Nikola was silent for a moment or two, his mind whirring with speculation about the question. “I’ve never known for certain,” he said slowly. “I’ve had a suspicion, but the demon lord refused to tell me, and I was in no fit state to challenge him on the question. You appear to be implying that my brothers had something to do with it. Do you have any proof?”
“No,” Ben admitted. “But it seems to me that they are the ones who stood to benefit.”
“From Nikola being made a Dark One?” I patted Nikola’s leg. “Why? It just makes him immortal. If they wanted his position or inheritance, then they wouldn’t have wanted him living forever.”
“We have long tried to understand our uncles’ reasoning, but we can’t. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Imogen said. “Ben says it is because we don’t know all the truth of what happened at that time, that there were unseen forces at work, but he has always been a little prone to conspiracy theories.”
“I have not!” Ben snorted, outraged.
Imogen smiled a tolerant smile.
“It doesn’t make sense at all. My brothers couldn’t inherit Andras Castle,” Nikola said thoughtfully. “They were not sons of my father, and thus they had no claim on the castle. That will pass to Benedikt when I die.”
“They can’t? Well, crap.” I kicked my toe at nothing. “There goes my brilliant explanation.”
“But Imogen and I weren’t born when you were changed into a Dark One. Perhaps they thought they could take control of the castle and your fortune if you were dead?”
“Not the castle,” Nikola repeated, his mind still going over all the possibilities. “But my fortune…yes, that I could see them gaining if I had no descendants. It is, however, merely speculation.”
“I suppose we can’t damn them based on just the fact that it makes perfect sense.” I sighed sadly. “Oh well. Maybe we can beat the truth out of them once we catch them.”
Nikola looked at me as if he’d never seen me. “Beat it out of them? You expect me to beat my own brothers?”
“Well, not torture them, obviously, but surely a little arm-twisting to admit the truth wouldn’t be out of the question. Or wait, can you just, you know, do a mind thing on them to make them admit the truth?”
“Mind thing?”
I giggled at the expression on Nikola’s face.
“Unfortunately, Io, they can’t do that,” Fran said. “I should know, I’ve asked Ben to do it often enough, but he insists they can’t.”
“No, we can’t,” Ben said firmly, giving her a stern look that just made her kiss his forehead.
You really seem to have gotten cheated. You can’t turn into a bat or a wolf, you can’t do the brain thing on people and make them your unwilling slaves, and you can’t seduce women with your eyes.
Who said I can’t?
He gave me a come-hither look that just about had me pouncing on him. All right, I take it back, you can seduce with your eyes. But you’d better not be trying that on anyone else, or you’ll find yourself with one pissed-off almost-Beloved on your hands.
You are a very violent woman. I didn’t not realize this at first.
I am not! I’m a pacifist! I don’t believe in guns, or the death penalty, or wars, or stuff like that.
You are many things, sweetling, but you are not a pacifist.
“The question is,” Imogen said, leaning against her ghost while I glared at her father. “How are we to find Uncle Rolf?”
“As to that, I believe I have an idea,” Nikola said, pulling out his notebook.
Approximately an hour and a half later, I emerged from a small shop, a triumphant—if somewhat dazed—smile on my face.
“Did he buy the coins?” Nikola asked as I got into the small minivan that we’d rented a short while before. “Was your passport enough documentation?”
“Did he mention Uncle Rolf?” Imogen asked.
“Yes to all three. Here, put this away somewhere safe. You’re now officially the richest person I know,” I said, handing Nikola a check. “You’re also the only baron I know, but that’s probably beside the point. The coin dude wanted me to wait until morning so he could give me cash, but I said we were going to be leaving town tonight, and that we’d trust him for a check.”
“What did he say?” Fran asked from where she sat next to Ben. The minivan was full to the gills with Viking ghosts, Nikola’s children, and Fran. “Is he going to do it?”
