Touch the Dark
Page 52

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, dulcea; 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, dulcea," 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, dulcea, 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.