Blood Spirits (5 page)

“I know what you might like, then. See it all at once. If you don't mind heights, we can take the champagne flight on the Eye. I've never been up on the damn thing. Should do it once.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sounds like fun.”

We were stopped at a red light. He pulled out his cell, which had begun to vibrate again. He sighed. “Hell. What's my mother want, calling fifty times? I'll see her tomorrow.” He thumbed the
ignore
and brought up a search engine. By the time the light changed to green, he'd found the Eye and the time. “Good. Last flight in half an hour. If we stop at the flat, we can borrow one of my sister's coats. She must have a hundred of them upstairs.”

Now that I felt safe, I was wildly curious to see the von Mecklundburg London house. Tony drove up a quiet street lined with handsome street lamps. The Georgian façades looked unchanged from the days of Horry Walpole. Tony parked in front, and as we walked to the door I pulled his coat close against the icy air. His cell phone vibrated three times.

Tony unlocked it and led the way down a hall into a cavernous room, where he moved around quickly, flicking on lights. The air was still— stuffy in the way rooms are when they've been closed up for months. There was no heat, and I was cold.

“Sorry about the lack of welcome.” He indicated the covers on all the furniture. “We've someone who comes in, sweeps out the spider webs, and plunks down the mail. Otherwise no one is here anymore.”

“You usually spend Christmas in Paris?”

He shot me a fast look, then flashed his grin. “Not usually. This year, yes.”

There went his cell again.

“Go ahead and answer that if you have to,” I said. “I'll wait in here while you get the coat.”

“I should chuck this thing out the window.” He pulled out the phone. “Make yourself at home.” He vanished into the hall, saying, “
Ja?
”

A few seconds later a door shut somewhere upstairs.

I didn't want to risk sitting on some chair that would turn out to be three hundred years old and fragile, unused since it received the royal backside of Prince Somebody in 1734. So I walked around the room, idly looking at things.

In spite of the Enlightenment era architecture, what I could see of the shrouded furnishings turned out to be vintage 1920s, right down to the light fixtures. Here and there were jarring touches: a sixties stereo console, and in a corner, a big screen television that reminded me of Ruli.

Ruli.

I'd tried for three months not to think about her. I knew I should wish her well in her huge, cold palace in Riev. But keeping your rational mind civilized doesn't fix the hurt.

I was examining the art deco-framed nineteenth-century racing prints on the walls when I heard Tony's footsteps clattering down some stairs, much louder than he'd gone away.

Then came the ringing, shivery sound of drawn steel, and Tony advanced, still in his shirt sleeves, carrying a dueling sword in each hand, his eyes narrowed.

“Uh—” I said.

He tossed a rapier to me. Cold, blue-gleaming steel rang softly as the blade whooshed through the air. Instinctively, I put my hand up and caught the elaborate hilt.

Tony whipped his blade back and forth so it voomed a low, unnerving sound. For a moment he held the blade horizontally, tip resting on his flat palm, the steel glinting below those black Byzantine eyes. “I never did get a good look your skill when you fought your way down the ancestral staircase.” He brought his blade down in
seconde
. “
En garde
.”

“There's no button on this thing,” I protested, flashing my blade in an automatic beat and riposte.

The swords rang—my bones jarred down to my heels, and I backed away a step.

“No.” He took a step toward me, swinging the sword back and forth. And struck again, in tierce.

“It's sharp,” I yelped as I blocked.

“Yes.” His grin was crazy. No, it was
angry
. “So you had better defend yourself, hadn't you?”

“Have you gone out of your freaking
mind?
”

Whoosh! His blade arced in indirect then straight at my head.

“I can't
believe
it,” I yelped.

There was no answer except the whoosh of his blade. I was about to point out our lack of padding and practice clothes, but he smashed aside my blade and lunged, the smile gone.

