“She had a tomb made for herself, out in the desert. A lavish thing, more like a small palace. She moved us to it, me and Iras, her hairdresser, and Charmion, her handmaiden. And, for a while, she seemed happier. I thought things must be going well. The rumors that had been swirling around the city were bleak, but rumors lie. And she seemed so calm. . . .
“And then, one night, she asked for me. I hurried into my clothes, ran to her room, not knowing what to expect. Had there been news? Were we going back to the city? Had her charms ensnared yet another general, brought yet another Roman to his knees?”
“No,” Mircea said, remembering his history.
“No,” Marte agreed. “Not this time.
“This time, great Cleopatra had gambled and lost. Both her bid to lead the world, and her navy, at Actium. Our fleet had been routed, and Octavian, Caesar’s heir and the victor on the day, had offered her only her life. Not her kingdom, which was to become a province of Rome. Not her lover, who was condemned for treason to the new lord of Rome. Not even the son she’d had with old Julius, who was too much of a threat to Octavian’s ambitions. But her life.
“In exchange for walking in chains through the streets of Rome, humbled before the city she had once hoped to rule. Just another prisoner in his triumphal parade.”
“She refused.”
“Of course she refused. As Octavian had known she would. Had she accepted, she would have been assassinated at the first opportunity anyway, as her son would later be. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. She would die by her own hand, she had decided, but how to do it?”
“An asp,” Mircea said. “Or so the stories say.”
“The stories are wrong. It was poison she planned to take. I can attest to it personally, for what did the great queen want with me? Why, to test it, of course. To make sure the concoction she’d come up with was as painless as she thought.
“There were three of us there that night. The legends say two, because that’s all they found the next day, but there were three. And three different brews that she administered herself, in cups of wine. I don’t know if the others knew what was in them, but I didn’t. I had no idea.
“Until we started to die.
“I was the last. I don’t know what she gave me—I never knew. But it wasn’t painless. It felt like fire in my veins and it took a long time to finish the job. The others died, she prepared her own cup, and still I lingered. And thus saw the creature who came for her, in the darkest hours of the night, the one who had determined to cheat great Caesar of his prize.
“I heard what he whispered to her, as she lay dying from his bite. What he promised. Life, and power, and riches, all the things I’d ever wanted. Why do you suppose they think only queens are ambitious? Or that only queens want to live. . . .
“He Changed her, as I lay dying. Changed her, but never once looked at me. She was a prize, a jewel, a feather in his cap. And what was I?
“Nothing. But still I lived.
“And I lived after he was gone.
“I lived when all was still and morning was hours away and there was no one there to tell me to keep to my place. Not anymore. Not ever again.
“And so I dragged myself over to her. And I found the puncture wounds, the ones all the ancient stories mention, the ones that made them assume she was bitten by an asp. She wasn’t so stupid—asp bites are painful. She meant to die by gentler means.
“I meant not to die at all.
“And so I took it from her, the blood he’d given. I closed my mouth over the wound and I sucked it out, like the wine she’d given me. I drank it down until I could drink no more, until my head was spinning and my body was so light that it felt like I might fly away.
“I’m not sure what happened then. I remember thinking I had to get away, some instinct telling me to get underground, quickly. I only know that I woke days later, buried in the desert sand, alone and confused. And so very, very hungry.”
“You really did make yourself,” Mircea said, in disbelief.
“Yes, but in my ignorance, I had botched it. She had been Changed correctly, by a being who had done it a thousand times before. I had . . . improvised. It wouldn’t have worked at all with anyone else. It’s against every law we know. But his blood was so old, so rich, even then, even fifteen hundred years ago . . .”
“But she told me that she was your master—”
“She is nothing to me!” Marte snapped, face flushing. “Just as I was nothing to her! Merely someone to be used. But her blood had mixed with his; it was impossible to separate them. I took in both.”
“But you went to find her—”
“I went to kill her! By then I had found out the truth of what I was—and what I wasn’t. What I would never be. Vampires are nothing without family. But I could never have one. My bite was poison, even to my own kind. Something to do with the poison in my system when I was created, or an attribute I acquired from my Sire, or how I was made—I didn’t know.
“All I knew was that I would never be able to make children, or bind ones that others had made. And a vampire without a family is nothing. All those things he promised—power, riches, position—they only come with family. Alone, we are weak, poor, nothing. All my ambitions, all my hopes, everything came crashing down around me. I had eternity, yes. But an eternity of the same thing I’d known in life. And more than that, an eternity of being hunted, once the fine elders she took me to see realized what I was.”
“They knew?”
“Oh, yes,” Marte said fiercely. “She hadn’t recognized me. It had been less than a decade since she’d killed me, but she didn’t know who I was—or what I could do. I wasn’t important enough to remember, just some servant child. But they knew. My little ability had cropped up once or twice before, you see, when the master Changed someone, and his decision had always been the same.”
“They planned to kill you.”
She nodded. “I heard two of them speaking of it. How they had communicated with him, how he had ordered it. Mine is a rare gift, and a rare danger. He wouldn’t risk anyone around him with the power to hurt him.”
“So you ran.”
“Yes. And I’ve been running ever since.”
“Until you came to Venice.”
“Until I came to Venice. And gave my blood to a young man who has been seeing very strange things ever since. But who, I suspect, isn’t seeing them anymore.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Marte slid sinuously off the table. Mircea moved back, but only to give himself more room. And he kept the sword up.
She smiled. “Aren’t your arms getting tired?”
“Vampire.”
“True. If only barely.”
“The same could be said of you,” he said, and watched it land.
“Be careful, Mircea.”
“Why? We both know you’re going to kill me—if you can. You have to, or you aren’t getting back down that hall.”
“If that was so important, I could have just stayed there.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You couldn’t. You’re not that powerful. In fact, since there is no possible way you didn’t hear me coming, I’d be willing to bet you only moved there right before I arrived.”
“Did you not hear what I just said? I’m fifteen hundred years old—”
“Yes, but still, not powerful. If you were, you’d have killed her before now. It doesn’t take fifteen centuries to get an opportunity. Unless, of course, your bite is all you have.”