Touch The Dark

Chapter 14

It was a small room, maybe ten by twelve, with bare stone walls, floor and ceiling. The only light came from a pair of torches, one on either side of a rather mundane-looking metal cabinet. It looked really out of place, like something that ought to be in a modern office building, not sitting in the vault of a magical stronghold. The Consul was standing before it, as still as a statue except for her living costume, holding a small silver ball in her hand. The cabinet door was open, showing rows of shelves full of black boxes.

I didn't waste time saying hello, but splashed the contents of the bottle all over Mircea and me. As soon as the liquid hit my skin, it was like a veil had been lifted. I could See everything, each image and sensation from that other time, as clearly as if I were leafing through pages in a book. Mircea put me down and I clutched him as my feet hit the floor. The images shifting through my head gave me double vision and I was afraid I'd fall.

"We have five minutes," the Consul said mildly, as if discussing the weather.

"I know." Mircea looked down at me. "Can you do it?"

I nodded. I had the scene I wanted. It was perfect—two people all alone with no one to see if they suddenly began acting strangely. It was a bonus that one of them was Louis-César. I figured he would be a lot harder to kill with Mircea in residence. "I'm going to try to jump us into a couple of bodies, since it'll give us more time. We can feed off them as Billy does me. But I don't know if this will work. I've never done it deliberately." I looked at Billy Joe, who was hovering anxiously. "Come in."

"Cassie, listen, I…"

"There's no time, Billy." I regarded the spirit I was trusting with my body, possibly permanently, and for a second I saw the man he might have been had he lived. "If I don't make it back, do your best to kill Tony and free my father. Promise." I didn't know if he could do it, but Billy was amazingly resourceful when he wanted to be.

He stared at me, then slowly nodded. He dissolved into a cloud of sparkling energy and flowed across my skin like an old, familiar blanket. I took him in gladly, ignored the flash of his last card game, which he should have played to lose, and felt him settle in. There was nothing left but to let go. I concentrated on the scene I'd selected, saw again that dim, candlelit room, felt the cool breeze from the window and smelled the scents of firewood, roses and sex. Then the earth gave way and we were falling.

The jolt of impact felt like I'd hit the ground after diving out a second-story window. But I barely noticed it considering the other sensations flooding through the body I had borrowed. I looked up to see Louis-César haloed in candlelight for an instant, just before he plunged into me. I cried out in surprise, but not in pain. It didn't hurt as Mircea had warned; it felt wonderful. I watched him pull out and tried to say something, but then he slammed into me again and all I wanted was for him to go faster, harder. My nails were scratching his back, but he didn't seem to mind. I looked into his eyes and saw that they had turned a beautiful liquid amber, a color Louis-César had never had in life or death.

It was difficult to think, because my thoughts were confused with those of the woman whose body I'd borrowed. I tried to focus, but all her attention was on the fine beads of sweat trailing down his face and chest, and she overrode me.

I reached up and ran a hand through his damp auburn curls to his neck, and drew him down to me. His rhythm didn't falter, but the angle changed slightly and we both groaned in response. I ran my tongue over him, tasting him, and his face grew slack with need. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled, driving him into me even harder. The muscles in my lower areas tightened, wrenching a strangled gasp from him. I grabbed handfuls of his hair, pulling his mouth down to mine, bending him almost double. He cried out and, finally, lost his rhythm.

I laughed into his mouth as he thrust into me in ragged bursts, as if he couldn't get enough, couldn't go fast or hard enough, to satisfy some overwhelming need. I understood it, because I was also feeling two rising tides of desire, mine and that of the woman whose body I had invaded. She didn't seem to care; at that moment, all she wanted was to be satisfied, and on that we both agreed.

I slid out from under him, causing him to clutch at me convulsively to keep our bodies together, and flipped him over. I smiled down in satisfaction. He was glorious, sprawled there among the soft, pale sheets, his hair glimmering richly in the candlelight. It should have seemed wrong, to see Louis-César's body with Mircea's knowing eyes, but it didn't.

"I want to be on top."

He didn't argue. His hands moved up my body to cup my breasts and we both sighed as I slowly settled back onto him. I liked this angle better: I liked seeing him beneath me, although I still had to fight not to have that strange, double vision. It was Louis-César's face that stared into mine, filled with longing, but it was Mircea's triumphal smile as he began moving again.

"I told you before, Cassie," he murmured, "anything you want." Then the waves of pleasure caught us both, robbing us of speech, and I didn't care. The world burst into perfect, liquid pleasure a minute later and I cried out his name, but it was not my voice and it was not the name of the body beneath me.

When the world coalesced again, I was wrapped in warm arms and soft blankets, my head pillowed on a chest that still rose and fell with slight tremors. A hand was running through my hair, soothing me, and I realized I was crying. His words were a strange mixture of French and Romanian, neither of which I understand, but somehow they warmed me anyway.

