Chapter Thirty-one
I guess I fell asleep
in the car, because I didn’t remember getting back. Or getting into
pink-striped shorty pj’s. Or falling headfirst into bed. But I must
have. Because I woke up tangled in my own sheets, the pillow half
over my head and sunlight leaking in through a crack in the
drapes.
I rolled over,
feeling groggy and thickheaded and gritty-eyed and yucky. It was so
much like yesterday that, for a minute, I thought it had all been a
dream. But even my dreams weren’t that bizarre. And then I tried to
move, and immediately knew it had been real enough.
Because I got the
charley horse from hell in my left calf.
I didn’t shriek—it
wasn’t that loud. But to a vampire’s ears, it must have been loud
enough, because the bedroom door burst open and Marco rushed in,
gun in hand and face pretty damn scary. He looked around wildly, I
suppose for something to shoot, and when he didn’t find anything,
he grabbed me.
“What is it? What’s
wrong?”
I stared up at him,
still half-asleep and disoriented from the pain, and didn’t say
anything.
“Cassie!”
“Charley horse,” I
finally managed to gasp, only it didn’t seem to do any good.
Because he just stared at me, uncomprehending, as the room quickly
filled up with vamps.
And then he blinked.
“Did you say charley
horse?”
I nodded
tearfully.
Marco said something
profane and shoved his gun into the small of his back. “Get outta
here,” he told the others, who melted away into the shadows,
looking absurdly grateful.
He sighed and sat on
the edge of the bed. “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.”
It wasn’t an
exaggeration. It felt like my entire body had whiplash. I was
beginning to understand why Fred had said he hated lasso spells. Of
course, the one that had made me feel like shit had also saved my
life, but that wasn’t all that comforting at the
moment.
I held up my left
leg, which was cramped so badly I couldn’t even straighten it out.
Marco’s big hand smoothed gently over the muscle, and then he
applied a little pressure. I gasped in pain and then in wonder, as
the muscle suddenly released. It still hurt like a bitch, a dull
throbbing that mirrored the racing of my heart. But at least I
could breathe.
“You know, I’ve lived
a long time,” he told me, massaging the calf more firmly now. “And
I met a lot of people. But I ain’t never met a woman made me want
to beat her to death as often as you.”
“Sorry,” I choked
out, and tried to pull away, but his hand held me
firm.
“You’re not going
anywhere,” Marco said. “Not until we have a little
chat.”
But he didn’t chat;
he didn’t talk at all. He just continued the long, soothing strokes
with those big fingers, so clumsy-looking but so deft in movement.
And after a few moments, I felt my body slowly relax. “You’re good
at that.”
“Had a lot of
practice.”
“Really? Where?” I
asked, less because I wanted to know than to postpone the
bitching-out I was about to get. Usually, I held my own pretty
well, even with the vamps. But right now, it didn’t feel like I had
anything left.
Marco shot me a look
that said he knew damned well what I was doing, but then he
shrugged. “The lanista I worked for had me ready the men for
combat. They fought better if they were loose, or so he
thought.”
“Lanista?”
“Guy who owned a
bunch of gladiators.”
“I thought you were
in the army.”
A bushy black eyebrow
rose, but he didn’t ask. “I was. Worked and scraped my way up to
centurion, just in time to see the empire crumble around me. I was
almost dead after a battle, when some men dug me out of the blood
and the muck and carried me off. Turns out they worked for a
vampire with an entrepreneurial streak, and he liked
ex-army.”
He added a little
extra pressure, and I moaned, but not because it hurt. That leg
felt better now, although it just highlighted how sore the rest of
me was. It was like I hadn’t been able to concentrate on all my
other aches and pains until the big one got taken care of. And now
they were all clamoring for help.
Marco just shook his
head at me. “Turn over.”
I turned over, and
those big hands got to work on my back. I stifled a whimper in the
pillow, because Marco’s idea of a massage bore no resemblance
whatsoever to the relaxing spa variety. There was no lavender oil,
no soothing music, no hot towels. Just an all-out assault on
cramped muscles, until they cowered in surrender and turned to
Jell-O.
