And suddenly, with the rush of relief came a wave of understanding. Whatever his earlier ambivalence in New York, Travis now wanted the sword enough to have followed him here. And Dante didn’t underestimate the difficulties involved in long-distance vampire travel. In fact, when he’d left the note for Travis, it had been intended as a polite dismissal rather than an invitation, to show him in a placating sort of way—after all, he was a vampire—that negotiations were over.
Dante felt his shoulders straightening, and the lost smile reforming on his lips. “Travis, my friend. What a welcome surprise. I have a slightly different proposition for you now, but I know you’ll like this one too.”
“What about Josh?” Elizabeth said suddenly, as they settled into the connecting flight at Zurich airport. She’d spent most of the transatlantic crossing asleep, as if the excitement and sleeplessness of the last several days had finally caught up with her. She’d slept curled into Saloman’s shoulder, although a couple of times she’d woken sprawled across his chest, as if clinging to him in sleep because the New York couple fantasy was about to end.
In Budapest, where Saloman had first seduced her, also resided her friends the vampire hunters, who would tolerate no alliance, let alone an affair, with the vampire who had defeated them in St. Andrews and eluded capture on two occasions since; who had drunk from Konrad as well as Elizabeth. And killed neither, she reminded them in her head, as if pleading his case. There would be no opportunity for that.
A Hungarian vampire now had the sword, and he would give it to Saloman. Elizabeth had to decide what to do about that. Loving him, and understanding the lonely, vulnerable side of him that missed the cousin he’d eventually killed, she wanted him to have it. But she couldn’t allow the massive increase to his power that it would bring. What chance would humanity have then? Already, apart from America, he had almost the entire vampire community at his beck and call; more slowly but no less surely he was building wealth and influence in the human world. She had no idea how it would eventually occur, whether he planned to keep his kingdoms separate or use one to rule the other, whether he planned to rule humans covertly through puppet leaders, or to engineer some violent coup. Neither was acceptable. But with the additional power of the sword, surely either was increasingly possible.
She would have to give the sword to the hunters for safekeeping, to hide it forever from all vampires. And from Josh.
And as her cousin entered her head, she wondered what the hell to do with him in Budapest. And ridiculously, she spoke aloud to Saloman, whom she was planning to betray again, because she couldn’t shake the recently formed habit of alliance with him.
“What do you want to do with him?” Saloman inquired, not even troubling to watch as Josh took his seat farther up the plane.
“Well, we can’t have him blundering about Budapest demanding the sword back. If Dante doesn’t kill him, one of the vampires will. A descendant who’s also your enemy is a desirable kill, and he has no protection whatsoever.”
“Give him to your hunters.”
Elizabeth glanced at him uncertainly. It was the obvious answer, of course, but it meant an early visit, which she wasn’t quite ready for. And he must have understood that without being told. He always understood too much. Deflecting his perception from herself, she spoke challengingly inside his head. You’ve given up on killing Josh?
The hunters can’t protect him from me.
How safe are the hunters? The question tumbled out to him only because she couldn’t stop it. Konrad, as a descendant of Tsigana’s partner in crime, was valuable to him, as was the propaganda value of killing a hunter. On the night of the battle in St. Andrews, she’d violently stopped him from finishing Konrad off, and later, in closeness, she’d pleaded for the hunter’s life and been granted it. She’d understood then that he spared all three hunters because she asked it. But how far would that promise stretch if she stole his sword?
The dangerous, alien being at her side was totally unpredictable. She’d always known that. He could make love to her exquisitely one night and kill her the following morning without seeing anything wrong in either. If she was honest—and she tried to be—his very strangeness added to her fascination; the very real risk brought addictive excitement. But just occasionally, like now, these points were rammed home with all the force of a hunter’s stake to the heart, and the fear took her breath away, curling around her stomach and gripping until she wondered how she’d ever borne him to touch her.
Until he touched her again, as he did now, threading his fingers through hers between the seats, and then she melted once more.
As safe as they need to be. The hunters chose their own path. But as I told you, decisions can be changed and new choices made.
