Blood on Silk (36 page)

“Dmitriu?” Konrad guessed.

“Don’t make me laugh. He may be old, but he’s weak.”

Konrad’s lips twitched, as if he were about to contradict that view. But it was not part of his plan to gift Zoltán any information that would provide future advantage. “Who, then?”

Zoltán’s deep blue eyes gleamed. “Maximilian.”

She was right. The quick grins of the hunters acknowledged it. The vampires
were
here for Maximilian, the “lost” killer who’d taken power from Saloman and in turn had it taken from him by Zoltán. It was Maximilian who’d brought Saloman to Scotland, to complete his revenge, to drink the blood of his last vampire killer. Not Elizabeth—it had never been Elizabeth.

Konrad didn’t dispute Zoltán’s claim. He just said, “You prefer the alliance of a defeated enemy?”

Elizabeth stirred. “He only defeated Maximilian with a huge conspiracy against him. And Maximilian appeared to have already lost the will to continue.” The others looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. It was one of the many things she’d learned in her unauthorized research into Saloman’s killers.

It also helped her understand Zoltán’s motives—an alliance with Maximilian to defeat Saloman and take back preeminence in eastern Europe. After which Maximilian, who had no interest in that kind of power anymore, would obligingly disappear again, leaving Zoltán in sole control.

“Maximilian was strong then,” Zoltán said. “It was an honor to defeat him.”

István pinched the bridge of his nose in a familiar gesture of deep thought. “And a vampire who can stay so completely hidden from his brethren for so long is still strong.”

“He’s not an Ancient,” Zoltán allowed, “but he’s the next best thing.”

So why, if his new ally was so strong, was he hanging around here, still talking to the hunters instead of escaping, or at least baring his fangs?

“You’ve actually
met
Maximilian?” she asked.

Zoltán cast a contemptuous glance over her and curled his lip. “Of course.”

Of course. But nevertheless, he didn’t trust Maximilian. Why should he? It seemed unlikely that Maximilian would trust him, whatever the threat of Saloman’s coming.

She glanced at the hunters. “A three-way alliance?”

“I have no objections,” Konrad said, a little too grandly for the occasion, but Zoltán didn’t seem to see anything over-the-top.

He stood, brushing imaginary grains of dirt from his hips. “Very well. You set the trap, and I’ll bring you Saloman.”

“How?”

Zoltán’s smile looked more vicious than pleasant. “With me, Maximilian, and
her”—
he pointed at Elizabeth in an accusing sort of a way—“in the one place? He’ll come.”

“He’ll sense a trap,” Elizabeth warned.

“But not the scale of it. I can bring at least four local vampires of reasonable strength.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “It would have been five, but apparently one branched out on his own and paid the price.”

Grateful for the knowledge, Elizabeth gave a curt nod.

“And Maximilian,” continued Zoltán, his smile still unpleasant, “along with my little army, of course.”

His zombies. Elizabeth’s stomach twisted. It might have been fear, but it felt a lot like distaste.

“And he won’t expect us to be on the same side,” Konrad said. “We’ll have backup too. Local hunters.” He was warning Zoltán against betrayal—which was bound to begin anyhow as soon as Saloman was dead. It was going to be hard to keep control of all these threads. . . .

“One thing,” Mihaela said. “Like everyone here, I appreciate the need to eliminate Saloman, but we can’t, we really can’t have a full-scale battle in the middle of town, right under the noses of the inhabitants.”

“Outside the town?” Konrad hazarded. “We can find a suitable place.”

“Halloween,” István blurted, and as they all stared at him in surprise, he added, “It’s Halloween on Saturday. Don’t you have some kind of celebration?”

“Of course.” Elizabeth caught on. “Strange things happening among the ruins with strange beings will be put down to student parties. The locals will stay away, and we can repel the students themselves with some kind of cordon. If they see me, they’ll think we’re staff and keep their distance. It might work.”

“Which ruins?” Konrad sounded quite excited now. “Here?”

“There.” Zoltán pointed behind him, and Elizabeth understood.

The cathedral was one of her favorite places, and she was loath to sully it, but before she could object, Konrad said, “Good. It’s surrounded by graveyards too.”

“Saturday,” Zoltán said. “From sundown. Don’t be late. He won’t be.”

Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder, as if she expected him to be there already. But she found only sea and shadow, the distant beating wings of night birds, and the memory of his voice, rushing through the sound of the waves.
Elizabeth
.

He should have killed her in Budapest.

He could kill her now. He had only to leap down from the castle roof and seize her, snap her delicate bones, and drain her in a heartbeat. He pushed his head back hard into the sloping wall behind him, digging his fingers into the stone in his effort to keep still.

He could barely think through this fury, this outrage he knew was ridiculous. His fragile, half-formed hopes lay in defeated ruin.

Saloman had returned to St. Andrews as soon as Zoltán’s masked signature grew too close to Elizabeth’s. Before he even heard her call, sweet and curiously familiar in his head; strong, yet a little wondering, hesitant, conjuring up her vital image in his mind. As if she missed him, as if she couldn’t resist trying out a skill she’d never thought of before this moment; yet as soon as he answered, she vanished, leaving only the echo of her shocked gasp. That too had made him smile, because it was so Elizabeth—so unbelieving of her natural strength that she hadn’t truly expected to reach him.

The whole tiny incident was over in a second, but now she could do it, she’d be back. The knowledge had pleased him—then.

