Masks

Chapter Forty-Two

The ground level of the house appeared largely deserted, with wide, deep hallways devoid of guests, guards or anyone except for a few servants darting here and there with trays. None of whom seemed be paying any attention to Mircea. And that was despite the fact that he was lurking in the stairwell and holding a naked sword.

Vampires, he thought, and paused a moment to admire his new acquisition.

It was a beautiful weapon, gold chased and fine edged, the kind of sword he’d once owned, until he’d been forced to sell it once his money ran out. It had hurt his heart, but what did a vampire need with a sword? That was probably still true, but its weight nonetheless felt good in his palm.

Of course, it would feel a lot better if the officer came along to wield it.

Not that Mircea wasn’t competent with a sword. But as the servants were currently demonstrating, there was a different standard in place now. He could probably run at one of them, brandishing the weapon and screaming, and merely get a strange look.

Until he got close enough to be wadded into a ball.

In his old world, Mircea was a trained warrior and a fearsome threat. In his new one . . . well, he wasn’t even sure he counted as a nuisance. That was normally a problem, but now it was an absolute menace, since he didn’t know exactly what he was dealing with.

Who, yes. How, possibly. But the what was bothering him as he started down the long hallway.

Was he facing a trained assassin? Someone hired to give the consul an added edge? Hassani led a group of such people, and he might well have decided to have someone in place to hedge his bets.

At the very least, he might want to make sure that he wouldn’t have to deal with his longtime rival as the new senate leader. And at best . . . perhaps he meant to make a bid for the power himself, in the confusion. Mircea didn’t know.

But if he was facing a trained assassin, this was about to be a big waste of time.

Of course, he was hardly likely to fare better against a run of the mill vampire-with-a-vendetta. When a delicate courtesan could best him in a fight, the world really had turned upside down. But he was pragmatic enough to accept it, and to come up with a workaround.

At least, he was if his solution didn’t kill him first.

He hazarded a glance over his shoulder, but the officer was nowhere in sight.

Mircea frowned. If it was him, he’d damned well want his sword back. He just hoped the officer felt the same. And that, if he did show up, he could somehow convince him to—

A servant dropped a tray, in a clatter of metal and a tinkle of glass. It made Mircea jump. And then jump again when two others did the same, at almost the same moment. And then they added to the confusion by shrieking and bolting for cover.

Mircea looked around, sword raised, trying to locate the threat. But there was nothing. Just echoing, empty tiled floors, a long corridor with windows fronting the garden, and the usual scattered tables, tapestries, and knick knacks.

Some of the latter of which had started to chime.

Mircea watched a couple of figurines, a man and a woman dressed in festival finery, jitter down the length of a dark wood table. They almost looked as if they were dancing. Until they fell off the end, shattering on the hard glazed tiles in a puff of plaster.

No one had touched them.

But then, no one was touching the rest of the corridor, either. Yet it had also started to shake noticeably. Little siftings of plaster had begun falling from the ceiling. A brass platter on shelf followed the dancers, hitting the floor with a metallic clang, clang, clang that was swallowed up by a roar that came out of nowhere, louder than the screams of the crowd, louder than anything Mircea had heard outside the battlefield. And which seemed to be coming from all directions at once.

And then the multipaned windows whited out.

Mircea stared at it, seriously confused, because it looked like a winter storm had blown up in an instant. A violent one. The metal latch started jittering against the small glass panes, the window itself began knocking back and forth against its frame, and then a single, diamond-shaped pane suddenly popped out, and went skittering over the floor.

That was not so strange; perhaps it had been loose. But something had started blowing through the opening, something that didn’t look like snow. Something that scattered across the floor, pale against the dark tile and the darker tops of Mircea’s shoes.

He knelt down, feeling something hard and gritty under his fingertips for an instant. Before he jerked his hand back, startled and confused. Because the tiny grains were also burning hot, like desert sand that had baked all day under a merciless sun.

But this was nighttime. And Italy. And it had just been raining fit to float Noah’s—

The lights went out.

Mircea’s head jerked up to see that all the windows were now black, the light from above having been blotted out by the growing storm. It left the corridor lit only by flickering torchlight and ominous, leaping shadows. And a vampire who suddenly decided that he could live with a bit of mystery.

He got back to his feet and started to run—

And then hit the floor again when the window abruptly blew out.

