Smoke and Mirrors (28 page)

The detector in his other pocket warned him that one lurked at the top of the stairs. The club bouncer, there to deter and disarm trouble. He’d know István was here, might even sense that he was a hunter.

Abruptly, something moved at the top, a swishing of fast footsteps, a sudden blast of music and shouting, cut off like a switch as if the club door opened and closed.

István’s pulses raced. The bouncer might have been going to report the presence of a hunter, although he could probably have done so telepathically without leaving his post. But that brief burst of noise had sounded to István like trouble.

To go in there, he needed fitness, permission and back-up. He had none of these.

Fuck it.
He’d come here to study angels, hadn’t he?
This
particular, bizarrely named angel.

Hastily, he grabbed his latest invention—which he thought of as his “bungee reel” — from his inside pocket, tied it around his waist, aimed it at the wall above the first turning in the staircase, and pressed the release switch. It worked like a dream, shooting the length of elastic like an arrow into the wall where it clung by its tiny, powerful claws. He felt the jolt as it locked and then it dragged him after it at almost the same dizzying speed.

He staggered on landing, but at least he hadn’t actually crashed into the wall. Another button released the claws and reeled in the elastic with one speedy snap. He aimed at the next landing and did it all again. And again.

On the whole, he reckoned he reached the top a couple of seconds faster than a fit man running. Pleased with himself, István pocketed his useful new device, and took hold of the old, familiar one: a sharpened wooden stick.

Madness. How are you going to deal with trouble in a vampire bar in this state?

It didn’t matter. Old habits died hard. Earlier, he’d had to walk away from two willing human girls who’d draped themselves over the vampire Dmitriu at Mihaela’s party. That no longer counted as trouble. And he’d been away from real action for so long that he yearned for the old excitement like an adrenalin junkie.

Willing strength into his legs, which were inclined to shake slightly after their several flights and abrupt landings, he walked the few paces to the club door and pushed.

It gave at once, releasing the noise of recorded rock music and human shouting over the top. As István walked inside, something crashed to the floor amid the lighter tinkling of breaking glass.

Someone hurtled right at him, a knife blade glinting in his hand, a roar of anger on his lips as a vampire threw him across the room.

From sheer instinct, István caught the knife man, spun him and dragged both arms behind his back in an unbreakable hold. The knife clattered to the floor and the man, a young guy still in his early twenties, struggled to break free.

But István’s arms were strong. Compensating for the weakness of his lower limbs over the last six months, they’d had to be. Although the force of the man’s struggles knocked him back against the closed door, István merely used that to support to himself while he held on and gazed beyond his captive to the vampire who’d thrown him.

She really did resemble the angel above the front door.

****

Although she’d been expecting it, the trouble, when it came, still took Angyalka by surprise.

There was a crowd of them, all young men in their early twenties, she guessed. One of them she’d seen before: he had an aggressive glint in his eye more reminiscent of an angry vampire than a human. Plus, although they drank plenty, they didn’t seem as interested in the music as in the clientele. Still, they kept their hands, if not their eyes to themselves, right up until the evening was drawing to a close when, without warning, they got up and walked onto the dance floor. In no time, their hands were all over the women and they were shoving at the men who took exception to their behavior.

It was a recipe for a full scale fight, and since Angyalka did not want her club drawn to the attention of the human police—it had existed for centuries without any official control or interference of any kind—she stepped out from behind the bar to deal with it.

Her vampire bouncers were already marching purposefully toward the dance floor, which was clearing with some annoyance. Angyalka held the vampires back with one telepathic word and walked up to the ringleader, the youth she thought she knew, who had his arms around a blond girl who quite clearly did not want to dance with him, let alone have her neck nuzzled.

“Cutting in,” Angyalka said brazenly, yanking him off the girl and into her own far more distant hold. “Time to dance with me, on your way out. If you dance well, I might even let you back in next time.”

