Blood of Angels (16 page)

It was true then, that vampires wept blood. He’d never seen it before.

“Angyalka,” he said helplessly.

She caught his hand and held it to her cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Then she moved, faster than he could see. The door from the roof banged shut, and he lay alone under the stars.

****

Had she ever cried the blood tears before? She didn’t think so. Vampire existence had been so preferable to life for her that she’d seen very little to weep about over the centuries of her undeath. Even now, they weren’t tears of misery but of joy she couldn’t express in any other way.

He’d given her back the night. And she hadn’t realized until now how much she’d missed it. The quiet darkness, the beauty of the black velvet sky with its sparkling stars and pale, ancient moon, had flooded her as she lay beneath him, convulsing with sexual pleasure. István and the night had overwhelmed her without ropes, even before he’d given her the greatest gift of all: his blood.

No wonder emotion tore at her. What István had done for her was huge. She couldn’t take it in properly, let alone analyze it. She could only feel it.

As she ran downstairs, rezipping her dress with one hand, she dabbed at her eyes with the other, trying to stem the flow of blood. Her skin began to reabsorb it. She only hoped she looked clean enough to get past Karoly on the door. He threw it open for her with alacrity and the subservient smile of the young vampire to a more powerful ally, and she swept past him and straight to the ladies’ room.

There were a few human women reapplying makeup and chatting. Ignoring them, Angyalka turned on the tap at the nearest basin and splashed water all over her unnaturally flushed face. The water flowed pink as it ran down the drain.

Only then, seizing the clean, soft towel from the shelf above, did she dare glance at herself in the mirror. There was no sign of blood on her face. She rubbed the towel over her cheeks and gazed into her own eyes. They glowed warm and soft. Even her lips looked soft. Instinctively, she touched them, to see if they felt different too. The lips István had kissed.

What’s happening to me?

I have a human lover who let me drink his blood. I’ve been out in the night, felt the wind on my face and my body.

I’ve had a good day.

A breath of laughter caught in her throat. She became aware that the women a couple of mirrors away were watching her with curiosity. She winked at them, grinned, and strolled out of the room, ready to take up the reins as hostess.

As if the night air and István’s blood between them had given her a massive energy surge, she felt capable of anything. And most importantly, she had to keep the club safe. So as she walked around the tables collecting empty glasses, she let down the guards she normally kept up against vocal and telepathic speech.

This was one of the first things Maximilian had taught her. Most fledglings picked up telepathy and accompanying defensive blocks gradually with age and experience. With Angyalka, hearing undead thoughts and the babble of human voices had rushed upon her with unbearable suddenness. The noise had been deafening, unendurable, and she’d have gone mad without Maximilian to show her how to filter out the backgrounds and hear only what she wanted to. Now it wasn’t even second nature; it was first.

So she drifted from table to table, listening. A few vampires were discussing the recent explosion in terms that left Angyalka in no doubt of what they wanted to do to the perpetrator. The sentiment warmed her. She’d worked damned hard for a long time to make the Angel the safe haven it was, and it was good to know her people appreciated it.

At the next table, some humans were discussing work and relationships, while one girl ogled an oblivious vampire drinking by himself on the other side of the room. Angyalka picked up an empty glass and kept moving. She ignored the seductive or just plain dirty chatter she overheard. Whatever turned people on was fine by her. She had a pretty good line in seductive looks and patter herself, although she rarely took it further. Most of the time she didn’t mean it.

Did István mean it?

István making love to her under the stars. István’s blood, rich and heady, flowing from his body into hers. Oh, but he tasted good, and his blood was strong and powerful. She imagined she
felt
it flowing through her veins now, nurturing her body, and she wanted to hug herself because part of him was still inside her.

Damnation, Angyalka, get a grip…

“I was there,” said a vampire voice at a table two or three away from where she was grabbing empty highball glasses. “And trust me, Angyalka is one vampire you do not want to cross. She stood there with her arms in the air, actually dissolving the explosion. That is serious strength.”

