Kat gasped. 'You're supposed to have left!' Then, as the words themselves penetrated: 'And damn you! I'm crying for a good man.'
Lucrezia laughed, throwing her handsome head back. 'There's no such thing, girl. Believe me--I've tried them all, from Capuletti to my brother Ricardo.'
Kat gaped, for a long moment, as Lucrezia waited for the sense of that to penetrate, unable to believe what she had actually heard. 'Your b--your brother!?'
Lucrezia smiled lazily, but the smile had a nasty edge. 'Cleopatra slept with hers. He did crawl into my bed when he thought I was too young to understand, but in the end, he was just a man. And I did have my revenge, after all. I've had him killed for it.'
The words, so cool, so unemotional, chilled Kat to the bone.
'And now,' Lucrezia continued, 'I need to kill these two while I still have the strength. Weather magic is wearisome.'
'B-b-but--' Kat was trying to ask why, but the words wouldn't come. By now the Hypatia medal was almost burning her hand. But was that caused by what Luciano was doing, or was it Lucrezia's presence? Or both?
Lucrezia obviously understood what she meant to ask. 'Oh, for many reasons--but among others, it's enough that they are two of the three who ever turned me down. Strange. Those potions you brought me from Ascalon were very effective, you know, and to have them fail so significantly on two occasions, your sweet little boy and that upright priest . . .'
Priest? 'Dottore Marina isn't--'
'I wasn't talking about him. Unfortunately, Luciano disappeared before I had access to those philters. If I'd had them--' she licked her lips, as if she tasted something bitter '--perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion now.'
Rafael, who had been standing ignored on the other side of the room, chose this moment to try to deal with her in a rush. He stopped as if he had hit a wall, paralyzed. Kat's medal enveloped her in warmth.
At Lucrezia's gesture, Rafael dropped the knife and folded, to sprawl before her feet.
Lucrezia shook her head. 'I am far too powerful for little Strega with their little knives. Lie there, little Strega, and watch as your friends die--for I believe that I will allow you to die last of all.'
She turned back to Kat. 'I learned a great deal from the Grand Duke of Lithuania's emissary, you know--in no small part, what not to do. She allowed Chernobog to possess her, in exchange for her beauty and power. I have not made that error.'
'You--' Kat tried to speak.
Lucrezia smiled viciously. 'And oh, my dear little virgin Montescue! Luciano made a most incalculable mistake in allowing you here, for you will make the perfect sacrifice to break the circle of power.'
* * *
Inside the circle, Marco was unaware of all of this. Luciano's words were like the droning of bees as he walked the sevenfold circle. Why seven? Why not three or five or nine? He tried to remember what Brother Mascoli had been teaching him. Seven wasn't a Strega number, though it was pagan. It went back a lot farther than that, to the Romans, or the Etruscans. It felt right, though; each time Luciano completed a circuit, the rest of the room receded a little, the sound from outside faded, and the less important what was outside seemed. He noticed vaguely that someone had come into the room, but--
Well, it just didn't matter.
Marco found himself transported with the words of power; they carried him somewhere else, or perhaps it was that the interior of the circle became somewhere else. The air was not full of incense. Instead it was a smell he knew far better that: the smell of driftwood fires. Of the marsh-reed pollen. Of the delicate scent of water lilies, of marsh-mallow, of sweet-flag blossom. The air glowed with the thick, amber light of the sun cutting through the mist.
Luciano beat on a drum; or was it a drum? It was more like his own heartbeat, but slow, slow, and full of heat. The air thickened until it was as sweet and heavy as honey, and Luciano's voice wasn't chanting words anymore, it was the bees that were droning the chant.
Then came a rumble that built up slowly, and from a distance in the thick air. Thunder?
No--not thunder. A roar. Marco heard a roaring echoing across the marsh, the last great refuge of lions in Europe. But no lion had ever roared like this, no lion he had ever heard of! This roar was thunder in the sky, from a throat like the mouth of a volcano!
