Blood on Silk

by Marie Treanor

  “I think he has too. There’ve been open killings in Edinburgh, and the news got out before our UK people could cover it up.”

  “I know. Mihaela, where are you guys? I think you should come over here.”

  “We’re on our way. Our plane leaves in an hour. We’ll be with you by morning. Until then, I’ll send you the number of our UK operatives. They’re probably in St. Andrews already, watching out for you.”

  Unexpected warmth flooded her. She didn’t ask why Mihaela hadn’t called before. The answer was obvious. They doubted they’d be welcome. But they were coming, and in the meantime, they’d sent their colleagues to look after her.

  “Mihaela?”

  “Yes?”

  “I will help you get him—get all of them. I even think I know how, if there are enough of us.”

  Saloman approved of the invention of motorboats. Without it, he would have been forced to row through the rain and mist to Maximilian’s bolt-hole, and that would have sacrificed some dignity. As it was, he drove the boat right up onto the sandy shore, doing little more than guiding it with one hand, in full view of the still, shadowy figure standing on the beach.

  Saloman cut the engine and stepped off the boat. From there, he regarded Maximilian. He had no intention of speaking first.

  Even in the darkness and the swirling mist, Maximilian looked pale and gaunt. On the other hand, he didn’t look terrified.

  He stirred at last. “Saloman, I knew you would come as soon as I felt your awakening.”

  “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Did I? I remember only mentioning where I was. Foolhardy enough. Have you come to kill me?”

  Saloman closed the distance between them. “Do you want me to?”

  “To be honest, I don’t much care.”

  “Ruling the unruly not as much fun as you expected?”

  Maximilian sighed. “If you’re anything like you used to be, you’ll know every little detail of how I fouled it up and crowned my glory with defeat by a lesser being. I suppose we have that in common.”

  Saloman inclined his head at the compliment. It wasn’t an apology. For what Maximilian had done, no apology was possible.

  “You were too young, Max. Not ready.” He began to walk along the beach, knowing Maximilian would soon fall into step beside him.

  “So who awakened you in the end?” Maximilian asked. His voice sounded unused, awkward. Clearly, he didn’t get many visitors.

  “A descendant of Tsigana’s.”

  Maximilian twisted his lips. “Power hungry and seductive?”

  “Ignorant and naïve.” Saloman paused. “And seductive.” And learned. Unexpectedly charming. And passionate . . . and clever enough to save her life.

  After a short silence, he said, “You’re not looking well. Is that fear? Or bad diet?”

  Maximilian shrugged. “I don’t feed much. It doesn’t matter. You’ll still gain the strength from my blood. As for fear, I don’t have any. I’ve always known you’d turn up in the end to kill me.”

  “I can be merciful.”

  “Tell that to Karl and Lajos.”

  “Weaklings, and unworthy allies for you. But I suppose they supplied the extra strength to hammer the stake right in.”

  “Don’t.” Maximilian’s eyes closed. He too had had three hundred years to contemplate his act of treachery, and maybe, just maybe, something remained of the strong, just man he’d once been.

  Saloman didn’t bank on it.

  He let the smile play around his lips. “Well. You do still have feelings, even if your ambition is dead. What do you feel about Zoltán?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t you want to kill him?”

  “I’ve no intention of going looking for him. But if he turned up here, I might.”

  “I suspect he will,” Saloman murmured. “Turn up here.”

  Maximilian turned his gaze around to him. “To get me to ally against you?”

  “I can see no other reason for him to be in Scotland, especially when he has a pet project at home to enslave humanity.”

  Maximilian’s eyes widened. For a moment he looked as if he was about to say something passionate, but in the end he only shrugged. “That will not be good for humanity.”

  “No,” Saloman agreed.

  “I suppose you’ll stop him.”

  “I suppose I will.”

  Maximilian gazed upward at the clouds and the mist. “He’s looking for me. I can sense him. . . .”

  “So what will you say, Max? When he comes with offers of whatever you want and the strength of an Ancient again?”