“Why did this vampire
like ex-army?” I gasped after a few minutes, mostly to give myself
something else to think about.
“Fortunatus was in
the business of providing gladiators for the rich. Politicos who
wanted to play up to the crowds, or fat cats trying to outdo each
other in private events. The best money came from fights to the
death, but it cost him a lot to train a gladiator well enough to
put on a good show. Having him die in a death match one of the
first times he fought wasn’t good business, even at the prices he
charged.”
“So he picked people
who were already trained?”
“No, he picked people
who were already trained, and then he made ’em vampires. That way,
the crowds could watch us ‘die’ over and over, but he didn’t have
to constantly replenish his stock. We—” He stopped when I turned
over and stared at him. “It was a long time ago.”
“That’s
horrible!”
“That’s life. If his
men hadn’t seen me on that battlefield, hadn’t decided that a
centurion was just what the boss had ordered, I never woulda made
it. I almost didn’t anyway. Took him two months to nurse me back to
health so he could kill me.”
I swallowed. “I hope
you weren’t with him long.”
“A century, give or
take.”
“A century?”
“Until the games were
outlawed.” Marco pushed me back down and started on my shoulders.
“Christianity didn’t approve, maybe ’cause a few too many of their
people had ended up in ’em, and not by choice. You
know?”
I
nodded.
“And once it started
to spread, the politicians stopped financing matches, because they
started to cost them votes’stead of the other way around. And then
the emperor converted and passed a law against it, and while some
people still held them illegally, there weren’t enough to make it
worth Fortunatus’s time. He traded me to another master who needed
a bodyguard, and I just got shuffled around after
that.”
“And ended up with
Mircea.”
“You know the score.
Gotta belong to someone.”
“But you’re a senior
master.” I pointed out. “You could have a court of your own, if you
wanted.”
“Yeah. And have all
the expense and the headaches and the diplomatic shit to deal with,
and still have to answer to somebody. Everybody’s the same; can’t
wait to move up, to hit fifth or fourth or third level, and strike
out on their own. Only to find out the same thing.”
“And what’s
that?”
His hands stilled on
my back. “That there’s no freedom in our world, Cassie. If I left
Mircea, I’d have to ally with some other high-level master in order
to survive. And then I’d be dragged into his life, his fights, just
like now. Everybody answers to somebody; everybody has restrictions
they got to put up with. Even senators. Even Mircea.”
I was starting to see
why Marco had been willing to get on this topic. I sighed and
buried my head in the pillow. “Even Pythias?”
“Everybody takes
orders from somebody,” he repeated. “Mircea takes ’em from the
Consul, and believe me, sometimes, he really don’t like it. But he
does it.”
I turned over and
regarded Marco tiredly. “Yes, and why does he do it?”
Marco frowned. “It’s
his job.”
“And she’s his boss,
his superior.”
“Yeah.”
“And there’s your
answer.”
“There’s what
answer?”
I sighed. “Mircea
does what the Consul orders because he’s her servant.”
“Yes?”
“But I am not
his.”
I got up and went to
the bathroom.
Of course, Marco
followed. “You are not his.”
“His girlfriend, yes.
His servant, no. I can’t be and do my job.”
“You’ve done it
pretty well so far. What the hell do you think Mircea’s gonna ask
you to do?”
“I don’t know. But
that’s not the point, is it?” I started running hot water in the
tub.
“Then what is the
point?”
“That he can
ask whatever he wants. I’ll probably
even do it most of the time. I’d have done it last night, if it had
been a request. I’d had the day from hell; I really didn’t want to
go anywhere. But it wasn’t a request; it was an order. And if I
start taking orders from a senator—any senator—I may as well forget
having anyone take me seriously.”
“The Consul takes
Mircea seriously.”
