Midnight's Daughter (31 page)

The room was full of booty. Several dozen plush prayer rugs brightened the walls, helping to insulate the cold stone. Many of the silver and gold vessels scattered about had Arabic words enameled onto them, the carpet was a Persian in blues and burgundies and the shiny brass lamp that hung from the ceiling didn’t look local. A sudden wave of exhaustion made the exotic colors run together, and I swayed slightly as the last of my adrenaline was used up. I hurt everywhere, but that was nothing new. What undid me was the sight of a real bed dressed with a pile of lovely furs and blankets, so high that they made a mound. I walked toward it unconsciously, my head spinning from pain and wonder.

I must have made it, because I fell onto something soft and squashy that my dazed senses identified as a feather mattress. The impact hurt my bruised ribs, to the point that I think I passed out for a minute. When I came around, I discovered that my first impression had been wrong: I wasn’t alone.

I was slumped over a body that was seeping a crimson stain onto what had been clean white sheets. It didn’t have a pulse, but that didn’t worry me. His kind never did unless trying to pass for human.

My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I thought it might shatter a rib. I noticed irrelevantly that the blood was ruining his clothes. His dazzlingly white tunic had been embroidered at the sleeves and around the slit collar in bright red and gold, but darker patches now marred the pattern in several places. I couldn’t tell how bad the wounds were, because although he was in bed, he hadn’t bothered to divest himself of his fur cloak. It was so silky that my hands completely disappeared in it. I stroked it softly, unable to believe my luck.

I stared down at my victim, and slowly undid the rag holding a sharpened wooden sliver around my waist. He didn’t move, not even to open his eyes. I told myself to get it done, but I hesitated. I’d never killed a sleeping vampire. Their daytime resting places were too hard to find to make it worth the effort; I caught them animated and bent on mayhem, not lying around wounded and helpless. This was so different from the fight to the death I’d envisioned that I simply sat there a moment, staring at him. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected.

His face had the same expressive eyebrows and long, dark lashes he’d passed on to me, but with strong, masculine features underneath that made them look quite different. He was very good-looking, but except for shadowy depressions in his cheeks, he was as white as bone. He looked ill, which was absurd, since vampires don’t get sick. Of course, the blood might explain it; the coverlet beneath him was virtually soaked with it. I had an awful idea: had someone beaten me to it? Had someone else
stolen my revenge, while I struggled not to fall off that damned wall?

My hands started shaking and I couldn’t seem to stop them, and my breathing was shallow and uneven. I sat back down on the bed until the room stopped swimming, then started to pull off the remains of his ruined shirt. The wounds underneath were deep, with a few showing bone, but none looked to be in the right area for a heart blow. So why didn’t he wake up?

I told myself that a dead vampire was a dead vampire, no matter how he got that way. I got a better grip on my stake and decided to stop worrying about who had attacked him in such a half-assed way and just get it done. I positioned my makeshift weapon over the heart, but again I hesitated. I wanted him awake for this, aware enough to know who was about to end his miserable life and why. It shouldn’t happen like this, without him even waking up. Somehow, it seemed almost obscene.

“Are you going to kill me or wait for me to die of old age?” I jumped at the sudden question, and the hand that had been lying so utterly still and limp a second ago caught my wrist. I struggled, but found that I couldn’t move. I stared at my arm as it hung there in the air, the strength that had never before failed me suddenly useless. “It will be a long wait, I assure you.”

Bright amber eyes looked me over as he easily rose to a sitting position, his other arm grabbing me by the neck like an errant puppy. He smiled, showing fully extended fangs. “You had your chance. Now it is my turn.”

I fought and thrashed against the iron hold, but it was no use—I couldn’t move. I screamed, as much in rage as in fear, and the hold tightened, tearing more cries from my throat. A hand clamped over my mouth and I bit it. Someone swore, and it was in French, not a language I’d have expected under the circumstances. It brought me back to myself slightly. I opened my eyes to find Louis-Cesare bending over me, worry clearly visible in his blue eyes. Déjà vu.

“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare’s face blurred in and out. He looked like he was struggling to stay calm. He wasn’t struggling half as much as I was.

