Blood on Silk
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Saloman and Elizabeth’s relationship is both amazingly
hot and terrifyingly complicated. Readers will fall instantly in love
with the world that Marie Treanor has created.”
—Michele Bardsley, national bestselling author of the Broken Heart series
PRAISE FOR MARIE TREANOR AND HER NOVELS
“Wow! Steamy-hot fantasy, sizzling sex, and a story that makes you think . . . Marie Treanor really packs a lot into these pages.”
—Fallen Angel Reviews
“Prepare to be scorched, alarmed, illuminated, and fired up!”
—TwoLips Reviews
“Fantastic.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“My first impression of this work was wow . . . highly recommended read from an author to watch.”
—The Romance Studio
“A very unique fantasy. The passion and heat . . . was Pure Erotic but with a loving passion that made me feel all warm inside.”
—Paranormal Romance Reviews
“A fantastic story . . . superhot sex. I cannot wait for future books.”
—Joyfully Reviewed
“A strange and adorable relationship . . . so much more than a mere vampire story.”
—Romance Junkies
“Funny, sizzling, and tender.”
—Bitten by Books
“Marie Treanor always delivers a book that you’ll be talking about long after reading it.”
—Love Romances
“Hauntingly beautiful and entirely sensual.”
—Ecataromance
“Clever, agreeable, and very readable.”
—BookWenches
“A superbly written story filled with suspense, action, and steamy, passionate encounters.”
—Literary Nymphs
SIGNET ECLIPSE
Published by New American Library,
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First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, September 2010
Copyright © Marie Treanor, 2010
All rights reserved
SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Treanor, Marie.
Blood on silk: an awakened by blood novel/Marie Treanor.
p. cm.
“A Signet Eclipse book.”
eISBN : 978-1-101-45995-9
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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http://us.penguingroup.com
To Robert Gottlieb and Kerry Donovan,
who’ve made writing this book a pleasure
as well as a learning experience.
For Heather, MCDC,
who shares my longtime love of vampires.
And, as always, for my husband.
Chapter One
Saloman. Again.
“I’m beginning to hate that guy,” Elizabeth muttered. “If he ever existed.”
She spoke in English, so her informant, Maria, an almost entirely toothless old lady in black, merely grinned without a clue as to what she’d said.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said in Romanian, switching off the tape recorder on the table between them. “You’ve been very helpful.” As she rose to her feet, Maria grinned again, adding to Elizabeth’s suspicion that she’d just been fed a farrago of nonsense. It was as much for the locals’ amusement as for her own—one of the challenges of her research was to pick out the “genuine” myths from the made-up ones, and it wasn’t always easy.
The villagers who’d gathered curiously in the garden during the interview now fell back as Elizabeth stashed the recorder in her bag and turned to go.
“Thank you for the coffee,” she added to the younger woman who’d brought it, and this time Maria’s smile was genuine.
Elizabeth slung her bag over her shoulder and made her way along the shaded path toward the rickety garden gate. She’d get no further useful material here. The villagers would just vie with one another to impress her now—or fool her. It wasn’t always clear which.
But although some of them stayed to chat with the old lady and her daughter, others walked toward the gate with her, as if eager to impart more nonsense. Elizabeth avoided eye contact, knowing she could be here for hours if she didn’t. And she was tired. It had been a long day, and despite the weeks she’d spent here in the summer heat, she still found it grueling. She had never imagined she’d miss the cold and rain of a Scottish summer.
She liked this charming garden, though, full of fruit trees and vegetables as well as large, brightly colored roses and, most of all, the maze of paths lined with vines that had been trained to form an almost impenetrable roof. The shadowed tangled-lattice effect in the sunlight was pretty and, more important, cool.
“Miss Silk? What makes
you think the vampire Saloman didn’t exist?”
Damn. She’d met the speaker’s gaze before she realized it, drawn by sheer surprise because he spoke excellent English. The other locals, as though accepting his victory, fell back and dispersed by other routes.
Elizabeth said, “Besides the word ‘vampire,’ you mean?”
