Midnight's Daughter

Chapter Seven

“Hey, Marlowe. You ever consider staking your decorator?” I glanced around the once-immaculate suite of rooms that now, like much of MAGIC, resembled a rummage sale in an inner-city neighborhood. A scorch mark in the shape of a human body marred one wall of the laboratory, next to the hall door that was half-torn off its hinges. And if there was a whole test tube or beaker in the place, I didn’t see it.

“Ah.” The handsome brunet vamp spun on his lab stool to face us. He smelled of Cuban cigars, cinnamon and some funky ointment with too many ingredients to list. The latter was emanating from the bandages wrapped around his head. His curls escaped from under them in dispirited clumps, but I didn’t have the urge to laugh. Any wound that a vamp couldn’t heal without resorting to gross-smelling concoctions was enough to have killed a man. It looked like the war had caught up with him recently. “That explains the stench,” he said, with a smile that never came close to his icy brown eyes. “I thought something had died in here. But no, that would be in about ten seconds.”

“Not unless you want Daddy on your ass,” I told him insolently. The few times I’d been to MAGIC had been with Mircea, who tends to make other vamps sweat, crawl and genuflect. I didn’t have that advantage now, but figured I could take a half-dead vamp, even Marlowe, if necessary. “I’m here on family business.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”

“Actually, I’m a great liar, not that I’d bother in your case. It’s much more fun to tell you the truth.” I placed a bloody piece of burnt-out metal on the table in front of him. “Speaking of which, the jet got torched. I think this was from the left wing, but I’m not sure.” He stared with no expression at the piece I’d pried out of the steward’s head. I parked myself on the neighboring stool and tried to look commiserating. “They just don’t make ’em like they used to, do they?”

“I most emphatically do not need this,” Marlowe said, turning a nearby clipboard over so I couldn’t read it. It probably contained nothing more interesting than the estimated repair costs, but he gives a whole new definition to the word “paranoid.” He makes even me look laid-back.

“I may have something you do need,” Louis-Cesare told him, dumping the still-unconscious mage onto the debris-covered floor. “This one was among those who attacked us.”

Marlowe looked the mage over in disgust, while I watched Louis-Cesare. His eyes were perfectly clear, like the sky on a bright June day. He wasn’t worried, which meant that the mess on the floor knew squat about him and Jonathan. Those summer eyes met mine over Marlowe’s head with a question and I shrugged. I had no vested interest in helping the Senate, and plenty of reasons to enjoy watching them squirm. His secret was safe with me.

“Dislocator,” Marlowe sneered after getting a good look at our captive. He glanced at me. “Do you know the penalty for being caught with one of those?”

“Dark mages,” I said, shaking my head regretfully. “You can’t trust ’em.”

“You expect me to believe that one of his allies threw this at him?”

I was surprised, shocked even. “What other explanation is there?”

Marlowe nudged the guy in the ribs with his toe. “Is that what he will say when he wakes?”

“Who knows? Mages, such liars.” I wasn’t worried. The captain wasn’t likely to rat on the person who’d saved his life, and Louis-Cesare had promised Mircea not to do anything to hurt me. Turning me in to Marlowe would definitely go against that promise. It seemed we both had secrets.

Nonetheless, I kept my bag close to hand, since there were some other unsavory devices still inside. There would be a lot more as soon as I got the chance to visit a certain old acquaintance in Vegas. Drac wanted me alive for now, but why? And for how long?

“We do need your help,” Louis-Cesare was saying, which seemed to get Marlowe’s attention more than my attempts at conversation. I left them to talk things over, because I saw a familiar shadow dart by the door and into a room across the hall. If it had been any farther, I’d have let it go. I have an excellent sense of direction and don’t usually lose my way, yet MAGIC’s layout seems to change every time I’m there. It could be a spell, one of its many built-in defenses, or simply nerves on my part. I strongly suspected that a whole coterie of dark mages would be more welcome around here than I was.