"Cassie." A murmur in my ear brought me back the rest of the way, and I left the woman to enjoy that warm, wonderful haze on her own. "You can really do this." He gazed around in wonder. "Can you choose which time to send us back as well? Can you do it before the attack, to give us time to prepare?"

His words finally helped me slam down a barrier between the woman, who was basking in the golden glow of sexual satisfaction, and myself. I glanced in panic at the door, but it remained closed, with no sign of the older woman, the guards or a crazed Russian psychopath. We seemed to be safe for the moment, but there were probably people on the way to kill him even as we lay around recovering.

"Mircea, we have to get out of here! They'll come here first!"

"Cassie, calm yourself. There is no rush. The sybil and her assistants know where this Frenchman will be. As you said, they will be along presently, expecting him to be pleasantly preoccupied and unwary. But we will be waiting for them instead." He slipped out of bed and walked over to the mirror. He touched Louis-César's cheek softly. "This is a marvel!" He examined his borrowed body in astonishment. He turned towards me as he looked over his shoulder to check out the rear view and my mouth went dry. Louis-César was simply stunning; there was no other word for it. Backlit against the fire, his hair a reddish halo around his face, he might have been a Renaissance angel come to life.

"This is the famous mask, is it?" Mircea picked up a scrap of velvet that had been flung over the mirror and held it up to his eyes. "A piece of history indeed."

"Are you going to tell me who he was now," I asked impatiently, "or do I have to guess?"

Mircea laughed and tossed the mask aside. "Not at all," he commented, unself-consciously perching on the edge of a low chest of drawers near the mirror. I wished he'd put something on. The current situation wasn't doing anything for my mental abilities.

"I will be happy to tell you the tale, if it will amuse you. His father was George Villiers, whom you may know better as the English Duke of Buckingham. He seduced Anne of Austria, Louis XIII's queen, while on a state visit to France. Louis preferred men, you see, a fact that had long left his queen frustrated and childless." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "So perhaps it was she who seduced Buckingham, hoping for an heir. In any case, she was successful. However, it seems that Louis was not pleased about the idea of having a bastard on the throne, especially not a half-English one. Anne had already named her son after the king, in the attempt, I suppose, to hint that a bastard heir was better than none at all, especially if no one knew about the substitution. The argument failed, and her firstborn was sent into hiding."

Something was starting to come together for me, some long-forgotten history lesson maybe, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Mircea didn't wait for me to figure it out. "Eventually, the queen had another son, whom most said was sired by her adviser, Cardinal Mazarin. Perhaps she kept quiet about the deception this time, or maybe the king was becoming afraid that he would leave no heir, because the boy came to the throne as Louis XIV. He wasn't happy to have a half-brother who looked a great deal like the Duke of Buckingham. That might call his mother's virtue into question, and cause doubts about his own parentage, and therefore his right to rule."

"The Man in the Iron Mask!" I finally made the connection. "I read that book as a kid. But that wasn't how it went."

Mircea shrugged. "Dumas was a writer of fiction. He could say what he liked, and there were many rumors circulating at the time from which to choose. But to make a long story short, King Louis put Louis-César in prison for the rest of his life, holding the threat of harm to his friends over his head to keep him docile. To make the point even clearer, he had him sent on a tour of France's most infamous house of horrors, the leading castle in the medieval witch hunts, Carcassonne. King Louis used it as a place of incarceration for any who disagreed with him, but the torturers and the troops supporting them were all found dead one morning in 1661, causing the greatest fortress of the Middle Ages to be abandoned. It fell into ruins and wasn't restored for two hundred years."

"But didn't Louis-César say he was here that year, in 1661?" I looked around nervously. That was all I needed, a homicidal maniac or a bunch of fed up townspeople to come busting in with pitchforks, ready to slaughter everybody.

Mircea didn't look overly concerned. "Yes, he was moved around to many prisons through the years, staying in captivity until shortly before his brother died, when the last of the friends he was protecting passed away. Then he took off forever the velvet mask they had made him wear so no one would notice his strong resemblance to a certain narcissistic English duke, who had left portraits of himself all over Europe. He told me once that his jailers only forced him into the iron mask after he was turned, and even then only when he was transported from one prison to the other." He grinned at me. "It was a precaution, you see, so that he didn't eat anyone en route."

I gave him a dirty look—now was not the time for humor—and tossed him the robe I'd used during my previous visit. "Get dressed. We need to get out of here."

He caught the robe in midair. Nothing about the possession seemed to be bothering his reflexes, but then, I'd already found that out. "I have told you, Cassie; you are panicking for no reason. They will come to us, and after we dispose of the sybil, we will save my brother."

I blinked. I hoped I hadn't heard right. "What do you mean, dispose of her? She was kidnapped, Mircea! She may not be any happier about being part of this than I am."