Glass panes went flying, glittering diamond bright in the torchlight, and a flood of something shot through the opening with the force of cannon shot.

It was sand, he realized, as a river of the stuff blasted over his head, overthrew the table, and exploded against the wall. And sent a burning, stinging rain spewing everywhere, including down onto the floor. Where Mircea lay in horrified disbelief for an instant, before starting to crawl—fast.

Until he was suddenly jerked backward.

“I’ll have that back, if you don’t mind,” someone told him.

Mircea looked around wildly and saw a hand on his ankle. A sapphire plume. A golden helmet running with reflected fire—

A fist in his face.

He felt his cheekbone shatter, and his lip split. Making him lisp slightly when he snarled, “You’re early.”

And then he flipped and kicked out—and smashed his foot into the officer’s face, hard enough to break that patrician nose.

Trust him to show up in the middle of a desert sandstorm, or whatever the hell the combatants in the garden thought they were doing. Mircea preferred to deal with one crisis at a time, but the man seemed to have a different idea. Although he didn’t appear to have expected the servile creature he’d met above to put up much of a fight.

Because the maneuver had worked.

The guard let go, cursing, blood spurting from the wound, and Mircea scrambled away.

Straight into a mass of overheated sand.

It had piled up in the short time the struggle had taken, already coating the ground an inch thick. He felt his hands start to burn, along with the knees of his hosen, and the panic of a vampire confronted with excessive heat start to rise. He ruthlessly suppressed it. And scurried ahead, half blind and deaf from the howling winds, flesh burning, hands searching. And finding—

Not a way out, but something almost as good.

His palm encountered wood, a good three inches thick, still cool and solid despite the conditions. The tabletop, he realized, old and black and carved—and ruined, when he ruthlessly snapped off the heavy legs. He left the crossed supports under the bottom for a grip, not knowing if they’d be needed, since the slab was almost as long as him and built of Spanish hardwood. It would have taken at least four men to lift it.

Or one desperate vampire, he thought, getting back to his feet and staggering a bit under the weight.

But it was still a blessed relief, cutting off much of the stinging sand and allowing him to see a way forward. Or it would have, if the torches hadn’t guttered in the wind. But he found his way by the direction the sand was blowing, and finally lurched into one of the relatively quiet areas between the windows.

Only to find the same thing happening everywhere.

Plaster was pouring down now, from a fissure that had opened in the ceiling. The whole corridor was shaking. And rivers of sand were spewing in from half a dozen windows.

Dim moonlight spilled across the scene from a distant window to the outside, lending the rivers a silvery quality, like water flooding through the portholes of a sinking ship. Only this ship would have already sunk by now. Even the walls between the windows were riddled with sharp-edged debris, their jagged ends glinting palely in the low light.

Mircea stared at them, wondering at the force it took to stab a piece of tile through a solid wall. Probably about the same as it would take to do it to a tabletop. And while most of the shards were stone or tile, some of them were wood.

The remains of the garden’s few trees, he supposed.

But he was going to have to risk it, nonetheless.

For more than one reason, he thought, as an old battlefield instinct kicked in. And alerted him a bare instant before a fist crashed into the shield he swung around. And then through it, to punch the air in front of Mircea’s wide eyes.

The fist became hung up there, as the table held and the jagged shards around the officer’s arm bit into his flesh when he tried to pull it out.

He wrenched Mircea’s makeshift shield around, staring at him over the slanted top. Then grabbed for his throat, before Mircea jerked back, swinging them around again. They suddenly reminded him of the dancing figurines; he only hoped this wasn’t going to end the same way.

But it was beginning to look like it, he thought, as he was suddenly jerked far too close to a bloody face and a fanged-filled mouth.

But despite everything, Mircea decided this was the best chance he was likely to get.

“I’m here to help the senator—” he began, right before the maniac jerked on his shirt again, slamming their heads together with a crack.

“That’s interesting,” the man said, looking with satisfaction at Mircea’s bloody face. “I foolishly thought you were here to steal my sword.”

“That was—I need it—”

“What a coincidence. So do I.” The man twisted them around and started pushing.

“No, you don’t understand. Someone is trying to—gaaah!” Mircea’s breath went out with a whoosh, when the man shoved him heavily into the wall.

And then backed up and did it again.

Mircea snarled and stabbed out with the sword he still held before the bastard could try for number three.

