Hunt the Moon

worked for had me ready the men for combat. They fought better if they were loose, or so he thought.”

“Lanista?”

“Guy who owned a bunch of gladiators.”

“I thought you were in the army.”

A bushy black eyebrow rose, but he didn’t ask. “I was. Worked and scraped my way up to centurion, just in time to see the empire crumble around me. I was almost dead after a battle, when some men dug me out of the blood and the muck and carried me off. Turns out they worked for a vampire with an entrepreneurial streak, and he liked ex-army.”

He added a little extra pressure, and I moaned, but not because it hurt. That leg felt better now, although it just highlighted how sore the rest of me was. It was like I hadn’t been able to concentrate on all my other aches and pains until the big one got taken care of. And now they were all clamoring for help.

Marco just shook his head at me. “Turn over.”

I turned over, and those big hands got to work on my back. I stifled a whimper in the pillow, because Marco’s idea of a massage bore no resemblance whatsoever to the relaxing spa variety. There was no lavender oil, no soothing music, no hot towels. Just an all-out assault on cramped muscles, until they cowered in surrender and turned to Jell-O.

“Why did this vampire like ex-army?” I gasped after a few minutes, mostly to give myself something else to think about.

“Fortunatus was in the business of providing gladiators for the rich. Politicos who wanted to play up to the crowds, or fat cats trying to outdo each other in private events. The best money came from fights to the death, but it cost him a lot to train a gladiator well enough to put on a good show. Having him die in a death match one of the first times he fought wasn’t good business, even at the prices he charged.”

“So he picked people who were already trained?”

“No, he picked people who were already trained, and then he made ’em vampires. That way, the crowds could watch us ‘die’ over and over, but he didn’t have to constantly replenish his stock. We—” He stopped when I turned over and stared at him. “It was a long time ago.”

“That’s horrible!”

“That’s life. If his men hadn’t seen me on that battlefield, hadn’t decided that a centurion was just what the boss had ordered, I never woulda made it. I almost didn’t anyway. Took him two months to nurse me back to health so he could kill me.”

I swallowed. “I hope you weren’t with him long.”

“A century, give or take.”

“A century?”

“Until the games were outlawed.” Marco pushed me back down and started on my shoulders. “Christianity didn’t approve, maybe ’cause a few too many of their people had ended up in ’em, and not by choice. You know?”

I nodded.

“And once it started to spread, the politicians stopped financing matches, because they started to cost them votes’stead of the other way around. And then the emperor converted and passed a law against it, and while some people still held them illegally, there weren’t enough to make it worth Fortunatus’s time. He traded me to another master who needed a bodyguard, and I just got shuffled around after that.”

“And ended up with Mircea.”

“You know the score. Gotta belong to someone.”

“But you’re a senior master.” I pointed out. “You could have a court of your own, if you wanted.”

“Yeah. And have all the expense and the headaches and the diplomatic shit to deal with, and still have to answer to somebody. Everybody’s the same; can’t wait to move up, to hit fifth or fourth or third level, and strike out on their own. Only to find out the same thing.”

“And what’s that?”

His hands stilled on my back. “That there’s no freedom in our world, Cassie. If I left Mircea, I’d have to ally with some other high-level master in order to survive. And then I’d be dragged into his life, his fights, just like now. Everybody answers to somebody; everybody has restrictions they got to put up with. Even senators. Even Mircea.”

I was starting to see why Marco had been willing to get on this topic. I sighed and buried my head in the pillow. “Even Pythias?”

“Everybody takes orders from somebody,” he repeated. “Mircea takes ’em from the Consul, and believe me, sometimes, he really don’t like it. But he does it.”

I turned over and regarded Marco tiredly. “Yes, and why does he do it?”

Marco frowned. “It’s his job.”

“And she’s his boss, his superior.”

“Yeah.”

“And there’s your answer.”

“There’s what answer?”

I sighed. “Mircea does what the Consul orders because he’s her servant.”

“Yes?”

“But I am not his.”

I got up and went to the bathroom.

Of course, Marco followed. “You are not his.”

“His girlfriend, yes. His servant, no. I can’t be and do my job.”

“You’ve done it pretty well so far. What the hell do you think Mircea’s gonna ask you to do?”

“I don’t know. But that’s not the point, is it?” I started running hot water in the tub.

“Then what is the point?”

“That he can ask whatever he wants. I’ll probably even do it most of the time. I’d have done it last night, if it had been a request. I’d had the day from hell; I really didn’t want to go anywhere. But it wasn’t a request; it was an order. And if I start taking orders from a senator—any senator—I may as well forget having anyone take me seriously.”

“The Consul takes Mircea seriously.”

“As a valued servant, yes. But she knows that, when she pushes, he’ll do what she wants. He owes his job to her, so he can never be truly impartial. But I have to be, or the Circle will ignore me as a vampire pawn, and the Senate will ignore me because they can order me around, and it’ll be . . . the Tony Syndrome all over again. And I won’t live like that. I just won’t!”

Marco sat down on the side of the tub, making the porcelain creak. “What’s the Tony Syndrome?”

Somebody had restocked the bath salts, and I threw half the jar into the water. “Most seers see both sides of life,” I told him. “They see the baby somebody has been hoping for, or the long-overdue promotion, or the love of their life, right around the corner. It helps balance out the bad stuff, the stuff nobody wants to see. The earthquakes and the bomb plots and the fires and the car crashes. But I never had that balance. I don’t see the good stuff. I never did.”

“That’s rough.”

“It’s . . . exhausting. It’s depressing. It keeps you from enjoying a lot of life because, even when you’re having a good day, suddenly you’ll see someone else’s pain, someone else’s grief. And the record scratches, you know?”

He nodded.

“Eventually, I learned how not to see things. But for a long time, I didn’t have that ability. The only way I could deal was by telling myself that the stuff I saw was in the future, and that maybe some of it could be averted. That maybe I could change things, at least for a few people. And Tony promised me he’d get the word out.”

“And he lied.”

“Of course he lied. But I was a kid and I believed him, maybe because I wanted to believe him. When I finally figured it out and confronted him, he just shrugged and told me that there was more profit in tragedy.”

“That sounds like that fat little weasel.” Marco regarded me narrowly. “You’re saying you expect the Senate to go around averting tragedies?”