Blood on Silk (2 page)

She rattled the car keys against her palm in annoyance. “Saloman
keeps
cropping up, always as a vampire, and I can find no reason for the same personality to be inflicted on so many cases in so many different eras. Sometimes he’s a hero, saving children from Turkish janissary recruiters, single-handedly repelling invaders or bandits; other times he’s a villain destroying entire villages or tormenting individuals who’ve crossed him. But I can’t find the remotest trace in folk memory, let alone in documentation, of his birth or anything that might corroborate his death. . . .”

“Oh, he died.”

Elizabeth blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Saloman. He died. By a stake through the heart in 1697, to be precise, so I’m afraid Maria’s nineteenth-century story was nonsense.” He smiled. He had an engaging smile. “I’m sorry you wasted your time.”

“Oh, I didn’t,” Elizabeth assured him. “I knew she was spinning me a yarn to keep me happy and entertain her friends.”

It was his turn to blink in surprise, so she took pity on him. “What I find really interesting is that she picked that name. She could have called him Max or John or Count bloody Dracula, but she didn’t. She called him Saloman. Why? I hate the bastard because he doesn’t fit into my theory and somehow I have to find out how to make him, or change my theory. But he is fascinating.”

On impulse, she held out her hand. “Sorry. It’s been good talking to you. Good-bye.”

He took her hand with a shy smile. At least it looked shy in the shadows of the vines around the gateway. He might just have been baffled by her tirade. Despite the heat, his hand was cool and dry, its nails unexpectedly long and cared for.

“And to you. My name is Dmitriu. And if you like, I’ll show you where to find Saloman’s remains.”

The village Dmitriu had shown her on the map wasn’t far, although the roads were dreadful. Grasping the steering wheel tighter to control the beat-up old car as it bumped over a major pothole, she felt something sting her right palm.

As soon as she could, she took her right hand off the wheel, almost expecting to find a squashed bee, but there was nothing except a welling pinprick of blood. Frowning, with one eye still on the atrocious road through the mountains, she brought her hand to her mouth and licked the wound.

“Ouch,” she muttered. Something was stuck in there. She waited until reaching a relatively smooth stretch of road, then laid both hands together on the wheel and tried to pick it out. It pulled free with a pain sharp enough to make her wince. A thorn—a large rose thorn. She must have picked it up at Maria’s without noticing until she’d driven it farther into her hand by gripping the wheel so hard. Blood oozed from it sluggishly.

“All I need,” she muttered, licking it again before deciding to ignore the sharp pain. A thorn would hardly kill her, and she wanted to press on. Although the sun was going down, she couldn’t resist the opportunity of at last finding some sort of context for the wretched Saloman character. Dmitriu’s unexpected information had given her a new lease on life, banishing the lethargy she’d felt at Maria’s. Besides, this was it: Sighesciu. . . .

It wasn’t the prettiest village in these mountains. Despite the unspoiled natural scenery that surrounded it, Sighesciu itself looked run-down and poor. Leaning forward to peer farther up the hill, Elizabeth glimpsed a bulldozer and a mechanical digger. There were no signs of the ruined castle Dmitriu had spoken of, though. Taking the turn that appeared to lead up the hill toward the bulldozer, she let her mind linger on the enigmatic Dmitriu.

She’d been relieved that he hadn’t suggested coming with her, had just sent her to the car for her map while he sat in the shade of Maria’s vines to wait. There, he’d shown her the village and the hill and said that although he couldn’t come right now, he might wander up there later to see how she got on.

Elizabeth wasn’t quite sure how she felt about seeing him again. He was an intriguing character, apparently well educated despite his “peasant” style of dressing. She realized she’d no idea what he did for a living, although his manicured hands clearly showed that he wasn’t a farmer. Insatiably curious, she wanted to know more about him—so long as it was all kept as platonic as their interaction that afternoon.

Her lips twisted into a smile and she laughed at herself. She was still harboring unrequited feelings for Richard, her PhD supervisor, who found her no more than an amusing curiosity. In any case, Elizabeth was smart enough to understand that half the attraction of Richard was his unattainability, if there was such a thing.

As she drew up to the top of the hill, she saw that the workmen were finishing for the day. Several cast her curious glances as they took off their hard hats and meandered past her battered old car. She’d bought it very cheaply in Budapest, but, although it didn’t look like much, it had gotten her safely around many inaccessible and isolated villages in both Hungary and Romania, and she was almost growing fond of it.

Emerging into the gathering dusk, she wondered whether she’d left too late after all. She wouldn’t be able to see so much if she had only a flashlight beam to work by. She might have to come back in the morning anyway. As it was, she had a bit of a drive ahead of her to the hotel at Bistriƫa.

Casting that difficulty to one side, she looked around for someone to talk to. One man among those streaming back down the hill detached himself and called in Romanian, “Madam? Can I help you?”

“Thanks, I hope so! I was told there was a castle here.”

The man took off his hard hat and gestured around him. Elizabeth took in the piles of stone and rubble scattered across the site.

“Ah.”

“We leveled all that was left today, but there was nothing much to see anyway. Tomorrow we’ll take away all the debris so we can begin building. Perhaps you’ve already reserved a house?”

“Oh, no. I don’t live here. I’m just visiting.”

The man laughed at that, as though the very idea of anyone looking like her—a pale-skinned northerner with untidy, strawberry blond hair; rather worn, old cropped jeans; a cheap sleeveless top; and a cotton hat dangling down her back from a string around her neck—could possibly be Romanian.

“These are holiday homes,” he explained, “for foreigners who like our country.”

“It’s a very beautiful country,” Elizabeth said with genuine appreciation. It was on the tip of her tongue to add that she couldn’t afford luxury housing for foreigners, when it occurred to her that he might look on her request with more favor if he thought her a potential customer. After all, he appeared to be some kind of foreman or even manager.

