing was, I didn’t think I had to. I had the definite feeling that whatever was out there was coming for me.

And I guessed it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

I’d never thought about it before, but maybe I cramped her style, too. Maybe she resented being woken up in the middle of a nice rampage by someone too horrified to finish the job. Maybe she hated my weakness, my humanness, as much as I hated her vampire-ness, her viciousness. Maybe instead of a crawling bug, she viewed me as a more insidious kind—a leech, taking her strength, her energy, her prowess and squandering them. Living a life no master vampire would have considered for so much as a moment, with no family, no servants, no
respect
.

Yeah. That probably galled.

If there was one constant in vampire society, one thing that defined it more than any other, it was hierarchy. Everybody knew their place and they damned well stayed in it. Unless they were prepared to fight—possibly to the death—for a higher one.

Some people thought it was worth the risk, because status decided everything, from who you served to who served you. From who would consider you for an alliance to who would—or would not—marry you. From where you could live to what jobs you could get to who went through a freaking door first. Status was everything.

But dhampirs didn’t have status.

Dhampirs weren’t even on the scale.

I wondered how she’d felt about that. How she’d liked having even baby vampires look down on us, watching them insult us, denigrate us, relegate us to back doors and servants’ entrances “like the rest of the trash.” How she’d felt knowing that we—that
she
—were perfectly capable of destroying the lot of them.

And how long had it been before that resentment had bubbled over, from hatred of them to hatred of me? The cowardly, weak,
human
part of her that played by the rules others had set and scavenged around the edges of vampire society for whatever crumbs it would toss her, like a diseased dog? No wonder she went berserk from time to time, killing everything in sight out of sheer rage that she couldn’t kill the one she really wanted to.

Me.

Only she could now, couldn’t she? I took another look at that ruined wall or synapse tangle or whatever the hell it was, and realized intellectually what my crawling skin had known from the first glance. The fey wine had let a tiger out of the cage.

And it was hungry.

All things considered, it really wasn’t much of a surprise when Louis-Cesare suddenly looked up, his face puzzled. “There is some—” he began, and stopped.

For a second, he looked like an old-fashioned TV signal going on the fritz. All the color drained out of his body and it blurred into jagged lines for a moment. And then he simply winked out.

It was almost a relief.

She’d taken enough from me, through the years. Family, friends,
sanity
. Any chance of belonging anywhere.

She wasn’t going to take him, too.

“He’s not like us,” I whispered, into the rolling fog. “He’s honest and stubborn and stupidly brave. And he thinks we’re the same. But we know better. Don’t we…
sister
?”

There was no response.

What a surprise.

I glanced at the wharf. I’d seen it as it was now, lying pristine and clean, waiting under the moonlight for the scene that was about to unfold. Louis-Cesare had seen it afterward, smeared with blood and ash and what remained of my onetime partner. What we needed was what had happened in the middle, and only one person I knew of had it.

I melted into the fog, circling around toward the wall’s bloody gash.

And the memories that lay on the other side.

There was no other choice. I didn’t know how to leave,
and it wouldn’t have done any good if I had. Leaving would only postpone the inevitable. I was going to have to face her, sooner or later, on her turf or mine. Because I didn’t think that wall was going back together again. I didn’t know how to repair it, and Mircea had already said that he couldn’t do it, not at her power level.

Which meant that he’d already bought me as much time as he could.

And somehow, looking at the sheer size of the thing, of the freaking fortress he’d had to build to imprison her, I felt my anger at him evaporating. I might resent him for not telling me, for not giving me the choice, but for once, I understood. He’d said he’d been worried that telling me might weaken the separation, and that he wouldn’t be able to compensate. I didn’t doubt it.

I didn’t know how he’d built the damned thing at all.

I glanced up at the walls for a split second as I slipped into the gap. I couldn’t spare more than that, not and keep an eye out for ambush. But I didn’t need to. The size of them, the sheer weight, rose up around me, more massive even than I’d realized, towering over my head like cliffs and disappearing into the distance like a ravine.

There was no end in sight, the mist hiding everything more than ten, twelve yards ahead. But it didn’t matter. The cost in power, the only real coin of the vampire world, for what I
could
see must have been…

God. It must have been staggering.

No way had he done it all at once. Mircea had been on the fast track to master status, fueled by intelligence, ambition and sheer, unrestrained rage at a life that had been anything but fair. But no new master had done this, either.

Or even an old one. Not all at once. It must have taken years—centuries—of pouring strength into me. Of pushing back the power of a creature only a few decades younger than he, a trivial amount in vampire terms. Of constantly monitoring and adding to the protection he had built up, stone by stone, inch by inch, always knowing that one mistake might free her.

And destroy me.

The fog was thicker here, trapped between the sides of the rift, puddling in the middle to the point that it was almost exactly at eye level. Tendrils brushed my cheeks and curled around my face, making it hard to see, and the muffling quality wasn’t helping my hearing, either. But I was finding it hard to concentrate on the danger.

I was too busy concentrating on something else.

Why had he done this? It made no sense. No master vampire wasted that kind of power, particularly not when young and vulnerable. He’d said it, and I had no reason to doubt him: other vampires had been trying to add him to their collections. And why not? Such mental gifts were rare. Coupled with his looks and charm and name…he would have made an ornament to any court. It must have been a constant struggle to stay independent, to remain outside their grasp, to maintain a sense of self instead of being subsumed into someone else’s ambitions, someone else’s needs.

So why waste power that he needed so badly?

Why waste it on
me
?

“Dory!”

I heard something through the mist, but it was faint, like a distant echo. Or possibly not there at all. The ravine trapped sound, diverted it, made it seem like it was coming from every direction at once. And the mist was getting thicker, almost like it was pushing back at me, trying to close my path.

