Smoke and Mirrors (27 page)

Damn, how many people had Mihaela invited to this affair? He hadn’t expected there to be so many vampires here, and yet the one he’d been so sure of seeing was maddeningly, elusively absent.

Once Mihaela had ushered her latest guests in the direction of the kitchen, he moved restlessly back into the hall. One of those women watching him had looked vaguely familiar. Someone from school, perhaps, though no one he’d known well. Lara something, he thought suddenly. Studious girl, much too straight and disapproving to appeal to his teenage self. Come to that, she still looked bloody disapproving, although what he’d done to offend her by standing in Mihaela’s hallway was lost on him. Her friend was pretty enough though, and he hadn’t missed her unmistakable interest.

Sexual desire stirred. It had been a long time and he wanted a woman. He wanted to lose himself quite urgently in hot, meaningless sex and he wouldn’t be averse to pursuing the woman with the bracelets. She had graceful wrists and long, slender legs encased in tight-fitting jeans… Maybe later. After he’d found
her
.

And eased his bloody, aching legs and back. All this restless pacing and standing around wasn’t good for them, and the knowledge annoyed him.

Some of the kids, including Mihaela’s Robbie, were bolting upstairs, calling to others already up there, as they climbed over the vampire Dmitriu, who still sat there with the same two human girls nuzzling his neck. No wonder his eyes gleamed. Dmitriu caught István’s gaze, shrugged and stretched his pale lips into a lop-sided smile.

“The times, they are a-changing,” sang Bob Dylan from the front room.

“No kidding,” Konrad murmured in István’s ear. He nodded with distaste at the scene on the stairs. “Are we really meant to be okay with that? To just walk away?”

István, who believed Dmitriu was too polite to drink from Mihaela’s human guests, at least while they were in her house, merely nodded and turned to distract his team leader. Since Konrad was still sensitive enough to see that István needed to sit down, he walked beside him without complaint until they sank onto the vacant sofa in the living room. One of Mihaela’s younger neighbors had just put himself in charge of music and was removing Bob Dylan from the CD player in favor of something livelier.

István, mostly to redirect Konrad from the health questions he could see forming on his lips, said, “It’s good to see you here. Mihaela was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“I was surprised she asked me. I know she bears a grudge about my sending Cyn and John Ramsay to Malta for Robbie.”

“Well, you know my views on that too.”

Konrad curled his lip and looked around the room. The same vampire still lurked in the corner shadows, watching the dancers who’d sprung to life around the new CD. Through the door to the kitchen, the Ancient, Saloman, overlord of all the vampires, was visible, still incomparably elegant although perched on a worktop with a glass of champagne in one hand. Through the other door, they could see Dmitriu fondling the girls who couldn’t seem to get enough of him.

“Is this it, then?” Konrad said disparagingly. “Détente between vampires and humans? We’re just meant to let them bite people in public?”

“You know vampire related deaths are drastically reduced. Almost non-existent in Hungary. I think this party is a good idea.”

“For Mihaela?” Konrad demanded. “Or for Saloman?”

“Both,” István said mildly.

Konrad stared at him. “You really have bought into this? You don’t see anything wrong in
that
?” He waved one impatient hand toward the hall door, and Dmitriu’s little
ménage a trois
on the stairs.

István let out a breath of laughter. “I admit I can’t shake off a sense of responsibility. But I don’t think those women would thank me for escorting them safely home right now.”

“They would if they had any idea what he was!”

“Maybe,” István said non-committally. In fact there was no way of knowing whether or not Dmitriu’s admirers were among the increasing numbers of humans who’d become aware of vampire existence over the last year.

For a moment, Konrad looked as if he’d let anger get the better of him. Then Mihaela walked through the room from the kitchen, slightly tipsy judging by her grin. She waved to them in passing, looking so uncomplicatedly happy that even Konrad shut his mouth and smiled back.

“
That
is the pay-off,” István murmured. “I never thought I’d see Mihaela so contented.”

“And you think that’s a good thing? With a vampire?”

“Actually, yes.”

“And Elizabeth with Saloman?”

It had hurt once. Now, he could say with almost total honesty, “Yes.”

