Alarm bells went off in Mihaela’s head. The men could have been family members, chasing him to bring him home, but something in the way they moved, their carefully controlled speed, the power of their running legs, spoke chillingly against it.
“Good-bye,” she said, a little too abruptly, remembering at least to cast the friendly American a quick smile before she too sped off down the hill.
There was no point in even telling herself not to get involved. Relaxing on holiday was suddenly irrelevant because no one could see a child in danger and do nothing. And Mihaela was terribly sure now he was in danger. Although she carried no detector, in this case, she didn’t need one. The figures pursuing the little boy were vampires.
****
Mihaela had been fighting vampires all her life. She’d accepted long ago that she would die doing so. Hunting the undead was her raison d’être, her life, her job for more than ten years. It was even, indirectly, the reason she was here in Scotland. Because everything had changed in the last three months, since the fight to defend the Budapest library. On that shattering night, at great personal risk from both sides, three vampires had stood with the hunters and fought against their own kind.
Now, doing what she did best—tracking the undead through dark, unknown streets— Mihaela almost felt nostalgic for the days when the relationship between vampire and hunter was clear, when she’d needed a reason not to kill a vampire.
She was part of a very old and secretive world-wide organization whose prime duty was to protect humanity from the undead. And she was damned good at it. At the age of twenty-five, she’d risen to be a member of the elite first team in eastern Europe, which boasted the highest density of vampire population in the world, and now, six years later, she’d grown formidably strong and fast as the result of her kills.
And if a tiny part of her remained secretly unfulfilled, that didn’t matter, because she knew she was doing good work, protecting people not just from vampires but from the terrible knowledge that there were monsters in their midst.
Then, not much more than a year ago, an unworldly academic researcher called Elizabeth Silk had accidentally awakened the vampire Saloman, last of the pure Ancient race from which all modern hybrid vampires were descended, and Mihaela’s world was turned on its head.
But although Saloman’s power was more frightening than anything the hunters had had to deal with in living memory, and he quite candidly sought to rule the world, he hadn’t started the war with humans that the hunters feared more than anything. In fact, he instilled discipline in the chaotic vampire communities, laid down rules, and compelled obedience—and vampire-related murders drastically reduced.
The downside, of course, was that vampires were coming out of the shadows. And that too suited Saloman’s plan, because he wanted a return to ancient times when vampires had walked among humans, living in harmony—at least according to Saloman. When he’d fought to preserve the hunters from his own kind, they’d had to acknowledge he had a few viable points.
So now Mihaela and the rest of the world’s hunters had to adjust to the fact that vampires were not automatically for killing, not unless they proved themselves to be a threat. The hunters and the vampire overlord, Saloman, were working together toward a strategy of coping with the inevitable human “discovery” of undead existence, a revelation which had already begun spontaneously in the last year as a direct result of Saloman’s regime.
Although Mihaela had believed, mostly, in the new world order, it still felt weird, unholy. And when Konrad, her friend and team leader of many years’ hunting, had come to her with his proposal, she’d been appalled by the wrenching of divided loyalties.
He’d arrived at her bright, blessedly normal apartment one evening, about a month ago, restless, anxious, but with a new purpose and determination in his step, in the very way he carried himself as he strode into her living room and accepted a mug of coffee.
Konrad was an impressive man: strong, principled, determined. His life, Mihaela’s, and that of the third member of their team, István, were bound by common cause and mutual reliance. They’d saved each other’s lives and dressed each other’s wounds countless times. Rugged and serious, Konrad paced her small living room, holding his mug in both hands, then turned abruptly and fixed her with his intense blue eyes. She was glad to see all that vitality back, for since the library fight, he’d been listless, sullen, even obstructive, way beyond the normal disagreements with which the team often confronted missions. Mihaela began to hope that at last he’d come to terms with the new alliance, the new world. And then he spoke.
