Zen and the Art of Vampires (27 page)

“But Karl is already dead, and Alec is . . . technically undead, I think, but still . . .”

The look of betrayal in her eyes wrung my heart.

“Marta,” I said, hoping she'd understand, but she stopped me with one word.

I couldn't turn my back on her. I had sworn to the dying Anniki that I would take on her responsibilities, and I couldn't ignore that oath now just because Alec was in trouble.

“Let's go,” I said, getting back on my feet and peering cautiously out down the line of vendors. No one seemed to be paying me any attention.

“Thank you,” she said with a throb of gratitude. “We must hurry. The Ilargi will not be held off for long.”

“Alec has lived several hundreds of years without being caught,” I muttered to myself as we dashed off toward the library, winding our way around strolling sight-seers and shoppers. “He won't let them catch him now. I hope.”

“Hurry,” Marta urged as I paused for a traffic light. “There is no time.”

I don't know what the librarians thought as I flung myself through the doors. I only had a glimpse of startled expressions as I waved a friendly hand at them before heading to the back study area.

“The Zorya has come!” one of the women ghosts yelled out from her spot at the end of one of the stacks, evidently acting as sentry. “She has come!”

“About time, too,” Dagrun sneered.

“Karl!” Marta screamed, rushing past me in a flurry of ghostly nothingness. “Is he . . . Karl!”

Just as I emerged from the stacks there was a loud crashing noise, followed immediately by the tinkle of glass.

“There! He's there!” Ulfur cried, rising from the ground and pointing at a shattered window.

“Karl?” I asked.

“I'm here,” came the shaky, somewhat muffled reply. I ran to the window and looked out, voices calling behind me indicating that other library patrons had heard the crash.

“Did he take anyone else?” I asked softly.

“No. We wouldn't let him,” Hallur said with grim victory in his voice as he faded to a translucent state. He limped slightly and appeared to be bleeding, but grinned. “He'll know better than to attack the lot of us again, he will.”

A woman behind me, assumedly a librarian, stopped next to me and started pelting me with questions.

“I'm sorry. I'm American. I only speak English,” I told her, clutching my side where a stitch pulled painfully.

“What has happened here?” the librarian asked, switching into flawless English. She waved a hand toward the window as others arrived, all of them viewing the display with confusion and ire.

“It looks to me like someone went through the window,” I said, peering out of the shattered window to a tiny patch of greenery. A few people who evidently had been strolling through the area were clustered together, pointing at a direction opposite the library.

“I will call the police,” the librarian said with thinned lips. She gave me a piercing glance. “You will not leave.”

“No, of course not,” I lied, giving her a bright smile.

She evidently issued orders to the other librarians, herding the patrons out of the bits of shattered glass. I waited until they had gone about fulfilling her commands before turning back to my ghosts.

“Come on, folks. We've got to find you all a new hiding spot.”

I smiled at the patrons who stood in the stacks, chatting about what happened. They stopped talking when I flung myself out of the window, managing to tear the leg of my pants on a shard of glass I'd been taking pains to avoid.

“Do not hurt yourself, Pia,” Ingveldur called as they drifted out the window after me. “Oh! You are bleeding. Hallur, the reaper is bleeding.”

“So am I. That Ilargi was a tough one. But we were stronger.” His face sobered. “But it wasn't enough to save Jack.”

“I know you tried,” I said as we hurried away. “It's my fault, really. If I was any sort of a proper Zorya, I'd have had you to Ostri by now.”

“Do not blame yourself,” consoled Marta, clutching Karl's arm and sending him a look of love so profound it brought tears to my eyes. “If it was not for you, the Ilargi would have taken Karl, too.”

“No, you all saved him,” I said, feeling the full extent of my guilt.

“We were near the end of our strength,” Ulfur confessed. “We could not have opposed him much longer. He ran because he heard you.”

I felt moderately better, but strengthened my determination to see that my friends received their reward. If I couldn't take them, then I would move heaven and earth to find someone who could.

