Embrace the Night

Chapter 29

"That's impossible! You said—"

"I said your theory seemed plausible if the spell had not morphed into something new. Obviously it has. In the hundred years since you placed it on the vampire, it has had more than enough time to grow, to change, to become a new spell. As a result, the counterspell won't work. Because the spell it was designed to offset no longer exists!"

"You're telling me we went through all that for nothing? That we'll just die anyway?"

"Not for nothing. In the process, we discovered—" He glanced at Mircea and hesitated. "Much of interest."

And, yeah, that might be true, but knowing what was really behind the war wouldn't do me much good if I wasn't alive to fight it. "That doesn't help!"

"I told you all along that I doubted the counterspell would work," he informed me, in the tone that made me want to hit him even more than usual.

I was about to return a scathing reply, when I suddenly remembered. He had said that, but he'd said something else, too. Something that I'd forgotten because I'd been so fixated on the Codex. There was another way to break the geis, one that Mircea had woven into the spell himself.

My heart sped up as I ran the idea over in my head. All three components of the geis were here now: me and both Mirceas. The counterspell didn't work, but that was because the original spell had changed form, not because my theory had been wrong. But Pritkin had said that the fail-safe was part of the geis and that it would morph along with it. So the fail-safe should still work.

"There might be an alternative," I said slowly.

"What alternative?" Pritkin asked, his eyes narrowing.

I looked at Mircea. "Do you remember, when you had the original spell cast, you had the mage put an escape clause in place?"

"A fail-safe, yes. I was advised to do so by everyone with whom I spoke. It is a common precaution, as the duthracht geis is famous for—" Mircea stopped, understanding flooding his eyes, followed immediately by a stubborn glint. "Dulceata? — " he began warningly.

"It didn't work with Tomas," I said, speaking quickly before he made up his mind, "because he was a substitute, but for only one of you. And just like with the counterspell, the fail-safe will only work if there's two of you, uh, participating."

"Cassie—"

"You must be out of your mind!" Pritkin broke in. "If it doesn't succeed, you could end up tied to him forever!"

"That won't happen."

"You don't know that! There is no telling what might occur with a spell left to its own devices for that long!" Mircea hadn't spoken, hadn't moved. But suddenly the security detail was back. "I suppose it only requires the right master for you to knuckle under—is that it?" Pritkin sneered as they started manhandling him from the room. "You were brought up as a vampire's little lapdog—I should have thought you'd prefer not to die one as well!"

The door slammed shut, although I could still hear him ranting as they towed him down the hall. "You can't hurt him. He has to go back with me."

"Their orders are merely to detain him," Mircea said, looking at me narrowly. "I thought you would prefer to discuss this in private."

"Yes. Well." I stopped and mentally pushed Pritkin's accusations away. I had to concentrate if I was going to get this right. If I was going to make Mircea understand. "If I've figured this right, and I'm pretty sure I have because we've tried everything else, then…it has to be all of us. The fail-safe was never an independent entity but was tied to the geis itself. So when the geis changed, the fail-safe changed right along with it. That's why built-in safety measures are used with the duthracht. Because even if it does go haywire, they will still counter it."

"What has to be all of us?"

I narrowed my eyes. Mircea knew more about magic than I did, so he'd followed me perfectly well. He just wanted to make me spell it out.

I paused, sure for a moment that I couldn't get the words out, that they wouldn't fit past my throat. "The sex thing," I finally blurted. "It needs to be all of us." Which was absolutely the most shocking thing anybody had ever said for the long moment before Mircea smiled.

"You know, dulceata? when I told you that I enjoy a wide range of experiences, I did not expect you to take me quite so literally." He started buttoning up the shirt. I assumed by the fact that he was getting dressed that I must not have been as clear as I'd thought.

"What are you doing?" I demanded. "I told you, we have to have sex now!"

"No, I believe the term you used for a threesome was ‘the thing. " Mircea slipped on his suit coat. "I admit to having few reservations about personal relations, but one rule I do try to maintain." He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. "If the lady cannot bear to say it," he whispered, "we don't do it."

I pushed him back and glared at him, hands on hips, immediately pissed. "No one made you put the geis on me," I told him, pushing a finger into that completely clothed chest. The soft, luxurious weave of Chinese silk met my hand, something that didn't make me any happier. "No one told you to make sex the condition to break it! I've been through hell to figure a way out of this and now that I have, you're playing hard to get?!"

