Touch the Dark (36 page)

I gave him a warning look. “I haven't. So if you don't stay still, don't blame me if you get hurt.”

He collapsed back on the bed and flung an arm over his face. He muttered something in Romanian and I ignored him. He knew I didn't speak it, and was just being difficult. If I hadn't been enjoying his body so much, I might have complained. As it was, I returned to the enthralling study of what made him moan. When I slid my lips and tongue along him this time, he stayed much quieter, except for a slight shudder that he might not have been able to help. I found that I liked licking the tip most, although the taste there was a little bitter. But it was worth it to see him struggle not to move or cry out under my touch, his hands balling into fists at his sides. I decided to see what it would take for the great Mircea to completely lose control.

I accidentally grazed his skin with my teeth when I took more of him into my mouth, and the sensation wrung a startled cry from him. After figuring out that it had been a sound of approval, I started interspersing regular nips between the licks, and he was soon whimpering faintly, as if he wasn't even aware he was doing it. A few minutes later, I found his true weakness when I moved lower to lick the downy skin over his balls. He must have been extra sensitive there, or maybe the pressure had been building for a while. Before I realized what was happening, he had grabbed my hips and positioned me above him, so that he was once more pressed against my entrance. It felt so incredibly good, so very right, that I almost let our bodies meld together. But some part of my brain spoke up, reminding me of the price, and I pulled back.

I moved too quickly and ended up falling awkwardly off the bed. A second later, Mircea's flushed face peered over the edge of the mattress, looking at me in bewilderment as I sprawled on the rug. I grabbed at my robe, and his eyes darkened. “I will personally shred that offensive garment so it will never hide your beauty again.”

His voice was hoarse and the look in his eyes was wild. I didn't waste the time needed to put the robe on but wrapped it around me like a blanket. It was a poor substitute for the warmth of his skin, but it was a lot easier to think with some clothes on. My breathing wasn't too steady and I almost felt dizzy with need for him, but I backed away until the window stopped me. “We had a deal, Mircea,” I told him shakily.

He sat up, which was a serious distraction considering that his arousal had not flagged in the slightest. He winced but kept his burning eyes on mine. They were more cinnamon than amber now, a blazing, beautiful reddish light. It was almost as dark as the color that had practically made Pritkin faint; it made me want to run back and throw myself at him. I gripped the window ledge behind me for support and felt its wards sizzle. They were cool compared to the heat of my skin at the moment.

Mircea ran a hand over his face, and it was shaking. He looked up at me with desperate eyes. “Cassie, please do not do this. I have explained the situation — you know what is at stake. I want to make this pleasurable for you, not to have you hate me because of it. But this must be done. You are not like that ridiculous mage who understands nothing of us. Please do not make this complicated. It could be beautiful.”

“And if I say no?” Mircea was suddenly very still. The room shimmered with barely controlled power, the way heat waves do over desert sand. “You wouldn't force me?”

Mircea swallowed and looked very intensely at the rug for a full minute. When he finally looked up, his eyes had returned to their usual rich brown. “Let there be total honesty between us,
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. I could invade your mind, use tricks to overcome your reason, and force you to give yourself to me as I know you wish to do. But if I did this, you would never trust me again. I know you too well; I know how you view disloyalty. It is the one thing you cannot forgive, and I do not want you to see me as an enemy.”

“Then I can leave?” I knew the answer but needed him to explain my options.

“You know better than that.” Mircea sighed and his face suddenly looked tired. “If we do not do this, the Consul will simply appoint another. I know you have feelings of some kind for Tomas, but I also know how upset you are with him. He betrayed your trust, and although it was done under orders he could not disobey, I do not think you have forgiven him for that.”

I hugged myself. “No.” There was a time when I'd trusted Tomas, at least as much as I did anyone, lusted after him, and maybe even loved him a little. But that had been the man in my imagination, not the real thing. I felt now like I saw a stranger when I looked at him. I didn't want those hands on me. Besides, he had invaded my mind once on Senate orders. If commanded, I had no doubts he would do it again.

