Blood of Angels (4 page)

How long was it since she’d made love with a human?

A strong, quiet human with the mind of a scientist and the fit body of a fighter. How did he kiss? How did he love? Dangerous ground…

The club was gradually emptying. The music was slow, insinuating. Angyalka held István’s gaze, keeping her own faintly amused, as was his.

Then he said, “Maybe I came to ask you to dance.”

For a moment, she couldn’t hear his heart for her own. She let her eyelids droop and rise. “Did you?”

“I can’t remember anymore.”

He was sure she’d refuse. He wouldn’t have asked her otherwise. She was empathic enough to pick up that much.
Foolish hunter.
Angyalka had thrived for centuries on doing the unexpected.

She stood. “Why not? It’s the last of the night.” Perhaps it was her moment to immobilize
him
. Just to show that she could.

Surprise flooded him, allowing something very like fear to show in his eyes, speedily hidden behind an excitement she could swear was genuine. As he stood and led her, still not touching, onto the dance floor, the blood rushed in his veins. She just wasn’t sure of the cause. He was a hunter; he didn’t have sex with vampires.

Mihaela does.

Don’t think about Mihaela.

There were only a few scattered couples left on the dance floor, one in a rather desperate-looking clinch. The others looked more sleepy than anything. István turned, looking directly at her, as if he knew exactly where she was simply by the reaction of his body. Or perhaps he used one of those vampire detectors the hunters favored these days.

Slowly, he raised one arm and took her hand. His skin was warm.
Warm human male
… He stepped closer, laying his free hand in the small of her back. His blood smelled heady, strong and tempting. She clasped his fingers lightly, placed her other hand on his shoulder, and looked up at him. His eyes were clouded, sultry. She could almost imagine he had nothing on his mind except mild lust. Maybe even not so mild. Humans had passion too. She could just about remember that far back…

But it was as well to keep her mind on this particular human. The hunter who seemed so ordinary and so very definitely wasn’t.

“How nice,” she observed as they began to sway lethargically, “to see your face this time.”

He blinked. “It’s kind of you not to snarl.”

“Snarl?” she exclaimed. But he was right. In her anger, when he’d released her that night, she’d deliberately shown him her fangs, to terrify him, threaten him. But Jesus, she wasn’t an animal…

“It was a very sexy snarl,” he said, grinning.

She narrowed her eyes. “No, it wasn’t.”

The smile died on his lips. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Then and now, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Again, his words started her borrowed blood surging into her face, although she hoped the dim lighting of the dance floor would hide it. She was more than two hundred years old. There shouldn’t have been anything left in the world to make her blush, and yet it was a human habit she’d never managed to break.

She searched his eyes, lifting her chin to show she wasn’t so easily fooled. “You really are good at this flattery thing.”

He drew her closer with the hand at her back. If she hadn’t wanted to come, there was nothing he could have done to make her. Not this time. And yet she allowed it, settling against his lean, hard body. Her breasts brushed against his chest as they danced; her hips fitted with his like a jigsaw. The stiff ridge of his erection pressed against her pubic bone. Hot pleasure and lust shot through her with such force that it took her several sweet, almost fearful moments to deal with it.

He was a hunter. One who’d already bested her.

And so she curved her lips into a smile. She raised a mocking eyebrow. “My,” she murmured. “You still have that stake in your pocket.”

“I never go anywhere without it.”

She moved in his arms, dancing, relishing his heat, letting herself rub deliberately against his erection, just to see what he would do. He swayed with her, pushing more closely into her body. Her nipples hardened against his chest so that he was bound to feel them through her dress and his shirt. His arms tightened.

It was a game. Another game to see who came out on top, and until she discovered why he was here, she was quite prepared to play. Besides, it seemed such a natural thing to do, to lay her cheek against his shoulder and slide her hand around his neck.

She wondered how it felt to István, to know that here, in a vampire bar, with a reputedly powerful vampiress in his arms, her fangs were only inches from his throat. Did he close his eyes and lose himself in sensuality, in the simple delight of learning another being’s body through dance? Probably not, which was a pity, because Angyalka couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so aroused.

To her secret amazement, he laid his cheek on the top of her head. She heard him inhaling the scent of her hair, and smiled with genuine pleasure. Mostly it was triumph, but some of it was definitely physical.

