He might be dog-tired and bruised, but, judging by the bulge in his jeans, he wasn’t averse to a little sex. She wouldn’t mind going to work on that.
Arousal pooled damply between her thighs. Mind on the job, Angyalka.
“I don’t think anything’s broken and you have no internal injuries,” she said calmly. “Wait there and I’ll clean up your face.”
“Angyalka, I can wash my own face,” he protested.
“Allow me,” she said, whisking into the bathroom and returning with a damp cloth. Although he blinked at her speed, he didn’t seem put out by it. “I owe you,” she added, sitting back down on the bed beside him.
“For what?” he demanded. “I’m not so full of shit that I can’t admit you saved my ass out there. I owe you.”
She shrugged. “You brought me back in.” And made me feel safe. She paused, the cloth just touching the cut on his lip, and stared at him, suddenly stricken.
She’d gone outside for him. Whether to preserve her revenge possibilities or her person from Saloman’s wrath, or because it was the right thing to do, she’d done it. And he’d got her back, made her safe, made her laugh.
He’d wiped out a debt, not begun a new one.
His brow twitched. “I won’t shout it from the rooftops, you know.”
She curled her lips and dabbed gently at the cut. He didn’t wince. “No. You’ll just add it to whatever biography of me you keep in the hunters’ infamous library.” She slid the cloth around his chin and neck, wiping off the dried blood. “You do have such a thing, don’t you?”
“A biography of you? Yes.”
“What does it say?” she asked, intrigued.
“That you were turned in 1801 by a vampire called Aranyi—not a particularly old or strong vampire—who was killed by hunters a year later. You then dropped out of sight for decades, and only came to our notice again two years ago when we discovered the Angel Club, which we now believe you’ve owned since around 1807, certainly since before Maximilian went into exile, because he gave you the building, carved the angel over the door, and helped you enchant the whole place. You gave allegiance to Zoltán while he led the east European vampires but switched to Saloman’s camp when he was awakened, before Zoltán was killed. There are no known atrocities or crimes against your name, and the Angel is permitted to exist because you run it with strict adherence to your own rules, which also suit the hunters.”
She felt his gaze on her as she stood up and returned the cloth to the bathroom.
“Is it accurate?” he asked with apparent curiosity.
“It isn’t inaccurate,” she admitted, sitting on the bed once more and reaching for her whisky.
He smiled lopsidedly. “Only because it doesn’t say much,” he guessed shrewdly.
“It’s still more than I know of you.”
“Which is?”
She sipped the whisky, savoring the slow, burning trickle down her throat. “That you’re a hunter, one of the so-called first team, and you’re Elizabeth’s friend. Saloman likes you.”
He looked slightly surprised by that statement but made no comment. So she added, “You’re a scientist. You developed detection units that can spot vampire presence, even Ancient vampires like Saloman.”
His lips quirked. “I hope there’s more to both of us.”
“I think we already established that.”
The smile in his eyes seemed to draw her in, conspire with her. But she wasn’t ready for that.
She stood abruptly. “Make yourself comfortable. Sleep. I won’t kill you now.” Although I wouldn’t mind a bite, a drink of that delicious hunter blood…
There was nothing he wanted more than sleep. Not even sex. It was in every line of his exhausted body as well as his eyes as he protested, “I can’t take your bed.”
“I’m pretty much a nighttime person,” she said dryly.
Unexpectedly, he leaned forward and caught her hand. “Give me the excuse. Stay here with me.” His lips curved. “I’ll leave the stake in my pocket.”
She was as aware as he of the jacket and the stake. Unless he was talking of the one in his pants, which should also, undoubtedly, stay where it was. For both their sakes. Pity, but there it was.
She sat back down on the bed, leaned against the pillows.
He said, “I have so many questions I want to ask you.”
At last. Finally, he was prepared to reveal why he’d come to her in the first place. And yet she only said, “They can wait.”