He’d followed Zoltán to the ruined castle, which had been no more than a wooden edifice on his first stay here a thousand years ago, and watched him feed from a human male he had retained enough sense not to kill, at least not before the hunters arrived and made Zoltán let the boy go. And then Elizabeth came.

From his place on the castle roof, masked from vampire senses and hidden in the shadows from human sight, Saloman had heard everything, seen everything. He’d even been amused by the hunters’ ruse of pretending an alliance in order to use Zoltán as bait for him.

Rejoicing in the sight of Elizabeth, Saloman had isolated the music of her voice among all the others and let it sweep him back into memories of their night together in Budapest, and forward into pleasurable imaginings of the future.

Yet when Zoltán departed, Saloman had been uneasy—no wonder. As Elizabeth and the hunters walked out of the castle grounds too, some of their words drifted up to his powerful ears. Unbelievably, they were taking this alliance with Zoltán seriously. It hadn’t been a ruse.

Understanding had thudded into him like a powerful kick in the stomach. He even felt sick.

Fools!
Didn’t they know about Zoltán’s human alliance plan? Were they really willing to risk such enslavement, murder, unimaginable horror, for their own people? Just for the chance to kill the last Ancient?

And whether Elizabeth was aware of Zoltán’s plans or not, there was no excuse for her choice.

He couldn’t stand the galloping emptiness, and so he’d let the anger in until he’d come to this ludicrous posture, trying to push himself into the wall behind him, just so he didn’t drop down in front of her and tear out her throat there and then. He needed a stage for his victory, and this wasn’t it.

But he couldn’t be still. Releasing the cold stone, he threw himself off the roof in the opposite direction from Elizabeth. He landed on the rocks that dropped down to the beach, and ran. He ran so fast it made him dizzy, all but flying around the rocks before leaping into the town and bounding from rooftop to ruin in a pointless, necessary waste of energy. No one could have seen him, a mere blur of speed. But emotion interfered with his normally sure feet. He began to stumble, slowing, zigzagging, and veering at impossible angles as if drunk—drunk on bitterness, which made him uncharacteristically clumsy. The knowledge pulled him up and forced him to go to ground before he revealed his whereabouts to everyone, human and vampire.

Even so, it took him two attempts to jump through the broken loft window of a tall terraced house, though at least he landed in silence on the bare wooden floor. Blood oozed from glass cuts in his face and hands.

His legs buckled and he gave in, lying down in the corner to absorb his own anger. At least, he called it anger. It felt sour, rancid, and it burned like acid in his mouth, in his veins. Not like the righteous fury that had consumed him in the face of Dmitriu’s treachery and had led him to spare the bastard in the end. This was different. It felt as if she were Tsigana all over again.

He lay still, letting emotion grasp him in a powerful, dizzying grip, knowing he had to go with it to release it, to think without passion.

Alliance with the hunters was natural for her. He’d always accepted that. And she’d promised to kill him if their paths ever crossed again. But her call to him earlier tonight had given him hope that she might yet come back to him without persuasion. Her voice had been soft and beautiful in his head, and all the more arousing for being so unexpected; yet it meant nothing, no more than his own upsurge of fierce possessiveness at her simply speaking his name.

The softness and the call, accidental or otherwise, were lies.

He was alone.

His hands opened wide in anguish on either side of his prone body.

He could bear it. He’d borne worse, much worse. He forced himself to relax until, slowly, his fingers lost their rigidity.

It didn’t matter. He’d always been alone in reality, whatever the passing companionships of his long life. It had never stopped him, and it never would.

I slept with you only to save my life.
Well, in the end, it wouldn’t. He’d made too many mistakes already through the bonds of lust. Now she’d allied with another vampire against him—and such a vampire as Zoltán. That, finally, was unforgivable, and her death, inevitable. And this would be no loving death such as he would have given her in Budapest. It would be a killing.

And at the finish, she, along with the hunters and the whole vampire world, would learn that he could not be defeated.

“L
enny for your thoughts,” Mihaela said.

Elizabeth, gazing out of her living room window with one hand on her packed bag, jumped at the sound of the hunter’s voice and jerked round.

Mihaela was sitting on the floor, sharpening her own and Elizabeth’s swords.

Elizabeth said, “I was wondering how you got that thing through airport security.”

“No, you weren’t.”

Elizabeth gave a lopsided smile. “No, I wasn’t,” she agreed. “I was thinking about the weird directions people’s lives take. Two months ago I was a normal person, really enjoying my research challenges and yet vaguely dissatisfied with my uneventful life. And now I’d give anything to get back to that dissatisfying normality.”

“That’s normal too,” Mihaela soothed, “in such circumstances.”

“I thought I wanted excitement. . . .” She broke off, banishing the unwanted vision of Saloman from her mind as well as from the tip of her tongue. “I
hate
this turmoil,” she muttered.

Mihaela glanced at her more closely. The brown, down-to-earth eyes were uncomfortably perceptive. “You speak of more than fear of tonight’s battle.”

She did. She had to keep banishing memories of her night in Saloman’s arms, of all the feelings he’d aroused in her. She had to keep telling herself those feelings were merely sexual, to force her concentration back to the necessity of eliminating him from the world. And yet the whisper that he wasn’t all evil, and the memory of her short-lived happiness, kept intruding, swirling and clawing at her stomach.