Blood Eternal (41 page)
Oh, Jesus Christ help us!
After all that, she’d failed.
After all that, she’d failed.
“As I think you’ve made yours,” he added into the silence that could be cut with a knife.
“I have,” she said, low, understanding him at once. “I can’t become a hunter.” She wiped her eyes on István’s suddenly too-inviting shoulder and straightened. After their sheer, wasteful stupidity, she wanted to shout and stamp; she wanted to slam the door and ignore them forever.
Instead, she said, “But I’m still the Awakener and I’ll do my best to kill Luk.”
Saloman sat down and faced the only two vampires he had created throughout his long existence. He’d just informed them of Luk’s chosen target.
“Fair enough,” Dmitriu said. “I never liked the hunters anyway.”
Saloman aimed a kick at his ankles, and he shifted his feet. “All right, all right, I’m joking. I’ll go and fight for the unspeakable hunters. Although I can’t see them being exactly delighted to have the Antichrist in their midst.”
“Elizabeth is trying to persuade them to the contrary.”
“Good luck to her,” Dmitriu said fervently. “Can you get into Dante’s mind to find out when it will be?”
“Not yet. The odd glimpses I’ve had, he’s always thinking of something else, which makes me think the decision as to timing is not yet made. When it is, hopefully Luk’s protection will relax through his inevitable excitement and I can get a closer look. I doubt that will be long. The vampires traveling from Romania and Croatia will make it to Budapest tonight.”
“On your side or his?” Dmitriu asked.
“We have to hope for the former. And plan for the latter.” Saloman sat back and crossed his bare ankles. “But it’s time to look beyond the coming fight, which has already been far too distracting. We must prepare now to move forward.”
Dmitriu looked nervous. “Where else is there to go?” he demanded. “Either Luk wins and we’re all in the shit, which I refuse to think about. Or we win, Luk is dealt with, and you’ll have a little punishment, a little more consolidation to take care of. That will leave you in complete control of the vampire world. No one else is strong enough, or stupid enough, to oppose you. America is loosely allied, thanks to my pal Travis; Turkey is quiet again. At least while Luk is. And you’re wealthy in human terms. You have the power of influence and friendship among the strongest governments in the world. Your boat is sailing just fine, Saloman. Take my advice and don’t rock it any more.”
“Dmitriu,” Saloman mocked. “When did you grow so timorous?”
“I’m not timorous,” Dmitriu retorted. “I just appreciate what I have—and so should you.”
“I do. And I have identified two steps that I would like your help with.”
Dmitriu sighed and pushed himself back in his chair. But it was Maximilian this time whose head snapped up in alarm. “What steps?”
“To help humans with the movements of the earth that cause natural disasters. And to introduce humans, peacefully, to vampires and their benefits. I believe these steps rely on each other and will advance us significantly.”
“Do you?” said Dmitriu dubiously. “And exactly what is it you expect
me
to do?”
me
to do?”
“Research. Find those with the Ancient gene and introduce yourself. Recruit them to our cause. Make a team of vampires to help you.”
“How the hell—”
He broke off under Saloman’s steady gaze, and swore under his breath. “All right, all right. I’m on it.” He stood up, already striding to the door as if in annoyance, but Saloman wasn’t fooled. Dmitriu was intrigued by his new task and even anxious to make a start on it. Saloman couldn’t help smiling. “You’ll be good at it, Dmitriu. Human interaction was always your forte. I’m relying on you, and whoever you choose to help, to make the noblest impression.”
Dmitriu didn’t look back, but he did incline his head before he closed the door.
Maximilian said, “You play him like that instrument over there.”
“Piano,” Saloman said mildly. “And if I do, it’s because I know him. It doesn’t make what I say any less true.”
“And how will you play me?”
“By asking. Your feeling for stone has been intensified in your vampire existence. You can hear the earth, as I do, help the humans avoid the tragedies from earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.”
“Perhaps,” Maximilian said, with a curl of his lip. “But I see no way of making them believe me.”
