Blood Sin (26 page)

“You humans concern yourselves too much with trivia.”

“Comes of having bodily toxins,” she said dryly, “and an attraction for dirt that isn’t too afraid to cling to our bodies.”

The shower was switched off and she reemerged in the decidedly damp bathrobe, rubbing herself dry. This time he kept his hands off her, but entertained himself by lounging in a chair and watching her dry and dress. There was an intimacy in it that almost frightened him, but, having begun it, he refused to forgo the pleasure.

Clearly deep in thought, she didn’t talk as she dressed and combed out her hair. Only as she set down the comb and turned to him did she say abruptly, “What will you do with the sword when you find it?”

Saloman stood. “Treasure it,” he said flippantly. “And keep it safe from others. Much as I do with you, in fact. Shall we go?”

He walked into the living area and toward the door. Keeping up with him, she parted her lips to ask more questions, as if well aware she wasn’t being told the whole truth. Which, of course, she wasn’t. He couldn’t tell Elizabeth that. He couldn’t tell anyone.

He didn’t even need to get out of the car. He knew before they entered the parking garage under Dante’s building that the sword wasn’t there.

“You don’t seem to mind too much,” Elizabeth observed as he restarted the car.

“I expected it to be gone with Dante.”

As he drove toward the exit and pulled out into the traffic once more, he felt her intense gaze on his face. “Do you suppose Travis has it after all?”

“No, but I’ll drive past his lair to make sure.”

“He could have hidden it somewhere else.”

Saloman smiled at her innocence. “Nowhere I couldn’t find it. Besides, if he had it, he would be waving it in my face—no doubt before as many witnesses as he could drum up, including Severin—to show that he had won our wager and that I should now slink off with my tail between my legs.”

“Would you?” she asked curiously.

“Slink? I’m not sure I know how. I would have to find another way to win his submission.”

By this time, her gaze almost burned him, so he spared a moment’s attention from the hectic road to glance at her. For an instant, her clear hazel eyes seemed to pierce him, as if she were trying to examine his very soul. Then she gave a quick, deprecating smile and dropped her gaze.

“You’re afraid to ask,” he observed, slowing to avoid a collision with a large truck in his path. “But you’re wondering why I don’t just kill him.”

“It crossed my mind,” she confessed. “I even wondered if you
could
kill him.”

“I could,” Saloman said, overtaking the truck and speeding up in order to make it to the next traffic light before it changed. Driving in a large city was like one of those computer games Dmitriu had first shown him in an arcade in Bistriţa. “But where would be the fun in that?”

Again, she surprised him, seeing behind the flippancy of his words to the deeper truth beneath. “It
is
fun for you, isn’t it? Gathering power and territory, pulling the strings.”

There was no point in denying it, so he merely shrugged. “Yes.” After a moment, skidding through the lights the instant they changed, he added, “More fun than killing, although I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed that too. It’s a trait of my race that humans find contradictory—we enjoy the exhilaration of the hunt and the kill, and yet value all forms of existence.”

There was a pause, then, “So speaks the vampire Saloman.”

“You don’t believe me,” he observed. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was well aware she still regarded him as the enemy. In fact, she regarded herself in much the same light, just because she loved him.

But unexpectedly, he felt the brief, brushing caress of her head on his arm. “That’s the trouble,” she said ruefully. “When I’m with you, I believe everything you say. I don’t think you ever lie, but I know you can be economical with the truth. I have to think of every possible meaning behind everything you say. And don’t say.”

“I don’t want death and destruction,” he said. “Still less do I want to rule over these things. Do you believe that?”

He glanced at her again and saw a faint smile on her lips. “Yes,” she said. “Although I refer you to my previous caveat.”

“Always the academic,” he murmured, giving in to the next red traffic light.

“I’m just trying to understand,” she said intensely, and he believed she was.

“It’s not so hard,” he said gently, “when you add it to what you already know of me. Existence embraces
all
of life, good and bad, the most extreme emotions, and physical feats as well as the lesser events and the quiet times. What is the point of any existence if you don’t experience all of it?”

