Blood Guilt

by Marie Treanor

  I’m going soft. Or insane.

  There were two bedrooms on the ground floor, and an open-plan living-room-kitchen area. Some of the vampires had clearly brought normal human things with them—clothes, toothbrushes, guidebooks, paperback novels—in order to blend in as genuine travelers. She found other things in their suitcases though: sharpened stakes, because a vampire never knew when he might be attacked by an enemy; and a couple of lethal-looking daggers which had no doubt been enchanted to get them through customs unseen.

  Robbie, she guessed, slept on the living room sofa. There were blankets bundled on it and some clothes—Maltese clothes, by their labels, so at least they were providing him with something to wear.

  She moved to the stairs. An outside staircase also led up here, to a roof terrace and, it appeared, another bedroom. Lying across the bed was a raincoat that looked vaguely familiar. Gavril had worn it in Edinburgh. So this was his room.

  She felt in the coat pockets and found a wooden stake. He could have been a hunter, she thought wryly. There seemed to be a rolled-up newspaper in the inside pocket, so she dragged it out in order to see if there was anything more interesting underneath. But it wasn’t a newspaper.

  It was a brown manila folder.

  Her heart beat and beat as she uncrumpled it and spread it out on the bed before opening it and looking at the papers inside. They were printed by an old typewriter. An image of the instrument flashed through her mind, because it had sat on her parents’ huge desk. It was written in Romanian, and for a moment, the capitalized heading on the first page danced before her eyes, because the words just didn’t go together: SEISMIC PSYCHICS.

  “Jesus…” she whispered. There it was: a connection between earthquakes and psychic power; between not one but both of her parents, the seismic and the psychic researchers, and Gavril, who’d stolen this from them after murdering them.

  It made her head ache. And she had no time to read it now. Hastily, she searched through all the drawers and suitcases in the room, even felt on top of the wardrobe. But there was no sign of any instrument like Maximilian’s stone compass. There was only her parents’ typewritten report on some preposterous piece of research. It seemed to shine at her from the bed, like that glass of milk in a famous Hitchcock movie. The answer must be there, and yet if she took it, she’d be giving the game away to Gavril. Did she want to do that yet? Before she knew how to stop him for good?

  She walked back across the room and sat on the bed, drawing her phone from her pocket. Switching it to camera mode, she opened the folder again and began to photograph the pages.

  It seemed to take an inordinately long time, but as soon as it was done, she rolled it back up as it had been and stuffed it back into the raincoat pocket. Then, with a quick last glance to make sure the room was just as she’d found it, she hurried back down the stairs and along the hall to the front door, which she locked behind her. Then she hurried down the path to the gate and Maximilian.

  He emerged from the shadows, took her arm, and urged her toward the end of the street. “They’ve just left Ggantija,” he murmured. “What did you find?”

  “I found the report Gavril stole from my parents. I so want to kill that—” But there were no words, and even the emotion was getting in the way. Unexpectedly, Maximilian’s hand slid up her arm to her shoulder, steadying her. What she needed to do was think.

  Maximilian said, “Their final ally arrives tomorrow. Which gives us a day to read the report for whatever knowledge it has. Then we come back here tomorrow night to finish this the best way we can.”

  It was the best plan. Only… “Is Robbie all right with that?” she asked anxiously. “Can he really hide his thoughts from them now he knows we’re so close?”

  “They don’t seem to be interested in his thoughts, just his power. Once Gavril ascertained that he wasn’t trying to escape, he left his head alone. To be honest, I think Robbie would be gutted if we took him away before he discovered what they wanted him for. He’s a most—unusual child.”

  An unusual child who was never likely to fit into any foster family, however kind and accepting. He’d always be different. Alien.

  She shook herself. Before they could do anything for Robbie, for the safety of the world she needed to read what her parents had written so long ago that it seemed like another life. She needed her computer.

  “When’s the next ferry back to Malta?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Although the photographs on her phone were too small for her to read, she spent most of the short ferry-crossing on deck, leaning on the rail in the semi-gloom, staring at the tiny, blurry type as if she could somehow get sense out of it.

  Beside her, Maximilian said. “You can do nothing about that right now. Why waste your time on it?”

  He was leaning one elbow on the rail, holding a notepad in one hand and sketching with the other. She’d been ignoring his scrutiny for some time, even though, somewhere, it warmed her. In fact, it excited her.

  “What else can I do right now?” she said lightly.

  “Enjoy the view,” he suggested.

  “Like you?” She glanced at his sketch. He’d caught the movement of the sea quite spectacularly for a pencil drawing. The edge of the ship, including the gouges and scratches on the rail, were in there, but the focus was all on the absorbed face, staring not at the phone but at the sea. It was unmistakably her face: taut, anxious, and yet far more beautiful than the reality.

  She smiled faintly and gestured at the picture. “Like that?”

  “Why not?”

  Why not indeed. In all her travels all over the world, how often did she actually look at the places she passed through? Her attention was always on the next job, the next crisis, the next kill. The rest of life was passing her by. More than she noticed.

  “Why do you keep drawing me?” she asked abruptly. Because I’m there…

  “Because one day I hope I’ll get it right.”

