Blood on Silk (14 page)

“Jesus Christ,” István gasped, staring at the scene that met his eyes—Elizabeth in bed, naked in the arms of the vampire. He held a stake between his shaking fingers, but even as Elizabeth took that in, István’s fingers gripped harder.

Konrad already held his like a spear, as if ready to throw. Would her life be worth it to rid the world of Saloman? In their eyes? Yes. They’d already used her as bait. In the grand scheme of things, the few puny lives of Elizabeth and the three hunters were all worth sacrificing for the safety of the rest of the world.

Saloman released her. In the draft of suddenly cold air, she seized the sheet and yanked it up over her body.

“Good evening,” Saloman said, rising to his feet. Removing himself from her, he’d just made himself a more viable target. Was that deliberate? Chivalry?

No. He still wanted her blood for strength. He didn’t want the hunters to kill her any more than he wanted Zoltán to do it.

He reached into his shirt pocket, and both men tensed. Saloman took out Mihaela’s detector. “I believe this is yours,” he said, tossing it in his palm. “It’s—er—broken.”

“No, it isn’t,” Konrad said. “It just doesn’t recognize the body chemistry of an Ancient. Until now it hasn’t needed to. Sorry,” he added with a quick glance at Elizabeth. “We just found out. Did he bite you?”

She shook her head, unable to form even the simplest word.

“A vampire just can’t get any privacy these days,” Saloman complained. Without warning he threw the detector straight at István’s head. István staggered, but before he fell, the stake had left Konrad’s fingers, hurled in fury at Saloman’s heart.

Elizabeth cried out, at which particular event she didn’t know or care—at all of it, everything. At the same time, she watched the fast, true flight of the stake.

Die, you bastard!
she thought, and wanted to weep.

The stake blurred. So did Saloman’s arm. When her focus returned, Saloman held the stick in his hand.

“Thank you,” he said, strolling across the room.

In spite of themselves, the hunters fell back. István was clutching his bleeding forehead while his right hand tried to aim his stake. Konrad, defenseless, cast wildly around until his gaze found Elizabeth’s bag with the stake half fallen out on the floor. He took a step toward it.

Saloman didn’t follow either of them, although Elizabeth knew he could have drained and killed them both—and still returned to have sex with her before dessert.

There were stirrings and whisperings in the passage outside as people came to investigate the noise. Konrad kicked the door shut and reached for Elizabeth’s stake. Saloman didn’t even glance at him, but from his position by the window, reached out and took hold of the curtain, leaving as he’d entered.

“Wait!”

Everyone glanced at her in surprise. Idiots. Partly, as guilt raged, she was giving the hunters time to kill him. And partly, away from the immediate threat of his dangerous and sensual presence, her brain could function again. She couldn’t suppress a nagging doubt about him. He had been the friend of princes. However mad he’d been when they staked him, surely there had once been more to him than raging revenge and hunger for power?

“Is this what you really want?” she blurted. “Just revenge and meaningless power? While the world around you dies in chaos?”

His gaze, opaque, full only of darkness, connected with hers. “In this new, urban world of wealth and freedom, music and technology? Of course not.” He smiled. “I want to have fun.”

The curtain moved. But she didn’t see him go. She didn’t think she even blinked, but by the time he’d finished speaking, he was no longer there.

The hotel guests had been reassured; the staff pacified.

Elizabeth was pleased to see that her hands were steadier as she wrapped them around the cup of coffee István gave her. She’d never been so glad that she traveled everywhere with her little kettle and jar of instant coffee.

“Is your head all right?” she asked, glancing at the cut, now covered with a bandage.

“Fine,” said István ruefully. “Though I can’t say the same for the detector.”

“Sorry about that,” said Konrad, nursing the broken pieces of the useless instrument in his hand. “István was on watch and got the message from Budapest. We’d asked them for information on the physiology of Ancients, and it seems it was known that their body temperature was warmer than that of modern vampires. It’s one of the things the detector picks up. We were afraid the biochemistry would be too different as well.”

“It is,” Elizabeth confirmed. “The thing barely acknowledged his existence.” She took a sip of coffee and tried not to think how close she’d come to abject surrender. What she had to deal with was her behavior before he appeared. Ignoring the advice of the hunters, she’d assumed she knew best—she who’d wandered into this weirdness just three days ago, knowing absolutely nothing. What had seemed like sane, sensible, and healthy cynicism about the possibility of a vampire attack here in her room, was now shown to be crass, criminally negligent stupidity.

“I told him about Zoltán,” she blurted. “I was trying to distract him, though it didn’t work. He knows Zoltán broke their agreement by attacking me tonight.”

“Don’t worry,” István soothed. “There’s nothing we can do about that now.”

“I think he might have known anyway . . . and I . . . I imagined I saw someone else up there. When Zoltán jumped onto the roof, I think it might have been him—Saloman.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?” Konrad asked, brooding over the broken detector.

“I thought I was imagining things,” she said miserably. “My only excuse is that I’ve been having a hard job thinking of all this as anything other than imagination.”

She took a deep breath and gazed at Konrad. “I’m sorry. I want to help. And I don’t want ever to be caught out like that again—totally helpless, like a lamb to the slaughter. Will you teach me to fight? Like Mihaela?”

Konrad smiled. It lightened his anxious face, making him seem younger and more approachable. She wondered how old he was.

