One exasperated other who dropped his burden unceremoniously in a heap just inside the hall.
“Enough!” a man said, and Mircea recognized the bald head of the official who had been presiding over the contest earlier. “Didn’t you hear the announcement? Great Antony is dead!”
“I’m not dead, you maggoty piece of scrofulous pig flesh—”
“For the purposes of the contest you are. Once you can no longer move on your own, the rules clearly state—”
“I can move, you stupid son of a whore! I can crawl, if I have to. Where’s my sword? Somebody give me a sword—”
“If you can crawl, then crawl out of here,” the official said nastily. It was obvious who he favored in the contest. “And your sword was thrown clear of the arena.”
“Then go get it, you bastard!”
“Get it yourself. There’s nothing in the rules requiring me to—”
“There’s nothing preventing it, either!”
“Your legs are crushed,” the man hissed. “Your right arm lies useless. You are dead, my lord. And soon your lady will be, too. I have taken my last command from you!”
The official left, disappearing back into the arena. But only because he’d passed into an area not visible from the doorway. The blowing veils of sand were too thin now to hide anything.
Marte noticed, too. “To think, I went to all this trouble, and he may kill her for me. But either way . . . it’s over, Mircea. My venom is deadly enough that it only takes a scratch. And I don’t think you can hold out much longer.”
Mircea didn’t think so, either.
But through the gathering fog in his mind, he did think something else.
“The venom . . . is on the blade. Perhaps . . . I’ll knick you first.”
She laughed. “Idiot. I already told you. I’m immune to my own poison!”
“Yes,” Mircea rasped, staring for the last time into those dark, dark eyes. “But you hadn’t told him. Antony!”
The brunet at the end of the hall had been looking this way, squinting into the darkness. And then a hand shot up, to catch the sword Mircea was struggling to throw him. But Marte had more strength than he’d had expected, or he was weaker than he’d thought, because she hung on. And then she wrenched the sword away, knocking him back brutally when he lunged for it and swinging it up—
Only to pause, mid-movement, with a strange look on her face. And then to glance down, where something protruded from the front of her gown. Something red-tipped and wood-hard, tearing the fabric of her dress right over the heart.
And drenching it red.
“Go!” someone yelled, from the shadows behind Marte.
It looked like Auria’s auburn head, but he couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t matter. Only one thing did. He scrambled back to his knees, grabbing the sword as Marte struggled with the assailant behind her. Who went staggering back a moment later, from a blow hard enough to have killed a human.
But the movement had cost Marte purchase on the weapon. And with the last of his strength, Mircea wrenched it away and threw it, in a tumbling arc. Light flashed along the blade, and it was a beautiful thing, gilt edged and running with reflected fire.
“No!” Marte screamed, at the same moment that Antony’s fist closed around the pommel. And then sent it flying again almost immediately, into the huge tail that whipped by, throwing up an arc of sand.
But not so thickly that Mircea couldn’t see the sword pierce the heavy hide, like one great fang sinking deep.
Mircea felt smaller ones slide into his throat at almost the same instant, felt his veins start to burn, felt consciousness slipping away.
But not before he saw the huge creature in the arena begin to flail. And fall. And writhe in apparently agony as a slim figure in white approached.
She never lifted a hand. Never did anything that Mircea could see. But the sand-filled wind gathered around the great body, in swirling, lashing exuberance. In seconds, it was black no more, but red, the skin scoured off by the relentless assault. And then there was too much sand to see, wrapping the colossal form in a swirling mass of gold, like a great cocoon.
Or perhaps a mummy’s wrappings would be more accurate. For, when the winds howled their last, and the dust faded, and their work was revealed . . . There was nothing left but an elongated skeleton, still rearing into the sky.
And then falling to earth, the bones rattling apart to rain down on the sand at the senator’s feet.
No, not the senator, Mircea thought, as she looked up and then around at the screaming, hysterical crowd, her beautiful face as impassive as ever.
The consul.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“It’s dual consuls, actually,” someone said, as Mircea struggled back to consciousness. “There’s going to be two of them, just like in old Rome.”
“Two of them?” someone else asked. “Oh, that should be fun.”
Mircea didn’t know where he was, or what was happening. It was dark and he was in pain—so much pain. And when he tried to sit up—
He was immediately hurting even more, when his head came into contact with a familiar low ceiling.
He was home, he thought dizzily.
Or what passed for it, these days.
And that made no damned sense at all.
“He’s awake! He’s awake!” Jerome’s voice, excited as a boy’s, came from somewhere above his head. And then the bed began to shake as someone jumped up, making Mircea grab it like the sides of a boat in a storm tossed sea. Oh, God.
“He’s gonna be sick,” Bezio said, grabbing him. Which definitely did not help.
And then he thrust a clean bedpan under his nose, which did.
Oh, God, Mircea thought again, moments later. What the hell had he been drinking?
“Something Sanuito left for you,” Bezio told him, when he gasped the question out loud.
“San . . . uito?”
The older vampire nodded. “Remember that shitty wine?”
Mircea frowned.
“The one you pulled out of the bean sack? The last time we were in the kitchen?”
Mircea vaguely recalled something about looting Cook’s latest stash. “Yes?”
“Sanuito left it for you. Or maybe he planned to give it to you, we’re not really—”
“He’s up?” Paulo asked, sticking his blond head in the door.
“Yes!” Jerome said proudly.
“Sort of,” Bezio countered. “And I’m trying to explain—”
“Mircea?” Zaneta shoved in behind Paulo, causing him to push Jerome onto the bed.
And Bezio to growl. “All right, all right, give him some room.”
“Why does it reek in here?” Zaneta asked, her nose twitching.
“Because he’s sick!” Bezio said. “Damn it, he almost died! Now, if you’ll hush up, I’m trying to—”
“Is it Mircea? Is he—oh,” Auria said, from the doorway, where she must have been on tiptoes. Because her auburn head was just visible over Paulo’s.
“The gang’s all here,” Jerome said, grinning.
“Oh, not even,” several more voices laughed, from the hall. And then from inside the room, as Danieli, Besina and the two blonds whose names Mircea could never remember started trying to fit into a space that was already bursting at the seams, half of them falling on the bed in the process.
“All right, that’s it!” Bezio bellowed. “Everybody out!”