His amusement, if anything, seemed to ratchet up a notch. I guess Sal was right; I didn't do tough well. "You have to admit, dulceata? that your story does seem somewhat—"

"Strip," I ordered.

Mircea stood there by the bedpost, giving me a disbelieving lift of an eyebrow, and a look that clearly said, You did not just order me to take off my clothes. Except that I had, and I gave him a stubborn chin raise in response. Very slowly, he pulled off the suit coat and dropped it onto the bed. His look challenged me to take something off as well.

I tossed my head at him. Fine. After the week I'd had, that didn't seem like much of a challenge at all. I reached back and unhooked the catch at the top of my dress. Sal had refused to let me visit "the master" in my old sweats, and had cobbled together an outfit for me. One tug had the zipper down on the dress and the satin material sliding over my curves until it was no more than an icy blue puddle around my feet. I still wore a strapless satin bra and panties set, purchased to match the dress, and a corset in white.

The corset was a slightly jarring note, but I hadn't had a choice. Whoever they'd had patch me up had done a good job, and a glamour had covered most of the assorted cuts, bruises and claw marks. But the fact remained that I don't heal like a vamp. Underneath the white lace and ribbons was an ugly two-inch-long scar that we'd been afraid would bleed through onto my pretty new dress.

"You are serious." Mircea was frowning.

I spread my hands. "Yes! Yes, I'm serious! What is the problem?"

He looked torn between exasperation and disbelief. "You know the problem! You explained it to me. And I do not intend to spend the rest of my life bound to the wishes of a—" He cut off abruptly.

"Of a what?" I could feel my temper rising.

He recovered quickly. "Of a young lady who, however charming, knows so little about our world."

"I'm learning fast," I said, "and don't patronize me." I was pretty sure the word he'd almost uttered had been "child." And whatever else was true of me, that wasn't. Not since the age of fourteen, when I'd run away and learned exactly the kind of world I lived in.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, unruffled. "Any more than I would dream of completing such a dangerous spell."

"We're not completing it! Two of us would have done that. The fail-safe wouldn't have worked if we'd had sex in London, because all three of us weren't there. But here and now, it will override the geis."

"You can't be certain of that."

"Maybe not. But I can be certain that you'll die if the geis isn't broken. Would you prefer that to living under someone else's mastery?"

"I cannot say," he replied mildly. "Having never had a master. But I did die once. It wasn't so bad, as I recall."

"Mircea!"

"Cassie, would you listen to yourself? You expect me to believe that another version of me is in there" — he nodded toward the snare—“and that the three of us must copulate to break the geis despite the fact that one of us is very likely mad?"

"You think I'm lying to you?"

"I have already told you what I think—that you have been deceived. You must—"

"I must do nothing. I'm Pythia. Which, in case you missed it, means I outrank you."

Mircea caught my hands, which had been trying to get the loops of silk that served as buttonholes on his shirt loose from their toggles. I really wanted that damn thing off. "You are Pythia because we put you there!"

I gave a sudden push. He ended up sprawled on the bed. "Dulceata?—"

"I have the title because I've damned well earned it! Stop assuming that I'm the same little girl you left at Tony's. I'm not."

"Mages are treacherous," he said stubbornly. "And this one has obviously—"

I stopped him by placing one foot on the edge of the bed, between his legs, while balancing on the other. I didn't spend much time in four-inch heels, and I wasn't sure how long I could stay there. "Take it off," I ordered, nudging his inner thigh with the toe of my shoe. I'd let Sal talk me into ice blue satin heels with a strap around the ankle and toes studded with crystals in a starburst pattern. I'd thought they were a little much, but for some reason she had absolutely insisted on the shoes.

"A pretty thing. Much nicer than your last footwear selection."

I gently nudged him again, and this time I didn't hit his thigh. He breathed in sharply. Mircea could pretend all he wanted, but at least one part of him wasn't completely indifferent to my proposition. "Cassandra," he began, his tone menacing, and I repressed a grin. Okay, now I knew I was getting to him.

The shoe continued its work, moving in circles that grew bigger with every sweep, grazing but never quite touching. Just a little encouragement, though it didn't feel like he needed much. "It's too risky," he told me stubbornly. "If you're wrong—"

"I'm not wrong."

"You don't know that. You admitted it yourself."

I nudged him again and his eyes dropped to half-mast. "I thought family were the only ones you can trust. So trust me, Mircea."

