She remembered, just in time, to catch Béla’s glass. She targeted the figure of István with his dark, clouded eyes unable to leave her for a moment, and when Béla threw her, she tossed the glasses behind her for Béla to catch, and dived straight for István.
Of course, he’d never seen the trick before, but even so, the change in him was startling. His mouth fell open in some silent cry, and he launched himself forward as if he meant to catch her. She had to adjust her jump to land in his arms, slithering slowly down his hard, muscled body. She lifted her smiling face to his, ready for his kiss.
His lips closed, and parted again. He was actually trembling. She had only a tiny fraction of an instant to realize that something was wrong, very wrong, before he proved it. His hands fell limply to his side. She’d never seen such distress in his face, even when he was riddled with pain and exhaustion last night. His lips parted one more time, but all that came out was, “Sorry. I have to—”
And then he rushed away from her toward the door, lost in the crowd of vampires and the few humans who’d managed to come in while Béla was off duty.
Baffled, Angyalka stared after him.
“Tactless,” Saloman observed in her ear. “Luk drained him almost to the point of death, then threw him on the floor from a great height. That’s how his spine and ribs were damaged.”
Angyalka twisted slowly round to face the Ancient. Stupidly, her throat had closed up.
“Humans are so frail,” she observed. At least her voice didn’t shake. “One forgets.”
“Sometimes,” Saloman said, setting down his empty glass, “one shouldn’t.”
The hunter hadn’t gone far. She could pursue him before he left the building.
Or she could let him go.
Oh Jesus Christ and fuck!
She flitted through the separating crowd to the door, and, ignoring the feeling of dread that always came upon her as she approached the outside world, she walked more slowly down the dirty staircase.
He sat on a step just around the last bend, as if he’d gone as far as he could before his legs gave out. This time, she doubted it had much to do with physical weakness. He didn’t look at her as she sat down beside him. He was a proud man who’d just given away more weakness than he’d voluntarily have shown anyone. To a room full of vampires.
“We’re not so unalike, you and I, are we?” she said ruefully.
When he didn’t answer, she laid her head on his rigid shoulder and waited.
After a moment, he turned his head to look at her, but she kept gazing straight ahead in silence. Under her cheek, his shoulder began to relax.
He said, “I’ve been fighting most of my life; never came so close to death before. You start to think you’re immortal.”
His hand gripped his knee harder until the knuckles shone white in the dingy darkness. Then it loosened again. “I’m not. I’m not even very strong when the nightmares wake me up, or something harmless stirs up my memory.”
“I didn’t know. It was an act, circus nonsense for the punters.”
“I know.”
She lifted her head, leaving her face very close to his. “Then you’d better kiss me to feel strong again, hadn’t you?”
A breath of laughter escaped him. “If I didn’t want you so much, you’d emasculate me entirely.”
“I still might.”
“Temptress,” he mocked, but without warning, his mouth crushed hers, hard and demanding, and she glimpsed again the strength that had once overpowered her. The butterflies in her stomach surged into life, diving lower and feeding her lust. And yet his hands didn’t touch her. There was just his thigh jammed into her leg and his mouth devouring hers with invading tongue and teeth and lips.
It was she who touched first, sliding her arms around his neck and letting her fingers tangle in the soft hair at the back of his head. She grazed her fangs along his tongue and moaned when he licked them greedily. She touched his cheek with her fingertips, loving the feel of human male stubble.
His arms came around her at last, grasping her hair, tugging her head back for a deeper onslaught. She allowed it, gloried in it while her hand wandered down his shoulder and arm to his thigh and stroked upward until she found the hard bulge of his erection. He groaned into her mouth.
“That’s my hunter,” she murmured, caressing and adjusting it in his jeans until she could stroke its whole length. Satisfied, she set to work on his button and zipper.
“Oh Christ,” he muttered, almost anguished as he tore his mouth free. “You’d really let me fuck you here on these filthy stairs?”
