Blood on Silk (35 page)

It was the longest speech Elizabeth had heard him make. The science of this, not the fight, was what fascinated István.

“So with every vampire you kill, you grow stronger?” she said in amazement.

“Every vampire of strength,” István amended. “Mihaela gained from killing Zoltán’s bodyguards, but she’d have gained a lot more if she’d killed Zoltán himself. Fledglings are the easiest to combat, but their death brings little if any gain to the killer.”

So she was right. Her attacker hadn’t been a fledgling. “It’s like some sick computer game.”

“Coffee?” said Mihaela, bringing things back to earth.

Elizabeth took the cup and saucer presented to her and perched on the end of the nearest bed. “So it isn’t just training,” she mused. “All of you are faster and stronger than ordinary folk because of what you’ve done.”

“So are you,” said Konrad. “You have greater potential than any of us, even though you haven’t yet killed.”

Something twisted inside her. She didn’t correct him. “Killed” was such an ugly word. And yet what else was there to do with vampires?
Vampires
, for God’s sake! Not some daft eastern European legend, but a reality that killed young men on the streets of Leith, whole families in a Romanian farmhouse. Why had she never even asked him about that? She’d been too mesmerized by his beauty and her own perverse desires.

“Then maybe we have a chance,” she murmured. “Our strength, the strength of your UK colleagues. I think I can make him come for me, if he thinks Zoltán is about to kill me.” She gave a lopsided smile. “It does involve bringing Zoltán and me together. Can we capture him?”

“We have to find him first,” Mihaela said. “We passed through Edinburgh on our way here, and even with the powerful detectors, there was no reading. Perhaps he’s located Maximilian. We can get our researchers onto that at once.”

Konrad, who’d been looking out of the window at the sea, turned with decision. “There is also the fact that the four of us plus the UK operatives are unlikely to be strong enough now.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Against one?”

“Maybe one. Maybe two. We don’t know which way Dmitriu will jump. He’s gone rogue, left the country without telling us—he was our informant in Transylvania—and now we don’t know if he’s joined Zoltán against his former friend. We need to find Zoltán, and then . . . we need to consider an alliance.”

Elizabeth set her cup down in the saucer with a clank. “Alliance? Between us and
Zoltán
?”

From the shrugs and dropped eyes of the other hunters, it was clear this was something they’d discussed before and weren’t happy about.

Mihaela said reluctantly, “It may be the only way. If Saloman is as strong as we think he is, and if he has Dmitriu on his side, then we need Zoltán and any vampires he’s recruited in this country. You don’t have many,” she added with a quick smile at Elizabeth, “and they’re not organized by our standards. But they’re usually up for a brawl.”

Elizabeth said, “He won’t have Dmitriu. If he knows about you and Dmitriu, he’ll regard it as betrayal.” Yet another betrayal, but she wouldn’t pity him. It was how his kind behaved. “Dmitriu may be dead.”

Konrad opened his mouth as if about to refute it, then changed his mind. “You might be right. This
is
as much about avenging betrayal as gaining power. He wouldn’t forgive Dmitriu. Even if Dmitriu sent you to him in the first place. In any case, we need Zoltán to hem him in, to let us get near him.”

“After that,” Mihaela said with a trace of anxiety, “the alliance is at an end. It is important that one of us—or all of us—kill Saloman. If Zoltán does it, it’s bad, because in the end, we need him as weak as possible.”

Konrad sat down and recapped. “So we find Zoltán, bring him here as if he’s threatening Elizabeth, and this will bring Saloman. We need to be prepared, to know Saloman’s coming, so it will have to be organized at a location chosen by us. Preferably near a graveyard.”

Elizabeth blinked. “To bury us quickly?”

Mihaela laughed.

“Zombies,” said Konrad repressively. “Zoltán has the power to summon and control zombies—walking dead with no souls and no will except to obey him.”

“It won’t be a pretty sight,” István warned her. “You’ll have to ignore them and concentrate only on him, Saloman. The zombies will help herd him to us.”

Elizabeth took in this mind-boggling addition too. They’d mentioned zombies before, way back at the beginning when she hadn’t believed a word they said anyhow. They sounded nasty, inappropriate, and downright dangerous. “Can you really trust Zoltán to that extent?”

“Until Saloman is dead.”

“And then what about the damned zombies? Will they turn on us if he tells them to?”

“Yes,” Konrad admitted. “But they are easy to neutralize, so long as they don’t get a hold of you, and it’s my belief Zoltán will lose interest in them once Saloman is dead. Even if we do the killing, he has his enemy removed and the ability to take power back in eastern Europe.”

“Wait a minute,” Elizabeth pounced. “If zombies are so easy to neutralize, why would they be any use at all against Saloman?”

“Numbers. Also, we believe the Ancients regarded zombies as abominations—they may be the only things that frighten Salo - man. They’ll distract him from us and let us kill him.”

Elizabeth shut her mouth. “It sounds a risky strategy.”