He didn't answer, but his hand slowly closed around my ankle, then smoothed down over my heel to the spike. He stroked his thumb over the silken material, up and down, until I started to feel a little giddy. I was beginning to understand why Sal had pushed for the shoes.

"I told you to take it off," I repeated. I could already feel my leg going wobbly. Mircea managed to get the tiny jeweled buckle around my ankle undone one-handed and slipped the pump off. Then his lips were on my foot. It wasn't something I'd expected, and it caught me off guard. The feel of his tongue dragging along my arch, was enough to make my toes curl and my breath catch.

"What about the other you?" I asked, while my brain could still form sentences.

"What about him?" he murmured, before his teeth closed over my heel. He bit down, a fairly gentle nip, but my knee buckled from the sensation. I twitched and wobbled, and had to grab the bedpost to keep my balance.

"Damn it," I muttered.

Mircea grinned at me, unrepentant, and pulled me down beside him. "The mage did not curse me earlier. Did you not wonder why?"

I stared at that beautiful face. It was close enough to kiss, but I didn't think that was what he had in mind. "He wants to help."

"Perhaps. But is it not equally possible that he has arranged a trap?"

"He has no reason to—"

"Tensions have been rising between us and the Black Circle for some time. They would love nothing better than to strike a preemptive blow. And what could be better than killing a Senate member and the new Pythia, all at once? He made sure to exit the room—"

"Because you threw him out!"

“—something he could have easily anticipated. Once we are alone, he would expect curiosity to compel us to open the box, and thereby spring the trap on ourselves. And once the general alarm was raised, he could slip away in the confusion."

And I thought I was paranoid. "That isn't—" I stopped, because he wasn't listening to me anymore. He looked up and, for a moment, his gaze was somewhere else.

"The mage is becoming difficult for the guards to handle. I will return shortly." He rolled off the bed and headed for the door.

"Mircea!"

He looked at me over his shoulder, his face grave. "I will not kill him, Cassie. But I will have the truth of this—of a lot of things. One way or the other."

I watched him go, wondering how things could possibly have gone so bad so fast. I'd known Mircea distrusted mages—all vamps did—but I'd foolishly assumed that a life-or-death situation would override that. And it probably would have, if he'd believed that was what we were facing. But he'd convinced himself that Pritkin was a dark mage assassin and I was the naive dupe he'd conned into helping him. If I needed his cooperation, I was toast.

For the fail-safe to kick in, I needed only two components: proximity and sex. I was pretty sure I still had the former. Mircea wouldn't want anyone interfering in family business, so he would almost certainly question Pritkin here, in his suite. From what I'd seen, it was pretty extensive, but not any more so than a large house. Which meant that they were somewhere nearby.

It was the second part of the equation that was problematic. I'd assumed we all three had to be present and actively involved to break the geis, but what if we didn't? I bit my lip, furiously trying to think of anything anyone had said that might give me a clue one way or the other, but there was nothing. It was a fifty-fifty gamble: proximity to two Mirceas and sex with one of them would either break the geis or it wouldn't. And if I gambled and lost, I'd end up completing the very bond I'd been trying to avoid.

Billy had advised me once to never gamble unless I could afford to lose. But not gambling now would lose me Mircea. And I didn't think I could live with that.

I stared at the innocent-looking box on the nightstand and wondered if I was nuts. Marlowe hadn't been able to handle him; the Consul had been spooked enough to order him locked up; and here I was about to release him. What if he didn't recognize me? What if I registered as no more than food? I'd seen how fast he could feed; I'd be dead before anyone could stop him.

I can shift out if he's too much for me, I told myself, hoping it was true. Yeah, and then what? If this didn't work, I was out of ideas. If this didn't work—I pushed the thought aside as seriously counterproductive and gingerly picked up the box.

Pritkin had told me something else once, too: the geis responded to the caster's deepest desires. And right here, right now, there was nothing Mircea and I wanted more than to have it gone for good. I just hoped that was going to be enough. I placed the box in the middle of the bed and took a deep breath.

And then I let him out.

The figure of a man suddenly appeared on the bed beside me. At first, he looked to be asleep, until I looked closer and saw his face, tucked halfway into the pillow and lined with pain. His hand clutched blindly at my shoulder, clenching as tightly as his jaw, for a long minute. And then, slowly, hesitantly, almost as if it had forgotten how, it relaxed.

This man was no threat, I realized, blinking back tears as I watched him. He barely even seemed to know where he was. I tried to comb my fingers through his hair, but they got stuck over and over in all the snarls. "Mircea?" I whispered.

