He broke in through the locked windows of the living room, carrying Elizabeth in his arms, wrapped only in his shirt and the cloak he’d worn for his three-century sleep. The flat was empty. Mihaela would be out with her colleagues, scouring the city for Elizabeth and for him. He hoped they hadn’t wrecked the Angel; if they had, Angyalka would be spitting with rage.
He found the tiny spare room that was Elizabeth’s temporary home. It was full of her stuff—the bags he remembered from Bistriţa, papers, tape recorder—all in a chaotic mess. Saloman laid her on the bed and opened the cloak as if it held a rare gift. For an instant, he gazed down at her. Then, with his fingertips, he touched her lips, the almost-vanished wound in her throat, and her steadily beating heart.
“I’ll be back,” he murmured, “after I’ve taken care of a few loose ends.”
She didn’t answer, but he was fairly sure she’d remember the words when she awoke. It didn’t matter that much. She was his, and she’d come to him when he was ready. Until then, the vampire hunters would keep her safe.
From the open window of the living room, he saw a car draw up at the curb. It contained Mihaela and the Hungarian hunter. The woman got out, looking both defeated and angry. Well, at least she’d be happy when she got home. He’d left the bedroom door open, so she’d see at once that her friend was there.
“Sometimes,” Saloman said to the breeze, “I surprise myself.”
He leapt off the ledge into the wind. The two below glanced up in instinctive alarm, but all they would see were fading shadows fluttering over the rooftops toward the river, and Buda.
It was time to take care of Lajos—he’d made the rat squirm for long enough over exactly when the ax of vengeance would fall.
Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth woke with a raging thirst and a sore head. When she opened her eyes, with no more profound hope than to discover a glass of water on the night table, she saw Mihaela sitting on the edge of the bed. And beyond her, arguing in low voices while Mihaela watched them, were Konrad and István.
“What . . . ?” she began, but had to break off because her voice came out as a feeble croak, and because as soon as it did, memory rushed on her with enough force to keep her silent for a very long time.
All three heads snapped around to her.
“Elizabeth,” Mihaela said in obvious relief. “Are you all right?” Since she leaned forward as she spoke, helping Elizabeth to sit up before passing a glass of water into her grateful hands, there was time to let it all flood in, and to keep from answering by drinking. She felt weaker than a newborn kitten.
“You’re alive,” Konrad stated, with as much amazement as gratification. “He let you live.”
Beyond the glass, which she still held to her lips, Elizabeth recognized the sleeve of the soft silk shirt she wore, and beneath the covering sheet, something made of black wool and, surely, fur. . . .
“Why did he do that?” István demanded. “Why didn’t he kill you?”
Elizabeth lowered the glass with reluctance.
“Did he hurt you?” Mihaela asked urgently.
Stricken, Elizabeth looked at her and couldn’t speak. What the hell could she say?
“Shit,” Mihaela muttered. “What did he do to you?”
Hysteria arrived like an old friend, but at least she knew how to deal with that, swallowing it down before the laughter became more than a hiccup.
He took me to his palace and made love to me all night until I felt safe and warm and happy. And then he drank my blood. . . . He used words like “love,” the meaning of which varies so much even among the truthful that it’s hardly worth regarding. Except to note that a polite synonym of the verb “to fuck” is “to love.” And trust me, in every sense, I’ve been fucked.
When she raised the glass to her lips once more, her hands shook. But at least her internal rant had remained internal.
She lowered the glass and held it in her lap with both hands under three pairs of anxious eyes.
“He drank my blood until I lost consciousness.”
Mihaela turned her head up, searching for the wound. There might have been still a mark of some kind, for her breath hitched.
“How did you manage to get back here?” István demanded.
“I don’t know.” Elizabeth fingered the sleeve of her shirt. “But judging by my dress, he brought me.”
“Why?” Konrad stepped closer. “Why would he bother? Why did he leave you alive when he needs your blood so much? Elizabeth, did he do anything else?”