“No.” I shook my head, my gaze on Nikola where he sat in the front passenger seat. “He refused to play along and call up the mysterious man who offered him the silver coins. He said it was unethical, or some such crap.”
“Did you threaten to beat him?” Nikola inquired politely.
“I am a pacifist, dammit! Of course I didn’t threaten to beat him up!”
Nikola raised one eyebrow.
“OK, maybe I said I had friends who wouldn’t take kindly to him not doing as I asked, but that’s entirely different from saying I was going to punch him in the gooch if he didn’t do what I wanted.”
“What’s a gooch?” I heard Imogen ask from the back row of seats.
“You don’t want to know; it’s very rude,” I said quickly, glaring at Nikola.
“In what form, then, will his help take?” Nikola asked.
I thinned my lips. “How on earth do you know that he’s helping us?”
“You are not angry. You are not swearing. Therefore, you are not upset with him, which you would be if you were unable to get any information from him. What form did it take?”
“An address.” I started the car, and pulled out of my pocket a slip of paper. “Evidently you weren’t the only one who had the bright idea of using a shill with ID to sell coins. Herr Kenner was so kind as to give me the address of a person who sold him several thousands of dollars’ worth of silver coins when I told him I’d sell your coins to his competitor. Turns out he’s an avid collector of old Austrian money, and he was just about drooling when I let him have them.”
“Do we go there now? It’s getting pretty late,” Fran pointed out.
I looked at the clock in the van. “I suppose midnight is a bit too late to be showing up on someone’s doorstep. Do you think it would be safe to wait until morning?” I asked Nikola.
“With regards to Rolf, do you mean? I do not see that a slight delay will endanger us, no.”
You just want to go back to the hotel and do wicked things to me, don’t you?
Oh, yes.
And I want you to do each and every one of them. Multiple times. However, right now, I think our time would be better spent tackling the issue of your brother.
Better spent? He let me feel just how badly he wanted to feed on me.
Feast, sweetling, feast, not feed. Anyone can feed me, but only you offer me a feast of endless delights.
“Right, that is going to get you bonus points,” I told him, and pulled out into the sparse traffic.
“What is?” Imogen asked, giggling when her ghost nibbled on her neck.
“I said that Io offered me—”
“Ahem! No kissing and telling.”
He frowned. “We weren’t kissing.”
“It’s a phrase. File it away for colloquial night. Right now, I think it is more important that we tackle Rolf than to give in to some people’s lustful thoughts, no matter how tantalizing they are, especially the ones involving some sort of swing of such erotic complexity that it would be wholly at home in a high-end sex shop.”
Ben and Fran laughed aloud.
They have shops that sell sexual favors?
No. Well, I’m sure they do, but that’s not what I meant. And stop distracting me with smutty thoughts. I have to concentrate on making this GPS unit speak English so it can tell us where we’re going.
Nikola glanced at the electronic device I indicated, pulling out his notebook. Colloquial night had better be soon, because I am fast filling up this journal.
The address that Herr Kenner had given
me turned out to be about twenty-five minutes out of town, in a large, ranch-style house that sat on the other side of the valley, with an outstanding view of not only St. Andras but the ruins of the castle, as well.
“I don’t know how your uncle found this place,” Fran told Ben as we silently marched up the long flagstone walkway to a Gothic-reproduction door. “But he has very good taste. This house is gorgeous.”
“Very pretty,” Imogen agreed. “The view is outstanding.”
“I think maybe just Nikola and I should be the ones to approach his brother,” I said, looking over the group of people with a somewhat critical eye. “We’re kind of a large group.”
“There’s safety in numbers,” Fran pointed out.
“Aye, and in swords,” Finnvid answered, pulling his from a scabbard strapped across his back.
“She has a point,” Ben said, taking Fran by the arm. He gestured to the flowering shrubs lining the opposite side of the walkway. “Imogen, you and Finnvid hide behind that big plant. Francesca and I will be on the other side of the lawn, behind that hedge. We’ll be nearby if you need us.”