“I guess they can.” The hunter’s heavy eyelids closed, flickered, and stayed closed.
Angyalka waited until he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. She didn’t mind. She rather liked the feel of the hot, human body so close to her. And when she judged he wouldn’t wake up, she unfastened his jeans, and slid them down his legs. You’d never have known from looking at them that he hadn’t walked for three months and more. At full strength, he was a formidable hunter. She’d made a mistake once. Watching him slouch in behind his colleagues, the arrogant blond leader and the feisty Mihaela, she’d judged him by his unassuming, quiet appearance . None of them had reached Saloman, but only István had stopped her.
She pulled the quilt up over his lean body with curious reluctance. He may have been quiet, but he was handsome in a physically careless, cerebral way that in Angyalka’s world was unusual.
In a rare moment of tenderness, she smoothed his hair away from his face. Asleep, he looked like a little boy exhausted after a busy day’s play.
It came as a bit of a shock to her, but she still liked István.
****
Of course that didn’t stop her going through his pockets.
Wallet, phone, stake, a small instrument that she took to be a vampire detector, and a slightly larger instrument with lots of tiny holes and dials. Using her own mobile phone, she took a photograph of the last and picked up the final object, which looked like some kind of fishing reel or sewing reel, except it had two buttons on it. Insatiably curious, she pressed one and saw the reel whizz as the thread—it was thin nylon rope, not thread—propelled itself across the room and buried itself in the bedroom wall. An instant later, it flew out of her hand and clattered against the wall.
Glancing uneasily at István, she went to retrieve it. The thread was still held somehow into the wall. When she picked up the reel and pressed the other button, a tiny claw disengaged from the wall and the rope wound itself back in under a second.
Angyalka began to smile. So that was how he got up the stairs so fast. She’d sensed hunter when the trouble was in full swing—right before György had returned to deal with it. And only seconds later, István had walked in on his damaged, still-recovering legs. He’d obviously been making good use of his time when he couldn’t walk.
She put all the things back in his pockets and laid his clothes in a neat pile on her dressing table chair. Then she left the bedroom and glided downstairs to the club. The human staff had all gone home, leaving the club in readiness for the next shift—tomorrow’s daytime customers, they thought. In reality the next customers would be in the second part of the night—vampires only. The hour off between was like Ireland’s once-famous “holy hour,” the one hour in the day when the pubs were shut. The Angel shut for an hour at two a.m., cleaned up, and reopened at three, without the loud music. Sometimes they didn’t get any customers, but they were always open.
Béla was pacing about in his leather jacket, desperate to get out and hunt. But he paused long enough to say, “Who killed him so close to us?”
“Um, I did,” Angyalka admitted.
Béla frowned. “Well, what did you kick him outside for? It’d have been easier to get rid of him from the gallery.”
“I didn’t kick him outside. He was outside. With his pals. They had another go at our hunter friend.”
Béla stared. “What, and you went outside and bit him?”
“I did,” Angyalka said, her pride only half mocking. “I fought for the hunte
r—should score us some brownie points to stock up on.”
“Not if you did it in front of the hunter,” Béla said dryly. “They’re ungrateful bastards to a man and would rather eat their own stinking socks than admit a debt to a vampire. Shouldn’t you tell him?”
“Saloman? Probably,” she said with deliberate vagueness. She gestured to Béla to carry on. “It’ll be fine.”
He got all the way to the door before he glanced back at her. Béla was the only being, besides the hunter István now, who knew she didn’t go out. He often brought her prey, but he never asked questions.
“How did it feel?” he asked curiously. “To go out in the night again?”
An echo of the awful fear and helplessness hit her so that it took an effort of will not to hold on to the bar for support.
“It felt shit,” she said truthfully. Béla’s lips stretched, and then he was gone.