He shrugged, and the casual indifference made me cold. "She aided our enemies and is indirectly responsible for the deaths of at least four Senate members." He saw my expression, and his face softened. "You have grown up as one of us, but I often forget, you are not vampyr." He gave it the Romanian pronunciation. It sounded better that way, but the implication behind his words hit me like a sledgehammer. "She is the key to all this. Once she is gone, there will be no other way for anyone to slip through time, and therefore no more threat."

I began struggling into the woman's clothes, which were scattered everywhere, and tried to come up with a response that would make sense to Mircea. I thought about the four Senate guards who had been killed. By the look of them, they had been with the Consul hundreds of years and must have served her faithfully or they wouldn't have been entrusted with protecting the Senate chamber. They may not have decided to betray her: the sybil had interfered with their transition and Rasputin was a powerful master who might have been able to force their obedience. It seemed unlikely that they would have chosen to essentially commit suicide by taking me on in front of such an audience if they had had a choice. But that fact hadn't saved them.

Vamp law was very simple, if a little on the medieval side, and intent wasn't nearly as important as in human courts. Nobody cared why you did something. If you caused problems, you were guilty, and the guilty had to pay. If you were in a quarrel with another master, your own might intervene to save you if you were useful enough to make it worthwhile, either by a duel or by offering reparations, but no one could do anything about a threat to the Senate. There was no higher power to which to appeal.

After only a minute, I gave up trying to figure out how the unbelievably complicated dress worked and threw on the lightweight slip instead. It was too thin, but at least I was covered. I crawled under the bed and retrieved the woman's shoes, then sat looking at them in annoyance. So, high heels weren't a modern invention. I couldn't believe women had been putting up with these torture devices for centuries.

"Would you like me to help, dulceaţă?" Mircea was holding out a peacock-colored dress that I assumed the woman had been wearing at some earlier time. "It has been some time since I played lady's maid, but I believe I remember how."

I narrowed my eyes at him. I bet he did. After five hundred years, Mircea probably couldn't remember all the boudoirs he'd been in. "You forget," I told him, as he helped me on with the heavy dress, "that there will still be a way into time, even if the sybil dies."

His hands were warm on my shoulders as he pulled the gown into place. He adjusted the low neckline, and his hand lingered on the exposed flesh. "The Pythia is old and sick, Cassie. She will not last much longer." I looked up into his face, and there was tenderness there, but also implacability. Mircea was willing to talk me around to his point of view, but not to really listen to mine. He had already decided how to deal with this—find the sybil, kill her, go home. It was utterly practical, if absolutely cold-blooded.

"But I will," I reminded him. "Or were you planning to kill me, too, after Radu is saved?"

Mircea widened those borrowed blue eyes, but there was none of Louis-César's innocence in them. His hands turned me around so he could reach the lacings at the back of the dress. "I have told you, dulceaţă; you are mine. You have been so since the age of eleven. You will be so forever. And no one harms what is mine. You have my word."

It sounded frighteningly like Tomas' speech. I had known, of course, that that was how he saw me. It was how any master would see a human servant, as a possession. In my case I was a useful, and therefore highly prized, possession, but that was all. But it was still hard to hear it stated so flatly. "And if I don't want to be owned? What if I want to decide for myself what I do?"

Mircea kissed the top of my head tolerantly. "I cannot keep you safe if I do not know where you are." He turned me around, the lacing completed, and lifted my hand to his lips. His eyes burned brighter than the room's candles. "You do see that, do you not?"

I saw, all right. I saw a life lived in thrall to one of the circles, to the Senate or to Mircea personally. Whatever he might say about the respect and influence my power would bring, the truth was that I would never be viewed as anything except a pawn to be used. If I became Pythia, I would never be free. Damn. I hoped metaphysical sex didn't count.

"Yes, of course." I sat down on the bed while he took my foot in his hands and drew on one of the woman's long, white stockings. I let him finish dressing me, and tried to think of some way to save the sybil, since arguing obviously wasn't going to cut it. I had to get him somewhere out of the way until I could find her and figure out whether she was in this voluntarily or not. Otherwise, the very practical vampire I was with would simply kill her. While that would solve the problem, I didn't think it was a solution I could live with.

Something occurred to me by the time he slid the last garter into place. "Mircea, you told me that your brother made Louis-César. That was why what Tomas and I did didn't change anything. Instead of being cursed with vampirism by Françoise's family, he was brought over the usual way by Radu, right?"

"Yes, it would seem our Frenchman had a destiny that would not be denied."

"Then Rasputin doesn't have to go after Louis-César directly, does he? If he destroys Radu, no one bites Louis-César and he dies at the end of a normal life, instead of living to become a master. Radu must be restrained somehow or they wouldn't have been able to keep him here. And killing someone tied down and helpless would be a lot easier for a spirit than attacking a strong, free man, wouldn't it?"

Mircea had grown pale. "I am a hundred times a fool, Cassie! Come, quickly! They may already be there!"

