Then I realized that I wasn't the one she was worried about.

"Remove it!" Mircea had stopped short of the table, and although his face was impassive, his fists were clenched at his sides. Not a good sign on someone who normally controlled himself so well. The other vamps seemed to agree. They weren't looking at me—every eye was riveted on him.

"Mircea." The Consul walked up behind him and placed a smooth bronze-skinned hand on his shoulder. It looked like it was meant as a calming gesture, but he shrugged it off. The circle of vamps drew in a collective breath, and the southern belle actually gasped. The Consul's hand quickly became an arm around his throat, but it was as if he didn't even notice. "I suggest you heed him," she told me. I noticed that, despite her grip, Mircea was making slow progress forward, if only by inches. "What do you hope to gain by allowing this to continue?”

"Allowing what to continue?" I looked from her to Mircea in mounting confusion, only to see his calm facade slip a little more. I didn't need her to tell me that something was wrong. His face was as white as bone, but his eyes burned like two candles.

"This has gone on long enough," the Consul agreed. "Release him, and we will discuss matters amicably. Otherwise...”

"Otherwise what?" I might not understand what was happening, but I knew a threat when I heard one.

"I will let go," she said quietly. "Then we will see if you can deal with the results of your revenge. We have been doing it long enough." The dark eyes flashed, and I suddenly understood how she'd dominated an empire when only a teenager. "I need him, Cassandra! We are at war. I cannot have him like this, not now.”

"Cassie ..." Mircea had somehow managed to lift his right arm, despite the fact that a Senate member almost as old as the Consul was hanging off it. Tendrils of sensation radiated outward from his hand like smoke from a fire. At first I thought he was just leaking power, but then one wisp brushed against me and I understood. It felt like one of my old visions, the kind in which I saw flashes of the future. They had been absent since my run-in with the Pythia, and I had wondered whether they were gone for good. I'd half hoped so. They had been a part of me for as long as I could remember, but they'd never shown me anything good. This was no exception.

A fragment of vision curled around my arm despite my best attempt to dodge it. It was so hot that I expected to see a welt rise on my skin. What I got instead was worse—a mosaic of images, each more cruel than the last: a blood-covered Mircea battling for his life in a swordfight almost too fast to see; a triumphant-looking Myra running from the shadows to throw something at him; an explosion that was more felt than heard, reverberating through the ground and tearing the air; and then, where two elegant fighters had been, a sodden mass of flesh and bone gleaming slick and red in low light, so mixed up that it was impossible to tell where one body began and the other ended.

I screamed and jerked away, causing the scene to shatter. I stumbled backward, too desperate to get away from the images to worry about dignity. I stared around frantically, but most of the vamps were still fixated on Mircea. A few spared me a puzzled glance, but none looked as if they had seen anything unusual, much less the gory death of one of their senior members. But there was no doubt in my mind what I'd witnessed. Somewhere, somewhen, Myra had succeeded.

It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice cubes into my stomach. My visions always came true—always. I'd tried to change the outcome of things before, especially when I was younger. I'd gone to Tony numerous times to report upcoming disasters, believing him when he swore he would do everything in his power to stop them. But, of course, the only thing he'd ever done was to figure out how to profit from them. And, in the end, everything had always happened exactly as I'd foreseen. The same held true for a vision I'd seen as an adult, when I tried to warn a friend of his impending assassination. I didn't know whether he'd received the message or not, but it hadn't mattered. He still died.

But all that was before I became Pythia, or, at least, her heir. I had changed things since then, hadn't I? And, if Myra had won, why was Mircea still here?

I finally focused on the Consul. I needed answers and Mircea was in no shape to give them to me. "What is going on? Is this a trick?" Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't. I'd had enough visions to know the real thing when I felt it.

The Consul's eyes narrowed to slits. "Do you play with me?" she demanded, so quietly that I hardly heard her.

I looked down at Tomas and drew in a sharp breath. I wasn't the one playing here. "I want Tomas," I said, more unsteadily than I liked. "You obviously want something, too. Tell me what it is and maybe we can make a trade.”

"You don't know." I finally saw emotion cross that lovely face. It was surprise.

Tomas made a small sound and I lost it. "Just tell me!" The vision had shattered my nerves, and I didn't feel like chatting while Tomas slowly bled out.

The Consul took a breath, which she didn't need, and nodded. "Very well. Remove the geis you placed on Lord Mircea, and I will give you the traitor.”