It was Igor, the vampire who had so nearly died that night. He wasn’t troubling to mask his conversation, although he spoke too quietly for humans to overhear. With him was the young American vampiress and an older vampire. Their interest was palpable. Angyalka turned her back, moving toward another table, but focused still on them, because they were speaking in English.

“I’ll tell you someone else who has power,” Igor revealed. “The Awakener, Saloman’s companion.”

“She’s human,” the older vampire sneered. His accent wasn’t American or British. Spanish, maybe.

“True,” Igor allowed. “But I was almost true dead. I lay there with a shard of wood as big as a chair leg grazing my heart. I couldn’t move. I could feel the life force ebbing away. I almost imagined I was dust already. Then
she
was there and touched me. I didn’t even feel the wood being drawn out. And in seconds, I was healed. Within a couple of minutes, I walked out of there.”

“You healed yourself, fool,” the older male said contemptuously. “The wood missed your heart completely.”

“It didn’t,” Igor insisted. He sounded indignant, almost frosty now. “Elizabeth Silk is a healer. She healed vampires
and
humans in the hunters’ battle.”

“You can’t know that. You weren’t there,” the old vampire objected. Softly, warily, Angyalka brushed against his mind. It was like walking into a stone wall. She didn’t even bounce. His mind was totally impenetrable.

For an instant, astonishment and panic both surged inside her. Only Saloman himself could close himself off from her quite so utterly. This vampire was not only old and strong. His power was a potential threat neither she nor Saloman could ignore.

“I hear things,” Igor said defensively. “Elizabeth Silk’s a most interesting case.”

Derision leaked from the older vampire’s mind. As if feeling it, Igor said, “I’ll tell you something else too. When her energy flooded into me, I could feel her strength as if she was
giving
it to me. And I heard not one heartbeat but two.”

Angyalka froze.
Oh shit… Igor, shut up.
But Igor was too agitated to hear her without more obvious intervention.

“The Awakener has two hearts now?” the old vampire mocked. “One for Saloman, one for the rest of us?”

“If she has two hearts in her body,” Igor said patiently. “One must be her child’s.”

Idiot!
Almost blindly, Angyalka carried the dirty glasses back to the bar. Of course it should have been obvious. Elizabeth hadn’t told Angyalka about the baby. Angyalka had sensed it, heard its heartbeat as Igor had. Every vampire Elizabeth had healed that night must know. Whatever masking she and Saloman had used before was no longer strong enough when Elizabeth opened herself for healing. Speculation would soon be rife. If it wasn’t already. Angyalka could have missed it, too taken up with István and her own petty desires and fears.

Saloman
, Angyalka called over the miles that separated them. And more urgently,
Saloman!

Yes, my angel?
His mocking reply sounded in her head as if he stood behind her. She resisted the temptation to turn and check.

Your secret’s out. The vampires Elizabeth healed sensed it. They’re talking about it.

There was a pause. He must have known this had to come out sooner rather than later.

Thank you,
he said at last.
Keep your promise to me.

Of course
, Angyalka replied automatically. She wondered if she could now. As she felt Saloman’s presence slip away, she tried to imagine herself going out, crossing the street, walking across the bridge that spanned the Danube. So many places to see, enveloped in the beauty of darkness. To follow her nose, choose her own prey from the hundreds of thousands who swarmed around the city… It was a huge, terrible thought, frightening, sickening, and yet massively exciting.

Could she? Could she really leap across the city to a house she’d never even seen, except in other beings’ heads, to protect a human woman’s unborn child?

There were worse causes to push yourself for.

She’d dumped the dirty glasses behind the bar and was sallying forth for a second sortie when she felt his presence. Everything tingled, from her skin to her womb, and for the first time, she admitted to herself that it was more, much more than the awareness of a vampire to the presence of her natural enemy, the hunter. It had always been more.

She savored the feeling, moving slowly, refusing to look at him just yet. Did he know, did he fully understand what he’d done for her?