  Maximilian stopped walking. “How about, ‘Fuck off, I hate you both’?”

  Saloman laughed.

  “Elizabeth!”

  Elizabeth glanced up in surprise. From the expression in Richard’s voice, she gathered it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken. She’d come into the department early, her mind and body buzzing with excitement that wouldn’t let her concentrate on her work. Instead, sitting at her desk, she stared blindly at the computer screen and grappled with plans for killing vampires. The hunters were here, in the St. Andrews Hotel—she had a text that told her so—and she was meeting them there at lunchtime.

  This time she would be bait without distraction. No dancing; no sex—just death and closure and an end to the unendurable emotions that wracked her whenever she thought of him, whenever she dreamed of him. Guilt because she’d awakened him and because she hadn’t finished him. Shame for the influence sexual desire had had on her sense of right and wrong. She deserved to suffer as she did, but more than anything in the world, she wanted to be rid of that suffering and to do the right thing at last.

  “Richard,” she returned, dragging herself back into the real world. “Sorry, I was miles away.”

  “Lost in your thesis?”

  “Sort of.” Avoiding the question seemed safest.

  “I read what you’ve done so far.” Walking into the room, he dropped the familiar folder on her desk. “I’ve made a few notes, but on the whole, this is an excellent start. You have some fantastic new material there, and a very fine, if novel, interpretation. If you keep up to that standard, you’ll have no difficulty getting the PhD.”

  There was a glow of pride at that. She greeted it with relief, glad her entire world hadn’t become lost in vampire obsession.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be interested to see how you resolve the issue of the Saloman legends. You’ll have to be careful not to contradict yourself or ignore the evidence.”

  She swallowed. “I think his name became a symbol for whatever they wanted him to be. A Vlad the Impaler for all ages, if you like. Someone to give them hope, but also to justify, and to blame for, atrocity.”

  It was the best she could do. She couldn’t leave him out. And babbling the truth would lose her any credibility. She wouldn’t let him do that to her either.

  Richard was nodding. He looked impressed. “Prove it.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good girl. So, are you up for Chris’s party next weekend?”

  She hadn’t even told him. She’d bought something to wear to it and hadn’t even let him know she was coming. The knowledge brought a surge of deprecating laughter, making her smile brighter than normal, and she was rewarded with a dazzling one in return. A few months ago, it would have turned her knees to jelly and fed all her wildest hopes. Right now, she didn’t know what she wanted.

  Except for Saloman not to be here, tormenting her by his existence. Then she could live.

  A different country, a different hotel, but still the same problem—it felt too familiar, even though she was the one walking into their room, rather than the other way around.

  It should have been awkward, considering the way she’d left them in Budapest. Elizabeth had looked forward to getting the first meeting over with for that reason. And certainly no one smiled as she walked through the door. But the three of them rose to t
heir feet. Mihaela came first, solemnly embracing her, and afterward, István and even Konrad kissed her cheek. It was the normal custom of their countries, but it still brought a lump to Elizabeth’s throat.

  “I’m glad you came,” she managed. “I shouldn’t have left when I did. He’s stronger now, isn’t he?”

  “He’s bound to be,” said Konrad. “On the other hand, this migration of so many of our powerful vampires is intriguing in itself. There is something here for them. Not descendants, apart from you—we’ve been tracing and warning as many as we could, but you’re the only one in Britain. And for the record, Zoltán and Dmitriu had left Hungary before you did. We scoured the whole region for them, but found nothing until they turned up here.”

  “And now they’re ignoring me.”

  Were they? A vampire had tried to kill her, after all. And what if Saloman had sent her the last dream, just as he sent his words into her head? What if he’d sent all of the dreams? Scary thought; yet . . . a part of her actually welcomed the idea.

  “I doubt you’ll be ignored for long,” Konrad said. “They’ve obviously come here for something else of great value to all of them. . . .”

  “I think I know what it is,” Elizabeth blurted. “It’s what I was looking into by myself in the library that morning. I knew he—Saloman—would look for Maximilian.”

