Travis was bored. He’d been shut up down here for three nights already, with only the shortest of breaks to hunt, and he was heartily sick of his companions, several of whom he had to prevent from killing one another from time to time. His vampires wanted to feed on Dante’s men, who came and went more freely, but were always around at night when Dante was present. Travis didn’t have a problem with using the thugs as a food supply, but Dante forbade it, and for the moment, at least, Travis went along with him. He suspected Dante was saving them for himself, for after Dmitriu eventually turned him. Dante was the sort who would want human slaves.
In fact, pacing the room, past the recumbent, miserable human, Josh, and his own half-asleep, half-playing vampires, Travis was conscious of his increasing distaste for this adventure. It was taking far too long and he was itching to get back to America to check on his own operation and gather up what was left of Severin’s. If it weren’t for the bloody sword and Saloman’s wager, he’d have left Dante to stew. Hell, he wouldn’t even be here.
Travis stopped his restless prowling next to the chained-up vampire Dmitriu. There were only a few hours until sundown. When Dante wasn’t here, as now, Dmitriu’s mask of serene disdain occasionally slipped. Travis could both see and feel his agony and that added to his distaste.
Travis wanted to go home and beat his own minions into order. He wanted to run his gambling operations and bite the favored few of his guests who never remembered. He didn’t want to force this weakened yet powerful vampire—stronger than Travis, if the truth be told—to drink from Dante. In fact, Travis himself wasn’t too keen on drinking from Dante anymore. And he was aware that once Dante was turned there would be a conflict for possession of the sword. It was a conflict Travis thought he could win, but he had no way of knowing how death via the sword would affect Dante as a vampire. In any case, once the sword was Travis’s and he’d won his wager with Saloman, he really didn’t want to swap one rival for another.
Travis didn’t like many beings. Dante he was beginning to thoroughly dislike. Dmitriu, on the other hand, was at least interesting, if only because Travis had no idea what made him tick.
He hung there now, eyes closed, a frown on his blood-streaked brow. The hunger was making him sweat what blood he had left. And it would only get worse when the sun went down.
“Why don’t you just do it?” Travis said abruptly. “Bite the bastard, kill him, let him drink from you. Who cares? We’ll both be out of this shithole.”
Dmitriu’s brow smoothed; his eyes opened. Although he hid what he could of his pain, Travis could still see it. “I can’t,” Dmitriu said. “He smells bad. He’d taste worse.”
“It’s going to happen. Can’t you just make it easier and quicker for all of us?” What Travis didn’t want was a failed turning: for Dmitriu not to ingest enough of Dante’s blood for the turning to “take.” That would drag them back to square one, and another night in this stone coffin.
“No,” said Dmitriu. He didn’t even pretend to consider it.
Travis looked at him with curiosity. “Why not? What makes you so fucking stubborn?”
Dmitriu appeared to consider him. The veil of disdain lifted from his pain-filled eyes. “I will not abuse Saloman’s sword nor leave it with him. On top of which, he’s not worthy of immortality.”
“Worthy?” Travis stared at him. “Am I worthy? Are you?”
Dmitriu paused again. Then he said, “You could be. I am sometimes, when I remember.”
“You’re delirious,” Travis decided. “Unless you always talk such crap. Haven’t you ever created an ‘unworthy’ vampire before?”
“No,” said Dmitriu. “Have you?”
Travis hesitated. The truth was, he hadn’t created any for a long time. He’d lost heart. At last he said, “I never got the chance to discover. They died as fledglings.”
Dmitriu nodded, without sneering or accusing. “They didn’t have the strength.”
Travis frowned. “Is that what you mean by worthiness?”
“Part of it. Dante has that part. He’s strong and would probably thrive.”
“Then what’s your problem?”
Dmitriu smiled. It was an oddly appealing, charming smile, and Travis knew a brief urge to entertain him at his New York club. “I don’t like him. He is, er, a bad bastard.”
Travis blinked. “So am I. And what the hell is Saloman?”