I parried. The shock of the hit—no easy hit—sent a sting up my arm. Tony was taller than me by at least half a foot and in superlative condition. The last time I saw him with steel in hand he'd pulled a knife out of his own shoulder and then nailed that horrible Reithermann square in the throat. During my time with Tony, I'd seen him laughing, curious, evasive, even idly amorous, but except for a brief moment when we'd both been under Reithermann's gun, I'd never seen him really angry.

He was angry now.

“Time for some questions,” he said.

“Questions,” I repeated in an
I-do-not-believe-this
voice.

We exchanged a rapid series of blows, each pressing for the advantage. I held him off. Barely. He advanced step-by-step. “First. Why are you here?”

Whang-g-g! Zing!
Lunge, beat, riposte—lunge.

“To see the Eye? To see London? Because Mom and Dad said, ‘Go and have fun.'” I blocked, attempted a bind, disengaged, and hopped back, deflecting a lunge straight at my gut. “
You
said I wouldn't have to dive off another bridge.” The expensive coat fell to the floor behind me. “Why are you
doing
this?”

“Why.” He kicked the coat out of the way. “Are you here? Today?”

Zing!
We exchanged
prises de fer
as we each tried to shift the other out of line, his strength forcing me back step-by-step. When I tried a flashing cut-over, he responded with a vicious circular parry that took all my strength to disengage. The wicked blades, sharp as death, whished through the air. His knocked a vase over with a
thok!
Mine caught in long brocade drapes, the material hissing as I ripped my point free.

“The curtains!” I squawked as my hairclip, put in for comfort against a long plane flight, came loose. A loop of hair drooped in one of my eyes.

“Why,” he swung a cut at my head, “are you in London?”

“Because my dad bought me a ticket.” I blocked, jumped back, and almost tripped over a footstool, whirling around it to catch his blade at the last second.

He leaped over the footstool, and for a moment we stood chest to chest, guard to guard, blades pointed upward. “Because?”

Pulling force from all the way down to my heels, I ripped my blade free, nearly taking his ear off.

He twitched his head aside, disengaged, backed up—and kicked that footstool out of the way.

Neither of us looked when it hit something with a metallic clang, followed by a crash.

Cold as the room was, sweat broke out on my brow as I worked to keep his blade away, but I was still backing up little by little. Tony lunged in a powerful
croisé
, forcing my blade from high line to low, his black eyes narrowed with murderous intent, and I remembered Alec's stories of him running about as a teenager, chasing armed Soviet soldiers with little more than crossbows and steel.

When I reached a point where I fought for breath as hard as I fought him, he finally spoke.

“Last time.” He flicked the tip of his blade down.
Whang
! I gathered the remains of my strength and tried a feint-and-lunge attack that used to rattle my opponents. Two loops of my hair flapped against my cheek and back, and his hair hung in his eyes.

He deflected me with a flick of his wrist, then stepped up
corps à corps
, his breath stirring the top of my hair. “Why are you here?” he whispered, soft as a lover.

“Dad and Gran were going . . . Argh! Put the sword
down
,” I yelled as his blade slid along mine in a metallic
coulé,
sending me nearly stumbling over that same footstool. I scrambled around it, leaped over whatever it was I knocked down—oh lord, one of those antique tulip lamps. “I'm not talking until you do.”

“I'm not stopping,” he said as he kicked that footstool against the wall. “Until you tell me the truth.”

“I've never lied to you.”

“You lied from the first day you showed up in Dobrenica,” he retorted. “And kept it up until you took off. Why did you leave?”

“I was in the way.”
Zing!
“In Ruli's—in
their
way. You yourself said I was trouble.”
Whang!
“It seemed leaving was the right thing to do.”

“It was the wrong thing to do.” Tony's mouth flattened into a line as he attacked again. My arm shivered as I deflected his blade—all art gone, my form along with it. I fought to defend myself. He kicked a chair my way, which skidded, rumpling up a fabulous Persian rug. “Damn it! Disappeared in a day.”
Crash!
“No word to anyone except my sister.”
Clang!
“Ruli whinged about having to drive you to the border like she was a chauffeur, and how you nagged her to do her duty.”
Slash, zing!
“No reasons.”
Zang!
“Nothing—”
Whoosh!
“—that made sense.”