“It isn’t right, Mihaela,” he burst out. “We should be killing them, wiping them off the face of the planet. Starting with Saloman. Instead we’re holding hands with him, giving away vital information and getting nothing in return. This alliance was always wrong. It’s only working for them by turning us soft enough to be finally defeated, and then there’s nothing left to prevent vampire supremacy. Can you live with that, Mihaela?”
Mihaela shrugged unhappily. “It takes some adjustment. But we have to face reality, Konrad, not what we think should be the case. And the reality is, word is getting out about vampires, slowly but surely. We can’t prevent that now. We can only work with Saloman to make the ‘outing’ as peaceful as possible.”
“You sound like Saloman,” Konrad sneered. “Or Elizabeth.”
“Well, they were the only ones talking any sense before the library fight,” Mihaela retorted. “If Saloman hadn’t ignored our rejection and come to our aid anyway, we’d all be dead, and Luk and his vampire cohorts would be on the rampage.”
Konrad brushed that aside with an impatient wave of one hand. “It may or may not have influenced the outcome. Either way, it should have been nothing more than the temporary alliances we’ve occasionally been forced into before. I can’t believe Mikl?s, even the Grand Master, are seriously considering this as long term. It’s disastrous for us, for humanity.”
“I don’t think so,” Mihaela said stubbornly.
“Don’t you?” He walked over to the sofa where she sat, and stared down at her. “Really? Have you considered that you’re blinded by Saloman’s civilized veneer? By the fact that his creation Maximilian saved your life?”
Mihaela looked away. She didn’t want to think about Maximilian, most enigmatic and reclusive of the undead, whose story had always captured her curiosity. The fight in the hunters’ library had been the only time Mihaela had ever seen him up close. Made by Saloman himself, he was six hundred years old, had once ruled all the vampires of eastern Europe, and yet he’d looked like some carefree youth in his torn black tank and jeans, his wild, dark hair falling forward across a face so perfectly beautiful in its masculinity that it seemed angelic.
He’d met her gaze for only an instant as he’d straightened from the kill that had saved her, an instant of stillness in the vicious battle that raged around them. His eyes, the fathomless, secretive eyes of the very old, had burned into her. Something had stabbed at Mihaela, sharper than a vampire’s fangs, a tug of fierce, animal attraction that was almost grateful recognition. Because she’d imagined a flicker of answering warmth in those impossibly cold eyes.
It had terrified her. More than death at the hands of the vampire Maximilian had just saved her from. Somehow, she’d managed to nod her gratitude. Maximilian had whipped away, the muscles rippling in his naked arms as he thrust backward with his elbow into an attacker and plunged his stake into the back of another vampire.
He moved like a dancer. A lethal, murderous dancer. Across the battleground, and, later, across her hot, frustrating dreams.
She shook his image away. “I’m not blinded by anything,” she retorted.
“Aren’t you?” Konrad sat down beside her, leaning forward to peer into her face. “So how would you feel if you ran up against the vampire who killed your family? Would you accord him the same courtesies?”
“He is a murderer,” Mihaela snapped. “Of
course I’d kill him.”
“Perhaps he’s reformed,” Konrad sneered. “Like Saloman himself. Mihaela, when this all goes wrong, we need to be strong. Mikl?s and Lazar are going to be useless. They’re completely in Saloman’s pocket now.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but Konrad was still talking.
“I want there to be a strong group of us still at the center of things. Hunters who haven’t lost their way in all of this, who stick to the original values of the organization without being bound by its current controls. Hunters who’re prepared to do the right thing—kill vampires. I’m forming a force now, not a breakaway group yet, not until it has to be, but a group within the network, remaining true to its ideals, who can counteract the damage of all this—tolerance. I want you there with me, Mihaela.”
Many things about Konrad’s proposal had churned her up. The bitter, vengeful part of her that still wanted payback for the crimes against her family, as well as for all the other atrocities she’d witnessed over the years, wanted to join Konrad in his destructive quest. This was an older, stronger loyalty than the fragile bonds forged with Elizabeth and the overlord Saloman himself. And she didn’t know what to do.
