She crossed to the door to face her pranksters. At least she’d find out how they did it. She hoped it would prove stunningly clever, just so she didn’t feel such a gullible fool.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.
They still stood there in the narrow passage, leaning against the walls, breaking off a whispered conversation to straighten up and gaze at her from serious, anxious eyes.
“Come in,” Elizabeth said with resignation.
They filed inside, just a little self-consciously, and sat side by side on her hastily made bed, glancing at one another with what seemed to be nervousness.
Good. Serves you bloody right.
Refusing to make it easy for them, she stood there and waited. It was good practice for the next year when students would line up before her like this to make excuses for not handing in essays.
Glancing from the fair man to the dark one, she was sure neither of them had played the part of Saloman. She was glad of that. She never wanted to lay eyes on that character ever again. She did wonder how much of it they’d seen, although she’d been pretty sure at the time there had been no one else in the crypt.
Konrad took a deep breath and spoke. “Miss Silk, are you aware what you did last night?”
She let a cynical smile twist her lips. “I’m aware I was set up, if that’s what you mean.”
“Set up?” He frowned.
Perhaps she’d gotten the phrase wrong. Spelling it out, she said, “Dmitriu sent me to Sighesciu. I’m presuming you three and your other friend set up the tomb and the dust to scare the pants off me. Congratulations—you succeeded. But I won’t bear a grudge, especially if you give me a genuine lead this time to Saloman’s death.”
Glancing along the line of open mouths, she was sure they wouldn’t be able to do that either. Saloman would remain a mystery, a side note in her thesis that this was one case that didn’t fit, possibly because several different characters had become confused over the centuries.
Konrad said, “Dmitriu? The vampire Dmitriu sent you to Sighesciu?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Elizabeth whirled around, pointing at the door. “Close it behind you, please, and don’t bother coming back. The only reason I let you in this time was because I foolishly imagined you’d come to apologize.”
“Apologize?” Mihaela sounded so baffled that Elizabeth itched to slap her.
“Don’t push it,” she snapped. “I admit you got me. You fooled me. You scared me shitless. Congratulations. But it’s not dark anymore, and contrary to apparently popular belief, I’m not a complete moron. It’s over. I know you tricked me. Now go. And if I ever set eyes on any of you again—or Dmitriu or your ‘vampire’ friend—I’ll report your assault to the police. Good-bye.”
She was rather pleased with that rant, but it didn’t have quite the effect she’d hoped for. Instead of shuffling out with half-embarrassed giggles, they sat perfectly still behind her back, and when Konrad spoke, it was with an air of helplessness that ate at her cynicism.
“Miss Silk, please . . . We had nothing to do with hurting you. We were nowhere near Sighesciu yesterday. But if you were assaulted, we need to know in what way.”
“Guess.” Elizabeth turned back to glare at him.
His gaze slid away, down to her throat, then back up to her face. “He bit you, he drank your blood, but he let you live—”
“Why did he let her live?” István, the darker man, interrupted.
“Perhaps he wasn’t strong enough at the time?”
“Maybe he was grateful to her for waking him,” Mihaela suggested.
Elizabeth said, “Would you like to make up your minds outside? I’m busy.”
“Please, Miss Silk, you have to listen to us!”
“Um—no, I don’t.” Elizabeth picked up her bag, shoveled her notepad into it, and grabbed the car keys from the bedside table. If it came to it, she’d damned well leave them here and inform reception there were intruders in her room.
“Miss Silk, you have to understand that you are in terrible danger,” Konrad said solemnly.
“So will you be when I get to the police station.”
“I’m serious!”
“Oh, so am I.” Elizabeth’s eyes locked with Konrad’s, and something like shock began to permeate her certainty. He didn’t look like a prankster, but instead a cross between a serious academic and a determined athlete. If he had a sense of humor, he kept it well away from his face.
“Please sit down and listen to us. This isn’t a joke or a trick or whatever you’re imagining. We are serious—deadly serious. And you need to understand.”
The last statement was certainly true.
Knowing she would regret it, Elizabeth lowered herself until she perched on the edge of the hard chair beside the bed. You’re weak, she told herself. You should have thrown them out. Now, you’ll never be rid of them. . . .
Konrad said, “Will you tell us what happened to you last night?”
“No. You talk to me. Or go.”
Konrad inclined his head. “All right. Last night, you went to Sighesciu and somehow discovered the tomb of the ancient vampire Saloman. Something you did wakened him after three centuries, and now he’s loose in the world once more. My c—”
“How do you know?” Elizabeth interrupted.
Konrad blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“If you were nowhere near Sighesciu yesterday, how do you know what I did or didn’t do there?”
“Because we have a reliable—and petrified—informant who told us that Saloman walks again. He drained two fledgling vampires whom we know of and drank from several humans besides yourself. After three hundred years, he’s starving and out of control. I can’t begin to tell you how dangerous that makes him.”