I resisted as he tried to draw me to my feet. "You go ahead. In case I'm wrong, I should stay here to catch them if they come."

"Rasputin is a master vampire! What could you do against him?"

"He's a master in our time, but he's only a spirit here. I have a body, so I'll be the strong one. Besides, I think Radu is a far more likely target, don't you?"

Mircea wanted to argue, but worry about his brother overcame his usual caution, and finally he went. I waited thirty seconds, then slipped out after him. I made my way to the corridor where I had encountered the swarm of ghosts and, with effort, managed to feel them even inside borrowed flesh. I couldn't see them as I had in spirit form, which was annoying, but they definitely knew I was there. I stood in the middle of that cold stone hallway and felt them crowd around me like a chill fog. A second later, the door to the torture chamber started to open and I stepped into the shadows that lined the walls. "Hide me," I whispered, "and I will help you."

The shadows wrapped around me like an invisible cloak, shielding me from the dazed eyes of the mutilated woman who appeared to be hovering in the doorway. She was suspended three feet above the ground, but although I couldn't see them, I knew who carried her. I waited until her body floated down the stairs, carried in Tomas' invisible arms, then started as a puzzled voice whispered a question in my ear.

"In English, please," I told him impatiently. In this woman's body, I could understand French if I concentrated, but it took effort and I needed my strength for other things. Slowly, Pierre appeared before me. He was nowhere near as clear as before, but I didn't feel like complaining.

"How is it that you can sense us, madame?"

I realized that he saw the woman I was possessing, and not myself. "It's a long story, and we don't have time for it. Bottom line is, we both want vengeance, and I think I know a way to make that happen."

A few minutes later, my ghostly army and I descended on the lower dungeons. I thought I had already seen the worst Carcassonne had to offer, but I was wrong. These chambers made the upper levels seem almost attractive by comparison, at least to me. They probably would have appeared deserted to most people, merely old, damp stone rooms too far below the waterline to be used even for storage. But to me the mossy walls and slippery floors teemed with ghostly traces, remnants of once powerful spirits who had haunted here for more centuries than I could name.

I tried to strengthen my shields, but I couldn't raise them all the way or I wouldn't be able to contact my allies. As a result, impressions crowded me from all sides, wispy pieces of lives long gone and tortures endured. I Saw Roman soldiers whipping a young boy the full number of lashes of his sentence, despite the fact that he was already dead. Right behind them, a medieval witch hunter threatened a young woman, who was heavily pregnant and pleading for the life of her unborn child. I tightened my defenses a bit more to keep the worst of the faded horrors out, but I caught an occasional one here or there. And everywhere I looked, in long, crisscrossing, glowing lines, were ghost traces. They covered the floors and walls and wove patterns through the air so thick it was like walking through a sickly greenish mist. They lit the lower dungeons to the point that I abandoned the torch I'd lifted from an upstairs sconce. I didn't need it.

The worst was saved for last. I followed my guides to a tiny, inner room. I could hear sobs before I opened the door. They abruptly cut off at my approach and the heavy latch was wrenched out of my hand. The door flew open and Louis-César stared out at me. For a minute, I wondered whether something had gone horribly wrong. The robe had parted to his navel, and beside the heavy, cherry red brocade, a darker color gleamed. He was bleeding heavily from bites on his neck and chest, and his face was ashen. When he recognized me, he swayed, and I barely caught him before he hit the ground.

I looked behind him to see a figure kneeling in a puddle of darkness that I identified after a moment as a hooded cloak. Slowly, it raised its head and I saw what seemed to be a bearded skeleton. Skin the color of moldy Swiss cheese covered the fine bones of his face, and only the burning amber eyes made him seem real. I took a guess. "Radu?"

A bony hand pushed the hood back. I looked at the thing that had once had the nickname "the Handsome," and wanted to be sick. They'd kept him under control, all right, but they hadn't used restraints. They hadn't needed them after they'd starved him almost to death. I hadn't heard that blood deprivation could kill a vamp, but the thing huddled across from me didn't look alive. I had never seen anything like it.

"Um, we're here to help. Did Mircea tell you?" The creature huddled in the corner didn't reply. I hoped Mircea had been right about the sanity thing, although I was beginning to doubt it. "We, uh, should probably go. Can you walk?"

"He cannot walk, dulceaţă," Mircea said in a dull, expressionless voice. He sat on the floor beside the door and his head flopped back against the wall as if he no longer had the strength to hold it up. "I have given him all the blood I can without risking this body's life, but it is not enough. He has been starved for years, kept conscious only by catching an occasional rat. No one visits him for weeks at a time, and when they do, it is only to bring torment."

I forced myself to look carefully at the wasted figure. It was hard to tell with the cape in place, but I could probably carry him if it came down to it. The body I inhabited was slight, but he was barely more than skin and bones. But I really preferred an alternative that didn't require me to touch him. The thought of those sticklike hands on even my borrowed body was enough to cause me to break out in chills, not to mention that I didn't like the idea of becoming dessert. Radu might not be able to feed from afar in his current state, but if he got close enough, that wouldn't be an issue. I wasn't sure if it was because his face was so emaciated that the skin had drawn back from his teeth, or if he was still hungry, but his fangs were fully extended and I didn't like it.

