“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 tear 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.