For a moment, she wondered if he was referring to the sex. Not in her wildest, angriest dreams could she call it rape. Even stranger was her not wanting to pretend to herself. She wanted to remember her own desires, her own responses, her own pleasure. She just didn’t want to feel so . . . betrayed.
“Did he make you drink his blood?” Konrad demanded.
“No,” Elizabeth said, revolted, and watched the quick, relieved exchange of glances among the hunters. “Is that how it’s done? Creating a new vampire? Like in Dracula?”
“Part of it,” Mihaela admitted. “But it has to be done at the moment of death.”
Elizabeth’s stomach twisted. “Then I wouldn’t know, would I? Perhaps he did kill me; perhaps he made me drink when I thought I was unconscious and I was actually dead—I wouldn’t know.”
Mihaela glanced up at the others. Konrad took his hand out of his pocket and threw something to Elizabeth. She caught it one handed, from instinct, and saw that it was a small detector. It was switched on and lay still on her palm, silent and dull.
“Is that conclusive?” she managed.
“On any but an Ancient, and we’re working on that—” He broke off as a ringtone sounded, and fished his phone out of the other pocket.
“I think he’ll be back,” Mihaela said grimly. “He’s still playing.”
“He meant to kill me,” Elizabeth blurted. “He told me so at the beginning, when we arrived in his house.”
“You were in his house?” István jumped on it at once. “Where is it? Could you take us there?”
Could she? Even if her memory and her poor sense of direction came up to the mark, could she? The idea should not feel like betrayal. He’d fed from her, after everything that had gone before. . . .
She opened her mouth, but Konrad spoke first, snapping his phone shut and shoving it in his pocket. “The vampire Lajos is dead. Saloman killed him at dawn, along with a human who got in the way.”
Water slopped from her glass, darkening a growing patch on the sheet. Blood sang in her ears. “Which human?” she whispered.
“Lajos’s human protector—or slave, if you prefer. Nasty piece of work who’s committed all sorts of foul crimes to please his master. We never had enough evidence to pin them on him. He was probably hoping to be ‘turned.’ The important point is, the Budapest vampires are falling over themselves to ally with Saloman now. As if they were just waiting to see how he handled his enemies. Zoltán has left Transylvania, presumably heading for a show-down with Saloman.”
“He’ll lose,” István said with certainty.
“Will he?” Konrad sounded excited. “Think about it. Why did Saloman leave it so long to kill Lajos?”
“Games,” Elizabeth muttered. “He likes to play cruel games.”
Mihaela nodded. “Increases the fear.”
“Perhaps,” Konrad allowed. “Or perhaps he isn’t as strong as everyone thinks he is. Whom has he taken out so far? Karl, the weakest of his vampire killers. He hasn’t touched Zoltán, whom he might reasonably accuse of usurping his power. Perhaps he needed Elizabeth’s blood even to be strong enough to take out Lajos.”
“Then why didn’t he finish her and get twice the power he did?” István demanded.
“God knows. He’s an Ancient. He knows things that wouldn’t even enter anyone else’s head—vampire or hunter—as possibility. Perhaps he gets more by milking her, letting her recover, and going back. He’s drunk from her twic
e now, after all, and she’s still here.”
Then why go to the trouble of seducing her? Just to pass the time? Just to amuse himself or scratch a sexual itch? A 312-year-old sexual itch. Excluding the nine days. No, there was more here. There was feeling for her; she could swear it. . . .
Who am I trying to fool? He’s thousands of years old, fascinating, magnetic, dangerous, with all the added attraction that somehow implies. I’m a sexually inexperienced, socially inept nobody. What the hell could he feel for me except passing amusement?
Shite. Am I grateful even for that? What is wrong with me?