Saloman shrugged. “I managed it. But those incidents were largely luck, and I take your point. I aim to set up new seismic study centers—in fact, I’ve already begun them. I see you in an official advisory role, traveling and listening and pointing scientists in which direction they should look. Find ways to make their instruments tell them what they need to know, until they trust us and we can be more open.”
Maximilian met his gaze, frowning. He looked oddly helpless. “You place a lot of trust in me,” he said, low. “I can’t imagine why.”
“I can.”
Maximilian closed his eyes. “There are others you could train in this role.”
“There are,” he admitted. “But I would rather have you.”
Maximilian’s teeth pulled at his lower lip. Abruptly, he stood and strode to the velvet-covered window before he spun around to face him again.
“What do you say?” Saloman asked softly.
Maximilian opened his mouth. “Saloman, there’s something you should know—”
The drawing room door burst open, and Maximilian closed his lips.
Elizabeth stormed into Saloman’s drawing room. “They wouldn’t listen! They won’t let you in the damned building! I can’t bel—” She broke off, finally realizing that Saloman was not alone. Maximilian was with him, but staring at her so intently from his place by the curtained window that she wondered whether her words had some special interest for him.
“I have to go,” he muttered, breaking eye contact and striding from the room. Distracted, Elizabeth watched him leave. Like Saloman’s, his face was hardly an open book, and yet when their eyes had met just now, she’d imagined some profound, desperate grief in them that went way beyond her own anger and frustration. As he passed her, she had to grab hold of the sofa back to steady herself from the sudden dizziness.
As she forced the feeling back, she felt rather than saw Saloman rise from the piano stool and come toward her. “What is it?”
At least the incipient sickness attack didn’t come to much—perhaps because she felt so much better about the episodes after talking to Saloman this morning. She straightened, dragging her gaze away from Maximilian’s retreating back. “Is he all right?”
“Max? Oh, yes.”
“I don’t think he is,” Elizabeth argued. “I felt some kind of pain when he passed me—emotional pain. It felt like . . . guilt.”
“That’s Maximilian. He has a lot to be guilty for. Why are you so upset? Because the hunters wouldn’t play?” Taking her hand, he led her around the sofa and sat beside her.
“I
nearly
had them, Saloman,” she said tiredly. “So damned nearly. I put everything into it, including some stuff I didn’t even realize until I said it. But I couldn’t persuade them.”
nearly
had them, Saloman,” she said tiredly. “So damned nearly. I put everything into it, including some stuff I didn’t even realize until I said it. But I couldn’t persuade them.”
“None of them?”
“Mihaela and István would have played. They agreed with me, even spoke up for our plan. I think Lazar might have gone for it too, but he was swayed by Konrad in the end. It’s just too hard to get over their conditioning that all vampires are bad, that their very existence is evil and you certainly can’t have one running loose around hunter HQ, even if he’s all that can save the world. Better all just die in a blaze of useless glory!”
“It won’t come to that,” Saloman said quietly. He touched her cheek. “Well-done. I think there’s great promise in Mihaela’s and István’s reactions.”
“What use is that if we’re dead? If the library’s destroyed and Luk’s rampaging across the world, the vampires back to their brutal, chaotic worst, and—”
“I won’t let that happen,” Saloman interrupted.
Elizabeth squeezed his hand hard. “Will you show me how to kill Luk?”
“I will kill Luk.”
Elizabeth blinked. “Before he attacks the library? How?”
“If opportunity arises, then yes. I doubt it will. If it doesn’t, I
will
kill him
in
the library.”
will
kill him
in
the library.”
“You can’t! ” Elizabeth had never found him remotely obtuse before. It crossed her mind that he was too obsessed, that she’d explained the situation badly. “They won’t let you in.”
“Elizabeth.” He lifted her hands to his lips, one after the other, and kissed them. “They don’t need to let me in.”
“You’ll attack Luk outside?” she guessed, brightening.
