Blood Eternal (44 page)
For an instant, he stared into his cousin’s black, implacable eyes. Something rose up inside him that might have been rage or joy or a combination too confused to separate.
Fuck, but you’re annoying.
Fuck, but you’re annoying.
I know,
said Saloman.
said Saloman.
Luk laughed.
Then let it be now. Bring it on!
And summoning the fire, he hurled it from his hand deep into the core of the hunters’ pride and joy. While the hunters panicked, Saloman and Elizabeth Silk both leapt for him. He sidestepped Saloman, reaching for the stake at his belt while with his sword he swiped off the nearest hunter’s head.
Then let it be now. Bring it on!
And summoning the fire, he hurled it from his hand deep into the core of the hunters’ pride and joy. While the hunters panicked, Saloman and Elizabeth Silk both leapt for him. He sidestepped Saloman, reaching for the stake at his belt while with his sword he swiped off the nearest hunter’s head.
Elizabeth yelled, a peculiar sound of agony and rage, cut off as suddenly as it began. And when Luk whirled around, it was Saloman’s sword that clashed with his. Memory flashed, vivid and inconvenient. He knew that sword. He’d given it, and the bastard still wore it after what he’d done. In fury, he hacked, driving Saloman back with the sword and swiping viciously with the stake.
You’re losing it all, Saloman. The library burns, the hunters are dying, damn their treacherous hearts, and your followers defect in scores
—
starting with your beloved Maximilian. Are you there yet, Maximilian?
—
starting with your beloved Maximilian. Are you there yet, Maximilian?
I’m here,
Maximilian said close beside him.
But Timucin isn’t.
Maximilian said close beside him.
But Timucin isn’t.
Maximilian spun, leaping toward Grayson, who was plunging a stake toward Dmitriu’s unprotected back, and struck hard and sure. Luk stumbled with shock, feeling Saloman’s blade bite into his shoulder, barely comprehending that the dust of Maximilian’s kill belonged not to Dmitriu but to Grayson, his last creation.
Now Dante isn’t here either,
Maximilian observed.
Maximilian observed.
Thanks,
said Dmitriu, already leaping onto a table after one of the Hungarian vampires.
said Dmitriu, already leaping onto a table after one of the Hungarian vampires.
You’re welcome,
Maximilian returned.
Maximilian returned.
For an instant, grief almost undid Luk. Grayson was gone. Unthinkable. How had he let that happen? It forced him to disengage from Saloman, to jump back and take stock.
Grayson had awakened him with Saloman’s blood for his own ends. He’d taken advantage of Luk’s weakness and confusion, and then of his strength. There was no love of his creator. And if Luk thought about it, as he did among the mayhem of the fight he’d begun, Luk felt no real love for his creation. In fact, he felt more emotion toward Maximilian, who was now fighting merrily along beside the enemy, damn him.
Oh, who cares? You were ever a treacherous bastard, Max! How well do
you
trust him, Saloman?
you
trust him, Saloman?
Implicitly,
said Saloman, who’d obviously grasped that several of Luk’s vampires were converging on the Awakener as instructed. Advancing at speed, he staked two of them at once. Elizabeth whirled and got another.
said Saloman, who’d obviously grasped that several of Luk’s vampires were converging on the Awakener as instructed. Advancing at speed, he staked two of them at once. Elizabeth whirled and got another.
The hunters, though overwhelmingly outnumbered, were all battling with enough lethal fury to be dangerous. It was time to finish it before any more of his vampires died.
So fast that the humans wouldn’t even have seen it, Luk leapt on Saloman. His cousin threw him off at once, with so much force that he dropped his sword. But that didn’t matter; he’d made the touch, got the connection; and now, with fierce, vengeful satisfaction, he reached in and seized Saloman’s mind.
By the time Cyn found the vampires, she was shaking with the feeling she’d called “malevolence” ever since she’d been old enough to know what the word meant. Here, on a respectable, quiet street in the middle of the night, the malevolence was overwhelming.
“There,” she whispered, nodding farther down the road. A fight was already taking place. One man against another three. Except as three vanished in quick succession, she knew they hadn’t been men.
“Wow,” Pete said, awed. “Is he a vampire hunter?”
“No,” John answered in a strange voice. “He’s a vampire. He’s talking to others inside that building. Telepathically.”
“Can you hear them?” Rudy asked. “All of them? Do you know how many?”