“You might be right,” Mihaela said, “though I wouldn’t like to bet my life on the weakness of the vampire I saw last night, flying through the Angel’s roof with Elizabeth in one arm. The other point is, he’s now a lot stronger. He has killed Lajos and drunk again from Elizabeth. Our time is running out, and we can’t protect her. He knows she’s here.”
Konrad’s face changed. For once, he said what Elizabeth was thinking. “He knows you’re here too. Neither of you is safe. You need to move to headquarters until we get this sorted out.”
Dmitriu liked train travel. He liked the hypnotic sound it made, passing over rails, the pleasant sense of limbo, having departed one place, but not yet arrived in another. He didn’t get that from walking or riding. And of course, there was often opportunity for a quick snack in a quiet, dark corridor. A little hypnosis as taught him by Saloman, and his victim didn’t remember anything. The same hypnosis was useful when presenting the conductor with a piece of paper that was not a ticket, or the border police with an obviously fake passport.
This particular journey wasn’t quite so pleasant. For one thing, he couldn’t wander up and down the train in case he encountered Zoltán or one of his bodyguards. There was no point in total masking on a psychic level if one then walked physically into the person one was trying to avoid.
And so he sat alone and still, several carriages away from the other vampires, watching the darkness rush him rhythmically toward Budapest. At least there he’d get a decent meal—and the pleasure of Saloman’s company.
On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he was doing Saloman a real favor. The Ancient would know as soon as Zoltán set foot in the city. He didn’t need Dmitriu to come and tell him. Dmitriu just couldn’t shake the notion that Zoltán was up to something. Last night he’d visited a Romanian politician in her house and hadn’t killed her. And then tonight he’d left in too much secrecy for a vampire who either had to confront or submit to his erstwhile ally.
In the meantime, the puszta—the great plain that spread eastward from Budapest—was dull. Even in darkness, Dmitriu preferred the hills and mountains of Transylvania. Still, it had been a long time since he’d experienced the crowds and the excitement of the city. And he admitted to profound curiosity as to what Saloman was up to.
As the train pulled at last into Budapest’s Keleti station, he couldn’t help the excitement that surged through him. It was almost light. He needed to find shelter fast, preferably with Saloman. He just hoped the bastard wasn’t playing masking games. The word was that he was increasingly visible in Budapest, and that with Lajos dead—they’d all felt that loss, or at least all the vampires old enough to sense anything more than their own animal hunger—everyone was desperate to submit to the awakened Ancient. Dmitriu assumed this was what had dragged Zoltán away from his futile courtship of the scattered Transylvanian vampires and sent him rushing hotfoot to the city.
Watching from the window, Dmitriu waited for the other vampires to pass before he left the train. And there they were, Zoltán’s two new bodyguards, looking like skinhead thugs as they swaggered through the crowd, which wisely gave them a wide berth.
However, where was Zoltán? Frowning, Dmitriu scanned the crowd both ahead and behind the bodyguards. There was no sign of him.
Alarm bells rang in Dmitriu’s head. Time was passing. The bodyguards had gone, and still Zoltán remained on the train. He was masking, but with severe concentration, Dmitriu could see through it. Who the hell was he hiding from? Saloman? Saloman would find him in the blink of an eye, if he was looking. . . .
Get off the train, moron, before we end up in bloody Vienna. . . .
Vienna. That was the plan. Zoltán had never been going to Budapest. His bodyguards were a decoy. He was traveling on in secret, with no companions, and that scared the hell out of Dmitriu. Not for one moment did he imagine that Zoltán was running away, giving up the struggle with Saloman before it had properly begun.
What was there in Vienna?
Everything. It was the gateway to the rest of Europe.
Dmitriu groaned. More passengers were getting on the train, loud in farewells and requests for help in finding their booked seats.
He could leap off and run to Saloman with this news that meant nothing, or he could stay aboard, arrive in Vienna in broad daylight, and find out where Zoltán was really going and why. While sheltering from the sun.
Why did he even send that girl to Saloman? Life was so much simpler when he slept.