I met another vamp, one of Marlowe’s boys, coming in the door and smiled at him. He bared fangs, but cringed away slightly at the same time, as if I’d really stake him in front of his already pissed-off master. I pushed past him and crossed the hall, noting that it was riddled with bits of serrated iron that were half-buried in the floor. Normally, these form what passes for decorations on the sconces and chandeliers about the place, but in times of attack they become lethal projectiles that target anyone not on the approved list. Since my name was definitely not on that document, I was glad to see that they appeared inactive.

I pushed open the door and saw whom I’d expected. “Hello, Uncle.”

Radu, in his usual swashbuckling attire, champagne-colored satin in this case, froze in place. He had the guilty look of someone caught in headlights with a body, a shovel and a big hole. I found his expression interesting, since not much disconcerts the older vamps, especially not ones who have seen and done as much as he has.

I glanced around, but nothing seemed unusual. We were in one of the small, unremarkable rooms that litter the rabbit warren of MAGIC’s lower levels. Like the one across the hall, this one looked more like it belonged in a hospital or laboratory than a supernatural stronghold. But there were no alien bodies in formaldehyde or anything else to account for Radu’s expression. He smiled nervously, the famous turquoise eyes that had once garnered him the nickname of “the Handsome” wide and scared.

“Stop looking like you expect me to draw a weapon and come after you,” I said irritably. I don’t know why he does that—I’ve never actually tried to kill him—but maybe he figures there’s always a first time. I sat on the edge of a nearby counter and lit a joint, trying to look casual and put him at ease. Considering the tenseness that practically radiated off him, I wasn’t doing so hot.

“You’re a brunette again,” he said, and then looked flustered when he realized that making personal comments wasn’t the best way to start a conversation.

“Temporarily.”

He tried widening the smile, but it trembled on his lips and he soon gave it up. “It has, er, been a long time, Dorina.”

“Dory, and yeah, I suppose so.” I thought for a minute. “Let’s see, World War II was still on. I remember because you were bitching about the Krauts sinking some ship with a bunch of your stuff on it—”

“The blockade, you know, around Britain.” He gestured helplessly. “Such a bother. Some of the rarer herbs simply aren’t available anywhere else.”

“Right.” I glanced around the room at the rows of shelves holding valuable ingredients. “Bet there’s no problem getting unusual stuff now, with you working at MAGIC.”

There was no earthly reason for Radu to jump slightly at that comment. The Senate had used him for the last century as one of its brain-trust weirdos, hanging around the lower levels, concocting God knew what. There was nothing new about it, so his reaction interested me. But since I knew I had about as much chance of getting information out of him as of being voted most popular by vamps worldwide, I switched subjects.

“I’m working with Louis-Cesare now—did anyone tell you?”

He nodded vigorously. “Mircea said something about it. How are you two getting on?”

“Famously. Until Jonathan showed up.”

I watched Radu carefully, but there was no sign that he recognized the name. And if he had, there would have been. It never ceased to amaze me that he and Mircea were full brothers. “Who?”

“Nothing.” I gave him my sweetest smile, and for some reason, he blanched. “I’m glad I caught you, Uncle. I need a favor.”

“There are three great houses of the Light Fey,” I was told by the nondescript little vamp Radu had dug up. He smelled like old, musty books and dust, and was gray all over—hair, eyes, clothes and teeth. But the bookworm knew his stuff; for once, Uncle had come in handy. “The Blarestri, or Blue Elves, are the current ruling house, but their grip is less than firm because their king has no heir. Or, rather, he does have a son—Prince Alarr—but he cannot rule.”

“Why not?” I perched on the overflowing desk, an enormous rolltop like something out of Dickens, that filled most of the tiny office. The vamp was one of Marlowe’s beetles, a group attached to the spy network who acted less as operatives than as librarians. He was one of those responsible for keeping track of info on the Fey, and Radu had called in a favor so he’d allow me to pick his brain for half an hour. So far, it hadn’t yielded much.