“If you don’t enjoy it,” she said slowly, still watching his face. “Like you made me enjoy my life in Budapest, even though you meant to take it from me.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Believe it or not, my people regard it as a responsibility. Used to regard it. Now I carry it alone.”

Her breath seemed to catch. “But who are you to choose?” she burst out. “It isn’t up to you! Why should I get to live when Professor Salgado-Rodriguez didn’t? On your mere whim, Saloman!”

He loved her anger, her opposition. It made him all the more determined to win her. And he had no objection to explaining his point of view.

“A whim, if you insist,” he allowed, “but there was nothing mere about it. I make choices for the greater good, and that demands that I be strong—emotionally as well as physically.”

Again, her eyes burned him. “I make you strong? Even alive, I make you strong?”

He couldn’t help smiling at her tone, which managed to mingle disbelief with pleasure and downright astonishment. But he didn’t want her immolating herself for the hunters. So he rephrased it. “You add to my existence.” He hesitated, then added, “And there is potential in you that goes beyond the personal.”

“Potential for what?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. It’s still, er . . . potential.”

Almost as if they were married, he dropped her off on Fifth Avenue to do some window-shopping while he went to a business meeting. First of all, she found an ATM and withdrew money she could ill afford in case she needed to pay Jacob that night. Then she relaxed into tourist mode.

It felt weird. As she gazed into windows full of glamorous clothes and fashionable shoes, she was chiefly conscious of the desire to meet up with Saloman again. And yet the very prospect of it added an exciting luster to her expedition. Although she couldn’t afford the fabric she let slide between her fingers, or the handbags she admired from a safe distance, it was fun to look, to soak up the ambience of New York, and know that soon she’d see him again, talk to him again. Make love with him again.

For Elizabeth, the future was a blank canvas, and she took care to keep it that way. In her heart, she knew this fragile happiness couldn’t last, but she refused to think of it as an illusion, because for this moment, it was real. And she grasped the moment with eagerness.

I’m beginning to think like him. . . .

When her phone rang, she grabbed it from her bag like a teenager waiting for her boyfriend to text. But this was no love note. It was from Jacob.

Stupidly, shock brought her to a halt on the pavement and someone walked into her heels. Muttering apologies, Elizabeth slunk up against a shop window to read the brief note.

“I have it. Bring money. J.,” followed by an address off Fifth Avenue. The closeness made her blood run cold, sent her gaze scanning among the crowd and up on the rooftops. But that was ridiculous. Jacob couldn’t walk under the sun.

He could have human accomplices. He’s the type who would. They wouldn’t even guess what he is.

Dropping her phone back into her bag, Elizabeth pulled herself together. She hadn’t been afraid of Jacob last night, alone in the dark; she was damned if she’d give in to fear in broad daylight. This was
her
world.

She paused only long enough to surreptitiously conceal a second easily accessible stake, then turned on her heel and walked back the way she’d come until she reached the first crossing. Jacob must have been driving behind her to know she would recognize the street easily and join him quickly. And if he was in one of the shops, he wouldn’t risk attacking her.

But the address he’d specified appeared to be a deserted shop. Dark blinds covered the windows and the glass door. A sign read CLOSED FOR BEREAVEMENT. Elizabeth only hesitated a moment before, right hand on the stake in her bag, she pushed at the door with her left. It opened easily.

Warily, she stepped inside. The shop was gloomy, with most of the sunlight blocked by the blinds, but she could still make out racks of coats and jackets and dresses. Too many places for a vampire to hide. If Jacob decided he wanted her blood as well as her money, she’d have to rely on her reflexes and hope they saved her from losing either.

She moved slowly inside, glancing around, deliberately brushing into the clothes to disturb anyone skulking beneath them. Halfway across the shop, a staircase ran up to a gallery full of hats, bags, belts, and other accessories, modeled on shadowy mannequins.

As she reached the middle of the floor, checking to the right and left, another shadow detached itself from under the stairs. Elizabeth halted, curling her fingers more tightly around the stake in her bag.

“Miss Not-Exactly-a-Hunter,” said the mocking voice she remembered. “I have your information. I hope you have my money.”

“If you lie to me, I’ll have your description spread around every hunter network and police force in the country. You’ll lose more than you’ve earned.”