She moved her head under his so that her lips fluttered against the base of his throat when she spoke. “Does that pulse beat for me, hunter? Or for the treachery you’re about to commit?”

She’d surprised him again. He took too long to answer.

Then he said with odd ruefulness, “It beats for you.”

“I excite you?” she pressed.

Boldly, he slid his hands farther down her back to the swell of her bottom and pulled her closer in over his erection. “You know you do.”

Oh yes, that felt good.

“And yet,” she pointed out, “it took you eighteen months to come back.”

He smiled into her hair. She felt the stretching of his lips, heard it in his quiet voice, “You mean you wouldn’t have ripped my throat out?”

“I hadn’t decided. I still haven’t.”

“Are you trying to scare me? Or test me?”

“I’m looking for clues, hunter. As you are.”

“Clues to what?”

She lifted her head to look him in the eye. “You.”

A frown twitched between his brows. “And have you reached any conclusions?” he asked.

His hips trembled against her, as though his lust were barely controlled, and abruptly, she wanted his clothes gone. She wanted him naked in her arms, as she wrapped her legs around him and drew him into the wet, desperate depths of her body. She wanted his hands all over her, his mouth on her breasts. She wanted to climb all over him, bite into the strong column of his throat and drink his blood, then scream with ecstasy while he pushed into her, over and over…

And he was asking about conclusions. She’d keep that one to herself. Curiously, desperation was breaking out of his carefully veiled eyes, and behind that, as if it were increasingly difficult to hide, was a deep, dreadful pain. When she stopped thinking of her own lust, she could even sense it enveloping him. His fear wasn’t of her, and his pain was physical.

If she’d had breath, she’d have lost it in that moment. She understood. Not why he’d come in the first place, but why her readings of him were so confused.

He’d fallen back against the door when he’d caught her troublemaker, made no further move to join the fight. He walked with a stiffness that certainly hadn’t been there when she’d watched him walk away from her eighteen months ago. He’d only asked her to dance because he’d assumed she’d refuse, and the trembling of his hips, his legs now, was nothing to do with her body but with his. He’d only just learned to walk again, and yet rather than admit it, he’d put himself through this.

Not so much unexpected as reckless to the point of madness.

“My conclusion?” she said softly. “That I thank you.”

A quick frown contracted his brow. “For what?”

“For using the last of your strength to dance with me.”

He stilled. She stilled with him.

He must know she was aware of what had happened to him. She was one of Saloman’s inner circle. She knew he was only alive because of Elizabeth’s healing. Lunacy to have come here in this condition. His very stillness told her he knew it.

It was a good revenge for what he’d done to her eighteen months ago. Except, of course, that her humiliation had been public, but it was enough for his to be in her presence.

And yet, as she stood in his arms, enjoying the lust betrayed by his pounding heart and his raging erection, she felt robbed of her satisfaction. Because there was little joy in defeating a weakened enemy? Because he could still be setting her up for something?

Whatever, it was his cue to leave, to drop his warm arms from her body and walk stiffly away before his legs refused to work anymore and he simply fell down. But the moment stretched, and he didn’t move. Perhaps he couldn’t.

He could, however, still surprise her.

He bent his head, closing the inches between their lips, and kissed her.

His mouth was firm, sweet, and exciting as he parted her lips. She grasped almost convulsively at the hair at his nape, but she allowed it. She even pressed her lips back against his for the barest instant before he released her mouth.

“Thank
you
,” he said huskily.

Retrieving his pride, perhaps. It didn’t matter. This was her territory, and she was happy to play. She tilted her face invitingly. “Again.”

His breath hitched. Like a revealed gate-crasher amazed to still be here, let alone be invited back. But the heat of desire drowned the confusion in his eyes, and he took her mouth again.

This time, she opened her lips wider for him. His tongue dipped over her teeth and into her mouth, gently exploring. She caressed his lips with hers, slid her tongue along the length of his. Heat and lust and the remnants of cool, bubbling champagne… He tasted good, alluring, and he kissed so well that she gave her whole mouth to him. He took it with alacrity, with aching sensuality and growing fierceness. He licked her fangs, and she moaned deep in her throat. He brought up one hand to hold her face steady, to caress her cheek with his roughened palm while his fingers tangled in her hair.