“Yes,” he said warmly. “We’ll teach you to fight like Mihaela. And we’ll gladly accept your help if you accept ours. In fact, you may well be a valuable asset. As his Awakener, you might find you have strengths and skills you don’t yet know about.” He exchanged glances with István.” I think it will take all of us together to defeat Saloman. But it can be done.”

Dmitriu found the underground network of sewers and cellars beneath Bistriƫa distasteful. Though it was a convenient way of getting around the city during the hours of daylight, much of it was dirty and tended to stink. At least the rats understood the proper order of things and kept well out of his way. He was more likely to encounter a sewage worker or two, who, as Saloman had pointed out, could provide a decent meal.

Dmitriu thought it a pity that Saloman had had to move out of the church undercroft after so short a stay—the novelty of the “great evil one” living under such a holy place had appealed to Dmitriu, but after he’d shown himself to the Awakener, there hadn’t been any choice. A home swarming with vampire hunters just wasn’t comfortable, however many hunters one got to eat
en passant
.

Saloman’s new “home,” since yesterday, was a cellar complex beneath ruined and disused buildings on the edge of the town center—damp, but not too malodorous. He hadn’t troubled to secure it with physical locks or with charm shields, a sign for any who cared to look that he was afraid of no one—or that he just couldn’t be bothered when the residence was so temporary.

As Dmitriu entered the first cellar, he began to think that Saloman had already moved on. Silence rather than the normal greeting or cynical joke greeted his arrival. There was no scent of Saloman, and none at all of vampire.

Dmitriu moved farther in, searching for clues as to Saloman’s whereabouts, until, in one of the back cellars, he found him seated at a battered old table by the glow of a single candle. An ancient television flickered silent pictures opposite. It didn’t surprise him.

“There you are,” said Dmitriu. Saloman’s back was to him, and he didn’t turn, seemingly engrossed.

Dmitriu would have understood that. Saloman was as fascinated by modern gadgets as by modern life. He’d taken to both with remarkable and admirable ease, his desire to learn as voracious as his ability to soak it all up. What Dmitriu didn’t understand was why he chose to mask his presence. Nor did he lower his barriers when Dmitriu spoke. Alarm twinged.

“What are you doing?” Dmitriu asked.

“Counting my money,” Saloman said, and spun around in his chair to face him. “Or at least what passes for money in these strange times. What was wrong with gold?”

Dmitriu’s jaw dropped. On the table were piles and piles of bank notes. “Where the . . . ?”

“Here and there,” Saloman said. “I had gold in lots of places. Some of it is even still there—and it seems some people still want it.”

“What are you . . . ?”

“I’m bored with living in cellars. I’ve remembered I liked palaces much better.”

“You did,” Dmitriu agreed. He couldn’t help smiling at the memories, but Saloman made no response. “Do you want Maria to . . . ?”

“Oh no. Transylvania is a backwater. I’m going to Hungary.”

Dmitriu walked forward and reached out to rifle through the money. “Already? You know that if this was stolen from banks, it’s probably marked and you’ll bring a heap of trouble down on yourself.”

Saloman merely curled his sensual lips, giving nothing away. Irritated with Saloman’s pointless secrecy, Dmitriu shrugged, as if he didn’t care. “Will Zoltán go with you to Hungary? Incidentally, the hunters killed his bodyguards last night.”

“I know. I was there.”

“Don’t trust him, Saloman,” Dmitriu urged.

“Oh, I don’t trust anyone. But this is a smoother transition of power. Everyone already knows Zoltán is number two. At the most.”

“He’ll go after the Awakener,” Dmitriu warned.

“He already has. She’s with the hunters.”

Dmitriu frowned. “You should have fed on her when you had the chance.”

“I’ll feed on her when I like.”

In normal circumstances, a derisive hoot would have been in order. Today, with Saloman in this strange mood, he said only, “How, when you’re going away?”

“She’ll know where to find me.”

“How?” Dmitriu demanded.

Saloman smiled. “I told her.”

Dmitriu threw down the bundle of money he’d been playing with. “I hear Lajos is in Budapest,” he warned.

“Dear Lajos,” said Saloman fondly.

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy him,” Dmitriu snapped. “Providing he doesn’t unite with Karl and Maximilian—wherever that bastard is—to stake you again. And have you considered the threat those three would be to you if allied to Zoltán?”

“Why do you think
I
allied with Zoltán?” Saloman sounded amused, though there was a warning blackness in his eyes as he added, “My brain didn’t atrophy as I slept.”

Dmitriu sighed and thought with longing of Maria’s pleasant, shady garden where he had the best of both worlds, no trouble, and pleasant scents in his nostrils. Budapest was large, grimy, and horribly noisy these days. He’d grown to hate it, though with Saloman it would be different, even exciting for the first time in decades. He said, “Do you want me to come with you?”

Saloman met his gaze. “No.”

The word was like a kick in the teeth. His vague longing for peace melted to nothing beside Saloman’s rejection. The Ancient stood up. “Your work is done. You sent me Elizabeth Silk.”

He’d become boring, Dmitriu realized with a jolt. Shutting himself off from brutal vampire politics, retiring from both worlds to live in the half existence of Maria’s comfort. What did he even get there? No sex, not anymore. Some thin old blood and a safe base from which to hunt younger, more nourishing prey. He’d been merely existing, much as Saloman had over the same period, except that Dmitriu didn’t have the excuse of a stake through the heart.

He didn’t want to think about that. In any case he was sure Saloman wouldn’t answer the reluctant questions that gnawed at his heart whenever the thoughts sneaked in.