Blood Guilt (10 page)

****

When he was dressed in fresh jeans and T-shirt, Maximilian caught up his thick woolen jacket and packed the pockets with the stone compass, his drawing pad, pencils and pens, and the wallet in which he’d stuffed banknotes from several countries. It didn’t really matter which he used. He could make anyone see whichever currency—or denomination—was necessary to the situation. The passport-size booklet for ease of traveling swiftly by human means was still in the inner pocket.

He slipped the loaded jacket on as he walked across to the bed and gazed down at the sleeping hunter. It was becoming a habit to watch her sleep, a curiously addictive one. Naked under his old overcoat, she lay curled and contented, her cheeks pale and yet slightly flushed still from sex.

He’d made love to her for hours with a kind of frantic, fevered energy he couldn’t remember any other lover ever arousing in him, alive or undead. Partly, of course, that was his long abstinence. But he couldn’t rule out the effect of this woman’s charms. There was something about her that moved him, ever since she’d first looked at him over the disintegrating vampire he’d saved her from in Budapest. She fought like a tiger and yet had the tragic, startled eyes of a deer. He’d known even then that it was unexpected and unwanted attraction to him that had caused that shock, that fear. But there was more to it than that. The hunter Mihaela was complicated, wounded, and damaged. As he was. Except while he’d wallowed in isolation for centuries, Mihaela had got on with her life, fighting back the only way she knew how.

She gave a little sigh and buried her face in the pillow. Maximilian felt his lips tug upwards in an involuntary, rueful smile. He was aware he’d taken too much from her, in terms of blood and sex and sheer emotion, but his need had been huge and urgent, and once he’d pierced her self-control, hers had been equally great. Even now, the memory of her wild, eager passion, the taste of her heady, hunter blood, made him harden all over again. He hadn’t been able to leave her alone, had only stopped in the end because he realized how totally exhausted she was, and finally let her fall asleep.

And that, he supposed, was all for the best. It would have been good to hang around, to have her waken with him inside her for one more bout of delicious sex before taking her with him. But he’d weakened her; now she’d slow him down.

And more importantly, he really didn’t want her giving the boy to the hunters. It would be best all round if he was alone when he found Robbie.

Maximilian cast a last glance around his home of several decades and realized he wouldn’t miss it. He’d been fucking miserable here, and it was long past time to move on without regret.

He settled his gaze once more on Mihaela’s beautiful face, fighting the urge to touch her. He couldn’t regret her either, although neither could he doubt that she’d regret him.

Turning, he left the room in swift silence, ran up to the ruined lighthouse and out into the cold wind and darkness. He didn’t need light to find his boat.

****

Her sleep was so deep that just for an instant when she awoke, she knew a profound, luxurious contentment. Her happy, sated body wasn’t even sore, thanks to Maximilian’s healing if wickedly sensual tongue.

With the flood of remembrance, heat surged, and she turned quickly to see if he still lay beside her. She couldn’t even tell if it was relief or disappointment that she felt; she was too swamped by the memory of falling asleep in his arms—the arms of the least trustworthy vampire who’d ever existed, and probably the most powerful after Saloman.

She dragged her hand across her face and through her hair. What the hell had she been thinking? Why the hell had she allowed this? Allowed it? Shit, she’d begged for it—vocally at one time, as she recalled. How in God’s name did she live with the humiliation of that?

By never seeing him again.

She swung her legs out of bed and realized two things. The body parts so well used earlier tingled in a pleasurable ache. And she felt weak and dizzy from the sudden movement.

“He bit me,” she whispered. “Shit, he bit me over and over. He could have killed me and I wouldn’t have cared because all I wanted was more sex…What the hell happened to me?”

Hastily, she looked more carefully around the room to make sure he wasn’t lurking and overhearing her, although in reality, she was sure she’d have sensed his presence so close.

I wanted to know what it was like. He was right about that. I watched Elizabeth with Saloman and couldn’t help wondering… And then I saw
him
.

For a moment, she drowned in the sensual memories of the hours with him above her, under her, behind her, kissing, biting, caressing, fucking. And God, he could fuck…

She began to understand the full tragedy of what she’d allowed to happen, to suspect that the vampire Maximilian had ruined her for mere mortals.

It doesn’t matter. Sex was only ever sex for me. Long-term love and happiness were never going to be an option.

Concentrate, idiot
, she lashed herself, and finally glanced at the watch still clinging to her wrist. She frowned. Ten past three. Surely she’d slept longer than that? It must have been beyond three before he’d let her sleep…

“Oh shit,” she muttered. Of course. It had to be three in the morning.