She began to dance again, and he molded her to him, kissing her as if he couldn’t stop. Desire surged through her like a long-forgotten song. She welcomed it, rubbing her pebbled nipples against his chest, her hot, tingling stomach against the ridge of his erection. This, at last, felt like winning.

And so, when the music stopped, Angyalka slowly, carefully detached her mouth from his and opened her eyes.

“What a very surprising hunter you are,” she whispered.

“I can do more than kiss.” His eyes blazed with lust; his voice was thick with it. Anything was possible after a kiss like that, and Angyalka wanted all of it. Now.

But he was a hunter, and whatever his game, she wouldn’t be caught.

She slid her hand down from his neck and pushed it between their bodies. He seemed to stop breathing.

She found the stake easily among the metallic objects in his pocket and brought it up to flash in front of his eyes. “You promised not to use it.”

His involuntary laughter sounded like a groan, yet it was beguilingly genuine. Angyalka liked him.

Chapter Three

“Put it away,” István said, “before your bouncers throw me out.”

She drew her other hand free of his to hold open his pocket and drop the stake back in. “What exciting pockets you have,” she murmured as she drew back out of his arms.

“You have no idea.” Lust still raged painfully in his pants, and yet weirdly, his whole body felt cold because of the lack of her coolness against it. Had she been cool? He couldn’t remember. He wondered if she ever got really warm.

Fortunately, his legs still worked, although they seemed unnecessarily lethargic as he walked beside her across the empty dance floor. Lights came on, brightening the place, reminding him of the twice he’d been here, in daylight, drinking coffee and making plans. Angyalka seemed content to stroll.

“My staff will call you a taxi,” she said politely, like the perfect hostess rather than the woman who’d set his blood on fire with a kiss. And fuck, she kissed as if she meant it, even after guessing his weakness. Humiliation and triumph no longer had any meaning. But she was right. He needed a taxi quite urgently.

“Thank you. I have my own number.” Sense had returned, along with unease. Only a fool would accept a taxi summoned by a vampire.

“Fine, I’ll show you my etchings while you wait.”

In spite of everything, he grinned at that.

Angyalka called a couple of instructions to her staff, ending with, “Lock up here. I’m going to try to sell this gentleman some art, so he’ll use that exit.”

He just hoped there was a banister. He really didn’t want to fall down the stairs, and yet he refused to admit either to himself or to her that he couldn’t manage them. He needed sleep, rest, and at least ten minutes with Elizabeth.

Angyalka opened the flap in the bar and led him through into the inner sanctum. He looked around curiously as they walked through a kind of staff restroom. The ceiling here was much lower than inside the public part of the club. There must be rooms above. Perhaps storerooms, perhaps rooms where Angyalka lived. But there was no time to explore. And besides, his legs almost buckled with relief when he saw the elevator door.

In a human, he’d have called it kindness. In Angyalka, he really had no idea. He had to beware of ulterior motives.

In the cramped space of the lift, alone with her, he fought lust and weakness that combined to make him dizzy. But he was damned if he’d give in. He said, “I’ve already given Mihaela and Maximilian a housewarming present. I don’t feel obliged to buy his art as well.”

“No one is obliged to buy. I thought you were interested. In my business.”

He turned his head and met her gaze. Did she know he was still recording lots of environmental data?

The elevator stopped, and the door opened onto darkness. Angyalka preceded him out of the lift and threw a switch that lit up an office, complete with computer and filing cabinets. Ignoring these things, she walked across to another door and opened it. The large room beyond, the gallery itself, was already lit up.

“Doesn’t this place affect the security of the club?” he asked, following her.

“You mean why disguise the presence of the club with powerful enchantments when this place is lit up like a Christmas tree right next to it?”

“Exactly.”

She shrugged. “Times are changing. There won’t be any point, soon, in trying to hide the club. Word is spreading among humans.”

“Like the arseholes you threw out?”

“And the arsehole you threw out,” she amended. She frowned suddenly. “That’s where I’ve seen him before. He was in here yesterday, looking at paintings.”

“Did he buy anything?”

“No. He wasn’t interested. He was with a girl.”

István, who knew his legs would begin to shake again soon—curiously, they’d stopped while he’d kissed Angyalka—forced himself to wander around looking at the pictures on the walls, the sculptures and jewelry displayed on plinths. A small, classical sculpture, about ten inches high caught his attention.