Angyalka enjoyed the peace of the “graveyard shift” as much as she enjoyed the noise and excitement of the early evening. For decades, there had been no need of a bodyguard during the predawn spell: not only was Angyalka known in the vampire community to be fast and fierce, but to be barred from the club had become distinctly uncool for any vampire. So György’s chief function was checking for humans outside while Angyalka hung over the bar reading, eavesdropping, or even talking with other vampires. If any came in.
A few did, the loners plus one or two of the more sociable variety who’d been here earlier, mingling with the humans. Judging by the rosy appearance of the latter, they’d used their “holy hour” to drink from their human conquests. Angyalka poured the odd drink while she thought about the vampire hunter upstairs in her bed and wondered if she’d be kept here until dawn.
Many vampires were at Maximilian’s, of course, although surely the party would have packed in by now. Angyalka suspected Mihaela had deliberately chosen a midweek night so that the humans would leave early, and so limit the hours of contact between them and her vampire guests.
She felt another of those twinges of regret. She would have liked to see Mihaela in her own territory, her own home, to see Maximilian there, and their adopted child, Robbie, whom they’d brought here to the Angel once to warn the vampire community that he was untouchable. Apparently, being telepathic, Robbie had a penchant for vampire company and was used to taking off in pursuit of it without a word to anyone. Not all vampires considered children off the menu, and very few would look a gift horse in the mouth. Maximilian had his work cut out.
Oddly, he seemed to thrive on it and on his unexpected relationship with the prickly hunter. Angyalka couldn’t grudge him his few years of happiness before Mihaela and Robbie inevitably died.
Abruptly, she sprang upright, her mouth opening in a silent cry of loss.
György, her employee of decades, was dead. True dead. His passing penetrated her reverie as nothing else had, not even the presence outside, already fading, of hunter.
Not István, she thought as she bolted for the club door and the stairs. He was asleep upstairs, and besides, it hadn’t felt like István. The other vampires in the club were staring at her. They too had felt György’s death.
A vampire was gliding up the stairs. Ignoring him, she simply jumped down the stairwell. Her legs were already pumping for the door as soon as she landed. For the second time that night, she wrenched open a door to outside and felt the cool, fresh air on her face. But this time, there was no one to fight. No hunter, no human presence at all. Not even a vampire. Just a sharp wooden stick lying in the gutter where György had fallen.
She reached out, imagined she felt György’s dust slipping between her fingers.
“Good-bye, my friend,” she whispered and let the door fall back on the outside world.
More slowly, she turned and began to climb the stairs. Something was wrong, very wrong. Two hunters here, separately, in one night, and one dead vampire employee. That couldn’t be coincidence.
Unexpectedly, a vampire whooshed by her, running. The same unknown vampire who’d passed her going the other way. He was young, terrified, excited, and his mind leaked like a sieve.
Jesus!
She began to run, yelling telepathically as she went to all the vampires in her bar. Get out of there! Now!
She wrenched open the club door, flying inside just as an explosion tore her ears and her bar.
Vampires, furniture, glasses, and bottles flew outward. Angyalka threw up her arms and began to chant, drawing all the power of the Angel about her and forcing it around the walls of her world that should have been so safe and untouchable.
Screaming silence filled her ears. She couldn’t move.
Then Saloman spoke in her mind. “Angyalka. What the hell just happened?”
She said, “Someone blew up the Angel.”
Chapter Five
A vampire bolted out of the Angel doorway and ran down the street as if all the fiends in hell were after him. Except that he laughed.
Jacob, Basilio, and Gabby watched him go.
“So many vampires,” Jacob murmured, still awed by the presence of so many undead in one city. They’d been all over it tonight, looking for Saloman or news of him. They hadn’t learned much. When this was done, Jacob reckoned he’d be better off back in New York where there wasn’t so much competition for human blood. He said, “Surely one of them must be him?”
“Saloman,” Basilio murmured, lifting his nose to the night air. “I can feel him, almost as if he’s hovering over the city. Which, of course, he isn’t. He’s making his presence in the city known while still masking his precise location. Clever. And difficult. His power is—awesome.”