“Then Louis-César, perhaps? He is handsome. Would you prefer him?” Mircea sounded a little strangled, and I think for some reason he liked that idea even less than me being with Tomas. Perhaps because the Frenchman was a full Senate member, with equal status. Did he think I'd fall head over heels for the first guy I had sex with, and run off to Europe? If so, he didn't know me as well as he thought.

“No.” I didn't want a man I barely knew, whose touch had sent me into a nightmare twice already, anywhere near me.

“Then perhaps Raphael? He looks on you as a daughter, as you know, but he would do this for you, if you prefer.” I shook my head. I wouldn't put Raphael or myself through that. I wouldn't be with someone who would look on the whole thing as a chore to be endured. Mircea spread his hands. “That was my assumption as well. So you see where we are. If you turn all of us down, the Consul will appoint one of her servants to deal with the matter, and that I do not think you would enjoy. There are no other alternatives. Your abilities are too important. The power cannot be allowed to pass to someone else simply because I have not had time to court you properly.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “And what do you get out of it, Mircea? Just security? Or did the Consul agree to honor your claim if this goes well? Do you want to use me, too?”

Mircea let out a long sigh. “No one controls the Pythia, Cassie. If the power does come to you, I will not be able to hold you. I always knew that.”

“Then why shield me all these years? Why do it now?” Mircea was right; I did know how vamp politics worked. He had spent a lot of time and energy protecting me, and I doubted it was simply to obtain a clairvoyant for his court. Especially not if, once I became Pythia, he would lose control of my gift. There was more going on here than he had told me.

He did not look happy, but he answered. His usual, laughing mask had gone, replaced by a stark, pain-filled expression. “You understand what it is to lose family,
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. So perhaps you can appreciate what it means to me that only Radu remains of all my kin, and he . . . I told you what was done to him.”

“Yes.”

“What I did not tell you, for I rarely speak of it and you were only a child, is that he suffers still. Every night when he wakens, it is as if it were all being done anew. They broke him,
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, in mind, body and spirit. Even now, hundreds of years after his torturers are dead, he cries out in agony at their whips and brands. Every night, a thousand torments are revisited on him, again and again.” Mircea's eyes were suddenly old and terribly sad; they told me that it had not been only Radu who had suffered. “I have thought of killing him many times to spare him, but I cannot. He is all I have. But I no longer believe that one night he will awaken from his nightmare.”

“I'm sorry, Mircea.” I resisted the impulse to go to him, to stroke his messy hair and comfort him. It was too soon for that. Years of experience had taught me to find out the whole story before offering sympathy. “But I don't see what this has to do with me.”

“You are going to Carcassonne.”

It took a moment for me to make the connection, and even then it didn't make sense. “You freed Radu from the Bastille.”

“In 1769, yes. But a century earlier, he was not there. He was held and tortured for many years at Carcassonne.” He said the name as if it was an invective, which to him it probably was. “Do you know the Pythia's alternate title, Cassie?” I numbly shook my head. “She is called the Guardian of Time. You are my best chance, my only chance. But if the Pythia dies and you lose your borrowed power because you were not yet a fit vessel to hold it, I will lose the only window on time I have ever found.”

Things clarified. “The Consul promised you a chance to help Radu. That is your payment for having me solve their little problem.”

He inclined his head. “She agreed to allow me to make up the third of our group. I will be going with you when next you shift. While you and Tomas stop the attempt on Louis-César, I will rescue my brother.” Mircea's eyes were somber but utterly serious. I knew in that minute that, while he might not force me himself, he would stand aside and watch someone else do it. He might not like it, but he would like even less leaving Radu to his fate. I wanted to hate him for it, but I couldn't. It was part pity — I couldn't imagine what it had been like, caring for someone for hundreds of years who was dangerously insane, watching him torment himself day after day and being able to do absolutely nothing about it. But it was more that: despite having every reason to do so, Mircea had not lied. He was right; I could forgive almost anything but that.