And a hell of a lot duller.
The train roared back to life, and lumbered forward.
Elizabeth didn’t sleep well at the hunters’ headquarters. Not because her room wasn’t pleasant; on the contrary, when she thought about it, she rather liked it, all faded splendor and solid comfort. Nor was she troubled by nightmares, although she woke often in the night with an odd impression of candles and blood and silk sheets, and the warm tingle of sexual arousal—or satisfied pleasure. It felt like both.
It wasn’t so much her body as her brain that prevented her from sleeping. In particular, it was the simple question—why?
Why did he not kill her? He’d meant to, she could swear. The bizarre mixture of seduction and promise of death had been genuine. She could even pretend the death part had been what persuaded her not to fight the seduction—and there was some truth in that. There had been a time when she’d believed she was playing for her life. It had gotten lost with humiliating speed in the whirlwind of lust and sensual pleasure, and finally vanished when the first lovemaking had ended without biting.
I’ve won, she’d thought.
What in God’s name had made her believe that? When had he said, One fuck, one bite, and you’re dead? Quite the opposite; he’d promised her a whole night of sex before killing her, and that was exactly what he’d given her. She had no reason to believe that he’d changed his mind, no evidence for her belief that she’d won.
And, of course, she hadn’t. He’d bitten her, fed from her, just before dawn, adding that cold, insidious pleasure to all the rest that she’d absorbed and reached for so greedily. It was only when she’d begun to come down that the reality had penetrated her fog of stupid, sexual ecstasy with the awful realization that she hadn’t won after all; that it had meant nothing to him.
And yet now, on her second night of tossing and turning in the large, soft old bed in the hunters’ headquarters, her brain hung on to his words with tenacity.
For this moment, this night, Elizabeth, I love you.
She wanted to believe it. She needed to believe it. She couldn’t bear the idea that she’d given herself to a monster without feelings.
Don’t you always? Unkind. Her previous lovers hadn’t been monsters. They’d just turned out to be somewhat—shallow. Besides, it had been her own loneliness, her own need and inexperience that had imagined those past relationships to be more than they were. She’d do the same with Richard, if he ever looked at her.
Was that the pattern? She needed to believe the men she slept with loved her?
For this moment, this night, Elizabeth, I love you.
He’d still meant to kill her at dawn. And he’d fed from her as he’d always intended. He needed her blood to be strong, her death to be stronger and to prevent his enemies from gaining that strength. But she was still alive. He’d brought her home. What did that mean?
That she was his mi
lk cow, as the hunters believed?
Elizabeth sat up and switched on the light.
She avoided thinking about these things during the day. She trained hard, worked on getting her thesis evidence in order, and continued her research in the hunters’ library.
“Waiting,” she whispered into her fingers as she drew them across her dry lips. “I’ve just been waiting for his next move.” She had a vague, confused memory that was little more than an impression, of his promise to return. But she couldn’t pin it down to any reality. Somewhere, she wanted him to come to her, to show her that something had changed for him, that he hadn’t killed her because he cared for her.
Is that likely, Silk?
It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, wait any longer. She needed to know what he’d do next to help to counteract it. He’d killed Karl and Lajos now, two of the three vampires who’d staked him, to say nothing of any humans who got in his way. He’d be looking next for the strongest of the three, the mysterious and lost Maximilian.
While she recovered from her blood loss, the hunters had been wasting time, sharpening their sticks and watching the Angel, scouring the old city and the new for evidence of Saloman and Saloman’s house as she’d described it. She herself had gotten lost in reading scraps of his documents, obsessed with drinking in every description, every history that involved him. She should have been pursuing Maximilian and determining from evidence that had to be there, exactly where he had gone. And when they found him, they had the weapon as well as the bait they needed.
Weapon? You’d really kill him now?
He fed from me, betrayed me.
He made love to you, let you live.
Blood on Silk Page 19