"What now?"

Mircea hung his head, breathing in great gasps of air as if he couldn't get enough into his lungs. "Allow me a few moments to recover, dulceaţă, and then together we will take him from this place."

I was about to agree when it became obvious that we didn't have a few minutes. Into the corridor behind us poured a dozen humans and a wind composed of too many spirits to count. I knew who they were even before they coalesced. No mere ghost, however newly dead, has that much power. A young woman, maybe in her late teens, appeared first and stepped in front of the crowd. She had a ghostly dagger in her hand that looked something like the ones that came out of my bracelet. Her eyes focused on me for a moment, and I didn't like their expression, but then they fixed on Radu with an almost hungry look. A shadow behind her pushed her forward.

"That one! In the cloak! Kill him quickly!"

I stood there, gaping at them for a second. It was disconcerting to discover that my diversion had been right on target. I put myself between Radu and the girl, but she merely walked through me. I wasn't used to a ghost being able to do that without my permission. I had unconsciously put up a hand to ward her off and my bracelet decided it was showtime. I spun around, and the next second she was screaming as two gaping holes appeared in the hazy outline of her body. She didn't bleed, of course, but she was obviously in pain. Great. I'd ended up hurting the person I was trying to help.

The dark presence behind her drew back behind a wall of humans, who surged towards me as a single entity. My daggers went back to work, but there were too many of them. Three were dropped by those flashing knives, but most got through. The first to reach me grabbed my shoulder, and my ward flared, throwing him across the room to slam against the hard stone. I stared at him in amazement. I wasn't in my body, so how had my ward tagged along? The mage couldn't tell me, since he'd slid down to the floor and lay still.

Another mage spoke something that sounded like the word Pritkin had used on the were at Dante's, and a curtain of flame leaped up all around me. I flinched back before I realized that it wasn't touching me; the fire stopped about a foot away, behind the golden tracery of a pentagram on the floor. My ward had to be using a huge amount of energy to stop a word of power, but I felt no drain. Whatever was powering it, it wasn't me.

Through the flames I saw a tall, dark shape start to ease around the wall. He was trying to get behind me, and that would not be good. Mircea was in no shape at the moment to fight off a two-year-old child, much less even the spirit of a master vamp. I glanced at the army behind me and nodded at him. "He's all yours."

A storm of shadows descended on the ghost like a swarm of bees, and he disappeared from sight with a choked scream. They might not be able to do anything to humans, but spirits were fair game. A few seconds later they reformed at my back, and the enemy specter was nowhere to be seen. "They ate him," I clarified for the tall figure who stood behind the mages, surrounded by his fellow spirits. No heroics for Rasputin. Smart, if not real brave. "Leave or I'll give them another course."

"They can't feed on humans, sybil," he said, echoing my thoughts. He moved slightly and I caught the impression of a pale face framed in greasy black hair. There was nothing handsome about it, but there was an odd, hypnotic quality to the eyes. "Even you cannot win against a dozen mages of the Black Circle. Let us have the vampire. We mean you no harm." The deep voice was heavily accented but strangely soothing. His vamp powers were weakened when he was no longer in his body, but they obviously weren't gone. He was trying to influence me, and it was working. I could suddenly see his point. Why die here, hundreds of years and thousands of miles away from anything familiar? Why give my life for someone I didn't even know and who, in any case, would be better off dying quickly than living to face centuries of torment? It seemed almost a kindness to let them past, to let Radu die. Rasputin would make it quick, and then I could—I literally slapped myself. It hurt, but the pain cleared my head. Damn! Even in spirit form, he'd almost gotten to me.

"Twelve mages?" I looked at the body of the mage by the wall, who hadn't moved a muscle; his neck was lolling at an angle that said he probably never would again. Three others had been taken out by my knives, which had returned to hover beside me, one on either side of my head. None of the three on the floor looked dead, and their buddies must have agreed because they were pulling them back towards the stairs instead of leaving them where they fell. But they also didn't look like they would be returning to the fight. "I only count eight still active, Rasputin. Ask your friends which one wants to die next."

He didn't bother. Maybe he didn't like the odds, or perhaps his friends weren't all that friendly when it came down to giving up their lives for him. Anyway, his spirit corps streamed at me in a shining cloud and got as far as the edge of my ward when my group attacked. "Don't hurt the girl!" I yelled, as thousands of spirits flashed past me in a flickering wave of color and shade. Greenish white sparks rained down everywhere as the spirits of Carcassonne began cannibalizing their enemies, draining them of every spark of life. I had a feeling there were a lot of vamp bodies that weren't going to rise after this night.