We waited until everyone had taken their places before Nikola pressed the button beneath an intercom, looking askance at it when a disembodied voice said something in German.
Nikola answered in kind. The voice asked what I wanted. I told it that I wished to speak with Rolf.
Huh. You’d have thought they would have something to say to that.
Nikola tensed, tugging me to the side until I was partially hidden by his body. There is someone behind the door. I can hear breathing.
The door clicked, and was open by a slim, elegant-looking young man with large gray eyes, dark, carefully tousled hair, and wearing a tight-fitting, expensive suit made of some shiny navy blue material that would have been right at home on the set of one of the Queer Eye TV shows. “Yes? To whom did you wish to speak?”
The man spoke with a slight German accent, and a hint of a lisp that seemed more affected than authentic.
Nikola made him a very slight bow. “I understand that my brother Rolf is here. Rolf von Linden. We wish to see him.”
“Oh. You must be the bawon.” The man eyed first Nikola—and I noticed that his visual examination seemed to take an inordinate amount of time—then me before sighing and stepping back, gesturing us into the house. “Vewy well, but you cannot stay long. Heww von Linden is assisting me with a little pwoject, and we weally cannot take much time fwom it.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, wondering why he felt it necessary to exaggerate his speech impediment to such a point where it was almost a parody, but decided that it wasn’t important.
Nikola led the way into the house, telling me as he did so, Stay close to me, Io. Until we speak to Rolf, I do not trust him.
Me, either. For one, I’d like to sic a few gay friends on him. And for another, he just seems too slick to be true. He didn’t even bat an eyelash when you asked for Rolf.
The door closed behind me with a finality that sent a little shiver down my back. I turned back when the man at the door made a slight noise of satisfaction. Then there’s the matter of that.
What? Nikola turned, frowning a little at the object held in the man’s hand. What is that?
It’s called a Taser, and I suspect we’re going to—
The world exploded in a burst of blue, red, and purple pain that swirled around and in me, sucking me down into its murky depths.
17 July
The voices seemed to ebb and flow like the water Nikola had seen on a beach in the south of France—with soft, gentle little laps at his awareness that allowed him to drift aimlessly on a sea of insensibility.
If only the voices would stop nudging him, he could relax fully. But that wasn’t really true, was it? He couldn’t relax, not when danger hung overhead, danger for—“Io!” he gasped aloud, and leaped to his feet without being aware that he had been lying on a cold stone floor. Sweetling, where are you?
There was no answering voice in his head, no sense of her presence, of her warmth, of everything about her that seemed so natural to him, it was no more than an extension of his being. Io? Are you well?
He snarled wordlessly at the silence that was his only answer, quickly taking in his surroundings. He was in some sort of a monk’s cell, a narrow room with a sliver of a window high on the wall. The room was bare of furniture, possessing only the window and a door.
He rushed to the door, intending on jerking it open, but it was locked, and remained steadfastly closed despite his attempt to force it otherwise.
The memory of the strange, lisping man holding an oddly shaped pistol on himself and Io tormented him, mostly because he was convinced that some ill had befallen her, an ill he should have prevented. Do not fear, my love, I will find you. And should you be harmed, I will see to it that the whoreson who touched you will die a prolonged and painful death.
He rattled the door a few more times, paced the length of the cell for approximately a quarter of an hour, and was about to give in to the urge to swear loudly and profanely at his stupidity in allowing Io to be placed in harm’s way when the analytical side of his mind, that which regularly held debates with the more frivolous part, urged him to look again at the door.
It was hewn of a solid wood, oak most likely, bound in iron. He narrowed his eyes at the lock and the round, circular door pull that served as a handle.
It looked familiar. It looked very familiar. It looked, in fact, just like those found in the row of rooms in the murky depths of his own castle, rooms that were stuffed with odds and ends, broken furniture, cast-off items of everyday usage, and a wine cellar that had been his father’s pride.
