And for a minute, I thought he was dead.
And I think Marlowe did, too, because as soon as he’d cleared the room, he grabbed Radu’s arm. “Let up,” he said, his face terrible. “Wait for the healer—”
And then Radu—Radu—jerked Marlowe up and threw him at the window, sending his body crashing through the heavy drapes and the glass behind them. It set the curtains swaying, back and forth, like the pendulum of a ticking clock, intermittently highlighting the tableaux on the sofa in beams of light-filled dust.
“Hold him,” Radu snarled at me, the voice nothing like his usual dulcet tones.
I was already moving as he spoke, scrambling across the floor, because my leg seemed to work now. Unlike my brain, which could only focus on that pale face. But I grabbed Mircea, who like me, seemed to be whole physically. But the blood—God, so much blood—and he was deadweight now—
“Pay attention!” Radu snapped, jerking at his sleeve as Marlowe vaulted back into the room.
And stopped, because he’d figured out what was going on the same time I had.
“Will he?” I breathed, my voice strange in my ears.
Radu ignored me. And then he bared an arm that looked nothing like its usual plump, well-toned self. It was corpse-pale, with ropy muscle and prominent veins running purplish blue under the surface. And fingernails that were suddenly a lot more pointed, a lot more talon-like, than the perfect manicure he’d had a second ago. Like the face that was suddenly older, more gaunt, and the hair that was finer, duller, with wide streaks of silver striping the brown.
I stared at him, and then around at the room, because it was that or look down. And I didn’t want to look down. Didn’t want to see that usually so-poised face splattered with blood, the sharply intelligent eyes closed, the fine mouth slack and agape. It would make it all too real, this strange, dust-filled room, with the ticking clock and the swinging drapes and the tasteful furniture I didn’t need to remember because nothing was going to happen in here of importance today. Nothing.
And then Radu sliced his arm open from elbow to wrist, using one of those knifelike nails. Blood welled up, not red like a human’s or a young vampire’s but dark, dark, almost black, with dull crimson glints when the intermittent light hit it. It didn’t gush like human blood, either, but seeped down his skin, molasses-thick with age and power.
He held the bloody limb to his brother’s pale lips, pressing them tight around the wound, forcing the fluid inside.
Blood of family, I thought dizzily, my own blood icing in my veins. The last resort for a dying vampire. Mircea’s own strength, distilled in the body of every vampire he’d ever made. And reinforced in Radu’s case by five hundred years of love, shared pain, struggle and sacrifice—
None of which did him any good if he wouldn’t take it.
“His mouth was full of blood already, I don’t know if…” someone babbled, and I snapped my lips shut when I realized it was me.
“Drink,” Radu rasped, a taloned hand digging into his brother’s shoulder. “Drink!”
But Mircea didn’t.
Marlowe stood by the couch, staring. Face white, eyes dark and burning. For once, the mask was gone, and he looked as stunned as I felt. And as horrified. And something else that I finally recognized—belatedly, because I’d never seen it on that face before.
He saw me looking and blanked again, but his voice was rough when he spoke. “How?”
“I…He wouldn’t defend himself,” I said, my voice still sounding strange. High and weak—and shrill with fear. But unlike Marlowe, I couldn’t seem to mask it.
Nothing, I told myself savagely.
“Against what? What did this?”
“Dorina.” There was no point in denying it now. “She was after me, but he got in the way—”
“No,” Radu said, not looking up from his brother’s face.
“What?”
“Mircea said it wasn’t you—her. It was almost all he managed to say before—”
“Then why didn’t he defend himself?” Marlowe demanded, before I could. “If he wasn’t worried about hurting—”
“That is one of the reasons for using a guide,” Radu told him abruptly. “Even a gifted master cannot hold open such a connection and also defend against attack. It takes too much concentration—”
“He had a guide!”
“Louis-Cesare was knocked unconscious,” Radu snapped, gesturing at him. Where he still lay, because no one had bothered to help him.