Embrace the Night

"Doesn't matter? He could kill you!" Laying a spell on a master vamp without his permission was considered so stupid that there wasn't even a law against it. There didn't need to be—most who tried it didn't survive long enough for a trial.

"You don't understand. The geis—"

"What about it?"

Pritkin looked like he'd swallowed a handful of nails. "Can't you feel it? The spell didn't work. The geis is still there!"

Chapter 29

"That's impossible! You said—"

"I said your theory seemed plausible if the spell had not morphed into something new. Obviously it has. In the hundred years since you placed it on the vampire, it has had more than enough time to grow, to change, to become a new spell. As a result, the counterspell won't work. Because the spell it was designed to offset no longer exists!"

"You're telling me we went through all that for nothing? That we'll just die anyway?"

"Not for nothing. In the process, we discovered—" He glanced at Mircea and hesitated. "Much of interest."

And, yeah, that might be true, but knowing what was really behind the war wouldn't do me much good if I wasn't alive to fight it. "That doesn't help!"

"I told you all along that I doubted the counterspell would work," he informed me, in the tone that made me want to hit him even more than usual.

I was about to return a scathing reply, when I suddenly remembered. He had said that, but he'd said something else, too. Something that I'd forgotten because I'd been so fixated on the Codex. There was another way to break the geis, one that Mircea had woven into the spell himself.

My heart sped up as I ran the idea over in my head. All three components of the geis were here now: me and both Mirceas. The counterspell didn't work, but that was because the original spell had changed form, not because my theory had been wrong. But Pritkin had said that the fail-safe was part of the geis and that it would morph along with it. So the fail-safe should still work.

"There might be an alternative," I said slowly.

"What alternative?" Pritkin asked, his eyes narrowing.

I looked at Mircea. "Do you remember, when you had the original spell cast, you had the mage put an escape clause in place?"

"A fail-safe, yes. I was advised to do so by everyone with whom I spoke. It is a common precaution, as the duthracht geis is famous for—" Mircea stopped, understanding flooding his eyes, followed immediately by a stubborn glint. "Dulceata? — " he began warningly.

"It didn't work with Tomas," I said, speaking quickly before he made up his mind, "because he was a substitute, but for only one of you. And just like with the counterspell, the fail-safe will only work if there's two of you, uh, participating."

"Cassie—"

"You must be out of your mind!" Pritkin broke in. "If it doesn't succeed, you could end up tied to him forever!"

"That won't happen."

"You don't know that! There is no telling what might occur with a spell left to its own devices for that long!" Mircea hadn't spoken, hadn't moved. But suddenly the security detail was back. "I suppose it only requires the right master for you to knuckle under—is that it?" Pritkin sneered as they started manhandling him from the room. "You were brought up as a vampire's little lapdog—I should have thought you'd prefer not to die one as well!"

The door slammed shut, although I could still hear him ranting as they towed him down the hall. "You can't hurt him. He has to go back with me."

"Their orders are merely to detain him," Mircea said, looking at me narrowly. "I thought you would prefer to discuss this in private."

"Yes. Well." I stopped and mentally pushed Pritkin's accusations away. I had to concentrate if I was going to get this right. If I was going to make Mircea understand. "If I've figured this right, and I'm pretty sure I have because we've tried everything else, then…it has to be all of us. The fail-safe was never an independent entity but was tied to the geis itself. So when the geis changed, the fail-safe changed right along with it. That's why built-in safety measures are used with the duthracht. Because even if it does go haywire, they will still counter it."

"What has to be all of us?"

I narrowed my eyes. Mircea knew more about magic than I did, so he'd followed me perfectly well. He just wanted to make me spell it out.

I paused, sure for a moment that I couldn't get the words out, that they wouldn't fit past my throat. "The sex thing," I finally blurted. "It needs to be all of us." Which was absolutely the most shocking thing anybody had ever said for the long moment before Mircea smiled.

"You know, dulceata? when I told you that I enjoy a wide range of experiences, I did not expect you to take me quite so literally." He started buttoning up the shirt. I assumed by the fact that he was getting dressed that I must not have been as clear as I'd thought.

"What are you doing?" I demanded. "I told you, we have to have sex now!"

"No, I believe the term you used for a threesome was ‘the thing. " Mircea slipped on his suit coat. "I admit to having few reservations about personal relations, but one rule I do try to maintain." He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. "If the lady ca

I pushed him back and glared at him, hands on hips, immediately pissed. "No one made you put the geis on me," I told him, pushing a finger into that completely clothed chest. The soft, luxurious weave of Chinese silk met my hand, something that didn't make me any happier. "No one told you to make sex the condition to break it! I've been through hell to figure a way out of this and now that I have, you're playing hard to get?!"

His amusement, if anything, seemed to ratchet up a notch. I guess Sal was right; I didn't do tough well. "You have to admit, dulceata? that your story does seem somewhat—"

"Strip," I ordered.

Mircea stood there by the bedpost, giving me a disbelieving lift of an eyebrow, and a look that clearly said, You did not just order me to take off my clothes. Except that I had, and I gave him a stubborn chin raise in response. Very slowly, he pulled off the suit coat and dropped it onto the bed. His look challenged me to take something off as well.

I tossed my head at him. Fine. After the week I'd had, that didn't seem like much of a challenge at all. I reached back and unhooked the catch at the top of my dress. Sal had refused to let me visit "the master" in my old sweats, and had cobbled together an outfit for me. One tug had the zipper down on the dress and the satin material sliding over my curves until it was no more than an icy blue puddle around my feet. I still wore a strapless satin bra and panties set, purchased to match the dress, and a corset in white.

The corset was a slightly jarring note, but I hadn't had a choice. Whoever they'd had patch me up had done a good job, and a glamour had covered most of the assorted cuts, bruises and claw marks. But the fact remained that I don't heal like a vamp. Underneath the white lace and ribbons was an ugly two-inch-long scar that we'd been afraid would bleed through onto my pretty new dress.

"You are serious." Mircea was frowning.

I spread my hands. "Yes! Yes, I'm serious! What is the problem?"

He looked torn between exasperation and disbelief. "You know the problem! You explained it to me. And I do not intend to spend the rest of my life bound to the wishes of a—" He cut off abruptly.

"Of a what?" I could feel my temper rising.

He recovered quickly. "Of a young lady who, however charming, knows so little about our world."

"I'm learning fast," I said, "and don't patronize me." I was pretty sure the word he'd almost uttered had been "child." And whatever else was true of me, that wasn't. Not since the age of fourteen, when I'd run away and learned exactly the kind of world I lived in.