  “Or that one day I really will look like that?”

  His brows contracted, then smoothed. “Are you criticizing my skills?”

  “No. Just your imagination.”

  “I’ll draw the phone in if it makes you feel better.”

  “It isn’t the lack of phone,” she said dryly, touching the picture with her fingertips.

  “I know. You think I’ve somehow smoothed out flaws and made you more beautiful than you are. There’s no beauty in perfection. This is you, only with something missing that eludes me. I’ll find it.”

  “Why?” She lifted her gaze to his face and saw a rare expression of surprise cross his face. He almost looked…flummoxed.

  “I don’t know.”

  There was another pause. She imagined she was falling into those profound, gray eyes, to relaxing coolness and blazing heat, the softness of comfort and the excitement of passion. Stupid imagination… Snap out of it, Mihaela!

  He said, “It seems—important. You seem important. To me.”

  The breeze caught at her hair, blowing it across her eyes. She pushed it aside, unable to look away from him, and yet afraid not to. Her heart was drumming with the conflict.

  He leaned closer, helping, it seemed with her unruly hair. But his cool, sensitive hand lingered, sliding round to the back of her head, where it stayed, gently, inexorably drawing her closer.

  She opened her mouth to speak, maybe to protest, to beg for reprieve or passion, she didn’t know which, for she could no longer see through the jumble of emotion flooding her. She caught at his wrist, yet didn’t try to pull it away, because she was distracted by his lips, descending slowly toward hers. She could make out every tiny crease of their texture, the full, well-defined shape. And just below his upper lip, she glimpsed the points of his fangs.

  Oh Jesus Christ, help me… She had time, and she had the ability to escape. But despite the fear swamping her heart, she made no effort to free herself. Even though she sensed somewhere that this was bigger, far more important than the
moment she’d kissed him in Scotland.

  His mouth covered hers in a moment of perfect stillness. For an instant, Mihaela imagined she felt peace. But then his fingers slid into her hair and his mouth began to move on hers, and she was lost. Her hand on his wrist clung tighter. Her other hand came out and touched his cheek wonderingly as he kissed her slowly, deeply, with the kind of tenderness she could never remember experiencing.

  He’s a vampire; he’ll take your blood with your body. Words she’d once spoken in warning to Elizabeth now floated through her head. He’d already taken her blood and her body, and he was still here. Was that the root of her strange attraction? That Maximilian hadn’t yet left her? Or she, him.

  With a shudder, she opened her mouth wider and kissed him back, sliding her hand up his head and tangling in his hair, drawing him closer. It went on a long time, churning her up in slow, deep arousal. And yet he made no move to push her into the shadows and make it more. It was just a kiss.

  And when it ended, with the same slow tenderness, she said huskily, “No blood?”

  “A kiss without blood can be a greater gift.” He brushed his lips against hers and fastened once more.

  They were still kissing when the ferry docked.

  ****

  Maximilian drove back to Valetta. She sat in the passenger seat watching him, unable to look away. His eyes were steady on the road, although he drove far too fast, using his vampire reactions to avoid the collisions that would have been inevitable with a human driver. None of that bothered her. She was totally absorbed by the outline of his face, his lips, the way his hair fell forward over his forehead, glinting a deep chestnut in the odd flashes of light from the road.

  This then, was what she’d been afraid of since she’d first looked at him over the exploding body of the vampire in the Budapest library. An attraction so deep that she didn’t care who he was or what he’d done in his past. But no, that wasn’t right either. She wanted to know everything about his past and realized she never would. She wanted to take a lifetime to understand him and knew that would never happen either. And yet she gazed at him and was no longer afraid.

  Occasionally, he glanced at her. Sometimes his lips quirked in a faint smile that she imagined betokened warmth. But he didn’t speak, and she was glad of that, as if the spell of whatever this was would be broken with the silence. She liked his silence. She liked his stillness.

  And as they neared the hotel, she found the butterflies were back in her stomach. Perhaps they’d never been away.

  It was bound to end, but whatever this feeling was, she hung on to it as he parked the car some distance from the hotel, and they walked along the harbor front, not holding hands or even touching, but aware as she’d never been of any companion in her life before. His lean, lethal body walked with compact grace, his eyes ever watchful for signs of danger. She loved the way he moved. She remembered how he felt against her skin, massaging outside and in.

  She reined her memory back in, trying to recall instead that she was a hunter, that even more than he, she should be constantly aware of possible threats. Which was why she glanced up the side street just before the hotel and glimpsed a familiar figure disappearing around the corner.

  Instinctively, she ran after it, bounding up the steep steps until she reached the next street. And yes, that was definitely Cyn climbing into a car. And the man opening the door on the passenger side was entirely distinctive. Because he had one arm. Ex-British soldier and member of Cyn’s and Rudy’s unofficial roving hunters, John Ramsay.

  “What?” Maximilian said beside her as Cyn’s car drove from them. He wasn’t even out of breath. But then, he wouldn’t be, since he had none.

  “Did you see these two people? Did you recognize them?”