She leapt off the bed and rushed to scramble into her clothes, ignoring the waves of dizziness. She found her jacket, complete with unused stakes, and put it on before creeping surreptitiously from the room. He wasn’t in the outer chamber or the one beyond that. She began to breathe more easily as she climbed shakily into the lighthouse and walked out into the darkness.

Stumbling and slipping, she staggered down the hill in the fine, misty rain to where she’d left the boat tied up. At any moment, she expected to hear his shout or find him standing right in front of her, still and menacing and sexy as hell. She couldn’t afford to find him sexy anymore. She certainly couldn’t afford to remember what he’d done to her this afternoon. Or what she’d done to him.

Heat flowed through her, despite the cold and the rain. She hoped it was embarrassment, but it felt awfully like arousal. She untied the boat, pulled it farther into the water, and climbed in. Her head spun. With a last, searching look around the beach and the hill, she drew in her breath and started the motor. If he hadn’t heard her leaving, he would certainly hear that.

It was only as she set off at full speed across the sea that it came to her there were two possible reasons for him not hearing her. One: he didn’t want to; he was ignoring her because he’d had his fun and didn’t want her around anymore. Or two: he’d already left.

This fresh rush of heat she recognized all too well. Anger. When she’d followed him here, he couldn’t kill her without Elizabeth complaining to Saloman. So he’d deliberately weakened her the only way he could with impunity so that she’d sleep and he could get ahead of her without a fuss. She wondered if all that fucking had been a side benefit or a chore.

Maximilian, the great betrayer.

She should have expected it. But, lost in a daze of blind lust, she hadn’t even seen it coming.

Chapter Eight

From the Alps, as from the foothills of the Pyrenees, the stone compass picked up no trace of Robbie. In theory, the instrument could trace a like power anywhere across the globe, provided there was a connection—in this case, a connection through stone itself between Maximilian and Robbie. Such connections reached across continents and under oceans. But so far, he hadn’t hit one. Which could mean the compass simply didn’t work on humans, even powerfully psychic ones with an Ancient gene.

The Ancient blood of Maximilian’s creator, Saloman, made him one of the strongest vampires in existence. It was infuriating that he still couldn’t find a trace of one child.

Maximilian wandered into the ski lodge and sat down in the public bar. The amiable young couple whom he’d drunk from by way of breakfast early this morning smiled at him over their après ski drinks. He’d find someone else to bite before he left. By now, with their depleted blood, those two would have far too high an alcohol content to please him.

It felt good to be feeding again. Strangely, it even felt good to be among people who had no idea who or what he was. But he wasn’t stupid. When he went to the Carpathians—next on his list—and from there to Budapest, the bubble of false well-being would burst. They’d all be after him, the conspirators, the discontented, the vengeful. It was one reason he’d wanted to find Robbie before he went to Saloman. The search would be so much harder when he had to constantly watch his back.

Maximilian took out the stone compass once more, hidden in his palm, and stared at it, willing the needle to move. It stayed stubbornly still. Beautiful, frustrating gadget.

He remembered the first time he’d ever seen it, in Saloman’s hands, in Pisa, in the Piazza del Duomo, under the shadow of the beautiful tower that had leaned even then. They’d been to the late mass in the cathedral, where Maximilian had stared and stared at the stunning paintings on the ceilings and the fabulous carvings on the pulpit and the font that made him ache with their beauty. He never tired of going there.

Saloman was leaving Pisa the following day for Florence and then on to Buda, he said. And so for Maximilian there had been a bittersweet pleasure in walking in the sacred square with him, a farewell for who knew how long, from his most elusive and fascinating friend.

“What are you doing?” Maximilian had asked when he’d seen him gazing at the small instrument in his hand.

“Keeping track of my enemies,” Saloman had said, with the kind of bland, not quite serious tone he often used when he wanted to keep his companions guessing.

“With a compass?” Maximilian had said dryly. “Will it find
my
enemies too?”

“Try,” Saloman said, offering it to him.

Maximilian took it and stared at it. After an instant, it pointed straight at Saloman. “Ah,” Saloman said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “Obviously, it finds your friends. And look, it’s moving again.”

It was. Maximilian followed it and found himself watching a tall, distinguished man in a velvet-edged short black cloak walking directly toward the needle. The man halted abruptly, gazing not at him but at Saloman, with the expression of a startled deer. And then he bowed low. “My lord,” he murmured. “I didn’t think to find you here. What a pleasure.”

Saloman inclined his head, accepting the courtesy as if it were his due. The lowly Maximilian had never been half so obsequious, and it came to him that he really didn’t have any idea about the extent of Saloman’s power or influence or what he did with it.