“As a valued servant,
yes. But she knows that, when she pushes, he’ll do what she wants.
He owes his job to her, so he can never be truly impartial. But I
have to be, or the Circle will ignore me as a vampire pawn, and the
Senate will ignore me because they can order me around, and it’ll
be . . . the Tony Syndrome all over again. And I won’t live like
that. I just won’t!”
Marco sat down on the
side of the tub, making the porcelain creak. “What’s the Tony
Syndrome?”
Somebody had
restocked the bath salts, and I threw half the jar into the water.
“Most seers see both sides of life,” I told him. “They see the baby
somebody has been hoping for, or the long-overdue promotion, or the
love of their life, right around the corner. It helps balance out
the bad stuff, the stuff nobody wants to see. The earthquakes and
the bomb plots and the fires and the car crashes. But I never had
that balance. I don’t see the good stuff. I never
did.”
“That’s
rough.”
“It’s . . .
exhausting. It’s depressing. It keeps you from enjoying a lot of
life because, even when you’re having a good day, suddenly you’ll
see someone else’s pain, someone else’s grief. And the record
scratches, you know?”
He
nodded.
“Eventually, I
learned how not to see things. But for a long time, I didn’t have
that ability. The only way I could deal was by telling myself that
the stuff I saw was in the future, and that maybe some of it could
be averted. That maybe I could change things, at least for a few
people. And Tony promised me he’d get the word out.”
“And he
lied.”
“Of course he lied.
But I was a kid and I believed him, maybe because I wanted to
believe him. When I finally figured it out and confronted him, he
just shrugged and told me that there was more profit in
tragedy.”
“That sounds like
that fat little weasel.” Marco regarded me narrowly. “You’re saying
you expect the Senate to go around averting
tragedies?”
“No. But if I see
something coming, something potentially disastrous for our world, I
expect them to listen to me. I expect them to trust me. And right
now, I don’t know that they respect me enough to do
that.”
Marco sighed and
looked at me, his elbows resting on massive thighs. “Look, I’m
gonna tell you something, and if you repeat it, I’ll deny it. But
the master shouldn’t have given that order. He ought to know you
well enough by now to know what was gonna happen. But he did it
anyway, because he’s scared and he’s stressed and he don’t always
see so clear where you are concerned. But that don’t mean he don’t
respect you.”
“Well, it sure
doesn’t mean that he does!” I said, swirling the soap around, a
little more forcefully than necessary.
“He talks about you a
lot in the family. He’s proud of you—anybody can see
that.”
“Anybody but
me.”
“He may not say it to
you, but that’s the truth.”
“Then why doesn’t he
say it to me? Right now, I feel like . . . like one of those
floozies you talked about—”
“I never used the
word ‘floozy’—”
“—who is supposed to
hang around, shopping and doing her nails and waiting for her lord
and master to show up! That’s how he treats me, so why shouldn’t I
believe that’s how he sees me?”
“Because he probably
does like the thought of you shopping and doing your nails instead
of the kind of shit you usually get up to! And because he’s a
politician and don’t want to give up an advantage.”
“Advantage in
what?”
“In the power games
you two got going—”
“This isn’t about
power.”
“The hell it’s
not.”
“It isn’t! I don’t
want to order Mircea around. I don’t want to order the Senate or
the Circle around. I just want them—”
“To take you
seriously. To listen to you. To be guided by what you tell them.
And that translates into power, don’t it?”
“It translates into
doing my job.”
Marco looked at me
for a moment and started to say something, and then he just shook
his head. “I thought I’d never meet somebody as bullheaded as the
master,” he told me. “But what do you know.”
“I’m not trying to be
stubborn.”
“I know. It’s like
with Mircea; you don’t got to try. It comes
naturally.”
I sighed. “I guess I
need to talk to him.”
I don’t know what my
expression looked like, but Marco laughed. “Yeah, but you get a
reprieve. He said he’ll call you tonight, late. He’s got a thing
all day.”