“Alarr is half-human, and the ruler must always have a majority of Fey blood,” the beetle explained. “But there are those who doubt that he intends to follow the old ways if they deprive him of a throne. People fear civil war should the king die, for there is another claimant. The king’s sister married a Svarestri noble, and bore him a full-blooded Fey son with royal Blarestri blood. They call him Æsubrand—it means the Sword of the Æsir.”

“I understood about one word in seven of that,” I told him frankly. “Back up. Who are the Svarestri?” The cram course on Fey politics was already giving me a headache. And I couldn’t even complain because I’d asked for it.

“The Black Elves, as they are known, are the second great house of Faerie. And because the Alorestri, the Green Elves, have never shown much interest in politics, it is the Svarestri who pose the greatest threat to Blarestri rule. In fact”—he paused to light a pipe—“according to legend, they did rule once, long ago, when the Æsir walked the earth.”

“The who?”

“How can you have lived so long and be so ignorant?” he asked tetchily.

“The Æsir were the lords of battle,” Radu put in.

The beetle glanced at him approvingly. “Quite. Said to love war more than the very air they breathed—Odin, Thor and the like. They displaced the Vanir, the older fertility gods, and banished their followers, the Blarestri, from Eluen Londe—”

“What?”

“Eluen Londe.” I looked at him blankly. “Faerie!” he clarified impatiently. “They gave its rule into the hands of those who pledged themselves to their service—the Svarestri—who ruled it until the Æsir departed.”

“Departed for where?”

“But that’s the great mystery, isn’t it?” Radu asked excitedly. “No one knows. One day, poof. They simply weren’t there anymore.”

I raised an eyebrow but didn’t question it. I really didn’t care where some probably mythical beings had gone on vacation. “Okay, how about more modern history? What’s the situation now?”

The beetle looked vaguely perturbed. He hemmed and hawed for a while, but the upshot was that the vamps didn’t know squat. There were rumors of turmoil in the Fey capital, and no one had seen the king for weeks, but whether that signified a coup, no one could say. I’d sat through that whole history lesson and learned absolutely nothing useful.

“All I want to know is why a party of Fey wanted to kill me,” I said heatedly.

The beetle’s lips twisted enough to show fang. “Doesn’t everyone?” Radu hustled me out the door before I could find out if the vamp’s plump little carcass would fit into his overstuffed desk.

Radu escorted me back to Marlowe’s digs, then made his excuses and disappeared into his lab. He closed the door, waited a few seconds to see if I’d follow, and continued toward the blank wall he’d been facing when I’d stopped him. I knew this because I’d left an Eye of Argus charm looped around the back of a nearby chair. As soon as Radu disappeared through the wall, I slipped back into the lab, retrieved my little eyeball cluster and put it back on my key chain. Time to find out what had Uncle so jumpy.

The hidden entrance to a corridor carved out of the local sandstone wasn’t warded. I stopped at that realization, more than a little worried since where the Senate doesn’t have wards, it tends to have even nastier things. Most wards are designed to keep something or someone out of an area, or to set off an alarm when an intruder passes through them. Booby traps are used when the Senate doesn’t care about interrogation, and only wants any snoopers dead, usually in a very unpleasant way.

It took me a long time to get down that corridor, because I was convinced that a trap lay waiting somewhere along it, and had to test every foot before I dared to move ahead. I have a charm that makes any magical traps in a two-foot area become visible, but it takes twenty seconds or so to kick in every time a new reading is needed. I had to move ahead two feet, stop, let the charm do its thing, get a negative reading and start all over again. It was the sort of thing that made me want to scream.

I could tell from scent that Radu had entered the left of two doors at the end of the hall. Oddly enough, since he hates the ocean, Radu always smells like a day at the beach: salt and ozone. Today, that was overlaid with something else, an odd, musty air that I couldn’t place. Since my brain’s scent catalog is pretty extensive, that should have worried me more than it did. But the nerve-racking pace had made me impatient, which in turn caused me to be more reckless than usual, although things would probably have played out the same way in any case.