“Or up against the wall, if you’re fastidious. I’ll mask us both. No one will know who’s bumping and grinding as they pass us. Come on, hunter, you’ve wanted it for eighteen months. Take it, fast and hard like we both want it…” She latched her mouth back on his and straddled him, rubbing his erection between her thighs, and God, that felt good. She could orgasm just from this, like some randy young human girl with her first boyfriend.
Except she wasn’t young and he wasn’t her first, and she wanted much, much more, with an urgency that consumed her. She wanted him inside her, pushing, pushing…
She let out a sound, almost a tiny sob of gratitude when he turned abruptly, flattening her under him on the stairs, his hands under her buttocks, beneath the silk dress.
For a glorious moment, his mouth was wild on hers, and she knew she’d won. Then, slowly, he detached his lips, breathing like a steam engine.
“You’re wrong,” he said unsteadily. “I don’t want that—hard and fast on these dirty stairs. I want you in your own bed, soft and willing, for a long, long time.”
She stared into his eyes. Stunned, she saw that he meant it, that he meant to make her wait.
Bastard.
Well, two could play that game too.
She stretched luxuriously, both arms above her head, and he couldn’t seem to help rubbing his body against hers. But without her arms to hold him, he simply stood and reached down one hand to help her rise.
She looked at his large, capable fingers, imagining them on her breasts, in her most intimate places. She bet they were good hands, sensitive and giving…
She said, “I could just throw you down and drink your blood.”
“You could. But you could have done that at almost any time during at least three out of our four encounters.”
“You think you’re safe?” she enquired, taking his hand and rising to her feet in one smooth movement. It took practice but looked pretty cool in a vampiress, even among such insalubrious surroundings.
Again the breath of laughter distracted her, and she became fascinated by the texture of his full, generous lips. She hoped he made love as he kissed. She’d like that.
“Oh no,” he said. “I’ve never been safe from you.”
They walked upstairs hand in hand as she brushed the dirt off her dress, and returned to the club, where the fiddler had stopped and the most regular of her rock bands had started up.
But if István imagined that at his command she was going to take him straight upstairs to her bedroom, he was much mistaken.
“Take a seat,” she drawled. “I’ll send someone over to take your order.”
He couldn’t even make a grab for her, if such had been his intention, not in this place full of suspicious vampires and Saloman himself. He gave a soft groan of frustration, which she heard quite clearly as she walked away from him. She only smiled and signaled to one of the free waitresses.
****
“If it hadn’t blown me into the road,” Jacob murmured as he strolled into the noisy nightclub with Basilio and Gabby, “I could imagine there’d never been an explosion here.”
Basilio spoke inside his mind. Remember what I told you. Say nothing important aloud and mask your thoughts at all times. Saloman is here…and so is a hunter.
Shit, Jacob commented, looking warily around him.
In fact, the overlord was easy to spot because he wasn’t troubling to
mask. Sheer power emanated from him, a bottomless well of energy and knowledge. The last of the purebred Ancients sat alone at the corner table nearest the bar. He was stunning to look at. Dramatic black hair tied behind his head, lean, handsome features, all cheekbones and hollows. Even though he was sitting, Jacob knew he was tall and dressed with style, elegance, and expense.
And yet, incongruously, Saloman’s leg vibrated under the table as his feet tapped and stamped to the rhythm of the loud rock music coming from the live band. But he didn’t watch the band. His attention appeared to be all on a laptop open on the table in front of him. His long-fingered hands flew across the keys, blurring Jacob’s vision.
As if sensing his scrutiny, Saloman glanced up, straight into his eyes. For an instant, Jacob was paralyzed with fear—not because of his own hostile plans, particularly, or the possibility of Saloman reading them. Just because the darkness there could swallow him whole. This was no enemy to con and charm and cajole. It was as pointless as dueling him. This was the vampire who’d forced just about the entire undead population of the world—a fiercely independent, chaotic, and individualistic population—to bow to him and obey him. For the first time, Jacob could understand why.