“What kind of a
thing?”
He shrugged. “Senate
stuff, I guess. You’ll have to ask him.”
“What about Jonas?” I
might as well get one awkward conversation out of the
way.
“He called a while
ago, while you were asleep. Said—Hang on.” Marco fished a notebook
out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “Said he thought he
might know what attacked you last night. He’s not sure, but thinks
they could be something called the Spartoi.”
“Spartans?”
“No—that’s what I
thought, too, but he spelled it for me. And it’s Spartoi. There’s supposed to be five of them, sons of
Ares and some dragon—”
I looked up from
shutting off the water. “Dragon?”
“Yeah, one of the
Fey. They can shape-shift, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said
slowly. And that would explain why the damn dragon had been so hard
to kill. I’d seen Pritkin and a friend of his, Mac, take on one
before, and it hadn’t been anything like that. But then, that other
dragon hadn’t been a half god, either.
“Anything else?” I
demanded. “Like how we’re supposed to fight these
things?”
“I think the idea is
not to,” Marco said drily. “He said for you to stay in the hotel
today. He’s tripled the guards, so nothing should get in here. He
needs to do some more research, but he’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Marco flipped over a page in his notebook, but must not have found
anything, because he flipped back. “And that’s it.”
I kind of thought
that was enough. Apparently, Marco did, too, because he was looking
a little worried, like he was afraid I was about to break down on
him again. I wasn’t. I was too pissed off. It looked like the other
side didn’t worry about little things like playing fair. One
not-so-great clairvoyant against five freaking demigods seemed a
little onesided to me. No wonder it had almost gotten Pritkin
killed!
“You okay?” Marco
asked.
“Yeah.” I forced a
smile, because none of this was his fault. “I was just thinking—I
have all day with nobody bitching at me.”
He grinned. “Well, I
can, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“You just
did!”
“Naw, that wasn’t
bitching. You should hear me when I get going.”
“I’m
afraid.”
“Hold that thought.”
Marco ruffled my hair and left. I stripped and got in the tub,
sinking down in the water up to my chin.
It felt good. It felt
better than good, and not just because of my sore muscles. Three
days ago, something had tried to drown me in this very tub, and now
I was back, relaxing in it. I had a stinky charm around my neck and
a vampire probably listening at the door, but still. That was
progress.
My feet floated to
the top of the water and I stared at my poor, chipped toenail
polish. I thought about redoing it. I thought about making
Augustine’s life miserable. I thought about going to the salon and
seeing if any of the guys could do something about my
hair.
But none of that had
much appeal. It was hard to concentrate on my to-do list with the
sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It felt like I was just
marking time, waiting for the next attack. And that was getting
really old.
I was sick and tired
of playing defense. But to play offense, I needed some help, and I
didn’t know where to get it. Or, rather, I did, I just didn’t know
how.
Assuming Jonas’s
crazy theories weren’t quite so crazy after all, I needed to find a
goddess—fast. And I thought there was a tiny chance that the one I
needed was still hanging around. It had been her spell that
banished the other gods, after all, so maybe it hadn’t affected
her. And maybe she hadn’t wanted to go back to a world filled with
a bunch of pissed-off fellow gods. In fact, the more I thought
about it, the more it seemed like helping humanity might have stuck
her with us. If she had gone home, wouldn’t her fellow gods have
forced her to lift the spell by now? They obviously wanted back in
pretty badly, and she could hardly have stood up to all of them.
And gods were supposed to be immortal, weren’t they? So if she
hadn’t gone home, it was at least possible that she was still
here.
But even if that was
the case, she hadn’t been seen in three thousand years. And anyone
who had hidden that long had probably gotten pretty good at it.
Barring a vision with a map, I had no freaking clue where to start
looking. And without a clue, I wasn’t likely to get a vision. It
was a vicious catch-22.
I needed somebody who
could point me in the right direction.
I needed somebody who
knew about gods.
I needed a god.
Fortunately, I knew
three of them.