She wondered, as she strode across the scrubby, sandy grass and climbed over mossy rocks on the hill, if he were watching her. Her skin pricked under her sheepskin jacket. Did he sleep in the daylight? The weird, eerie sleep of the vampire she’d witnessed before, mainly while clearing out fledgling communes in the mountains of Transylvania. Or was he like Saloman, who rarely so much as closed his eyes? According to Elizabeth, who should know.
The lighthouse no longer had a light. In fact, the higher part of the edifice had crumbled altogether. It did still have a door, which was closed. Mihaela pushed it, and to her surprise, it gave creakily to let her in.
Bad sign, she thought ruefully. There was no effort to keep strangers out. Plus, her detector wasn’t registering any vampire presence.
But neither was there anything here to attract anyone inside. There was most of a roof over the entranceway, but the rest was rubble. Any rare visitors who stumbled on the place would glance around as she was doing, and, realizing there was nothing to see, would leave again. Better than a lock, she thought with growing excitement, which might only attract attention.
If he’s really here, he’ll have masked his presence from human eyes as well as vampire senses…
Gingerly, she pushed her way past the rubble, staring hard at every surface until she made out the narrow door in the wall. Even so, when she touched it, it again became uncut wall to her eyes. Only by feel did she discover the handle. She pulled, and it opened smoothly, though only onto darkness. Delving for her torch, Mihaela shone it inside. There was nothing to see. It might have been a cellar once, small and cold. It smelled only of damp stone, and there was no way down. Or was there?
In her pocket, her detector began to vibrate. Got you!
Mihaela crouched down and felt with one foot until she found a step, firm and solid, made of stone. She stood on it and, grasping her stake firmly in one hand, felt for the next step. In this way, curiously disoriented and vulnerable, she made her way down the steps and into the cellar. By shining the torch and staring so hard at every stone that it hurt her head, she found yet another door.
At first, she thought it was locked, for her first tug didn’t budge it. A second, stronger effort did, and that was when she knew without doubt that she was right. This was Maximilian’s lair.
By the light of her torch, she read the detector. A vampire presence registered several yards away but stationary. Somewhere beyond this room. The cellars must spread beyond the lighthouse, under the actual hill it stood on. The walls of this chamber were painted white, and all sorts of odd things filled the cavernous space—rocks and pebbles of various shapes and sizes, sea shells, feathers of different colors, pieces of sea-washed driftwood, a single, ancient, salt-stained boot, a tiny rowing boat, a red ribbon, piles of assorted seaweed and lots of varied junk that looked as if it had been washed up from the sea.
What did he want with it all?
Straining her ears for the smallest sound, she moved on to the next door, which wasn’t masked at all. How far did this labyrinth go? Before she opened it, she consulted the detector. The vampire presence did not appear to have moved, but since she had no idea of the spaces she was dealing with here, she had to be prepared to encounter him as soon as she opened the door.
Dropping the detector back in her pocket, she pushed the door open and leapt through, brandishing her stake at emptiness.
But not at darkness. There was daylight in this room, not exactly bright, but there, filtering through from a hole angled into the ceiling to strike one particular spot. She could even smell the salty seaside air. These walls were painted too, but not plain white. They were covered in huge murals, rugged landscapes, some stormy, some merely gray, some tinged with the delicate shades of sunset or early sunrise. They were peopled with a weird array of characters, from naked Renaissance-type nymphs to an old man in a raincoat and peaked cap. Not one of them smiled, and whatever the weather portrayed in the pictures and however bright the splashes of colors, the overall effect was of darkness, bleakness.
“Jesus,” she whispered, half laughing in nervous astonishment before she remembered to check the detector. He still hadn’t moved, so far as she could tell, and he was still beyond this room, although the distance was no longer so great.
It seemed likely he was asleep, that if Robbie was with him, the child was too. Would he wake when she passed through the next door, which, from some sense of rightness or of humor, he’d painted to look like a medieval wooden one with iron hinges?
