Luk shook his head like a dog trying to dislodge a troublesome insect. It had been fun rooting about in an Ancient mind again. In Saloman’s mind in particular. So many layers and locks and depths. And such desperation to resist him. Euphoria rose once more, fierce and consuming. The being who’d outstripped him, eclipsed him, defeated him at every turn had been easy to trick after all, to best in his own palace. It didn’t matter that between them, Saloman and his Awakener had managed to push him out. They all knew who’d won that round, and who would therefore win the next. Luk had learned what he’d gone for: Saloman’s strengths and weaknesses.
“Then why do you keep them here?” Grayson carped. “All it takes is for one of them to escape and our cover is blown.”
Luk spared each of the women a dispassionate glance. “Look at them. They can’t exactly run fast. They’ve lost too much blood.”
“Then you’re going to need stronger blood soon. Why don’t you just kill them, or let the boys kill them,” he added with a wave of his hand toward the Turkish vampires who were now settling down to play backgammon.
Something twinged in Luk. He couldn’t recognize it. He just knew he didn’t like the feeling, the impression that something wasn’t right. Confusion, never far away, began to churn his mind up, reminding him how little he knew about this new world and the creatures who inhabited it. The unfamiliarity scared him, until he focused on the well-remembered hatred of Saloman to bring everything back into place.
Somewhere he longed for the peace of the sleep Grayson had wakened him from. But that was impossible now. He had an older, more important mission to fulfill. Even the new world was changing. She, the Awakener, was the missing piece who would cause Saloman’s power to wane. And he, Luk, would win at last. Over whatever was left. But he wouldn’t think of that.
He reached for the first woman again. She couldn’t lose much more and not die, but he wanted another mouthful to calm himself. When her eyes closed, he pushed her aside angrily and turned on the other vampires.
“I need fresh blood! I hate being cooped up in this stupid box! Did any more vampires approach you tonight? How many can we count on now?”
“Count on? Maybe five, but how can people even join us when all we do is hide? Five in the whole of Budapest!” Dante said disgustedly. “They’re the ones who contacted me during your little battle in Saloman’s palace and liked your style. And someone spoke to Timucin tonight—he seemed stronger, at least. I’ll meet with him tomorrow. But the rest are still on the fence. Waiting.”
“Of course they are. Hybrid vampires have very little honor.” Luk leapt up through the skylight and onto the roof, from where he surveyed his motley group of followers and slaves in the room below. “It doesn’t matter. When we strike, they’ll flood to us so fast that Saloman will simply get washed away.”
Meeting with Saloman’s world that night turned out to be a not undiluted pleasure. The civilized vampire haunt of the Angel Club gave way to glimpses of the darker side of human nature, the side Elizabeth had always avoided.
Teetering with him on a rotting roof, his arm steadying her, she gazed in horror at the room lit up like a goldfish bowl in the building opposite. Small children huddled in a corner like puppies while an angry man punched a woman full in the face, then picked her up by the hair while the children seemed to scream silently.
“Stop it,” Elizabeth whispered, though to whom wasn’t clear.
“What should I do? Jump through the window and kill him in front of his children?” Without warning he dived off the roof onto the road, sweeping her along with him, cushioning her landing as he always did, before running along to the next street. He pointed out two youths breaking into a house, a woman beating a whining dog with a stick, kids setting fire to an abandoned car, two men beating up a third in an alleyway.
At the last, unsure whether she was angrier with the thugs or with Saloman, Elizabeth broke away from him, shouting, “Enough, Saloman! I get it, all right?”
The men in the alley paused, and with a quick glance in Elizabeth’s directions, the two attackers ran. In fury and pity, Elizabeth made a move to the bleeding man left behind. But another figure detached itself from the shadows and knelt, phone already clamped to his ear—presumably the victim’s friend, who’d been too late, or too afraid, to help against the attack.
