Blood of Angels (17 page)

Angyalka ignored her. István said soothingly, “We’re not hurting her. Couldn’t you tell she’s not herself? She’s been hypnotized. Angyalka here has some skill in—er—de-hypnosis.”

If Angyalka hadn’t been holding Andrea’s wild stare, she’d have rolled her eyes at that.
De-hypnosis?
However, she concentrated on forcing her way into the woman’s mind and loosening the compulsion. Remembering Justin, she delved deeper, found an almost hidden trigger linked to the club via an image of the angel over the door—clever. With it came a little aggression booster.

When she released Andrea, Lara, still tense with suspicion, had sunk onto the sofa opposite and was watching intently. Andrea blinked a couple of times. Her lips parted, her eyes widened as she took in Angyalka, but she made no move to break free. Instead, her eyes closed with very obvious shame.

Angyalka nodded to István, and he let Andrea go. However, the woman suddenly fell on his chest, and István put one arm around her to comfort her properly.

It was almost as if the human’s rage had transferred to Angyalka. She wanted to drag Andrea off István and hurl her across the room.
He’s mine.

Jealousy was not an emotion she could remember encountering before, and it took a helpless moment to recognize it and ignore it. For he wasn’t hers, and whatever they’d done last night and tonight, he never would be.

Forcing herself, she looked away and stood up. She paused, her blood freezing in warning.

At the entrance to the sofa-enclosed booth, a vampire was watching intently. An old, strong vampire, heavily masked. The one who’d been talking earlier to Igor.

He smiled, inclined his head civilly to Angyalka, and moved on. He liked information. He was collecting it. Why?

Angyalka forced herself to look at Lara. “She’ll be all right now.”

“I don’t understand,” Lara said, her mouth tight with anxiety. “How could this have happened to her? It can’t have been a stage hypnotist—”

“No, I’m afraid it happened in my art shop when she dropped in earlier today. Someone was fooling around. We didn’t realize the damage it would cause.” Deliberately, she avoided looking at István and Andrea. “When she calms down, pass on my apologies. Obviously, neither of you is banned.” She forced a smile onto her lips. “In fact, your drinks are on the house.”

Chapter Thirteen

By the time Basilio and Gabby returned to the hotel, Jacob’s wound had almost healed. But his head still throbbed like he was being hit repeatedly with a hammer. He lay stretched out on his bed, waiting for it to go away, when they walked into his room without even knocking.

“I’m glad to see the old-world courtesies aren’t dead,” he said waspishly.

They both looked pretty pleased with themselves as they strolled in. Right now, Jacob resented that.

Basilio arranged himself in the armchair by the heavily curtained window. Gabby sat down on Jacob’s bed and demanded, “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing now. A hunter just stabbed me in the head.”

Basilio’s lips twitched, as if the old bastard found it amusing. “Well, I hope you at least got what you went there for, since the hunter himself is not lying dead and drained in his own home but running loose around the Angel Club—fucking the hostess.”

“Eww,” Jacob commented. “Fucking a hunter? I must admit I haven’t encountered many, but that does seem to be carrying détente too far.”

“Her smell is all over him,” Basilio said.

Jacob sighed, pulled himself into a sitting position, and clutched his throbbing head. “Shit. Basilio, you know I love gossip as much as the next man, but I fail to see how Angyalka’s weird sexual arrangements help us. You said yourself she’s Saloman’s and no ally of ours.”

Basilio shrugged. “Information is power. Human affections make them weak. It may give us a hold over the hunter that we can use. But I’m still waiting for an answer to my question: did you get the tool?”

“I didn’t even
see
the fucking tool,” Jacob said irritably. “I turned the whole place upside down, and then the annoying shit came home. I tried to get my attack in first, but he’s bloody strong.”

Basilio curled his superior lip. “You do know he’s only recently started to walk again? He’s still on sick leave.”

Distracted, Jacob stared at him. “Fuck.”

“Be that as it may, did you achieve anything at all—apart from a monumental headache and a bad temper?”

“He said it isn’t finished yet. That it has a long way to go and that I should tell my fellow conspirators so.”

Basilio nodded, thoughtfully. “And then he left you alive so that you could indeed pass this on?”

“He could have killed me,” Jacob admitted with reluctance. “For a moment, I knew he would. Then he started asking questions and let me go. Does it matter at this stage? There is no gadget. And in any case, we have no plan that could possibly involve it.”

He knew from Gabby’s excited wriggle on the bed that things had moved on. Basilio himself gave very little away. But he still looked slightly more smug than usual.

“Actually, we do,” Basilio drawled. “In Angyalka’s art gallery hangs—or at least hung—an enchanted picture that inspires humans to violence, largely against vampires who’re in turn pissed off by humans and therefore Saloman’s regime of détente. That brings us more ready-made allies. Plus…”

Basilio smiled, and Jacob knew that this was, finally, the crux of the matter.