“That’s you,” he observed.

“His best new work is of Mihaela and Robbie, but he won’t sell that.”

István lifted his gaze to hers, then back to the statuette. There were tiny wings at its back, an expression of mischief on its lovely face. A smile tugged at his lips. “I don’t know. He’s caught you rather well. Is it really Maximilian’s?”

She nodded. He moved on, knowing he had to get out of there before he fell over. And yet he was stupidly reluctant to leave. He noticed a wild, rocky seascape, and a portrayal of Budapest in the snow, both vaguely familiar.

“Are they
all
Maximilian’s?” he asked.

“No. But there’s a lot of his stuff here. It was really Max—or at least Mihaela—who gave me the idea. She told Max he should sell his work, which he hadn’t done in about four hundred years. It got me thinking about other vampire artists. And a few humans without the right connections who could use a break.”

“I hadn’t realized you were so philanthropic.”

Her devilish eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I’m not. It all serves to make this place just a little different from all the rest. It makes me money.”

“There are no prices.”

“I change them, depending on whether or not I like the customer.”

“Doesn’t that make it difficult for your staff?”

“No, they can exert their own preferences too.”

“I don’t think I believe you.”

“Try me.”

“All right. What would you charge me for the statuette of you?”

“Fifteen thousand forints.”

István blinked. “And here I thought you liked me.”

“Maybe I want you to appreciate it.”

Tired and aching, he really couldn’t think of a witty retort to that. Instead, he gazed again at the sculpture. Maximilian was good with expression. Along with just the right curve of her elegant bones, he’d caught her air of teasing, and the sultriness behind her eyes which had been carved, if not colored. And something else he couldn’t quite read. It might have been sadness, or his own tiredness. Whatever, right now it was more intriguing than the Mona Lisa’s smile.

He dragged his gaze away from it and back to its model. His left leg began to shake. “Thank you,” he said abruptly. “I have to go.”

“Did you call a cab?”

“No, I’ll do it from outside. I could do with the fresh air.” He could do with the seat on the gallery windowsill once she’d gone.

“I’ve bored you,” she observed without expression as she walked past him to the door.

He followed, trying not to limp. “Hardly,” he said, but he was concentrating too hard on remaining upright, on forcing his feet to keep planting themselves one in front of the other, and the word didn’t sound sincere. Aware he was spoiling whatever connection there had been, he just wanted out of there, and she seemed to sense it.

She opened the door without a key or any other obvious unlocking action. It was a trick Saloman used. And vampires didn’t need physical alarm systems. They had their own.

His fellow hunters might tell him that he was lucky to get out of there with his life. István knew he was luckier to get out without falling over. As he brushed past the vampiress, he glanced at her face, which was closed and expressionless. She seemed unaccountably stiff, as if he’d done something wrong. Apparently it was as easy to offend a vampiress as any other woman.

“Good night,” he said gently.

“Good night, hunter,” she murmured.

He stepped over the threshold, and almost immediately, the door closed behind him. He heard the locks click into place, and a moment later, the lights went out. It was a relief, and yet as he sank down on the stone windowsill and reached for his phone, he realized he was piqued by the speed with which she obviously wanted rid of him.

He’d read too much into a dance and a bit of banter. And a kiss. She’d been playing him for her own ends. Again. Or…

István had always regarded himself as pretty self-sufficient. Before his injury, he
had
been. With revulsion, he wondered if he was somehow leaking
neediness
now. The very idea appalled him far more than it could ever repel Angyalka.

At the corner of his eye, something moved in the shadows. István released the phone in his pocket and instead flipped the switch on the vampire detector. But there was no time to prepare. By the time he’d hauled himself to his feet, there were four shadows converging on him.

Not vampires, but humans. The one in the lead was the man he’d caught at the club entrance, more by luck than design. Payback time.

Resigned, István blocked the first wild swing and lashed out with his elbow to fell the man closing in behind him. He was used to fighting beings with much faster reactions than semi-drunken humans, but there were four of them, and his legs refused to function.

He was, as Elizabeth would say, mince.

Still, he got in a couple of good punches, infuriating his attackers by the strength behind them, before they kicked his legs from under him. He head-butted the first to fall on him, lashed out with his fists at another, before a boot crashed into his side, and he knew it wouldn’t be long.