With a swallowed sob, she swung away again and hit the wall of Saloman’s chest. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered as he swept her around the corner in the circle of his arm. “I know what humans are! I’ve always known.”
“I want you to feel it too. Like you feel the brutality of vampires. And I want you to feel safe with me.”
She stared at him in outrage. “Safe? For God’s sake, how is forcing me up against that going to make me feel safe?”
His long eyelashes swept down like a veil and lifted to reveal only blackness. He said steadily, “I want you to be aware that if you leave me, you won’t have left violence and darkness. It’s present in all beings.”
It took a few moments to sink in. Something cold and furious squeezed around her heart as she backed away from him. “That’s how you do it, isn’t it? Teach your flock to toe the line with little demonstrations of cruelty or benevolence or whatever the problem calls for. Well, I’m not one of your bloody flock, Saloman, and I won’t toe your line.”
Spinning on her heel, she marched away from him. She didn’t care where she was going; sheer anger propelled her, to the extent that if he’d dared to follow her she’d have snarled at him like a bitch dismissing her annoying suitor. And yet the fact that he didn’t follow only fed her rage.
Safe, my arse!
Finally, as she hit the busier part of town, she calmed down enough to laugh at herself. She didn’t, since it would probably make her cry instead.
A few yards in front of her, a nightclub was emptying, and the cobbled street became suddenly full of people. Elizabeth moved forward into the brightly dressed, happy crowd, weaving between them until, by the next junction, their numbers had thinned. Elizabeth paused, glancing up the narrower, badly lit street, which looked more like a delivery alley, looking for a street sign to give her a clue where she was. She’d been walking so furiously, paying so little attention, that she’d lost her sense of direction.
There were no street names to guide her. A few yards down the alley, shadows moved in a shallow doorway, and Elizabeth’s spine prickled. Vampire.
Instinctively, she moved down the alley, her hand inside her shoulder bag, finding and gripping the sharpened stake as her heartbeat increased to welcome the sudden danger. A burst of loud laughter from the crowd of young people outside the club reached her ears, and then she heard nothing except the rustling of clothing in front of her, a tiny moan that could have betokened anything from terror or pain to sexual pleasure.
As her eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, Elizabeth could see two people clinched in the doorway. The shape was unmistakable as the male figure’s head bent over the female’s neck. She could have stumbled on lovers groping in the dark, perhaps about to enjoy a quickie, as she’d done with Saloman up against the rocky hillside in Turkey. The unmistakable slurping sound told her the rest.
Elizabeth leapt forward before they could register her presence and thrust the stake up against the vampire’s back, just over where his heart should be.
“Stop,” she said harshly. “Right now. Let her go.”
The hunters would expect her to kill the vampire instantly. It was the only safe course. But she’d just spent a civilized evening drinking wine with several vampires whom she’d have needed a damned good reason to kill. Compromised? Me?
The vampire released his victim. Bizarrely, the girl said, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“A hunter has a stake held to my heart,” the vampire explained.
Am I? Am I a hunter?
Perhaps the vampire sensed her distraction, for without any warning, he grabbed his chance, knocking her backward
with one elbow in the chest. The pain was sharp, winding her, but as he leapt after her, she acted from instinct, kicking out at his legs and throwing him to the ground. She landed on him with deliberate force, her stake raised for the kill.
The girl, his victim, let out a low, moaning scream. “Oh, don’t hurt him; don’t kill him, oh, please!”
Elizabeth paused. With the vampire immobilized, she spared the girl a frowning glance. There was softhearted and there was stupid. “He was biting you,” she pointed out.
The girl trembled from head to toe, her eyes wide with fear and panic, her young face almost contorted with ridiculously intense pleading. “Of course he was. He’s my boyfriend.”
There was no sound but the beating of her own heart. In the grip of her legs and hand, the vampire lay very still. Staring at the girl, Elizabeth couldn’t even see his face, but with a mental push she found quite suddenly that she could speak to his mind.
She knows what you are?
