Somebody saw him; he didn’t know who, but it didn’t matter. Not with hands suddenly grabbing him, dragging him back. But the portal had seized him, too, catching the fist he’d accidentally dangled too low and pulling, pulling, pulling.
Hence the broken legs—or shattered, more like—that had resulted from the tug-of-war between a powerful magical object and half a dozen men. The portal won, in the end. But it was safe to say that Mircea still lost.
Maybe God wasn’t finished toying with him, after all.
But then, as he was dumped onto the flooded streets of the Rialto, still desperately fighting to get away, he received his second miracle: the portal shut down. Not correctly or properly—at least, he assumed not. Since it cut several mages and a vampire in half in the process, when the shortcut through space they’d been using suddenly disappeared.
The two mages were human; they had not continued to move for long.
But the vampire was different, and he wasn’t one of the poor sods destined for the rendering pots, but one of those putting them there. Worse, he was a master. And even half a master, Mircea had discovered, was far more powerful than he.
The vamp might be trailing half his intestines behind him, but he still had two good arms. And an excess of shattered boards that had followed them through the portal. Quicker than Mircea could parry, almost quicker than he could see, the master grabbed one of them, snapped off the end to give it an edge, and—
Looked down in alarm, at the similar piece of wood sticking out of his own chest, the bloody tip glistening in the latest lightning blast.
Mircea had a second to see the red-haired woman standing over the body, her eyes huge, her hands still gripping the other end of the piece of wood. And then the master was hacking at him again and again and again, trying to finish the job. And Mircea was grabbing up a shard of his own, his fingers suddenly quicker, steadier, with the feel of an invisible hand covering his own.
Dorina, he thought, and she was savage, slashing across the creature’s throat, releasing a torrent of black blood, sticky as tar. It flooded over him—them—as he panted in shock and pain. And struggled to get away with the creature’s body pinning his legs.
But he was too clumsy and it was too heavy. Leaving him nowhere to go as the master slowly raised his head, the dark slash in his throat mirroring the grinning rictus on his face. And grabbed for his makeshift stake again, because the horror hadn’t bled out yet!
“Die! Die! Die!” Mircea was yelling and stabbing and scrabbling back, agony shooting up his spine as the true state of his legs became apparent. And as the master got the makeshift stake in him, more than once. And as Mircea kept twisting and turning and scuffling and slashing, to make sure it didn’t hit his heart—
And then watching as the master’s head went bouncing across the cobbles and fell into the canal, when a lucky strike finally finished the job.
He lay there, watching it bob among the waves for a moment, his mind blank with shock.
Until somebody slapped him.
The red-haired woman, Mircea realized, staring up at her.
“Move!” she screamed.
He moved. Not running or even walking, both of which were out of the question now, but crawling, if dragging himself by the arms counted. Because passing out, or cursing, or any of the other things one usually did in these cases, wouldn’t get him anything but dead. And he didn’t want to be dead.
But several hard minutes later, he could still see the space where the portal had been, sandwiched between the two stalls that had fallen over in the gale.
And right after that, the praetor’s voice had shaken whatever tiny hope he’d had left, leading him to his current state, sprawled against the side of the bridge, wondering if the booming sounds from above were God’s hysterical laughter.
Then the woman slapped him again.
“I said, where are the rest?” she screeched.
Mircea blinked up at her, mud and water and gore dripping off his face. “The rest of what?”
“Your companions! When are they coming for us?”
Mircea started wondering if fear had driven her mad. “Would I be in this condition if I had companions?”
She stared at him. And then she shook him. “What are you talking about? Where is the Circle? Where is Abramalin?”
“You know Abramalin?”
She stared at him some more, although he wasn’t sure how well human eyes could see in this light. But she must have seen something, because she managed to slap him again. “You weren’t sent to get me out?”
“Cease attacking me, woman!” Mircea snapped, and pushed her.
From his perspective, he’d barely touched her, but he sometimes forgot vampire strength. Or perhaps she slipped on the torrent raging across the cobblestones—he didn’t know. He knew only that she hit the side of the bridge, bounced off, and fell down the embankment.
Cazzo!
He scrambled after her, afraid she would drown. And she might have; the canal was roiling like the ocean, as if the whole city had somehow floated far out to sea. But she wasn’t in it.
“Abramalin! è un figlio di puttana! Un porco demonio, un miserabili pezzi di merda!”
Mircea blinked. He didn’t know if Abramalin was the son of a whore, but he was absolutely spawn of the devil and a miserable piece of shit. “He sent you in and then abandoned you,” he guessed, as she floundered around in a boat full of fish.
“He said he just wanted information! He said I wouldn’t get hurt!”
“Sounds familiar.”
She wiped her face, which didn’t help because the rain was still pelting down. “You, too?”
Mircea nodded, before remembering that she couldn’t see it. “Yes. And now we’re both in desperate danger, but if you’re with Abramalin, you must be a witch. You can get us out of this!”
Sprawled among the fish, she looked up at him for a startled moment, her face blank. And then began laughing hysterically. Mircea went back to worrying for her sanity.
“I’m what’s known as a scrim,” she finally managed to gasp, as if that made things any clearer.
“What?”
“You know, like the curtains?”
Mircea scowled. “I’m not a mage! I don’t know what that means!”
“It refers to my kind being like curtains that block out the sun, leaving a room dark inside. Magicless.”
“Then you’re not a witch.”
“I’m a witch as much as any of them!” she snarled, probably because she’d just tried to get out of the boat, slipped on fish, and landed on her backside. “But I don’t make enough magic for anyone to detect it. My kind make good spies.”
“So you’re a spy?” Mircea said, because frankly she didn’t look like one.
“I’m an idiot,” she spat. “I came to Venice because I have one talent, one I hoped to turn into a fortune and spite them all, everyone who always told me how useless I was! But, instead, I listened to Abramalin, and his stupid stories about the future of the magical community—the same one that always despised me! And now look—”
Mircea cut her off. “What talent?”
“Glamourie.” She was thrashing about in fish guts, in what to her was probably total darkness, but that didn’t seem to have dampened her spirits any. “‘Go to Venice,’ they said. ‘The courtesans there live like queens,’ they said.” She slipped again, and ended up draped across the side of the craft, cursing. “If this is a queen, I’d rather be a commoner!”
“Glamourie,” Mircea repeated, hope dawning. “Then you can disguise us!”
“I could disguise myself,” she corrected. “I don’t have enough magic for two. And it doesn’t matter, anyway, when I can’t disguise my scent. Or don’t you think I’d have walked away before this?”
Mircea felt like battering his head against the boat, but he was hurt enough.
“Abramalin, the bastard, was supposed to send someone to get me,” the woman continued, ripping her skirts to get them free of a nail. “But the damned praetor changed locations, and I couldn’t get to the rendezvous for a week or so. She didn’t want anyone getting wise to her little scheme—”