She closed her eyes, letting her head fall back on the seat as the familiar pain and longing welled up. A choice to stay with him. Unthinkable. And yet how easy had it been in New York? There was more too, a knowledge that had been struggling for recognition since the fight in Travis’s gambling club, one she still refused to look at.
“I chose to protect Josh,” she said quietly, “and he didn’t choose any of this stuff.”
“Then keep him with you.”
Chapter Fifteen
As it turned out, there was no difficulty keeping Josh by her side when they arrived in Budapest. Having ignored them for most of the long, exhausting journey, he attached himself to them at baggage claim and clung like the proverbial limpet. Elizabeth, torn between her desire to stay with Saloman and her duty to steal from him, between her wish to see Mihaela and the hunters and her need to protect Josh, wrestled with her conscience until they walked into the front hall of the airport and Saloman went to arrange pickup of the hired car he’d ordered.
Then, with a distinct feeling of sacrifice, she began, “Josh, I’ll take you to friends of mine—”
“Is he coming?”
“God, no.”
“He’s going to get the sword from his friend.”
Elizabeth grasped his arm and shook it until he looked at her. “Josh, he won’t give you the sword. And despite its connection with your father, you really, really don’t want it. You and I both had a glimpse of its power. I know you didn’t believe it then, but you’ve seen things since then, things that must make you realize that sword is more than it seems.”
The cold disdain with which he’d regarded her since entering the departure lounge slipped slightly as he scanned her face. Perhaps her earnestness was finally getting through to him.
“Josh, my friends can explain all this so much better than I can. You probably think I lied to you—”
“I know you lied to me. The man who jumped through the roof at Travis’s was him.”
There was no way of knowing whether Josh had also clocked him as a vampire. Elizabeth said ruefully, “Yes, but Adam Simon isn’t really his name. I’m sorry; I was playing with words to keep you as far out of this mess as I could. I should have known that was a lost cause. But you must see that you can’t have the sword back now. Every fiend in hell and on earth would fight to take it from you, and shit, Josh, the sword was Saloman’s. There’s no way you can keep it from him, not on your own.”
Some of that penetrated his stubbornness. His eyes grew thoughtful, a serious frown marring his brow.
“Come with me?” she pleaded.
Then, as Saloman came to stand silently beside her, Josh’s gaze shifted to him and hardened. “He knows where the sword is. I’m going with him.”
“By all means,” Saloman said graciously, waving the car keys in his hand. “Let us all visit Dmitriu. He will be charmed.”
Elizabeth closed her lips. “Dmitriu’s in Budapest? Dmitriu took the sword? My God, Dante got so close. . . .”
“Dante could not trouble Dmitriu,” Saloman said with a hint of pride that made Elizabeth want to laugh or hug him or both. “Not even with hunters at his back. Shall we go and find my car?”
As they piled into the large ca
r whose windows were inevitably blacked out, Saloman laid his documents on the dashboard and put the key in the ignition. Elizabeth, in the front seat beside him, waited until they were clear of the airport and onto the main road into the city before she reached out and picked up his driving license.
It was an empty wallet.
Saloman smiled at the road.
“You don’t have one, do you?” she murmured in Hungarian.
“No, but it’s easy to make anyone who looks at it see what I want them to.” Under her astonished eyes, the blank wallet suddenly looked like a Hungarian driver’s license in the name of Adam Simon.
She blinked until it showed blank once more and then, with a sigh, tossed it back on the dashboard. “Is your passport like that too?”
“Oh, no, it’s perfectly legal. I paid for it.”
“Congratulations.” She gave in. “All right. Where did you learn to drive?”
“In a disused industrial estate,” he said. “I used to race the local hooligans in their stolen cars.”
“Where does your friend live?” Josh’s voice interrupted from the back.
“Dmitriu? He has a secluded penthouse in the city,” Saloman said so blandly that Elizabeth knew there was some joke. She “got” it immediately when Saloman drew up outside a disused warehouse near the river.
“Your friend lives here?” Josh said, as he got out and gazed up at the ugly building, with its broken windows and the graffiti of several decades. For the first time, he actually looked daunted. “How the hell can he keep anything safe here? Let alone a priceless antique!”
