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.
Chapter Forty-Three
Mircea paused, panting, and stared around.
He was at the front of the house now, on the edge of the wide atrium that served as an entrance hall. It was a thick rectangle bisected by the massive front doors down and to his right, and a wide hallway leading to the garden opposite them on his left. Either the walls were thicker here, or something about the architecture muffled sound, because the roar of the storm had just become a low background hum.
Likewise, the almost darkness had been replaced by puddles of light, one falling around a delicate cesendello lamp on a table near the wall.And two more from the torches burning on either side of the main doors. Together, they cast a warm glow over a wood ceiling, beautiful tapestries, and a large expanse of tiled floor.
And a slight figure in a dark yellow dress.
She was standing with her back to him, at the entrance to the corridor leading to the garden. Despite the hallway’s length, it was close enough to leave her enveloped by the outer edges of the storm. Mircea would have been writhing in pain at that range, but she appeared unconcerned, the outer bands drifting across her body like golden veils wherever the torchlight touched them.
“You should have been here earlier,” she told him, as he approached. “You’d have had a better view.”
“It’s not the view I’m interested in,” Mircea said softly.
“You should be. You’ll never see its like again.”
She turned to look at him, and it was the same face—why did that surprise him? The same quick smile. The same Marte.
“How often do you witness the death of a god?”
“Will I witness it?” he asked. “What if he wins?”
“He won’t.” She shook her head, making her curls bounce. “You don’t know her like I do.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t even know you. I realized on the way here: yours was the only story I never heard.”
“You heard it,” she told him, not even trying to dissemble. “You heard hers. It is the same.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” She walked toward him, her footfalls on the tile as silent as the senator’s had been. “Then why are you here?”
She stopped well short, as if she didn’t want to scare him.
It didn’t work.
Mircea badly wanted to glance over his shoulder, but his instincts told him there was no one there. He had moved quickly, expecting the officer to be right behind him. But perhaps he’d been a little too quick.
Or perhaps the man wasn’t coming at all.
It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how well even a senior master would do, when a massive section of wall came flying at him unexpectedly. Maybe he’d had the reflexes to dodge it, or had found something to hide beneath and survived the same way that Mircea had. In which case, he should be along shortly. Or maybe he hadn’t, but was strong enough to heal and would be along eventually. In either case, Mircea needed to stall until he arrived.
But then, maybe he wasn’t coming at all. Maybe he’d been killed by a blow that would have taken out a giant. Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious, and the fire was slowly eating away at him. Maybe—
Maybe Mircea should say something before she got bored and killed him.
“A lot of little things,” he said hoarsely. “The earrings . . .”
She smiled and shook her head, making the tinsel dance. “I should have given them up, shouldn’t I? Women don’t wear them much in Venice.”
“They don’t wear them at all,” Mircea corrected. “Not unless they’re a gypsy. Or . . . from somewhere else. But you’re supposed to be Italian, and young. Auria was said to be the oldest, but even she is only a century. Where would you pick up a habit that has been out of favor with the women here for at least twice that long?”
She sighed. “I’ve had them so long, they feel like a part of me. But it was careless.”
“And the jars, the ones they pulled from the wreckage. Why were you sorting through them? Martina and Auria are the ones who worked with them all the time. Wouldn’t they better know the ingredients?”
“I volunteered.”