While the pyrotechnics went off over our heads, I bent to help the dazed figure of the lost sybil. She looked pale and frightened, but at least she was alive. Large gray eyes peered at me out of a small, oval face, framed by limp blond hair. "Don't worry," I told her, although it sounded pretty strange under the circumstances. "I won't let him harm you. We need to get—"

I never finished the sentence because, suddenly, everything froze. I looked around fearfully, wondering what new threat I had to deal with, and noticed that the knife was still in the sybil's hand. It was also all of about a millimeter away from my chest. I stared at it in disbelief. The bitch had been about to stab me! And, judging by the angle, it would have been a heart blow. Admittedly, it wasn't my body, but I thought it would be polite to return it without any big holes in it. Besides, I didn't know what would happen to me if the woman died. Even Billy hadn't known. Maybe I'd survive, maybe not, but I sure as hell wouldn't be much help to Radu or Louis-César. Not to mention racking up yet another death on my conscience.

"I see you received my message." A voice floated across the room, as silvery clear as chiming bells.

I looked up to see a slender, short girl with long, dark hair rippling down her back almost to her knees. She was weaving past the hovering ghosts, some of which had frozen, jaws wide, busily gulping down other phantoms. No one moved, no one breathed. It was like I'd wandered into a photograph, except that two of us continued to be active.

"What?" I eased back from the sybil and her knife, which also allowed me to back away from whoever the newcomer was.

"The one on your computer," the woman continued. "At your office. That was clever, don't you think?" She peered at Louis-César but made no move towards him. Her big blue eyes came back to me and her sweet little face took on a somewhat peevish air. "Well? Don't I at least rate a thank-you for saving your life? The obituary was real, you know. If you hadn't left your office when you did, Rasputin's men would have found you. You'd have managed to get away from them, but a couple of streets over you would have encountered the vampires sent by that Antonio person and been shot. I brought the obit forward to warn you. Clever, wasn't it?"

"Who are you?" I realized the truth the same time I asked the question, but I wanted to hear her say it.

She smiled, and her dimples were almost as big as Louis-César's. "My name is Agnes, although no one uses it anymore. Sometimes, I don't think they even remember."

"You're the Pythia."

"Right in one."

"But… but you look younger than me. They told me you were on your death bed, that you're really old."

She gave a small shrug. It caused me to notice what she was wearing—a long, high-necked gown much like those Eugenie used to have made for me. It looked like something out of a tea party circa 1880. "Right again, I'm afraid. In fact, it is quite possible that this little trip will do me in. My power has been fading for a while, and four hundred years is a lot to manage." She didn't sound very upset about her impending demise. "Anyway, you'll learn how to manipulate your spirit to look any way you want after a while. I prefer to remember myself as I was. In fact, in recent years, I've spent more time out of that wrinkled old hulk than in it." She flexed her fingers. "Arthritis, you know."

I stared at her. I'd somehow expected the Pythia to be more, well, regal. "What are you doing here?"

Agnes laughed. "Solving a problem, what else?" She bent over to look in the distorted face of the woman about to plunge a dagger into me. I'd moved, but the sybil hadn't; the face was still set in a scowl and the knife was caught halfway through its arc. "I spent twenty years training this one. You wouldn't think it to look at her, would you? Twenty years and look what I have to show for it." She shook her head. "I'm here because this mess is partly my fault. I chose your mother as my apprentice. I trained her for almost a decade. I loved her like a daughter. And when she took up with your father, I forbade it, telling myself that I was doing her a favor. He was a member of the vampire mafia, for God's sake! Hardly a fit match for my beautiful creation."

"I don't understand."

"I could have found her!" Crystalline tears glistened in Agnes' big blue eyes. "I told myself, if she didn't care anything about her calling, if she could throw it all away so easily, I didn't need her. I could start afresh, could choose another apprentice, make another shining star… only, of course, I couldn't. I was too proud to admit that it hadn't been my tutelage that made Lizzy what she was, but her own innate talent. I didn't go after her, and that vampire boss of your father's had her killed to get to you." She covered her face and wept.

I just stood there. Did she actually expect me to sympathize? I didn't feel like kicking her when she was down, especially not if she really was on her deathbed, but I also didn't feel very comforting. I settled on simply crossing my arms and waiting it out.

"You aren't the compassionate type, are you?" she asked after a minute, looking at me through her fingers. She lowered her hands and regarded me curiously. I shrugged; considering where I'd grown up, what the hell did she expect? She sighed and gave up the act. "Okay, I was wrong. My bad. But now we have to fix things. I can't train you properly because I don't have time, but quite obviously the power can't be allowed to go to Myra. She's either in this voluntarily, or she was coerced. If the former, she's evil; if the latter, she's weak. Either way, she's out of the running."

I looked at the long, sharp knife in the sybil's hand and at the expression in her eyes. I was betting on voluntary. She looked a little angry to be under some sort of mind control. I was beginning to have a certain sympathy with Mircea's point of view.

