Daisani smiled, humor warping his memories. He said, “Holy water,” aloud, but his thoughts made mockery of the idea. Holy or not, salt or fresh, it made no difference. Submersion held his people in stasis, just as earth comforted their bones as they rested. Wood thrust through the heart stopped their bodies and their thoughts, and iron held them against any chance of tearing free should stakes disintegrate without being replaced. The holy men of any faith would keep their secret charges, thinking all the while that the vampires were vanquished, dead to the world and all time. No one, no one at all, knew the vampires were the only true immortals.
The modern world crashed back into existence around Margrit, Ursula’s furious shrieks splitting the air in time to the crackling of fire. Janx, with utter disgust, slapped Daisani aside and imploded back to his human form to stand over the damaged vampire. Scorn laced his beautiful voice. “I had thought better of you, old friend. I had thought you were a survivor, not a traitor. Your own people, all but murdered, for the sake of walking alone yourself.”
“For walking safe myself.” Daisani spoke without a hint of repentance, but his voice was shockingly weak. “Tell me you would do no less, should your people waken from their slumbers.” He coughed and slumped, an arm wrapped around his middle.
Margrit strained to see through smoke and fire, remembering that the dragon had skewered the vampire more than once. Even Janx hadn’t easily walked away from lesser injuries, and for all that Daisani’s memories claimed immortality for his people, she thought she could hear his labored breathing over the sounds of the fire.
Alban answered her unspoken question: “Immortal, perhaps, but not undamageable. I wonder if he might yet die.” There was sorrow and censure in the words, as though he regretted the loss of a friend, but thought the loss might be greater in living than in death.
Janx turned away from Daisani with all the grace at his command, very much the picture of a sovereign leaving an unworthy subject to suffer whatever indignities might befall him. Daisani, clearly drawing on all the strength he had left, came to his feet and watched the dragonlord go, a mixture of anger and injury written across his features.
“You are free of your favor to me.” Janx paused by Margrit, his gaze fixed ahead. “You have more than brought my rival low, and none amongst the Old Races would dispute that he is unworthy to walk among us. Tony Pulcella’s life is yours. Goodbye, Margrit Knight.” He stalked past her gracefully, then stopped at the doorway, looking back toward Kate Hopkins.
She cast a desperate glance at him, then at Ursula, who stared at Eliseo Daisani as though he had betrayed her personally. After a few seconds, as if sensing her sister’s gaze, Ursula looked up and offered Kate a brief, sad smile.
Kate bolted across the room to hug her, then darted after Janx, stopping just long enough to shoot a quick smile of her own toward Margrit. Then the pair of them left together, leaving burning memories behind.
Daisani collapsed. For all her anger, Ursula let go a low cry and jolted forward, then stopped herself, expression going hard. Alban touched Margrit’s shoulder, inviting her away, and she looked from the vampire to the gargoyle and back again.
“Do you really think it’s so awful?” To her surprise, she could hear herself over the flames. “He betrayed them and left himself to walk free, but isn’t that better than nobody being left to know where they were? Nobody being left to know how to free them? And he was right, the world was changing.” She was walking through the fire without a conscious decision to do so, kneeling at the vampire’s side in the midst of an inferno. “What if they couldn’t restrain themselves? What if he was right, and he was the only one who could make a choice that hard?”
“Margrit.” Alban’s voice held warning and despair.
She looked up with a helpless smile. “Since when have I played favorites, Alban? You’ve all needed help in one way or another. I’ve given it, if I could. Daisani’s saved my life, and I’ve repaid him with this.” She gestured to the burning apartment and realized for the first time that the smoke didn’t seem to be clogging her lungs. Another gift from the vampire, or maybe the dragon if his blood had, in fact, mingled with hers. Margrit pushed the thought away, only distantly curious about it, and spoke to Alban again. “Maybe he won’t die, but he’s sure as hell not healthy, and it’s not like we can leave him here for the police or fire department to find. Go on. Get out of here before the cops do get here. I’ll be right behind you.”
“I am not leaving you.”
“You’d better.” Tony Pulcella’s hoarse voice came from the doorway. He stepped inside, holding a hand up against the heat, the other covering his mouth as he coughed. “All of you. It’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to explain a building fire if there aren’t a handful of people standing around like potential arsonists. And you can’t afford to be in custody when the sun comes up,” he reminded Alban sharply.
Margrit, as much as the gargoyle, stared at the police detective without comprehension. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you were on your way here. I didn’t know you’d be busy destroying the place, but I thought I’d better come over even before I saw the fire. Go,” he said more urgently, gesturing to Alban. “Margrit’s right. You can’t be here.”
Alban closed his hands into fists. “Margrit…”
Memory flashed through her again, Hajnal’s near death on a rainy Paris night, and Alban’s reluctant agreement to abandon her to dawn and stone. “I know, Alban. I know. I’ll be right behind you, I promise. Get Tony out of here, too. He can’t see what’s about to happen.”
No one saw a vampire’s natural form and lived to tell of it. The warning haunted her, but before any more arguments could be made, she bent her head over Daisani’s shuddering form, and offered him her throat.
An image stood out in her mind. The last image, she imagined, that she would ever see. It was dramatic: a slim, dapper man standing before a wall of fire, looking down at her. Despite the fire, she was freezing, as though all the warmth had been drained from her body. Even her heartbeat seemed sluggish, as though there were nothing left to push. She’d felt that way once before, very recently, when her blood had spilled out on a concrete floor, taking her life with it.
Clarity brightened everything for an instant, letting her understand that the same thing had happened again. Nearly the same thing: this time she had chosen to buy one life with her own. Daisani crouched at her side, murmuring under the crackle of flame. “I will not see you again, Margrit Knight. You had best pray for all your days, however long they may be, that I will not see you again. Eliseo Daisani is dead, thanks to you, and the only reason you do not follow him to the grave is this act of grace you have offered. Live with that, if you can survive the fire.”
Margrit nodded, a flimsy motion that stole what strength she had left. Her eyes drifted closed, Daisani’s image dancing behind her eyelids for a little while before it faded.
Liquid brushed across her lips, so sticky she tried to wipe it off. She couldn’t: as before, her muscles were watery. Licking it away was a compulsive reaction, her body working without command from her mind. Iron’s tang was drowned by sugar, so sweet she gagged before involuntary swallowing overrode the weak attempt to spit up.
For a brief eternity there was nothing.
Then life came roaring back in, a surge that rolled her onto her hands and knees, coughing and spitting against too much smoke inhalation. Heat said the fire was behind her. Margrit crawled away, trembling with effort, and collapsed outside Daisani’s apartment door. Cool air rushed to fill her lungs and she heaved for it, trying to clear her mind.
“Margrit.” Tony put a hand on her shoulder, then pushed her back to sit on her heels, keeping her upright with his own strength. He was blackened with soot, sweat making lines through it. “Grit, I couldn’t get back in there to go after you—”