I’d met Mircea for the first time in a bar in Italy, around the turn of the seventeenth century, not in a castle in Romania. Especially that one. Cetatea Lui Negru Voda, the Citadel of the Black Ruler, was the real castle Dracula. It had originally been built in the fourteenth century, but Drac rebuilt and expanded it after he returned from his Turkish adventure. The Turks had let him go after learning of his father’s assassination and Mircea’s burial alive at the hands of the nobles of the town of Tirgoviste, who supported a rival family on the throne. They knew he’d stir up trouble as soon as he got home, giving the Wallachians something else to think about besides fighting them. And in that regard, Drac hadn’t disappointed.

He had decided that the only thing that would protect Romania from outside invaders and inner rebels was a show of strength. On Easter Sunday 1459, he started as he meant to go on. Drac invited the nobles of Tirgoviste to a lavish dinner party. Once there, they were arrested and forced to march fifty miles to the town of Poenari, located where the Carpathian foothills turn into real mountains. Those who survived the trek were put to work building him a fortress on a steep precipice overlooking the Arges River. The job continued for months, until their elaborate banquet attire rotted and fell off their bodies—then Drac ordered them to keep working naked. It was the harshest kind of physical labor, mixing mortar and lugging huge stones and timber up the steep mountainside. Many died of fatigue and illness, but some survived. Drac examined his new fortress, decided there was nothing major left to do and ordered the remaining workers impaled.

The castle had, not surprisingly, developed a bit of a reputation. It was said to be haunted by some of the thousands who had died there. Maybe that’s why, when tourists come all agog to see Dracula’s castle, they are taken to Bran Castle in Transylvania, even though the only connection with it Uncle ever had was to besiege it once. But it’s in good condition, while Poenari’s version is a hulking ruin, a great lump of stone and misery, with pieces regularly working loose from the grainy old mortar to drop onto careless-tourist heads.

And Bran doesn’t give people nightmares.

“Dorina! Are you all right?” Louis-Cesare shook me, and from his frantic tone, I had the impression that it wasn’t the first time he’d asked.

The problem was, I didn’t know the answer. I’d been under a lot of stress for a month, without Claire to help mitigate it, not to mention I’d almost died twice in one day. Even with my past experience, that could bring on a troubled night. It could be just a nightmare. But the images had seemed so real, much more detailed than my usual dreams. What if the spell had combined with the wine to dredge up something long buried?

But that didn’t make sense. I’d never been to Poenari, not in its heyday and not afterward. And if I’d never been there, it couldn’t be some residual effects of the spell. So why could I almost feel the rough texture of the stone under my fingertips? Was it a nightmare, or something more? And if it was more, how was I supposed to find out? I couldn’t very well use a flawed memory to search for gaps in the same memory.

Mircea, I thought blankly, what did you do?

“Dorina!”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully without thinking about it, and it wasn’t the right answer.

Louis-Cesare began fumbling around in the bedclothes. Hands slid over my body, looking for an injury. I quickly recalled that I wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of panties, having not had anything suitable for nightwear after Stinky ruined my tee. I realized when a drop of water hit my nose that Louis-Cesare wasn’t much better off. His hair was wet and the only article of clothing on that long body was a damp white bath towel draped loosely around his hips. I couldn’t understand why he’d been showering in the middle of the night, until I noticed a sliver of daylight peeking through a gap in the heavy curtains.

It was morning. Morning of the day I was going to get Claire back. I started to get up, only to have Louis-Cesare force me back down. “You will stay here until I have a physician called.”

“I’m okay—”

“Which explains why I have had to hold you down for the last five minutes to keep you from tearing at your own skin!”

“—and doctors can’t do anything more for me than you already did.”

“Dorina! You are ill!”

“Louis-Cesare! I’m a dhampir! I go crazy on a regular basis. Just one of the joys of being me.” I tried to rise again, only to find that I couldn’t. It was no longer sexy, I decided. “Let me the hell up!”

Louis-Cesare was suddenly attacked by a growling Stinky, who wrapped his stick arms and legs around the vamp’s head and held on for dear life, making a horrible screeching sound the whole time. “Don’t hurt him!” I yelled as Louis-Cesare reached for the little guy.

