Midnight's Daughter

Page 18

“I’m not . . . I don’t . . .”
“Save it. Just tell me what’s going on.” I flopped onto a forties-era leather chair. It looked like something Bogie would have liked and was decadently comfortable.
“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Radu protested, glancing around like he hoped for rescue. Not likely. I hadn’t seen any servants besides Geoffrey, and he wasn’t the hero type. He’d tried to knife me in the back when we first met, supposedly before he knew who I was, but the most he ever did to my face was sneer.
“Try.”
“It . . . they . . . were an experiment. Or part of one.”
“I didn’t know you went in for that kind of thing.” It wasn’t the first time I’d seen attempted manipulation of species. Demons, for one, were always trying to improve their bloodlines any way they could, to win out over rival clans in the constant infighting, and the Fey had been doing selective breeding for centuries. But those were attempts to improve things, however odd they might seem to outsiders, and nothing I’d seen in the lab looked like an upgrade to me. Not to mention that I’d always thought that Radu, the Senate’s resident mad scientist, had an ethical code of sorts.
“I didn’t! I wouldn’t!” Radu stopped wadding Mircea’s nice bedspread into a ball and stared at me in what looked like genuine consternation. “We captured them in a raid on one of the Black Circle’s haunts. I was asked to discover the reason they were created.”
I was inclined to believe him, mainly because I couldn’t even start to guess why the Senate would waste valuable resources, especially during a war, on splicing genes. “You didn’t guard them very well if they’re some big secret.”
“They are guarded quite well!” Radu said, offended. “You were able to pass through the screens only because they are keyed to me—or, more specifically, to anyone with my blood. Since the only other persons who fit that description are trusted family members, it seemed foolproof.” He looked grumpy. “We forgot about you.”
“You always do. So what did you find?” His expression slipped from righteous indignation into sneaky eva-siveness in a flash. I mentally shook my head. “Let me guess. That’s the part you’re not supposed to talk about.”
“I’m not supposed to talk about any of this! And you had better not, either, Dory. The Senate won’t like your knowing.”
I shrugged. “They basically don’t like my breathing, so what else is new?”
Radu crossed the room so fast I almost didn’t see him. A second later I was dangling a couple feet off the ground, while those delicate-looking hands shook me like a dog. Just when you forget they’re vampires . . .
“Promise me! You can’t say anything! The Senate is deadly serious about this. If they even suspected that you knew—”
“What? They’d kill me? And that would be different from the current situation how?” I wrestled out of Radu’s grip and straightened the creases his fists had made in my new jacket. “Speaking of which, we need to talk.” I pushed him into the chair I’d vacated, and leaned over as menacingly as I could manage with a straight face. “How about you and I discuss our mutual problem?”
“Wh-what problem?”
“Don’t play dumb. I’m sure Mircea mentioned it, maybe in passing? Drac’s loose.” Radu nodded, gulping. He looked vaguely ill, and I took that for an encouraging sign. It showed he had a brain, and that he knew his brother. “What are you planning to do about it?”
“I’ve already done it,” he told me, gesturing around. “Why do you think I’m here? I don’t like this place. Nothing is ever left where I put it, and one Senate member or another is always prowling about, asking for progress reports. I could work much more efficiently at home. But Mircea said Vlad wouldn’t try for me here.”
“No, I suppose not.” Considering that he’d have to wade through the Senate and their retainers, the Silver Circle and its bevy of psychotic war mages and who knew how many weres, Fey and whatever else was hanging around at the moment, it seemed a safe bet. “So the plan is what? To stay trapped here forever? Doesn’t sound like fun, ’Du.”
“You know I hate that absurd diminutive,” he told me irritably. “Why can’t you leave people’s names alone? Does it physically pain you to utter an extra syllable?”
I grinned. “Looks like I struck a nerve.”
“Nonsense!” Radu sat up a little straighter and pushed me a foot or so back. Talk of his predicament seemed to have evaporated my scare potential—there aren’t many things that look frightening next to Drac. “Mircea said you’d take care of him shortly, and then I can go home.” He looked testy. “Why aren’t you on the hunt, instead of snooping about here? I thought you liked killing things.”
“Aha!” I clapped him on the back. “I knew I wasn’t the only smart one in the family. You want him dead, too!” I went to pour the guy a drink. He’d earned it.
