Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 36

Panic caused me to jerked my trapped foot hard enough to crack the heavy old root it had become wedged under. I ignored a bright searing pain from my ankle and scrambled to my feet, gun in hand. Only to have it caught in an iron grip.

I twisted but couldn’t break the hold, so I did the next-best thing and threw my attacker against the wall. He hit with a thud that had more dirt dropping down on top of us, but he still didn’t let go. Instead, he spun me into his arms, and somehow got a grip on both wrists. So I stomped on his foot, trying to get enough leverage to—

“Please do not hit me below the belt again,” a man said, sounding heartfelt. “I have not yet recovered from the last time.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, relaxing back into Louis-Cesare’s arms.

“I followed Anthony. I wanted to know what was important enough to keep him away from the challenge of the century. Why are you here?”

“I followed you.” I twisted in his grasp, and he let me go, a little reluctantly, I thought. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. “Everyone is looking for you. The consul’s about to have a fit, Marlowe’s tearing his hair out and Mircea…”

“I know. I called him an hour ago, informing him that I will return for the trial. I never intended to do otherwise, but I had to be free to gather evidence, if such existed.”

“I think Marlowe is already doing that.”

“Yes, but there are places even he cannot go.”

“Such as?”

“Such as Anthony’s private rooms. I wished to search them for the stone—”

“You searched my rooms?” The outraged voice drifted faintly through the rubble.

Louis-Cesare’s head jerked up. “What was—”

“Anthony,” I said sourly. “I found him a little while ago.”

“You found—” He looked at me incredulously. “But he could drain you from here! If he is the killer—”

“I don’t think he is.” I wanted to ask how Louis-Cesare had managed to search Anthony’s rooms when Marlowe himself couldn’t do it. But I decided it could wait. “Did you find anything?”

“No.” He looked frustrated. “But he is dangerous nonetheless!”

“Not so much at the moment,” I said drily.

“He killed Geminus!”

“He says not.”

“I saw the body, Dorina. There are very few opponents who could have done that to a fighter of Geminus’s caliber.” It was the same thing I’d been thinking, but it still didn’t make sense.

“He was attacked, too.”

“By Geminus, no doubt attempting to defend himself.”

“I’d think the same, but those weren’t defensive wounds. Anthony said something killed Geminus and then attacked him.”

“Something?” Louis-Cesare’s expression spoke volumes.

“That’s what he said, but he isn’t completely coherent at the—”

The scream that tore the stillness caused us to jump as one, tensing against attack. But it wasn’t on our side of the fall. “Anthony!” Louis-Cesare called, as I scrambled back up the slope.

There was no answer, but an odd scent suddenly flooded the air, sweetness on the verge of putrefaction, hard and sharp-edged. I’d smelled it somewhere before, but I couldn’t place it. But there was something off about it, something wrong.

The tiny tunnel at the top of the landslide was even harder to get through quickly. By the time I’d managed it, I’d lost what skin remained on both my elbows and cracked my head on the ceiling a few more times. Which was why I just stared at the scene on the other side. For a moment, I thought maybe I’d hit my head a little too hard.

Anthony was slumped against the wall, staring upward with an expression of stark terror. Half a dozen stakes had been pulled out of his chest, and lay scattered on the floor, their bloody tips pointing at the creature stroking red hands over Anthony’s torso. The tiny, delicate fingers slid through slippery blood, teasing the edges of mortal wounds almost playfully.

But they were stronger than they looked. One of them suddenly backhanded Anthony, the manicured nails tearing into his cheek and snapping his head around, smashing his face into the rough wall. He forced his head back up, working his jaw absently. A trickle of blood made its way down his cheek before he began sluggishly to heal.

This seemed to enrage his tormenter, who gave another of those unearthly screams. Another slash of nails laid open his chest, but although he jerked against the pain, he kept his teeth clenched on a scream. With a digging twist the nails gouged deeper, until he twitched helplessly against their merciless grip, his head tossing back and cracking against the unforgiving bricks.

“Rotting carrion. How many times do I have to kill you?” his tormenter hissed.

“A few more, it would seem,” Anthony said, grimacing. And then he had to grit his teeth again as those knifelike nails started tearing downward in sharp, hard tugs.

The movement galvanized me out of my shock. A moment later, I was slip-sliding down the tumbled mass of dirt as Anthony’s nightmare looked up, snarling. I tensed, gun in one hand and heavy-duty flashlight in the other. But then the lips that had been pulled back in a rictus softened into a smile, and the glittering hate in the eyes melted away, as if it had never been there at all. If it hadn’t been for the blood smearing her pale blue gown, she would have looked completely normal.