“Good question,” Dmitriu said on the ghost of a laugh. “But if I had a choice of throwing in my lot with either Dante or Saloman, I know which one I’d choose.”
“I won’t ‘throw in my lot’ with anyone,” Travis said disdainfully. Dmitriu’s eyes were serious. “Your choice,” he said softly, and Travis turned away, unreasonably annoyed. It fucking well was his choice, and he’d made it, because Dante would be easier to beat than Saloman.
Halfway across to his eternally gambling vampires, he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Where is Saloman?”
Dmitriu smiled and closed his eyes.
Huddled in the castle cellar room with the cordoned-off tarpaulin, the hunters looked at Elizabeth doubtfully. “Are you sure this is it?”
“I’m sure Saloman says it is.”
A new flashlight beam descending the steps heralded the almost silent arrival of Konrad. Joining them by the tarpaulin, he reported quietly, “The alarms are off between here and the open exit. The night watchmen will cover the exit but they won’t bother us.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “Where is Saloman?”
“Here,” said the deep, almost sepulchral voice that melted Elizabeth’s bones. Beside her, Mihaela jumped and swore beneath her breath. Konrad and István swung around to face the steps, stakes drawn.
Saloman took the steps in one graceful jump, landing squarely in front of the hunters, which would have been taken as a threat had he not then stood perfectly still with his open hands by his sides.
“Good,” he said, regarding the stakes. “You came prepared. Travis is a strong vampire for his age, and his bodyguards are cunning. If you deal with the latter, I will take care of Travis.”
“How did you get past the watchman at the entrance?” Konrad demanded.
“He probably showed him his driving license,” Elizabeth muttered, and Saloman bestowed a dazzling smile upon her, causing tense, hysterical laughter to try to fight its way out. Only the hunters’ baffled expressions sobered her.
Saloman moved forward, ignoring the hunters’ stakes as he brushed past them to crouch down and lift the tarpaulin. At first it looked just like the rest of the earth-strewn floor, even with a flashlight beam trained upon it.
“It’s masked,” Saloman said mildly, and then, as if the very notion banished the enchantment, Elizabeth could make out the deeper blackness, the gaping hole disappearing downward into nothing.
István held his detector at the edge. It could pick up normal vampire presence within a short distance, although Saloman’s biochemistry passed it by. “Nothing,” he said doubtfully.
Saloman said, “Dante passed here most recently. He’s in the stone room now, with Travis. Three other vampires and four humans guard our friends.”
“Can he know that?” Mihaela whispered in Elizabeth’s ear.
Elizabeth nodded. He could if he was communicating with Dmitriu.
Dante uncovered the Sword of Saloman, throwing off the musty old coat and lifting up the weapon in both steady hands. Travis had to admit to a certain amount of awe. The sword was beautiful in the kind of way that called you to touch it, hold it, see what it could do. He couldn’t prevent the rush of excitement as he gazed upon it. This was his freedom from Saloman, his guarantee of continued power in America.
It was funny, but he hadn’t realized how much this power meant to him until he faced the threat of losing it. He’d worked for centuries to build up his authority. And though he’d pinched some ideas from the late and unlamented Severin—all hail to the Awakener for that one—as to imposing his will on the maximum territory wit
h minimum discipline, he knew he’d done it all bigger and better.
Travis didn’t want to rule the world. But he had set his sights on leading the whole of North America and he was damned if he’d give up that aim, especially now that Severin was out of the picture at last.
“You see, Josh?” Dante said to the human captive. “This is why the sword never really belonged to you.”
The human, who’d grown increasingly morose and uncommunicative as time passed, surprised Travis with a bitter burst of laughter. “Why is that, Senator? It couldn’t belong to me because you wanted it?”
Dmitriu said provokingly, “It doesn’t belong to either of you. It’s Saloman’s.”
Dante ignored him. It was Travis who rose impatiently and stalked across to Saloman’s “child.” Ramming his face up close to Dmitriu’s, he said low, “Is Saloman afraid of Dante? Is that why you won’t turn him?”
Dmitriu said nothing.
Travis placed his lips very close to Dmitriu’s ear. “Or are you afraid of Saloman?”
