Embrace the Night

Page 58

“Normally, yes. But Horatiu was dying when he went through the transformation; had I hesitated at all, he would have been gone. And changing someone in such extremely poor health is, as you said, inadvisable.”
“Then why do it?” An eternity like that wouldn’t have struck me as a great gift.
Mircea poked at the fire, not that it needed it. The room was already warming up nicely. “Because I did not know what I was doing,” he admitted, having tortured the logs to his satisfaction. “You forget, I was not chosen for this life; I received it because of an old woman’s hatred for my family. I was cursed.”
“What does that have to do with Horatiu?”
“Everything. I had no one to advise me, dulceata?. No one to give me any knowledge of my new state. Perhaps in another time it would have been different. Today, the Senate itself oversees such masterless vampires as are created, few though they are. But then…nothing was so simple then. I didn’t know this would be his fate.”
“I never thought about what it must have been like for you,” I said slowly, “to suddenly wake up changed.”
He smiled grimly. “It did not happen as quickly as that. It was a week before the transformation was complete, and even then…Such things were fables, stories told to frighten children! How could such a thing have happened? To me, a good Catholic?”
“But vampirism is a metaphysical disease. It doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“But I didn’t know that, Cassie. I didn’t know anything. I could enter a church, pray the rosary, do things I had always been told were impossible for the damned. And yet the sunlight I’d walked in all my life suddenly burned me, the food of my youth no longer nourished me, and even my body was changing in ways that, at the time, appalled me. I did not wish to see more than everyone else, to hear things better left unknown, to toss and turn in my bed, feeling every heartbeat within a mile calling out to me…”
“You accepted it in time, though.”
“I don’t know that that is quite the word I would use,” Mircea said dryly. He unself-consciously stripped off the bedraggled trousers, laying them on the bed, where he tackled them with a brush. “I was in denial, refusing to admit, even to myself, what was happening.”
“When did that change?”
“When the nobles caught up with me. Ours was an elected monarchy—anyone with the correct bloodline was a candidate—and they had decided to support a rival branch of the family. And in those days, the common way of changing power was to kill the ones who currently had it.”
I’d heard the story of his change long ago, but he’d made it sound like a grand adventure. It wasn’t sounding so much like that now. I was beginning to suspect that the version I’d received as a child had been a highly selective account.
“They killed Father first. He’d sent me on an ill-fated crusade against the Turks, and despite the fact that the troops I led had acquitted themselves well, we lost the war. I was…less than popular…thereafter, with nobles who had not bestirred themselves to help in the fight. Making me watch his death was intended as retribution.”
He paused to tackle a particularly tough stain, then continued. “They scalped him, a trick we’d learned from the Turks. It involved peeling away the skin of the face while the victims still lived, torturing them and making them unrecognizable at the same time. When they finished, they blinded me with hot pokers so his mutilated body would be the last thing I ever saw. Then they buried me alive.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I lay there, hearing the clods of earth falling onto my coffin, and assumed it was the end,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull his trousers back on. “I waited for my air to run out, for death, for judgment, for something…but hours passed and nothing happened. Nothing except that my eyes mended, allowing me to see despite there being no light. I finally had to face the fact that something a little…strange…was going on.”
“What did you do?”
Mircea shrugged. “I dug my way out. It had rained overnight, making the ground soft. Otherwise I might not have managed it. Afterwards, I lay on the wet earth, gulping in air that I clearly no longer needed, and wondered what to do. I was a monster; I’d finally accepted that. But I was a damn weak one. I hadn’t had any nourishment since the change and my body had had to repair considerable damage from the fight and the torture that followed it. I knew I was in no fit state to face them again.”
“How did you survive?” I asked urgently. I really wanted to know. Our situations weren’t identical, but there were enough similarities for me to hope for a nugget of wisdom. Mircea hadn’t known how to be a vampire any more than I knew how to be the Pythia. Yet he’d managed.
His eyes narrowed slightly at my tone, and I cringed inwardly. I was tired and not guarding my voice as well as I should. I’d probably just told him a lot more than I’d intended.