“Plus your friend Igor turns out to be an absolute fountain of information. Saloman’s companion is pregnant.”

Jacob blinked. “Well, he should either kill her at last or generously allow someone else that privilege.”

“Imbecile. It’s Saloman’s child she’s carrying.”

“Crap,” Jacob said roundly. “He’s a fucking vampire, remember?” He didn’t get many opportunities to question Basilio’s intelligence but he began to think now that the supercilious asshole was going senile. Jacob seemed to have run out of luck with allies recently.

“Oh, trust me, I remember,” Basilio said, apparently amused, and for some reason, Jacob began to feel
he
was the senile one. “But you must remember Saloman is an Ancient. Anything is possible. When I was young, there were rumors that Ancients could breed with humans. Not that any of them did, to my knowledge. But then, there were only about three left in the world. Now, there’s one, and he’s breeding with his Awakener, a human woman who carries the Ancient gene in her blood. This will be one powerful child.”

Jacob took that in. His headache seemed to have disappeared in the shock. “Fuck.”

“As you say. This child will be Saloman’s natural successor, and in the meantime a fantastically powerful ally and tool. He’ll be unstoppable.”

Jacob frowned. “Then why are you so bloody happy about the whole thing?”

“Because knowledge is power, my children. Wherever Saloman is, it isn’t Budapest or anywhere close. Rumor says he’s in America with my friend Travis. Which suits us very well.”

“It does?” Gabby asked. “So he can’t stop us?”

“Exactly.”

“Stop us doing what?” Jacob asked, with more foreboding than excitement. He began to wish he’d never got involved with this and didn’t even know why.

“Extracting the concessions we need from Saloman,” Basilio said impatiently. “With this, we can force him out of America, and I can oust Travis.” His gaze moved between Jacob and Gabby, and his cold eyes flashed with irritation. “Oh, for God’s sake! We use the hunter’s tool to boost our own strength and capture Elizabeth Silk with her unborn child.”

****

“Go,” Béla said roughly. “You don’t need to be here all the time.”

The club had closed for its “holy hour.” Human and vampire staff were clearing and cleaning, setting everything to rights.

Angyalka, bone tired and desperate to be alone to think and feel, knew she couldn’t give in. She shook her head. “There are things I need to listen for. Too much is going on in Budapest right now, and I don’t understand it.”

Béla walked toward her. With one hand, he casually shoved a sofa aside for a waitress who was trying to clean underneath it. She cast him a glance of surprised gratitude which he didn’t appear to notice.

I’ll be your ears and eyes,
he said telepathically to Angyalka.
Tell me what’s going on.

He came to a halt in front of her, strong, calm, and familiar. He was still grieving for György, who’d been his friend for more than a century, and yet he put her own troubles before his own. He was the best of friends, but did she rely on him too much?

As if he picked up her thought, he smiled slightly and shook his head.

You probably know already,
she said wryly.
Three foreign vampires who’ve been in here since we refitted. Two Americans, a male and a very young female. And an older vampire with an ultra-strong mask. They’re all too curious. And I need to know about the enchanted picture
—
who’s behind it and who’s been affected.

She frowned.
We need to watch out for compelled humans tomorrow, but at least that shouldn’t be a problem tonight. And obviously, any word about the rogue hunter.
She paused.
And about Elizabeth. Saloman’s Elizabeth.

Béla simply nodded. She was sure he soaked everything up as a matter of course. She’d no need to tell him any of this. She smiled.
Overcome your natural reticence, Béla, and tell me all.

I’ll come before dawn, with gossip and snacks.

She almost told him not to bother with the latter, because she’d already dined on rich hunter blood. But that was too new, too much her own. Béla stepped forward and placed his hands on her shoulders.

Rest,
he said, and touched his forehead to hers.

She lifted her hands to grip his upper arms.
Thank you.

She slipped away into the back room with a feeling very like relief. When the elevator doors closed her off from the world, she sagged against the wall with relief. Alone.

What the hell am I going to do with myself now?
she wondered perversely.
Droop on the sofa and dream about my lover like some consumptive literary heroine? Pine? Rage at myself for weakness? Maybe I can climb out of the window and jump onto the roof again
—
by myself this time…

For a moment, she let her longing for the night swamp her, but it was so mixed up with István and lingering, insistent fear that she shook her head to clear it and straightened as the lift came to a halt.

She even imagined she felt his presence now, surrounding her, swamping her. The elevator doors opened onto her apartment. Above her head, something tapped, and she jerked her face up to the ceiling.

István’s head poked through the emergency hatch. A faint smile lurked around his lips. His fingers tapped on the ceiling.

She had no breath to lose, but for once, she could think of nothing to say.

“I’m being discreet,” he said.

