Blood Guilt

by Marie Treanor

“I don’t want to. I’ll stay here with you. But they’re not calling me.”

  Mihaela spared him a frowning glance. “They’re not?”

  “Nah. I just feel them, ken?”

  Mihaela peered outside, trying to avoid being seen by watching eyes. She couldn’t see anyone in the street below. But the distance indicator, when it stayed still for long enough to read, was displaying smaller and smaller numbers.

  “Do you know how many?” she asked calmly.

  Robbie counted on his fingers. “Four,” he said, with a grin, though whether his pleasure was with the vampire presence or his powers of calculation wasn’t clear.

  “I don’t suppose you know where?” she asked, turning to face the living room door, from where she could see the front door of the flat.

  Robbie shook his head.

  Four. She’d need a hell of a lot of luck to deal with four vampires on her own, especially when she needed to protect Robbie at the same time.

  She said, “I think there might be another fight.” Reaching over to the table, she grabbed her phone to do what she should have done at the beginning: call the British hunters. Rules were there for a reason. She could almost hear Miklόs and Konrad saying it. It was almost the only thing they agreed on. Her overdeveloped sense of this one vengeance had put Robbie in danger. There was no one to protect him if she died.

  But as she scrolled down, a thud from across the hall distracted her.

  Shit! “They’re coming through the kitchen window,” she said calmly. “You have to stay behind me, keep as far away from the fight as you can get.” She crammed the phone into his hand. “If anything happens to me, you call this number. You can trust the voice that answers.”

  There was no time for more. She grabbed the arm of the sofa, pushing it around a hundred and eighty degrees so that its seat faced her and it stood between her and whoever entered the room—a poor defense but all she had. The vampire Gavril strolled in.

  “Bunã seara,” he said, and held out one inviting hand. It might have been for herself or Robbie, but since another vampire pushed past him, and a crash against the front door told her a third was breaking in from that direction, she didn’t pause to find out.

  As the second vampire ran at her, she leapt at the back of the couch, forcing it over to crash down on the vampire’s knees. An older vampire would have moved fast enough to avoid it. This one was knocked over, and Mihaela jumped hard over his knees to break them. At the same time, since luck favored her by not hiding the vampire’s chest under the fallen furniture, she staked him through the heart.

  It was her last luck of the evening, she suspected, for a third vampire, one she hadn’t even seen enter the room, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back against him. Both stake arms were pinned uselessly to her side. Back-heeling his shins and knees in quick succession drew growls of rage and pain but didn’t loosen his grip. While she struggled, Gavril moved at last, strolling from the door toward Robbie, who, good boy, backed away from him.

  “Robbie!” she yelled uselessly.

  “It’s okay!” he called back in his high, childish voice, cutting straight to her heart. That the child had to comfort her for making so many unforgivable mistakes. With a mighty twist, she managed to reposition her left-hand stake and stab her captor in the thigh.

  He screamed, and she pulled free from his loosened arms just as a fourth vampire grabbed her by the throat. She kicked out at the one she’d just stabbed, to delay further attack from that quarter, and jabbed the new attacker in his throat.

  Whether it was her blow which distracted him or the sudden crash of breaking glass as a fifth vampire cascaded into the room, she found she could wrench his arm down and twist it behind his back, giving her the instant she needed to stake him through the heart.

  Somewhat to her surprise, while she did so, the strong vampire she’d stabbed in the leg leapt over the couch, throwing himself on top of the newcomer. There was a brief, snarling struggle for position before the newcomer sank his fangs into the other’s throat and snapped his neck. Through the puff of dust, Mihaela’s stunned gaze met Maximilian’s.

  Robbie laughed with glee. What the hell was going on? There was no time to ask, for Gavril, who’d grasped Robbie’s arm, dropped it again and turned to face Maximilian.