“Stop fighting me!”

The voice came again, but it didn’t make sense.

“I’m not fighting you,” I murmured. And I wasn’t. I wasn’t doing anything, my mind reeling with fear and confusion and…and something else.

Something impossible.

But there was no other explanation. I had been a child, and one rapidly approaching insanity at that. I couldn’t have helped him. I couldn’t have been anything but a drain. He should have left me, should have done what any other master would have and cut me loose. Or followed the advice of those so-called specialists and humanely
put me down before I tipped over the edge entirely.

But he hadn’t.

And try as I might, I could come up with only one explanation for that.

I ran a hand over the smooth, fleshy texture of the wall. It was already healing the damage, even if it couldn’t close the gap. And somehow, it didn’t seem so horrible anymore. Didn’t seem horrible at all, in fact.

Slick and warm, it felt like what it was: a healing scar. Not that I had a lot of experience with those. Dhampirs didn’t scar, for the same reason that we couldn’t get tattoos or piercings or so many other things. Our healing abilities wiped them away, erasing them off our skin in a matter of days or weeks, as if they’d never existed at all. Leaving only fresh, new skin behind.

But the mind didn’t heal like that. The skin might forget, but the mind…remembered. To the point that sometimes it felt like my head was full of scars. Others couldn’t see them, but I could.

And every time I got too close to someone, I tripped over one.

The fog was thicker now, cloying, choking. Not mist anymore, not even really like gas. More like waterlogged sheets slapping me wetly across the face, as if I were trying to push through a field of soggy laundry. And serving as the perfect backdrop for dozens of images.

They appeared out of the fog, just the barest of flickers at first, and then more and more, crowding around on all sides. Most were unfamiliar, although it was hard to tell. They looked like flashes of old silent movies projected onto sheets that were blowing erratically in the wind. I saw a glimpse of a ballroom, of huge gowns spinning against flashing mirrors; I saw burnt tree limbs silhouetted against a ridge littered with bodies; I saw faces, so many faces.

And then I saw something I didn’t recognize at all, but that drew me forward like a hand. It wasn’t the most dramatic scene. It was actually one of the more plebeian. Just a room with stucco walls and flaking paint, and a large window open to the night.

Dusty beams of moonlight cascaded onto a dustier wooden floor, which was obscured by little in the way of furniture. Just a few plain benches around an elaborately carved table, its shiny dark wood and corkscrew legs making it look like it belonged in another room. Or maybe another house.

An easel was set up beside the table and a candle, flickering in the breeze from the window, sat on top of it. The stuttering light looked impossibly bright and warm against the cool blue tones of the room, shedding a golden halo over the floor and part of the table. And lighting up the corner—

—of a canvas.

It was set up in the usual place, looking out onto the canal and the dark water shining below. I never knew why; it wasn’t much of a view. Just the shuttered windows of the house opposite and the still, silent boats drawn up outside, tied to listing poles for the night. Because who needed transport at this hour?

Maybe the fine ladies and gentlemen populating the palazzos and bars and brothels, but not around here. This was a working-class neighborhood, filled with men who would be up at dawn, lading and unlading ships or working on construction crews. The women would be going to the markets to haggle over fish or to buy the spices to brighten up a stew for their men’s dinner. And the children, the children would be everywhere.

Ragged and dirty and shoeless—and lice-ridden, according to Horatiu, my tutor. He was mostly wrong about that, although I didn’t tell him so. And anyway, they were happy, laughing and chatting and staging mock stick battles on the bridges, like their fathers would do more seriously on feast days.

They were amazing, those children, running right
along the very edge of the canals, yet never falling in. I could do that, too. And leap from boat to boat, crossing the water without ever needing a bridge, following them on their crazy, circuitous route around the city, laughing at foreigners and giving them bad directions and picking their pockets when they weren’t looking.

And using the coins obtained to buy food from the vendors, who knew where we got the money and didn’t care. And, oh, the food. I had never known anything like it. Veal liver fried in grape-seed oil and served on little sticks. Stuffed baby squid swimming in fish broth. Huge dishes of steamy polenta with fried fish and eggplant.

And then there were the sweets—oh, the sweets!—unlike anything I’d ever known. The Roma who had raised me before I found my father had made sure I ate, but food to them was mostly tough black bread and vegetable stew, with the occasional scrap of salted pork. But sweets…those were rare in camp, and they did not go to me.

Father had bought me my first sweet shortly after we “landed,” setting foot on this strangest of cities but not really on land, for it floated. Or so it seemed to me at the time. An impossible, magical place, and even the overcast, rainy day didn’t dim my spirits, or the brilliant colors of the waterside market we waded through.

I’d never seen so many people, all in one place, all at once. Rough sailors smelling of fish oil and sweaty workmen covered in plaster dust rubbed shoulders with pretty young slave girls following their mistresses about with baskets, slick con men doing sleight-of-hand tricks for credulous farmers, orphan boys in bright tunics shaking poor boxes, and old grandmas bent double, palms outstretched for coins. Not to mention the painted women in the doorways, with their hair done up in ringlets and their arms jingling with bracelets, calling out offers to passing men. And making rude gestures at the ones who refused.

Father pulled me away from one of them, saying something sharp to her in a language I didn’t understand. I didn’t care; I hadn’t been interested in her anyway, but in the vendor beside her. He was selling platters piled high with sweetened rice cakes, honey fritters topped with gingered almonds, clusters of nuts boiled with honey, and what the Venetians called
calisconi
—wonderful marzipan-filled raviolis that melted on the tongue. I hadn’t known what any of it was then, but the smell—