Touch the Dark (31 page)

I didn't see the problem here. “Then appoint someone else heir.”

“I told you; it is not an appointed position. The power goes where it will, to whoever is most worthy, the ancient texts say. There should have been no contest. You are young and untrained, whereas our sybil has studied for years for the position. She was selected late, but she was trained well. We did not think you would be a rival . . .”

He stopped, too late, and I pounced. “You knew about me? How?”

The arrogance began to bleed back into his face. “Your entire line is tainted. Your mother was the same; you even look like her.”

“Wait a minute. You knew my mother? How?” He looked about thirty-five, maybe younger. So he wasn't aging at normal speed, either, unless the Circle admitted its members at fifteen.

“She was the heir,” Pritkin told me, his lips thin with rage. “She had to be pure, untouched, as she knew very well. But she had an affair with your father, a vampire's servant! And worse, she hid it from the Circle until she became pregnant with you and ran away with him. Who knows what would have happened to the power, had we let it fill an unclean vessel?”

“Unclean?” Okay, now I was pissed. “She was my mother!”

“She was unfit to be the heir! I can only be grateful we discovered her in time.”

“So, if someone's not a virgin, they can't be heir?”

“Exactly.” He smiled nastily at me. “Yet another reason you are disqualified.”

I didn't bother to correct him. I was willing to bet that my sexual experience gave their pure-as-the-driven-snow sybil a run for her money, although not for the same reasons. Eugenie had guarded me like a hawk, and when I wasn't with her, I was running for my life. I'd never trusted anyone enough to get that close. It also helped that most of the vamps at Tony's had rivaled Alphonse in the looks department, and that they'd been warned off me anyway. The most temptation I'd experienced had been with Tomas, the Senate's spy who had been feeding off me without permission, and Mircea, who was probably plotting some nefarious scheme. I have no taste in men.

“Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then, when that falls through, you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something, or do you just not like me?”

Mircea laughed, and even Louis-César's lips twitched. Tomas either didn't get the joke or wasn't in a laughing mood. Pritkin, of course, was annoyed. “Everything you say only confirms my initial impression. You would be a disaster as Pythia.”

“The power doesn't seem to care.”

“That is why the Circle exists, to intervene in these cases!” He glared at me, so fiercely that I flinched back before I could stop myself. “Haven't you ever wondered why your mother named you Cassandra? It is our term for a fallen sybil, one who uses her power for ill instead of good. One allied with the Black Circle. One who might be able to summon ghosts and dark witches to fight for her, to possess humans like a demon, and to command a dark weapon so easily. The power will not be allowed to pass to someone like you!”

“And if it does?”

“It won't.” It was emphatic enough that I mentally added another group to the long list of people who wanted me dead.

“The Senate will protect you,” Louis-César assured me.

I turned jaded eyes on him. “Sure it will. As long as I do whatever it wants.”

Mircea smirked at Louis-César's expression. “She grew up at one of our courts. Did you really think she would not grasp the situation? Now remove the mage,” he ordered Raphael. “We will talk business with our Cassandra in private.” Pritkin was wrestled from the room, and I for one was glad to see him go. If I never met another war mage in my life, I'd count myself lucky. I waited to see what the Senate's continued help was going to cost me.

“We will not turn you over to the Circle,
mademoiselle.
” Louis-César's eyes, which were back to blue, shone with sincerity. I stared at him. Was he really that naive, or was it all part of the honorable-little-boy routine?

“But we may not be able to protect you if their ally wins the duel tonight,” Mircea added. “Rasputin would decide things then, and I would not like to see you in his power. The Silver Circle might kill you if you fall into their hands, but I do not wish to speculate about what the Black will do. It is to your advantage that we win, Cassandra.”

We looked at each other and had one of those moments of perfect understanding. Ah, enlightened self-interest: the coin of my old world. It felt good to get back on familiar ground. No talk of honor with Mircea; just plain business. “Did you train Tony or what?”

Mircea laughed delightedly. Louis-César shot him an unhappy look before turning his eyes back to me. “
Mademoiselle
, until tonight, I did not truly believe that anyone could do what you can. But now that I know, I have hope again. The Pythia is the final arbiter of disagreements within the magical community, our Supreme Court, if you like. Without a strong Pythia, with the power to enforce her rulings, the problem between the light Fey and the Silver Circle may escalate to war, as ours with the Black already has. The structure of our world is fracturing.”

He glanced at the door and Mircea cocked his head slightly. “The spell is active. Even with enhanced hearing, Pritkin cannot eavesdrop. Tell her.”

Louis-César looked at me and I got that feeling again of power sliding along my skin. His control was slipping. I thrust my bracelet into my pocket so it wouldn't go nuts. I didn't want to find out what would happen if it attacked him. “We believe that a challenger to the Consul, Lord Rasputin, is using the missing sybil in his bid for power. For months, Senate members have been attacked by their own retainers. In some cases those who have served them for centuries, who were thought completely loyal, have turned on them without warning. The guards in the Senate chamber who attacked you were some of these. Sworn to the Consul's own power, still they turned. Now we may understand why.”

Maybe I was missing something. I wasn't exactly at my best. “Okay, why?”

Rafe came forward and knelt at my feet. I petted his messy curls and felt a little better. He couldn't do a damn thing for me, but it was nice having him around. “Don't you see,
mia stella
? The sybil must have traveled in time as you did, and somehow she interfered with the bonding between servants and masters. It has long been thought that the Pythia experiences all times at once, instead of traveling only in one direction as we do. It may be that the missing sybil is gaining power as you have recently done. Only she has used the power for harm.”