So when Elizabeth, sensing her stress, had offered her the use of her flat in Scotland to get away from it all, she’d jumped at the chance.
****
This—pounding down a dark city street in pursuit of vampires—was Mihaela getting away from it all. Once a hunter, always a hunter.
Shadowing her quarries with swift efficiency, keeping them in sight without getting too close, Mihaela had time to think, savagely, that perhaps Konrad was right in his belief that all vampires everywhere should be exterminated. At this moment, watching vampires hunt a child, he certainly seemed closer to reality than Elizabeth’s daydream of toleration and integration.
Hands in pockets, both curled around lethally sharpened stakes—training overcame everything, and she never traveled without at least two wooden stakes—she followed with grim determination, swerving down side-streets and through ill-lit alleys and narrow flights of steps.
Oddly, even in quieter territory, the vampires made no move to close in on the child. Did they sense her following? Were they being circumspect, or luring her into a trap? Most vampires avoided tangling with hunters if they could avoid it; killing one simply brought too much trouble down on their heads. But since Saloman’s revolution, they were all behaving differently. In many ways, they were less afraid than they had ever been, and since they’d never been exactly timid or shy of bloodshed, this scared the hell out of Mihaela.
She had no idea where she was. Following along a dimly lit alley, she saw the vampires halt at the end, where it seemed to open into a wider back court. Slipping silently closer, she thought it looked like a delivery area for shops or, judging by the smell, more likely a pub.
The vampires paid her no attention. Keeping them in her wary vision, Mihaela cast a few quick glances beyond them. The boy was there, standing in front of a man sprawled on a metal barrel, with his back leaning against the wall of the pub. On the wind, she caught the child’s voice, high and excited, though she couldn’t make out the words.
The man on the barrel sat very still, with the sort of boneless flop she associated with the very drunk. Was this the child’s father? Was this who he’d been looking for all day on his own? Mihaela’s heart went out to the boy. She squashed her upsurge of anger against the irresponsible piss-head of a father. She had to protect both of them now from the hovering vampires.
She tensed, for the vampires began to move, not fast as they could, but with an air of slow, unstoppable determination. She drew in her breath, running swiftly forward. But other shadows were moving in the yard too. On all sides, they detached themselves from the darkness, advancing on where the boy stood talking to the drunk, who at last lurched to his feet, finally aware of the danger.
Picking up speed, Mihaela acknowledged something was very wrong here. There must have been twelve vampires altogether. Too many for this country, this city, this small meal of one adult and a child. What the hell was going on?
The boy turned around to face his attackers, took one circumspect step backward, just as the drunk launched himself at one of the vampires. The god of the inebriated must have smiled upon him, for by some miracle of luck, his fist connected with one an instant before his foot kicked another to the ground. Or perhaps he was just used to brutal pub brawls.
Mihaela didn’t wait to find out. Focusing on the fair head of the boy, she staked the vampire in her path—a recently fledged weakling, for she barely felt his strength adding to her own—and sped toward her goal. His companions seemed to feel his death, though, for some of them turned to stare at her.
One flew at her, snarling, his fangs white in the blackness of the yard. Mihaela kicked him, hard, and staked him as he doubled-up, lashing out with her free elbow at another vampire who tried to take advantage of her distraction. They weren’t expecting a hunter, or it wouldn’t have been so easy to kill him, but by now they’d all have her scent.
Given vampires’ superior speed and might, a fight with a human could have only one realistic end—unless that human was a hunter. Not only trained to counter vampire speed, hunters could also grow far stronger than ordinary humans, because with every vampire kill, they gained some of that vampire’s power. Of course, vampires also gained by killing each other, especially if they took the blood of their victim. Plus, they grew more powerful with age.
