Acquainted With the Night (9781101546000) (21 page)

“It's Bulgaria,” Jude said. “They cling to bureaucracy.”

The driver finally returned, the passports stacked to his chin. Walking at a slant, he moved down the aisle, distributing the booklets. When he was finished, he settled behind the wheel. The engine sputtered, and the bus rolled forward.

Jude's face relaxed, then he drew her hand to his lips. “I can't wait until we're alone.”

“Me, either.” Her bite wound prickled, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

A whistle blew, and a border policeman stepped in front of the bus, one hand raised. The gears shifted again, and the bus rumbled to a stop. The side doors creaked open, and the policeman climbed inside. He spoke to the driver in Bulgarian, flashing a stack of computer printouts, then started down the aisle, his dark eyes scrutinizing each passenger.

Toward the middle of the bus, he spoke sharply to a chaperone with frizzy brown hair.

She handed over her passport and averted her gaze.

The policeman looked from the passport to his printouts; he peered at the woman and spoke again. She nodded and stared at the floor.

Caro slumped down, but Jude pulled her up and slid his arm around her shoulder. “Your hands,” he whispered. “The ink.”

Her breath hitched. Anagrams covered her palms. She tugged her sleeve over her fingers, trying to keep her face impassive, but her pulse thundered in her ears.

“Relax,” Jude whispered. He leaned forward and kissed her. From the corner of her eye, Caro saw the policeman pause beside their row and study the printouts. He fanned the pages, and she glimpsed her picture.

Caro broke the kiss and turned to the window. She no longer resembled the girl in the picture. Her old self hadn't had cheekbones, and her face had been dwarfed by her Medusa-like curls. However, her eyes were the same, and she hoped the policeman hadn't noticed.

Go away, damn you
.

The printouts rustled, then he walked briskly to the front of the bus and climbed down the steps. The doors creaked shut. Jude's hand closed over her knee. As the bus lurched forward, Caro pressed her forehead against the window and watched Bulgaria blend into the Greek frontier. Her relief changed to sorrow when she thought of Uncle Nigel. Who had taken his body? Was he still dead—or had he become like that man who'd bitten her in Momchilgrad?

No matter what, she could never return to Bulgaria to search for him. The police were looking for her. She'd killed a man, and she wasn't sorry. Not one bit.

Jude peeled back the wrapper from a roll of mints and offered her one. She held it between her fingers. “How long till we arrive in Thessaloniki?”

“After sunset. But don't worry. Greece is safer.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a garlic clove. “Don't say that I never gave you a present.”

 

Two Royal Guards escorted Ilya Velikov through a line of protesters outside the British embassy in Sofia. A man held up a sign that objected to the guards' fur hats. Velikov clutched his briefcase and followed the guards to Thurston Hughes's office. A plump secretary looked up from her desk and waved him through.

Velikov walked into the paneled room. Hughes sat behind a massive walnut desk, surrounded by folders. Behind him, silver-framed photographs lined a shelf, each picture showing a laughing, silver-haired woman with two black Labrador retrievers. Hughes rose and shook Velikov's hand.

“Lovely to see you, Ilya. Please be seated. I haven't had any luck finding Miss Clifford.”

“Perhaps this will help.” Velikov opened his briefcase and pulled out photocopied documents. “When Professor Clifford's body was found, he was holding his passport. Apparently he spent his last moments leaving notes for his niece. I made a copy of the pages and returned the passport to the niece.”

“This is amazing, Ilya. Why didn't you say something earlier?”

“I was waiting for the cryptologist to decode the notes.”

“And did he?”

Velikov slid the documents across Hughes's desk. “They were anagrams. Miss Clifford is headed to either Greece or Italy. But I do not know what is waiting for her in either place.”

“Brilliant work, Ilya.” Hughes lifted the papers. “Just brilliant.”

“Is your MI5 involved?”

“My official answer is: no comment,” Hughes said. “But off the record, yes. Field agents are looking for Miss Clifford.”

“To protect her? Or is something else afoot?”

