Jacob frowned. “Then why are you so bloody happy about the whole thing?”
“Because knowledge is power, my children. Wherever Saloman is, it isn’t Budapest or anywhere close. Rumor says he’s in America with my friend Travis. Which suits us very well.”
“It does?” Gabby asked. “So he can’t stop us?”
“Exactly.”
“Stop us doing what?” Jacob asked, with more foreboding than excitement. He began to wish he’d never got involved with this and didn’t even know why.
“Extracting the concessions we need from Saloman,” Basilio said impatiently. “With this, we can force him out of America, and I can oust Travis.” His gaze moved between Jacob and Gabby, and his cold eyes flashed with irritation. “Oh, for God’s sake! We use the hunter’s tool to boost our own strength and capture Elizabeth Silk with her unborn child.”
****
“Go,” Béla said roughly. “You don’t need to be here all the time.”
The club had closed for its “holy hour.” Human and vampire staff were clearing and cleaning, setting everything to rights.
Angyalka, bone tired and desperate to be alone to think and feel, knew she couldn’t give in. She shook her head. “There are things I need to listen for. Too much is going on in Budapest right now, and I don’t understand it.”
Béla walked toward her. With one hand, he casually shoved a sofa aside for a waitress who was trying to clean underneath it. She cast him a glance of surprised gratitude which he didn’t appear to notice.
I’ll be your ears and eyes, he said telepathically to Angyalka. Tell me what’s going on.
He came to a halt in front of her, strong, calm, and familiar. He was still grieving for György, who’d been his friend for more than a century, and yet he put her own troubles before his own. He was the best of friends, but did she rely on him too much?
As if he picked up her thought, he smiled slightly and shook his head.
You probably know already, she said wryly. Three foreign vampires who’ve been in here since we refitted. Two Americans, a male and a very young female. And an older vampire with an ultra-strong mask. They’re all too curious. And I need to know about the enchanted picture—who’s behind it and who’s been affected.
She frowned. We need to watch out for compelled humans tomorrow, but at least that shouldn’t be a problem tonight. And obviously, any word about the rogue hunter. She paused. And about Elizabeth. Saloman’s Elizabeth.
Béla simply nodded. She was sure he soaked everything up as a matter of course. She’d no need to tell him any of this. She smiled. Overcome your natural reticence, Béla, and tell me all.
I’ll come before dawn, with gossip and snacks.
She almost told him not to bother with the latter, because she’d already dined on rich hunter blood. But that was too new, too much her own. Béla stepped forward and placed his hands on her shoulders.
Rest, he said, and touched his forehead to hers.
She lifted her hands to grip his upper arms. Thank you.
She slipped away into the back room with a feeling very like relief. When the elevator doors closed her off from the world, she sagged against the wall with relief. Alone.
What the hell am I going to do with myself now? she wondered perversely. Droop on the sofa and dream about my lover like some consumptive literary heroine? Pine? Rage at myself for weakness? Maybe I can climb out of the window and jump onto the roof again—by myself this time…
For a moment, she let her longing for the night swamp her, but it was so mixed up with István and lingering, insistent fear that she shook her head to clear it and straightened as the lift came to a halt.
She even imagined she felt his presence now, surrounding her, swamping her. The elevator doors opened onto her apartment. Above her head, something tapped, and she jerked her face up to the ceiling.
István’s head poked through the emergency hatch. A faint smile lurked around his lips. His fingers tapped on the ceiling.
She had no breath to lose, but for once, she could think of nothing to say.
“I’m being discreet,” he said.
She found her voice at last. “How, exactly? Every vampire downstairs will sense your presence. Hunters shine like lamps to us.”
“Not with one of these,” he said, opening his palm to reveal the masking gadget he’d shown her in the gallery when he’d come in without her noticing.
“Clever hunter,” she said without expression. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
She curled her lip. “Talking, dancing. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”
“Actually, I always say what I mean. But if you want chapter and verse and I wouldn’t push you away if you jumped me.”
She raised one eyebrow. “If I jumped you, you couldn’t push me away.”
He chose not to answer that. Instead, he asked, “May I come in? For ten minutes?”
“So much for my time off,” she said petulantly, walking out of the lift. “Please yourself.”
In the living room, she kicked off her boots and threw herself on the sofa. Right now, there was so much going on in her head and her heart that she couldn’t even tell if she was angry or glad to see him. Just that her cool, sluggish blood flowed a little faster and a little warmer for his presence. And that she felt alive.
How misleading is that? I’ve been dead for two hundred years.
And István… István was little better than crippled, and yet he was climbing about on elevators—moving elevators – just to save her reputation. Or his. Perhaps she should see if he needed help.
Apparently, he didn’t. He walked into the living room and halted, gazing at her.
“Shouldn’t you sit before you fall?” she said by way of invitation.
He strolled toward her. “I’ve had a busy day.” He sank onto the sofa beside her, leaving several inches between them. “But for some reason, my body isn’t complaining.”
“It should be,” she retorted. “I took your blood, more than I should. You must notice that.”
“Accounts for the light-headedness.” The glint in his dark eyes was humorous, unthreatening, almost conspiratorial. As if they were friends. Her stomach knotted.