“How do you know we're even going back there again?” If he was going to be honest with me, the least I could do was to return the favor. “I don't have the same apprehension or fear or whatever it was around Louis-César anymore. And when he carried me away from Dante's, nothing happened. For all I know the power has already passed, or it might choose to take me somewhere else.”

“We believe that Rasputin will try for him that night, the one you have visited twice now, because it was then that Louis-César was changed. You did not know that my brother made him, did you?”

“I thought Tomas said he was cursed.”

Mircea shook his head. “I do not know where he heard that, Cassie. Perhaps he believes it because Louis-César did not know what it was to have a master. Like me, he had to make his own way with little guidance. Because my brother was imprisoned, Louis-César's birth was not recorded until long after the fact. By the time any other master knew of his existence and might have tried to claim him, he was too powerful. Radu bit him for the first time the night you were there, after the jailers left them alone together in an attempt to terrorize our Frenchman. Radu called him back the two nights afterwards until he changed. Perhaps he was trying to gain a servant who could release him.”

“So why didn't he?”

Mircea looked at me with some surprise. “You do not know who Louis-César was?”

I shook my head, and he smiled slightly. “I will leave him to tell you the story. Suffice it to say, he was not free to move about for a long time, and by the time he was, Radu had been moved and he could not find him. In any case, all Rasputin would have to do to eliminate our Louis-César is to stake him before the third bite; kill him when he is yet human and helpless and he will never have to fight him.”

“He could kill him in his cradle even easier, or when he was a kid. You don't know it'll be then.”

Mircea shook his head emphatically. “We believe that your gift has been showing you where the problem lies, where someone is attempting to alter the time line. Why else would you keep going back there? In any case, the records on Louis-César's early life are scant. The first time Rasputin can be sure where to find him is when he changed. It is on record, along with the peculiar circumstances of his masterlessness. He won't take a chance on something so important. He will try for him where he knows he will be. I know where they held Radu, Cassie. It will be a matter of a few moments to free him.”

“And can you tell me the exact date his mind gave way? A city surrounds that castle, Mircea. I won't help you turn a mad killer loose on them.”

Mircea spoke quickly. “I have spoken with Louis-César. Radu was quite sane when he changed him. You can help me save him,
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. Torture for others ended soon enough with death or, rarely, exoneration. But not for him. His torturers would never free him because they did not believe he could ever be redeemed, but they would not kill him, since his suffering made such a good lesson for those they wished to frighten.” The emotion in his eyes was hard to witness; desperation was too mild to describe it. “There is no way out for him! You have seen that place. Can you leave him there, knowing what his fate will be? Can you trade his life for your virtue?”

It wasn't my virtue I worried about; it was my freedom. But I knew better than to try to strike a bargain over that. There was no way the Consul wouldn't at least attempt to hold on to me. If I became Pythia, perhaps I'd be able to avoid her manipulation and that of the two circles; maybe I could even help my father. It was a hell of a long shot, but it was the best one I had. I took a deep breath and pushed away from the window, letting the robe slip from my hands as I did so.

Mircea watched me walk to him, hope dawning in his eyes. I put a hand on his shoulder, in the midst of the decadent, raw silk of his hair, and ran the other lightly down the curve of his face. “You answered my question. Don't you want your reward?”

He caught me to him and began speaking softly against my lips, words of thanks and passion intermingled. Tears fell onto my neck and breasts as he kissed, licked and nibbled his way across my upper body. He lay me back carefully onto the bed and kissed his way back to the center of that building pressure that had returned with a vengeance. Soon he had me almost crying for something larger than his tongue to ease the ache. As if reading my mind, Mircea slid a finger down to my throbbing center and eased it inside. It felt wonderful, but it wasn't nearly enough.