Karen Chance - Masks

Who attacked again, using his much greater strength to his advantage. Or trying to. But Mircea hadn’t been bragging earlier; he’d practically been born with a sword in his hand, his father had seen to that. And the battlefield hones even sharp reflexes to a knife-edged sheen.

At least it does if you want to survive.

So half the hammer blows didn’t land, and most of the rest were repelled. But a few got through, because a few always get through: nicks on Mircea’s shoulder and hand; a more serious cut on his thigh; torn muscles from countering the sheer power of those blows. Whereas his best efforts in return involved a ripped shirt and a small wound to the man’s left arm, which healed almost before he’d finished cutting it.

And Mircea was getting tired.

He hadn’t fed before he left the house, not expecting to have to fight, and desperate to get here before the battle began. But that, combined with the blood loss from his earlier wounds, had already sapped him. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for long.

Just as bad was the fact that the battle in the courtyard was winding down. He could tell it in the sounds of the crowd, now clearly audible again. He could tell it from the house, which had quieted, with no more shuddering blows. He could tell it from Marte’s face, glimpsed in instances between ducks and dodges: excited, eager, savage.

The senator was running out of time, and so was Mircea.

And then the officer grabbed one of the torches.

He must have noticed Mircea’s vulnerability to fire in the corridor earlier. Or maybe it was his fear he wanted. Because he laughed when Mircea stumbled back, closer to the cleaved table.

“Worried, infant?” He swung the torch in a wide arc, causing sparks to rain down onto the stones around him. “You should be. I’d sooner see you burn than put any more nicks in that sword.”

Mircea didn’t have an answer for that, and had frankly never seen the point of witty comments in battle anyway. He didn’t want to impress the man; he wanted to kill him, before he tired of this game and just drained Mircea where he stood. Or where he stumbled back, having almost tripped over something.

Something that cracked slightly under his heel.

He didn’t look down. He didn’t have to. There was only one thing capable of cracking in the entire room, other than his bones. An example of exquisite workmanship that might do him no good at all, since the officer had seemed pretty impervious before.

But there was only one way to find out.

Another deliberate stagger, a toe under a delicate glass lantern, an upward fling, just as the man made another of those fiery slashes—

And, no, it seemed that older vampires weren’t impervious to fire, after all.

The cesendello hit the officer dead center of the chest, exploding in a burst of expensive glass and gleaming oil, and the sparks he was slinging around did the rest. That and vampire flammability. The whole top half of the man’s body went up like a human torch, in an audible whoosh that had the hair on the back of Mircea’s neck raising in horror, and his feet stumbling back.

He’d seen men burning on the battlefield, and found it a disturbing sight. But it had been nothing like this. A man on fire had time to put it out. To drop to the ground, to roll in the sand, to possibly save himself.

A vampire did not.

At least, one caught off guard did not, and once he was aflame, the instinctive panic of their kind gripped him, too hard for rational thought. But fury isn’t rational. And the officer rushed at Mircea, body suffused with running flames, face set in a snarl that was mostly bones and gaping fangs, because the skin and flesh had already burnt away, hands reaching—

And then Mircea threw a chair, the only defense he had to keep from touching the creature, and jumped back.

And thereby missed the explosion when it connected.

Burning, crisping, already-turning-to-ash-as-they-fell body parts exploded everywhere, in a gory rain that Mircea thought he would remember as long as he lived.

Which wouldn’t be long, he realized, as he was knocked to the floor by a smaller, but no less deadly, opponent.

Mircea managed to get the sword up in time. But a vampire’s bite is the strongest part of their body, almost impossible to break, and the result was . . . not as he’d intended. Venom slid along the blade, like elongated golden teardrops, milked from fangs that had bitten the metal so delicately they hardly seemed to be touching it.

And yet had stopped it cold.

Mircea looked up into cold, dark, expressionless eyes. They had about as much life in them as the featureless voids in the larve mask Sanuito had worn. The ghost mask he’d chosen on the night he knew he was to die.

Mircea had never killed a woman before. Had always forbidden it to his men, thinking it barbarous, unthinkable, cruel. That had held true even on the rare occasions when they had been combatants.

He found that he had no trouble at all with the idea of killing this one.

The problem was not of will, but of strength, as Mircea soon realized. Marte’s hands slid to either end of the sword, closing over his own. Keeping the blade motionless as she pulled back, licking the blood from the only wound he’d managed to inflict—a tiny cut on her lips.

And freeing her fangs for other things.

But biting him required getting to him. He saw her puzzle it out, leaning forward, trying to reach first his neck, and then either hand. She only needed the tiniest bit of exposed skin—anything would do. But nothing was close enough to reach without either letting go of her hold or loosening it by contorting her body awkwardly.

And as soon as she did, she was dead.

Or at least decapitated. It wouldn’t kill one as old as her, at least according to everything Mircea had ever heard. But that was all right.

He thought it might be a little difficult to bite the senator with her head on the other side of the room.

So Mircea was pushing upward with everything he had, but all he was doing was managing to keep the status quo. She couldn’t come closer, couldn’t release the blade, but he couldn’t seem to move it, either. Not even the short distance needed to cut her throat.

And so they stayed, locked in combat, equal in strength and determination. But with one big difference. Marte was unharmed, unbloodied, save for the small cut that had already healed. Whereas Mircea had given everything he had to the fight, to the point that he couldn’t even close the wounds the officer had inflicted.

He could feel them leaking on the stones underneath him, a sluggish, steady flow, and the last of his strength was draining away with them.

All Marte had to do was wait.

He, on the other hand, had to come up with yet another idea, with a mind fogging over and the edges of his vision starting to pulse and his hands already beginning to shake.

And, of course, she noticed, and a slight smile curved the crimson lips.

“You should have left,” she told him, bearing down. “Such a waste.”

“Like your life?” Mircea asked, panting in the effort of holding her off.

“My life is just beginning. Once she’s dead—”

“You will be, too. Do you really think they’ll let you live? The assassin of a senator?”

“I think . . . it may not be an issue,” she said, tilting her head.

A moment later, a voice rang out, unnaturally loud and echoing. There was no one there, no one in the cavernous space but the two of them. But Mircea could hear it as clearly as if someone had been standing over them.

“Great Antony is dead. Great Antony is dead. The contest resumes with the remaining contenders.”