She examined it some more and realized she’d been wrong before. It did arouse emotion. She could feel it swirling through her. But the emotion wasn’t good. It felt like—anger. She couldn’t recall ever getting angry at a painting before, not even that awful portrait of herself that her parents had once commissioned. But this—it was almost as if the stormy sea was transferring its rage to her. Intrigued, she opened herself to it, let herself feel, as she always did with art.
“Yes, this is an interesting work isn’t it?” the young man said at her elbow. “Do you like it?”
Irritated, she swung on him to tell him in no uncertain terms to bugger off. Then, over his shoulder in the shadows at the back of the shop, she saw a woman watching her. A beautiful woman Andrea had never seen before. And yet the chemistry was bad; it was awful. Andrea hated her.
The young man shifted slightly to catch her eye, blocking her view of the lovely, hateful woman, and abruptly, Andrea knew there was only one way to get at her—through him.
She shot up her hand in a vicious punch that should have surprised the crap out of him when it connected. Only it never did.
Her hand was held in the other woman’s steely grip.
“No,” the woman said. “No one hits my staff. What’s the matter with you?”
Several thoughts rushed through Andrea’s head. That the woman must have moved far too fast for reality. That Andrea had actually been going to hit someone for no reason. That she’d put herself in the wrong and would be ejected from the shop before she’d learned anything. That now she wouldn’t be able to help István. And all those things combined into the same result, the same source—she hated this elegant woman with the pale skin and the weird eyes that managed to look both unspeakably profound and scarily dead.
She brought up her free hand to hit, and abruptly it was twisted painfully behind her and she was being marched toward the door. The young man held it open, and the woman threw her out like the rubbish. It felt like she was pushed from a long way and yet she carried on, rushing out into the street until the door slammed behind her.
It all happened so quickly, there was no time to do or even feel anything before she was outside, staring at the blinds over the door’s glass top half.
What the hell just happened?
I just tried to hit two people because I didn’t like their painting. Now I don’t even have the necklace. What is the matter with me?
****
Angyalka stared at her human henchman for an explanation.
Justin shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea. One minute she was nice as nine pence, saying how wonderful the shop was—she even picked out a necklace to buy, although I suppose that’ll be a lost sale now—the next she turned on me as if I were some hateful worm!”
“She looked as if she was going to tear my eyes out,” Angyalka observed.
“I’d like to see her try,” Justin said with incongruous pride. He frowned suddenly. “You know, she’s not the first customer this week who’s turned as suddenly as that. There are all sorts of weirdoes out there, so one or two and I don’t really notice, but this is becoming a habit.”
Angyalka lifted her brows, gazing thoughtfully from him to the paintings the violent woman had been looking at. “I had one like that yesterday too. She backed down and apologized, but for a moment, she looked almost as angry as that woman there.” She moved toward the pictures, gazing at each of the seascapes in turn.
“Justin, were your weirdoes looking at these pictures too?”
He walked over to stand beside her. “Do you know, I think they were.”
What’s more, Bruno Geller, the man she’d killed the night of the bombing had been skulking around this area when he’d been in with his girlfriend. Before he turned inexplicably violent.
“Something very strange is going on here,” she said softly. Two of the pictures were Maximilian’s, the others local human artists’. But if any of them were enchanted, it was so well done that she couldn’t spot it.
On impulse, she told Justin to stare at each of them in turn. From the first two, he showed no reaction whatever. On the third, after a few moments, he swung on her with impatience. “What’s the point of this? Staring at these bloody ugly pictures…”
“Again,” Angyalka said. “Same one.”
He muttered under his breath, which was so out of character for the good-natured Justin that she watched his face as he gazed again at Maximilian’s dreary seascape. He was frowning with irritability, anger building behind his normally placid eyes.
“Okay, enough,” she said.
Justin ignored her, so she laid her fingertips on his arm. “Justin,” she said sharply.
He flung her off. “Get off me, bitch! Don’t think for a minute I don’t know what you are—evil, bloodsucking cow!”
“Well,” she said softly. “And how much of that is you, my friend?”
By this time, she’d caught his gaze and was holding him captive through it. His eyes widened, as though with shock at what he’d just said.
“Are you calling me a vampire, Justin?”
His mouth curled downward with shame or misery, she wasn’t sure which, but another spark of anger lit up his eyes, almost drowning the sudden fear.
“What do you want to do to me?” she asked.
“Kill you!” he exploded.
Enough was enough. She stared deep into his eyes and beyond, right into his mind, following the surge of hate to its source. It wasn’t a complicated compulsion, and it was easy to unravel before she slid as gently as possible from his mind and, without further ado, picked up Maximilian’s seascape and marched with it toward the office. She got no identity, no reading from it.
“I’m taking this upstairs, out of the way,” she said. “If you see anyone come in who ever went near this picture before, press the alarm button.”
Justin nodded dumbly as she carted the picture into the lift. At the last moment, he started after her. “Angyalka, I didn’t mean it,” he said desperately. “I don’t care who or what you are. I like working here. I like you.”