She found her voice at last. “How, exactly? Every vampire downstairs will sense your presence. Hunters shine like lamps to us.”

“Not with one of these,” he said, opening his palm to reveal the masking gadget he’d shown her in the gallery when he’d come in without her noticing.

“Clever hunter,” she said without expression. “What do you want?”

“To talk.”

She curled her lip. “Talking, dancing. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

“Actually, I always say what I mean. But if you want chapter and verse and I wouldn’t push you away if you jumped me.”

She raised one eyebrow. “If I jumped you, you
couldn’t
push me away.”

He chose not to answer that. Instead, he asked, “May I come in? For ten minutes?”

“So much for my time off,” she said petulantly, walking out of the lift. “Please yourself.”

In the living room, she kicked off her boots and threw herself on the sofa. Right now, there was so much going on in her head and her heart that she couldn’t even tell if she was angry or glad to see him. Just that her cool, sluggish blood flowed a little faster and a little warmer for his presence. And that she felt alive.

How misleading is that? I’ve been dead for two hundred years.

And István… István was little better than crippled, and yet he was climbing about on elevators—moving elevators – just to save her reputation. Or his. Perhaps she should see if he needed help.

Apparently, he didn’t. He walked into the living room and halted, gazing at her.

“Shouldn’t you sit before you fall?” she said by way of invitation.

He strolled toward her. “I’ve had a busy day.” He sank onto the sofa beside her, leaving several inches between them. “But for some reason, my body isn’t complaining.”

“It should be,” she retorted. “I took your blood, more than I should. You must notice that.”

“Accounts for the light-headedness.” The glint in his dark eyes was humorous, unthreatening, almost conspiratorial. As if they were friends. Her stomach knotted.

“It’s a funny thing,” he observed. “Elizabeth has been healing me for months in a slow, gradual way —partly so the doctors don’t freak, and partly because my body wasn’t up to the trauma. But since I met you, she’s been able to blast me. The difference between the night we met and right now is unbelievable. I think that’s down to you.”

“I run a bar,” she said dryly. “I don’t heal people, just fill them full of booze so they
think
they’re better.”

“I’m serious,” István said. “Somehow, you magnify magic. Like Robbie. Like the gadget I’m trying to create.”

“István, I’ve never been anywhere near you when Elizabeth does her healing thing!”

“You kissed me.”

She stared at him with open derision. “Magic kisses? István, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t live in a fairy-tale world. And if we did, I would
not
be the fairy princess.”

“You underestimate yourself. Kisses and sex both linger in the body. So does Elizabeth’s healing. It’s like they mixed in me. As for fairy tales, where do you suppose they came from in the first place? There’s always truth in there somewhere.”

“If so, I doubt the inner message is quite that obvious,” she murmured, scanning his face for signs of mockery.

He gazed back steadily. “Who were you, Angyalka? As a human? Were you powerful then too?”

“No. I was about as powerless as you could get. Bottom of the food chain.”

His eyes gave little away. “I find that hard to imagine.”

“I took to vampirism like a duck to water. As a human, I looked forward to death. If I hadn’t been so afraid for my immortal soul, I’d have taken my own life months before it was taken from me. Undeath never entered my head. That was a story told to scare children. And yet here I am.”

His lips quirked. “Caring nothing for your immortal soul because you have an immortal body?”

She shrugged. “No one’s ever explained soul to my satisfaction. I’ve had great philosophers in my bar, young revolutionaries—Lajos Kossuth himself drank here once. I’ve met princes and communists, patriots, poets, soldiers, politicians—men and women of power and intellect. None of them ever proved to me the meaning or even the existence of a soul.”

“But you implied you changed when you became a vampire.”

“Oh, I did. I was no longer the pawn of others. I could take what I needed, what I wanted. Everyone changes within their time. But their inner being is the same.”

“Then you’d have fascinated me as a human too?”

She felt blood rise to her face. “It depends what fascinates you now. You would have found me more pathetic than wicked. Then, as now, I wouldn’t have been able to bear your pity. You’d have dropped a coin into my lap and hurried on to avoid my sullen face.”

“You were a beggar.”

She shifted restlessly in her seat, drawing her bare feet under her. “For the last year of my life.”

“How come?”

She waved one impatient hand. “How does misfortune come to anyone? A combination of bad luck, my own stupidity, and other people’s malevolence.”

“Tell me,” he invited.

She wriggled, thrusting her legs straight out in front of her and dropping her feet back onto the floor. “I can barely remember. I was the child of a poor peasant family. They all died in some epidemic that swept through the village. I went to the city to find work, was taken on as a kitchen maid in the house of an important nobleman, and then dismissed for getting raped and impregnated by one of the other servants. I miscarried in some backstreet and almost died. By some miracle, I survived and begged and wished to die. I probably would have done before the end of winter, if Aranyi hadn’t come and taken the matter out of my hands.”