“Greater than yours?” Jacob asked innocently.
Basilio wasn’t fooled. “Considerably,” he snapped. “That’s why we’re here.”
To find a way of shaking off Saloman’s restrictive rule, especially in America. Jacob rather suspected Basilio also wanted to eject Travis and dominate America himself. After all, he’d waited years for Travis and Severin to take each other out so he could pick up the pieces. Lazy bastard. Only Travis’s turnaround and unexpected acceptance of Saloman as overlord had roused Basilio to contemplate direct intervention, and even then only because Jacob had come to him with a vague plan of ousting Saloman by stealth. Head-on obviously didn’t work, as Saloman’s squashing of all those vampire revolts last year had proved.
“Do you think he’s in there?” Jacob asked, nodding at the neglected, uninspiring building in front of them. There was an art shop at the far end, but the hum of vampire presence seemed to come from above, along with the echo of humans, which was pretty bizarre.
“No,” Basilio said uncompromisingly. “But it might well be the place to learn something. Some sort of social gathering. I can’t smell many humans there at the moment—maybe one—but they’ve certainly been here earlier tonight.”
“Like Travis’s gambling den in New York?” Jacob asked with deliberate provocation.
“Let’s go and see,” Gabby urged, already reaching for the grubby door through which vampires had passed very recently. A featureless angel was carved into the stone above. For some reason, it caught Jacob’s attention, and he was staring at it when an almighty explosion ripped the door from Gabby’s hands and slammed it in their faces.
The force knocked all three of them off their feet and into the middle of the road. From his prone position there, Jacob found he was still staring at the stone angel which seemed to glow in the darkness like a light bulb. It looked beautiful now, shining, fine, perfect lines and the most expressive, enigmatic face…
The whole building shook, almost bulged outward, and Jacob was sure they were about to be buried under the rubble. He shook his head to clear it, to force himself to rise and escape. Then, amazingly, the world steadied. And the angel wasn’t glowing at all. That, presumably, had been his own blasted head.
“What the fuck?” Jacob hauled himself to his feet.
“Somebody just blew the bu
ilding up,” Basilio said dryly.
“It’s still standing,” Jacob pointed out.
“Somebody contained the explosion.”
“That must have been Saloman,” Jacob said, excited.
“No, but there’s another damned strong vampire in there.”
“Shall we go in?” Gabby asked, brushing down her jeans and top.
“Let’s wait and see what happens for a bit,” Basilio said, striding down the road toward the art shop.
Jacob and Gabby trailed after him. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, all three of them in the narrow doorway.
“Not exactly discreet,” Jacob murmured after a while when nothing happened.
Basilio regarded him with contempt. “Discreet enough. I’m masking us all too. Don’t you have any knowledge of your own people, your own power?”
“I know I have a knack of separating fools from their money.”
“Humans can do that,” Basilio snapped.
“Not with my flair,” Jacob insisted, unabashed by the older vampire’s derision.
But the others had become distracted by the sound of a car driven at breakneck speed from the direction of the river. An instant later, something large and black whizzed around the corner, screamed to a halt outside the Angel door and emptied itself of a man and a woman.
Correction, a vampire and a woman, only…
Jacob shivered. Only what? For an instant, something overwhelmed him. Power. From the vampire, who was in too big a hurry to mask anymore. Or perhaps he was really too powerful to care. He was tall, with long, black hair streaming out behind him as he leapt in the doorway.
“Saloman,” Basilio whispered.
The human companion glanced back over her shoulder. Red-blonde hair and pale, perfect skin, deceptively delicate bones. Jacob had seen her kill. He knew she’d slain the powerful vampire Severin in New York a year ago. Miss Not-Quite-a-Hunter.
“And Elizabeth Silk,” Jacob said softly. “The Awakener.” So it was true. She really was Saloman’s companion. He supposed it explained a lot.
Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series) Page 6