Worse, helpless in the beam of the Ancient’s gaze, he began to understand the pointlessness of trying to fight him by any means whatsoever.
Someone walked in front of Saloman, breaking the eye contact, and Jacob shuddered with relief. Basilio shoved him roughly onto a vacant sofa, hissing telepathically, For God’s sake, what are you doing? Introducing yourself?
We could do worse than get close to him, Jacob retorted with defiance. In reality, he didn’t want to go anywhere near the Ancient. The vampire who’d come between them now sat opposite Saloman, who casually yet impenetrably masked the conversation.
Dragging his wayward gaze away once more, Jacob pulled himself together enough to order drinks from the human waitress. She was a pleasant distraction, fair and pretty and exotically accented. Jacob smiled at her winningly, inhaling the warm, sweet smell of her healthy blood, which he could probably taste quite discreetly…
No fighting, no biting. That had been the warning of the bald, laconic bouncer who’d let them in and, recognizing them as strangers, informed them of the house rules. Judging by the expressionless stare of the same bouncer, who now stood with one elbow leaning on the bar, watching him, he was prepared to enforce them.
Jacob would have quite liked to see the bouncer take on Basilio. But it was no part of their plan to alienate the local vampires, and if this was what worked for them, fair enough.
“So where’s the hunter?” Gabby demanded aloud. “I’ve never seen one before.”
“Find him yourself,” Basilio said, playing the indulgent teacher. “Focus on the humans and find the one who radiates strength. Almost like a vampire, but alive.”
Jacob played the game too and found the hunter easily. He sat by himself, twirling a bottle of beer in his long, capable-looking fingers. He was strong, as the Awakener was strong.
“They welcome hunters here?” he murmured and, rather to his surprise, received a telepathic reply from another vampire somewhere in the room.
Welcome is too strong. Tolerate. He watches us. We watch him. It’s not so bad.
Why do you watch him? Jacob asked curiously, letting his companions in on the conversation.
He’s a clever hunter. Uses Ancient technology lost to most of us and combines it with modern science to make tools.
Tools? Jacob frowned. What sort of tools? Hunting tools?
Presumably. Rumor says he’s almost completed an instrument that can combine, store, and magnify the supernatural energy of hundreds of vampires.
That isn’t possible, Basilio said flatly, but Jacob felt the excitement zinging through him, and knew they were on to something. On their own closed and masked telepathic channel, Basilio issued his order to Gabby. Go bat your eyelids at the hunter. And stay out of Saloman’s way.
Gabby rose with alacrity, and as the friendly if argumentative local vampire appeared suddenly in front of Jacob, she sashayed over to the hunter and sat seductively opposite him to give him the best view of her remarkably fine cleavage.
The hunter raised his eyebrows but didn’t send her away.
****
Angyalka was aware, as the evening progressed, of several women sitting down to chat with István. Beautiful, human women. And one curious, very young, foreign vampiress whom Angyalka disdained to send about her business.
It was Saloman who did that. Closing the lid of the laptop he’d been studying most of the evening, he stood up, sauntered over to István’s table, and sat down. The terrified young vampiress bolted.
This time, curious herself, Angyalka chose to wander across and sit down beside István. Well, it was her bar, and her smile told Saloman so.
“How fortuitous,” the Ancient murmured. “I can speak to you both at once.” But it was István whose gaze he held.
The hunter sighed, as if he knew what was coming.
“First,” Saloman said, “I found the vampire bomber.”
“I thought you might,” István murmured. Angyalka frowned, feeling as if she were missing something. Wasn’t the bomber more her business than the hunter’s?
“He was a stupid creature, little more than a fledgling who’d just arrived in Budapest , attracted by all that human blood and human wealth. He was put up to the bombing—and paid—by a human,” Saloman continued. “A hunter, in fact.”
Stricken, Angyalka’s gaze flew to István. Could she have been wrong to dismiss her initial suspicions? Was he still using her?
“It wasn’t me,” István said quietly. “Or anyone acting with the network’s knowledge.”