“Miss Clifford may have murdered her flatmate.”

“I cannot believe that. And I am shocked that you do.”

“I didn't say what I believed, did I?” Hughes's face reddened. “I'm simply reporting facts.”

“Whose facts?”

“I've said too much already. Naturally the embassy won't be involved in any criminal investigation. I'm here to assist British nationals.”

“But she
is
one.” Velikov ran his thumb along the edge of his briefcase. “I pray she is still alive. If not, her death will not end this.”

“How dare you threaten me.” The tips of Hughes's ears turned scarlet. He picked up a sheaf of papers and swiveled in his chair. “You know the way out.”

Velikov left the embassy and steered his Astra through the clogged traffic in Sofia. He listened to Bulgarian National Radio as he drove down the empty highway to Kardzhali. At twilight he pulled up to his stone house and went inside.

He hung his jacket and holster over the back of the dining room chair, then walked to the kitchen. Ursula had died two years ago, and their daughters worried about Velikov's nutrition. They often sneaked into his house and left soup bubbling on the stove.

He turned on his television and listened to the news while he rummaged in the kitchen to see what his girls had left. The media offered blandness. The citizens of Kardzhali would not hear about murdered tourists.

Velikov found a roasted chicken on the counter. While he carved thin slices of white meat, he thought of the professor's missing body and pieced together a list of suspects. Not even the Bulgarian Mafia would steal the mutilated body of an elderly gentleman. The black market had no use for postmortem organs.

Either the professor's body had been stolen to lure his niece or he had risen on his own. Of course, he could voice the latter theory to no one. To the Interior Ministry, vampirism was the elephant in the room—bad for tourism. Sometimes the lines were blurred, as with the wild dog attacks near the Black Sea. It was impossible to know if the attacks were animal or vampiric in origin. Everyone from law enforcement to the coroners looked the other way.

The professor's wounds had been suggestive of an attack by immortals. Velikov's thoughts circled back to his original theories. Could the British government be involved? Would they use the professor's missing body as a way to trap the Clifford girl? And if so—why? Thurston Hughes was capable of orchestrating a ruse, though whether for his government or for someone else, Velikov did not know. The second option, vampirism, was equally possible, but there had been no reports of violent attacks in Kardzhali, human or animal. No thefts from blood banks. No reports of a naked Englishman creeping around the city.

Velikov rubbed his temples. Too much puzzlement for one night. And his dinner was waiting. He set the dining room table with Ursula's china and lifted his cutlery. The white tablecloth stirred around his legs. He looked around for the source of the draft. A man with oily black hair and eyes like poppy seeds stood in the arched doorway. The man's face was white and stunk of zinc oxide. He wiped his fingers on a filthy red jogging suit. Other, darker stains marked the fabric.

“Dear Ilya, always sticking your nose where it does not belong,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Velikov frowned. “How do you know my name?”

“One question at a time. I'm Georgi Stoyanov Ivanov.” He bowed. “I know everything about you, Ilya. You go to bed at nine P.M. and arise at dawn. Your wife died of uterine cancer. Every Saturday you visit her grave and leave a bouquet of lilies—her favorite, yes?”

“You are observant,” Velikov said, struggling to control his voice. He inched closer to his jacket.

The tall man bowed. “Only when I am paid to observe.”

“Did Hughes send you?”

“In a roundabout way, yes.” Georgi smiled. His teeth pricked the edge of his lower lip. “Do not worry. I will not drink your dirty bureaucratic blood.”

Velikov dove for his jacket and reached for the holster. Before he could turn off the safety, Georgi was on top of him, wrenching the gun from his hand.

“Wait. Do not shoot,” Velikov said. “Let us sit down and talk.”

“No talk.” Georgi seized Velikov's neck. There was a snap, and the bureaucrat dropped to the floor. A tiny thread of blood curled from his ear.

Georgi touched Velikov's wrist. Warm. A weak pulse. But the heart would not beat much longer. The smell of iron brought Georgi to his knees. His thoughts dripped down the back of his mind.

