At the impossible.
Because the baby was walking through the flames now, dual-wielding his makeshift swords, forcing the woman back. Until she repurposed my trick. Finding a still-intact bottle and throwing it at his feet, where it exploded against the hard concrete and splashed everywhere, wetting his trousers. Causing fire to run up his legs and spike toward his torso, and the crowd to gasp in horror.
But not the baby. Another involuntary jerk, and he was back in control. A wave of his hand, a murmured word, and the flames died down and went out. And this time, even the woman stared.
I didn’t know what she might have pulled out of her bag of tricks next, other than the knife that was already in her hand. And I never got the chance to find out. Because a shadow had taken advantage of the distraction to slip up behind her, one whose arm went around her throat, and whose murmured words in her ear seemed to do what steel bars couldn’t.
And caused her to drop the knife.
And suddenly, the vampires went crazy.
If I’d thought they were loud before, it was nothing compared to this. You’d have thought their team had just won the Super Bowl, it was so deafening. And this from creatures who usually prided themselves on how silent and reserved they could be.
But not this time. The baby found himself abruptly jerked up and paraded around the room, like a pop star crowd-surfing a mass of loyal fans. The yells and cheers were like the roar of the ocean; even the senate was suddenly talking excitedly—and smiling.
And then Jules pulled me out from under the table, soda can in hand. “Are you all right?” he yelled, to be heard over the din.
I nodded. I thought so. Honestly, I had no idea.
Like I had no idea what had just happened.
“What’s going on?” I yelled back.
“They just . . . dhampir!”
“What?”
“I said, they just saw a baby vamp defeat a dhampir!” he screamed at me, grinning like all the rest.
I turned my eyes to the woman, who was now struggling in Mircea’s hold. She wasn’t going anywhere, but her fangs were out, her eyes were gold, and her beautiful face was set on snarl. I blinked. That . . . was a dhampir?
I’d never seen one before, but I’d heard about them. I’d heard all about them. They were the bogeyman. They were the vampire equivalent of John Wick. They were the half-vamp, half-human deformed monsters who hunted vamps the way vamps used to hunt humans, only with even more savagery and ruthlessness. Tony’s guys had loved telling stories about dhampirs.
And Mircea was . . . What the hell was Mircea doing with one?
“What is going on?” I yelled again, because nothing made any goddamn sense.
Until I caught sight of the baby vamp again, grinning from his throne of cheering supporters. So happy that he never even noticed the shadow pull apart from him and flit over to Adra. The head of the demon council met my eyes.
“I think we have our deal, Pythia,” he called.
Yeah, I thought. And the senate had their army, or at least the beginnings of one. Because the fight had done what I couldn’t, and whipped up some legitimate enthusiasm.
Which might have been why the consul was smiling as she stepped forward.
“Lord Mircea,” she called, her voice carrying over the din. Mircea’s head jerked up. For a moment, he just stared at her, dark eyes wide. And then they slowly slid over to me. “Would you please secure—”
“No!”
“—your daughter?”
I stared from Mircea to the struggling woman in his arms, uncomprehending.
And then it hit me.
“Daughter?”
Chapter Thirty-eight
“It was a cow pasture!” I whirled on Mircea as soon as we left the hallway. “I had to get you out of that room, and I couldn’t afford another fight, and—damn it! It was a cow pasture. The only thing hurt was her pride!”
“I know.” He closed the door behind him, and damn if he didn’t sound exactly the same as always. The velvet voice calm, the motions unhurried, the handsome face composed. It was infuriating.
We were back in the bedroom suite where I’d woken up, which was the only place he would talk, I suppose because he’d made sure it wasn’t bugged. But it meant that I’d had to come all the way back up here without saying a word, feeling like I was about to explode. While he’d had the trip back to prepare the defense, as Jules would say. So this was probably going to be another master class in—
No! Not this time! “Then what the hell—”
“She is dhampir,” he told me, still standing by the door. We were in the outer room with all the candles, and they danced in his eyes, making it even harder to read his expression. “They do not think as we do. Most . . . do not think at all. They are famous for their madness, almost as much as for their savagery. Dorina is . . . less unstable . . . than most. But her vampire half has been coming to the forefront more and more lately, and it has its own way of thinking about things.”
“Her vampire half? What, is she some kind of split personality?”
I’d said it scornfully, but he nodded. “In a manner of speaking, yes. She was whole once, but her vampire nature threatened to swamp her human child’s mind. I suspect that is why most dhampirs go mad: their two sides grow at separate rates, and one destroys the other. Leaving them vulnerable to hunters of all descriptions.”
“But that didn’t happen to her.” Because if she was Mircea’s child, his actual child, she had to be . . . God, something like five hundred years old. Or more, since he was almost six hundred himself. A five-hundred-year-old dhampir.
It didn’t compute.
Of course, none of this did.
“I managed to separate the two parts of her nature,” Mircea explained, “and build a mental block between them—it was the only way to save her life. But now that block is crumbling, and I cannot repair it. She inherited my mental gifts, and she is too strong. Her vampire half wants out.”
“And to kill me, apparently!”
He shook his head. “You must understand, her vampire nature has not had the experience with our society that her human mind has. She is . . . something unique, a master vampire who has grown up, not only without a master, but also in almost complete isolation. Dory—the human side of her—dominated for centuries—”
“Why? If Dorina has your mental gifts, shouldn’t she have been the one in charge?”
“Yes,” he said patiently, “but that is what was causing the problem in the first place. I locked Dorina down to give Dory time to mature. I thought I was doing the right thing; otherwise, I would have lost both of them. But I . . . overdid it. Once the block was in place, Dorina was able to emerge only when Dory was under extreme duress, and her mental control was ragged. As a result, Dorina knows a great deal about combat, but very little about interpreting other types of human interaction.”
I tried to process that. It didn’t help much. “So she decided to kill me because I ticked her off?”