Blood of Angels (14 page)

István slammed his knee upward, at the same time using his left hand to smash the vampire’s head into the stake pointing from the other side. He felt it go in even as the vampire screamed with pain and rage. István wrenched the stake free, threw his body forward, and rolled the vampire underneath him. In an instant, the point of the stake was over the vampire’s heart.

A year ago, he’d have finished it. Hunter training left no room for hesitation. But this was a most unusual situation. Even before Saloman’s revolutionary détente, vampires never went looking for hunters. Killing one just brought too much trouble, and besides, ordinary humans were far easier meat. István had never even heard of a vampire breaking into a hunter’s home.

And now that he had the luxury of pausing, he realized that the whole place was a mess—things swept onto the floor, drawers opened and half-emptied, cushions pulled off chairs and ripped open.

“What were you looking for?” he asked curiously.

The vampire’s agonized eyes came back into focus. He must have had a hell of a headache. Whatever the reason, he didn’t seem to understand. István repeated the question, then, in a flash of inspiration, tried it in German, and then English, which at last got a response.

“Power-store tool,” the vampire said, slurring his words like a drunk. An American drunk. Interesting. The vampiress who’d been so curious about him last night had been American too. “It could annihilate us.”

“Or us,” István said reasonably. “In the wrong hands. And if it worked.” He pricked the skin over the vampire’s heart. “Did someone send you here to steal it?”

The vampire grinned, baring his fangs. “I drew the short straw.”

A group of them. Worried vampires? Or vampires fighting back against détente? An international conspiracy? Or were the American vampires just trying to take back control over their own affairs again? Whatever, he supposed it was inevitable.

“I could kill you,” he said conversationally. “Or I could give you to Saloman.”

“Saloman isn’t here.”

István blinked. “You really do think short-term, don’t you?” He got up slowly, watching the vampire with great care. “If such a tool’s possible, it has a long way to go. Tell your friends. And if any of you come here again, I’ll kill you before you can open your mouth. Go away.”

The vampire’s eyes widened. He stood, leaving a gory mess on István’s carpet. The wound in his head still bled sluggishly, and he staggered slightly as he backed his way toward the door, where he turned and bolted.

István hoped he wouldn’t run into any of the neighbors.

****

At the top of the grubby stairs to the Angel Club, István saw that he was right. The entrance wasn’t really the top of the building. Another, narrower flight, almost invisible in the darkness, led up, presumably to the roof. Maybe even to Angyalka’s living quarters.

“Well, well, honored yet again.” The vampire Béla lounged against the club door while a human waitress detached herself from his body and scuttled back inside. Béla’s fangs were showing, although they appeared to be clean. “What’s the matter? Life too tame since the hunter organization lost its teeth?”

“You guys were always the ones with the teeth,” István said.

Béla let out a faint hiss that might have been a laugh. Or a warning. It was hard to tell. At any rate, he still blocked the door and met István’s steady gaze without blinking.

“You don’t back down,” Béla observed. “I can respect that. I can even respect hunter strength. Plus, I abide by Saloman’s decrees as well as Angyalka’s wishes. No reason not to. But if you give me one, hunter, if you so much as piss her off, all the respect and decrees in the world won’t stop me draining you dry.”

Interesting.

The vampire stood aside, even opened the door to release another blast of rock music.

“Trying,” István murmured as he strolled past him.

Béla’s brow twitched with incomprehension.

“Won’t stop you
trying
to drain me dry,” István explained. He knew better than to leave a vampire with a sense of victory. He didn’t look back, but the door took a long time to close.

Angyalka was behind the bar, serving drinks. Although she must have been aware of him, for some reason she didn’t look up until he stood almost in front of her. Even then, she finished pouring the beer, placed it on a silver tray with a collection of other drinks, and pushed the lot toward a waitress—Béla’s waitress—before she turned to him.

“My favorite hunter,” she purred. “What can I get for you tonight?”

She’d been doing this for decades, centuries, perfecting this flirt mode and somehow imbuing it with so much coolness, so much sheer distance, that no one ever stepped over the line. Unless they were invited. It began to look as if István’s invitation was withdrawn.