A pair of exasperated blue eyes stared at me out of a mask of matted gray fur. But the hands trying to prize Stinky off gentled. He pried the Duergar away and held him at arm’s length. Stinky gnashed useless fangs at him and spat. “It does have a curious charm,” he murmured.

“Will you please let him go? He thinks you’re trying to hurt me.”

Louis-Cesare’s face lost its amusement. “You do well enough at that yourself,” he said shortly. Stinky was bundled into the bathroom for the second time and Louis-Cesare turned to regard me with crossed arms. I suppose the gesture was an expression of impatience or exasperation, but all my brain could manage to focus on was that towel. It looked to be in immanent peril of falling off entirely, barely clinging to the muscular swell of his hips—smooth-skinned hips glistening with water and flecked with soap suds.

I tried to look away, but the man was perfection, beauty given a face and body. The line of his throat, the sleek muscular sweep of his torso, were pure masculine sensuality. And in the dim light filtering in through the curtains, he almost looked like he’d been oiled. My mouth went dry.

“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare had moved, one of those lightning-fast transitions that vamps use when they can’t be bothered to appear human. He was by the bed staring down at me, and that was definitely exasperation on his face. “Have you heard anything I have said?”

“Not really.”

I suddenly felt the press of the intimate little room, with its lush carpets, gaudy gold-papered walls and rich, dark furniture. A breeze from the open window shifted around my legs, pushing into the sheet covering me. It was a tentative little thing, just a filmy tickle, but I was cold and he stood there still flushed from the heat of his bath. The soap smelled good on him, and the faint musk rising from all that warm skin smelled better. I shivered, hard.

Louis-Cesare’s breathing had roughened as my gaze lingered on his body. “You will not distract me!” His words were a surprise, because that hadn’t even occurred to me. Hadn’t, but should have. The last thing I wanted was to discuss my dreams, especially the last one.

A smile flirted with my lips. I stroked a hand up the interior of one strong thigh, shivering at the whiplash of sensation, the blaze of skin on skin. “You mean like this?”

I found myself on my back, with Louis-Cesare above me, his eyes flashing blue gray lightning. He looked powerful, hard, aroused. Stunning. “I do not believe that this was one of your fits, Dorina. There was no provocation—”

I took advantage of his nearness to run a hand down his chest and along the tight belly, until I hit the terrycloth barrier just below the curve of his waist. He grabbed my hands before I could tug the towel off, and leaned over me, trapping them on either side of my head. “So what are you planning to do?” I grinned up at him. “Tie me to the bed?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Louis-Cesare looked like a man who has finally heard a good idea. “Don’t you dare!”

My arms were pushed over my head. I would have protested, but the action brought that perfect mouth close enough to kiss, so I did. He tasted right the way water tastes right—simple, necessary.

Louis-Cesare leaned into the kiss for a moment; then tore away, his eyes blazing with something wild and seductive. The look alone was enough to send a wash of desire through me. It didn’t help that he was close enough for me to reach out and tangle his hair in my fists and pull him close, close enough to kiss again, close enough to make him moan. Just thinking about it made me ache, a sharp knife of want twisting in my stomach. I curled my hands around slats in the headboard to keep from grabbing him.

“I have found nothing else that succeeds with you!” The voice was deep and rough, with only a faint echo of his usual smooth tones. “I make logical arguments, but you do not hear.”

“Don’t,” I warned him in a strangled voice. “I’ve had a hard month. I ache in more places than I can count. The last thing I need is a lecture.”

He hesitated for a moment; then his palms smoothed back down my arms to cup my face. The usually so-controlled features were strangely tender. Those blue eyes met mine, asking, seeking. “What do you need?”

I should have laughed, should have thrown it back in his face as he did once to me. But my gaze had fixed on his mouth, on those impossibly enticing full lips. “Guess.”

The softness of his mouth was a surprise. I leaned into the insistent sweetness of the kiss, loving the way his lips caressed mine, how he managed to infuse the lightest of touches with a longing that made me weak. I let go of the slats, wanting to touch him, but he curved one of his hands over both of mine, curling them tightly around the headboard. For some reason I didn’t protest, possibly because his other hand had found my hip and slowly moved down until it cupped my backside. His mouth had moved along my jaw to my neck as his hand caressed me, as gently as if I were made of glass.