Karen Chance: Hunt the Moon

A smooth white hand cupped my face, cool to the touch, unlike my overheated skin. Concerned lapis eyes stared into mine, and I cringed at the thought of what she must be seeing. Frazzled hair sticking to my sweaty face, filthy clothes and panicked eyes, as I fought what was rapidly becoming clear would be a losing battle.

“Almost there,” she told me softly, and I nodded, no breath to talk, nothing to say anyway, nothing that would help, at least.

Then the pace picked up, and what had been torment became impossible. I didn’t know how I was keeping up, or even if I was. I couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t even be sure that my feet were moving forward anymore because I couldn’t feel them. Days became months became years became decades, time flipping by like pages in a book, a book that was smearing and fluttering and shredding before my eyes, and I screamed in pain and fury. Because I wasn’t strong enough, because I couldn’t keep up, because I was about to fail at the thing I was supposed to be good at, and I couldn’t —

Suddenly, there was a horrible wrenching, like my body was coming apart at the seams. Only it wasn’t me. It was our magic pulling and tearing and ripping as she veered one way and I fought the current of her power to go the other. But she was so strong, so unbelievably strong, and I didn’t have anything left, and I felt myself stalling and flailing and starting to turn—

And the damn Spartoi saved me. They had started firing more wildly, sending panicked people scrambling away from them—and straight at us. It didn’t help that the crazed crowds usually disappeared before they reached us. I kept flinching back, expecting a collision, and the near panic made it impossible for me to concentrate well enough to keep shifting.

I felt myself falter, my grip on time shaking along with my concentration. And I suddenly—belatedly—realized that I didn’t have to shift away from her. All I had to do was remain stationary somewhere, and she’d shift away from me .

And then a big guy in an old-fashioned suit and a bowler hat barreled right into me, sending me sprawling. We went down in a pile of tweed and leather and outraged pink skin, and there was an umbrella in there somewhere, too, because it was stabbing me in the backside. And then Mircea pulled me up and I realized that something wonderful had happened.

We’d stopped.

I guess I passed out. Because the next thing I knew was waking up in a strange bed, in a strange room, with a strange city view outside a small balcony. But the man standing in front of the window, leaning on the open French door, was familiar. Mircea’s dark hair was blowing in a slight breeze, the same one that was ruffling the thin silk of his dressing gown as he turned his head toward me.

He didn’t say anything, and neither did I. He just walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning to brush my sleep tumbled curls out of my face. “Are you cold?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t wearing anything under the comforter, but it was thick and warm except for my feet, which were sticking out of the covers. They were a little chilly, but also pink and whole and perfect, a gift from Mircea, I assumed. The rest of me felt pretty good, too; tired, but also warm and whole and clean and alive.

I decided I didn’t mind the temperature. It felt good to feel cold. It felt good to be able to feel anything.

Mircea must have thought so, too, because he pulled me in a little more, until he could rest his chin on the top of my head. I usually disliked that; there wasn’t enough hair up there to cushion the bone. But tonight . . . tonight I didn’t mind.

“Your mother was an extraordinary woman,” he murmured, after a moment.

“Hm.”

“Much like her daughter.”

I thought about that for a moment and then twisted my head around, so I could see his face. “I thought I was just . . . lucky.”

Mircea’s lips twisted. “I am not going to be allowed to forget that, am I?”

“Probably not.” At least not anytime soon.

He pulled me back against him and ran a hand through my pathetic hair. “I have never doubted you.”

“Mircea—”

“It’s true.”

“Then what was all that in the tunnel? What has been going on all week?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I thought maybe he wouldn’t. Master vampires weren’t in the habit of having to explain themselves, except possibly to their own masters. And Mircea had never had one of those.

“We talked about my parents,” he said, after a moment. “A few days ago. Do you remember?”

I nodded.

“Did I ever tell you what happened to them?”

“I know what happened to your dad,” I said. “Sort of.”

Mircea’s story about his father’s death and his own near miss changed depending on the circumstances. When I was a child, he’d made it sound almost comical: crazy nobles trying to bury him alive when—surprise—he’d been cursed with vampirism more than a week before. Later, I’d heard a less amusing version, including a late-night flight barely ahead of the torch-wielding mob who had killed his father and blinded him, before leaving him six feet under.

Mircea had crawled out of his own grave and gotten away, still half blind, his newly vampire body struggling to heal itself with no food, his mind reeling from shock and horror. He’d had no master to help him, no one to go to for advice or shelter. And yet, somehow, he’d survived.

“I know all I need to know,” I told him, tilting my head back to look up at him.

His hand tightened on my arm. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t think you do.”

He drew the covers around us, probably on my account. It takes a lot to get a master cold. And then he told me the whole story. The one I doubted he’d told too many people before.

“In 1442, the pope decided to call for a new crusade against the Ottoman Turks, who had conquered much of the Middle East by that time, and were making inroads into Europe. It was felt that someone needed to bring them to heel, and the king of Poland was elected. He had dreams of glory, but at barely twenty, little battlefield experience. He relied on the guidance of a soldier of fortune named John Hunyadi.”

I didn’t have to ask if Hunyadi was the bad guy. Mircea’s tone was the same one a devout Catholic would use to say “Satan.” “I take it you didn’t think much of him.”

Mircea’s hand ran lightly up and down my arm, causing a wave of goose bumps to chase his fingers. “Hunyadi did have military skill,” he admitted grudgingly. “But his ambitions often overruled his judgment. Such was the case when he and Ladislas—the Polish king—met with my father on their way east. Napoleon famously said that God fights on the side with the largest battalions. That was centuries later, but it fairly sums up my father’s opinion. Which is why all his diplomatic skill could not keep the horror off his face when he saw their ‘army.’ ”

“It was that bad?”

“It wasn’t an army at all. The idiots had brought a totality of fifteen thousand men with them. As my father told Hunyadi, the sultan often took that many on hunting expeditions!”

“I’m assuming this Hunyadi guy didn’t listen.”

“He informed my father that a Christian knight was worth a hundred of the sultan’s ‘rabble.’ Rabble!” Mircea’s voice was bitter. “When the Janissaries, Murad’s elite military corps, were among the best-armed, best-trained soldiers in the world. They were trained from the time they were children—Christian children whom the Turks took as devshirme , a sort of tax, on areas they conquered.”

“I wouldn’t think slaves would be all that thrilled about fighting for their masters.”