I hugged myself. "No." There was a time when I'd trusted Tomas, at least as much as I did anyone, lusted after him, and maybe even loved him a little. But that had been the man in my imagination, not the real thing. I felt now like I saw a stranger when I looked at him. I didn't want those hands on me. Besides, he had invaded my mind once on Senate orders. If commanded, I had no doubts he would do it again.
"Then Louis-César, perhaps? He is handsome. Would you prefer him?" Mircea sounded a little strangled, and I think for some reason he liked that idea even less than me being with Tomas. Perhaps because the Frenchman was a full Senate member, with equal status. Did he think I'd fall head over heels for the first guy I had sex with, and run off to Europe? If so, he didn't know me as well as he thought.
"No." I didn't want a man I barely knew, whose touch had sent me into a nightmare twice already, anywhere near me.
"Then perhaps Raphael? He looks on you as a daughter, as you know, but he would do this for you, if you prefer." I shook my head. I wouldn't put Raphael or myself through that. I wouldn't be with someone who would look on the whole thing as a chore to be endured. Mircea spread his hands. "That was my assumption as well. So you see where we are. If you turn all of us down, the Consul will appoint one of her servants to deal with the matter, and that I do not think you would enjoy. There are no other alternatives. Your abilities are too important. The power cannot be allowed to pass to someone else simply because I have not had time to court you properly."
I arched an eyebrow at him. "And what do you get out of it, Mircea? Just security? Or did the Consul agree to honor your claim if this goes well? Do you want to use me, too?"
Mircea let out a long sigh. "No one controls the Pythia, Cassie. If the power does come to you, I will not be able to hold you. I always knew that."
"Then why shield me all these years? Why do it now?" Mircea was right; I did know how vamp politics worked. He had spent a lot of time and energy protecting me, and I doubted it was simply to obtain a clairvoyant for his court.
Especially not if, once I became Pythia, he would lose control of my gift. There was more going on here than he had told me.
He did not look happy, but he answered. His usual, laughing mask had gone, replaced by a stark, pain-filled expression. "You understand what it is to lose family, dulceaţă. So perhaps you can appreciate what it means to me that only Radu remains of all my kin, and he… I told you what was done to him."
"Yes."
"What I did not tell you, for I rarely speak of it and you were only a child, is that he suffers still. Every night when he wakens, it is as if it were all being done anew. They broke him, dulceaţă, in mind, body and spirit. Even now, hundreds of years after his torturers are dead, he cries out in agony at their whips and brands. Every night, a thousand torments are revisited on him, again and again." Mircea's eyes were suddenly old and terribly sad; they told me that it had not been only Radu who had suffered. "I have thought of killing him many times to spare him, but I cannot. He is all I have. But I no longer believe that one night he will awaken from his nightmare."
"I'm sorry, Mircea." I resisted the impulse to go to him, to stroke his messy hair and comfort him. It was too soon for that. Years of experience had taught me to find out the whole story before offering sympathy. "But I don't see what this has to do with me."
"You are going to Carcassonne."
It took a moment for me to make the connection, and even then it didn't make sense. "You freed Radu from the Bastille."
"In 1769, yes. But a century earlier, he was not there. He was held and tortured for many years at Carcassonne." He said the name as if it was an invective, which to him it probably was. "Do you know the Pythia's alternate title, Cassie?" I numbly shook my head. "She is called the Guardian of Time. You are my best chance, my only chance. But if the Pythia dies and you lose your borrowed power because you were not yet a fit vessel to hold it, I will lose the only window on time I have ever found."
Things clarified. "The Consul promised you a chance to help Radu. That is your payment for having me solve their little problem."
He inclined his head. "She agreed to allow me to make up the third of our group. I will be going with you when next you shift. While you and Tomas stop the attempt on Louis-César, I will rescue my brother." Mircea's eyes were somber but utterly serious. I knew in that minute that, while he might not force me himself, he would stand aside and watch someone else do it. He might not like it, but he would like even less leaving Radu to his fate. I wanted to hate him for it, but I couldn't. It was part pity—I couldn't imagine what it had been like, caring for someone for hundreds of years who was dangerously insane, watching him torment himself day after day and being able to do absolutely nothing about it. But it was more that: despite having every reason to do so, Mircea had not lied. He was right; I could forgive almost anything but that.
"How do you know we're even going back there again?" If he was going to be honest with me, the least I could do was to return the favor. "I don't have the same apprehension or fear or whatever it was around Louis-César anymore. And when he carried me away from Dante's, nothing happened. For all I know the power has already passed, or it might choose to take me somewhere else."
"We believe that Rasputin will try for him that night, the one you have visited twice now, because it was then that Louis-César was changed. You did not know that my brother made him, did you?"
"I thought Tomas said he was cursed."
Mircea shook his head. "I do not know where he heard that, Cassie. Perhaps he believes it because Louis-César did not know what it was to have a master. Like me, he had to make his own way with little guidance. Because my brother was imprisoned, Louis-César's birth was not recorded until long after the fact. By the time any other master knew of his existence and might have tried to claim him, he was too powerful. Radu bit him for the first time the night you were there, after the jailers left them alone together in an attempt to terrorize our Frenchman. Radu called him back the two nights afterwards until he changed. Perhaps he was trying to gain a servant who could release him."
"So why didn't he?"
Mircea looked at me with some surprise. "You do not know who Louis-César was?"
I shook my head, and he smiled slightly. "I will leave him to tell you the story. Suffice it to say, he was not free to move about for a long time, and by the time he was, Radu had been moved and he could not find him. In any case, all Rasputin would have to do to eliminate our Louis-César is to stake him before the third bite; kill him when he is yet human and helpless and he will never have to fight him."
"He could kill him in his cradle even easier, or when he was a kid. You don't know it'll be then."
Mircea shook his head emphatically. "We believe that your gift has been showing you where the problem lies, where someone is attempting to alter the time line. Why else would you keep going back there? In any case, the records on Louis-César's early life are scant. The first time Rasputin can be sure where to find him is when he changed. It is on record, along with the peculiar circumstances of his masterlessness. He won't take a chance on something so important. He will try for him where he knows he will be. I know where they held Radu, Cassie. It will be a matter of a few moments to free him."
"And can you tell me the exact date his mind gave way? A city surrounds that castle, Mircea. I won't help you turn a mad killer loose on them."