“Christine?”

“Hello, Dory.” Her voice was calm, even, friendly. If I hadn’t been watching, I’d have never known that her fingers were still tracking the furrowed paths of Anthony’s wounds, slick with his blood.

I’d ended up teetering precariously on a pile of fallen bricks, so I stepped cautiously to the side. She didn’t noticeably react. “Uh. What are you doing?” I asked, equally carefully.

“What does it look like?” Anthony asked hoarsely.

I thought he might be wise to stop drawing her attention. The hate returned to her eyes as she looked at him, so focused that I could feel it pulsing between them. Then her hand tightened on the stake in his heart, and before I could stop her, she had jerked it out.

Anthony choked back a scream, while Christine crouched over him, holding the bloody spike. She held it up, examining it with a puzzled frown. “Why isn’t he dead?” she asked me.

I was wondering the same thing, until I saw his neck. There was a stuttering, puckered line where, until very recently, a gaping wound had been. He’d healed, I realized in disbelief. The stubborn son of a bitch had healed a mortal neck injury with a stake through his heart. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible without seeing it myself.

It was a damn impressive trick, but I didn’t think he had another one. The resignation on his face said that clearly enough. Anthony had given up; he thought this was it. And I had no clue why.

He should have been able to snap Christine like a twig, drain her, defend himself a hundred different ways from someone with little more power than a human. But he wasn’t. And that couldn’t be good.

“The wood is showing through,” Christine complained, before I could figure it out. She proffered the gory stake. “I don’t understand. It worked last time.”

“Last time being?”

“Elyas,” she said impatiently.

I walked over to take the stake, shedding dirt with every step and fighting to keep my breathing slow and steady. I didn’t understand what was going on here, and that was bad. But the unmistakable flicker of madness in Christine’s eyes was worse. If she wasn’t running on all cylinders, even a minor slipup could get me in trouble.

And Anthony dead.

I took the stake and examined it, crouching down beside Christine and her prey. I turned it over in my hands. “It looks okay to me,” I said. “Did you use the same type on Elyas?”

“Yes,” she said fretfully. “I had them made to my specifications in Zurich by a silversmith. The shaft is apple wood, but I had him inlay a little silver tip, you see?” She pointed out the razor-sharp end with a nicely manicured nail. It would have been pretty if it hadn’t had part of Anthony caught underneath it. “It makes it go in easier.”

“I bet it’s not as easily deflected by a rib, either,” I said, because she obviously expected me to say something.

She nodded. “It isn’t as good as a knife, of course, but at least it doesn’t splinter.”

“I tried iron banding once,” I told her, “quite a while ago, but I found that—” I broke off at a painful jab in my right calf. I glanced down to find Anthony’s hand gripping me. Right.

“Uh, so. Why did you kill Elyas again?”

She raised those lovely eyes from the stake to mine. “I’m sorry. Did you want him?” she asked politely.

“Not particularly, no.”

“I don’t blame you. He wasn’t much of a challenge.”

“Unlike Geminus?”

“Oh, no. He would have been interesting, but he wasn’t expecting it, you see. They rarely do.”

No, I didn’t suppose so. I was standing in front of her, watching Anthony’s blood drip from her hands, and I was still having a hard time picturing her as the murderer. Her scent was off, but she looked the same as always: sweetly innocent and beautiful enough to turn heads.

And then she plunged the stake back into Anthony’s chest, and it became a little easier.

He did scream that time—a pathetic, mewling sound that had me grabbing Christine’s wrist before I thought about it. But she only crouched there, looking at me inquiringly. “Uh. You can’t kill him,” I said weakly, after a short hesitation.

Her head tilted curiously. “Why not?”

My mind raced, trying to come up with a reason, any reason, to save Anthony. It was a little difficult since I didn’t know why she wanted him dead in the first place. And then a voice spoke calmly behind me. “His death energy would bring down the ceiling on our heads. We would all die.”

Christine frowned, and let go of the stake. She slowly rose to her feet, bloody hands smoothing her crumpled skirt. “Louis-Cesare.”

“Christine.”

I glanced between the two of them. Louis-Cesare looked vaguely sick, regarding the tableau with a terrible sadness. But he did not look shocked.

He did not look surprised.

“What the hell?” I demanded, standing up.