She knows, the vampire answered. Hope mingled with smugness in his mind. She likes it.
Elizabeth couldn’t breathe. She stumbled backward, to her feet, away from the vampire and his human lover. As the vampire slowly rose and the girl collapsed into his arms, Elizabeth turned on her heels and ran.
Words rang in her ears, silent and mocking, the words she’d said so often to Saloman, flung back at her now with a vengeance.
Who are you to choose? It isn’t up to you.
She’d nearly killed someone else’s Saloman.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite the fact that it was almost three in the morn ing, Mihaela opened the door only seconds after Elizabeth rang. She wore the shorts and top she often slept in, and her dark eyes were huge with concern.
“Elizabeth! What is it?” she demanded, opening the door wide in clear invitation.
Elizabeth stepped in. “I’m sorry. It’s ridiculously late. I just thought you should know. I thought somebody should know.”
“Oh, shit. What has he done? Elizabeth, has he hurt you?” Mihaela closed the door, leaning her back on it as she stared at Elizabeth, fearful expressions chasing across her face almost as clearly as words.
Elizabeth gave a shaky smile. “No.” Yes, he has. He has hurt me, and he didn’t even mean to. Was Mihaela right all along, that this can never work? “This has nothing to do with Saloman. I just came across something really weird. It scared the hell out of me.”
Mihaela pushed herself off the door and padded across the hall to her kitchen. “I’ll get coffee.”
Elizabeth followed on suddenly weary legs, and while Mihaela worked, she told her what she’d seen near the nightclub, the vampire and his girlfriend.
“Is this important, Mihaela?” she finished. “Have you ever come across this sort of thing before? Vampires having relationships with humans?”
“Vampires have always had relationships with humans,” Mihaela said, pushing a mug of milky coffee toward her. “Usually master-slave relationships.” She frowned, picking up her cup and walking toward the living room. “What is different here is the openness and public acknowledgment of both parties.” Both she and Elizabeth seemed to be ignoring the similarities to her own case. Elizabeth was fine with that.
“So this girl begged you to spare her boyfriend’s life,” Mihaela mused, curling herself onto one side of the sofa. She cast a penetrating glance at Elizabeth. “Did you?”
“Spare him? Of course I did!” Elizabeth kicked off her shoes and sat on the other side of the sofa, drawing one knee up under her chin.
Mihaela’s frown deepened. “No ‘of course’ about it. You should have killed him at the outset. The sob stories of slaves should never distract you from your duty.”
Elizabeth said, “That’s just it; I don’t think she was a slave. She was too obviously terrified of what I could do to him. I don’t believe he hurt her or had any plan to kill her. I think they were in a genuine relationship.”
Mihaela looked at her. “Could you be mistaken?” she asked. Elizabeth heard the unspoken addition. Are you projecting your own case onto the unknown girl’s and simply getting it wrong?
Elizabeth sipped her coffee. “I don’t believe I am,” she said evenly. “I wouldn’t have brought this to you tonight if I thought that was possible. I would have killed the vampire and told you tomorrow.”
Mihaela watched her for a few moments before she looked away, absently drinking. “Is it important?” she repeated. “I don’t know. It depends whether it’s a one-off or not.”
It was never a one-off. At the very least there was herself and Saloman. Is there?
Abruptly, Mihaela was speaking again, distracting her from the despair threatening to rise up and consume her. “I’ll tell you another weird thing. We’ve been looking for new patterns in vampire attacks, trying to locate Luk—there’s a whole commune of them out there, after all, and they all have to be feeding. We couldn’t trace them, of course. But we did find two recent reports from victims of vampire bites who remember it happening.”
Mihaela shifted position. “In fact, in the last six months there’ve been several reports of nonlethal bitings. Statistically, there shouldn’t be any at all in that time. Vampires who don’t kill—that is, the ones that are avoiding trouble in the shape of us—mesmerize their victims so they don’t tell and start up a hue and cry. Some of them have stopped bothering. It’s almost as if . . .”