"Okay, fine. She's a bad sybil. You want to take her back with you and read her the riot act? Be my guest."

"That isn't the program."

I was in no mood to play twenty questions. "Do you have a point? Because I'm kind of busy here."

She threw up her hands. "Of course; please do forgive me for nattering on. But this is an occasion, you know. I'm merely trying to give it a hint of ceremony."

I had a bad feeling suddenly. "What occasion?"

She turned a look on me that had none of the previous playfulness. "The power has selected you. You're it; you're Pythia." She grimaced. "Congrats and all that."

I decided the woman had a few screws loose. "You can't just dump it on me like that! What if I don't want it?"

She gave a small shrug. "Your point would be?"

I stared at her. Her gall was unbelievable. "Forget it, lady. Pick another seer."

Agnes put small fists on her narrow hips and glared at me. "The more I talk with you, the more I'm convinced that you'll either be the best of us all, or the very worst. If I had another choice, believe me, I would take it. But I don't. The power wants to come to you. Take some advice and make it an easy transition. The more you fight it, the more trouble it will give you."

"Like hell." Thank God I had an ace in the hole. "Your power can't go to a virgin. And technically, I'm still pure and untouched."

She looked at me for a second, apparently speechless. Then she collapsed into a fit of giggles. She finally got her breath back and managed to gasp out, "Says who? Don't tell me you've been listening to the mages! Please!"

"Wait a minute. The vamps believe it, too. Everyone does."

Agnes shook her head and tried to stifle a grin. It didn't work and she finally gave up. "God, you're naive. Who do you think told them that? One of the ancient Pythias got tired of the code that said a priestess had to be 'pure and untouched, to use your phrase. So she told the priests at Delphi that she'd had a vision. The power would be much stronger if it came to an experienced woman. They bought it, and she got her lover. But it doesn't make a difference. Well, not about obtaining the power, at least."

"What does that mean?"

She laughed again and did a little twirl around the room, passing through a couple of mages on the way. They shuddered slightly but didn't wake up. "It means that I suggest you complete the ritual as soon as possible if you expect to control the gift instead of vice versa." She grinned. "And I'm not exactly equipped to help you with that." She took in my crossed arms and stubborn expression and paused. I got the impression from the little frown that appeared on her forehead that she wasn't used to being questioned. "Fine, have it your way, but if you leave the ritual half done, not only will you have imperfect control, but the mages will consider you only the heir. The Pythia can't be deposed, but the heir certainly can. Your position is vulnerable until you finish this." She looked me up and down, then raised a delicate eyebrow. "I find it difficult to believe we need to have this conversation."

I was pretty damn annoyed, especially when she started dancing again. "Look, how many ways do I have to say this? No, thank you, I don't want the job."

"Perfect. Then at least I move on knowing you aren't insane." She stopped her little ballerina impression so abruptly that her skirts swirled about her legs. "I didn't want it, either, you know. I alone among the sybils of my generation would have been very happy not to have been picked. It is a great honor, but it's a heavy burden, too. Plus, you have to put up with the Silver Circle and, believe me, that's no one's idea of fun."

Her expression was suddenly somber. "For what it's worth, Cassie, I'm sorry. There hasn't been a Pythia since the first one that has had to take on the job completely untrained. But then, with your abilities, you're likely to rewrite the rule book anyway. For example, did you know that you're currently inhabiting the same time twice? Your spirit is struggling along with that girl you rescued, through the streets outside, while you're in here talking to me. I can't do that. Plus, most of our adepts take years to learn what you've managed to teach yourself in only a few days. Really, taking another spirit along with you! That's impressive."

I felt like screaming. "Will you stop talking and listen to me? I. Am. Not. The. Pythia!"

She crossed to me quickly and kissed my cheek. "You are now," she said, and disappeared. That same second, I got hit with something that felt like a Mack truck had mowed me down. There's no way to adequately describe it, so I won't even try. The closest thing I'd ever felt was when I was in Tomas' body and his heightened senses proved so distracting. Only the senses that were sharpened this time weren't smell or sight, but that awareness of other worlds, different but meshing with ours, that I'd always had a little of when I spoke with ghosts. Now I had a lot of it, and the sights and sounds around me were so distracting that I didn't even notice that time had started back up. Not, that is, until someone stabbed me in the foot.

I looked down to see that the rogue sybil had got me after all, although not in the way she'd planned. It still hurt like a bitch and blood began welling up through the satin of my little high-heeled slipper, turning the material a dark purple. I looked up at the battling forces over my head.

"Okay, I changed my mind. Eat her."

A group of ghosts broke off from the main cloud and dove for her, but Rasputin moved with vamp quickness and got there first. He grabbed her about the waist and they disappeared, along with the few of his vamps who had escaped the ghostly attack. The mages saw their ally run for it and immediately followed suit. My little knives got overly excited and chased them out the door and up the stairs and I let them go to it. Killing off a few more dark mages might alter the timeline, but at that moment I was too tired and fed up to care.