His lashes were clumped together and he didn't open them at the sound of my voice. He didn't reply, either, but a tentative hand wandered up to my neck. His fingers slid along the curve of my flesh to rest above the pulse of the jugular, right over the two small scars he had made.

I gazed down at him with wet eyes and a heartbeat so rapid it felt like I was about to faint. Then he blindly grasped for me, making these choked, desperate noises in his throat that I finally realized were words. He was asking me if I was sure.

"I've never been surer about anything," I said fervently, and the decision was suddenly just that easy. I couldn't let him die. All the logical arguments in the world couldn't change that one simple fact. This whole time, I'd been battling for his life as much as for mine, and I wasn't about to lose him now.

It was easy to turn him over with my hand on his chest. It was much less easy to ignore the heat of his skin, the tight nipples riding over lean muscle or the strong thump of his heartbeat. I liked the way his breath caught, the way his stomach hollowed under his rib cage, when my thighs touched his sides.

I wasn't kidding myself—I knew how any relationship between us was going to go. Sooner or later, Mircea would do something unforgivable, probably at the Consul's behest. Or I would make a demand and he wouldn't give in. Even without the Circle's suspicion hanging over us, there was a clock ticking every second we were together, the distant sound of the oncoming train. I knew, I'd always known, that I couldn't keep this. But for this one night I could have him. And I wanted it all.

I pressed my palm against him and was rewarded with a hitching, indrawn breath. He was thick and uncut, tender at the tip, irresistible. He was darker here, rose and gold, and it was fascinating the way the flush shifted under the pressure of my slowly moving fingers. I brushed my lips over the side of him, drinking deeply of his familiar scent. It made it easy to accustom myself to the strangeness of what I was doing.

I licked, a long, slow trail from base to head, letting my tongue wander and slide and yes—a gasp spurred me on. I did it again, and felt him shudder above me. I didn't hesitate after that. I needed this—the thick glide of his flesh past my lips, salty and bitter and sweet on my tongue.

Mircea pulled me up before I was ready, pressing against me with tongue and teeth and lips shredded with bite marks from weeks of torture. He cried out when we kissed, but I don't think it was from pain. I wrapped myself in his body, all hard muscle, sweat-drenched skin and matted hair, and felt him begin to press inside. Blunt, thick strength took me, sinking deep. I shifted up, wanting even more, and in a moment he was so far inside that there was no distance left to close.

He paused for a moment, and we stared at each other, his eyes finally wide open, wild and pained and so golden that I couldn't see any brown. When he finally began to move, there were no short thrusts from his hips, but an unrelenting deluge, the muscles of his arms and the power of his thighs reducing his body to one long undulation. And suddenly, every cell was screaming to get closer, to clench tight around him on the downstroke, to live inside his taste and smell, to feel every thrust in my teeth. For a moment it was almost like being possessed, only it seemed to go both ways. Some part of me whispered through him with every thrust into my body, which in turn increased my own pleasure until I was sure I would die of it.

"Perfect," he said brokenly, before swooping in for another kiss. Mouth open, tongue plunging deep, he stroked in perfect time with his movements inside me.

And it was suddenly too hard, too fast, too much. My breathing fractured into harsh, quick gasps when I could get air at all, my body spasming as my mind fought to sort it all out. But it was complete sensory overload, pinned inescapably, pummeled by every forceful movement, the pain blending with the pleasure. He pounded into me while growling into my mouth, biting my lips, saying the same thing with breath and hands and body. Mine! It whispered through me with every deep thrust. Mine. Every frantic push of his hips, every deep, wet kiss echoed with it. Mine, mine.

And then, whether my body could take it or not, it was suddenly even more. Between one breath and the next, we became an extension of each other's passion, somehow living inside the other's skin, more like one body than two. His pleasure felt like mine, was mine. He swallowed and I felt it in my throat; he lost himself in the motions of having me, and I felt his every stroke.

His fingertips brushed against my scars with a deep inner thrill (mine, mine) before dropping to my hip, caressing the soft roundness. His hand was on my breast, and I felt my own shivery skin through his fingertips, knew the sensation of my shudder passing down another's spine, felt his joy as my muscles quivered and then relaxed, surrendering completely.

Orgasm was both heavenly and painful when it finally came. It felt like we were breaking through a barrier into each other, falling deep, tearing loose from the last pretense of control. He thrust again and again—no finesse, no thought, just this, the rapture of it. Every touch burned through me, the pleasure that burst inside my veins echoed in his. I couldn't tell which one of us gave that raw, stuttering cry: mine, mine, mine.