  There was only Gavril left, but from where she stood, the Romanian vampire looked murderous enough to manage the job of the three already turned to dust. As he and Maximilian closed, Mihaela ran forward and leapt onto Gavril’s shoulder. If Maximilian turned him to dust before she could see his ear, she’d never know…

  Gavril fended his enemy off with a slashing stake, but he spared her a snarl over his shoulder, and with that she knew. Dizziness threatened. She clung to his shoulder for support now rather than attack, for just so had he glared at her when she’d spat bits of his own ear into his face and vomited the rest on his shoes.

  She snatched up his hair, shoving it up to reveal a torn, jagged earlobe, perfectly healed but with a lump out of it the size of a child’s mouth.

  But she had no time to celebrate the culmination of her lifetime quest. Even as fury and sickness surged inside her with equal strength, his blow sent her flying across the room, clutching her face. She couldn’t see for the pain in her nose and the water streaming from her eyes.

  She managed to roll to a more defensive position, but neither of the vampires was paying her any attention. They struggled on the floor. She heard a clatter as Gavril’s stake hit the wall. She didn’t know which threw it, but, wiping her eyes, she guessed it was Maximilian, for he lay over Gavril, pinning the Romanian vampire down.

  They glared into each other’s faces in perfect silence. And yet Mihaela was sure they were communicating. Gavril’s expression changed constantly, as if he was hurling words at the vampire who’d defeated him. Maximilian frowned but otherwise looked much as he always did, giving away neither words nor emotion. Until he shrugged.

  “Your choice,” he said aloud and bit into Gavril’s throat.

  Inside Mihaela, something snapped.

  “No!” Sheer instinct propelled her into Maximilian. Instinct and rage. Finally, after more than twenty years, luck had smiled upon her, brought her face-to-face with the vampire she’d sought through the mountains, villages, and city streets of several countries. She’d sacrificed everything—family, friends, every hope of normality or happiness—for this one moment she’d given up believing would ever come. And now that it had, Maximilian was taking it from her.

  Surprise as well as the force of her charge rolled Maximilian off Gavril, with her now on top of Maximilian, stake raised.

  “He’s mine!” she raged. For the parents who’d loved her and the sister she must have played with, the hands that had held hers when she crossed the street…

  Maximilian jerked under her, almost heaving her off; then he twisted and threw her against the sofa.

  “Mine,” she repeated wildly, already acknowledging how stupid she sounded but not caring in the slightest. She seemed to have reverted to the child she’d been when she’d first confronted Gavril.

  If only stupidity were limited to words. Behind Maximilian, Gavril leapt out of the broken window, escaping both of them. He carried a child in his arms.

  Something shifted in Mihaela’s head, a flash of memory. She’d seen Gavril’s back before, as he’d leapt out of a window, carrying something… But that was hardly her priority right now.

  “Robbie!” she screamed, hurling herself at the sill, careless of the lethal shards of glass in her desperation to see if Robbie survived and where Gavril took him. Something flashed to her right, disappearing round the corner into Castle Street. It was a start.

  As she turned away, she realized Maximilian stood beside her. He didn’t look at her.

  “Vengeance,” he observed, “is overrated.”

  She had nothing to fight that with. Nothing at all. He jumped onto the sill like some monstrous bird and jumped. Some instinct made he
r grab at him uselessly. He hit the ground softly, firmly, like a panther, already running toward Castle Street.

  Mihaela swung away, dashing her hand over her eyes. There would be time for tears, along with recriminations, later. Once she’d put all this right. She ran to the door, grabbing up her bag and coat and the discarded stakes from the fight.

  Amazingly enough, the front door stood intact, although the wood had splintered where the lock had been broken. And an elderly neighbor stood on the landing looking concerned.

  “Is everything all right, dear? Do you want me to call the police?”

  “Oh no, that’s okay,” Mihaela said hastily. “It looks worse than it is. I’ll sort it out. Bye!” And she ran downstairs with a quick, silent apology to Elizabeth for leaving her home in such a state.

  Since everyone else had gone that way, she hurried toward Castle Street while dragging out the vampire detector. Remarkably, something was still registering some fifty meters behind her. She spun around, and something on the pavement caught her eye. Bending to pick it up, she saw that it was her mobile phone. Robbie’s best hope.