She tried a smile and hoped it didn’t look too guilty. “Would you mind if I stayed for a few minutes and looked around? Just to get a feel for the place and admire the views?”

He shrugged. “You’re welcome. There are no gates to lock. Take as long as you like. Just be careful. We still have some old foundations to fill in, and some of them are pretty deep.”

“I’ll be careful,” she assured him. “Thanks.”

She made to pass on, but with obvious concern, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

She blinked, following his frowning gaze to the hem of her top, which now boasted a bright red, shapeless bloodstain. There was another smear across the leg of her jeans where she’d wiped her bleeding palm.

“Oh, no, it was just a rose thorn. I bleed easily, but it’ll stop in a minute.”

Satisfied, the man walked on, and Elizabeth began to pick her way over the rubble. Dmitriu had claimed there was a chapel here, and beneath it, a crypt. But neither was obvious at first glance.

Elizabeth rummaged in her bag until she found her flashlight. She was careful to hold it in her uninjured left hand, and shone the beam into the debris, looking for any carvings in the fallen stone, any lettering that might give her a clue. But if there had ever been anything, it had been obliterated by time and bulldozers.

She shivered as if someone had walked over her grave—instead of the other way around. But she couldn’t quite laugh at herself. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up like hackles, and she spun around to see who was watching her.

No one. She was alone on the derelict site. Even the departing workmen had been more interested in their supper than in her.

What’s the matter with you, Silk?
she jeered at herself.
Vampires getting to you at last?

Of course not. It was just that the sun seemed to set so quickly here, and this place did have an intriguing atmosphere. She
liked
atmospheres and had learned by experience that they could be useful guides. She preferred hard evidence, of course, but when that was lacking, sometimes you found something just by going with a hunch, a feeling.

Other times, you found nothing at all—like now.

Giving up, she spun around to head back to the car. Her foot slipped, and she flung out her right hand to save herself from falling. She winced as stones pressed into the thorn hole in her palm, and when she dragged herself upright, the flashlight flickered crazily across the tiny smears of blood on the stones. As another drip appeared, she brushed the dirt off her hand and thrust her palm at her mouth before following the beam of the flashlight to its end—a gap in the ground into which gravel and more rubble were already falling. That must have been where her foot slipped.

Elizabeth crouched down beside it, away from the bulk of the shifting ground, and shone her beam into the widening gap.

It was a room, like a crypt.

Excitement soared, drowning the last of her silly anxieties. She could make out rough carvings on the walls, perhaps angel figures. . . .

Elizabeth reached out with care and gave the rubble an encouraging push before leaping back to admire the effects. A little irresponsible, perhaps, but how else was she supposed to get in? She doubted her little avalanche was capable of damaging anything.

When the ground stilled, she edged forward. All seemed secure on this side of the wide hole. She knelt, trying to gauge the distance to the ground of the crypt. She was sure it was a crypt. It smelled musty and damp. If she were fanciful, she would have said it smelled of death, although any human remains would surely be long past the rotting stage. Maybe there were rats—not a nice thought. But she caught no scurrying creatures in the beam of her flashlight, and she thought she could lower herself down there without difficulty—“dreep,” in the language of her childhood.

First, she rolled a fair-sized boulder to the gap and let it fall in. She might need it later to stand on to get herself out. Then, positioning herself, she gripped the side of the hole and let her feet slide through until she dangled. She let go and jumped the last foot or so to the ground.

It was an easy landing. Triumphant, she dragged the flashlight back out of her bag and shone it around the room. They
were
angels on the walls, worn with age but still remarkably fine for an out-of-the-way place like this. It made sense, she supposed. If this Saloman was important enough to have inspired so many legends, even after he’d been staked as a vampire, he would have been a rich, even princely, man.

The trouble was, there seemed to be no tomb—no markings on the wall to denote he was buried behind them, no tomb on the floor. There were just angels carved into the wall and broken stone steps that had once led up to the gap she’d almost fallen down, where the chapel used to be. It was exactly as Dmitriu had described.

Except for the lack of a body or any kind of inscription.

Bugger. He must have made it up too, just as Maria had done. He couldn’t have known about this hidden room—it had obviously been sealed for centuries, and there was no evidence whatsoever that a chapel had ever stood above it.

So Saloman’s origins remained elusive. But at least the angels were pretty.

Elizabeth laid down her bag, pulled her camera out of it, and propped the flashlight on the bag to shine upward. Walking around the room, she photographed each angel in turn, changing the direction of the light as necessary. In the final corner, she stubbed her toe on something—rubble, she imagined, although her impatient glance could pick out nothing large enough. Ignoring it, she aimed the camera at the large angel above her head.

A shiver ran all the way up her spine to her neck, jerking the camera in her hand. She steadied it, irritated when a drop of blood from her hand distracted her.

“Whoever bled to death from a rose thorn?” she demanded, wiping her hand on her thigh again. Finally, she raised the camera and took the picture. And when she stepped back, she saw the sarcophagus right in front of her.

She blinked. “How the . . . ?” Perhaps her eyes had just gotten used to the particularly dark corner, but was the light really so poor that she’d missed
that
? Or was her observation so erratic? She must be
bloody
tired.

Grabbing up the flashlight, she shone it full on the stone sarcophagus. It was the size of a large man, its lid carved with a human figure in sharp relief, almost as if the corpse lay there looking at her.

As beautifully carved as the angels, it was a wonderful, detailed piece of art in its own right. She shone the flashlight from its booted legs upward over the long, open cloak, which revealed an ornate but empty sword belt. The emptiness might have been explained by the broken sword protruding from his stone chest; Gory, yet tastefully done. So
this
must be the basis of the vampire legends.