“You’d be surprised,” Saloman said, closing the car door with a casual swing and leading the way into the building.
Elizabeth touched Josh’s arm. “Dmitriu is a vampire,” she said quietly, and when Josh’s head jerked around in panic, she added hastily, “He won’t attack you. Trust me, I wouldn’t lead us into another mess like Travis’s. I know this city a little better than New York.” And we’re under the protection of the strongest vampire of them all.
Saloman led them through the bare, empty building, picking his graceful way over the rubble and broken glass to a dirty stone staircase. They began to climb.
“You’ve brought company,” a voice observed from the top. He spoke in English, which meant he’d recognized Elizabeth. Although she and Josh both paused and glanced upward from instinct, Saloman merely smiled, continuing to climb with long, steady strides.
“Only the best,” he said to Dmitriu. “I hope you’ve cleaned up.”
It seemed he had. Although the windows were all boarded, someone had painted bright, swirling pictures on them. There was even a thick rug on the swept wooden floor, and a comfortable dark leather sofa. An incongruously pretty glass shade covered the dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and spreading a curiously cozy glow around this part of the bleak, grim building.
“Dmitriu, let me present your guests,” Saloman said graciously. “Josh Alexander from America; and Elizabeth Silk, I believe you’ve already met.”
Dmitriu didn’t offer to shake hands, for which Josh looked heartily grateful, but merely inclined his head and shoulders in the sort of old-fashioned bow he might once have exchanged with his social equals.
“And, Miss Silk,” he said smoothly, in his precise English, according her a similar bow, “I am, of course, delighted to see you again. Please make yourselves comfortable.”
As they passed him, moving in the vague direction of the sofa, Dmitriu addressed Saloman in Hungarian. “Two descendants? You brought dinner for me too?”
“Dmitriu,” Saloman scolded at once. “Have you forgotten Elizabeth is proficient in Hungarian as well as Romanian?”
Of course he hadn’t. He’d said it deliberately to provoke some kind of reaction. Dmitriu, she suspected, did that a lot: dropped the hunters a piece of information to see what they’d do with it; sent the skeptical academic to Saloman’s crypt, pressed a thorn in her hand to see if she bled all over his tomb to wake him; turned up to do battle at Saloman’s side after the Ancient had discovered his betrayal, to see if Saloman killed or welcomed him.
Elizabeth cast him a brief, sardonic glance, looking him straight in his dark, gleaming eyes.
“The sword.” Josh gasped, distracting everyone. He started toward the sofa, where lay the long, golden sword. Elizabeth, struck afresh by its beauty, almost forgot to breathe. After two swift paces, Josh halted, remembering, no doubt, that he couldn’t touch the sword with impunity. Dmitriu brushed past him and lifted the weapon with a casualness that seemed plain wrong.
“Here,” he said negligently, and threw it to Saloman. It cut through the air with a whiz, close enough to Elizabeth that she felt the displaced air ruffle her hair. Light sparkled on the blade and the glinting golden hilt as it flew, to land squarely in Saloman’s reaching hand.
Oh, yes, there was some huge, untapped power in the sword. It seemed to electrify Elizabeth’s spine.
Saloman’s fingers closed around the hilt like the hand of an old friend.
“Thank you,” he said mildly, but his fingers showed white where they gripped it, and as he turned away, swiping the air with one clean, graceful stroke, Elizabeth’s heart ached for him. For the first time that she could remember, his shoulders looked tense and rigid. He would have given a lot to be alone.
Do vampires weep?
She hadn’t meant him to hear the stray thought, but after the faintest pause he replied, Yes. But I won’t.
He turned back to face them, lowering the point of the blade to the floor while he looked at Dmitriu. “Thank you. Now I have another favor to ask.”
Dmitriu sighed, waving one resigned hand. “Ask and it’s yours.”
“Look after Tsigana’s descendants for me.” His lips twitched. “That means they eat. You don’t.”
Josh made a noise somewhere deep in his throat and coughed to cover it.