We managed to get away from the area just as the police sirens were heard, although I kept looking over my shoulder as we headed for the open spaces and busy area that was the waterfront park.

“Where are we going?” Ulfur asked as we pulled up en masse at the edge of the park.

“That is a very good question. I wish I had an answer to it.” I scanned the area, looking for somewhere safe to hide for a bit while I made some plans. My arm burned with an increasing pain that I put down to the fading of adrenaline. I garnered some odd stares as people noticed the blood flowing down my arm, driving me to take up a position under the trees on the far side of the park.

“Pia, you are hurt. You should see a doctor,” Marta's soft voice chided me.

I knelt in a slightly damp bed of discarded fir needles cast down by the tall tree that shielded me from the sight of the rest of the park, rocking for a moment as I tried to get a grip on the pain now radiating with increasing intensity from my arm.

“We should get to safety,” Agda said, her voice even reedier than normal. “That Ilargi may come back.”

“We can take care of him,” Ulfur said, flexing his muscles in that time-honored male attitude of bravado.

“Aye, and just how are you expecting to do that?” Agda asked, squatting a few feet away from me. “I'm all done in. I don't think I could so much as move that pebble if my life depended on it.”

There were murmurs of assent from the others.

My head swam suddenly.

“Pia?” Marta's face came into view. “She's fainting!”

“I'm all right, just a bit woozy from the loss of blood,” I said, wrapping my tattered sleeve around the bleeding gash. The pain from that act almost left me retching. “I've got to find somewhere safe for you guys. Only I don't know of anywhere safe, and Alec might be captured, and Kristoff is gone off who knows where, and I don't even know where Magda is, and if the Brotherhood people find out I've been seen letting a vampire drink my blood, they may not listen to me. . . .”

“Weeping never served anyone,” Agda said, peering at me as tears of self-pity welled in my eyes. “You've got a brain, child; use it.”

I sniffled back the unshed tears and remembered the cell phone Alec had shoved into my hands. I'd stuffed it into my pocket absentmindedly as I made my escape from the restaurant. I pulled it out now with a minute sense of hope. I might not be high on Kristoff's list of people he was willing to aid, but he wouldn't turn his back on Alec, would he?

I brought up the phone's address book, quickly finding the number for Kristoff.

“What is she doing now?” Hallur asked, studying the cell phone with interest.

“She's calling someone. That's a mobile phone. I've told you about them. All the fishermen in the village have them,” Dagrun said with the voice of a teen who can't believe how stupid adults are.

“I've told you not to hang around those docks.” Ingveldur rounded on her. “They're too rowdy for a young lady.”

Dagrun rolled her eyes. “I'm
dead
! They can't do anything to me! Besides, how do you expect me to keep up on things if I stay along the shore with the rest of you?”

“You might be dead, but I'll not have a daughter of mine making sheep's eyes at the local fishermen,” the ghost I assumed was her father said gruffly.

Kristoff's short, “Yes?” in my ear interrupted the scene.

“Kristoff? This is Pia. I know you're pissed at both Alec and me, but I could really use your help.” I described in succinct sentences the happenings of the last half hour.

The ghosts, prompted by Dagrun's description of a cell phone, crowded around with their heads pressed closely to mine so they could hear.

“Where are you now?” Kristoff asked in a weary voice.

“At the north end of the park, near the cliff. Behind a tree.”

The silence that followed was rife with annoyance. “Stay there. I'll fetch you as soon as I can.”

“You'd best be hurrying,” Old Agda yelled. “The reaper is bleeding something fierce.”

“I'm fine,” I interrupted. “Just get here as soon as you can. I have a feeling the police are going to be crawling over this area any minute.”

I slumped back against the hard face of the cliff that edged the park, closing my eyes in an attempt to keep a handle on my emotions, the sounds of the seagulls and ghosts as they chatted seeming to blend and blur in my mind until they lulled me into a state of unawareness.