I goggled at her. "What?" Somewhere along the line, I'd missed something. "The only geis around here is the one he put on me! It's been causing me hell.”

"Hell?" Mircea laughed abruptly, but it was mirthless. "What do you know of hell?" He tore free of his living restraints and dropped to the floor. Two vamps dove under the table after him, but I never saw how close they came. All I know is, it wasn't close enough. I was suddenly crushed against a hard chest. "Try mine," he whispered before catching my lips in a bruising kiss.

The punch of his emotions came clearly through the geis, hitting me like a kick to the stomach. The same energy that arced between us whenever we met thrummed through Mircea, only it had grown. This was no vague frisson of passion. The craving had lain smoldering, waiting for the proper fuel, and now it ignited into a roaring blaze. It was like drowning in a river of molten lava. I felt it in his veins for an instant, pleasure as sharp as pain, before it poured into mine in a scalding wash of desire. I felt myself flounder, falling into heat, falling away from thought to a place that was all-consuming sensation. Fire. Sweet fire.

The kiss was hard and brutal, as if he would eat me alive. There was nothing gentle about it, nothing romantic. And it was just what I wanted. My hands closed convulsively on his shoulders, my nails digging into his coat. His mouth was relentless on mine, fierce and insistent, and a hard hand slid behind my head to hold me in place. One of his fangs nicked me and I tasted my own blood. He made a strangled cry and pulled back, his eyes wild, his face beautifully feral.

His tongue darted out to taste my blood on his lips; then his eyes closed and he shuddered. I ripped open his collar and his head tilted, almost blindly, towards the ceiling, giving me better access. My hands tore at his shirt, popping buttons, while my tongue and lips slid down the cords of his neck. My palms traced the contours of his chest and trailed along his ribs, reveling in the fact that his breath quickened under my touch. I kissed a path across the taut skin and hard muscle to a nipple, and when I bit down, he let out what was almost a scream. I knew how he felt—the energy between us sang in time with the throbbing of my pulse and I felt like I could combust at any moment.

Mircea pushed me against the sandstone wall of the chamber, but I was held there more by the physical impact of those fire-lit eyes than by the body pressing against mine. I looped a leg around one of his and slid a hand to the nape of his neck, molding myself to him. His hands dropped below my waist and lifted, and I gasped as his arousal pressed full against me. He was large and hard and it felt wonderful, but I wanted more. It seemed that he did, too, because he gasped my name in between savage, hard kisses, ran a hand through my hair and over my face, cursed in Romanian and generally forgot about dignity. I wasn't doing any better myself, making inarticulate demands whenever I could catch a breath.

I found myself straddling one of his legs, my thigh tight against his groin. Even through our clothes, the sensation was unbelievable: a combination of raw pleasure and yearning hunger. But then he wrenched away, abruptly putting inches between us. His expression was desperate and he looked almost ill, as if racked by the same need that tormented me. Yet, when I reached for him, uncomprehending, he flinched away as if my touch was painful.

Immediately the geis showed both of us what pain really was, flaring into a white-hot heat. Pain beyond imagination slammed into me, ripping from my throat scream after scream that all but shredded my vocal cords. The blood burned under my skin until I thought I would die from unfulfilled need. Hot tears fell over my cheeks onto Mircea's hands as he gripped my face, trying to calm me. But nothing helped; the pain was literally unbearable. My knees gave out when the screams stopped spearing me upward, and Mircea caught me as I sagged against him.

"Mircea! Please ..." I didn't know what I was asking for, only that he make it stop, make it better. I closed the small distance between us and kissed him desperately. I had a few seconds to delight in the familiar warmth of his mouth and the clean scent of his flesh before he jerked back.

"Cassie, no!" It sounded tight, like he was forcing the word out. He put both hands on my upper arms, holding me away from him, but they trembled, and the strong column of his throat worked in a silent swallow. He was fighting the geis, I finally realized, but I couldn't help him. His hands moved up to cradle my head, smoothing my hair. The pain and pleasure together were devastating. My body was wracked by alternating surges of agony and ecstasy, and my pulse roared so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear.

Just when I thought I would tip over the brink into insanity, the energy flared and reformed into something completely new—a sparkling brilliance, like water under a desert sun. It broke over us like a tidal wave, and the pain was simply gone. In its place was an overwhelming sense of relief, followed by a rush of pure joy. I saw the astonishment in Mircea's eyes as it broke over him, too.