Blood Eternal (38 page)
Sweeping his arm around her waist, he leapt onto the roof of the tall building on their left, and while she still gasped at the dizzying height, he pointed out stars and constellations that meant something to him, together with amusing beliefs and superstitions from various cultures, and how these had helped or hindered him in Egypt, Greece, Byzantium, and India at various points in history.
Jumping from the roof with no word of warning, he kissed her as they plummeted, and she gasped with pleasure at the wild experience. Hand in hand, he led her among the older parts of the city, across the dark, rippling Danube to some of the smarter nightspots, describing the buildings and the people with a vampire’s heightened perception. It sounded like a wonderful painting, like life enhanced with more vibrant colors and sharper contrasts.
“It’s as if you see some inner beauty blended with the outer,” she said once, gazing after the ordinary-seeming young man in glasses he’d just drawn her attention to. “Would I see that too?”
“If you were a vampire?” Saloman said. “Probably.”
If I were a vampire.
Forbidden ground. Unthinkable ground. She pushed it aside.
Forbidden ground. Unthinkable ground. She pushed it aside.
Saloman said, “Forty or fifty years together is not so very long.”
Had she really wanted him to bring up this discussion once? She forced herself to smile, gazing above the crowd to the stars that never changed. Or not in one lifetime. “It wouldn’t even be forty years, would it, Saloman? In thirty I’ll be old.”
If whatever it is that’s making me ill lets me live that long.
If whatever it is that’s making me ill lets me live that long.
He paused, turning her face up to his, searching her face. “You think I won’t love you as you age?”
“You
couldn’t
look on me the same way. You’ll never change, Saloman. I’ll become a wrinkled old lady with hairy moles and arthritic joints.”
If I’m lucky.
couldn’t
look on me the same way. You’ll never change, Saloman. I’ll become a wrinkled old lady with hairy moles and arthritic joints.”
If I’m lucky.
“The inner beauty doesn’t disappear,” he said softly. “In you it will only grow stronger.”
“Will you grieve when I die?” She hadn’t meant to ask such a stupid question. There was no answer she would like, neither his pain nor his lack of it. From somewhere close by drifted the sound of a choir, singing in perfect, moving harmony. Elizabeth moved forward in its direction, drawing him with her by the hand.
“I always grieve,” he said simply.
“Is that why you hold part of yourself so aloof? Like Luk said?”
His lips twisted. “It would be too simplistic to say yes. I welcome every experience to the full, including love and grief. It’s never the feeling that’s lacking.”
She lifted her face to his, gazing at his strong profile. “Trust,” she said in wonder.
“We’re more similar than I gave us credit for,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug. “It seems neither of us trusts completely in our own worth. I can rule the world; I have every confidence in that. But I can’t rule you; I can’t make you stay. And so I make mistakes.”
As if he couldn’t bear to have said the words, he flung his arm around her waist once more and leapt onto the nearest roof to begin the mad roller-coaster run to his palace. He took a circuitous and unfamiliar route, extending this spell of rare closeness in the open.
It came as a shock to realize they were standing on the high wall opposite the hunters’ headquarters. Elizabeth opened her mouth to tell him, before the knowledge slammed into her that he shouldn’t know. This was the hunters’ secret, sacrosanct area, and to them, if not to her, Saloman was the enemy.
The only too familiar reality of her impossible situation crashed back, yanking her soaring spirit down to earth. She lifted her gaze to Saloman’s face and found him staring across at the hunters’ building.
“You know!” she blurted.
“I’ve always known.” The crease in his brow deepened. “And yet never recognized . . .”
“What do you mean?”
His grip tightened at her waist almost painfully before he noticed and relaxed it. Excitement vibrated through his body into hers. “I mean, I’ve got him. I really think—I’m sure—I’ve got him.”
“Got who?” she asked, bewildered.
His gaze came back to her, blazing with triumph. “Luk.”
Chapter Eighteen
T
he worst thing about fighting with just one arm, John Ramsay thought as he staked a vampire with an unerring throw, and fell under the charging body weight of another, was remembering that he didn’t have two. There was no use in his brain telling his left hand to punch.
he worst thing about fighting with just one arm, John Ramsay thought as he staked a vampire with an unerring throw, and fell under the charging body weight of another, was remembering that he didn’t have two. There was no use in his brain telling his left hand to punch.
But he refused to be defeated, to let this strong, stupid animal spoil the euphoria of the group’s first battle. It was snarling for his throat, and if he let up the pressure of his right arm in order to snatch up another stake, it would undoubtedly bite and kill him.
John head-butted it with a yell of “Ouch!” and while it reared up in stunned surprise, the pale moonlight casting tree-branch patterns across its forehead, John grabbed the stake from his breast pocket and plunged it into the creature’s heart. It exploded to dust, just as Rudy had promised, just as he’d seen the Afghan vampires do when the über-vamp had bitten them.
John stumbled to his feet, a little less gracefully than he’d have liked, but the pleasing situation in Central Park more than made up for that. They’d stuck to his plan, invaded in formation, attracted and faced the attack they sought with highly trained efficiency. John was proud and triumphant, especially when the last vampire fell to the once unathletic accountant Pete Carlile.
He grinned, slapping Pete on the back as he went forward to meet Rudy and Cyn. “Not bad, eh?”
Rudy nodded. “Satisfying.”
“We all did well,” John said warmly, and was pleased to see his little group of trainees preen under his praise. The army had been right: He’d have risen quickly in the ranks. And for the first time he didn’t resent leaving. There were other wars to fight.
