“Be careful, Gregor.”
Mircea glanced at the dais, where the senator was chatting casually with the woman on her right. Her body was relaxed, her face unconcerned. It was impossible to tell that she’d been listening to the same conversation he had.
But that voice was unmistakable, as was the authority in it.
But apparently, Gregor didn’t agree.
“We’ve been careful! We’ve been careful for centuries! We scraped and crawled and kissed his shriveled ass—”
“Gregor.”
“No! No, I will have my say! I have kept quiet too long. He took my people, my children—” The voice broke.
“You are in mourning, old friend. This is not the time to act.”
“According to you, it is never time!” Gregor said, as a gray haired man in German dress stood up so quickly, he knocked over his heavy chair. He’d also spoken aloud, something Mircea only realized because the whole room suddenly went deathly silent.
Mircea glanced around to see Jerome blinking, his lady friend looking faint and Paulo frozen with a speared sardine quivering in front of his lips. They looked shocked by the outburst, but also bewildered. As if this had come out of nowhere.
As if they hadn’t been somehow overhearing what was supposed to be a private conversation within the senator’s family.
Mircea didn’t know how he was, either, but it didn’t matter now.
Because if it had been private, it was no longer.
“Sit down, Gregor.” The senator’s voice was soft, but it carried. And while Mircea might not know much about vampire etiquette, he knew a direct order from a superior to a subject when he heard it.
So did Gregor, but he didn’t stop, although tears were running down his face, and into his beard. “I have waited,” he said, his voice trembling. “We have all waited, to see what you would do. But it has been five days! And our people remain unavenged!”
“And what would you have me do?” she demanded. “I have remonstrated—”
“Remonstrated! When has that ever done any good?”
“And you think this will?” She didn’t so much as glance at Hassani, but she didn’t have to. Mircea imagined the entire conversation would be relayed to the consul by his friend later that night, assuming he wasn’t hearing it already.
“No.” Gregor was shaking his head wildly. “The time for talk is over. It ended when he butchered some of the best of us in cold blood. If we are to be rid of him, rid of this plague, this demon—”
“Don’t be a fool, Gregor!” That was Antony’s voice, raised in a final, silent plea.
But too late.
“—then we must act, and act now!”
The senator slowly stood up, her face as still as a carved statue. “Gregor. What have you done?”
“What you wouldn’t,” he cried, and the room fell away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The dining hall was abruptly replaced by another scene, one equally as familiar. The graceful lines of the consul’s mansion rose up in front of Mircea’s mental vision, framed by poplars and silhouetted against a star flung sky. It looked peaceful, but not static, jittering a little around the edges, like a painting someone had decided to shake.
Or like the field of vision of someone who was quivering, although whether from excitement or fear, Mircea didn’t know.
He realized that he was seeing through someone else’s eyes, as he had that night in Marte’s room. And like that night, he didn’t feel the watcher’s emotions. But in all other ways, it was far more real than that other experience—almost like being there.
He could see the man’s breath ghosting on the cold night air, feel the wind against his face as he darted across an open field, smell the night-flowering vine on a trellis on the side of the house as he started climbing, heading for the roof.
There were others with him, too. Mircea could see them, vaguely, out of the corners of his eyes, dark shapes in form-fitting attire, dim against the night and quiet as shadows. They were climbing with him. He could feel the trellis shake beneath him, and see others going up by fitting their fingers and toes into the shallow cracks between the stone blocks of the wall, agile as monkeys.
And far more deadly.
A sentinel or soldier on top of the flat roof peered over, alerted by some small noise, and a moment later came falling past, almost knocking Mircea off his makeshift ladder. The man hit the grass far below, almost silently and unmoving. And then Mircea was over the edge of the roof and running for the opposite side.
Like many in Venice, the palazzo was built around a large, central courtyard filled with fruit trees and flowering bushes. A central fountain caught the moonlight in silver flashes, the only light to be seen other than for a few dim candle flickers behind half closed shutters. But it was enough.
Their prey was seated at the edge of the water, as if enjoying the change from the arid desert heat. Having just seen the auras put off by the senator’s dinner guests, Mircea was surprised to find no similar glow surrounding the small figure. He was dark as a human, just a vague, star-limned shape, like the diamond-studded nets ladies sometimes wore over their hair.
But there was enough light for Mircea to see the man’s chin rise, and his neck turn slightly in their direction.
For a long moment, there was no other movement. The master vampires ringing the roof, several men deep, the small creature in the garden, the occupants of the house—were all so still that a late working bird fluttered back to its nest in between them, unconcerned. And then the consul slowly rose to his feet.
“Welcome,” he told them, in strangely accented Venetian. “I have been waiting for you.”
“Mircea, Mircea!” Jerome’s voice came to him, as if from far away. “We have to get out of here!”
“Good luck with that!” Paulo snarled, and lashed out at someone.
Mircea could see him, vaguely. He fought off the images of that starlit garden and tried to focus. But it didn’t help much.
A moment later, he realized why when the heavy Turkish carpet that had been cushioning the tabletop was pulled up. And a panicked-looking servant tried to crawl underneath, where Mircea was half-sitting, half-lying on the floor. Along with Jerome and Paulo and the lady with the pink aura he’d seen Jerome talking to earlier.
But the servant’s attempt to join them failed when Paulo, who had broken off one of the sturdy chair legs, promptly whacked the poor man upside the head with it.
“Paulo!” Mircea said, only to have the blond turn to stare at him out of slightly mad eyes.
He’d seen that look on new recruits’ faces a few times, when they were first exposed to battle. It usually came just before they panicked and did something stupid, like running straight for enemy lines. Mircea wasn’t clear on who the enemy was here, although apparently there was one.
At least, he assumed they were under the table for some reason.
The shouts, screams, sounds of running feet and breaking things would tend to bear this out. He grabbed Paulo’s arm in one hand, and cautiously lifted the tablecloth with the other. And saw a scene of pure pandemonium.
Finely dressed people were clustered at the doors to the atrium, pushing and shoving each other in their desperation to get out. Servants were standing around the dining area, holding platters of food and looking unsure what to do with it. The only ones eating were the dogs running underfoot, barking excitedly and cleaning up the fallen bounty from several knocked over tables.