Blood Sin (44 page)

Joanne said, “So you’re hesitating over whether to apply for the job? Apply now and worry later.”

Elizabeth shifted in her seat. “Actually, I’ve already applied. They’ve offered me the post. I just have to decide whether to take it.”

Joanne finished her coffee and set down her mug before rising. “Bite their hands off,” she advised, swinging her bag off the floor and onto her shoulder, to the imminent danger of the mugs, which undoubtedly would have been knocked to the floor if Elizabeth hadn’t seized them out of harm’s way. Behind Joanne, a passing waiter stared at Elizabeth, wide-eyed. She must have moved too fast.

“I’ll miss you, of course,” Joanned added, oblivious to the entire incident.

“No, you won’t. You’ll come to visit me or I’ll never speak to you again.” Which was another point against accepting. In Budapest, Saloman’s own city, there would be untold distractions from the world of academia—leaving love out of it, there were vampires and hunters and an inevitable conflict waiting to erupt that would place her squarely in the middle. Could she really hope to keep Joanne out of that?

But traipsing downstairs in her friend’s wake, Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling a secret leap of excitement at the prospect of moving to Hungary. Outside the Victoria Café it was raining, a fine, misty drizzle that seemed to exemplify the Scottish summer: dull.

“Well, back to the grindstone,” Joanne said, happily enough. “What are you up to for the rest of the day?”

“I said I’d do a favor for a friend—visit this wounded soldier in Glasgow.”

“Badly wounded?” Joanne asked sympathetically.

“Badly enough, but he’s pretty well recovered physically. Apparently he’s still traumatized.”

“Sounds like a worthy but fraught day for you, then,” Joanne observed, lifting her hand in farewell. She was clearly eager to get back to her books. Elizabeth watched her scuttle across Market Street with a feeling that came close to envy. Once, being lost in academia had been enough for Elizabeth too. And visiting an injured soldier would have aroused a much simpler compassion in her, without this guilty, nagging hope that because the British vampire hunters had asked her to go, he’d have something paranormally intriguing to say.

She was bored, she realized with some surprise. Achieving her doctorate had been satisfying; writing the book had been fun; research and teaching at some academic institution were still a necessary part of her ambitions, to say nothing about putting food on the table. Six months ago, desperately trying to keep her life stable and normal in the midst of unasked for and unwanted new responsibilities and dangers, she wouldn’t have believed this was possible; yet now, perhaps influenced by her earlier shiver of anxiety, she actually
missed
the menacing world of darkness and vampires, a world in which her mind and body could both stretch without hindrance, and succeed.

She missed Saloman.

With the sound of the vampire’s preternatural scream splitting his ears, Senator Grayson Dante knew it had all gone horribly wrong. Dante thought back to the accounts he’d read of Saloman’s awakening, taken from Elizabeth Silk’s testimony. She too had found an empty underground chamber, except it had turned out not to be so empty. She’d been bleeding from a thorn prick and surmised that it was the drops of her blood that had first made the dead Saloman visible to her. She’d mistaken him for a stone sarcophagus.

Dante crouched down and delved into his bag to retrieve the vial of blood. It was a tiny amount, distilled from the stain of Saloman’s blood left on his shirt during their last violent encounter. He couldn’t afford to waste any. He was sure this room was enchanted, as the outer cave had been, to deter visitors. But simply staring wouldn’t break through this spell.

Dante unscrewed the lid with great care.

“What is that?” Mehmet, his Turkish guide, whispered.

It’s the blood of the Ancient vampire Saloman, with which I hope to awaken his cousin and enemy, Luk, whom Saloman killed more than three hundred years ago.
Would Mehmet run or laugh if he said such a thing aloud? Instinctively, Dante knew his need for Mehmet was almost over. But only almost. The Turk had one more purpose to fulfill.

Dante crept around the dark chamber. The beam from his flashlight bobbed eratically around the rough stone floors and walls, barely penetrating the profound blackness more than a couple of feet beyond his unsteady fingers. He hoped that if he couldn’t see the body, at least he might feel it with his hands or feet. Even so, when his foot struck something that felt like stone, part of the floor’s uneven surface, he almost paid it no attention. Then he paused and placed his finger over the phial opening before he shook it and removed his finger.