“Just one taste,” he said, then plunged his teeth into Velikov's neck.

 

Jude and Caro walked from the bus station to the Capsis Hotel—a square building in a bad part of the city, but it was only two hundred meters from the railway station.

When they stepped into their room, she leaned her hip against him. “After we get settled, let's poke around the city. We can find authentic Greek food.”

He shook his head. “It's not prudent to walk around at night.”

“But you said Greece is safer.” For the last fifteen minutes, she hadn't thought about her uncle or his missing body. She hadn't thought about the living dead in Momchilgrad, either.

“The hotel is in a dangerous part of the city.” Jude slipped his arm around her. “Not so many vampires, but plenty of other unsavory types.”

“I was in Thessaloniki a long time ago with Uncle Nigel and we walked everywhere.”

“Where have you
not
been?” Jude laughed.

“Quite a few places, actually. Machu Picchu. The Easter Islands. Antarctica. Come to think of it, I haven't been to Miami or Chicago, either.”

She headed straight to the bathroom. While the tub filled, she picked through the miniature toiletries on the counter. She tipped blue bath oil into the water. Suds rose to the edge of the porcelain lip. She pushed her hair into a plastic cap and sank down into the steaming water. She bent her leg at the knee and rubbed soap over the ink, scrubbing away the letters:
Ellen vumv ice = Venice vellum.

Her uncle was speaking from the grave. With all the museums in Venice, she was sure to find old manuscripts—but where to begin?

But the first clue,
Meteora, Greece
, also fit. All sorts of manuscripts, from papyrus to vellum, were housed in the clifftop monasteries. Had it only been this morning when she'd solved the anagrams? It seemed as if they'd spent years in Momchilgrad.

She pressed a washcloth to her neck, and the water dribbled between her breasts. The faint movement of the streaming droplets made her skin tingle. She soaped the cloth and ran it over her breasts. Her nipples hardened into taut peaks. Every nerve in her body vibrated like strummed guitar strings. Her head almost slipped under the water as she climaxed.

She moaned, and her foot skated along the slick porcelain bottom. One more inch, and she'd slip under the surface. She grabbed the edge of the tub, pulled up, and brushed her toes along the drain, feeling for the chain. She gripped it with her toes and pulled. As water gurgled, she tried to work up the courage to touch her nipple again. What would happen if she touched between her legs? She leaned back in the tub and waited till the water receded; her hand dropped to her stomach and moved lower and lower. Ripples moved in all directions, and her breath caught.

Even before she reached her most sensitive place, the orgasm broke loose. The sensations slammed into her, hard. It was like falling and having the breath knocked out of you, but in a pleasurable way.

Moving cautiously, she climbed out of the tub, careful not to touch herself. This could be embarrassing. What if someone bumped into her in a restaurant, hitting her breasts in the right spot, and set off an accidental orgasm? She couldn't even become a nun; she'd have to be a recluse. She wasn't fit to be around people.

I'm just like Jude's mice.
Her hand moved to her neck. Even light pressure on the wounds felt erotic. Before the man had bitten her, sex had been pleasing but underwhelming, leaving her wondering why the world made such a fuss about it. But she'd been bitten by a vampire and was now at the mercy of a hormonal storm.

She wound a thick towel around her body, flinching at the pressure against her nipples. The bathroom was foggy, so she walked into the bedroom and peered into the full-length looking glass. She pulled off the plastic cap, and her hair tumbled down. Her reflection peered back, still flushed and aroused. Her eyes looked different, too, more blue and rimmed with silver.

Her breasts looked rounder, fuller. Not a lot, but she knew her body, and it seemed to be changing. Would starvation change her this dramatically? She'd eaten a small bowl of chickpea soup at Mr. Kudret's, but other than that she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. She started to turn away and saw Jude's image in the looking glass.

“You're beautiful,” he whispered.

For a moment, she thought she could hear his thoughts, that he wanted children with her eyes. The towel fell into a puddle around her feet. She stepped out, feeling like Venus emerging from her clamshell.