Elizabeth let her gaze flicker from him to the others. On her guard as she was, she saw no sign of deceit, no sliding eyes, no shifty movements or even deliberately steady stares. It occurred to her that these people believed what they were saying. How they knew of her interest in Saloman or her visit to Sighesciu she wasn’t sure, but any of the people she’d been talking to over the past months could have talked to them too. The same lies could have been repeated to all. They weren’t country people. In fact, she guessed that only the girl, Mihaela, was even Romanian. István was clearly Hungarian—although there were many ethnic Magyars in this part of Transylvania—and Konrad was probably of German extraction. But all of them had a sort of cosmopolitan, well-traveled air that sat very oddly with the nonsense they were spouting.
These were no wacky tricksters after all, but genuine, very serious nutters.
“I see,” she said, carefully noncommittal. “And you are . . . ?”
Konrad’s shoulders relaxed, as if the hardest part of his battle was won. “We are part of an international organization dedicated to eliminating vampires from the world. My colleagues and I are based in Budapest, but there is generally more work for us in the mountains of both Hungary and Romania.”
“I see,” Elizabeth repeated. “And your—informant—told you about me too?”
Konrad hesitated, exchanging glances with István. “Yes . . . But we knew about you already. We know about all the researchers who come here asking about vampire legends. It makes you a target for the vampires, and it’s our duty to protect you.”
Elizabeth closed her mouth. There was nothing to say to that.
Konrad continued. “The vampire Dmitriu already approached you and sent you to Sighesciu. It’s not generally known that Sighesciu is—was—Saloman’s resting place.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth found herself asking.
“Other vampires, his enemies, could kill him for good, scatter his remains so far apart that he’d never walk again. His friends didn’t want that. His enemies, who staked him in the first place, didn’t want anyone finding him and waking him.”
“How can he be awakened if he’s been staked?” she asked, wondering wildly if she’d fallen into an old Ham
mer Horror script.
“Saloman is an Ancient,” István said with careful emphasis. “He is therefore very hard to stop at all. Staking him alone does not dispel his spirit; it merely holds him.”
“Then why didn’t his enemies scatter him at the time?”
“We don’t really know that. There have been suggestions that they were too afraid of him, even staked. His power and his standing were awesome in those days, among both vampires and humans.”
“How come?” Elizabeth demanded.
István shrugged. “Sheer strength, acquired through age and study. Plus, according to the sources we have, a formidable intelligence and force of personality. Perhaps his enemies were still influenced by these traits. But there is also evidence of a major battle, so it’s possible they were disturbed or distracted before they could finish the job. On the other hand, if Saloman’s friends won the battle, they were still too late to release him. He couldn’t be freed without . . .” István broke off and glanced at Konrad.
“Without human blood,” Konrad said. “I should tell you: I have been to Sighesciu myself and have never even seen his tomb. I was told it was hidden by magic from his friends and enemies alike, so I have no idea how you found it. Did Dmitriu attack you?”
“Of course not! He wasn’t even there!” She frowned. She’d thought she’d seen him, afterward, even imagined she’d run him over.
“Then if Dmitriu didn’t take your blood, how did it get on the tomb?”
“My hand was pricked by a rose thorn. . . .” Oh hell, I’m talking as if I believe them. Lock me up quick. “Does it matter?”
Konrad shrugged again. “Only as a curiosity. Perhaps it was drops of your blood that made the tomb visible to you. The point is, you wakened him, and you escaped before he could kill you. The blood of his Awakener is important to him. On top of that, word is out that you are responsible. Plenty of other vampires are pissed off at you for that, including Zoltán, the regional leader here. Seriously, you need to leave Romania and go as far from eastern Europe as you can get.”
“I will,” Elizabeth soothed.
“When?”
“Soon. I have to be back in Scotland in September.”
“That’s weeks away! You have to go now.”
“I haven’t finished here yet.”
“Miss Silk, your life, your soul, are more important than any thesis!”
“Don’t make me say my life is my thesis,” she begged, although it was loweringly close to the truth.
“Please, come with us now. We’ll look after you in Budapest until you can get on a flight home.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind, but I’ll take my chances here for the next couple of weeks.” She stood up. “And now, I really need to eat before I start work. . . .”
“Miss Silk, please reconsider.” Konrad stood up with her, as did the others. “At least let us teach you how to defend yourself. You really don’t know what you’re dealing with here. It’s not safe for you to be out alone after sundown. Every vampire in the region wants you dead, and you must understand that Saloman was the most powerful vampire who ever lived. He’s back, and he’ll want your blood.”
“Actually, I want his,” Elizabeth said grimly. His and Dmitriu’s. It looked as if they’d been taking advantage of people a lot more gullible than she. Vampire legends had gotten out of hand recently. She blamed Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “Um . . . Before you go . . . what do you know about Saloman’s death?”
Thanks to the delay caused by the “vampire hunters,” whom she’d shaken off with extreme difficulty in the end, it was almost midday before she parked outside Maria’s house once more. The village was quiet, most people having sought shelter from the worst of the sun’s heat. But as she approached the familiar rickety gate, where only yesterday she’d paused to talk too long to Dmitriu, she saw Maria’s daughter sweeping the garden path beneath the shade of the thick, tangled vines.
