Death's Mistress

It wasn’t hard. Along with the spattered trail, there was a wide swath of slightly cleaner floor, near one wall, with some odd marks around it. They didn’t look like they’d been left by shoes or boots, more like something had been dragged through the grime. Something that might have been struggling, because some of those markings looked a lot like handprints.

And then there was the blood. I could have probably followed it without the flashlight, the smell was so strong. Stronger than it should have been, for such a thin trail.

I knelt and ran a finger through the century’s worth of muck on the floor, bringing a small sample to my nose. And flinched away, an electric charge shooting up my spine. Vampire blood. From an old one, based on the feel. It was rich and dark, closer to black than red, with a strange, almost velvety texture. Very old, I decided, looking up.

The thought made me hesitate. I didn’t think of myself as particularly cowardly, and for once I had plenty of weapons and no compunction at all about using them. But a wounded master could drain me of the blood he desperately needed to heal before I even got close enough to spot him. And no weapon would help me then.

But he had to know I was here; this close, he could smell every breath, hear every heartbeat. And he wasn’t feeding yet. He was, however, cursing a lot more. But not in English. I listened, frowning, as I inched forward, and figured out what language he was corrupting about the same time I rounded a bend and saw him.

He was slouched on the filthy floor, inching along on his elbows, his back legs dragging through the grime. His once-white tunic was drenched in blood, much of it still wet. The dampness had picked up the furred gray cover of dust that had collected near the walls, like foam on the sea, as he dragged himself forward. The result was so startlingly like an enormous dust bu

“Anthony?”

The esteemed consul of the powerful European Senate looked back over his grubby shoulder. And an expression of profound relief chased away the almost panic on his features. “Oh, thank the gods!”

I blinked. That wasn’t the reception I usually received from vampires, much less master ones. I moved forward, and he grasped my hand, already babbling before I could so much as get a word out.

“We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get out of here now.”

“It’s okay,” I told him, trying to struggle out of a grip that was about to crush my fingers. “The roof held. I don’t think we’re in danger of a—”

“Oh, we’re in danger, all right.” He gave an almost giggle that had me doing a double take. Consuls did not giggle. I hadn’t even thought they knew how.

“From what?” I asked cautiously. “Geminus is dead.”

“Geminus.” He hissed the name through his teeth. “I’d like to kill him for getting me into this.”

“Didn’t you?” There weren’t a lot of people who could have sent a first-level master reeling into that arena, but I was looking at one of them. It seemed like Louis-Cesare might have been right, after all.

But Anthony merely shot me an exasperated glance. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Then what did?”

His eyes darted here and there, the whites showing all the way around the iris. I wasn’t sure if that was due to nervousness, or because of the way the skin seemed to have pulled back from his bones a little. Old Anthony wasn’t looking too good.

“It was that thing,” he whispered.

“What thing?” I asked, as he tried to struggle to his feet. He failed.

“The thing that killed him! It’s still down here, and it’s going to get us, too. Oh, yes, and don’t think you’ll be spared.” He wagged a finger at me. “You’re half vampire, aren’t you?”

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, or if he even did; he looked a little crazed. But at the moment, I was less concerned over some possibly mythical monster than over why he couldn’t stand. It takes a lot to put a master vamp on his ass, and Anthony was clearly hurting.

“What happened to you?” I asked, drawing back the folds of the toga he still had half draped around himself. And sucked in a breath.

I knew where the blood came from, I thought dizzily. Anthony didn’t have one stake in him, or even one dozen. His body was riddled by them, like a human porcupine. They didn’t look like regulation stakes, now that I focused past the gore that covered them. More like shards of some kind of boards. But they’d done the trick. Some of the longer ones had passed completely through his body and were tenting the back of his toga.

And one had nailed him straight through the heart.

“Why haven’t you pulled these out?” I asked, bewildered and a little sickened.

“Don’t touch them!” he said savagely. “It was bad enough putting them in the first time!”

It took me a second, but I got it. Or I thought I did. “You stabbed yourself?”

“I had no choice. The stake through my heart is coated in wax. I had to drain myself so my body temperature would lower. Otherwise, I’d have melted the damn thing already.”

“And vamp bodies don’t bleed much from a single wound, so…”

“I had to keep on stabbing myself! If I hadn’t been left near some old wooden crates, I’d be dead now.”

“You bought yourself time for your neck to heal,” I said, impressed in spite of myself. I’d killed a lot of vamps, and never once had any of them thought of that. Of course, most of them were pretty much paralyzed with a stake through the heart. I wondered how much power Anthony had to have to still be somewhat mobile in spite of the stake and the massive blood loss.

And then I wondered what would happen if he didn’t make it. Geminus had almost brought down the roof, and Anthony was at least as old and a good deal more powerful. “We need to get out of here,” I said, trying to get him up.

“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” he asked, with vicious sarcasm.

Considering the circumstances, I decided to let that go and concentrated on where to grab him. There wasn’t a lot of free space left, but I finally managed to get an arm around his waist. A heave got him to his somewhat shaky legs. It would have been nice to have been able to lean him against a wall, but that would only have done more damage. And it didn’t look like he could take much more.

“Do you know these tu

“Don’t you?”

“Why would I have asked if I did?” I demanded, trying not to snap. Anthony weighed a ton, and he was bearing almost none of his own weight. “I’ve never been down here before.”

“You live here. Don’t you ever go exploring?”

“Underground? No.”

“Underground is where all the interesting things happen.”

“Underground is where the monsters live.” Anthony’s surprisingly high-pitched laughter echoed off the walls. “You aren’t kidding, sister.”

Anthony, I decided, might have lost a little too much blood. He was getting punchy. “Come on,” I told him, heading back for the main hall. Bad as it was, it beat wandering around lost for hours.

I’d started to get up a head of steam when Anthony suddenly jerked to a stop and stumbled over to the nearest wall. He clutched it, muttering another rude phrase in Latin. Mine’s not too good, but I think it had something to do with someone’s grandmother and a one-legged donkey.

“Are you all right?” I asked, feeling a little stupid even as I said it. Because obviously not. But his health didn’t seem to be uppermost in Anthony’s mind.

“It’s back!” he hissed, staring around fearfully.

“What’s back?”

“That thing! Gods! I thought it had left!”

I stared at him, wondering how I was supposed to get a seriously wounded consul out of this underground maze when the man was clearly not in his right mind. And then I heard it, too: a distant, far- off echo, just a sigh on the air. “Anthoneee.”