A slow smile curled his lips. Bless you, Io, for giving me presents. He pulled from his pocket the small flat object that Io had slipped into his hand when they left the hotel earlier that day, saying she’d picked it up at the men’s shop where she’d bought his clothes. “It’s some sort of a survival gadget. It has a tiny little knife, and a screwdriver, and tweezers, and a bunch of other little things that are supposed to come in handy. I thought it looked kind of scientific, so you’d like it.”
I do indeed like it, he told her, even if she couldn’t hear him. He examined the flat object, about half the size of his palm, before eventually extracting a long, thin tool. Seven minutes later, he’d taken apart the ancient lock, and pulled open the door to his cell. Like the cellar back home, the room he emerged into was dimly lit, this time, by a globe overhead.
“Bulb, not globe,” he corrected himself, remembering that Io had called the object that made light out of nothing a bulb. This bulb was hung somewhat haphazardly on a cord that wove drunkenly down the ceiling, disappearing into the wall at the far end.
He glanced around, noting the narrow passage lined with numerous doors. There was no one in sight, and unable to resist the desire to know what was in the nearest room, he tried the door. It was locked. As was the one next to it, and on down the passage. Nikola walked to the end where his own cell had been, pulled out the tiny screwdriver, and went to work on the lock of nearest door. It was a bit more rusted than his had been, but after a few minutes’ work, he was able to open the door.
The air that swirled out to cover him was fetid, rank with the odor of unwashed bodies, and blood. His nose wrinkled with the scent of rotting animal flesh at the same moment that whatever was within the cell realized he was at the door. An inhuman howl of rage rent the air, and another swish of air warned of the swift movement within. Nikola just had time to see a pair of burning black eyes beneath a matted, filthy mass of hair before he slammed the door shut again, hastily twisting the lock so that it caught into the teeth of the mechanism. A second howl followed the slam of a large body against the solid door. Nikola quickly screwed the faceplate back onto the lock, the memory of those insane, burning eyes giving him pause.
“If they captured me, they must have done likewise to Io,” he said softly, and went to the next door
, carefully stripping the lock down to where he could open it. He cracked the door just enough to catch a whiff of the air contained within, found it just as abominable as the last one, and had the door closed and locked before the occupant even knew he was there.
Three more such rooms followed before he came to one that didn’t bear the odor of animalistic, violent humans.
He peered cautiously into it, opening the door a little wider when the air smelled nothing worse than a little musty. A figure lay curled up in the corner, but it wasn’t the figure of a man. It was a large, cinnamon-colored lion, and it stood up slowly, its eyes wary as Nikola glanced around its cell.
“You wouldn’t happen to be named David, would you?” he asked.
The lion blinked at him for a few seconds; then its entire body seemed to shudder and ripple before changing into that of a nude man. “It’s Daffyd, actually, but everyone calls me David. Are you one of de Marco’s men?”
“Do you have clothing? Your nudity does not disturb me, but I would not like Io to be exposed to it.”
“Er…” The man stepped back to where a pile of clothing sat in the corner. “Io?”
“Yes. She is my woman. She is highly sensitive, and would not care to see you without clothing. In your human form, that is. I believe she would greatly enjoy seeing your lion form. It is true she has stated that she takes much pleasure in seeing me without clothing, but I cannot believe that to see others would be at all pleasing to her. You must be a therion. My son mentioned you to me. He did not, however, say that you would be sans clothing. Ah. That is better. Do you know where Io is?”
“No, I don’t.” David had a slight Welsh accent.
Nikola studied him, this man his son had chosen for a blood brother. He was still somewhat disturbed that Benedikt and Imogen could believe him capable of severing all ties with them, his beloved children, and he felt instinctively that Benedikt, for whatever reason, had felt the loss of a father more than Imogen. He badly wanted to know what sort of a man his son had turned out to be, so logically, he must look to the people with whom he had surrounded himself.
A Tale of Two Vampires Page 25