“I get you,” Jacob said patiently, halting a respectful—or circumspect—two feet away from her. Slowly, he lifted one hand, palm upward in an unmistakable request.

With her left hand, Elizabeth drew the sheaf of money from her bag to let him see it. “Where?” she asked.

“They move around to make sure Travis’s boys don’t find them. But right now Severin and his bodyguard are at the Sheraton Hotel on Long Island. All together in room two twelve.”

She scanned his steady eyes. She’d never know if he was lying until she went there. If it was true, would she have time to get there and kill Severin before Saloman found her? Then at least it would be over; she’d have completed her mission.

Slowly, she extended her left hand with the money. “Thank you.”

Jacob smiled. “Thank
you
,” he said, closing the distance and reaching for the cash. But as he took it, his fingers touched hers, giving her an instant’s warning before they twisted, snaking up to seize her hand along with the dollar bills.

She expected it. At least she’d get her money back. She whipped the stake free of her bag and plunged it unerringly toward Jacob’s heart.

Something clobbered her from above and wrenched the stake from her right hand, while Jacob snatched the money from her left. With a grunt of pain, she fell to her knees, and realized she’d been jumped from the gallery above.
Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, ma’am,” Jacob said with a mocking tug at his forelock as he wandered to the door with his money. The being who yanked her head back by the hair to see her face was a stronger vampire. She could feel it. And he was not alone.

“I’m Severin,” he said with a curl of his lips as two other vampires emerged from the back of the shop. “I hear you’ve been looking for me, Elizabeth Silk.”

She had little choice but to let him draw her to her feet by the hair and turn her in his rigid hold to face him. He was tall, black, and well dressed, his head shaved and his face unexpectedly thoughtful.

“I want to make a suggestion,” she said, relieved her voice didn’t shake. Her shoulders throbbed from the blow she’d taken.

Severin released her hair, but not her right arm. “Go on.”

“You don’t need to submit to Saloman. Ally with Travis against him.”

Severin grinned with undisguised contempt. “To stop him from killing you?”

Elizabeth inclined her head.

“You must be very clever to have evaded him for so long,” Severin observed. “Though, of course, he likes to play cat and mouse. I hear he’s playing with Travis now too. Pay him,” he added to his followers with a jerk of the head, and Elizabeth realized Jacob still lurked at the door.

As one of the vampires walked in Jacob’s direction, Severin turned his gaze back to Elizabeth, who was afraid to breathe. The door opened and closed behind Jacob. One less vampire. If anything, Severin’s immovable grip on her arm tightened as he said softly, “As either a gift or blackmail, Saloman’s Awakener is extremely valuable to me.”

Which, Elizabeth thought, was only too true. Although Severin clearly didn’t have all the facts, with her in his power he could make Saloman do anything. For many reasons, Saloman would not risk her. She didn’t doubt that if Severin took her to Saloman right now, the Ancient would save her.

She would have failed both the hunters and Saloman.

Before Severin could drag her, she jerked her head to one side, drawing his attention to her throat. “My blood is valuable too,” she said huskily, and even as hunger flashed in his eyes, she gave one subtle shake of her left arm, as if she shivered. The hidden stake dropped from her sleeve into her palm and she thrust upward, fast and sure.

Severin’s scream of fury cut to silence as he exploded into dust. Elizabeth leapt back, catching the falling stake that he’d taken from her earlier and holding both in front of her against the vampires who leapt toward her. Severin’s power rushed into her like a tidal wave. She felt exultant, invincible.

“I’m the Awakener!” she cried. She sounded insane and she didn’t care. Instead, she laughed with triumph, because she’d succeeded. She’d done the right thing and won. Both vampires skidded to a halt, staring at her. One glanced uncertainly at the other. Elizabeth took a purposeful step forward, and they fled.

Although Grayson Dante hadn’t ever visited Budapest before, he had good feelings about the city. This place would be the setting for his acquisition of the ultimate power—he knew it, and the knowledge gave him added confidence as he walked alone in the dark along the gloomy, narrow streets of the old part of town. Although he’d been given directions, he almost missed it. He’d walked to the end of the street and back again before he took to staring with extreme concentration at each building.