Blood Sin (21 page)

“Okay, boys,” Travis said. “Two descendants to play with, and the victim was Saloman, so no gulping. Share the boy and hold the Awakener for me.”

Josh, who seemed to have finally picked up that the “men” surrounding them were dangerous, took a step backward. Before he could draw too much attention, Elizabeth glared at the vampire who grasped her arm.

“Gulping?” she said. “Without an introduction, I don’t even allow biting.” And she whipped out the stake, plunging it into his heart. At the same time, she spun in the cloud of his dust and kicked the vampire nearest Josh hard enough to knock him into the table. “Josh, run!” she yelled, and lunged at Dante, grabbing his wrist and yanking him after her. “Go!”

It was desperate; it probably required a miracle to make it work; but at least its suddenness gave them a chance. Unfortunately, Elizabeth had reckoned without Josh’s recent skepticism, which she’d just blown sky-high with the vampire. He stood rooted to the spot, blinking at where the creature had last stood. His lips moved, making no sound.

“Get them,” Travis snarled. Elizabeth gave Dante one last tug after her to make her point and grabbed Josh’s arm instead. She couldn’t drag both of them and fight at the same time.

“Josh!” she cried. “Move!”

He stumbled in her wake, but she had to punch the vampire who had hold of him and dragged him to the ground. As Elizabeth leapt and staked the fallen vampire, she could see that their moment had passed. The vampires were closing in on all sides. More were emerging from the office beyond, from the doorway to the car park. Wildly, she scanned the room for an escape route, holding fast to Josh’s arm. He was breathing like a steam engine. Dante backed away toward Travis, who, however, ignored him. The vampire leader’s attention was all on Elizabeth.

“Sir, do we have an agreement?” Dante shouted.

“Not now, Senator.” Travis smiled and walked forward into the circle. “It’s feeding time.”

Dante strode the length of the room toward the exit, and began to run, shoving past the vampires who were not remotely interested in him when the blood of two descendants, one of whom was also the Awakener, was up for grabs.

“I’ll fight, Josh,” Elizabeth said shakily. “But I can’t win. If you can manage it, get out—they want me more. Find Adam Simon and tell him what happened here. Do you understand?”

There was no time for any reply. The vampires approached, beginning at a walk and advancing quickly to a run. Elizabeth raised her stake and released Josh in order to have both arms free.

“Straight ahead,” she breathed, and launched herself at the first vampire with a scream of pure rage.

But something was louder than her cry—the crashing of falling masonry as the ceiling began to cave in. Her chosen victim’s distraction gave her an easy kill. Whirling, she spun to face the vampires closing behind her, and found their backs to her. They were watching in stunned amazement as someone fell—no,
stepped
—through the hole in the ceiling as if descending a staircase.

He still wore the business suit, minus the constricting jacket. From his long, loose black hair to his shining shoes, he was dazzling. He advanced on those who stood between him and Elizabeth and Josh. “I’m Saloman.”

Chapter Ten

T
o Josh, the advent of a man who resembled Adam Simon via the club roof merely added to his sense of nightmare. None of this could be real: not the bizarre fight, not the murders committed by Elizabeth Silk, of all people, and certainly not the exploding bodies. His subconscious was merely dragging all his acquaintances into his dream.

And yet somewhere Elizabeth’s last words nagged at him. Even in a dream, surely it wasn’t right that she should be prepared to die to save his skin? But Elizabeth’s mood seemed to change abruptly. The desperate tension he could almost feel as his own suddenly vanished. He even thought he caught a breath of laughter.

The men between him and the door began another rush, and Josh acted from pure instinct. Apart from childhood scraps, he’d never been much of a fighter, but as two men ran at Elizabeth, he struck out with a fist at the nearest. No doubt his sudden action after prolonged passivity helped, but as his victim fell back under the punch, landing flat on the floor, Josh felt a fierce sense of satisfaction.