  “Maximilian . . . ,” Mihaela repeated, almost in awe.

  “Here?” Konrad said, tugging at his lip.

  “I never got as far as tracing his movements,” Elizabeth muttered. “I got sidetracked. But why else would they both be here? Paying me no attention.”

  Konrad gave a thin smile. “I’m sure they haven’t forgotten your value.”

  “Or yours,” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “Or mine,” he allowed. “But I’m not the Awakener. Your blood is still more important.”

  “I don’t understand how all that works. Is it real? Or just in their minds?” And in mine . . . I believe I’m better and faster because I’m the Awakener, Tsigana’s descendant, and so I am? It wasn’t the first time this possibility had entered her head. But that surge when she’d killed the vampire had felt very definite.

  “Real,” István said with conviction. “We’ve analyzed blood from vampires both before and after they’ve killed other vampires—or even killed particular humans who’ve killed vampires, and it does change. What particular quality provides the strength, we don’t know. We’re still working on it. Unfortunately, we have no Ancient blood to test. But we all undergo regular blood tests for the scientists to try to understand how this phenomenon works.”

  It was the longest speech Elizabeth had heard him make. The science of this, not the fight, was what fascinated István.

  “So with every vampire you kill, you grow stronger?” she said in amazement.

  “Every vampire of strength,” István amended. “Mihaela gained from killing Zoltán’s bodyguards, but she’d have gained a lot more if she’d killed Zoltán himself. Fledglings are the easiest to combat, but their death brings little if any gain to the killer.”

  So she was right. Her attacker hadn’t been a fledgling. “It’s like some sick computer game.”

  “Coffee?” said Mihaela, bringing things back to earth.

  Elizabeth took the cup and saucer presented to her and perched on the end of the nearest bed. “So it isn’t just training,” she mused. “All of you are faster and stronger than ordinary folk because of what you’ve done.”

  “So are you,” said Konrad. “You have greater potential than any of us, even though you haven’t yet killed.”

  Something twisted inside her. She didn’t correct him. “Killed” was such an ugly word. And yet what else was there to do with vampires? Vampires, for God’s sake! Not some daft eastern European legend, but a reality that killed young men on the streets of Leith, whole families in a Romanian farmhouse. Why had she never even asked him about that? She’d been too mesmerized by his beauty and her own perverse desires.

  “Then maybe we have a chance,” she murmured. “Our strength, the strength of your UK colleagues. I think I can make him come for me, if he thinks Zoltán is about to kill me.” She gave a lopsided smile. “It does involve bringing Zoltán and me together. Can we capture him?”

  “We have to find him first,” Mihaela said. “We passed through Edinburgh on our way here, and even with the powerful detectors, there was no reading. Perhaps he’s located Maximilian. We can get our researchers onto that at once.”

  Konrad, who’d been looking out of the window at the sea, turned with decision. “There is also the fact that the four of us plus the UK operatives are unlikely to be strong enough now.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Against one?”

  “Maybe one. Maybe two. We don’t know which way Dmitriu will jump. He’s gone rogue, left the country without telling us—he was our informant in Transylvania—and now we don’t know if he’s joined Zoltán against his former friend. We need to find Zoltán, and then . . . we need to consider an alliance.”

  Elizabeth set her cup down in the saucer with a clank. “Alliance? Between us and Zoltán?”

  From the shrugs and dropped eyes of the other hunters, it was clear this was something they’d discussed before and weren’t happy about.

  Mihaela said reluctantly, “It may be the only way. If Saloman is as strong as we think he is, and if he has Dmitriu on his side, then we need Zoltán and any vampires he’s recruited in this country. You don’t have many,” she added with a quick smile at Elizabeth, “and they’re not organized by our standards. But they’re usually up for a brawl.”

  Elizabeth said, “He won’t have Dmitriu. If he knows about you and Dmitriu, he’ll regard it as betrayal.” Yet another betrayal, but she wouldn’t pity him. It was how his kind behaved. “Dmitriu may be dead.”