The man smiled. She’d noticed him before, watching her a little too closely for comfort, while she talked to old Maria. Although she didn’t doubt her ability to get rid of him—eventually—her internal alarm bell gave a warning tinkle. He was perhaps around forty years old and wore the traditional garb of most of the older villagers—long white shirt, belted in the middle, and dark trousers—and his dark, steady eyes were of the same nut-brown color as his sun-drenched skin. Only the mass of deeply etched lines around his eyes spoke of greater age, but then, the sun did that to people.
“If you want to hear about vampires, the villagers will tell you,” he explained. “They always do.”
She allowed herself a rueful smile. “I’m not the first to ask these questions around here, am I?”
“No. We’ve had people writing books, people making films, people who want to meet vampires, people who want to be vampires—”
“I’m a little more serious than that,” Elizabeth interrupted. Her car was in sight, and she wanted nothing more than a cool bath and some dinner in her own room before a good night’s sleep.
“Ah yes. You’re writing your doctoral thesis.” He held the gate open for her, and she cast him a quick glance as she passed, checking for any signs of mockery. The shading vines cast an intricate pattern of shadows across his face—an interesting, intelligent face, but not a comforting one. Something about him—something both attractive and repellent—bothered her. But then, she’d had that reaction to men before. Excessive interest might be flattering, but she didn’t trust it.
“I heard you tell Maria,” he added, obviously misunderstanding her suspicion. “What exactly are you writing about?”
She smiled and nodded a definite farewell as she passed through the gate. “Vampires, of course.” Once she was away from the sheltering vines, the sun hit her like a wave.
He called after her. “So what’s your problem with Saloman?”
Well, she could bore him with that till he shoved off. Then she could drive away, venting her frustration inside the car. She halted and frowned back over her shoulder. “That he keeps cropping up in too many eras,” she all but snapped. “I have recorded stories of at least one Solomon before Christianity, several Salomans between the eleventh and the eighteenth centuries, and one Sal at the beginning of the twentieth. Oh, and Maria’s Saloman in the nineteenth.” She snorted. “And everyone claims they’re the same man!”
“He’s a vampire,” her companion said reasonably. “He can exist for centuries.”
Elizabeth cast him a withering stare and in spite of herself walked back to him as she dug in her bag for the car keys. “I’m writing a doctoral thesis, not a fairy tale. My interest is in the social conditions that inspired and fed the vampire superstitions, not in the gory details.”
“And what were they?” the man inquired.
“What?” Distracted, Elizabeth fumbled the keys, dropping them into the recesses of her bag. She rummaged for them again.
“The social conditions,” he said patiently.
Retrieving the keys, Elizabeth came up for air. She sighed. “Are you really interested in this?”
“Of course.”
She shrugged. “My theory is that accusations of vampirism resemble accusations of witchcraft in western Europe, insofar as they were made against people who presented some kind of threat to their communities—either economic threats, such as the single, unsupported women who made up the bulk of so-called witches, or more physical ones. I believe accusations of vampirism were made after deaths to justify killings that would otherwise have been unlawful. There may be elements of guilt and other factors in there, too, but in basic terms, that’s what vampire legends come down to—people who threatened villages by stealing, pillaging, excessive taxation, military levies. . . .” She trailed off. “Well, you get the idea. Anyway, generally it works. Most of the individual cases I’ve found support my theory. I can trace many such characters to legal documents and recordings of their deaths. But Saloman . . .”
She rattled the car keys against her palm in annoyance. “Saloman keeps cropping up, always as a vampire, and I can find no reason for the same personality to be inflicted on so many cases in so many different eras. Sometimes he’s a hero, saving children from Turkish janissary recruiters, single-handedly repelling invaders or bandits; other times he’s a villain destroying entire villages or tormenting individuals who’ve crossed him. But I can’t find the remotest trace in folk memory, let alone in documentation, of his birth or anything that might corroborate his death. . . .”
“Oh, he died.”
Elizabeth blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Saloman. He died. By a stake through the heart in 1697, to be precise, so I’m afraid Maria’s nineteenth-century story was nonsense.” He smiled. He had an engaging smile. “I’m sorry you wasted your time.”