****

Angyalka closed the door with relief and slid the locks home manually. It should have made her feel better, and yet something uneasy remained. Something to do with the hunter.

Disappointment at the speed of his departure. He’d been fun to tease and flirt with. And he could certainly kiss better than most vampires with centuries of practice behind them. She smiled a little at the memory, touching her lips with her fingertips. It didn’t feel like revenge anymore.

She wondered if it would take him another eighteen months to come back this time. With the lights out, she turned to watch him.

His outline pushed against the windowpane, as if he’d sat almost immediately on the sill. He was a hunter. He’d never admit weakness before a vampire, even when she’d already guessed. It would be suicide in many cases. His kisses, extracting her response, had been his fight back. She didn’t mind that, since he was so good at it. And since she had the suspicion they’d gone well beyond his original intention.

He was bound to be freaked.

Smiling faintly, she began to turn away and return to the club, when his silhouette heaved itself to its feet and lurched out of her line of vision. It could have been his taxi arriving, but alarm bells went off in her head. There were other humans out there. Running at him.

Instinct propelled her to the glass door, and she pushed the blind aside. Four men, the same men who’d been ejected from the club when he’d first arrived. And they were about to take out their anger on the man who’d helped do it.

“Damnation.” Angyalka frowned. István could barely stand. They’d kill him in this state unless she intervened. Fear clawed at her stomach. This wasn’t the revenge she’d planned for him, and it certainly wouldn’t bring her any personal satisfaction.

Bastard human thugs.

Am I really going to have to go out there?

“Oh Jesus,” she whispered. “Oh fuck…”

She’d unlocked the door again without conscious thought. Now she opened it with trembling hands. The men had jumped István. He was down, and they were on top of him.

He was strong. Whatever the injury to his spine and his legs, his arms were like iron. He could hold them off until she got Béla and György down from the club to help… Couldn’t he?

She peered out into the darkness, hearing her own heart beat like thunder in her ears. It shouldn’t do that. She was a vampire.

A bloody terrified vampire watching a bunch of human thugs beat the crap out of a man who was
her
prey. A man who’d danced with her and kissed her…and barely had the strength to stand upright. The whole thing was downright rude, and she couldn’t allow it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” she whispered, forcing her feet over the doorstep. With a wild yell to encourage herself rather than intimidate the thugs in the street, she flew at them.

Through her red mist of sickness and fear, she saw the man who’d bitten her leave off kicking István to turn and face her. Even in her condition, the vicious, murderous glare of his eyes shocked her. It was pure, inhuman hatred.

Angyalka buffeted him with her elbow on the way past—enough to send him sprawling. István, from the ground had just floored another of his attackers. He grabbed the ankle of a third and yanked, but Angyalka caught the bastard and threw him down the street. She plucked the rising one from the roadside and kneed him in the groin before shoving him into his friend.

Still screaming, she saw that she couldn’t fight them all without killing. In their drink-fueled bloodlust, they didn’t feel their injuries as they should and kept coming back for more. And as for the ringleader, the biter, no way was he giving up.

And so when he flew at her with flailing feet, she jumped above his head, grabbed him, and bit into his throat. It only took her a few moments to drain him.

“No!” István gasped, trying desperately to rise. “Angyalka, stop!”

Too late. She hurled the dead man contemptuously into his advancing, suddenly unsure friends, who yelled with horror. Screaming again, she grabbed István’s arm, hauling him to his feet, and staggering backward into the gallery doorway. By the time they arrived there,
he
was all but carrying her. It was he who shut and locked the door while she collapsed on the floor and curled up like a fetus.

“They’re running off,” he said coldly, through her pounding heart, her terror, and her shame. She was vaguely aware of him sliding down the door to the floor. “Except the one you bit. Did you kill him, Angyalka?”

Somewhere, beneath the inner shock, she wanted to laugh, because although she’d just killed for him, saving his self-righteous neck, he was far from grateful. Bloody hunters.

From his voice, she knew he’d turned toward her, could see her curled and trembling on the floor. Fuck, this wasn’t exactly the revenge she’d planned either. It just gave her another reason to kill him.

She closed her eyes in shame, tried to pull herself together, to come up with a reason, an excuse. But her mind wouldn’t work. It was still far too terrified.