His gaze fell on the silent Cyn, efficiently gathering up the fallen stakes around the battle site while the men compared notes. After a moment, he followed her, and when she straightened beside him, he said, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you pleased?”
“Pleased? Yes,” she said distractedly. “Of course. It shows we’re trained better, at least.”
“But . . . ?” John prompted.
Almost angrily, Cyn stuffed the retrieved stakes into his wide pocket. “Forget it. You did great with this, Johnny, and we’re a team.” She glanced up and met his steady gaze. “I’m not taking that away. It’s just . . . Rudy and I were doing this stuff on our own, beating up the fledglings. It’s like nothing’s changed except we have more people doing it!”
“You want to be in the bigger picture, aye? Taking out the über-vamps.”
“I guess.”
He regarded her. He hadn’t been going to say it, because he hadn’t been sure they were ready, but surely if tonight showed anything, it was that they were a capable team. “I heard from Elizabeth Silk the other day.”
“She okay?”
“She’s in the middle of a war in Hungary. They’re expecting some major attack. Any day now.”
Cyn’s eyes began to gleam.
The heavy red velvet curtains could not prevent filters of sunlight from creeping in through the cracks. Sprawled on cushions in his bedroom, Saloman was working on his computer to hold together the various strands of his plans for the world, while every available sense reached out to Luk, who was doing his best to thwart them. He still had space and time to love the tiny, breathy sounds of Elizabeth sleeping in his bed close by. The illusion of companionship, as he’d once called it, had become a reality, and one he valued more than anything else in the world.
When you lived for millennia, you learned not to think too far into the future. Life died and changed and was born around you all the time. Long ago, Saloman had accepted that he would love and lose, even before Tsigana. It had become part of the pain he was proud to live with. But Elizabeth . . . Elizabeth was different. So young and new, and yet her soul was old and wise. She’d grown so quickly since awakening him that it was clear she was meant to be with him. And this peace, this unique happiness her very presence brought him, was a sign he could not ignore. Elizabeth was more, far more, than a meaningful incident, more than a beloved tool to keep him sane and contented for a few more years.
Elizabeth should be his eternal companion, a joy he had never allowed himself even to hope for as his species waned and died to extinction. He’d certainly never expected to find it with a human, and whatever Luk did now, Saloman would be grateful to him for forcing him to see the truth, to face the torture of losing her through his aloofness.
And so, as they made love until dawn, he’d let her deep into his mind. Knowing him couldn’t be achieved overnight. But her delight in him gave him hope that however deep she went, she would still love more than the outer shell. That shell, the part of him he chose to reveal to the world, had grown and deepened with time, until even the outer Saloman was more profound than most people could handle. And over the millennia, one grew so many layers that one could lose touch with several of them for centuries. Saloman had the peculiar, not unpleasant feeling that with Elizabeth, he was relearning himself.
He should be concentrating on finding Luk before the attack began. But as his fingers whizzed across the keyboard, e-mailing, shuffling money, making decisions, and deliberately expanding his influence as if Luk were no threat, the free part of his mind kept returning to the woman who slept and dreamed in his bed.
She’d texted the hunters last night to call a meeting for early the following morning. Like him, she understood the importance of the moment. Since Saloman felt no disturbance, no warning of an imminent strike among the vampire world, she was preparing to get her point across to them: that, short-term and long, they needed Saloman. And with luck, the very real threat of Luk, whose victory would destroy them all, would be instead the tool that brought them together.
Saloman hit “send” on his keyboard and flicked onto the Internet news pages. A gasp from the bed brought his gaze to Elizabeth, who lay half–pushed up on her elbow, breathing too fast.
He reached across to her. “What is it?”
She grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly as she lay back down on the pillow. “Nothing. Stupid dream.”
“About Luk?” he asked, pulling himself onto the bed beside her.
She shook her head. “No. Mostly my own demons. I dreamed I was about to die.”
“You didn’t.”
She smiled. “Clearly.” Her eyes searched his as the smile faded on her lips. She swallowed, then blurted, “I think about dying sometimes.”
Watching the rise and fall of her breasts under the sheet, Saloman tried very hard not to jump the gun and imagine her dying and reviving undead in his arms. But the hope was there, sweet, seductive, and so temptingly achievable now. “In any particular context?” he asked steadily.
She grimaced. “In the context that I don’t want to. Not yet.”
“I won’t let that happen. I’ll protect you.”
She reached her arms up around his neck, burrowing under the silk of his robe. “You can’t protect me from everything.” Her hands clung to his skin, making his nerves tingle and shiver. If he hadn’t sensed the difficulty of the revelation she was forcing herself to make, he’d have pulled the sheet away and covered her luscious body with his own.
She drew in a deep breath, speaking into his neck. “It’s struck me recently that there are more relentless enemies than big, bad vampires. It seems I can deal with those, and if I can’t, you can. But things that
seem
much more trivial, like illness and accident, can just carry you off.” She’d snapped her fingers against his back. “Poof! And it’s all over.”
seem
much more trivial, like illness and accident, can just carry you off.” She’d snapped her fingers against his back. “Poof! And it’s all over.”
Saloman rolled her under him, the better to see her face. “First of all, it’s never over. What you are and what you’ve done live on in those who knew you. Little comfort, perhaps, when you’d rather do the living yourself. I can take care of that.”
Searching her troubled face, he found confirmation that her anxiety was specific. Worryingly specific. He brushed against her mind, asking for permission. As if from instinct, she pushed him away, but then all at once she caved in and opened to him, and he saw it all.
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