He glanced at me and hesitated. But then his spine stiffened and he answered, “When I made Christine, it was as I told you. She had been drained of most of her magic, and with it, her life. She was close to death—so close, in fact, that I did not know if the process would take.” He paused to lick his lips. “When she awoke, it became rapidly obvious that… there was something wrong. She was lucid enough. She knew me, but she was… troubled.”

“Troubled as in…”

“She was violent. Disturbed. I put her to sleep, hoping it was merely the trauma of what she had been through. But the next night, when I went to check on her, she was gone. I tracked her to the abbey where she had been a novice and where she had once been whipped. I found it burned to the ground, and the abbess…”

I suddenly remembered a vision of a burned-out building, piles of ash and a desiccated corpse, as delicate and fragile as an insect’s exoskeleton. “Christine?”

He nodded, swallowing. “Others had been fed upon. I tracked Christine for miles, and finally found her with a group of pilgrims. Or… what remained of them.”

“Oh, gods.” That was Anthony. I wasn’t sure if it was a cry of pain, or because he was slowly reaching the same conclusion I was.

“She hasn’t done anything like that since,” Louis-Cesare said quickly, seeing the dawning horror in my eyes. “I kept watch over her, and she is easily enough restrained. Her power is minimal; she is only a danger to humans and she is not allowed—”

“Minimal?” Anthony coughed, a harsh, wet sound. “She’s a goddamned first-level master. I should know!”

Christine casually put a delicate little patent leather shoe through his chest. I heard ribs crunch, and he cursed. “You do not wish to kill him, Christine. Remember?” Louis-Cesare said sharply.

“Oh. Oh, yes. I’m sorry.” She meekly withdrew the foot, leaving Anthony writhing on the floor.

I stood there, feeling dizzy. “She’s a revenant,” I said numbly. Louis-Cesare didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it either. He just stared at me, his face blank and pale like that of a man about to face the gallows.

Or like a man who had sired a monster.

It didn’t happen often, but occasionally a young master would feed off the same person too many times in close succession, thereby passing on the metaphysical virus that was at the core of vampirism. But because the feedings weren’t intended to be a Change, the master’s blood wasn’t also shared with the child. And thereby the link that power created was missing.

Revenants also occurred when something went wrong with the Change, either because of a mistake on the master’s part or because of a problem with the subject selected—generally illness or age. If the subject was weak, the link formed was as well, and never provided the control needed to steer the new vampire’s development.

However they were created, the newborn revenant was a problem from the start. They craved that connection with their master and the power it should have brought them. Without it, they went mad with hunger, attacking everything in sight, blindly searching for something they would never find.

Occasionally, one would survive for a few months, maybe as long as a year if he was in a relatively isolated place, like a mountain range with plenty of hiding places. But I’d never heard of one lasting longer than that. Certainly not long enough to rise in power. It had never even occurred to me—or to anyone I suspected—that a revenant could rise in power.

I guess the assumption always was that they were flawed mentally, so they must be flawed physically as well. And that was often true. The pale, hunchbacked, salivating vamp of legend, with fangs too large for his mouth and an unquenchable lust for blood, possibly came from sightings of revenants.

But what if one did live, because she had a powerful protector? A protector so ridden with guilt that he couldn’t bear to follow the law and have her destroyed? And what if that revenant was highly functioning, enough so that, with careful supervision, she would appear merely eccentric rather than mad? And what if this farce had continued for three hundred years?

What could a first- level master revenant do? Other than manage to camouflage her abilities, even from her own maker. Who, after all, hadn’t seen her for more than a century.

I glanced at Anthony. I guess I knew.

“She is not… She does not have to be a danger,” Louis-Cesare said desperately. “She can be—”

“She’s a fucking revenant,” Anthony coughed. “She’s a danger to everyone—you know this! Why the hell didn’t you have her put down when you realized it?”

“How could I? I had already killed her twice! First when I handed her over to that bastard of a mage, and then when I made her into a vampire. How many times am I supposed to kill this one poor woman? How much damage am I to do?”

I didn’t think that was the question. I thought it was: how much could he do? Like human children, baby vamps tended to take attributes from their sire. So much so that family lines often became known for having certain gifts. Mircea’s, for instance, was better than normal with healing, both themselves and others. Louis-Cesare had gained that advantage from Radu, but when he became a master, it was his own special gifts and interests that were passed to his children.

And, as everyone knew, his strongest ability was in combat.