"For you, if you do not tell me the truth."
"I already have a gun," I told him, confused. What did he think I was going to do with that thing? It wasn't a handgun; it was an M16 assault rifle. The thing was freaking huge.
And it was pointed at me.
"Oh." I suddenly got the message. I dropped the bobby pins and held up my hands, palms out. But the gun to my chest thing didn't change. "After what you just went through, it's understandable you'd be a little spooked," I said. And, wow, didn't I wish I'd thought of that earlier. "But I really am here to help. Please, take my hand and I'll prove it."
Mircea's only answer was to move back a few steps. Probably to get a better shot. Behind him, several of his vampires looked up from fire extinguisher duty and saw us. Just great.
"You can drop the glamour," he told me grimly. "I am not deceived."
"I'm not using a—" I began, but he did his disappearing act again before I could finish. It took me a moment, but I spied him across the parking lot, over by one of the limos. And, no, letting him drive off somewhere really wasn't an option.
I shifted, but in the split second it took me to get there, he had vanished. I was about to open one of the car doors, to check inside, when I caught the reflection in the windows of two blurs moving up behind me. I shifted again before the vamps could grab me, landing back across the lot, near where I'd started. I was starting to get dizzy—not a good sign. Especially when we hadn't even gotten to the damn auction yet.
I looked around, trying to spot Mircea, and almost ran into him. We both shied back, and a quick glance showed me that he'd lost the gun. Maybe he'd remembered that he didn't really need it to kill me. Or maybe he'd decided to let me get a word in. "Listen," I said. "I just want to—"
He threw a potion in my face. My mouth had been open, and I choked on an absolutely vile-tasting mess. It was green and oily and globules of it dripped down my chin to land on Billy's necklace. Wonderful. The thing had so many nooks and crannies that I'd probably never get it clean.
When I finally blinked enough of the stuff away that I could see, I found Mircea staring at me, a half-perplexed, half-angry look on his face. "That should have stripped away the glamour," he said, as if talking to himself.
"It probably would have, if I was wearing one!" I said furiously. He disappeared again. "You better hope this doesn't stain!" I yelled at the space where he'd just been, right before an arm fastened around my throat.
"You must be powerful," he whispered, his breath warm in my ear, "for that concoction to have failed."
I shifted out of the almost choke hold and landed behind him. "Will you hold still for one minute?!"
Mircea spun in another movement too fast for my eyes to track and grabbed me around the throat, palm to bare skin. I sighed in relief. "Thank you," I said sincerely, and shifted us before anyone else noticed our game of keep-away.
A moment later, I found myself pinned against a hard, cold brick wall. My body was busy informing me that maybe I'd done a few too many jumps lately, and I'd landed in a puddle and gotten icy slush in my shoe. Not to mention Mircea's grip on my neck, which was a little too tight for comfort.
"Where are we? And who are you?" I couldn't see him very well, but he sounded pissed.
"When are we," I corrected. A thin, whirling snow was falling, catching on my goopy eyelashes. I couldn't see much of anything with his body in the way, but the night was cold and damp, not hot and arid, and there were cobblestones under our feet, not asphalt. And judging from the dizziness I was experiencing, we'd jumped at least a few centuries. "And you know who I am."
"You are not my Cassandra." The tone was flat, hard. Not one I'd ever heard from him, at least not directed at me.
"Then who am I?" I really wished the road would stay still for a minute, long enough for me to get my breath back, to think.
"You are a mage, hiding under a glamour, which if you do not drop" — his hand tightened fractionally—“I will drop it for you."
I swallowed, and felt it against his palm. I wondered how much longer I'd be able to do that, how much tighter that grip had to get before I couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe. It didn't feel like it had far to go, but I couldn't think of a damn thing to say to stop this. The one thing that had never occurred to me was that Mircea would mistake me for one of the people we'd been fighting. Because I knew him, instinctively, unmistakably, I'd just assumed he'd feel the same way.
Obviously I'd been wrong.
I could feel his fingers on my throat, flexing against the muscle there, and I knew I had to say something, do something, now. But I couldn't shift again, not this soon, not with panic and exhaustion eating at my consciousness. And I was sure I'd black out before I could remember something that might convince him to wait a minute before he killed me—
Mircea's hand abruptly fell away and I gasped, little black dots dancing in front of my eyes as my lungs fought with my throat to get enough air into my starved system. I felt his hand grip my chin, knew when he brushed my hair away from my face, but it seemed pretty trivial next to not asphyxiating. Light fingertips trailed over a couple of faint ridges on my throat, stilling directly over bright, sensitive skin.
"Where did you get this?" His voice was faint, but I wasn't sure if that was him or me. My ears were still ringing, whether from the shift or the half-choking thing I wasn't sure. It took me a couple of seconds even to understand what he was talking about. And then I realized why he'd released me, why I probably wasn't going to die tonight—at least not by his hand. I sagged against the cold brick, so relieved I would have laughed, only it would have hurt my throat too much.
"Where?" His voice was stronger now, more insistent; maybe he'd had a chance to recover from the shock. I glared at him, a hand on my abused neck. He could give me the same opportunity.
"Where do you think?" I snapped.
Bite marks were like fingerprints; no two alike. I'd been wearing the mark of his teeth in my flesh for days, like a brand. It was probably the main reason Alphonse and Sal and even the Consul, in her own way, had been so cooperative. And if they'd recognized it, Mircea certainly had.
"It is my mark, yet I did not give it to you."
"Didn't give it to me yet," I corrected. There was no way to hide the fact that I was from his future. His Cassie couldn't shift people through space, much less time. So I'd already given that much away. The trick was not to give anything else.
"Why didn't you tell me? I might have injured you!"
"Might have?"
His touch was back in an instant. Strong fingers wound into my hair, rubbed at the back of my neck, trailed carefully over the healing wound until I couldn't feel it anymore. Not the pain, at least, but the two little bumps remained. They weren't hard, but they were obvious, at least to me. I guess they must have been to him, too, because he bent his head and kissed them, carefully, lightly, lips soft and warm against the tiny scars.
It wasn't a particularly sensual touch, but my body reacted immediately, with a rush of wild adrenaline. For a minute, my fingers clenched in his coat, not caring about the cold or that he smelled like smoke or that I had green goop trickling down my neck.
"They're still there," I said shakily, as he slowly stroked the length of my throat.
"They will always be there," he murmured. "You are mine. They announce the fact to all who see you."
"It's a little more common to get a ring," I said breathlessly. "Not to mention being consulted first!"
"I am a gentleman, dulceata?" he said reprovingly. "I would never enter a lady's house—or head or body—unless she invited me."