“Lots,” John said, tugging at his hair as though his head hurt, or he was trying to sort out the babble of voices. “They’re trying to kill someone called the Awakener. Oh, shite, is that—”
“Elizabeth?” said Rudy. “Oh, yes. Let’s go.”
The sidewalk-level windows were broken, and from inside came the sounds of total carnage. Awkwardly, John got the ropes out of his backpack.
“Hurry,” Cyn said, shivering, keeping her eyes fixed on the end of the street. “There are more coming.” She’d be all right once the fighting started, but until then, all she could feel was the chill of evil.
“Let’s go,” Rudy said.
Saloman had stuck to his plan. Since Maximilian had agreed to go with Luk to keep track of events and to do what damage he could from that end, he and Dmitriu had entered the hunters’ building early in the afternoon, so deeply masked that the staff they’d encountered had barely noticed them, let alone recognized them.
Even the business of breaking the shield enchantment to get in, and of building it again behind them, had been accomplished quickly and discreetly. In the library, they’d moved past all the researchers and librarians and taken up position at the very back of the cavernous room among the deepest shadows. So when the detectors were switched on and reset at five o’clock, they accepted him and Dmitriu as part of the environment. They remained silent, just as Elizabeth had hoped they would.
And although a couple of the hunters, especially Mihaela, had taken too many glances into the shadows, as if something there disturbed them, no one had truly seen them through Saloman’s masking, because no one had truly had expected to. Apart from Elizabeth.
And at least he’d been able to give her a telepathic warning; with the detectors used to him and Dmitriu, Elizabeth hadn’t been sure that they’d pick up any other vampire presence, so his own senses had been a very necessary part of the plan. When he and Dmitriu had emerged to face Luk’s attack, there had been no time for the hunters to object.
Obeying his instructions, Maximilian and Dmitriu avoided tangling with Luk, and concentrated on his supporters. But clearly Luk had given instructions too, and those were to take out Elizabeth. Despite his trust in her new strength and abilities, her vulnerability scared him. He had to even the odds for her, and in his relief at achieving it, he’d turned his back on Luk.
Like taking candy from a baby,
Luk mocked as Saloman froze in the grip of agony and humiliation, and the fear he hadn’t been able to shake off in millennia of existence.
It gets you every time, and you never learn.
Luk mocked as Saloman froze in the grip of agony and humiliation, and the fear he hadn’t been able to shake off in millennia of existence.
It gets you every time, and you never learn.
Saloman made no telepathic reply. He couldn’t.
“Saloman!” Elizabeth’s voice, full of agony, told him she’d seen his situation. But this time, it was up to him to rescue her. He rode the pain, hanging on to one thought until, finally, Luk caught it.
I’m sapping your energy.
The pain loosened its grip as Luk instinctively drew back a little. But still he didn’t release him. Instead, he drifted in front of Saloman, staring at him with pure, unadulterated hatred.
I’ve got enough,
Luk sneered.
I’m stronger than before. And you’re just as frightened.
Luk sneered.
I’m stronger than before. And you’re just as frightened.
Saloman bared his teeth. “I like fear,” he whispered. He sought it out at the epicenter of earthquakes, like the one in Peru just before he’d heard Luk’s waking scream.
He took a step forward and Luk’s eyes widened in shock. As Luk fought to tighten his grip once more, Saloman slammed his mind shut. He felt Luk’s furious battering against it, but Saloman, staring deep into his cousin’s red-tinged eyes, simply threw him out. Panicked, Luk stumbled backward and Saloman followed.
“Not this time, Luk. I choose who enters my mind, and you lost the privilege.”
“When you killed me?” Luk screamed, swinging his fist faster than lightning into Saloman’s face with enough force to break a human jaw. It slowed Saloman, but only for an instant. He thrust with his stake, drawing blood from Luk’s arm as his cousin blocked the blow.
“No,” Saloman said. “When you failed to knock.” He thrust again, and Luk fell backward into the hunter István, who was fighting one of the Turkish vampires. “Now the door is locked. For good.”
István whirled and caught his vampire opponent unaware by a backward thrust of the stake that turned him to dust. At the same time, from some hunter’s instinct, well honed in many battles, he seemed to spot Luk’s next move before he made it. After all, trapped between István’s and Saloman’s stakes, Luk had only one direction to go.