  “Shit,” she whispered, still clutching it in one hand as she stared at the needle of the detector in the other. A car came careering down North Street toward her, and the distance indicator flashed so quickly downward that she stared, frowning into the car as it roared past her.

  The vampire Maximilian was at the wheel.

  Mihaela pocketed the detector, ran to her own hired car, and set off in pursuit.

  ****

  He drove like a maniac. There was no way she could keep up and live. But by a mixture of guesswork and sensible assumptions, she found herself crossing the Forth Bridge and heading for Edinburgh. She began to relax, flexing her white-knuckled fingers on the wheel. Edinburgh was good. Somehow, she could find them all there. And if necessary, she could call in the British hunters to help. Robbie’s safety far outweighed her petty desire for personal revenge against Gavril. What the hell had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t been thinking at all. And now that she was, she wondered about Maximilian all over again. What exactly was his game? Had he used the little scenario to keep Robbie and get rid of rivals in one blow? If so, why bring him to her? None of it made any sense.

  It made less sense as she reached the Gogar roundabout and a car shot over at breakneck speed to the accompaniment of several horn blasts from those he cut off. Mihaela swore, for the speeding car looked a lot like Maximilian’s. Now it was her turn to annoy her fellow drivers and drive right around the roundabout and follow back the way she’d come.

  Her heart sank. They appeared to be heading to Edinburgh Airport.

  And yet, as she was about to enter the airport car park, wondering how on earth she would find any of them, Maximilian, Gavril, or Robbie if they’d already checked in, her silent detector on the dashboard abruptly vibrated.

  An instant later, a large gray car whizzed out of the car park. Maximilian.

  Mihaela’s heart drummed as she wrenched the steering wheel around. Had Maximilian found Robbie? Had he taken him from Gavril?

  Is Gavril dead? Did I fail in that too? What was he carrying when he escaped from our house all those years ago? Not a body. Not a person. It was smaller, much smaller than that…

  It doesn’t matter. Robbie’s what counts. Only Robbie. Until he’s safe.

  ****

  It was a long night. She never drew near enough to Maximilian to tell if Robbie was with him. She didn’t know if Maximilian was following a trail or trying to lose her, if he even knew she was there. She caught only tantalizing glimpses of his car in the distance—once at a petrol station, and once she drew close enough for the detector to go off again. In this way, she crossed Scotland in the dark, heading north and west until she reached craggy, beautiful coast.

  He’s going home, she thought in wonder. He’d taken Robbie back to his hidden lair—or was on his way there—where no one had been able to find him for centuries after Zoltán had defeated him for control of the East European vampires and he’d chosen to eschew the world.

  But it was almost dawn. The vampires would have to shelter somewhere. All she had to do was look for Maximilian’s car. Or…

  Slowing to a halt at the side of the road, she reached across to the passenger seat and rummaged for her powerful binoculars. She got out of the car and, shivering in the cold, gray dimness of pre-dawn, she scanned the sea for vessels of any kind. Not so much as a fishing boat.

  She got back in and drove on, watching out for his car on the coast road and stopping frequently to look for any boats on the water. There were several tiny islands, most with no signs of habitation. But then she doubted Maximilian would leave many.

  ****

  With his feet once more on solid ground and his immovable hand grasping the child’s shoulder, the vampire Gavril had yet another great idea that made him smile.

  Using Robbie’s own power to help mask him from the human passengers, police, and immigration officers they walked among appealed to Gavril’s sense of irony. Even if Robbie had struggled, no one would have seen him.