  Konrad opened his mouth as if about to refute it, then changed his mind. “You might be right. This is as much about avenging betrayal as gaining power. He wouldn’t forgive Dmitriu. Even if Dmitriu sent you to him in the first place. In any case, we need Zoltán to hem him in, to let us get near him.”

  “After that,” Mihaela said with a trace of anxiety, “the alliance is at an end. It is important that one of us—or all of us—kill Saloman. If Zoltán does it, it’s bad, because in the end, we need him as weak as possible.”

  Konrad sat down and recapped. “So we find Zoltán, bring him here as if he’s threatening Elizabeth, and this will bring Saloman. We need to be prepared, to know Saloman’s coming, so it will have to be organized at a location chosen by us. Preferably near a graveyard.”

  Elizabeth blinked. “To bury us quickly?”

  Mihaela laughed.

  “Zombies,” said Konrad repressively. “Zoltán has the power to summon and control zombies—walking dead with no souls and no will except to obey him.”

  “It won’t be a pretty sight,” István warned her. “You’ll have to ignore them and concentrate only on him, Saloman. The zombies will help herd him to us.”

  Elizabeth took in this mind-boggling addition too. They’d mentioned zombies before, way back at the beginning when she hadn’t believed a word they said anyhow. They sounded nasty, inappropriate, and downright dangerous. “Can you really trust Zoltán to that extent?”

  “Until Saloman is dead.”

  “And then what about the damned zombies? Will they turn on us if he tells them to?”

  “Yes,” Konrad admitted. “But they are easy to neutralize, so long as they don’t get a hold of you, and it’s my belief Zoltán will lose interest in them once Saloman is dead. Even if we do the killing, he has his enemy removed and the ability to take power back in eastern Europe.”

  “Wait a minute,” Elizabeth pounced. “If zombies are so easy to neutralize, why would they be any use at all against Saloman?”

  “Numbers. Also, we believe the Ancients regarded zombies as abominations—they may be the only things that frighten Salo - man. They’ll distract him from
us and let us kill him.”

  Elizabeth shut her mouth. “It sounds a risky strategy.”

  “I don’t see that we have any option. With or without any succession wars, Saloman is the biggest danger humanity has faced in centuries. If he reaches the height of his powers, all the hunters in the world won’t be able to combat him and humanity will be doomed—slaves to murderous, bloodsucking fiends ruled by the whims of this insane Ancient.” Konrad paused for his grim words to sink in.

  He isn’t insane, Elizabeth thought rebelliously. Or was he? Wouldn’t that account for his erratic behavior? Where Saloman was concerned, appearances were oh so deceptive. . . .

  Konrad spoke again, his voice all the more impressive for being quiet and measured. “Saloman must die. After that, we’ll just have to take care of peripheral problems.”

  It struck Elizabeth, as the days went by, that they were going to have to come up with a new plan. This one hinged on finding Zoltán, and so far they hadn’t heard a peep from him. Nor had the researchers in Budapest come up with any helpful information about Maximilian’s location. They could find no connection to Scotland.

  The excitement that had buoyed Elizabeth up and spurred her into action faded over the weekend into a sense of frustration and anticlimax.

  She found it difficult to concentrate in the daytime, either on teaching or on her thesis. While her nights were full of hot, disturbing dreams of Saloman—Saloman kissing her; Saloman biting her; Saloman caressing her naked body to blissful, trembling compliance; Saloman making love to her. And worse than her surrender were the dreams of her own seduction of Saloman and the wild triumph with which she rode him to roaring, howling orgasm.

  She couldn’t suppress the dreams any more than she could suppress her enjoyment of them. All she could do was sneer at herself on waking, and at him if he was sending them, and go back to sleep. She couldn’t afford to be weak through lack of rest. It all made for an edgy, difficult life, but fed her now-unshakeable belief that she was doing the right thing at last. Saloman must die—not because of her wicked dreams, but because of who and what he was. And her role was pivotal.