“It’s just sex,” Konrad said in disgust.

István jerked his beer bottle with irritation, “I don’t think either Elizabeth or Mihaela would have had to look very far just for sex, do you? We have to allow them to be rather more than their hormones.”

Konrad made a sound like a snort and demanded, “When are you coming back to work?”

“Got a meeting tomorrow with Lazar,” István said vaguely. “Not really up to much more than a desk job,” he added lightly. He tried not to care. He tried quite a lot. The fight for the hunters’ library last autumn had changed many things, made Saloman their ally, shifted the role of hunter more toward policing the undead community and the humans who came in contact with it. He wouldn’t think of personal injuries, not tonight. He was being positive.

“Want a drink?” he asked Konrad, easing himself to his feet. He could really have done with a longer rest, but he couldn’t be still.

Konrad shook his head. “No, I’ve done my duty. I’m going to head off before I kill something and piss Mihaela off even more.”

István clapped him on the shoulder. He felt for Konrad, knew he’d have to pull him out of this mire of hate and frustration before he did something stupid. But not tonight. Tonight, he had a mission—self-imposed it was true, but a mission nonetheless; and Saloman was among the company.

Abandoning Konrad, he made his way toward the kitchen. In the doorway, he almost bumped into the woman with the bracelets. Wryly amused, he watched a startling array of expressions flit across her face—a gleam of almost triumphant pleasure, twinges of alarm and guilt and defiance—before she finally smiled. His old schoolmate, Lara Whoever, must have remembered him and blabbed about his teenage follies.

And yes, there she was like a mother hen, glaring at him over the other woman’s shoulder.

“Lara, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly.

Lara blinked, as if taken aback by the courtesy of mere acknowledgement. Had he really been that obnoxious at school? Perhaps he’d stolen her parents’ car. “I’m surprised you remember me,” she said with quite unnecessary aggression.

“Likewise.” He glanced from her to her friend and returned reluctantly to the disapproving Lara. “So what are you doing with your life?”

“Teaching,” Lara said. Her eyes gleamed as if about to deliver the victory punch. “What are you doing with yours?”

“Security,” István said briefly. It was the standard answer of the hunters, but he could see it astonished his old schoolmate. Not surprising really, since when they’d last met he’d been all too often on the wrong side of the law, and in school those things got around.

“Security,” she repeated, blankly, as if this put a whole new complexion on things.

István turned to her friend who looked unaccountably smug. “We haven’t met before, have we? I’m István.” He offered her his hand.

She took it with alacrity. “Andrea. And no we haven’t. I live in the house across the road. So how do you know Mihaela? Or are you Maximilian’s friend?”

“Mihaela and I work together.”

Andrea cast Lara a look of such triumph that it was István’s turn to be startled. What in the world had Lara accused him of? She was looking confused now, and rather more attractive for it. He found himself smiling at her and felt Andrea’s glare like a dart in the side of his head.

Too complicated, back off
, he told himself ruefully. “Excuse me, just getting another beer,” he said aloud and walked past them into the kitchen. There, he dropped his bottle into the bin and found himself a fresh one before he surveyed the unlikely kitchen occupants.

The Ancient vampire overlord, Saloman, the oldest and most powerful being who’d ever existed—probably—still perched on the work top, incongruously casual for so large and forceful a personality. Supernaturally still and handsome, he smiled at something said by his human companion Elizabeth, who sat at her ease at the nearby table with a glass of orange juice. Beside her, in the shadows, lurked Saloman’s elder creation, Maximilian, Mihaela’s enigmatic lover. If he was uneasy in so large a company, as he often seemed to be, he hid it well. In fact, he seemed more relaxed than István had seen him.

Catching sight of István, Elizabeth toasted him in her orange juice. István raised his bottle to her. Even here, she glowed like sunshine, the woman who’d saved his life and was making him better every day. She hooked her ankle round a chair to position it invitingly.

“Take a seat,” she said lightly. “Max and Saloman are being wine bores.”

“I’m afraid I want to bore about something else,” István returned, sitting carefully. He’d already spent more time on his feet than any other day since his injury. Time to be sensible, before he ruined everything. “I want to pick Saloman’s brains.”