“I don’t see that we have any option. With or without any succession wars, Saloman is the biggest danger humanity has faced in centuries. If he reaches the height of his powers, all the hunters in the world won’t be able to combat him and humanity will be doomed—slaves to murderous, bloodsucking fiends ruled by the whims of this insane Ancient.” Konrad paused for his grim words to sink in.

He isn’t insane
, Elizabeth thought rebelliously. Or was he? Wouldn’t that account for his erratic behavior? Where Saloman was concerned, appearances were oh so deceptive. . . .

Konrad spoke again, his voice all the more impressive for being quiet and measured. “Saloman must die. After that, we’ll just have to take care of peripheral problems.”

It struck Elizabeth, as the days went by, that they were going to have to come up with a new plan. This one hinged on finding Zoltán, and so far they hadn’t heard a peep from him. Nor had the researchers in Budapest come up with any helpful information about Maximilian’s location. They could find no connection to Scotland.

The excitement that had buoyed Elizabeth up and spurred her into action faded over the weekend into a sense of frustration and anticlimax.

She found it difficult to concentrate in the daytime, either on teaching or on her thesis. While her nights were full of hot, disturbing dreams of Saloman—Saloman kissing her; Saloman biting her; Saloman caressing her naked body to blissful, trembling compliance; Saloman making love to her. And worse than her surrender were the dreams of her own seduction of Saloman and the wild triumph with which she rode him to roaring, howling orgasm.

She couldn’t suppress the dreams any more than she could suppress her enjoyment of them. All she could do was sneer at herself on waking, and at him if he was sending them, and go back to sleep. She couldn’t afford to be weak through lack of rest. It all made for an edgy, difficult life, but fed her now-unshakeable belief that she was doing the right thing at last. Saloman must die—not because of her wicked dreams, but because of who and what he was. And her role was pivotal.

But they couldn’t find Zoltán. The UK hunters were scouring the country without success. The concentrated human energy of Elizabeth and Konrad in one small town
should
have drawn the attention of any self-respecting vampire.

On Tuesday evening, Elizabeth closed the lid of her laptop and sat back on the sofa, rubbing her eyes. The hunters were convinced they needed Zoltán to defeat Saloman. And if Saloman were here, near her, wouldn’t Zoltán believe the Ancient was killing her at last, and come running? Perhaps they were even looking for each other and failing.

Perhaps, just perhaps she could move things on a little. Perhaps there was another way of summoning Saloman. Her heart beat too fast.

Why shouldn’t it work? He spoke in her head; she heard him. Because of Tsigana, because she’d awakened him, surely she had all sorts of latent abilities that she’d never tried to use, not just as a fighter.

She closed her eyes, tried to relax her body and empty her mind of anxious plans and stress, and thought of him. It wasn’t difficult. He swam into her mind like a high-resolution photograph in all his dark, mysterious beauty, enhanced by his unquiet, mesmerizing black eyes. A smile even played about his lips, mocking, appreciative, curious. . . .

Saloman,
she thought.
Saloman . . . can you hear me?

Elizabeth
.

The answer came back so quickly that she sat up, gasping, breaking the connection in terror—because it had worked, and because the very sound of his deep, rich voice overwhelmed her with so much unbearable emotion that she had to.

Now her heart thundered. She could do it!

He’d sounded just a little surprised, and
pleased
. God yes, he’d been pleased. Would he come now? Would that bring Zoltán hot on his tail?

Another thought hit her out of the blue like a battering ram.

What if he was here already? Just as he’d been in the Angel before she arrived. The hunters had no instruments that could detect him. Why had none of them considered the possibility before?

Because if he were here, he would have done something.

Someone had killed the three men in Leith—Saloman or Zoltán. Whichever was responsible, they’d been saying hello, come and get me, and circling until they found whatever it was they’d come to Scotland to find. Only then would they get to her, to their inevitable battle that
had
to be fought here.

She might have moved things along. She just hoped it wouldn’t bring Saloman without Zoltán.

She woke from the dream, sweating, disoriented, to the sound of her phone’s ringing beside the bed. Grabbing it, she switched on the light, registering that it was Konrad.

“He’s here.”

Her heart, her whole stomach plunged. “Saloman?” she croaked.

“Zoltán.”

They’d cornered him among the ruins of St. Andrews castle where he had been feeding off a dazed and probably drunk student.

“He didn’t kill him,” Konrad said as she joined them. “He swears he didn’t kill the three in Edinburgh either.”

Hate spiraled and twisted through her. She hadn’t wanted it to be Saloman. In spite of everything, part of her wanted him to be civilized, to be what he so palpably wasn’t and, in all honesty, what he had never pretended to be.

Zoltán, sitting with deliberate casualness on a broken wall, curled his lip in her direction. “Ah, the Awakener.”

“I thought you’d forgotten me.”

He didn’t get it, of course. He still had no idea that he’d walked past her on Princes Street.

“I must admit, it amuses me. The all-powerful hunters seeking my help.”

“You can’t deny it will be useful,” Konrad said.

“It might be, but not necessary. I have another more powerful ally.”