Was that adoration in his fearful young eyes? A little ruefully, she reached up and touched his cheek. “My dear, you wouldn’t like me at all on a deep, dark night.”
She’d drunk from him once, a few sips before he went home for the night. He shouldn’t remember that, although it might have left some residual idea of intimacy.
As the door closed between them, she wondered if she’d just created another problem. It would be a pity. She liked Justin, and she couldn’t be bothered looking for another assistant for the gallery.
Of course, he had tasted rather good…
Chapter Eleven
István pushed back the trailing branches and stood still.
Konrad sat with his back against the tree trunk, looking up at him. He didn’t seem to be angry or upset. “I wondered if you’d look for me here.”
“You knew I would.” István let the veiling branches fall back behind him. “It’s why you came.”
In the weeks and months immediately following his captive ordeal with the vampires, Konrad had often been unable to bear a roof over his head or any companion except István. He’d come here to the City Park behind Heroes’ Square and found this quiet corner close to the lake but not near enough to be stumbled upon very easily. From here he could look straight up to the sky, feel the sun and the wind on his face. He could be safe and alive.
He’d brought István here once. And on another occasion when Konrad had gone missing, István had come here to talk him into coming home, rather than giving away his hiding place to the authorities.
István crouched down and pulled up a chunk of coarse grass with his fingers. “You’re taking a chance, Konrad. After what you did. You know I should take you back with me.”
“But you won’t. Even if you could.”
“Let’s leave ‘could’ aside. Because we both know I ‘could’ always find a way. Everyone’s looking for you, Konra
d.”
Konrad’s lips curled, and yet he wasn’t sneering. At least, not at István. “Come to talk me down again? Not this time, my friend.”
“You haven’t left me many choices. Saloman is keeping your actions quiet, but he knows it was you. He expects us to deal with it.”
“He knows you won’t. He’s always wanted to kill me, because I’ve always known what he is.”
“We all know what he is, Konrad. Your only difference is in interpretation.”
“And so for that difference you’d take me in for Saloman to kill?”
“Of course I wouldn’t.” In the line of duty, Konrad had been bitten several times since that first torture. Although he’d faced it with bravery, István understood what it cost him, and what was still his biggest fear—death by vampire draining. “But Saloman won’t kill you. He’s under oath to Elizabeth.”
“Do you think such an oath could survive the bombing of their precious Angel Club?”
István shrugged. “Why not? The Angel survived.”
“I don’t understand how. The whole building should be rubble and matchwood.”
István held his gaze. “There’s more to vampires than we ever imagined when we first joined the hunter network.”
“Maybe,” Konrad allowed. “But one thing remains the same, and that’s the one I can’t ever reconcile myself to.”
“What?” István challenged. He knew what he would say, hoped desperately it would sound stupid and trivial when spoken aloud.
“Pure evil,” Konrad said conversationally. “That’s what I read in the dead eyes and faces of the vampires who used me as a Sunday roast. It’s what I read in all their eyes, from mindless fledglings to the eternally calculating Saloman.”
“It’s the same evil, the same vampires you see each time.”
Konrad frowned at him.
István said, “That’s what Mihaela told me once. That she was always fighting the same vampire, the one who killed her family.” He didn’t add that she was reporting what Saloman had said to her. He knew when to keep quiet. “You’re doing the same thing.”
“If only it were that simple. They’re all evil, István. I’m afraid for Mihaela and Elizabeth, for the whole world if we keep to this road.”
“I’ve seen evil in them,” István acknowledged. “But Konrad, have you never seen evil in the eyes of a human?”
“No. Not like that.”
“That’s your experience talking. And your lack of experience. Until your vampire attack, you led a pretty sheltered life. I didn’t.”
“And yet you’re the one with his eyes shut now.”
“No, I’m not. Maybe vampire evil is deeper, more out of control because until Saloman there was damn all discipline among them. But there are humans like that too, who believe they’ll always get away with it. Neither of them should.”
“Human policing isn’t my problem. Vampires are. It’s what I signed up to do.”
“To protect humans from vampires. Isn’t that what Saloman is doing?”
“No. It’s only what he says he’s doing.” Konrad looked up at the sky while István struggled to find the answering words.
In the end, Konrad spoke first. “I have to go, István. I just wanted you to know why. I haven’t given up and I won’t. And I want you—and Mihaela—to know that I’ll always help you.”
“Don’t do this, Konrad,” István warned. “You’re making it bloody hard to reciprocate. You’re not just dealing in abstracts here. Vampires have personalities. And lovers. If you’d killed Maximilian the other night, do you imagine Mihaela would ever have forgiven you?”
“It’s about more than personal feelings. It always was.” He stood and looked down at István, still crouched on the grass at his feet.
“You’re wrong,” István said urgently. “It was always personal, for all of us. Our opinions, our instincts, us looking out for each other—that’s how we worked best, how we survived. You have to give this a try.”
Konrad’s smile was faint. “No, I don’t, István. No, I don’t.”