“He’ll be expecting that. We’ll wait for them in the library as I planned. Dmitriu, Maximilian, and I.” He smiled and kissed her bewildered lips. “I learned enchanting from Luk. I can unravel his enchantments almost as easily as he can unravel mine. In effect, I have my own key.”
Elizabeth’s lips fell apart. “Then you could have entered the hunters’ building whenever you chose?”
“I could. Until now, there has been no point. They had nothing that I wanted.”
Elizabeth balled her hands into fists and thudded them into his chest. “Saloman, you . . . you . . . !”
“What?” he asked, pushing against her fists until she half lay under him against the arm of the sofa.
“Nothing,” she said with a sigh, and slid her hands free to hold him instead. His mouth bore down on hers, and after that, sex was inevitable.
It began quick and fierce, with urgent pulling and throwing off of clothing, until Saloman found his way inside her. Once there he groaned and paused, unmoving, his eyes closed in obvious bliss. Elizabeth gazed up at him, feeling the mad surge of lust morph into a slower, deeper love that made her want to weep. She touched his face with her fingertips.
“Saloman. Saloman.”
His eyes opened, like pools of darkness glinting in moonlight. He began to move inside her. “I could make love to you forever.”
“I wish you could.”
His eyes changed, darkening with grief before he buried his face between her breasts and dragged his mouth across to her peaked, begging nipple. “Elizabeth . . . my dawn, my light . . .”
She smiled, holding his head to her breast. “I like that.”
“I watched you in the sun today,” he murmured, giving her nipple one last brush between his lips before he lifted his head to gaze down into her face once more. “I’ve never seen you so beautiful.” His movements grew deeper, harder inside her, mirroring a new wildness in his profound dark eyes, and yet as she writhed beneath him, his voice dropped to an unbearably tender whisper. “I want you to know that I wish I could walk there with you.”
Her lips parted with shock, and she lost the rhythm of the loving. His words brought a rush of longing she could neither fight nor articulate. There was no point. She drowned in the tragic darkness of his eyes, in the sweet, relentless urgency of his thrusts, and clung to him.
“I wish you could too,” she whispered. As she wrapped her legs around him, massaging him toward climax, her mind flooded with visions of Saloman in the sunshine, walking with her on the beach in St. Andrews. Blurred visions, because they were so impossible. “Nothing’s perfect, is it, Saloman?” she said with a gasp.
“No,” he agreed. “If it were, there would be nothing left to fight for.” His fingers caressed the wetness of her cheek. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just wanted to tell you.”
She smiled, kissing him deeply, because there was more, much more than regret in her heart; there was knowledge that he’d never said this to anyone before, and probably never felt it so strongly. It was more than enough; it was joy.
But Saloman could never walk in the sun, not without ending his existence.
His tongue teased and pleasured her nipple. She pushed farther onto his shaft and twisted as the tide began to rise.
He could die with her, ending his existence and all the good he could do for the world.
Or she could die for him, and go on forever.
Saloman’s thrusts grew wilder, faster, out of control. His mouth left her breast, brushing greedily at the other nipple on its way to her throat. His teeth pierced her vein and she cried out, reaching for the pleasure of his suck even before her blood began to flow into his mouth.
It wasn’t wrong to live like this. It wasn’t wrong to be a vampire.
As the tension broke and ecstasy swamped her, convulsing her body under him, he released her throat and pounded into her harder. She smiled through her discovery and his exploding orgasm, and as their minds and pleasures became one, she basked in the moment of complete, utter joy.
Sated and helpless, she lay under him, stroking his soft hair with trembling fingers, loving the feel of his smooth, hard flesh against her sweat-slickened skin. If she were a vampire, that was one sensation she would lose.
Her fingers stilled. Another truth was fighting its way into her head and heart, one she didn’t want to listen to, not now. Desperately, she roved her hands down his back, feeling his instant response, trying to drag back the moment of uncomplicated happiness.
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