“A bottle of beer,” István said. “And a dance, when you have a moment.”

Her eyes flickered, the only sign of agitation she betrayed. “No moments tonight. It’s Friday.”

“I’ll wait over here,” István said. “In hope.”

She shrugged and passed him his beer. “Please yourself.” Her glance moved to the young man sitting on the barstool next to him. “Talk to Justin.”

“Eh?” A young man looked up a little wildly, his gaze whizzing from Angyalka to István. Obligingly, István picked up Justin’s drink too and wandered to the nearest table. Justin had to follow him if he wanted his drink back.

“Why should I talk to you?” István enquired, plonking them both on the table.

Justin sighed as he sat down and then told him an odd tale about an aggressive customer and his and Angyalka’s subsequent discovery of a hexed picture.

It was no stranger than a lot of things István had learned over the years.

“So after looking at this picture, you hated Angyalka?” István asked, seeking confirmation of his understanding.

“Worse. I wanted to hurt her.”

“Why?” István asked.

“No reason. I like Angyalka. I’d do anything for her. Which is what’s so scary about the whole thing. It made me want to hurt someone I care about, for no reason worth a damn.”

“No reason worth a damn,” István repeated. “Then there was a reason, a stupid one, maybe, that doesn’t make any sense now?”

Justin hesitated, glancing over to the bar and back to István. “I thought—imagined—she wasn’t human, that she was dangerous and should be exterminated.”

István held the young man’s defiant gaze. “And do you still feel that way?”

“Of course not. I just had to look into her eyes and I knew it was absolute rubbish. She took the picture away so I couldn’t see it again, so nobody would.”

István sipped his beer thoughtfully, still keeping his gaze on Justin’s open face. “And you come here to the nightclub often?”

“No, not often. I just wanted to tonight.”

“Did you tell anyone you were coming? Bring anything with you?”

Justin’s eyes widened. “You mean like a bomb? What do you think?”

“I think no, but I’ve been wrong before. Do you know this guy?” Hastily, István got out his phone and found a picture of Konrad and Mihaela.

Justin gazed at it, frowning. “I met the girl once. She’s married to an artist, isn’t she? Don’t know him at all. Why?”

“Shot in the dark,” István said ruefully. He wasn’t sure if he was pleased or annoyed not to be able to pin it all on Konrad and wrap up both mysteries at once. But it seemed there were two enemies—or two lots of enemies out there.

Shoving his phone back in his pocket, he kept watching Justin. “How do you feel now? Happy to be here?”

Justin shrugged. “Sure.”

Though happier when he was talking to Angyalka, István suspected. He sat back and waved one expansive hand. “So tell me, what do you think of the clientele tonight? Comfortable with these people? Any of them you wouldn’t trust? Any you wish would leave?”

Justin blinked. “Who are you exactly? Doctor or policeman?”

István’s lip twitched. “Neither. I suppose you could call me an investigator with experience in this kind of thing. It would help Angyalka if you’d humor me.”

Justin sighed and began to scan the room. “I don’t know… A couple of the women on the dance floor look a bit sleazy, and I wouldn’t like to run into that dark bloke in a back alley…”

He pointed out another few whose appearance or behavior offended him in some way, and then Béla strolled in with a jerk of his head at a group of vampires at the table nearest the door. One got up and went to replace him outside on the stairs.

Justin glowered. “I don’t like him either. I know he works for Angyalka and a bouncer has to be a
bit
mean, but that guy looks positively brutal.”

“He probably is,” István allowed. “Should Angyalka sack him?”

“Sure. And ban him.”

“I see. Okay, thanks for your help, Justin.”

Justin’s lip curled. “You mean I can go now?”

István met his gaze. “You don’t like me much either, do you?”

Something flickered in Justin’s face, a hint of violence, quickly lost in a welter of confusion and even shame. “I don’t know you, do I?” His gaze flashed to Béla, now lounging on a barstool, then came back to István, as if comparing the two.

Interesting.

Justin gave a little laugh, picked up his glass, and stood. István let him go, taking another thoughtful sip of his beer.