As soon as my charm read negative on any surprises, I opened the door and slipped inside. I flashed on that old story about the lady or the tiger, and had time to think that it figured I would pick the latter, before the thing was on me. I smelled the fetid breath of something that had been snacking on raw meat recently and hadn’t bothered to floss, felt claws on the front of my jacket and heard the familiar rushing sound in my ears that precedes a period of dhampir-induced madness.

When I came around, it was to find Radu swatting at me with a stick. “No, no, no!” he was chanting, and from the rough state of his voice, it sounded like he’d been screaming it for a while. Weirdly enough considering the noise level, no one else had joined us, unless you counted the various strange things cowering in the corners. It was difficult to see them because a prehistoric-looking panther the size of a small horse was sprawled across my chest, its body limp in death. Since my hands were still buried in its throat, I didn’t have to ask what had killed it.

Radu, I realized as my vision cleared the rest of the way, was attempting to beat the thing off me. But his aim wasn’t very good and as many thumps landed on me as on the recently departed. My ribs felt sore enough to let me know that this had been going on for some time.

I sat up, throwing the body away and catching the stick as it descended again. I tried not to notice that several of the creatures in the corners immediately began to make a meal off the remains of the kitty. “Cut it out. I have enough bruises already.”

“Dorina? You… you’re not hurt?” He looked stunned. I don’t know how people think I’ve lived as long as I have. The rumor is that I’m freaking lucky, and while I wouldn’t argue the point, it isn’t the only reason.

“No, didn’t feel like being cat chow.” I glanced down at myself, but all parts seemed to be present and accounted for, if not in particularly good shape. There was a lot of blood—not mine for the most part—and a few tufts of fur clinging to my top. “Crap!” I shrugged out of my jacket and held it up to the light. Large slash marks perforated the heavy leather giving me a view of the room in places. Its thickness had spared my body much of the laceration, but that didn’t make me feel much better. “This is the second one in less than a day,” I complained. “The Senate’s going to get a bill for a new wardrobe if this keeps up.”

“You’re really all right!” Radu threw his arms around me, causing me to wince when he squeezed the wounds the jet parts had made in my back. “I was so worried, Dorina! Mircea would… I couldn’t think what I’d tell him if—”

“Yeah, I’d hate it if my death got you in trouble with Dad,” I said with undisguised sarcasm. Radu didn’t seem to know how to reply to that, not that I gave him a chance. “And what the hell is this place, anyway?” I realized that none of the creatures, some in cages and some roaming free, looked all that familiar.

The two things snacking on the carcass looked like someone had hit a giant rat and the contents of a Dumpster with a dislocator—nothing made sense and nothing was where it was supposed to be. One of the sort-of rats seemed to have gotten hold of a human leg, which I originally thought it was saving for dessert. I looked away when I realized it was attached to the side of one furry hip, and was moving slightly, as if trying to gain a footing on the blood-slick floor.

After five centuries of horrors, very little gets to me anymore. Disgusted I can still do, but I would have said that appalled was no longer on my sensations list. The last time I’d felt it had been during the Great War, when a hunt took me into the trenches in France just after the Battle of the Somme. A mountain of corpses, too battered and blood soaked to reveal what army they had belonged to, fell on top of me while a revenant vamp and I were playing hide-and-seek. Digging my way out had not been pleasant. I still have dreams about it sometimes, of sliding on a bed of churned-up mud, decaying bodies pressing in all around me, someone’s soil-stained tibia stabbing me in the ribs, and rats the size of rabbits snacking on the feast man in his infinite stupidity had provided. A few of the men in the pile had still been alive, although they were busy coughing their lungs out in foaming pink shreds, courtesy of a recent mustard gas attack. I made a few mercy killings and got the hell out of there, leaving the revenant behind. It was the only time I’d ever run from a quarry, and I wasn’t proud of it. But at least I believed I’d seen the ugliest face of humanity.

I’d been wrong.