Debating her next move, she looked around the painted room. It was lined with pots of paint, of the type you used to paint your house, lumps of stone and carved statues. Some wooden shelves constructed in the corner displayed tubes of oil and acrylic paints, stone tools like chisels and hammers. Little pots and palettes littered other shelves and a rudimentary wooden table. A stool and an easel stood in the middle of the room, well back from but facing the thin beam of daylight from the hole in the ceiling.
Unable to stop herself, she crossed to the easel to see what he’d been working on. A landscape on canvas, savage, stormy, magnificent in its way, yet curiously unrelieved. The colors were all dark, unrelenting, despairing.
The picture caught at her breath, tugged at some hidden, confused emotions deep inside her. It seemed to her he had a prodigious talent, and if vampires had no soul, he surely still carried the memory of one…
She turned away, looking instead at the half-formed stone figure on the table. It appeared to be human, female and voluptuous, its curves sensual and so alluring she wanted to touch them. But beyond that, it had no features, no neck or head. Under it were pencil drawings on paper. Lots of them. The top one looked familiar.
She glanced at the door, at her unchanging detector, and, keeping the stake to hand, she dropped the detector back in her pocket so that she could gently maneuver the drawings from under the half-made statue.
She was right. It made her flesh tingle just to look at Saloman’s opaque black eyes staring at her from the drawing. He’d caught it all, the Ancient’s power and arrogance, the profound depths of eyes that had existed millennia too long, the beauty of his face, of the way he held himself, at once soothing and challenging and letting no one, least of all himself, get away with anything.
She could read all that and more in Maximilian’s drawing. She’d never seen half of it in Saloman’s face before. Too busy being petrified.
She lifted it up to see better, acknowledging as she should have long ago what it was about that being which so attracted and enslaved her friend. As she held it up to the dim, narrow light, her eyes fell on the drawing below, and her heart skipped a beat.
Slowly, she lowered the drawing of Saloman and stared at the new one. Undoubtedly Mihaela. The drawn figure crouched on the floor, a pointed stick in her right hand, staring up at the “camera.” Her eyes were huge, her face severe, her expression at once aggressive, afraid and deeply, sensually aware. The whole impression was one of defiant vulnerability, and for some reason, it made her throat ache.
He’d seen all that, the bastard. He knew. Knew she’d take on any monster of the darkness without fear and yet couldn’t face an instant of gratitude. Not when it was linked with the power of such wicked, intense attraction.
But she’d forgotten to check the detector. And now she didn’t need it. She could feel him. She jerked her gaze up in panic, and there he stood, just on her side of the open medieval door. Her heart leapt into her mouth, and with it came stupid words.
“You remembered me.”
“It’s rare to find someone who looks more threatened by having her life saved than by the prospect of it being taken. I remembered that. And your beauty.” His eyes flickered. “I couldn’t get it right, though. I wanted to sculpt you, but the position was wrong, and I couldn’t make it work.”
She followed his gaze to the unfinished statue on the table and felt her eyes widen. “That is me?”
“No. I wanted it to be.” He began
to walk toward her, and at last, she remembered the real reason she was here.
“Robbie,” she gasped, thrusting her free hand in her pocket to grasp the second stake. The first he’d have seen already, and she needed something to surprise him with if she was to win this fight. “Have you got Robbie?”
He shook his head. “Robbie’s with Gavril and the others. In Europe.”
“Where?” she demanded.
“Robbie doesn’t know.”
Her breath caught. “You’re communicating with him?”
Maximilian nodded and came to a halt a foot away from her.
“Is he afraid?” It came out as a whisper, because she couldn’t bear the idea.
“Not really. He doesn’t want to be there, but he’s interested. And they don’t hurt him.”
She swallowed. “Why did you come back here?”
“To collect what I need to find them.”
She searched his pale, reflective eyes. “I don’t trust you, Maximilian,” she whispered. Her lips felt cold and oddly rigid.