Without warning, everything came apart. The sensations, color, heat, pleasure, were so intense that I worried I might never be able to put myself together again, intense enough to hurt and make me beg him to stop, beg him to never stop. It went on and on, waves of pleasure in time with Mircea's unsteady thrusts, sparked harder by the wild shocks that emanated from me, from him, from me, until I couldn't remember how to breathe anymore.

He suddenly stopped, and there was an odd look in his eyes, surprised and a little broken, but mostly amazed. I was pretty amazed too, because I'd never made anyone look like that before. He stayed there for a long moment, staring at me, before rolling off, and pulling me back against him, his chest rising and falling harshly as he breathed.

He pulled the coverlet up over both of us, making a warm little cocoon. It was easy to just lie there, watching the nearest candle gutter and wax dribble over the holder. It finally went out, leaving the room dim, shadowed and strangely cozy. And it was while we lay there in a tangle of limbs, unsure quite where one body left off and the other began, that I felt it. Nothing dramatic, nothing extreme, just a small snap. But suddenly I was entirely back in my own skin again.

The geis was gone.

"Dulceata?" Mircea breathed. And I felt it as soon as he said my name, an even, soft hum of something that recognized me and welcomed me like it had known me forever. But it wasn't a spell. It was the way I'd always felt around him, something that had been masked by the geis and its constant low, stirring heat, its hunger and desperation and pain. This was less overpowering but deeper, more persistent and sweet. I kissed him softly and it tasted amazing, warm and familiar and home.

"Are you all right?" I asked, but I knew the answer even before he smiled slightly and opened his eyes. Long lashes dipped over too-sharp cheekbones, but I felt the same weightless flutter in my stomach as always when that gaze met mine.

"I will be."

Compared to all my problems, saving the life of one man didn't seem like much of an accomplishment. So why was I suddenly grinning like an idiot? Maybe because, somewhere along the line, I'd learned to take my triumphs where I could get them. Tomorrow there would be trouble and danger and pain, and I didn't know if I would be smart enough or strong enough or capable enough to handle it all, especially now that I understood what I was up against. But I knew one thing: today, finally, something had gone right.

"The other you will be back soon," I said, hoping he was lucid enough to understand. "And I told him too much. He can't be allowed to keep those memories."

"No one can erase a master's mind," he said hoarsely. "I doubt even the Consul herself could do it."

"But if you remember, you'll try to change things—"

"I did. I searched for the mage, but never found him, and returned here only to discover that you were also gone. Afterwards, I reconsidered what you had said, and tried to break the geis before it had a chance to be doubled, but the war intervened. And once it did, there was nothing to be done but see this through to the end."

I stared at him in disbelief. "But you didn't know what happened after you left! You didn't know we succeeded!"

"I knew you. I could not believe that you would leave without completing your mission. I had to trust that you'd found a way to break it."

"That's why you sent me away," I said, my head reeling. "Why you wouldn't let Rafe bring me to you."

"I did not want to change this future," he agreed. "When he went to you despite my orders, and you came to me…For a brief moment, I thought it was over. But then I remembered: I had not yet been imprisoned, your clothes were wrong, and there was no snare on the bedside table. It was too soon. It was the closest I came to breaking."

I couldn't imagine it, that solitary, agonizing wait, not even knowing for certain that we would win in the end, that it wouldn't all be for nothing. I didn't think I could have done it. I didn't understand how he had.

Before I could say anything, the door burst open and Pritkin dashed in. His coat was missing, half his potions were gone and he had a gun in each hand. I wondered how he'd managed to get the door open. He kicked it shut behind him. "Did it work?" he demanded.

"Yes, no thanks to you!"

"No thanks to me? How else would you have gotten that creature out of here?"

"You planned this?"

"Of course!"

"But…what if I'd listened to you? What if I hadn't dared—"

Pritkin gave me his old impatient look. "You never listen to me!"

"That's not the point!"

Someone put a fist through five inches of Romanian oak and almost grabbed him before he could skip away. "We can discuss this later," he said quickly. "Get us the hell out of here!"

I gazed at Mircea, still feeling stunned. "You might have hoped I'd be successful," I said, "but you couldn't have known—"

"I knew you," he repeated. "Therefore I knew how it ends."

I grabbed both their hands, just as the door exploded off its hinges. "How it begins!" I said, and shifted.