“It’s a funny thing,” he observed. “Elizabeth has been healing me for months in a slow, gradual way —partly so the doctors don’t freak, and partly because my body wasn’t up to the trauma. But since I met you, she’s been able to blast me. The difference between the night we met and right now is unbelievable. I think that’s down to you.”
“I run a bar,” she said dryly. “I don’t heal people, just fill them full of booze so they think they’re better.”
“I’m serious,” István said. “Somehow, you magnify magic. Like Robbie. Like the gadget I’m trying to create.”
“István, I’ve never been anywhere near you when Elizabeth does her healing thing!”
“You kissed me.”
She stared at him with open derision. “Magic kisses? István, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t live in a fairy-tale world. And if we did, I would not be the fairy princess.”
“You underestimate yourself. Kisses and sex both linger in the body. So does Elizabeth’s healing. It’s like they mixed in me. As for fairy tales, where do you suppose they came from in the first place? There’s always truth in there somewhere.”
“If so, I doubt the inner message is quite that obvious,” she murmured, scanning his face for signs of mockery.
He gazed back steadily. “Who were you, Angyalka? As a human? Were you powerful then too?”
“No. I was about as powerless as you could get. Bottom of the food chain.”
His eyes gave little away. “I find that hard to imagine.”
“I took to vampirism like a duck to water. As a human, I looked forward to death. If I hadn’t been so afraid for my immortal soul, I’d have taken my own life months before it was taken from me. Undeath never entered my head. That was a
story told to scare children. And yet here I am.”
His lips quirked. “Caring nothing for your immortal soul because you have an immortal body?”
She shrugged. “No one’s ever explained soul to my satisfaction. I’ve had great philosophers in my bar, young revolutionaries—Lajos Kossuth himself drank here once. I’ve met princes and communists, patriots, poets, soldiers, politicians—men and women of power and intellect. None of them ever proved to me the meaning or even the existence of a soul.”
“But you implied you changed when you became a vampire.”
“Oh, I did. I was no longer the pawn of others. I could take what I needed, what I wanted. Everyone changes within their time. But their inner being is the same.”
“Then you’d have fascinated me as a human too?”
She felt blood rise to her face. “It depends what fascinates you now. You would have found me more pathetic than wicked. Then, as now, I wouldn’t have been able to bear your pity. You’d have dropped a coin into my lap and hurried on to avoid my sullen face.”
“You were a beggar.”
She shifted restlessly in her seat, drawing her bare feet under her. “For the last year of my life.”
“How come?”
She waved one impatient hand. “How does misfortune come to anyone? A combination of bad luck, my own stupidity, and other people’s malevolence.”
“Tell me,” he invited.
She wriggled, thrusting her legs straight out in front of her and dropping her feet back onto the floor. “I can barely remember. I was the child of a poor peasant family. They all died in some epidemic that swept through the village. I went to the city to find work, was taken on as a kitchen maid in the house of an important nobleman, and then dismissed for getting raped and impregnated by one of the other servants. I miscarried in some backstreet and almost died. By some miracle, I survived and begged and wished to die. I probably would have done before the end of winter, if Aranyi hadn’t come and taken the matter out of my hands.”
Emotion chased through his eyes too quickly for her to read. It might have been shock or compassion. She looked away.
“You agreed to become a vampire?” he asked conversationally.
Angyalka laughed. “In those days, no one asked my opinion, let alone my permission for anything. Aranyi was stupid and lonely and thought he’d make himself a companion. He found me asleep on the street and killed me.”
“And turned you…”
She spread her arms with mockery. “As you see.”
To her surprise, he shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t see. Did you magnify his power during the change? How did you become so strong a vampire so quickly? Only Saloman’s creations—and Luk’s—have ever avoided the bestial fledgling stage.”
Straight to the heart of the matter as ever.
His eyes widened. His lips parted. “Maximilian,” he said slowly. “Not a purebred Ancient but created and taught by Saloman. Aranyi didn’t turn you, did he? Maximilian did.”
The need for secrecy had passed with Maximilian’s return from isolation. It no longer really mattered if it got into the hunters’ records, or the vampires’ knowledge.
“Aranyi didn’t finish the job,” she admitted for the first time ever. “He took all of my blood, gave me a dribble of his, then pushed me off his vein to have sex with me instead. Maximilian came out of nowhere. It was his shadow period, haunting the streets incognito immediately after Zoltán’s victory. Aranyi ran away when Max pulled him off me. I was half undead, half true dead, utterly helpless either to move or to die in earnest. Maximilian gave me his blood and the enchantments that preserve the inner being.”
She crossed her legs and smiled as devilishly as she could manage. “After which I lived—and indeed will live—happily ever after. Using the word ‘live’ at its loosest.”
His lips curved into a smile. “Well, I suppose that explains a lot… Whose idea was it to name this place? Yours or Maximilian’s.”
Angyalka shrugged impatiently. “I named it.”