“By luck and some timely help,” he said after a pause. “My clothes, other than the filthy ones I had on, money and possessions were in Tirgoviste—where many of those who had just tried to kill me resided. I had to risk going back there, and as luck would have it, I was seen by one of my attackers. He didn’t realize how weak I was and did not dare to take me on himself. But he ran to summon the others.”
“But if they’d just buried you, why did they believe him?” Most people would ask anyone who came bearing tales of the walking dead if maybe he’d been drinking a little too much.
Before answering, Mircea came to join me. Since I was still sitting by the hearth, far too near the fire’s random sparks for a vampire’s liking, the move worried me. So did the casual smile on his face. “Spoken like a true modern woman,” he said lightly. “But at that time, many people accepted the old legends about nosferatu as fact. And they knew how to deal with any of us who dared to show our face.”
He sat down and relaxed, digging his bare toes into the deep, rich carpeting, and his eyes fixed on the hem of my gown. I looked down only to realize that the dirty ends of Pritkin’s boots were peeking out from under the silk. I’d forgotten I was wearing them, just like he’d forgotten to search them. I felt myself blushing at the memory of exactly why we’d been so distracted.
I tried to tuck my feet back under the material, but it didn’t do any good. Mircea knelt in front of me and pulled my foot into his hands, staring at the dirty, clunky boot incredulously. “Where did you get this?”
“Um.” It was about a size ten, and obviously a man’s. Mircea scraped at a bit of mud coating the heel and a knife popped out. It fell to the floor, making a small ringing sound, and we both stared at it for a beat.
“You’re wearing the mage’s shoes?”
“Technically, they’re boots.”
Mircea’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I can see that. Why are you wearing them?”
“My feet were cold.”
“And he made a gentlemanly gesture?” His tone dripped sarcasm.
“Not exactly.”
“You stole his shoes.” Mircea sounded like he didn’t quite believe it.
“Boots. And I didn’t exactly…I mean, he wasn’t using them at the time.”
“And why not?”
“Um.”
Mircea pulled the other offending boot off and tossed the pair of them to the other side of the room. They landed with a crash against the heavy wood paneling, sending a shower of caked dirt scattering across the floor. Which left him staring at Pritkin’s socks.
They were woven from a coarse gray wool that in no way matched my dress and, like the boots, were oversized. Mircea didn’t comment this time, just yanked them off and threw them after the shoes. “My feet are going to get cold,” I protested.
“I will find you something more appropriate,” he informed me tightly, pulling my feet into his lap.
He hadn’t yet buttoned the shirt, and when he moved, the firelight did amazing things to the muscles on his chest. He started rubbing my arches, just too hard to tickle, and it felt so good I had to look away. It was a mistake, letting him know he was getting to me, but it was either that or get up and move—an even bigger red flag.
“How did you get out of there?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Out of where?”
“The town.”
“With Horatiu’s help,” he said, rubbing my instep with hot, firm strokes. He had incredible hands—long, slim and skilled—and the warmth of his touch through the filter of my silk stocking was more than a little disconcerting.
“I take it he was younger then?”
“By quite a few years. The family’s hold on the throne had never been completely secure, and we had been trained from childhood to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Horatiu retrieved my emergency funds, some clothes and a horse, and hid me until nightfall. I was getting ready to go when he rode up, insisting on coming with me as far as the border. I tried to dissuade him, but he was as hardheaded as ever. And fortunately so. I wouldn’t have made it alone, not in those first few months. Even with his help, there were some very close calls.”
I caught his hand, needing to break contact in order to think. “Is there anything you’d do differently?”
Mircea let his hand lie still in mine, although the other kept hold of my leg, those long fingers curled around my ankle. “At the time, I believed that I was doing the only thing I could. I was leaving until they stopped searching for me, until I grew strong enough to defend myself and the political winds changed once again. But I departed too quickly, with too much left undone. Some of my mistakes I rectified later, but others…could not be redeemed.”
That might have been true, but it wasn’t what I needed to hear. “If you were going to give the old you some advice, what would it be?”
Mircea was silent for a long moment. “That when you become something more, you must often give up something to claim it.”