“Oh, I didn’t,” Elizabeth assured him. “I knew she was spinning me a yarn to keep me happy and entertain her friends.”
It was his turn to blink in surprise, so she took pity on him. “What I find really interesting is that she picked that name. She could have called him Max or John or Count bloody Dracula, but she didn’t. She called him Saloman. Why? I hate the bastard because he doesn’t fit into my theory and somehow I have to find out how to make him, or change my theory. But he is fascinating.”
On impulse, she held out her hand. “Sorry. It’s been good talking to you. Good-bye.”
He took her hand with a shy smile. At least it looked shy in the shadows of the vines around the gateway. He might just have been baffled by her tirade. Despite the heat, his hand was cool and dry, its nails unexpectedly long and cared for.
“And to you. My name is Dmitriu. And if you like, I’ll show you where to find Saloman’s remains.”
The village Dmitriu had shown her on the map wasn’t far, although the roads were dreadful. Grasping the steering wheel tighter to control the beat-up old car as it bumped over a major pothole, she felt something sting her right palm.
As soon as she could, she took her right hand off the wheel, almost expecting to find a squashed bee, but there was nothing except a welling pinprick of blood. Frowning, with one eye still on the atrocious road through the mountains, she brought her hand to her mouth and licked the wound.
“Ouch,” she muttered. Something was stuck in there. She waited until reaching a relatively smooth stretch of road, then laid both hands together on the wheel and tried to pick it out. It pulled free with a pain sharp enough to make her wince. A thorn—a large rose thorn. She must have picked it up at Maria’s without noticing until she’d driven it farther into her hand by gripping the wheel so hard. Blood oozed from it sluggishly.
“All I need,” she muttered, licking it again before deciding to ignore the sharp pain. A thorn would hardly kill her, and she wanted to press on. Although the sun was going down, she couldn’t resist the opportunity of at last finding some sort of context for the wretched Saloman character. Dmitriu’s unexpected information had given her a new lease on life, banishing the lethargy she’d felt at Maria’s. Besides, this was it: Sighesciu. . . .
It wasn’t the prettiest village in these mountains. Despite the unspoiled natural scenery that surrounded it, Sighesciu itself looked run-down and poor. Leaning forward to peer farther up the hill, Elizabeth glimpsed a bulldozer and a mechanical digger. There were no signs of the ruined castle Dmitriu had spoken of, though. Taking the turn that appeared to lead up the hill toward the bulldozer, she let her mind linger on the enigmatic Dmitriu.
She’d been relieved that he hadn’t suggested coming with her, had just sent her to the car for her map while
he sat in the shade of Maria’s vines to wait. There, he’d shown her the village and the hill and said that although he couldn’t come right now, he might wander up there later to see how she got on.
Elizabeth wasn’t quite sure how she felt about seeing him again. He was an intriguing character, apparently well educated despite his “peasant” style of dressing. She realized she’d no idea what he did for a living, although his manicured hands clearly showed that he wasn’t a farmer. Insatiably curious, she wanted to know more about him—so long as it was all kept as platonic as their interaction that afternoon.
Her lips twisted into a smile and she laughed at herself. She was still harboring unrequited feelings for Richard, her PhD supervisor, who found her no more than an amusing curiosity. In any case, Elizabeth was smart enough to understand that half the attraction of Richard was his unattainability, if there was such a thing.
As she drew up to the top of the hill, she saw that the workmen were finishing for the day. Several cast her curious glances as they took off their hard hats and meandered past her battered old car. She’d bought it very cheaply in Budapest, but, although it didn’t look like much, it had gotten her safely around many inaccessible and isolated villages in both Hungary and Romania, and she was almost growing fond of it.
Emerging into the gathering dusk, she wondered whether she’d left too late after all. She wouldn’t be able to see so much if she had only a flashlight beam to work by. She might have to come back in the morning anyway. As it was, she had a bit of a drive ahead of her to the hotel at Bistriƫa.