“I know.” His gaze dropped to the region of her mouth, causing her stomach to surge with memory; then, almost immediately, he lifted his eyes to the drawing on the table. He frowned, as if irritated by mistakes she couldn’t even see.
“What do you really want with Robbie?” she asked desperately.
“I want to know what Gavril wants from him.”
“Did you set us up? In St. Andrews? Did you bring them?”
“I wanted to see if they’d come, if they could reach Robbie through my masking. They shouldn’t have been able to, and yet they could.”
“You should have warned me!”
“I came back,” he said, as if that made up for everything. She shied away from that; it was her stupid action which had let Gavril escape with Robbie.
“Why me?” she managed. “Why did you bring him to me?”
He lifted his gaze once more to hers. Something burned behind the lightness of his eyes, like smoldering ashes. “Because you’d protect him.” His lips quirked slightly. It might have been a smile. “And because I like to look at you.”
“Why?” It was a stupid question, and through the burning of her cheeks, she wished she could snatch it back.
He didn’t answer at first. He stepped closer. His hand came up, and when she flinched instinctively, it paused. He waited, holding her stare, and then continued the journey of his hand until it touched her cheek, trailing his fingertips down the line of her jaw bone to her lips. Oh Jesus Christ…
“Perhaps to get the drawing right,” he murmured. “And the sculpture. Perhaps to know.”
“Know what?” she asked huskily. She felt the movement of her lips against his finger, right down her spine to her toes. But pride wouldn’t let her back away, and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to throw him off.
He frowned, his eyes intent. “Life,” he said, bending closer, inhaling her like perfume. At least it broke the terrible eye contact for a moment. But as his hair brushed against her cheek, her neck, she shivered. She was aware of his lithe, strong body, not quite touching hers, and had to fight the insane urge to close the distance, to fit herself against it more closely even than when he’d lain on her and drunk her blood.
Oh shit, if he bites me now…
His head lifted a little, his gaze now on her lips. There was heat in his pale eyes, a silver spark of vitality she’d never seen in human eyes. It enhanced his beauty way beyond what was bearable. She drew in a shuddering breath, and he gave the faintest smile, as if he felt it on the finger that now glided along her lips, tracing the outline of her mouth.
The caress was gentle, the touch of a butterfly wing, and yet it sprinkled shards of pleasure through every nerve. Her breasts ached to press themselves against his chest. The hot dampness between her legs paralyzed her. At the corner of her mouth, his finger paused and bore down ever so slightly. And yet that lightest of pressure made her gasp, parting her lips, and his dying smile sprang back to life.
He lowered his head until his mouth hovered above hers. Barely a hairsbreadth separated their lips. Her heart seemed to have stopped beating, waiting for that tiny distance to close, waiting for her to close it.
What would it be like to feel the vampire’s kiss? To feel his cold, curiously sensual mouth on hers? Her whole being ached for it with a force that shattered her. Just a kiss, just one…
Which would put her in his power forever.
As his other hand touched her nape, she stepped back out of his reach.
He was a vampire. A very old and powerful one who could move with speeds she could only imagine. He could snatch her back in less than a heartbeat, long before she could reach her stake.
And why the hell would I do that? whispered a furious, frustrated voice inside her, because now it was too late; now she’d never know his kiss.
And she’d live.
“Stick to looking,” she said harshly.
His eyelids came down like hoods, masking the wild, exciting heat in his reflective eyes. Mihaela, still aching with lust and raging disappointment, tried to concentrate on the relief. And yet she could still imagine his touch on her lips.
Furious with herself, because again she was losing sight of her primary purpose, she snapped, “How do you plan to find Robbie?”
He shrugged infinitesimally. “I’ve already sent word to Saloman and so to the vampires across Europe to look out for him and Gavril.”
She stared. “Is that meant to make me feel better?” she demanded.
“It makes me feel better.”
“So you can just wait, cowering back here?” She sounded like some awful, nagging wife, and even as she hurled the words at him, she knew it, knew she was being totally unreasonable. She just couldn’t stop herself lashing out at him.
“I told you. I’m going to find him.”