Angyalka slid onto the sofa beside him, and immediately all his senses went into overdrive. She didn’t even touch him, and yet his body heated almost instantly. If there was the natural alarm of the hunter recognizing the close proximity of his prey, István couldn’t distinguish it from the powerful surge of pure, blind lust.

“Well?” she murmured.

It took him a moment to understand what she meant. He had to disguise the silence as thinking time.

“I think at least some of the compulsion’s still there,” István said.

Angyalka frowned. “But I found it in his head and removed it.”

“You removed what was associated with you, but it seems to go deeper than that. There’s still some aggression there, unnatural aggression for him, I would guess, aimed at people who look or act a little differently. He picked out several people in here—not all vampires, so far as I can tell, but some of them certainly were, plus a few humans who look threatening, physically or sexually.”

Angyalka closed her parted lips. István couldn’t help following the tiny movement. He thought her cheeks colored slightly, and though he couldn’t tell why, he knew a powerful urge to spread that flush through her whole body with friction.

He pulled himself together enough to ask, “How often has he come to the nightclub in the past?”

Angyalka shrugged. “Never, I don’t think. Maybe he stuck his head round the door once when he first started at the gallery, but he certainly didn’t stay.”

“I think that’s part of the compulsion. To come here. It would explain at least some of your troublemakers recently, including Bruno Geller.”

“I’d better have another go at him,” Angyalka murmured. “Not such a simple enchantment as I thought.”

“Where did you get the picture from?” István asked.

“It’s Maximilian’s.”

István frowned. “Why would he enchant it like that? This is working against Saloman… Has he changed sides again?”

“Maximilian doesn’t change sides,” Angyalka said impatiently. “He made a mistake
once
—a bloody huge one, I’ll grant you, though quite understandable to vampires—but he never wavered before or since. The enchantment isn’t his.”

István couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy at her defense of the vampire, but he kept his voice even. “Do you
know
that?”

“I recognize his style. That wasn’t it.”

He could have disguised it, of course, but no one who knew him seemed to think Maximilian would have a motive to do this.

“Promoting discord between vampires and humans,” he mused. “Causing fights here, where they meet on a regular basis, whether aware of it or not. Who would do that? Whose interest is it in?”

“Vampires who’re unhappy with détente and Saloman’s regime,” Angyalka said at once. “It’s making humans our enemies as well as our prey. Perhaps forcing Saloman’s revelation to be too sudden, provoking the war you hunters have always feared.”

Thinking of the American vampire in his apartment, István cocked his head to one side. “Know of any such vampires?”

She shrugged. “I know they’re there.”

“Come across any American vampires recently?”

“There were two in here last night, including the pretty young one who was all over you. Why?”

“I found one in my apartment this evening. Ransacking it.”

She sat back, holding his gaze. “You think I sent him?”

“No. But it crossed my mind,” he admitted, “since I talked to you about the power of angels.”

She didn’t look offended or smug. She didn’t even ask why he’d discounted his suspicions. She was too smart, or was too aware of the very early stages of his research, to have made a play at this stage.

Instead, she said, “You think that’s what he was after? Your new gadget?”

“According to him.”

She regarded him thoughtfully. Then changed the subject back to the enchanted picture. “What about discontented hunters? You know about enchantments. How many of you can use them?”

“None that I know of. To be honest, until Elizabeth forced us to recognize their existence, we dismissed them as fairy tales.”

“Elizabeth has Ancient blood in her veins, however thin. Perhaps some hunters have too.”

Unofficial hunters, maybe, like Cyn Venolia in New York, but he’d never heard of her enchanting. He’d never heard of any hunter with gifts beyond what experience and the added strength of vampire killing had given them.

Konrad hears vampires as they die.

The memory came to him out of nowhere, a half-forgotten conversation with Elizabeth, who was telepathic and could communicate with any vampire. Konrad had confessed to hearing them as he killed them. What else could he do?

I’m demonizing my friend. My damaged, dangerous friend…

He said evenly, “I’ll look into my people if you look into yours.”