“Tell me.”
“Nimue,” I said simply. “Fifteen hundred years ago. It was the same as on the drag: a darkness, a . . . coldness.” I gestured futilely. “I know I’m not explaining it very well, but I knew him. And he knew me—or at least he knew what I was. He called me vlva—it means seer.”
“I know,” Adra murmured, his face going blank.
It didn’t bother me so much this time, because I hoped the reason was that he was thinking too hard to bother keeping up the facade. But I still didn’t like looking at it. I stared out at the room, wondering where the hell Mircea was, and why nobody seemed to be noticing anything unusual about us.
But they weren’t. The crowd ebbed and flowed beneath us, the ones who weren’t part of the ongoing argument taking the opportunity to refresh their drinks or to group up, talking quietly. Nobody seemed to notice us at all—well, almost nobody.
I sighed, catching sight of the baby vampire, blundering over in our general direction. He must have seen Adra and me talking a minute ago, and now he couldn’t find me. And he was getting distressed again; I could see it on his face, although I didn’t know why. The most dangerous thing happening at the moment was that they’d run out of vermouth.
Even worse, Marlowe was following him.
Not obviously, not unless you were looking for it, but when the baby moved, a few seconds later, so did the chief spy. He was hunting for us, hunting for us using that poor, scared baby vamp as bait, and that was just—
“I see two possibilities,” Adra said abruptly.
I turned back to him.
“A true possession requires a spirit physically entering someone’s body. And Ares isn’t here.”
“But I saw—”
He quieted me with a gesture. “However, there is an interesting story in the Iliad. Ares was badly wounded in the Trojan War by Athena, and forced to withdraw. But before he left, he infused part of himself into the armor Achilles was to wear, hoping to cause him to throw the battle. Achilles was a leader on the opposite side,” he added, seeing my frown.
And misinterpreting it.
“Infused?”
He nodded. “It appears that, on rare occasions, the gods would shear off a small part of their power, as Apollo did when he gave some of his to the Pythian Court. In this case, it was Ares, but instead of leaving it free, to take on a life of its own, he bound it to an object.”
“A suit of armor?”
“Not just any suit; one made by the god Hephaistos, to protect Achilles at the siege of Troy.”
“You’re saying Ares could possess Achilles through the armor?”
“I am saying that he tried. But Achilles was a demigod, son of the sea goddess Thetis, and remained unaffected. However, when he lent the armor to his human friend Patroclus, it promptly drove him mad. He fought to his death, in a crazed frenzy. And the victor of that fight, a man named Hector, who took the armor as spoils of war, later committed suicide.”
“Then Ares can possess an object?” I didn’t know why I’d never even thought of that, when I wore something similar around my neck.
“In a manner of speaking. But there appear to be limitations. It isn’t as strong outside its element, in this case war. It isn’t an independent ghost, but merely some of Ares’ energy, which is bound to an object and cannot leave it. It can therefore only influence one person at a time.”
“Whoever’s using it.”
He nodded, and I immediately thought of Nimue. Rosier had seemed shocked by her actions; even some of her people had been freaked out. Like the fey in gray. His expression, as he knelt beside that girl, had been angry, but there had been confusion, too. Like that hellscape was out of character for the woman he knew.
Maybe because she wasn’t the one calling the shots.
“You said two possibilities?”
“The attack you suffered at Dante’s is . . . puzzling. A spiritual assault of the kind you describe should have left you unconscious at best, in a coma or dead at worst. Yet you slept for an afternoon and were on your feet again. Hurt, yes, exhausted, yes, traumatized, most certainly. But functional . . .”
“You think it was a trick.”
“I think that, if Ares had left part of his soul here, we would have heard about it long before this,” he said grimly. “And trickery is as much a part of warfare as battle. If Ares could demoralize you, persuade you that you were too injured to fight, it would help him, would it not?”
“Yes, but—”
“You told me recently that the barrier protecting us from the gods had been weakened by Apollo’s arrival, allowing Ares to contact supporters on this side—including your acolytes. If he was in mental communication with the mage when you attacked, he wouldn’t have been able to hurt you. But he could attempt to make you think otherwise.”
“But I felt it. And I was weakened afterward.” I looked up at him in confusion. “Wasn’t I?”
Adra looked grave. “I do not think he can reach you here. But there are many things about the gods and their powers that we do not know. Be careful, Cassie.”
Yeah, that was the real trick, wasn’t it? I thought, as I felt his spell lift. The room went back to normal, light and sound flooding in: people talking, glasses chiming, the baby making a relieved sound and starting toward us. And then Adra’s eyes lifted, in the direction of the door on the far end of the room.
“Ah. It looks as if we may receive some help, after all.”
I followed his gaze, expecting to see Mircea at last—and I might have.
But someone else was in the way.
“Dorina!” I heard Mircea’s voice thunder, felt his power flow around me, saw a stake pause in midair, headed straight for my face. And then it was slashing down, and someone was shoving me, and someone was screaming—
And then I hit the floor, at the bottom of the stands, hard enough to stun.
Although not as much as looking up and seeing the baby vamp, standing where I had been a second ago, because he must have been the one to shove me out of the way. And had been rewarded for his courage with stakes bisecting both heart and throat. The latter was so long the bloody tip jutted completely out the other side.
Until it was ripped out of him a second later.
“No!” I screamed as he turned to look at me, blood-splattered glasses gleaming in the firelight, and stumbled against the bench behind him.
But there was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. That blow would have taken vampires far older than him. It was another reason babies were kept separate from the rest of the household: for their protection, because they were so vulnerable at that age.
“No,” I said again, my eyes filling.
And then his assailant was jumping for me, bloody stakes in hand, moving like a blur, as someone yelled: “Slow her down!”
Mircea’s voice came again. “I am slowing her!”