I think it was the instinctive knowledge that, whatever these things were, their creation had not been accidental that got me. I watched a thing with a wolf’s head and a giant lizard’s body pull itself across the floor toward us, its heavy, fang-filled mouth dripping saliva onto the floor, and felt as much pity as revulsion. Both of those were eclipsed a moment later by a rushing tide of pure rage.

“Is this your new hobby, Radu?” No wonder he hadn’t wanted to be followed! “And here I was telling someone recently that one of my uncles is semisane. Guess I’ll have to rethink that statement, huh?”

“Please, Dorina, it isn’t what you think—”

“The name is Dory!” I realized that I had Radu in a grip that would have broken more than a few ribs if he’d been human. I pushed him away from me, and he staggered near the remains of the kitty cat, causing the rat things to chatter at him. He took a few steps back in my direction, but stopped short, as if having trouble deciding which of the dangers was worse. If he’d been doing what I suspected, it was definitely me. “Okay, tell me what I should think. ’Cause you don’t even want to know what ideas are swimming around my head right now.”

“You aren’t supposed to be in here!” Radu wailed, almost in tears. “You weren’t supposed to see this!”

“I bet.” The stench from the cages and the viscera being chewed over by the rat duo was starting to get to me. Just because I’ve smelled worse didn’t mean I found it pleasant. “Come on. You can explain while I steal a new jacket.”

Mircea’s quarters in MAGIC were, like their owner, subtle, rich and somehow intimidating. Of course, the sheer size might have had something to do with that last one. There was a receiving room guarded by a stately foyer, an intimate dining room, a library and a bathroom as large as my office. There were two large bedrooms, one of which was Radu’s temporary home, and five smaller ones—in case, I assumed, someone needed to house a horde of servants. The only one I’d seen so far was a sour old Englishman—a vamp, of course—that Mircea had long ago loaned his brother. I suspected that had been prompted less by generosity than by the creature’s perennially bad disposition. Geoffrey had scowled at me on arrival, but since Radu was with me, he’d had to let me in.

Radu and I ensconced ourselves in the master suite. Walnut panels lined the walls except for where a built-in bookshelf interrupted to showcase an impressive collection of what were probably first editions. An antique Kashan rug in rich gold, brown and cream covered the floor. The bed was enormous and built high off the ground, with sturdy wooden posts at the corners providing anchors for the curtain rods that outlined it. The curtains were plush cognac velvet with tiebacks in a dark brown satin that matched the sinfully soft quilted comforter. So good to know Daddy wasn’t depriving himself.

Radu sat on the bed and watched me with apprehensive eyes as I sorted through Mircea’s huge old wardrobe. The carvings were traditional Romanian: a tree of life bloomed on each door, around which twisted rope, flowers and wolf teeth in an elaborate design meant to ward off evil spirits. Considering where the thing was located, I thought that was being optimistic.

It didn’t surprise me to see it there, though. Mircea loved Romanian folk art, especially anything made of wood, and had assembled a huge collection through the years. His main estate, in an isolated part of Washington State, is filled with everything from priceless antique doors from Maramures, the woodworking heart of the old country, to cheap but pretty hand-carved spoons that had caught his eye. Or at least it was the last time I had been hauled there for a family gathering, back in the eighties. I’ll never understand him. Everything I own, except for my weapons collection, can fit in a small car. I like it that way, being mobile, able to pull up roots and leave everyone and everything behind at a moment’s notice, driving off into the sunrise…

“I thought that was supposed to be sunset.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Radu piped up.

“Sunrise is better. That way, you have a full day’s head start on any nocturnal types who might be in pursuit.”

I passed over a forest of coats in expensive materials with soft drapes in favor of something sturdier. “This might do.” I dragged a leather capelike coat out of the back of the wardrobe and slung it over my shoulders. It was butter-soft, buff-colored leather with a rich brown lining in what felt like silk. It was too big, of course, but that just meant I could hide more stuff underneath it.