  But Gavril couldn’t help feeling particularly clever when the new idea came to him. Having Maximilian in the game was not something he’d anticipated. Encountering him in Edinburgh at the wrong moment had been fucking bad luck, and their best chance of eliminating him when he was drunk had been foiled by the hunter popping up from nowhere. That hunter, of all people…

  However, Maximilian was the greatest threat to Gavril’s project. He’d already forced the planned experiment to happen without Robbie, and now, to avoid the spotlight, Gavril had to move faster than he’d intended. Worse, Maximilian wasn’t prepared to join him or even to turn a blind eye. Jealousy, probably, because he hadn’t thought of it first. Gavril had even offered him leadership of the project during that silent struggle in St. Andrews, but Maximilian hadn’t believed in his sincerity. Rightly, as it happened.

  No way was Gavril giving up control of the earthquakes that would ravage the world, decimate the human population, and leave the way open for his rule. It was his discovery, his plan, and he was keeping it. Because it was such a great one that had been building in his head for a quarter of a century while he grew strong enough to implement it. And when his Scottish contact had discovered Robbie…

  Well, it just had so many possibilities: mainly his own meteoric rise to power over the vampire world, but also, perhaps, through the mass slaughter of humans, the rule of vampires in general over whatever humans were left. There would have to be enough of them to supply the vampires with blood, of course, but he rather liked the idea of enslaving weak and deluded humans…

  However, this part of his plan was more nebulous and dependent on how well the first part went. He didn’t really mind if things never went that far. The first step had been the experiment in Scotland—which had to count as successful, even without Robbie’s presence. The second, crucial step, was the real thing, which could be easily accomplished now with Robbie’s presence and the knowledge acquired during the Scottish experiment.

  Mass death and carnage all caused by him. He, Gavril, would change the balance of power forever.

  Oh yes, his plan was well on the way to fulfillment.

  But the fact remained, Maximilian was a pest. Too strong to take out without a lot of allies and weeks of planning Gavril could simply not spare.

  Then, guiding Robbie through the crowds of the airport, he had his brilliant idea. And the beauty of it was, it also inspired him as to how to deal with the annoying hunter. But first things first.

  Ferdinand, he called across the miles. And when that didn’t work, he gave his telepathic voice a little boost via Robbie. Ferdinand!

  A surge of anger and contempt struck him, causing him to stumble. Robbie glanced up at him in the first alarm he’d shown. Perhaps he wasn’t so stupid after all. Still, since it was best the boy wasn’t frightened, he smiled reassuringly at him, just as Ferdinand spoke ins
ide his head.

  You had better have a damned good reason for disturbing me.

  Oh, I have. I’ve just run into an old friend of yours. Maximilian.

  The old vampire’s hatred almost exploded in one word:

  Where?

  ****

  The sun was beginning to rise, turning the gray sky into an increasingly spectacular pink-and-gold painting that reflected in the glacial, gently rippling sea. Despairing, Mihaela lifted the binoculars to her eyes one more time. And something moved, some shadow too far away to make out, disappearing over the horizon.

  Or it might have been her imagination.

  It didn’t matter. In the absence of his car, it was all she had to go on.

  Chapter Six

  Some three hours later, she cut the engine of her borrowed motorboat and used the oars to pull herself quietly onto the island.

  It had been hard to find, which gave her real hope that this was the right place at last. She’d asked a lot of questions of the locals and looked at a lot of maps, always remembering the exact position of the shadow that might have been Maximilian and Robbie on a boat, or might have been nothing at all.

  What if he’d been too late? What if the sun had risen and he’d burned up in front of Robbie’s eyes and the kid was left alone at sea? She didn’t really believe that. Maximilian was six centuries old; he simply didn’t make misjudgments like that. Despite his reputation for seclusion, she had to consider the more likely scenario that there were other vampires there, maybe even Gavril. And her best weapon in such an unequal fight was daylight. You didn’t get much of that in a northern winter day, so she couldn’t afford to waste any time.

  Lugging the boat far enough up the beach not to get whipped back in when the tide went out again, she tied it to a rock for added security, and, with a quick glance at her silent detector, she began to walk toward the tumbledown lighthouse. Abandoned since the mid- nineteenth century, when a more modern and useful one had been built closer to the shipping lanes, it was regarded as more of a folly than anything else, for it had never served any useful purpose, at least according to the locals she’d spoken to.