“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 â now was not the time for humor â 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,
dulceaÅ£Ä
?” 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 â 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,
dulceaÅ£Ä;
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.