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.