Fingers on my wounded arm roused me from my stupor. Sharp eyes of the purest teal considered me when I jerked upright.

“You came,” I said without thinking, a little spike of hope starting anew within me.

“You asked me to,” he answered. His brows pulled together as he gently removed the wad of cloth I'd tried to bind around my arm. “This is deep. It is still bleeding.”

“It hurts like the dickens, too.” I tried to keep my voice light, but judging by the assessing glance he shot at me, I suspected I failed.

He hesitated for a moment. “You should see a doctor.”

“I don't think that would be a very good idea, not unless you know of someone who can patch me up without involving the police.”

“Can't you help her?” Ulfur asked Kristoff.

“I am not a healer.” He gently probed the area around the deep cut, his fingertips coming away red with my blood.

Instantly, a deep, consuming hunger rose within me. I shook my head at the fantastic thought. The hunger was within him, not me . . . but how did I know that?

“But you're a Dark One,” Ulfur insisted. “You can close a wound, can't you?”

“I must be going into shock,” I said aloud in a distant, somewhat abstracted voice.

Kristoff stared at his fingertips, swallowing hard as he struggled to control the hunger.

“Oh, you might as well,” I said, leaning back as I closed my eyes. At that moment, I didn't care what happened to me. I was tired and in pain, and I just wanted to go to sleep forever. Let someone else take my burdens for a bit. “The blood's there, why let it go to waste?”

“You must help her,” Marta insisted.

“I'm going to take a little nap,” I announced, my voice sounding distant even to me. “Do whatever you want.”

I let myself drift, too tired to care anymore. Heat built up in my arm, a persistent sensation that wouldn't allow me to float away entirely. It was an annoying feeling, nagging at the edges of my awareness, pulling me back to a body that suddenly seemed too burdensome to bear.

I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the top of Kristoff's head, the rich brown curls a few inches from my nose. “What are you doing?”

He looked up, bumping his head on my chin. The warmth I felt had been his mouth on the gash, now partially closed in a raw-looking welt. “You've lost too much blood.”

“You're healing me?” I asked, amazed and even more confused at the dichotomy of his actions. “I kind of got the impression you never wanted to see me again.”

Irritation flashed across his face. “You summoned me, if you recall.”

“Yes, but that was because I knew you'd want to help Alec. I didn't think you'd give a snap about me.”

He was silent for a moment, his expression stony and unreadable. “Alec would have my head if I let you bleed to death while I rescued him.”

“Yes,” I said, insight coming with a rare burst of clarity. “Did you drink enough? You seemed awful hungry.”

A look of indignation flickered in his eyes. “I am not so desperate that I must prey on wounded women. I closed your wound, nothing more. If I have your permission, I will finish so we can ascertain what trouble Alec has managed to find now.”

I nodded, watching with interest as his mouth moved over the remainder of my wound. Something like that would have grossed me out a few days before, but the touch of his mouth on my skin was sensual, erotic, and anything but repulsive. It sent little shivers of pleasure up and down my arms, and it was only with a great effort that I managed to keep my face placid.

“That's so weird,” Dagrun said sulkily from the pack of ghosts, who were clustered around, watching intently. “I thought you said you couldn't heal.”

“I can't, not in the true sense of the word. But I can stop the bleeding. It is a necessity for Dark Ones to know how to do so,” Kristoff said as he examined his handiwork. The entire wound was closed now, still somewhat red and raw, but not open or bleeding. Dried blood pulled at my skin, however, making it feel itchy. “It would not do to have one's source of blood hemorrhaging to death. Are you able to stand?”

The last bit was addressed to me. I nodded and got to my feet, staggering a moment when the blood seemed to rush from my head. Kristoff's hands were warm on my arms as he steadied me. “I'm OK. We'd better go see what's happening to Alec. If he'd only let me explain to the Brotherhood guys who I was, I'm sure I could have avoided the whole scene.”