He whirled to discover that Elizabeth had dealt with the second immediate attacker. She stood now back-to-back with the man who looked like Adam Simon. It couldn’t have taken long, maybe only seconds, but Josh found himself watching with fascination as together they performed maneuvers almost like a dance, drawing and repelling attacks until suddenly the way was clear to the door.

Dante’s friend Travis sat on the floor as if he’d been flung there, observing through narrowed eyes. The man who looked like Adam seized a chair and crashed it over someone’s head. In the same fluid movement, he caught one of the chair’s broken, jagged legs and threw it over his shoulder. Elizabeth caught it deftly and without a word passed it to Josh. Almost numbly, he grasped it.

Elizabeth nodded, as if in agreement to something he hadn’t heard. “Let’s go,” she said breathlessly, and Josh registered that there was no longer the same desperate grimness in her voice. It was almost as if she were
enjoying
herself.

On autopilot, Josh ran with her the length of the room. She kicked open the door, scanning for any new threat; then, for the first time since this began, she seemed to hesitate. She looked over her shoulder, and Josh glanced with her.

All Travis’s men—or at least those of them who hadn’t disappeared in clouds of dust—still dressed in their ridiculous gangster outfits, were crowding in on the man who looked like Adam. Elizabeth made a tiny movement, as if, after all, she intended to go back, but in the end, with a sound like a strangled sob, she wrenched herself straight and ran on toward the parking lot.

Josh loped after her, clutching his broken chair leg more like a talisman than a weapon, and when they all but ran into two more men rushing from the parking lot toward the club, it was Elizabeth who stabbed one and kicked out at the other. But her kick never connected. The man was more interested in whatever fight was still going on inside.

As they ran to his car, Josh noted that Dante’s vehicle had gone. But there was no time to debate what it all meant. If this really wasn’t a dream, the most important thing was to get himself and Elizabeth as far away from here as possible.

At least he’d found his key and sprang the lock in time for them to leap inside as soon as they reached the car. Without any pause to fasten seat belts, he started the engine, threw it into reverse, and screeched around to speed out of the parking lot, crashing through the closed barrier and out into the road.

Beside him, Elizabeth said low, “Are you all right to drive?” She was tense again, like a coiled spring, and the fear had returned to her rather beautiful hazel eyes.

Josh dragged his gaze back to the clamorous traffic, took a deep breath, and forced himself to slow down.

“Shit,” he breathed, rubbing one still-shaking hand over the back of his sweaty neck before replacing it on the steering wheel. “This isn’t a dream, is it? What the hell just happened, Elizabeth?”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I tried to tell you. But some things you just can’t believe until you see them for yourself. It was like that for me too. We just met Travis, the strongest leader of the North American vampires, and his bodyguard. And we were recognized as Tsigana’s descendants. Like I told you, our blood is valuable to them.”

She dug the back of her head into the headrest. “Bugger, I should have listened. I shouldn’t have gone out.”

Josh had no idea what she meant by that. But an instant later, she seemed to pull herself together, replacing her wooden stake carefully in her bag before she rummaged for her phone.

Josh concentrated on driving. What he’d just seen, what he’d seen Elizabeth do back there, needed a lot of processing.

“Mihaela, it’s me,” she said into her phone. There was a pause, then: “I’m in New York now. Can you find me what you have on the American vampire Travis? With particular reference to a possible relationship with Senator Grayson Dante.”

Curiously, her matter-of-fact words soothed Josh. Then Elizabeth said, “Maybe, but the American network wouldn’t necessarily give me the info—they don’t know me. You’ll have to do it for me. . . . Yes, I’m afraid it is important, Mihaela, bloody important.” She smiled faintly. “Thanks, you’re wonderful,” she said, and broke the connection.

Josh began to laugh. Elizabeth glanced at him in alarm, as if afraid he’d cracked. Maybe he had.

“What?” she demanded. “What is it?”

