Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance Page A

chair had been pulled up in front of it, which I assumed was for me. I started toward it—which would have worked better if Louis-Cesare had let go of my arm. I looked up to find that the scowl he’d been wearing earlier had taken up permanent residence. It matched the shadow in his eyes, which the gloom had deepened to indigo.
    “You don’t have to do this,” he told me shortly.
    “Like hell she doesn’t!” Marlowe snapped.
    “You
don’t
,” Louis-Cesare reiterated, and Marlowe suddenly went very still.
    That was probably because Louis-Cesare had just made what could have been interpreted as a direct challenge. And it might have, had he so much as glanced Marlowe’s way. But his eyes were on me, and they were serious. I briefly closed mine.
    When I opened them, he was still looking at me, still concerned. Still totally oblivious to the fact that he’d basically just challenged the Senate’s chief spy to a duel. Itwas days like this that made me wonder how, even with his fighting ability, the guy had survived as long as he had.
    He was honest and honorable and ethical and generous, in a culture that was exactly none of those things. That didn’t even value those things, because “good” was a relative term and being a good vampire was to be like Marlowe: cunning, deceitful, ruthless, overwhelming. Or like Mircea: calm, patient, resourceful, relentless. “Kind” wasn’t in the job description; “compassionate” even less so.
    Damn it, the man needed a keeper.
    Yeah, sure he did. A dark-haired, dimpled, dhampir keeper, which wasn’t going to happen, so just
shut up
. Sometimes I didn’t think it mattered what Mircea did in my head, because I was already crazy anyway.
    “It’s like someone invented you just to mess with me,” I said resentfully.
    “Quoi?”
    I sighed. “I’m
fine
,” I said, just wanting to get this over with.
    “I see what you mean,” he told Claire drily, and she blinked at him in what looked like surprise.
    There was no point in stalling, so I walked over and sat down, really glad that I’d had that drink earlier. Even with Claire’s presence leeching the manic energy off my skin, like some kind of supernatural magnet, I was still crawling with it. Any other time, I’d have been crawling the walls, too—or, more likely, punching through them. As it was, I wanted this
done
.
    I cleared my throat. “Okay, so now what?” I asked…Radu, because just that fast everyone else was gone.

Chapter Eight
     
    I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. Or having the lights go out. Or having the room suddenly be replaced by towering glass-covered skyscrapers on one side and rippling dark water on the other.
    First-level masters
, I reminded myself grimly. You never got anywhere underestimating them, and Mircea already knew my brain like the back of his hand. He ought to; he’d basically designed it.
    But at least he hadn’t had any trouble finding the right memory. The ripples frothed against an embankment like lace on a hem. Or maybe a neckline, because a few dozen ships rode the waves, glowing under the moonlight like a string of pearls.
    The wind was fluttering real lace at Radu’s throat and wrists when I looked back at him, and ruffling the long dark hair that he didn’t always keep as tightly confined as his brother did. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, half expecting to hear my voice echo, since we were talking inside my head.
    Radu didn’t answer. He seemed a little preoccupied, possibly because the insanely realistic picture Mircea had conjured up had some holes in it. Literally, I realized, following ’Du’s gaze to where pieces of things—buildings, the far end of a road, whole swaths of the sky—simply weren’t there. The weirdest one was a nearby skyscraper that just disappeared halfway up, like King Kong had passed by and had a snack.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked, gripping his arm.
    “I…Nothing.” He looked a little paler than