As Luk jumped, ensuring that any blow from Saloman’s stake would miss his heart, István grabbed him around the waist, pinning both arms, presumably to keep him on the ground. It didn’t work; Luk was too strong. He simply took István with him, and landed on top of one of the tall bookcases before shaking the hunter off like a dog dislodging a flea.
As Saloman whirled to face two charging vampires who were overdesperate to gain the power of an Ancient kill, he saw Luk kick István in the ribs, hard enough to send him spinning off the bookcase.
And then, most bizarrely of all, five humans jumped through the windows and rappelled down the library walls.
Blood dripped from Elizabeth’s arm, trickling over her hand and between her fingers. It made the stake in her left hand slippery and hard to hold, and she’d already bungled one supposedly sure attempt on the heart of the vampire she fought. Of course, distraction didn’t help. She’d seen Luk’s mind-attack on Saloman, and her instinct to rush to his aid had allowed the vampire to slash her arm. That pain, she could live with, but it had been next to impossible to fight with the sudden agony in her head. It had to be Saloman’s pain she was feeling, and along with her terror for him, it almost debilitated her.
Fortunately, it hadn’t lasted long, though, and somehow, she’d managed to block the vampire, to defend from instinct until the pain lifted and Saloman was free. Another vampire, sensing an easy yet powerful kill, abandoned his fight with Lazar to join the one against her. Leaping high and kicking out, she floored him and finally dispatched her original attacker on the way back down to the ground. And, dropping to a crouch, she plunged the stake into the fallen vampire’s heart before springing back to her feet, panting, and whirling to assess the next danger.
She took in the scene in a bare instant. The library was a mess. Tables and chairs had been upended and broken in the fight, some of the smaller bookcases overturned with books spilling out; Luk’s fire hadn’t caught enough to do much more damage than blacken one side of a bookcase, charring a row of books and singeing a few bindings before István had put it out. Since then, presumably, Luk had been kept too busy to summon any more fire.
Among the carnage lay a couple of wounded vampires, and the body of the dead hunter, Seb. There would be time enough to grieve for him later. Right now there was too much to do. Elizabeth fought on.
She had a glimpse of Saloman cutting a swath among the invading vampires, striking out with both hands in perfect time. His victims exploded into dust, and he strode on, repeating the maneuver with equal success before the enemy cottoned on and leapt back out of his way.
Elizabeth crashed her elbow back into the flesh of a fresh attacker and spun to meet him.
Apart from the lost Seb, the hunters were still on their feet, although bleeding. Lazar had blood all over his face, yet seemed to attack with a joy in battle that implied he’d been released rather than forced from his desk.
Near him, Mihaela plunged her stake and turned another vampire to dust. Though the numbers were still drastically against it, Elizabeth began to hope that maybe, just maybe, they could win in the end. Then Mihaela stepped back, almost touching a wounded vampire that lay at her feet. Elizabeth saw his sword arm twitch, and she yelled a warning to Mihaela. Hacking her own opponent to the ground, she sprinted across the room to help, but it was too late. The fallen vampire yanked on Mihaela’s leg, bringing her crashing down to meet his bared teeth.
No!
Elizabeth’s agonized cry felt long and drawn-out; she didn’t even know if she said it aloud. All she knew was, she could do nothing to stop this tragedy, and neither could the unbalanced, helpless Mihaela.
Elizabeth’s agonized cry felt long and drawn-out; she didn’t even know if she said it aloud. All she knew was, she could do nothing to stop this tragedy, and neither could the unbalanced, helpless Mihaela.
Incredibly, Mihaela landed on dust. Beside her, a capable hand withdrew the stake that had killed her attacker. Elizabeth skidded to a halt. Mihaela twisted to a crouch, staring up at her undead savior for the smallest instant and giving a curt nod. Maximilian, who had not betrayed Saloman again, straightened and turned away in search of fresh prey. It was a tiny incident in the carnage of battle, and yet as Elizabeth rejoined the fray, it bothered her, because of the expression in Mihaela’s eyes as they’d encountered Maximilian’s. The hunter who didn’t fear death had looked frightened by her salvation.
Running next to help the sore-pressed Konrad, Elizabeth heard her name called and looked around wildly for its source. A row of people under the windows stood in wary, defensive postures, scanning the carnage before them.
“Elizabeth!” the woman’s voice yelled again.
“Cyn?” Amazed, Elizabeth began to hack her way forward.
What the hell are you doing here?
What the hell are you doing here?
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