He had a limited range of movement thanks to the table, and he couldn’t see what he was doing. But he could feel it when the blade sank through the thick leather of the man’s boots, into the vulnerable flesh below. And hear it when he cursed and fell back—too far.

And since he didn’t let go, Mircea and the tabletop went with him.

That gave Mircea a captive audience, for the moment, and he used it.

“Someone is trying to interfere with the contest!” Mircea said quickly, as the man thrashed and bucked and growled beneath him. “I’m not sure of the plan, but I think the idea is to—”

The trapped fist closed around Mircea’s throat.

“To attack her . . . when she’s vulnerable . . . after—urk.”

He found himself once again jerked close to narrowed blue eyes. “And a little sneak thief like you is going to stop them.”

“I’m not a thief!” They both looked at the sword he still held. “Usually.”

“You’re not going to be anything in a moment, boy.”

“No, listen to me—”

But the officer didn’t appear to be in a listening mood. Perhaps he should have tried diplomacy before breaking his nose, Mircea thought wildly, as the man gave a roar, and flipped them over, table and all. He then jumped back to his feet, in a display of strength that would have been impressive if he hadn’t followed it up by jerking his bloody arm out of the wood. And then used it to land a blow on Mircea’s jawline hard enough to send him staggering.

Mircea stumbled back, directly into the path of one of the last intact windows.

Right before it blew out.

He was blown off his feet and sent hurtling backward, smashing hard into the opposite wall. Where he stayed, pinned by the force of a raging torrent of stinging sand. He was trapped between the wall and his makeshift shield, which appeared to be trying to crush him to death.

But as it was also keeping him from burning up on the spot, he didn’t like to complain.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to do the same for everything else. As demonstrated by the tapestry hanging on the wall behind him. Which promptly burst into flames around the protective barrier of the door, surrounding him in a choking ring of fire.

And then he was grabbed by an even more irresistible force and sent hurtling down the hallway.

Mircea hit the ground hard, panting in pain, watching the officer casually walk through the burning stream toward him. No shield, no concern for the blast of heated sand, nor even for the knife-like shards of flooring, rubble ,and garden tiles that lay hidden in the mix.

Without a shield, Mircea would have been scoured to the bone in seconds.

The officer didn’t even look like he noticed.

Mircea swallowed. Good. Great. That’s . . . what he’d wanted.

Now all he had to do was stay alive long enough to lead his champion to his target.

He spat out a mouthful of sand, grabbed the burned and pitted top of his shield, and ran.

The windows and wall areas were almost equally spaced, giving him brief respites in between the hell.

They didn’t come often enough.

Blood spurted across his vision as something cut his forehead, sand scoured more skin off his ankles and legs, and then a shard of something ricocheted off a wall and tore through the muscle on his left knee, cutting it almost to the bone.

Mircea staggered into the wall, hamstrung. But he started forward again anyway, hobbling as fast as he could—until he saw what lay just ahead. Something, which he vaguely recognized as the remains of the fountain, had been thrown through the side of the house,leaving a massive hole through which a shrieking, slashing, deadly storm was scouring the opposite wall.

For a moment, Mircea just stared at it, watching as the remaining plaster was flayed off, leaving bare studs behind. Which were quickly being worn away themselves. The only reason the whole thing hadn’t collapsed yet was that the outer walls were solid stone.

But Mircea wasn’t.

And shield or no, there was no way he would survive that.

And then bad matters became infinitely worse when a massive black tail appeared out of the blowing sand, and destroyed the remainder of the wall. The blow sent columns from the loggia, glass from the windows, and sharp-edged bricks tumbling like pins in a giant bowling game—and straight at Mircea. Who hit the ground, huddled under his makeshift shield, and waited for the end.

Only to have the ceiling fall on top of him.

That should have pretty much been that. But a few moments later, when a much flatter Mircea peered out from under his tabletop, he didn’t see an open space filled with howling winds and biting sand. Instead, he found himself looking at a quiet, dark tunnel formed from heavy oak beams, and fronted by the equally solid wood flooring of the corridor above. The ceiling had only half collapsed, which had actually been a good thing, since it cut him off from the terror on the other side.

At least, it did for the moment.

Mircea pulled himself out from under a mass of debris, choking and bleeding. And then hurried down the new tunnel, limping and then crawling past furniture, fallen columns, and destroyed statuary. Before stumbling out the other side—

Into blessed quiet.