“You can’t say anything about what you saw, Dory. You have to promise me.” Radu was looking at me the way a small child might regard something sprouting tentacles and oozing pus that had just slimed its way out of a closet. I found myself getting annoyed with him all over again.

“Relax, I’m not going to bite you.” You’d think I was the vampire here. How Radu had ever run a country in the cutthroat bad old days was a mystery. The guy got nervous if you looked at him too long.

“I’m not… I don’t…”

“Save it. Just tell me what’s going on.” I flopped onto a forties-era leather chair. It looked like something Bogie would have liked and was decadently comfortable.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Radu protested, glancing around like he hoped for rescue. Not likely. I hadn’t seen any servants besides Geoffrey, and he wasn’t the hero type. He’d tried to knife me in the back when we first met, supposedly before he knew who I was, but the most he ever did to my face was sneer.

“Try.”

“It… they… were an experiment. Or part of one.”

“I didn’t know you went in for that kind of thing.” It wasn’t the first time I’d seen attempted manipulation of species. Demons, for one, were always trying to improve their bloodlines any way they could, to win out over rival clans in the constant infighting, and the Fey had been doing selective breeding for centuries. But those were attempts to improve things, however odd they might seem to outsiders, and nothing I’d seen in the lab looked like an upgrade to me. Not to mention that I’d always thought that Radu, the Senate’s resident mad scientist, had an ethical code of sorts.

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t!” Radu stopped wadding Mircea’s nice bedspread into a ball and stared at me in what looked like genuine consternation. “We captured them in a raid on one of the Black Circle’s haunts. I was asked to discover the reason they were created.”

I was inclined to believe him, mainly because I couldn’t even start to guess why the Senate would waste valuable resources, especially during a war, on splicing genes. “You didn’t guard them very well if they’re some big secret.”

“They are guarded quite well!” Radu said, offended. “You were able to pass through the screens only because they are keyed to me—or, more specifically, to anyone with my blood. Since the only other persons who fit that description are trusted family members, it seemed foolproof.” He looked grumpy. “We forgot about you.”

“You always do. So what did you find?” His expression slipped from righteous indignation into sneaky eva-siveness in a flash. I mentally shook my head. “Let me guess. That’s the part you’re not supposed to talk about.”

“I’m not supposed to talk about any of this! And you had better not, either, Dory. The Senate won’t like your knowing.”

I shrugged. “They basically don’t like my breathing, so what else is new?”

Radu crossed the room so fast I almost didn’t see him. A second later I was dangling a couple feet off the ground, while those delicate-looking hands shook me like a dog. Just when you forget they’re vampires…

“Promise me! You can’t say anything! The Senate is deadly serious about this. If they even suspected that you knew—”

“What? They’d kill me? And that would be different from the current situation how?” I wrestled out of Radu’s grip and straightened the creases his fists had made in my new jacket. “Speaking of which, we need to talk.” I pushed him into the chair I’d vacated, and leaned over as menacingly as I could manage with a straight face. “How about you and I discuss our mutual problem?”

“Wh-what problem?”

“Don’t play dumb. I’m sure Mircea mentioned it, maybe in passing? Drac’s loose.” Radu nodded, gulping. He looked vaguely ill, and I took that for an encouraging sign. It showed he had a brain, and that he knew his brother. “What are you planning to do about it?”

“I’ve already done it,” he told me, gesturing around. “Why do you think I’m here? I don’t like this place. Nothing is ever left where I put it, and one Senate member or another is always prowling about, asking for progress reports. I could work much more efficiently at home. But Mircea said Vlad wouldn’t try for me here.”

“No, I suppose not.” Considering that he’d have to wade through the Senate and their retainers, the Silver Circle and its bevy of psychotic war mages and who knew how many weres, Fey and whatever else was hanging around at the moment, it seemed a safe bet. “So the plan is what? To stay trapped here forever? Doesn’t sound like fun, ’Du.”

“You know I hate that absurd diminutive,” he told me irritably. “Why can’t you leave people’s names alone? Does it physically pain you to utter an extra syllable?”