“I know exactly who it was,” Saloman said disdainfully. “I had that much from the vampire’s mind before I even entered his sewer.”
Angyalka received a mind-picture, tossed carelessly to her by Saloman. The other hunter, István’s blond colleague who’d waved a wooden stake around on the night István had simply controlled the potential violence by capturing her.
“That is between the three of us,” Saloman said, “and whoever else you, István, need to tell. He will be curtailed, whether that is by you or by me.”
Angyalka shivered at the chill in Saloman’s voice. You forgot, sometimes, how he really was behind the amiable façade he occasionally chose to wear. István, however, didn’t back down from the force of the Ancient’s gaze.
He said quietly, “Konrad’s my friend, but I won’t let him destroy our alliance if I can help it.”
“Good,” said Saloman, as if that was one matter successfully dealt with. “I wanted it clear before I leave.”
“Where are you going?” Angyalka asked, more to annoy him than because she imagined she’d get an answer.
“Abroad,” Saloman said blandly. “Maximilian has already left the country, which leaves only Dmitriu to care for Elizabeth.”
His eyes flickered between Angyalka and István. “I think you both know what I mean.”
Angyalka, who’d discovered rather more than comfort from her brief connection with Elizabeth last night, smiled. She wasn’t quite sure how such a thing could be, but since she couldn’t imagine Elizabeth fucking another being or Saloman accepting it if she did, she had to take the unlikely as fact.
Saloman said, “I’m asking you, along with Mihaela, to help Dmitriu look out for her.”
Unease prickled Angyalka’s spine. She stared at him. “Are you expecting trouble of some kind?”
“No. But I need you to be prepared to go to her if there is any.”
Angyalka swallowed. She’d committed herself before to helping Saloman, keeping her fingers crossed that her presence outside of these four walls would not, in fact, be required. So far she’d got away with it, but this seemed different.
It wasn’t safe for Elizabeth to depend on her.
She looked at Saloman and opened her mouth.
“We’re all prepared,” István said smoothly. Angyalka glanced at him, uncomprehending, but he didn’t look at her. Neither did Saloman, who trusted her. He just needed to be sure the hunters understood the importance of this child. And it seemed István, at least, did.
“Then I thank you,” Saloman said formally and rose to his feet. “On my behalf and Elizabeth’s.” He inclined his head once more and vanished toward the door. When she glanced at his previous table, the laptop had gone too.
Vampires had powerful hearing. In normal circumstances, there was nothing anyone could say in this room that couldn’t, in theory, be overheard. But the music and the noise made it harder. Saloman’s masking would have made the conversation they’d just had all but impenetrable, but even so, he’d never said the word “child.”
Angyalka looked at István, idly rubbing his beer bottle between his fingers as he gazed after Saloman. She dropped a little disruption buzz of her own, adding it to her masking for extra privacy.
“You need to tell Elizabeth I won’t be there for her,” she said abruptly. It felt like betrayal, not just of Saloman but of Elizabeth herself, a woman she’d known no length of time at all by vampire standards. She had to stop hanging around with humans.
“I thought that,” István said. He brought his gaze back to her so slowly that she could have imagined it was reluctance, until she saw the exciting blaze of lust still burning there. In spite of the difficult conversation, her stomach did somersaults. One side of his mouth quirked upward. “Only then I thought, you came out to fight for me. You could fight for Elizabeth.”
“I didn’t stray more than ten yards from my own door for you,” Angyalka retorted. For a human, his eyes held power, made it hard to break away. Or perhaps she just liked looking at him, at the desire he no longer troubled to hide.
“Well, I have a plan.” A quick frown creased his brows. “Don’t you want to go out? Don’t you feel trapped here?”
She shrugged. “The world comes to me at the Angel. It always has. And the gallery has broadened my horizon.” They were the reasons she gave herself. They should have been good enough for him. There was no need to admit, as she did, snatching his beer from him. “I miss the night. I miss seeing humans in their own world. I miss hunting my own prey. I miss the night.”
Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series) Page 11