Mihaela was a strong hunter. But there were just too many of them here. She had no chance. Her only hope was to get the humans away and somehow frighten the vampires off.
She shouted, “Run, kid! Get out of here!” Where’s the bloody father? He should be with him… Dodging a vicious blow from another of the vampires, she made out the drunken parent, falling under a hail of kicks and punches. A flash of a car headlight winked through from the road beyond, just as the drunk sank his teeth into one of his attackers, who exploded almost instantly into dust.
Mihaela froze.
“Oh shit,” she whispered. She couldn’t look away as he heaved himself to his feet, hurling one of his attackers into the rest and lashing out before they fell on him again.
No human drunk, but a vampire; an extremely powerful one that she really, really didn’t want to see here.
She paid for her moment of stunned distraction as a vampire cannoned into her, knocking her off balance and snarling for her neck. She stabbed him with a backward thrust in the thigh that surprised him enough to let her make the kill. He was stronger; his energy flooding into her almost made her gasp.
So the numbers were reduced, but the boy still stood by the barrel, flattened into the wall, his eyes wide. Mihaela couldn’t fight them all, and she didn’t trust the powerful vampire currently being beaten to a pulp by his fellows.
“Police!” she yelled at the top of her voice. “Help!”
It was hardly likely to bring the cavalry galloping to their rescue, but at least it gave the vampires pause. Which was interesting. She’d wondered if they’d care about such attentions. After all, there were still enough of them to deal with the coppers who, even if they came, were unlikely to turn up mob-handed on a Tuesday afternoon.
“And there are more hunters coming,” she informed the vampires more quietly, as she kneed one in the groin and pushed him into the crowd.
Stumbling back, he recovered and glared at her. His muddy eyes flashed venom.
Mihaela’s world reeled.
Suddenly she felt not a seasoned vampire hunter at all, but a child facing a monster of unspeakable proportions as her world collapsed and died around her in blood and horror.
The vampire, a stocky being with thick, rough brown hair straggling down to his neck, grinned. Just for an instant, she could have sworn recognition gleamed in his red-tinged eyes. Then, as if he’d given some silent order, which he probably had, all the vampires backed off. One grabbed her by the throat on the way
past. She swiped his legs away with her foot and staked him as he landed on the ground. The pressure on her throat vanished with the vampire, and she whirled to find the lead vampire advancing on the child.
Springing forward, Mihaela threw herself between them.
“No,” she said, both stakes pointing straight at the vampire’s chest from different angles. “Not this time.”
Spite twisted his face. He even swayed forward on the balls of his feet, and her every nerve prepared for the swiftest action of her life. His ear was covered by his hair, so she still couldn’t be sure. If it wasn’t for the child, she’d have fought him just to get at his ear, and then killed him whatever the result.
The vampire laughed and stepped back.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll get him later.” And he turned and walked away.
Breathing hard, Mihaela glanced round the whole yard. It was impossible to see how far the vampires had withdrawn. They needed to get out of here, fast.
She turned to the boy. “Are you all right?”
The child nodded. Mihaela tried to smile, held out her hand to him with more hope than expectation. He looked at it, then at her face, and then grabbed her hand as if it were his only lifeline. It was.
“I’ll take you home,” Mihaela promised. She began to walk with him toward the far exit, from where she’d seen the car headlights. The “drunk” vampire lay in a still, black heap on the ground. Clearly, he wasn’t dead, though she doubted he was far from it. But Mihaela wasn’t stupid; she’d spent a long time around vampires, and although he hadn’t appeared to be part of the group attacking the child, she couldn’t trust him any more than she would a rabid dog. She gave him a wide berth and hurried on to the road. She’d deal with her conscience later, along with her responsibility, once she’d done her duty by the little boy who must be terribly traumatized by the night’s events.
“What’s your name?” she asked, as gently as she could. Her voice showed an annoying tendency to shake.
Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series) Page 29