Another feint, a lunge that he smacked out of the way, and then a lamp rocked, teetered, went over with a crash. Tony never gave it a second glance.

My hair clip fell out at last, and my hair swung down in ropes, tangling with my arms.

I whooped for breath as I slung my hair back. He wanted the truth? Fine. “Honor.”

“And I couldn't bear it.” May as well get it all out.

His hand dropped, that point swinging aside, out of the line of attack. “Bear what?”

I let my point fall slightly, my arm throbbing. I was furious with him and furious with myself for actually trusting him enough to get into that car.
Never
again.

“I thought you were better than that.” He held his point steady but still out of line.

“I
am
better than that,” I retorted. “Months of no practice, and your reflexes wouldn't be as fast, either. Once my shoulder healed up from that bullet hole, I was at my new job:
teaching French
. They didn't have a fencing team.” He was rubbing his own shoulder. To forestall some irritatingly superior comment about how he'd had to recover as well, I said, “And about that bullet hole in my shoulder.”

He paused. “What about it? You're going to say it was worse than Kilber's bull's-eye on me?”

“I was going to say that when I went to the doctor to get it checked out, he said the wound was so cleanly placed it hadn't done any bone damage. I figured, if Reithermann's guys were going to shoot point blank, they would have hit me somewhere far worse. I think I was shot by one of your guys. In fact, I remember his face. I've seen it a lot in nightmares.”

“Niklos,” Tony admitted. “He was very careful.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. He shot me in the shoulder before one of Reithermann's slimes could shoot me in the head. That way, it still looked like you guys were his allies. And I bet Kilber threw his knife in exactly the same spot on you for some of the same reasons.”

“True.” He rubbed the spot again, then said, “Couldn't bear what?” A little of his old sarcasm was back as he said, “What was it sent you off so suddenly, an American distaste for the depravity of monarchy?”

“Look, last summer, when I finally realized that my showing up in Dobrenica was an epic mistake, the least I could do was not force Alec to have to choose between Ruli and me—knowing the Blessing would only work if he married her. So I left.” I wiped my forehead with my sleeve, then said fiercely, “And I couldn't stand by and watch it happen.”

Tony squinted at me. “Who said the Blessing wouldn't work if you married him?”

“You did. Explicitly. When you talked about bastardy. Everyone else only hinted: Gran not being legally married, my mother born out of wedlock. Alec's marrying Ruli was to bring peace between the five ruling families, which meant—”

He spun around and flung his blade across the room so it stabbed the priceless silk wallpaper next to the door and stayed there, vibrating violently. “I didn't tell you that,” he said. “I said you were trouble, yes, a problem, yes—but only because it was becoming clearer by the day that you, and not my sister, were the necessary component. And I wanted you up the Eyrie with me so I could use you as a bargaining chip—no, not only against Alec, though that was true in part, but against my mother. Dammit.
Damn
it.”

“What? Make some
sense
.” I waved my sword in an arc.

“My mother lies when it's to her advantage. Like sending me to London on this so-called urgent law question, when I should be. . . .” He stopped, his profile shuttered. Then he flashed the nasty grin. “Let's say there's trouble at home. Today. This particular day.
Now
.” His voice lowered, oddly gentle. “And I don't believe in coincidence. Yet here you are.”

FOUR

“I
T'S ENTIRELY COINCIDENCE,” I said. “I didn't even know I I was coming until day before yesterday. And my parents didn't know I was going to drive home. My dad got me a ticket just in case.”

He frowned. But at least he was listening and not attacking.

We were still standing in the middle of the trashed room. Since his sword was stuck in the wall, I dropped my point and leaned against the table as I tried to recover my breath. “Look. From my view, everything that happened last summer was a personal disaster. So when I got back to L.A. I told my parents never to mention Alec again. Or Dobrenica. Or . . . anything about any of you. I took a job five states away.”