I grinned. “Looks like I struck a nerve.”

“Nonsense!” Radu sat up a little straighter and pushed me a foot or so back. Talk of his predicament seemed to have evaporated my scare potential—there aren’t many things that look frightening next to Drac. “Mircea said you’d take care of him shortly, and then I can go home.” He looked testy. “Why aren’t you on the hunt, instead of snooping about here? I thought you liked killing things.”

“Aha!” I clapped him on the back. “I knew I wasn’t the only smart one in the family. You want him dead, too!” I went to pour the guy a drink. He’d earned it.

“Of course I do!” Radu snapped impatiently. “Do you have any idea what he’d like to do to me? He’s always despised me.”

“So we’re in the same boat.” He took the glass of whiskey I handed him while I settled onto the hassock at his feet—or tried to before finding myself dumped unceremoniously on my butt. I got up and tried again, only to have the same thing happen. This time, I looked closer at the footstool, a fat paisley-covered pouf with thick tassels at each corner, and noticed something fairly weird, even by my definition of the term. It was hovering a few inches off the ground, its little bun feet not quite touching the rug.

“It was upholstered from an old flying carpet,” Radu explained, seeing the direction of my stare, “and tends to be temperamental. I wouldn’t—” I grabbed the thing, only to find it suddenly wriggling like an overly energetic puppy. It spurted out of my hands, but I jumped on top and held on. “It doesn’t like anyone using it but Mircea,” Radu said. “I think there’s another chair in—”

“I like this one,” I told him, as the bucking-bronco ride I was being treated to careened me into the bedpost, smashing my thigh against the hard wood.

“It doesn’t like me, either,” Radu said as I grabbed one of the tiebacks from the bedpost. The plan was to strap it down, but somehow it seemed to know that, and went skittering off in the other direction, jouncing me as savagely as it could manage in the process. “Anyway, I don’t think Vlad hates you, Dory,” Radu sighed. “Or if he does, it’s merely for an accident of birth.”

“And the little thing of helping to trap him for a century or so.”

“Well, yes, there’s that.” Radu drained his glass while I struggled to get the tieback looped around one of the hassock’s squat feet. I finally managed it, but then I had to figure out where to attach the other end that had a chance of holding it. “But he hates me far more. Mircea and I are full brothers, but he and Vlad were always the soul mates. Two warriors and a bookish runt—it was laughable,” he said bitterly. “I tried to keep up with them, at least at first. But I was no good at any of it. Even with the best instruction in the country, my swordsmanship was never better than average and I was hopeless on a horse. Still am, really.”

“Uh-huh. Life’s a bitch,” I commiserated not at all. The hassock rode us by the bookshelf and I got an idea. I snagged several heavy volumes, and sure enough, its antics slowed down perceptibly. I shoved them underneath me and quickly grabbed two more. The hassock slowly started to settle toward the floor and I thought I had it, but then it gave a huge heave and threw both the books and me off. It flounced away, tassels swinging smugly.

“You can have this chair, Dory,” Radu offered, starting to rise, but I waved him off.

“No, really. I’m fine.” I started stalking the hassock, dismemberment in mind. “You were saying?”

“Yes, well, things deteriorated after Father agreed to our being hostages, of course. Indeed, they became immeasurably worse. I got out of much of the torture after Father broke his treaty with the Turks and they threw us in the dungeons. I should have been stronger, should have defied them the way Vlad did, but you don’t know what it was like.” He licked his lips and set the glass aside with a slightly shaking hand. “I saw what some of the older prisoners looked like, those that had been in there for a while. Noses and lips missing, teeth knocked out, limbs torn off, burns everywhere—”

“Yeah, bad stuff.” I’d seen things that made the Turks look like children at play, but then, so had Radu. The difference was that he’d been pretty damn young, barely a teenager if I remembered right, to be dealing with that house of horrors. Since he was handling the Senate’s menagerie now, something that would have given me nightmares, he must be made of sterner stuff than he looked.

