Blood Sin (28 page)

“That,” said Saloman, “depends on the person.”

She took hold of his knees. “No, it doesn’t,” she said seriously.

His face softened. He stretched out one hand to smooth her hair from her cheek. “Trust me. There are so many things I can do for the world, that vampires can do for humanity. It can be as it was before, that we care for you.”

She caught his wrist. “We’re not pets, Saloman! We need to be in charge of our own betterment.”

“Then would you consider working together?” His lips quirked. “Like you and me.”

She searched his eyes, her fingers tightening on his wrist. “You’re serious. You really imagine humans could work with vampires? Travis for state governor, perhaps?”

“Open your mind, Elizabeth,” he urged. “I said ‘care for,’ not govern. My people had an affinity with the earth that gave them senses way beyond those of humans. Some of that blood runs still in the veins of modern vampires, however corrupt. The world could use that.”

She swallowed, fighting her instinct to believe his plausible yet impossible words. “Humans couldn’t live with the knowledge that vampires exist. They’d slaughter you without compunction, and in the inevitable war, they’d be destroyed.”

Saloman sniffed the air. “I smell hunter,” he mocked, and when she jerked her hand away from him in protest, he caught it back and pulled her up on to his knee. “Think for yourself, Elizabeth. You’re a clever woman,” he said, as once before, and kissed her mouth.

She wasn’t prepared to surrender, not yet, but she couldn’t maintain her rigidity in his arms for long, not when everything in her body leapt to meet the demand of his lips and the deliberate, wicked sensuality of his hands. There was an odd, intense sweetness about being so seduced, and in the end, it didn’t matter what he said, what he believed, what he did. She couldn’t prevent herself from loving him.

It was a weakness she couldn’t even hate anymore, although somewhere she remembered how she had once despised women who loved and stood by their men through the most horrendous crimes. Loving Saloman gave her a new understanding, and yet she knew there would come a time, very soon, when she could no longer stand by him. After Dante and the matter of the sword were dealt with, she would have to leave him again.

“Not yet,” she whispered into his mouth, throwing her arms around his neck. “Not yet.”

He stood, lifting her in his arms and strode with her to the bed. “Yes, right now,” he commanded, and what was left of her bodily resistance burst into fire. She opened her mouth wide under his, fought him for control of the kiss, even as she gasped out, “Yes, oh, yes,” and when he laid her on the bed, she dragged him down with her, wrapping her legs around his hips and thrusting up to meet his exciting hardness.

Another night of bliss with Saloman. There had never been more than one night at a time before this, and she was aware of the danger as she writhed under him, dragging at his clothes and wriggling to feel all of him against her desperate body. She was sinking deeper into the darkness and it felt increasingly like light.

Chapter Thirteen

D
ante’s morning appointment suited his mood perfectly. The discreet but impressive old building, efficiently masked, seemed a perfect setting for the next stage of his plan. He just had to hold his excitement in check, put to the back of his mind the knowledge that by tonight the ultimate power would most probably be his.

The Hungarian Grand Master of the Order of Vampire Hunters greeted him in the foyer with flattering respect. Keeping to protocol, they didn’t use each other’s names, and in fact, Dante was unaware of the Hungarian’s. An impressive array of staff was lined up behind him too, and Dante’s spirits soared again to know that here he was in the most densely vampire populated area of the world. These hunters were the best because they had to be. And tonight, Dante needed them.

Therefore he was exceedingly gracious when the Grand Master turned to his team, saying with barely a hint of pomposity, “And all of my staff join me in the honor of welcoming to Budapest the Grand Master of the American Order. Your Excellency, allow me to present to you my deputy and chief librarian, Miklόs.”

A thin, almost unimpressive man of middle years bowed to him. He didn’t possess enough muscle to be Dante’s prime interest of the day, but since one never knew when more information would be valuable, he shook Miklόs’s hand heartily, and moved with the Grand Master to be introduced individually to his hunting teams.

Like the Americans, these guys also hunted in threes. The senior team consisted of two fit-looking men and a young woman who stared at him with flattering intensity. Dante noted them in his head as possibles while the Grand Master introduced them by first name only, beginning with their respectful leader, Konrad. Dante missed the other man’s name because of the way the girl, Mihaela, continued to stare at him. It was almost unnerving, particularly since her cheeks looked slightly flushed in the cool of the drafty old foyer, and as he shook hands with her, giving her a special pat on the shoulder to show he thoroughly approved of her spunk in doing such a rough job for a female, he realized she must have recognized him.

It wasn’t impossible. Despite his deliberately low profile, he figured in the American news from time to time, and even abroad he was mentioned occasionally. He wondered if it was worth catching her later to ask her to keep his name under her hat, although after tonight, would it really matter?

The other hunters all looked equally fit and strong, and Dante decided any one team would serve his purpose. Together with the sword, they’d ensure Dmitriu was his.

When he broached his special mission in the reception hall, where cold drinks and a rather magnificent breakfast feast were set out, the Hungarian Grand Master was pleased to give his gracious consent and asked for volunteers among the hunters.

They all stopped talking and eating to glance at one another, clearly hoping for the honor. But the Grand Master looked at Konrad, the leader of the senior team, who smiled and parted his lips, no doubt to accept. Then, without warning, his expression changed to one of pain and indignation.

“Unfortunately, it’s impossible for us,” Konrad said smoothly in perfect English. “Tonight, we have a duty that cannot wait.”

Dante wondered if he’d only remembered it when the girl, Mihaela, stood on his foot.

Saloman said conversationally, “Travis has gone.”