“Wait a minute.” My head hurt. “There are so many problems with that statement, I don't know where to start. How do you interfere with a bond that close? And how about the fact that I'm not the heir? Pritkin made that pretty clear.”

“No,” Louis-César said, “he made it clear that he did not wish the power to come to you. But obviously he fears that it has, at least in part, or he would not have tried to kill you. I apologize for that. If we had truly believed him that hostile, we would not have allowed him to stay. But we hoped he would confirm our suspicions.”

“Which he did, after a fashion,” Mircea commented. “He may not have said as much, but his reactions make it clear that part of the power the Pythia holds has leaked to Cassie, and therefore in all likelihood to the other heir as well.”

I shook my head. “But Pritkin said the Pythia can't possess people, so her heir wouldn't be able to either, right? And if that's true, it would really limit what she could do. Energy reserves are used up fast in other times, real fast. Especially if you do anything more than stand around. When I was, um, in Louis-César, I didn't have that problem, but if she can't latch on to a human energy source, she won't last long enough to do very much.”

“She might not need long,” Mircea said thoughtfully. “The act of creating a new vampire is a delicate process. Any deviation can have very unfortunate results.”

I'd heard a few horror stories. Best-case scenario, the new vamp simply never rose. He or she stayed dead after three days, and you knew there had been a problem. Worst-case scenario, they rose without any higher brain functions, a horrible mess called a revenant. They were like animals who lived only to hunt. And because they couldn't reason, they didn't acknowledge the mastery of the one who made them. The only thing to do was to hunt them down before they went crazy on a group of humans.

“What could someone with no more power than a new ghost do in, what, about an hour?” I looked at Tomas. “Is that right? How long were we there?”

“It could not have been much longer, but we were exerting ourselves heavily. We might have been able to prolong our stay otherwise.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn't know how to interfere with a vamp making a new servant, and even as a spirit, I wouldn't like to try. How would she do it?”

“The sybil has Rasputin to tell her what to do,” Louis-César reminded me. “She would go with detailed instructions, and possibly others to aid her.”

“It would not be so difficult,” Mircea added. “The individual in question has to be pure, with no bites from another vampire in the last few years. They have to be willing and at peace when they are made, and healthy, or at least not seriously ill. If someone tampered with any of these conditions, centuries later, a powerful master such as Rasputin might be able to override the weakened bond.” He thought about it for a minute. “Interference in the first condition seems to me unlikely. That would result in the subjects failing to rise, which would not help Rasputin's cause; the master would have simply selected other servants. It is also likely that a master would detect another's bite and pass them by.”

“What would she have to do?”

He shrugged. “There are many possibilities. Poison them with a slow-acting toxin, for instance. They would die before it became obvious that they were seriously weakened, and the poison would not harm them once they rose. Yet it would severely diminish their attachment to their master. Or they could be given a stimulant powerful enough that they remained aware and afraid through the transition, instead of peaceful and euphoric.”

“But you can't take stuff with you in spirit form,” I pointed out. “Where would she get the poison?”

“She likely retrieved whatever medium she used from where her allies had placed it. The Black Circle has existed almost as long as the Silver — it dates to the middle of the third millennium B.C.E. — and poison has always been a favorite weapon of its members. They could easily have provided what was needed.”

“But why would the old Black Circle trust Rasputin?” If he was strong enough to cause this much hell, I doubted the guy had actually been born a Russian peasant in the latter nineteenth century. It was probably a name he'd adopted, possibly after killing the owner or by making it up and using mental tricks to make people believe his story. But it didn't seem likely that he'd been around long enough to have been at Carcassonne when I was there. The Senate would not have so badly underestimated a vamp that old.

“He is allied with their modern counterparts, who could tell him what to say,” Mircea explained. “The sybil could have taken a message to the dark mages, asking for aid. The Silver Circle is allied with us, and it is an old alliance. Disrupting it would be a coup for the dark.”

My head was swimming. I had a hard time believing that the Black Circle in any era would exert themselves for future gain that none of them would live to see. But it wasn't my problem. “What do you expect me to do? Go back and arm wrestle her or something? Shouldn't you be more worried about the duel?”

“We are.” Louis-César was grim. “In less than twelve hours, I am scheduled to duel Rasputin to the death. I will defeat him, if I am still here.”

“You planning on going somewhere?”

I meant it as a joke, but he didn't look like he found it funny. “Possibly. Rasputin agreed to the duel believing that he would face Mei Ling. It was thought that, when I was named champion instead, he would withdraw. But he did not, even though he must know that he cannot defeat me.”

I decided not to point out how conceited that sounded. “But he can't interfere with you. You're a first-level master; he isn't strong enough to influence you. Even if he weakened your bond with your old master, at your level, it doesn't matter anymore. The tactics he's used on the other vamps won't work.”

“No, but he could prevent me from being made at all.”

I debated whether to point out the obvious. I decided to risk it. “No offense — I'm sure you deserve your rep — but there's got to be other champions the Consul could choose. She's been around two thousand years; she has to know people.”

“True.” Louis-César didn't look insulted, to my relief. “She had other names in mind if I declined.”

“Then what's the problem, other than for you personally?”

“The problem,
dulceaţă
,” Mircea said, “is that Rasputin has also never lost a duel. There were other names on the Consul's list, but none that we are confident can manage victory no matter the trickery used against him. Louis-César has fought more duels than the rest of the Consul's choices combined. He must be our champion, for our champion must win.”

“And that has to do with me how?” I was getting a very bad feeling.

“We need to ensure that he does not alter time again,
dulceaţă
. We need you to go back and stop him from interfering with the birth of our champion.”