Saloman’s eyebrows rose. “Intriguing. What about?”

“Angels.”

The Ancient had the deepest, most unreadable eyes István had ever encountered, and yet something flickered there at the word “angels”. It might have been surprise, or interest or simple amusement. Or a combination of all three.

Saloman’s lips curved slightly. “A massive subject. What can I tell you? Except that I’m not one.”

“That much I’ve worked out for myself,” István said dryly. “But what is their significance to you? Just symbolic? Or does the image have actual power?”

Saloman sipped his champagne. You couldn’t make out his fangs. “What makes you think that?”

“I’ve been reading up on enchantments and on combing and harnessing that kind of power. Angels keep coming up in the discussions, from medieval times to the present. And then I remembered seeing Elizabeth’s photographs of your tomb after she first wakened you. There were angels all over it. Weirdly Christian, I thought at the time. And then I found it even more bizarre considering it was built not by your friends but your enemies—why should they want angels to watch over you?”

Saloman eased himself off the worktop and reached for the champagne bottle, all without taking his eyes off István. “And what conclusion did you come to?”

With growing excitement, István knew he was on to something. Saloman was too interested, too encouraging.

István said steadily, “That they weren’t there for your good but to somehow harness or strengthen the power of those who ‘killed’ you, to keep fresh the enchantments that would keep you hidden from your friends.”

Maximilian muttered something and wandered away, understandably put out by the discussion since he’d been the most important of the killers, although he’d had nothing to do with the burial. Saloman’s gaze flickered after him, then back to István.

“Very good,” he approved, like a teacher applauding a breakthrough in a slow child. He poured himself a fresh glass of champagne.

“So how does that work?” István pursued. “Why angels? Why should a lump of stone cut into a particular shape have more power than any other?”

Saloman took a sip, and when he lowered the glass his lips were smiling. “It isn’t in the stone, or the shape.”

István frowned, searching the unreadable eyes that should have scared him witless. Would have if he hadn’t been on a knowledge quest.

Abruptly, István’s breath disappeared. “The word? It’s in the word?”

Saloman’s lips quirked. “Words have their own power. It’s how enchantments work. In combination with certain individuals, of course.”

Words. Names. Individuals.

One who wasn’t here tonight. István couldn’t kid himself any longer. She wasn’t coming. Or at least, not before his legs gave out. But he was pretty sure he knew where to find her.

“What,” Elizabeth said as István walked abruptly away, “was all that about?”

“István’s new gadget,” Saloman replied with satisfaction, watching the hunter’s back disappear through the living room. “Which we might conceivably need one day.”

****

István paused under the grubby angel carving, and stared at it until it showed its true colors: an exquisite work of art, carved by a Renaissance master. You could easily walk past this battered door and its guardian angel above without noticing it—it was enchanted to make you do just that—but István had been here before. And, besides, a new art gallery had opened up next to the anonymous door of the vampires’ Angel Club.

Although István had heard of it, he’d never seen the gallery before. The sign above the window proclaimed “Angel Art—antique and contemporary artwork.” Interesting, and much more attention grabbing to most than the exquisite carved angel above the club door.

He took a few photographs of it and stuffed the little camera back in his jacket pocket. The other, slightly bulkier instrument in his left hand measured temperature and other environmental factors. István wanted to see if those changed when the enchantment had to work harder. One day he’d bring a ladder and get right up to the angel. Or maybe for speed, he’d get Mihaela to do it. Some night when she wasn’t having a party.

On the other hand, the urge to actually touch it was strong. The angel was extraordinarily beautiful. Like
her
, its model, who owned the dangerous nightclub it protected.

István dragged his gaze downward and, watching the dials of his instrument, pushed open the door. He walked inside, let the door swing shut behind him, but there were no significant changes, other than those you’d expect going from outside to in.

The entrance and the long, winding staircase were both deliberately unprepossessing. Even the homeless would think twice about curling up in the dank, spider-ridden corners, not so much for fear of rats as because the whole place gave you the creeps. As it should, since it was full of vampires.