Elizabeth, lying across his naked chest with her chin on her folded arms to watch him, frowned. She wasn’t sure she wanted this night interrupted with talk of external events, and yet it didn’t bother her as much as she expected—because he was still here, with no obvious plans to change that in the immediate future. She roused herself to ask, “Gone where? When?”

“A couple of hours ago. And I don’t know exactly. East, toward Europe.”

Elizabeth didn’t ask how he knew. He could sense the presence of other vampires, track them over vast distances without moving an inch himself.

“Then he hasn’t acted to take over Severin’s little empire? Even though he must know that Severin’s dead. What do you suppose that means?” she wondered. “Has he gone after the sword?”

“Probably. Which means he’s gone after Dante.”

Elizabeth smiled. “So if we sit tight here for a little longer, you’ll know where Dante is through Travis?”

“Exactly.” He stroked her hair, spreading it out across his chest. It was a quiet, precious time after a long, delicious loving. Although Elizabeth was tired, she refused to sleep and lose the moment, the feel of his tender hands and his relaxed, powerful body.

She moved her arms to drop a lazy kiss on the smooth skin of his chest. “So which do you want to find most? The sword or Dante?”

“The sword,” he said at once. His lip twitched, but it wasn’t quite a smile, before he added like a mitigation, “One will come with the other.”

It seemed she knew him now, for she could tell he’d revealed more than he meant to. “But it’s the sword that drives you,” she prompted. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if pursuit of the sword hadn’t led you to him in the first place.”

His fingers tangled in her hair and gently tugged. “You are too shrewd. I’d already run across him in business and marked him. But you’re right, the Spanish professor—yet another distant cousin of yours—told me Dante had been to him looking for the sword. Which means he was on the trail of Tsigana’s descendants.”

“But I could almost swear Dante didn’t know who I was until I touched the sword at his house party.”

“He probably stopped looking for descendants once he discovered Josh had the sword. The question, as you already noted, is how he knew where to look in the first place.”

“Actually,” Elizabeth said, giving in to the pull of his hand to slide up nearer his questing mouth, “I’ve moved on to a different question.” Her lips parted, hovering over his.

“And what is that?” he asked. The words stirred her lips, spreading new sparks through her sated body.

“Why you want the sword. Is it so very powerful?”

His lips curved, brushing against hers so faintly it might have been an accident. “You mean more powerful than I?”

“Yes.”

His gaze lifted from her lips to her eyes. There was a pause, as if the question meant more than she knew, and suddenly she was afraid to breathe. Their lips didn’t move to separate or to join, and when he finally spoke, she felt the words slide into her like a secret never before revealed.

“I place a different value on the sword. Because . . .”

“Because?” she prompted when his words dried up.

“Because it was a gift.”

Not from Tsigana. Oh please, not from Tsigana . . .
Although sudden, pointless jealousy filled her, piercing like a knife, she held his dark, stormy gaze, kept her lips where he could take them at will, and waited.

“My cousin Luk gave me it when I died.”

Her lips parted. “Luk? Your cousin whom you . . . ?”

“Killed. Yes.”

“You want a keepsake of your enemy?”

“I want the keepsake of my friend.” Abruptly, he took her mouth, as if that made it easier to tell, and his words formed in her head to the rhythm of his deep, sensual kisses.

I’d known Luk all my life. When I died, it was he who led my revival, he who became my guide in my new existence. He was strong, clever, just rebellious enough to appeal to my youth. His profound wisdom and understanding of all earth’s races was second to none. He was respected and admired, even by the elders who frequently disagreed with him. And yet he usually got his way because of his other gift. . . .

He released her mouth, allowing her one quick, gasping breath before he returned to it, almost fiercely. Passion soared higher, making it difficult to concentrate on Saloman’s story. Elizabeth felt torn, wanted to concentrate on one or the other, and yet she couldn’t stop him now. For some reason, he needed to talk and to lose himself in her at the same time. So she drank him in like wine and urged him on.

What other gift?
she asked.

Prophecy. Foresight. The gift that is more of a curse. Most of my people had it to some extent, even I; but in most of us it is little more than a feeling, a tingle, a mostly forgotten dream associated with an object we touch, a place we see, a person we meet. Luk, however, had true visions, and no one but I could see how they tore him apart and drove him toward madness. . . .

He opened her mouth wider, deepening and hardening the kiss, as he rolled her under him and continued it, holding her head steady and winding his tongue around hers like a lash.

I loved Luk more than any being, and it broke my heart when he began to lose his mind and turn against me. He grew jealous of my increasing power, and in the end he could not see beyond Tsigana, beyond taking her from me.

His kiss became desperate, and his wicked incisors grazed the inside of her lips. Elizabeth welcomed the pain with the pleasure, and yet she ached for the deeper, far more corrosive pain that still ate him up. His hands slid under her buttocks, kneading.

Tsigana fed his lust, of course, hoping to gain immortality from one of us. I’d known for a decade that I should kill him before his madness brought us all down, endangering humans and vampires alike. I put it off, hoping he’d recover. But then, when Tsigana went to him . . . I
wanted
to hurt him, for her, and I hated—

His words broke off. His knee parted her legs and he pushed himself inside her with a force that made her gasp in as much astonishment as pleasure. Somehow, she hung on to the thread through the devastating assault on her senses, afraid he’d tell her no more. Afraid that he would.

You hated yourself for that
, she managed at last. Sorrow for him, for herself, had somehow blended with the sexual bliss. Together they surged higher, overwhelming her.

He gave me the sword
, Saloman said, moving above her, inside her, hard, fast, and relentlessly. His dark eyes glittered with inhuman power.
And I will have it back. As I have you. Possessed. Come.