I sat down and tugged off the slipper. Damn it! The crazy bitch had almost severed a toe. Mircea handed me a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe, and I bound up the wound as best I could. I didn't think she'd lose it, unless it got infected. But considering the state of the dungeon, that seemed at least possible. Great.

I looked up to see my ghostly army hovering there, an unspoken demand in their eyes. I knew what they wanted, and there was no point trying to talk them out of it. The energy they'd stolen from Rasputin's vamps might sustain them for years, but who wanted to exist someplace like this?! They had only one interest, and I had promised, but there were going to be a few conditions.

"No townspeople and no innocents," I said, and got a creepy, collective nod in return. I sighed. "Okay, then, the rest are yours."

Immediately, a swirling maelstrom of spirits rose up, like a multihued blizzard around my head. It was so thick that it blotted out the room for an instant and so full of pent-up rage that their collective wails sounded like a freight train. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone. I didn't try to follow them with my senses; that was one party I preferred not to see.

I took my hands away from my ears to find Mircea watching me, a cautious look in his eyes. I sighed. I did not want to have this conversation, wanted it less, in fact, than facing Rasputin again. But there was no way out. "I think we did it," I told him. "Did you explain things to Radu?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes. He has agreed to bring Louis-César over and to leave him to develop alone as happened before. Radu will escape but avoid contact with anyone for a century, until the time I rescued him from the Bastille. And even after that, he will keep a low profile, as you would say. Will that do?"

I thought about it for a minute. It wasn't perfect, but barring locking him in a room for three and a half centuries, I didn't see an alternative. And I somehow doubted that Mircea would go along with that. "Yeah, it ought to, as long as he doesn't make any vamps until our time. Somehow Rasputin is already making unregistered vamps, and we don't need two people doing it. Oh, and tell Radu about Françoise. I get this feeling that some of the mages might try to recoup some of their losses with her tonight."

It was a measure of just how close to the edge Mircea was that he didn't question what I meant. "As you like."

I gestured around. "How much of that could you see?"

"Very little, but I received the impression from our being alive that we won."

"Not exactly." I explained the situation in brief, including my promotion. When he got back and found out Agnes was dead, he'd figure it out anyway. "You'll need to tell the Senate that Rasputin got away, and that the sybil went with him. I don't know if she'll keep the power she borrowed now, but she may." Considering that Myra had flashed out right after my talk with the Pythia, it seemed a good bet. Maybe that would fade in time, but there was no way to know for sure. Which left me with a major problem. When she recovered from my little knife attack, she could do to me what she'd been trying to do to Louis-César. The possibilities were endless, including killing me as a child or attacking my parents before I was even conceived, making sure I wasn't born at all. The only good thing for me was that, for most of my life, I was either in Tony's fortress of a house, warded like the vamp equivalent of Fort Knox, or in hiding. So I wouldn't be an easy target. But something told me that Rasputin liked a challenge.

Mircea was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he sounded as tired as I felt. "You could tell them yourself."

I smiled. "No, I don't think I can." He started to say something, but I put a finger over his lips. About one thing, at least, I was sure. "I won't go back to that, Mircea. It was bad enough before, but now everyone will be fighting over me—the Senate, the two circles, maybe Tomas… no. What kind of a life would that be?"

He took my hand in his and kissed the fingers carefully. His eyes were tired, but still beautiful as they met mine. The glowing, cinnamon amber completely overwrote Louis-César's blue. I had a feeling that I'd never see another pair so stunning, or so sad. "You cannot run forever, Cassie."

"I hid before. I can do it again."

"You were found before." He clutched my hand as tightly as he could and, for the moment, I let him. It might be a long time before I knew the touch of another person, much less one I cared about.

"Only by you and Marlowe," I told him gently. "Tell him to take a vacation. He'll need one to recover from the attack. Take one yourself."

Mircea shook his head, as I'd known he would. He wouldn't lie to me even now. For a vamp, he was a hell of a catch. I reached out and ran a hand through his hair, wishing it was his own dark, straight strands under my fingers instead of the Frenchman's bronze curls. It was somehow hard to imagine never touching him again, never holding him. But the price was too high. There were simply too many strings attached.

"I will find you, Cassie. I only pray it will be before the circles do. Both of them will come after you, you can be sure of it. Do not underestimate them."

"I won't." I started to rise, but he held on to my hand.

"Cassie, stay with me! I will keep you safe; I swear it!"

I asked him the same question I had put to Tomas. This time I got an answer. "Would you want me, even if I wasn't Pythia?"

He raised my hand to his mouth. His lips were cold. "I begin to think I would prefer it."

I looked around at the body of the fallen mage, the slimy walls and the despair-filled room. I tightened my grip. "I know I would," I told him, and shifted.