He blinked, slightly stunned by the speed and ease of his detachment from his chosen if reluctant partner. Then, recovering, he grinned and tried to pull her closer. A disconcerted frown tugged down his brow when he found he couldn’t.

“You’re strong,” he observed.

“Very,” Angyalka agreed, dancing him irresistibly off the dance floor to his own table. His friends, seeing something was up, began to hurry back toward them, clocking the bouncers who were closing in on the table.

Without warning, one of the humans lunged and upended the table, spilling drinks and glasses everywhere. There were screams from the patrons, laughter from the troublemakers, who started swinging punches and kicks at the bouncers. None of them connected, which seemed to both bewilder and frustrate the aggressors. But it was something else which distracted Angyalka. She smelled hunter.

Just what they didn’t need right now.

“I know why you’re so strong,” Angyalka’s captive taunted. “You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”

She had his arms and his legs under control. But what he did next took her completely by surprise. His head plunged suddenly for her neck and bit. Hard enough to hurt; hard enough to pierce her skin, even with blunt, human teeth.

There was no thought, just instinct and acute disgust. She plucked him up in the air and hurled him across the room with enough force for him to have hurtled to the bottom of the stairs, breaking the door on his way out.

Except that the door suddenly opened and the last man in the world she expected to see walked in and caught her troublemaker, much as he’d once caught her.

The crash sent him stumbling back against the now closed door, but he didn’t let go. Which was when the knife she hadn’t even seen fell from the troublemaker’s suddenly limp hand.

She stood perfectly still, staring at the newcomer, as did the others of that little group in front of the door, as if frozen in a photograph.

He was tall, lean almost to the point of lanky, and yet she knew well the hardness of the muscle beneath his casual clothes, the strength in his steel-like arms. He had straight, un-styled brown hair that tended to flop forward over his high, intelligent forehead. Calm, steady dark eyes met hers without fear or anger.

He was supposed to be crippled, paralyzed by the insane Luk during the fight in the hunters’ library. Clearly reports had been somewhat exaggerated, for this was undoubtedly the hunter called István, the one who’d held her humiliatingly immobile on their last encounter when the hunters had tried fruitlessly to capture Saloman. The one who’d reacted with gratifying spontaneity to her teasing. It had been some balm for her humiliation.

Once, she’d thought his own more permanent immobility was enough revenge for such a slight. Now, seeing him so hale and hearty, in perfect control of her vulgar attacker, she wasn’t so sure.

His eyes, gazing at her across the frozen carnage, were veiled for a human’s. Over-anxious to give nothing away. Intriguing.

One of the troublemakers threw a punch at Béla, her right hand helper, who dodged the blow with ease and grabbed his assailant. The hunter, István, obligingly slid along the door to the wall, where he lounged, as if at his ease, still gripping his wriggling, swearing captive, watching as the group of troublemakers was efficiently ejected.

Béla, with his own assailant in his right arm, took István’s captive from him with his left and dragged them both outside.

Angyalka’s human staff began to right the fallen tables, and sweep up the broken glass. Most of them, if they worried at all about such occurrences, only did so the first time they saw it. Thanks to the speed of her security, none of them was ever hurt. And as for her human customers, they came to this place for its edge, its atmosphere of danger bubbling just below the respectable surface. Already their attention was returning to their drinks, and to the dance floor.

All this Angyalka absorbed without releasing her gaze from István. He didn’t move, just continued to lounge against the wall as if quite at ease. Only he wasn’t. He was tense as a coiled spring.

“Well,” she drawled at last, gliding toward him. She let her gaze slide over him, took in the dragged down pockets of his smart jacket—clearly he’d been to Maximilian’s party—and his right hand thrust casually into one of them.

“Is that a stake in your pocket, hunter?” She smiled. “Or are you…? Don’t make me say it.” Her eyes lifted to his and found a hint of amusement there.

He said, “I’m pleased to see you too.”

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