Drawing back to see the effect of his words, he was frustrated to see Dmitriu smile. “Only as much as I should be. It’s you who should be truly afraid.”
An instant longer he met Dmitriu’s steady gaze. As unease twisted through him, he tried to force his way into the other vampire’s mind, but even weakened as he was, Dmitriu held the door firmly closed.
Travis became aware that across the room, Josh was watching. There had been little or no communication between the captives, which, in the circumstances, perhaps, wasn’t surprising, but somehow it all added to Travis’s unease.
Saloman. He was bound to be here in Budapest looking for the sword, maybe even looking for Dmitriu. And the sun would go down in minutes.
“Boss, can I go for a whiz?” asked one of Dante’s men, interrupting the senator’s love-in with the sword.
Dante waved it at him. “Hurry up, two at a time.” His gaze, glittering and triumphant, swung around to Dmitriu. “We begin in ten minutes.”
Chapter Twenty
István, ever the scientist, said, “Are these tunnels even older than the known labyrinth under old Buda?” He bumped his head and ducked down further, rubbing it in an irritated sort of way.
“Some of them,” Saloman answered. “They’re a mixture of what you would call prehistoric, dark age, and medieval. Some were once connected to the current labyrinth, but they’ve been blocked off.”
He moved, stretching his hands over Mihaela’s bent head to catch a falling piece of rubble crumbling from the ceiling. “As you can see, they’re not terribly safe.”
“Thanks,” Mihaela muttered, and Elizabeth wondered if she’d rather have had the stone fall on her head. She didn’t want to be beholden to Saloman; none of them did. Not yet. But Elizabeth was starting to see a way forward, a glimmer of the shadowy beginnings of something greater than antagonism and mutual murder.
She was starting to see Saloman’s way forward, and it no longer looked quite so scary.
Saloman halted, both hands outstretched to stop István and Mihaela on either side of him. “Humans,” he said softly, barely louder than Elizabeth’s breath. “Two, coming this way.”
Squinting past those in front, before the flashlights switched off, Elizabeth glimpsed the tunnel ahead. In a few more feet, the ceiling sloped higher so that most people would be able to stand. The tunnel then swung around a corner.
“We can’t fight here,” Konrad hissed. “Go forward!”
But Saloman was already moving, almost gliding ahead of Mihaela and István, who scuttled after him like huge crabs in the darkness. Elizabeth scrambled in their wake, suddenly claustrophobic.
Breaking free of the low tunnel and stretching, Elizabeth took a deep breath. Saloman stood at the curve in the wall, the hunters lined up behind. She ran silently to join them.
“Use your lights or you won’t see,” Saloman advised, and walked around the corner. Elizabeth and the hunters hastily spread out behind him.
“What the . . . ?” came an American voice from a few yards’ distance, and Elizabeth made out two men with flashlights coming toward them. “Who the fuck’s that?”
“Who the fuck cares?” was the immediate response, and the flashlights wavered as both men delved for their guns.
“Oh, shit,” István said with a rueful glance at the crumbling ceiling, which he clearly feared would collapse in a firefight. He was probably right, but before Konrad, the only one of them with a firearm, could produce it, Saloman leapt forward.
Moving so fast he was a mere blur, he flew at the advancing men. They never even saw what hit them. A gun fired, but only the Americans fell, slammed into the ground by a force they never anticipated. Saloman leapt to his feet, quite as graceful as, and ten times more lethal than, a panther.
“Oh, God,” Mihaela whispered, and Elizabeth gripped her hand hard as they ran forward. But there was no time to see to the fallen men. Ahead was what looked like a dead end, except that the stone suddenly shimmered into an opening iron door. It had been masked. This, then, was the stone room where Josh was imprisoned.
Someone—Travis—poked his head out of the door. The beams of several flashlights struck him in the eyes, just as Saloman leapt once more.
But Travis was fast. He slammed the door shut with a yell, and the screech of bolts and locks crashing into place echoed around the tunnel.
Konrad swore. “Now how the hell do we get in?” he raged.