But a sudden flash of memory struck her: Maximilian nodding with agreement, a rare smile lighting up his troubled face. He’d approved, all right. He’d known it would give her and the bar added protection, although he’d never bothered to tell her so. She wasn’t sure she liked that. She wanted to have made the Angel what it was on her own.
She shifted restlessly, disliking the whole conversation. It was almost like going outside, that feeling of control sliding away from her. But István didn’t let up.
“Does Saloman know you carry his blood through Maximilian?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure he guesses.”
He frowned again. “But this doesn’t explain how you magnify enchantments.”
“If I do,” she retorted. “Maybe I carry the Ancient gene, like Elizabeth, like Robbie.”
“Maybe,” he allowed, nodding. “Angyalka… Was Angyalka always your name?”
“In powerless life and mighty undeath,” she mocked, “the name was always the same.”
“But until you met Aranyi and Maximilian, you’d never encountered the supernatural, no enchantments of any kind.” He sat forward in excitement. “Maximilian, a strong vampire carrying the blood of Saloman himself, finished your turning, gave you enchantments which repeated your name, magnifying his own considerable power in your person. It is in the name, in the word ‘angel.’”
She’d never discussed her strength or the reasons for it with Maximilian. Vaguely, she’d been aware that he was pleased with her progress, but in those early, heady days of her undeath she’d been too enamored of her new existence to question the origin of her power or even compare it to anyone else’s. Even now, she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to be special; she wanted what she’d always wanted, to run her bar and be treated with respect. Not be dissected and analyzed.
Without warning, something fell into place in her brain, illuminating and shattering.
She leapt to her feet. “Experiment on Robbie,” she spat. “If you can get past Maximilian and Mihaela.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” He rose with her, facing her. “Experimenting on you?”
“Aren’t you?” she retorted. “Gadgets, angels, magic kisses, and sex under the stars… I can’t say it hasn’t been fun, István, but it’s getting old now, so bugger off and let me digest my meal in peace.”
For a moment, he stood quite still, a stunned expression on his face. “Maybe you’re right,” he said slowly.
Her hand itched to hit him, to throw him across the room and hurt him in retaliation for her own stupidity. Hadn’t it always been about the balance of power between them? Each trying to obtain information from the other that might give them the edge. When had it stopped being that for her? When he’d held her captive in her own bed for the best sex she could remember? When he’d given her the night and his blood and she’d mistaken his motivation for trust, for feeling?
“I look for knowledge wherever I can find it,” he said slowly. His eyes began to clear and soften. “God knows you’re fascinating on any level. And I’m not used to separating my professional and personal lives. They’re one and the same thing. I’m a hunter. All my friends are hunters too.”
“Like the two women who were here tonight?” she sneered.
It didn’t have the expected effect. He began to smile. His eyes glinted, suddenly predatory. “Are you jealous?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous! I can’t—”
She broke off as he grabbed her with one arm, hauling her against his hips, and crushed her mouth under his. Sheer surprise parted her lips, and after that, the sweet surge of lust carried her beyond the point of throwing him off.
“Angyalka,” he muttered into her mouth. “Angyalka, I don’t care how it began. I don’t even know anymore. Everything about you fascinates me, every encounter drags me deeper. I want you. I want everything. If I ever knew why, I don’t anymore…”
It seemed t
hat now he’d started, the quiet man couldn’t stop talking. She interrupted him. “Shut up. You can’t talk and kiss at the same time.”
His lips smiled against hers, and she nipped them. “Yes, I can,” he said.
“Try now,” she invited, and, throwing her arms around his neck, she fastened her mouth firmly to his and kissed him with deep, aching sensuality. His erection grew and hardened against her abdomen. His hand tangled in her hair, stroked her head, and held it steady. His arm tightened, lifting her, and as she realized he was laying her on the floor, she hung on without breaking the kiss, dragging him down onto her, wrapping her legs around his waist. He began to move on her as if they were naked, as if he were inside her already, thrusting against her with slow, even strokes.
Since her dress was round her waist, it was easy enough for her to tear the thong to give him easier access, but he kept moving and she kept answering until orgasm hovered. With a little animalistic cry, she pushed his chest up without releasing his mouth. He raised his body, letting her unfasten his jeans and shove them over his hips. He pushed them the rest of the way down, then slid right inside her, so big and hot and wonderful that she began to come.
He kept his strokes slow and even, building the climax and holding her there, kissing her trembling mouth as she convulsed around him in a thousand joyous pieces.
When she could control her body again, she rolled on top of him, breaking the kiss at last and sitting straight to feel him deeper within her. She smiled and rode him hard and fast to his own climax. The feel of his hot seed shooting into her threw her over the edge again.
Abruptly, he sat up, facing her, still moving and she cried out at the added intensity. He pulled her dress off, over her head. She ripped his shirt in an explosion of scattered buttons and fixed her mouth to his warm, velvet chest. Still undulating together, one loving turned into another, long and slow, changing, oh, so gradually, with every stroke and caress and twist, into wild and frenetic.
“You have staying power for a human,” she murmured as she lay back contentedly in his arms. The carpet felt rough under her skin, but she didn’t care.
István said, “I never seem to get enough of you. I could make love to you all night.”
Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series) Page 19