  “They were in the hunters’ library the night of Luk’s attack. They fought for us. What are they doing here?”

  Mihaela smiled. She thought she knew, and it untwisted a nagging background pain, because her old friend was still, however secretly, supporting her. Konrad had sent her Cyn and John as backup.

  ****

  Inside the hotel room, Mihaela connected her phone to her computer and started downloading the photographs. Then she sat back on her bed to wait.

  Maximilian’s figure filled the doorway. “Are you going to watch it? Or do you want to eat while you wait?”

  “Eat…” She’d eaten nothing since breakfast, and the realization made her stomach rumble. She threw her arm across it, as if to muffle the noise.

  “The restaurant’s still open. Come.”

  An urge to laugh surged up her throat. “Are you inviting me out for dinner?”

  “Yes. And it’s not an invitation you should take lightly from a vampire.”

  She let the laughter out. “What, I get the food, you get the waiter?”

  “No. I’m saving myself.”

  For what? For her? Excitement galloped and wouldn’t be squashed, even when she told herself she should be appalled.

  “I’m sure the waiter will be grateful,” she said breathlessly, climbing off the bed. “Let me change quickly…”

  This was bizarre. It felt like going out on a date. She had no makeup with her, for she rarely wore it, but she caught herself biting her lips to redden them and admiring her fresh, red top rather doubtfully in the mirror. She wanted to look good and didn’t know why. Or at least didn’t want to know why. It was like inviting the vampire to eat her.

  She brushed her hair until it shone, then reached for the band that tied it up in her normal, severe style.

  “Leave it,” Maximilian said. This time she hadn’t heard or seen him come in. How long had he been standing there? He appeared behind her in the mirror, touching her hair in a long, sweeping caress of his hand. “I like it.”

  She eyed her reflection. With her hair down, she looked younger, softer. I’m neither, she told herself with just a shade of desperation.

  Maximilian reached down and took her hand. “Come.” She felt like some renaissance princess being conducted to a banquet. And that feeling wasn’t unpleasant either.

  The restaurant was quiet, with just a few other people finishing up their meals when Mihaela and Maximilian entered. But the waiter seemed delighted to usher them to a table by the window and take their order. They chose a Maltese red wine; Mihaela ordered fish, and Maximilian asked for soup. Mihaela wondered if he’d eat it.

  While they waited, Mihaela gazed out of the window, watching a huge cruise liner make its way into the Grand Harbor. She imagined she could almost reach out and touch it. Its horn sounded, and it moved on, gradually revealing the fortresses that were the permanent view.

  “Do you remember the Great Siege of Malta?” Mihaela asked at last.

  “The Turkish siege? I remember it happened, but I wasn’t there. I was never a soldier.”

  She smiled slightly. “An artist, not a fighter?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t a fighter. That’s probably what made me what I am.”

  She turned her face back to him. “How you became a vampire? In a fight?”

  “Not exactly. I got into a fight and was dying when Saloman made me the offer.”

  “Why?” Mihaela asked, suddenly determined to know everything she could persuade him to tell. “Why did he pick on you?”

  Maximilian shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself the same question many times. I’ve even asked Saloman, who only says ‘because we were friends.’ And once that I was ‘worthy.’”

  “And were you? Friends?”

  “Yes, I suppose we were. He used to come to the workshop where I was apprenticed, and we”—his eyes sparked with wry humor—“hung out, you might say. I imagined we were around the same age. Or at least that he was only enough older than me to have an air of experience and glamour. I never imagined there were millennia between us.”

  “What did you do together?” Mihaela asked curiously.

  “We painted, sometimes. Or he would watch me sculpt. We pr
acticed fencing, held long conversations in taverns that went on all night, went to—well, there were women.”

  “You went whoring together,” Mihaela guessed shrewdly.

  Maximilian looked oddly apologetic, as if he were sorry to have offended her by such crass, vulgar maleness. She found it oddly touching.

  “It was a different world,” he said. “And Saloman was fun to be around, whatever we did. Even though he knew important people, powerful people, not just patrons of the arts, all over the Empire, Italy and beyond, he always seemed glad of my company. I was only a lowly sculptor, not even a master craftsman. I suppose I was flattered at first. Then I just accepted it. Whenever he was in Pisa—I went there from Vienna, where I was born, to be apprenticed and to study—we’d spend time together.”

  Maximilian paused while the waiter brought the wine and glasses and poured.

  “But you didn’t know what he was?” Mihaela prompted when the waiter left them.

  Maximilian shook his head. “Not then. It never entered my head. Although some people warned me against him.” He smiled. “Told me he came from the devil, or that he was the devil. I didn’t listen. I liked him.”

  “Until you got into this fight? What was that about?”

  “A woman. Her name was Caterina.”

  “Did you love her?” She wished it unsaid as soon as the words tumbled out, but she couldn’t take it back. But Maximilian, now that he’d finally started talking, didn’t appear to mind answering the most intrusive of questions.

  He raised the glass and drank a little. She watched with fascination as the red liquid passed over his lips and he swallowed. Somehow his body absorbed it before it even hit his stomach. Vampire physiology was bizarre to say the least.