The hassock suddenly reversed course and swept through my legs, knocking me to the floor again. I shot it a dirty glance; even the furniture around here hated me. Then I made an abrupt leap and threw myself on top of it. Turning the wicked thing upside down, I lashed it to the bedpost before it had a chance to try any more tricks. By the time I was finished, it was trussed up in all four tiebacks, the sheet and several items from Mircea’s wardrobe.

“There!” I grinned at it triumphantly. “Now try to move, damn you.”

Radu sighed and stood up to get a refill. “That’s all very well, Dory, but how are you going to sit on it now?”

One of the tassels waved about, giving the distinct impression that it was flipping me off. Fine. It could stay like that until it rotted. I dropped into Radu’s abandoned chair and glowered at it. “Were you trying to make a point, Uncle?”

He propped himself against the bar and regarded me somberly. “Only that I was weak. I was offered a way out, and I took it. Vlad never forgave me for that, for sleeping with the enemy, as they say these days. And then, of course, he thinks I betrayed him and stole his throne—”

“You did betray him and steal his throne.”

“Well, yes, but only after he went barking mad,” Radu said impatiently. “I wasn’t stupid, Dory. I knew the Turks were trying to use me, but something had to be done about Vlad. I’ve never forgotten the sight of the corpses, thousands of them, staked alive on the fields around Tirgoviste. In all the years since, I’ve never known anything like it.”

“There were more killed in some battles in the world wars.”

“Yes, but not with the… the precision, the intent. You remember—he had the stakes laid out in geometric patterns, so he could climb that tower of his and gloat over the pictures they made.”

“No, I don’t recall that. I’d been given to a bunch of Gypsies, remember?”

“Oh, yes.” Radu looked at me vaguely. “How did that turn out for you, then?”

I stared at him. Five hundred years later and he finally thinks to ask. “Oh, peachy. They kept cats around to keep mice off the food, and me to kill any vamps that tried to munch on them. Fun times.” Until they all ended up dead, anyway.

“Oh, good.”

I bit back a retort. I was fast recalling why I usually avoided conversations with Radu. “My point, if you’ll let me make it, is that we both have the same enemy. Okay”—I held up a hand to avoid another waltz down memory lane—“Drac may be planning a more elaborate send-off for you, but me being dead still figures in his plans somewhere. It doesn’t in mine.”

“Then you had best tell Mircea you won’t be going after him. He needs to know, in order to plan something else.”

I regarded him through the heavy, cut-crystal glass. A dozen little Radus looked back at me, each as clueless as the last. “And what, exactly, do you think his backup plan is? Who would be crazy enough to face Drac? Even if there wasn’t a war on, I think it’s safe to say that’s one commission most people would pass up.” I actually knew a few bounty hunters who might be stupid enough to try, for the right fee, but I doubted they’d do more than make Uncle feel insulted that they’d been sent against him. Right before he turned them into meat.

“Mircea would deal with it,” Radu offered unhelpfully, “but he’s trying to arrange a meeting of the six senates.”

“Why?” Having one group of crazed senior vamps around was enough.

“The war, of course. It’s becoming quite bothersome.”

I decided to let that conversation wait for another time. The less I knew about what Mircea was doing, the better I tended to sleep. “So, anyway, we have a common enemy—”

“You’ve said that.”

I took a deep breath and tried one more time. “The way I see it, we have two choices. We can cower in here until Drac raises enough of a force to come in and get us, or we can go on the offensive. I prefer the latter, since letting him call the shots is a good way to end up dead. Or worse,” I added, considering that Radu was probably right about his brother’s plans.

“And how do ‘we’ do that? I told you, I’m not a fighter, Dory. That army I led was Turkish, and so were its commanders. I was mostly there as a figurehead, so the people had someone from one of the old families to consider their ruler instead of a Turkish prince. I didn’t make many decisions.”

“You won’t have to fight him,” I assured Radu.

“Oh, good.” He looked relieved.

I drained my drink and patted him affectionately on the leg. “You’re the bait.”