“Here is a countryman of yours,” Saloman said. “Maximilian, meet Ferdinand.”

Ferdinand bowed but effaced himself. It entered Maximilian’s head as he watched his back disappear into the darkness that his countryman was frightened of Saloman. He hadn’t expected ever to see Ferdinand again. He certainly hadn’t suspected what an important part in his life he was to play. At the time, Maximilian was more interested in the compass which didn’t point north.

Saloman, gazing from it to Maximilian’s face, had been smiling faintly. “How interesting,” he’d said. “Perhaps you should keep it.”

And he always had. And at least now he remembered that it had worked for him as a human, perhaps because he had the Ancient gene. Perhaps that was why Saloman had turned him. Whatever, it
should
be able to find Robbie.

Annoyingly, it just hadn’t.

Perhaps the Carpathians would provide the connection.

****

Robbie woke to a stream of sunshine shining through a chink in the curtain. He wasn’t in a room he knew, but that didn’t bother him. He’d wakened so often in new rooms that one more made no real difference to him.

He was lying on an old-fashioned sofa that seemed well-used though not terribly comfortable. Someone had dropped a blanket over him. The walls were peppered with a strange mishmash of pictures. Robbie didn’t like any of them. He climbed out of the sofa, fully dressed, and found he was glad of that. Somehow, he didn’t like the idea of them undressing him, even when he was asleep.

The floor was cold under his feet. It was made of tiles, like a bathroom, although this was definitely a living room. There was a fireplace and a television and a dining table, beyond which was a kitchen area. Robbie padded across to the window and pulled back the curtain. Sunlight streamed in, making him smile. There was a garden outside with a couple of trees and some shrubs bordering a stone terrace.

Between him and the beguiling sunlight was a window and a glass door side by side. Since the key was in the door lock, he turned it and opened the door, already inhaling the fresh air he hadn’t even realized he missed.

Almost at once, his nose wrinkled in involuntary distaste. Just as a voice said behind him, “Not thinking of leaving us, are you?”

It was Gavril, the vampire with the broken ear. He stood just inside the room, keeping well clear, Robbie realized, of the direct sunlight now streaming into the middle of the area.

“No,” Robbie said honestly. On the whole, he’d felt safer and much more comfortable with the other vampire, Max, and with the nice lady called Mihaela, but at the moment, he was too curious to run away. “It’s warm here.”

“Only by the standards of your benighted country. Come in and close the door. Pull the curtain.”

Robbie obliged. His urge to go out had waned as he smelled the quality of the air. “So what are we going to do here?” he asked.

“We’re going to wait for some friends to join us, and then we’re going to see the sights.”

Robbie felt his eyes widen. “In the daylight?”

“Of course not.” Gavril, brave now the sun had been shut out, moved past him, turned the key in the lock of the french door, and dropped the key into his own pocket. “You’ll want food. There’s some in the fridge.”

As Gavril swept the blanket onto the floor and sat down on the sofa, Robbie wandered into the kitchen area and opened the fridge door. His stomach began to rumble. He found a jug of milk and drank straight from the lip. He’d discovered early on that the vampires had no interest in table manners. He bit into a hunk of salty cheese, and although he wasn’t sure he liked it, he was so hungry that he swallowed it anyway.

Hey, Robbie,
said a familiar voice in his mind.
Are you alone?

Max!
he answered, pleased. He was getting good at talking like this, without speaking or even moving his lips. But just to be on the safe side, he turned his back on Gavril and began to rummage in what looked like a bread bin. He took out the uncut loaf that was inside.
I’m not really alone, but I can talk a bit.

Do you know where you are?

They’ve brought me to a house. It’s warm outside, and it stinks.

Stinks?
Max sounded startled
. Of what?

Shite,
said Robbie uncompromisingly.

He felt Max’s distaste as if it were his own and hastened to reassure him.
Not a toilet kind of shite smell,
he said.
More like…
He paused, struggling for the right explanation.
Gorgie Farm, ken?
he said finally, pleased to remember something useful. Absently, he bit into the loaf and started to chew.

A farm? You’re on a farm?

I don’t know about that. Doesn’t seem to be much growing in the garden. But it smells like one.

You’re in the countryside, near farming land, and it’s warm. Warm enough to go about without a coat?

Oh aye.

Good,
Max approved, and Robbie felt proud. He didn’t get praise very often.
Are they still treating you all right?

Yes. They just don’t want me to leave.

There was a pause, then:
Do
you
want to leave?