“I remember the days when you used to be fun,” Dmitriu complained. He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter; I’ve eaten already.”
“Ignore them,” Elizabeth said to Josh. “It’s their perverse sense of humor.” And then, looking at Saloman, she demanded, “Where are you going?”
“To lay a false trail. And to do a little urgent business.” He walked toward her. “First, come here.”
She took one curious pace forward, and he lifted the sword between them before coming to a halt almost toe-to-toe with her.
“Give me your hands.”
“No!” Josh exclaimed, starting toward them before he came to an abrupt halt, stopped, it seemed, by the repulsion in Saloman’s eyes. “It hurt her before!”
“I know,” said Saloman, turning his gaze back to Elizabeth and waiting. Slowly, Elizabeth raised her hands. Holding the sword in one hand, he took Elizabeth’s right and began to speak low, incomprehensible words as he laid it on the hilt, covered entirely by his own larger hand. Although Elizabeth imagined some enormous power vibrating through the weapon, there was no pain, no sense of burning, no vision.
Without taking his gaze from her, Saloman took her left hand and clasped it also to the sword hilt, still intoning the foreign, half-familiar words that made no sense. Elizabeth’s throat constricted, because he was doing this; he was allowing her to touch the sword with impunity. He was trusting her.
Saloman stepped back. His hands fell away, leaving her to support the weight of the huge weapon.
“It was you,” Josh said hoarsely. “It was you I saw in the vision.”
Saloman didn’t spare him a glance. Elizabeth couldn’t. Held by Saloman’s dark, burning eyes, she was drowning in love and gratitude and the pain of a new betrayal she hadn’t yet committed.
She swallowed, slowly bringing the heavy sword nearer to Saloman. Perhaps it was just her arms that hurt. He took it and placed it against the wall, point down. Nodding curtly to the watchful if expressionless Dmitriu, he said wryly, “Don’t lose it.”
“Take it with you if you’re bo
thered,” Dmitriu retorted.
“I wish I could. But in this weird modern world, there are some places where even a masked sword is just too noticeable. Not to say unwelcome.”
“Then it’s no use to you, is it?” Josh interjected.
“On the contrary, the problem is easily overcome—in time, which I don’t have right now.”
Then he strode across the room toward the stairs and disappeared. Elizabeth suspected he jumped, for she never heard his footsteps clattering downward.
“I thought anything or anyone could be masked,” Elizabeth remarked.
Dmitriu shrugged. “They can. It’s a question of degree. Something one wouldn’t expect to see, like a sword on a sauna bench, for example, requires much deeper, more time-consuming layers of enchantment to hide than, say, a particular sword in a shop full of historic weapons.”
Interesting as Dmitriu’s explanation was, Elizabeth’s attention stuck on a minor point. “He’s going for a sauna?” The being whom dirt particles avoided.
Dmitriu’s lips curled. “It has been known. But I said it was an example. I might as well have said a sword on the hip of a suit-wearing businessman at a formal meeting.” He began to walk away. “In the absence of solid information, feel free to make your own hypotheses.”
Dmitriu, whatever his expressions of surprise when he’d first greeted them, had clearly been expecting them. From another room he produced cold fish, salad, cheese and bread, wine, orange juice, and water, and set it all out on the low table in front of the sofa.
Accepting with slightly bewildered thanks, Elizabeth and Josh ate, largely in silence. Once or twice, she thought Josh was about to speak, to ask her no doubt about Saloman and “Adam.” But he never formed the words. Perhaps he was too tired to think straight, for almost immediately after he stopped eating, he lay back on the sofa and fell asleep.
Elizabeth watched him for a few minutes, wondering ruefully what all of this had done to the open, charming personality of her famous “cousin.” She hoped it wouldn’t sour him or change him at all, although surely that wasn’t possible. She herself had changed. Some of it was good, she acknowledged. She had new confidence, was more able to take care of herself and other people. She understood more, was open to more. And yet she couldn’t help wondering whether her parents would have approved of her as she was now. Would they even recognize her? Would the old friends who had once helped her nurse them and covered for her at school? Had the old Elizabeth had to die to make way for the new one?
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