And he simply turned his back and walked away.
****
Elizabeth’s lunch hour was finished by the time István made it over to the university, but she claimed to have worked through lunch and was therefore at liberty to entertain in her office. She had almost an hour before her next class.
“Have a sandwich,” she offered, pushing a large container toward him.
They were homemade and fresh, and it suddenly seemed an incongruous mixture, that she, companion to the powerful vampire overlord, supernatural healer extraordinaire, should spend time in her kitchen doing something as mundane as making up sandwiches for lunch.
“I’m hungry all the time,” she confessed. “You doing all right? You’re moving better.”
István took a sandwich and sat down at the side of her desk. “Tired, like you said, but everything’s still working. Did I thank you for that? For everything?”
“Frequently. What’s on your mind?”
István’s smile felt twisted. “Konrad.”
“Ah.”
“You’ll know it was him behind the bombing of the Angel?”
Elizabeth laid down her sandwich as if giving herself time to think what to say. “We’ve been losing him for a long time,” she said at last. “He’s an intense sort of man. I suppose it was inevitable he’d be extreme.”
“I know this is a long shot, but is there anything you can do for him?”
Elizabeth blinked. “If he won’t listen to you and Mihaela, he won’t listen to me. I gave it my best shot before all this even started.”
“I know that. I mean your—healing.” He bit into his sandwich, realized he was hungry, and chewed with relish.
Elizabeth said, “I can’t heal opinions. It’d be a bit Nineteen Eighty-Four if I did.”
István swallowed. “It’s not the opinions, it’s what’s behind them. You were right six months ago when you said the network used our fears and experiences for its own ends. We recover only so far from whatever tragedy brought us into the organization in the first place, and the rest stays with us, spurring us on, keeping us hunting. Konrad’s more a victim of that than anyone. His mind needs healed, Elizabeth, not altered.”
Elizabeth stared at him, grabbing another sandwich, which she didn’t eat but picked at absently with her fingers. Crumbs scattered onto her desk.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’ve never even tried that before. I can soothe a little bit sometimes, like I did with Angyalka the other night. But—”
“Angyalka?” he blurted.
“Her home had been bombed,” Elizabeth said dryly. “She was a little upset.”
“So that’s why she stopped blaming me. Couldn’t that work for Konrad too?”
“I’ve no idea! What happened to him anyway?”
“I can’t tell you that. But it was bad and it affected him deeply. If you…‘soothed’ him, wouldn’t he be able to think more clearly?”
Elizabeth looked doubtful and just a little frightened. “It sounds rather beyond me. Konrad needs deeper help.”
“He won’t go to a psychiatrist.”
“Maybe Saloman could smooth out a few knots and memories…?”
“He won’t let Saloman near him. He’d think he was being brainwashed.”
“I suppose he’d be right,” Elizabeth admitted. “Do you know where he is?”
“He’s still in Budapest, but I think he’s about to leave—which amounts to a declaration of war.”
“He could be a one-man wrecking ball.”
István nodded.
“Fuck,” Elizabeth said absently, clearly deep in thought. Her eyes snapped back into focus. “If we find him, or he finds us, I’ll give it a go, but I really don’t know if it’ll do any good. This has become who Konrad is.”
István got out his phone. He had a contact in the police, an understanding formed many years ago. He thought he could arrange for
Konrad to be found by the cops and brought to him rather than going through normal hunter bureaucracy.
Elizabeth watched him in silence while she steadily munched her way through another sandwich. When the call was made, he met her expectant gaze once more.
Then, with a twitch of his lip, he delved into his rucksack and brought out Maximilian’s statuette.
Elizabeth laughed. “Angyalka,” she said at once, reaching for it and examining it more closely. “Did Maximilian do this? It’s rather good.”
“I thought so. Just as well, since it cost me fifteen thousand forints.” He laid his battered, old penknife beside the carving. “Would you mind performing some kind of enchantment on both of these objects?”
“What sort of enchantment?” she asked suspiciously.
“It doesn’t matter at this stage.” István got out his makeshift storage device and began to set it up. “Something simple will do.”
Elizabeth shrugged and laid one finger on the penknife, muttering something below her breath. The penknife seemed to shiver and vanish.
The needle on his device twitched and was still. Bugger all energy there. It might not even have been energy that moved it.
“Those words you said, was ‘penknife’ among them?” he asked.
She nodded. “Well, the Ancient equivalent for a cutting implement. Same enchantment for Angyalka here?”
István nodded. Elizabeth touched the statue, recited some words, among which he distinguished “Angyalka,” until it too was invisible. The needle soared. The lights on the old charger and battery flickered, and István grinned in triumph. “Got you.”
“Got me?” Elizabeth demanded. “In there?”
“Well, some of the energy you created with your spell. Angyalka’s statue magnified it. Saloman was right. It is in the word. You said it, referring to both Angyalka and the angel depicted. That’s what protects the Angel, and that’s what makes Angyalka herself so strong.”
Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series) Page 15