“You could try knocking,” Saloman suggested. “Or we could go in the way I always intended.”
The gunshot in the tunnel clearly startled Dante from his complacence. He almost dropped the sword. As it was, the point made an echoing, clanking sound as he lowered it too quickly to the floor. Grimly, Travis pushed past him. Either one of Dante’s fools had fired his weapon by accident, or . . .
Travis wrenched the door open and peered outside. Only feet away lay the recumbent forms of Dante’s men, and looming over them, among others, the being he least wanted to see. The Ancient’s eyes glittered; his whole body seemed to thrum with a power Travis had never before witnessed. It was terrifying in its magnitude, as if it had no boundary, no end. Lights flashed into Travis’s eyes, almost blinding him as Saloman leapt.
Instinct preserved him. Throwing himself back inside the room, he slammed the door shut and knocked all the locks into place, swearing long and consistently.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Dante demanded.
“I knew it,” Travis snarled. “Bloody Saloman!” He turned on Dante. “To say nothing of the Awakener and other humans who stink of hunter.” He allowed himself a vicious smile. “Well, who cares? Technically, I found the sword before him!”
He lunged for it, but Dante, with unexpected speed for a human, swung it out of his reach. “Oh, no!” Dante hissed. “You still have a part to play first!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Travis raged. Hadn’t the fool grasped what was out there? There came a dull thud on the iron door, as if someone had thrown himself at it. “See?”
“In any case, you’ve lost the wager,” Dmitriu said to him calmly. “Saloman had the sword in his hands before you and Dante took it from Josh.”
“Shut up,” Travis muttered as the battering continued at the door. Was it time to change sides? Kill Dante—for good—grovel to Saloman, steal the sword when his back was turned, and pray it gave him the power to withstand the Ancient at some time in the future, safe back in New York City? The carnage of a fight was a good time to take off. . . .
“Bring him!” Dante commanded. “Bring Dmitriu and make him do it now!”
On the other hand, Saloman had blown his men across the room with one forceful exhale. How the hell was that done? Easy when a being had the power at his disposal that Travis had just sensed surrounding Saloman in the tunnel. Travis couldn’t fool himself that the Ancient was likely to forgive him. He’d stuck this long with Dante; he might as well see it through and pray the sword and Dmi
triu’s blood would be enough to get them both out of this mess.
Travis jerked his head at his minions, who, already on their feet in response as much to the scents wafted in from the door as to the gunshot, began warily to unchain Dmitriu.
“I didn’t plan to confront Saloman this early,” Dante said anxiously. “You had better do this right, Travis, or we are both—not to put too fine a point on it—fucked.”
“I know,” Travis said grimly.
“Why couldn’t that bastard just turn me when he was first brought here?” Dante demanded. “It would have been so much simpler and I’d be more ready—”
“Because Saloman told him not to,” Travis said impatiently. He hadn’t read it in Dmitriu’s mind; he’d guessed it from his voice, his eyes, the same way he knew of the affection, the love that Dmitriu felt for his maker. Affection was not an emotion that Travis had much truck with these days, but he still recognized it when he saw it. In fact, damn the whole situation to hell, he realized he missed it.
I’m a three-hundred-year-old vampire, not a fucking teenager. “Get his feet,” he snapped as Dmitriu struggled with his captors every step of the way. But they’d managed to get him in here when he was far stronger; the outcome was never in doubt.
They flung Dmitriu to his knees before Dante, who wordlessly passed Travis the sword. “I could fall on this myself,” he warned. “Remember, I’m trusting you.”
“Of course,” said Travis ironically. There had never been the remotest trust between either of them. Just plain self-interest and the need of the sword.
And it would be a sweet thing to own, he acknowledged, admiring the grace and beauty of it in his hands. If he cut Dante’s head off with it now, would it bring him enough strength, enough invulnerability to defeat Saloman with it too?
“The sword is Saloman’s,” Dmitriu said quietly. Was the bastard reading his mind? One of Travis’s vampires had him by the hair, controlling his head, while the other two held him to the ground on his knees.
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