Drawing in his breath with a quick, silent prayer to no one in particular that it would be enough, he shook his hand out in front of him. His finger tingled as the tiny spatter of blood sprayed downward. And there in the darkness, without suddenness or shock, was what he’d been looking for all these weeks.

A stone table on which lay a sculpted body. Almost exactly like the one Elizabeth Silk had found a year earlier.

Mehmet’s breath sounded like a wheeze. “My God, I almost didn’t see it. I thought there was nothing. . . . Is this it? Is this your nobleman’s tomb?”

“Almost certainly.” Dante felt dizzy. His whole body trembled, not just as a reaction to his first glimpse of the deeply sinister figure illuminated by their flashlights, but as a result of the enormity of what he was doing. He found it difficult to get words out, and yet he had to concentrate, to ignore his sudden fears and stick to his plan. Mehmet had to continue to believe in the fiction that this was merely the lost tomb of a historic nobleman. And then, finally, Dante would reach his goal. Eternal life. Eternal power. Damnation, if it existed, was a small price to pay.

With carefully judged casualness, he passed the vial to Mehmet. “Here. I want to photograph this.”

Even shining his flashlight on the tiny drop of dark liquid, Mehmet could have no idea what it was. He seemed happy that Dante had found what he sought—even if only so he could get back into the fresh air and climb down the mountain.

Dante produced his camera and pointed it at the tomb. “When I say ‘now,’” he directed, “pour the contents of the vial over the carving.”

“Why? What is it?”

“It’ll make the tomb stand out more in the picture,” Dante lied easily. He wasn’t a politician for nothing. “Okay . . . now!”

Dante held his breath as Mehmet shook the tiny drops of liquid over the carved face. This was it, the moment of greatest risk and greatest hope, on which all Dante’s ambitions rested. Religion, decency, nature itself—none of those things counted beside the huge power Dante was about to take.

At this point in the earlier awakening, Saloman had clamped his teeth into Elizabeth’s neck. Dante had been torn over this part of his plan. The blood used in the awakening had to be Saloman’s—Luk’s killer’s—or it wouldn’t work, but Dante didn’t know whether any of the mystical attributes of awakening would be bestowed on whoever did the pouring. No one had ever done it like this before, to his knowledge. If there was power to be had from awakening, he naturally wanted it for himself; but on the other hand, he needed Luk to be as strong as possible, which meant drinking the blood of his Awakener and killing him to absorb his life force. So far, Saloman had failed to kill Elizabeth, and therein lay his weakness. Dante did not intend Luk to make the same mistake.

It was a pity for Mehmet.

Dante shone his flashlight unwaveringly on Luk’s dead face. It did indeed look like stone. He’d expected it to be more lifelike, to give some hint of his Ancient strength, a clue that he could be awakened. Despite the tiny droplets of blood splashed on Luk’s cheek, nose, lips, and chin, nothing happened.

Oh, fuck. It isn’t enough. After all this, I needed more blood. . . .

“Did you take it?” Mehmet asked.

“What? Oh, the photograph. Yes, I got it. Thanks.” He took a step forward, meaning to take back the vial and see whether there was anything left in it. But before he could touch it, a sound like a faint groan issued from the carving.

Oh, yes. Hallelujah.

Under Dante’s riveted gaze, the dead eyes of the sculpture opened and the lips parted. The skin moved, shifting slowly into an expression not of triumph but of shock. Even . . . fear. Luk sat up and Mehmet fell back with a low moan of terror. Luk’s twisted mouth opened wider, revealing his long, terrifying incisors as he stared at Mehmet.

The vampire’s scream started low, like a rattle in his throat, then rose quickly into the most horrific, gut-wrenching howl Dante had ever heard. Like all the pain of everyone in the world rolled into one pure, dreadful sound.

This isn’t meant to happen
, Dante thought in panic.
Something’s gone terribly wrong. I must have got the wrong vampire. . . .

Then in fury the creature who may or may not have been Luk swung himself off the stone table, and Dante stepped circumspectly behind Mehmet before giving the Turk a sharp shove into the reaching arms of whatever they’d awakened.

ALSO BY MARIE TREANOR

Blood on Silk