Catching sight of Elizabeth, she straightened and leaned on her brush. “Domnişoară,” she called in greeting. It wasn’t clear from her closed face if she was pleased, annoyed, or even embarrassed to see her.
Elizabeth returned the greeting, adding, “I’m looking for Dmitriu.”
There was a pause, but the woman came no closer. “He isn’t here,” she said at last.
“Do you know where I can find him?”
She shook her head.
“Does he live in the village?”
The woman shrugged and returned to her sweeping. “He moves around a lot. I’d find someone else to talk to.”
Yes, I’ll bet you would, Elizabeth thought with a hint of bitterness. They’d all been in on it. Fool the crazy foreigner. Butter her up with Maria’s nonsense, and then set Dmitriu on her as the more acceptable face of legend. Only, what was the point? Didn’t it get boring after a while? She never paid anyone for talking to her—on the grounds that for one thing she couldn’t afford to, and for another it would just encourage people to say what they imagined she wanted to hear.
She got back in the car and drove the now-familiar road through the hills to Sighesciu—not forgetting to check her rearview mirror for any vehicles following hers. She didn’t put it past the “vampire hunters” to dog her footsteps until she left the country.
The village looked different in the brightness of the afternoon sunshine; though still down-at-the-heels, it was less depressing. Parking her car in the shade of a parched tree in the empty market square, she found she could actually laugh at herself, and at the sight she must have presented last night, fleeing in panic from a “vampire” come to life from a stone sarcophagus. Her colleagues would laugh themselves silly if they ever found out—though she’d take damned good care they didn’t.
And yet, despite everything, as she walked up the hill toward the castle ruins, she found her heart beating too hard and too fast. She knew she should feel as angry with Dmitriu as with his accomplice “Saloman,” but the truth was, she needed to talk to Dmitriu again, to find out if any of what he’d said was true. The heat of her fury was reserved for “Saloman,” who’d scared her, tormented her, and, worse than anything else, excited her out of her normal, reserved skin. For that, for him, she felt something approaching hatred.
She had no idea how she’d cope if she met him again. Would she yell at him, gibber like a fool, turn all tongue-tied like the shy schoolgirl she often still felt she was? Or would she still melt like butter under the heat of his hungry, mesmerizing eyes?
She curled her lip, knowing that in daylight, in the brightness of her returned common sense, he’d look no more than ordinary. No charisma, no magic would touch her or arouse her, which was a pity in some ways because she hadn’t even known she could feel like that. It had been edgy, breathless, exciting. . . .
Hastily, she shut down that line of thought. It was the adrenaline, the fear, that had intensified and confused everything. That was all.
Diggers and workmen swarmed all over the hilltop. Keeping a low profile, she got quite close to the crypt corner before the foreman she’d spoken to last night spotted her. He yelled something to the driver of a large mechanical beast, who inched his charge forward out of her line of vision while the boss walked toward her.
Elizabeth gazed beyond him, at a completely flat piece of ground. The hole crumbling onto the crypt had been filled in. This entire part of the hilltop was smooth and even.
“You filled in the hole,” she blurted before the foreman had even greeted her.
“What hole?”
“I found a hole in the ground last night—just there. There was a room underneath, like a crypt, with angels carved on the walls. Shouldn’t you notify the authorities before building starts?”
The man smiled at her, a pitying smile, though why he pitied her wasn’t clear. “There was no hole over there; nothing to fill in. We’d have seen such a thing, and if we hadn’t, the surveyors who swarmed over the site last week would have. So, will you be buyi
ng a house?”
It was pointless. Either Dmitriu and “Saloman” had covered it up themselves, or the builders didn’t want to wait for archeologists to grub about in the foundations before they started work, and so they would deny everything.
“No,” Elizabeth said ruefully. “I couldn’t live here now.”
Over a cup of coffee in the village square, she asked about Dmitriu, but no one seemed to have heard of him. She wasn’t surprised. She’d been expecting to work without him. Her next stop was the churchyard.
However, there were three churches in Sighesciu: the Roman Catholic at one end of the main street, a Lutheran church at the other, and about halfway between, the Eastern Orthodox church. Each had its own graveyard. The “vampire hunters” had looked at her as if she’d grown horns when she asked them which religion Saloman had followed, although they’d all known he’d been staked in 1697.
“Did Dmitriu tell you that?” she’d asked suspiciously.
“I’ve never met Dmitriu,” Konrad had answered with what seemed complete honesty. “The date is in our records.”
Elizabeth began to think, having scoured all three graveyards in search of likely monuments, that she might have to ask to see these records, whatever they were. However batty, they might just contain the odd kernel of truth that would help her. After all, that’s what she’d been doing in all her research so far, rummaging for pearls among the dross. Her reluctance to engage with the “vampire hunters” again was down to the simple fact that their very solemnity freaked her out.
Dropping onto a table stone facing the church building, she pulled out her water bottle and took a sizable swig as she cast her gaze around the cemetery in an accusatory way. Well, what had she expected? A nice, clear stone that read, Here lies Saloman, a very ancient vampire, staked in 1697 by the following people?
Blood on Silk Page 4