“As if what?” Elizabeth prompted.
Mihaela met her gaze. “As if the vampires had stopped hiding.”
Elizabeth drew in her breath. She reached out and set her mug down on the coffee table. Mihaela had put her own growing realization into words. “I think you’re right, and I think it’s happening all over. Before I left the UK, there was a case of a vampire openly feeding in some village down in Cornwall. And remember John, my injured soldier? I got an e-mail from him saying he’d encountered another vampire, this time in Glasgow’s city center. She spoke to him because she was intrigued by his telepathic powers, but she made no attempt to kill him, or even to feed from him. And now he wants to know more. He needs to know more. And he’s precisely the sort of determined young man who’ll manage it.”
Mihaela’s free hand tugged at her hair. “It’s Saloman. He’s changing their behavior, and they’re revealing themselves. Put that together with all the stuff we couldn’t cover up in Turkey, and this could be disastrous for all of us. I really don’t want to have to clear up the carnage once this secret is out in the open.” She gulped her coffee. “If it can be cleared up.”
Thoughtfully, Elizabeth reached for her mug once more and took a few sips before she said, “Like I said before, I think we need a strategy for dealing with this revelation.”
“I spoke to the others. And to Lazar.”
“What did they say?”
Mihaela gave a lopsided smile. “Konrad thinks Luk’s behind the changes, because Luk rather than Saloman would benefit from the upheaval of a vampire war. Lazar grunted. Which may mean he’s thinking about it or that he believes we’re insane. I’ll take this stuff to him in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
Mihaela glanced at the clock on her bookcase. “Want the spare room?”
Elizabeth’s free hand flew to her throat and pinched. Stupidly, although staying with Mihaela was a natural and sensible thing to do, it seemed a monumental decision. Because she’d quarreled with Saloman, and she was too confused even to work out whether she wanted to make up. She’d gotten over far larger hurdles in this relationship, and yet . . .
“Elizabeth.” Leaning over the space between them, Mihaela squeezed her shoulder. “What’s the matter? You think he’ll mind if you’re not there?”
“I’m not even sure he’ll notice.” He was probably teaching some other recalcitrant underling to follow his rules. She closed her eyes, appalled by the meanness of her own thoughts. “He’ll know I’m safe,” she added in the interest of honesty.
Mihaela shrugged. “
I doubt he’s paying much attention to that either,” she said dryly. “He’s obviously happy enough for you to be wandering about the city on your own at this time of night, even after Luk tried to kill you.”
“That’s not fair.” It came out as a whisper. “I left him, stomped off. He knew I didn’t want him to follow me.”
“Why?”
Elizabeth smiled unhappily. “Why? Why any of this? He’s manipulative, Mihaela; I’ve always known that. I just don’t want my strings pulled by his cruelty or benevolence—”
“Cruelty?” Mihaela interrupted, her fingers digging suddenly harder into Elizabeth’s shoulder. “What has he done to you?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing like that. He just showed me things, unnecessary things, to remind me of human cruelty. I’m not an idiot. I don’t need reminding.”
Mihaela’s hand fell away. “No,” she agreed. “You’re right. That was unnecessary. I’m not surprised you don’t want to go back to him.”
“Oh, Mihaela, it’s not as simple as that. I know why he did it. He’s afraid—” She bit the words back. Not just because of the skeptical curl to Mihaela’s lip, but because baring her heart would bare Saloman’s confidences too.
“And yet you can’t forgive him.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “Not yet,” she whispered.
Mihaela set down her mug carefully. “You don’t have to,” she pointed out. “Not if it isn’t right.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes. “I know.”
Mihaela stood up, her eyes shrewd even through the concern. “It isn’t so much the cruelty, or even the implied manipulation that hurts, is it? It’s the fact that he’s treating you like everyone else.”
Elizabeth looked away. “You know what I hate about you, Mihaela? You’re too bloody perceptive. Can I call a taxi?”
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