Why had he done it? Just because he wanted her? Carefully, she scanned the tables at the front of the club, gradually making her way to him.

Her gaze passed over two young human women and jolted back to them. One was the woman she’d thrown out of the art gallery today. Her hair was done up in a more glamorous style, and she wore a lot more makeup, but it was undoubtedly the same person. Angyalka could smell her anger from several feet away.

But the woman wasn’t looking at her. She was gazing in the opposite direction—at István.

István, still sexily rumpled from their rooftop encounter, stopped in his tracks, then swerved not to her but to the two human women. The angry one beamed like a cat with the cream and pulled him onto the sofa beside her before kissing his cheek. István didn’t appear to mind. He nodded more distantly to the other woman.

How did he know them? What was his connection to the angry woman, to the enchanted picture? A hundred questions surged into her head, not quite covering the disappointment that seeped through her being, because after what they’d done on the roof, he hadn’t come straight to her.

I’m just the exotic fuck,
she thought, stricken all over again, just as she had been after their first time last night.
I’ll never count as high as a human being.

So why did he let me drink his blood?

Because it’s exciting. It’s new. It’s forbidden. And he misses that. He’s a bad boy gone straight and still pushing at the boundaries.

She drifted away, going through the motions, picking up glasses, smiling, chatting to the regular guests, but all the while her focus was on István’s dangerous friends. For the first time, she wished he were telepathic so she could tell him this was the star of Justin’s story.

“What on earth brings you here?” István asked the women.

The quiet one answered. “Andrea heard about this place from your friend. She came to look after you.” She spoke with an odd, mocking defiance, as if the whole situation, including István, at once attracted and repelled her.

Angyalka turned toward them, saw István’s gaze move between the two women until it settled on the quiet one. “Did she? And why did you come, Lara? To look after Andrea?”

“No,” Lara said with more blatant defiance. “To see if it was true.” She stared back at István’s watchful, carefully expressionless eyes.

István stirred. “To see if what was true?”

“She can’t say it here,” Andrea hissed.

István’s lip quirked, although he didn’t take his eyes off Lara. “Actually, she can say anything she likes here. Everything can be overheard, and nobody cares.”

Angyalka picked up a fresh surge of anger from Andrea. The woman’s gaze flitted between her friend Lara and István, and she quite clearly didn’t like what she saw. Warning bells chimed in Angyalka’s head. She laid down the dirty glasses on the nearest table.

“Well, whatever it is,
is
it true?” István asked softly. He was clearly feeding Lara’s reluctant attraction in order to get answers, and it seemed to be working. Lara’s pink lips stretched into a rueful smile, and Andrea lost it.

“Get
away
from him,” she raged, lunging across the table at her friend.

Prepared—after all, Andrea was behaving just like Bruno Geller—Angyalka leapt and landed between the two women. Not that she really minded if they scratched each other’s eyes out. Her primary motive remained keeping order in the club.

Andrea and István both blinked. They probably hadn’t even seen her arrive because she’d moved so fast.

“Fighting earns you instant exclusion,” Angyalka said mildly. “Although in your case, I believe you were excluded earlier. The ban extends to all my premises. I’d like you to leave quietly. Your friends may stay or go as they please.”

She knew it would happen of course. The sight of Angyalka was tantamount to a red rag to Andrea’s bull and the suggestion that Lara and István stay at the club together without her wouldn’t have gone down well either.

Andrea went for her, nails at the ready to claw and hurt. She couldn’t have harmed Angyalka, of course, but unexpectedly, it was István who grabbed Andrea and yanked her back, capturing her with the same speedy, effective hold that he’d pulled on Angyalka eighteen months ago.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he said harshly.

“It isn’t her,” Angyalka said. “She’s the one I threw out of the gallery earlier. Sit her down.”

István yanked Andrea back to the sofa and sat beside her, holding her arms behind her back while Angyalka hemmed her in from the other side.

“What are you doing?” Lara demanded. “Get off her! Leave her alone!”