“I’ve just realized the really annoying thing about this . . . adventure. We went through all that, and I still don’t have my damned sword.”

They all had stakes of some kind, many made after Saloman’s own example of a broken chair leg, and Travis was strong enough to pierce his skin. There was no doubt that together they could take him, weaken him with bloodletting where his skin was less tough than over his heart, while gaining greater strength from drinking his blood, pushing a stake farther and farther into his heart until, eventually, he would be sent back into the agonized sleep from which Elizabeth had awakened him less than a year ago.

They might not know it, of course. Ancient-killing had become something of a lost art in the last three hundred years or so. But Saloman didn’t care to bank on it. He could fight, rely on his greater strength to keep them all at bay while he talked them out of a mutual killing spree, if he could. But their bloodlust was up. Elizabeth and Josh had seen to that, and now, without some kind of powerful jolt, they were unlikely to pay much attention to talk.

A display of his superior power was clearly necessary. It would weaken him, sap his strength and his ability to fight for much longer, so if his ploy didn’t work, he was, in modern parlance, fucked.

What is life without risk?

“Enough!” he roared. He used his thundering tone, the godlike one that echoed around the head as well as the atmosphere. It garnered enough surprised attention. Saloman parted his lips and blew out a howl of rage, sending every vampire in the path of his “breath” flying across the room. Several hit the wall on the far side; the rest crashed into them. Saloman turned his head to ensure that every vampire from Travis down got his fair share.

“Good,” Saloman said into the stunned silence. “Enough fighting for one day.” His roving gaze, which he made as stern as possible, found Travis, who was picking himself somewhat shakily off the floor. “Forgive the unconventional entrance, but the Awakener is mine, not yours. Fortunately, I don’t bear grudges. Shall we talk?”

Travis’s gaze flickered around the room, taking in the piles of injured and demoralized vampires around him. Clearly he was a realist. “In my office?” he suggested in the tones he might have used to a favored salesman. “Al—two beers.”

Saloman’s lips twitched, but he inclined his head with politeness as he preceded the American vampire into his office. At least here the desk and chairs were still usable.

“I hope your operation is not inconvenienced,” Saloman said, taking the visitor’s seat. It was a relief to sit. The loss of the power used in his little demonstration had left him dizzier than he’d been since Elizabeth awakened him. He needed to feed and rest. But not yet.

Travis straightened his gangster tie and adjusted his hat to a preferred angle on the back of his blond head. “I don’t mind them having to work. I pay them enough. In dough as well as blood.”

If he thought to flummox Saloman by his use of old-fashioned slang, he must have been disappointed when Saloman merely smiled.

“I didn’t expect you,” Travis said, sprawling in his chair. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I guess you weren’t. I unmasked some time ago, since I had no wish to startle you when I visited.”

“So you planned a courtesy visit before you smelled the Awakener in my vicinity?”

“Something like that.”

“I trust you found my friend Severin quite well.”

“I found him serene, and his welcome a little more traditional than yours.”

Something like annoyance flickered in Travis’s blue eyes and vanished, as if he was irritated rather than impressed by Saloman’s openness. Or perhaps he’d wanted to impress Saloman by his powerful sense of smell.

Travis’s brow cleared again. “Well, now you’re here, what can I do for you?” he asked almost jovially.

Travis clearly was a vampire who liked to play games. It was no accident that he’d chosen to host an illegal casino. His thoughts were closely shielded, his amiable expression revealing very little. But although he lounged in his chair as if perfectly at ease, the still, tense set of his shoulders gave him away. Travis was suspicious and on edge, as he should be. And as Saloman gazed into his dense eyes, he was pretty sure anger simmered. Travis saw no reason to give up his power, no reason it should be expected of him. He was a modern vampire, living with minimum order only so long as it suited him. His heart was as chaotic as Zoltán’s, as those of the Spanish rebels Saloman had killed in Salamanca.