She waved one sarcastic hand to indicate the island. “This isn’t exactly on the direct route from Edinburgh to mainland Europe.”
“There are things I need. And you need to sleep before we travel.”
“I’m not traveling with you!”
His upper lip quirked. “I don’t require you to share my coffin. But please yourself.” He turned away, walking toward the painted, iron-hinged door. “You can sleep in here.”
“If you think I’m sleeping in your presence—!”
She didn’t see him move, but without warning, he was right beside her again, as close as before, and this time, he had her face between his large, cool hands.
“Flattered as I am by the courage you attribute to me and the terror I so clearly inspire, we both know you’re perfectly safe here. Stop being so angry. We’ll find Robbie and Gavril.”
Speechless, she could only stare at him, aware of the treacherous tide of desire rolling back through her. To feel those hands on her body… But already he’d left her, striding toward the door once more.
He was right. She was exhausted, and lashing out at Maximilian achieved nothing. Not even the assuagement of her own guilt. Dazed, she put one foot in front of the other and followed him.
“Why do you have all these doors?” she blurted. “You live alone, don’t you?”
“It gives me the illusion of a home,” he said with odd self-mockery. There was a pause while she stared at the back of his head. He opened the door. “Besides, it was an amusing project and passed the time.”
How long had he spent here? A century? More. She could barely grasp the mind-numbing boredom of that. How could he bear it? Because being among others was more unbearable still.
“Why do this to yourself? Just because you hated to lose? Or because you hated what you did to Saloman?”
Betrayed him and staked him and condemned him to three hundred years of agony, and a boredom, surely, even greater than Maximilian’s.
He walked into the “room,” and she thought he wouldn’t answer her. Then he said, “Yes,” and stood aside for her to enter.
There were no
murals here, just rough, white-painted walls. An antique oil lamp resided on a flat-topped carved stone “table,” providing an unexpectedly warm, soothing glow. There was a simply constructed chest and bedstead made of wood but covered with intricate carvings. Something else he’d done to pass the time. Books, pencils, sheets of paper littered the floor. Maximilian swiped at them with his feet, creating a path for her.
“Yes,” she repeated. “What does that mean? You hated to lose, and you hated what you did to Saloman?”
He swung away from her, but not before she’d glimpsed the depths of blackness in his light eyes. The sight shocked her, paralyzed her.
This time she was sure he wouldn’t answer, and she couldn’t blame him. For whatever reason, Maximilian was in pain.
Then, surprising her all over again, he spoke. “The losing—losing to a bestial, lesser being like Zoltán—emphasized the futility, the wrongness, of what I did to Saloman. I thought my ends justified my means. But I was too young and stupid with ambition to comprehend the ends.”
He didn’t need to say that to her. She wished he hadn’t. It sounded too…human. And she could almost imagine he’d never said it before.
“I have no blankets,” he said, as if deliberately dragging her back to the mundane. He walked to the wooden chest and opened it. “You can use these to keep warm.”
He made no effort to touch her, merely dropped the pile of clothes onto the mattress, which was covered by a worn, white linen sheet. It was all ridiculously inviting. Madness to sleep so close to a vampire. Even knowing that, through Elizabeth, she was to some extent under Saloman’s protection shouldn’t have relaxed her like this. It went against every instinct, every lesson of her life and profession. And yet she longed to close her eyes, to rest, even if just for an hour.
She touched the heavy woolen overcoat and gave in. She glanced round. “Will you wake me in…?” She broke off. He’d already gone.
Even the door was closed over, although not shut tight. Mihaela shut her mouth and sat down on the bed. Since it was none too warm in these caves, she kept on her own sheepskin jacket and pulled Maximilian’s overcoat up to her chin before she lay down. The coat felt old and comfortable, and it smelled of Maximilian. Which was odd, since she hadn’t even registered that he had a smell. Salt and sea mist and sweet, strong earth, and something else she couldn’t place. It wasn’t unpleasant. It wasn’t unpleasant at all.
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