“Of course I do!” Radu snapped impatiently. “Do you have any idea what he’d like to do to me? He’s always despised me.”
“So we’re in the same boat.” He took the glass of whiskey I handed him while I settled onto the hassock at his feet—or tried to before finding myself dumped unceremoniously on my butt. I got up and tried again, only to have the same thing happen. This time, I looked closer at the footstool, a fat paisley-covered pouf with thick tassels at each corner, and noticed something fairly weird, even by my definition of the term. It was hovering a few inches off the ground, its little bun feet not quite touching the rug.
“It was upholstered from an old flying carpet,” Radu explained, seeing the direction of my stare, “and tends to be temperamental. I wouldn’t—” I grabbed the thing, only to find it suddenly wriggling like an overly energetic puppy. It spurted out of my hands, but I jumped on top and held on. “It doesn’t like anyone using it but Mircea,” Radu said. “I think there’s another chair in—”
“I like this one,” I told him, as the bucking-bronco ride I was being treated to careened me into the bedpost, smashing my thigh against the hard wood.
“It doesn’t like me, either,” Radu said as I grabbed one of the tiebacks from the bedpost. The plan was to strap it down, but somehow it seemed to know that, and went skittering off in the other direction, jouncing me as savagely as it could manage in the process. “Anyway, I don’t think Vlad hates you, Dory,” Radu sighed. “Or if he does, it’s merely for an accident of birth.”
“And the little thing of helping to trap him for a century or so.”
“Well, yes, there’s that.” Radu drained his glass while I struggled to get the tieback looped around one of the hassock’s squat feet. I finally managed it, but then I had to figure out where to attach the other end that had a chance of holding it. “But he hates me far more. Mircea and I are full brothers, but he and Vlad were always the soul mates. Two warriors and a bookish runt—it was laughable,” he said bitterly. “I tried to keep up with them, at least at first. But I was no good at any of it. Even with the best instruction in the country, my swordsmanship was never better than average and I was hopeless on a horse. Still am, really.”
“Uh-huh. Life’s a bitch,” I commiserated not at all. The hassock rode us by the bookshelf and I got an idea. I snagged several heavy volumes, and sure enough, its antics slowed down perceptibly. I shoved them underneath me and quickly grabbed two more. The hassock slowly started to settle toward the floor and I thought I had it, but then it gave a huge heave and threw both the books and me off. It flounced away, tassels swinging smugly.
“You can have this chair, Dory,” Radu offered, starting to rise, but I waved him off.
“No, really. I’m fine.” I started stalking the hassock, dismemberment in mind. “You were saying?”
“Yes, well, things deteriorated after Father agreed to our being hostages, of course. Indeed, they became immeasurably worse. I got out of much of the torture after Father broke his treaty with the Turks and they threw us in the dungeons. I should have been stronger, should have defied them the way Vlad did, but you don’t know what it was like.” He licked his lips and set the glass aside with a slightly shaking hand. “I saw what some of the older prisoners looked like, those that had been in there for a while. Noses and lips missing, teeth knocked out, limbs torn off, burns everywhere—”
“Yeah, bad stuff.” I’d seen things that made the Turks look like children at play, but then, so had Radu. The difference was that he’d been pretty damn young, barely a teenager if I remembered right, to be dealing with that house of horrors. Since he was handling the Senate’s menagerie now, something that would have given me nightmares, he must be made of sterner stuff than he looked.
The hassock suddenly reversed course and swept through my legs, knocking me to the floor again. I shot it a dirty glance; even the furniture around here hated me. Then I made an abrupt leap and threw myself on top of it. Turning the wicked thing upside down, I lashed it to the bedpost before it had a chance to try any more tricks. By the time I was finished, it was trussed up in all four tiebacks, the sheet and several items from Mircea’s wardrobe.
“There!” I grinned at it triumphantly. “Now try to move, damn you.”
Radu sighed and stood up to get a refill. “That’s all very well, Dory, but how are you going to sit on it now?”
One of the tassels waved about, giving the distinct impression that it was flipping me off. Fine. It could stay like that until it rotted. I dropped into Radu’s abandoned chair and glowered at it. “Were you trying to make a point, Uncle?”
He propped himself against the bar and regarded me somberly. “Only that I was weak. I was offered a way out, and I took it. Vlad never forgave me for that, for sleeping with the enemy, as they say these days. And then, of course, he thinks I betrayed him and stole his throne—”