Yes,
Robbie said uncertainly.
Soon. But they want me to do something, and I really want to know what it is. They won’t tell me, though. They don’t talk in my head like they used to.

They’re masking their thoughts from you because they don’t want you to hear them anymore.

It saddened Robbie but not too much. He didn’t really want Gavril and the others as friends anymore either.
Are you going to come and get me?
he asked Max eagerly.

As soon as I can, and we can find out together what they want you for.

That would be best,
Robbie agreed, pleased.

Will you do me a favor, to help me find you? Think of me, especially if you ever go outside. Touch something made of stone, and try and speak to me like this. Without them knowing.

All right,
Robbie said excitedly. He thought of something else.
Will Mihaela come too?

There was another pause, then:
I’ll take you to Mihaela
, the vampire said.

****

It had begun to snow in Budapest, large, fat flakes, so white against the night sky that they seemed to shine. Maximilian amused himself by watching them as he sat on the museum steps and waited for the right passerby.

He found her eventually, hurrying home, presumably, but not from the pub. He could smell no alcohol on her, which was good. Plus she was young, mid-to-late twenties, and glowing with health. Pretty too.

“Hey,” he called to her without getting up. “Have you got the time?”

She slowed, glancing at him. The book open on his lap probably helped boost the harmless impression he wanted to create. She said, “Just after ten.”

“Pardon?” With the excuse, he stood and ran down the steps toward her. He caught her eye as he moved and willed her, subtly, to walk to meet him. She did and came to a halt at the foot of the steps, repeating, “Just after ten o’clock.”

“Good.” He held her gaze and smiled, and she smiled back, not mesmerized or compelled but soothed enough to notice his attractions without fearing him. “I’ve still got five minutes.”

“Me too,” she admitted and looked a little surprised by her own openness.

“Sit beside me for a moment,” he suggested and lowered himself back to the cold step. She hesitated, snowflakes caught fetchingly in her dark hair. He wondered how Mihaela would look here and now, then banished her from his thoughts as the girl came and sat beside him. He could read attraction, admiration in her gaze, in her chaotic, leaking mind. He put his arm around her shoulder, tilted her head to one side, and bit her.

She gasped but didn’t scream. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, and she panted for breath. She made a sound in her throat, deep and sexy and aroused. He thought of taking her home, now that he’d rediscovered feeding and sex, but on the whole, he couldn’t be bothered.

He detached his mouth from her neck. “Thank you,” he said and gazed into her dazed eyes once more. “You’d better catch your bus.”

“Call me,” she said, as though under the illusion she’d given him her number.

“Sure,” said Maximilian. She’d remember nothing about him at all in another few minutes. He winked and watched her as she smiled and ran on her way.

“Good dinner?” Saloman enquired.

Maximilian stilled. He’d neither seen nor sensed his creator’s approach, but he wasn’t surprised by his presence either. “Middling,” he answered, turning to face the Ancient, who stood on the step above, gazing down at him. He wore a favorite full-length, black leather coat, open at the front. The collar was turned up at the back, tangling with his long, raven-black hair. Snow was gathering at the top of his bent head as he stood gazing down at Maximilian. Apart from his clothing, his appearance hadn’t changed in six hundred years, and it still brought Maximilian an involuntary lifting of the heart. Until the ache of remembered guilt kicked in.

Saloman moved in a blur to settle beside him. For a moment, neither said anything. Saloman should have killed him last year when he found him on the island. That was what Maximilian had assumed he’d come to do, and he knew he deserved no better. Three hundred years ago, he’d betrayed the being he loved most in the world for the sake of blind ambition. And the pleasure of fucking Tsigana, he supposed, although half of her attraction had been that she was Saloman’s. He’d been ridiculously flattered that she was prepared to leave such a lover for him, Maximilian. But of course, all she’d really wanted was immortality, which Saloman had refused her; and when Maximilian had understood that, he’d refused to give it to her too. Even more ridiculously, he’d been aware that Saloman would have been pleased by his decision. Even though he’d already staked Saloman and left him without the enchantment of peace…

He shifted, as if by that he could change the unendurable direction of his thoughts. He’d been living with the guilt for so long it shouldn’t bother him just because he sat beside the being he’d betrayed, whom he could still betray, and yet who, for some reason, appeared to trust him. More than that, Saloman was even pleased to be in his company. He let that much show, and even knowing how calculating the Ancient could be, Maximilian soaked it up like a sponge.

He’d missed Saloman.

The Ancient said, “You’ve come openly this time. They’ll swarm around you like locusts on a honeypot—the revenge-seekers and the discontented.”