Zen and the Art of Vampires (32 page)

“Kristjana would not be happy,” he pointed out.

“Well,” I finished fighting with Kristoff's zipper and moved toward the door, smiling my most winsome smile. “She doesn't have to know, does she?”

He hesitated, clearly not sold on the idea of letting us out, but I was not going to let this chance slip by me.

“Mattias,” I said gently, batting my lashes ever so slightly at him. “I'm the Zorya. Anniki picked me to be her successor, and I'm wholly committed to doing what's right. There are a dozen ghosts upstairs right now just waiting for me to make good on my promise to take them to Ostri. I'm not a bad person—you know that, don't you? Please let us out. I promise I'll be responsible for both Alec and Kristoff.”

“No, I could not let the Dark Ones out,” Mattias said, shaking his head. “That would be wrong. They are to be cleansed.”

“You are completely misjudging the situation—” I started to say, but Mattias suddenly pushed the door open a little wider, enough for his entire face to glare in at me.

Or rather over my shoulder. Kristoff had come up behind me, as silent as a panther. I turned to see what it was that had Mattias so angry.

Kristoff's shirt hung open, part of it poking out of his fly.

“No wonder I had such a hard time with that zipper,” I muttered, frowning at it.

“What?” Mattias asked suspiciously.

I turned to face him with a bright, innocent smile. “Sorry?”

His face darkened. I looked down and saw to my horror that I had buttoned my blouse incorrectly—half the buttons were in the wrong buttonholes, while the other half weren't buttoned at all.

“You have slept with the Dark One!” Mattias accused, and I had to admit, the evidence of obviously hastily donned clothing was pretty damning. “You had sex with the other one, and now this one, too? You have sex with everyone but me!”

“I don't have sex with everyone!” My fingers danced along the front of my blouse, fixing the button issue.

Kristoff snorted.

I elbowed him in the gut.

“Right here, in the very house I was in, practically in front of me!” Mattias continued, his face turning red.

“Would I do that?” I asked, trying very hard to assemble my facial features into those depicting innocence, but I couldn't seem to remember what that looked like.

The door slamming closed and the key scraping in the lock were the answer to
that
idiotic question.

“Well, hell,” I said, leaning my head against the door.

“Oh, be quiet, Mr. Actually-she's-
my
-wife. That didn't help matters one little bit. You just had to mention that, didn't you?”

“Are you attempting to blame me for our current predicament?”

I took a deep breath to answer him, and realized that I was, in fact, trying to blame him for just that. I slumped against the door in defeat. “No, I realize full well that it's my fault we're here.”

Kristoff was silent for a few moments. “I believe Alec shares some of that blame. He should have known better than to take you to a public place where he had no easy means of escape.”

“Probably.”

“I suppose I should have made you stay back while I checked the perimeter of the house, as well.”

“Hindsight and all that. Besides, shifting blame won't do any good.” I sighed, my spirits drooping. “If there was just some way to reason with the Brotherhood people. I know if I could talk to them, they would see that you and Alec don't deserve their wrath.”

“It won't do any good. We've tried for centuries to show them the truth about us, but they refuse to accept it.”

“Maybe if—” I stopped, hearing something that had me taking a step away from the door, watching in surprise as once again it was opened a crack.

“Pia?”

I grabbed the door and hauled it open, relief swamping me as I beheld the welcome sight of Ulfur and Ragnar. Ulfur was in solid mode, his smile filled with warmth as we emerged from the cell. “Ulfur, I could kiss you, but given the fact that lately I seem to end up married or in some other way bound to any man I kiss, I'll settle for a heartfelt thank-you. How did you get the keys?”

Ulfur's smile widened to a cheeky grin. He flexed his fingers. “I saw that one who had the keys come upstairs a few minutes ago. I figured he must have confined you down here somehow, and . . . er . . . persuaded him to give me the keys.”

“Is there a handcuff key on there?” Kristoff asked, nodding toward the key chain.

There was. He was still rubbing his freed wrists and shaking the blood back into his arms when we released Alec.

“My love, I knew you would find a way to free us,” Alec said with a wet and hurried kiss.

I slipped out of his hold, not wanting to mislead him, but hesitant to say anything. Now was not the time to discuss personal relationship issues. I shot Kristoff a glance, but he was frowning down at his wrist as he rubbed away deep red marks. “You can thank Ulfur, not me.”

“Ulfur?” Alec looking around the basement area.

“He's one of my ghosts. Is it safe to go upstairs, Ulfur?”

He flitted up the stairs, once again translucent. “Yes.”

“Then let's get the hell out of here,” I said, starting for the stairs, but was shoved back by first Kristoff, then Alec.

Just as my foot hit the bottom stair, a sudden explosion of noise filtered down to us. Kristoff and Alec froze for a moment, then both shouted something and bolted up the stairs, right through Ulfur and Ragnar.

“What the—what is it?” I asked Ulfur as I ran up after them.

He stood in the doorway, his brows raised in surprise. “It's Dark Ones.”

“More? Good lord, how many are there on this island?”

Behind me, a door slammed. I whirled around to see who had just left the kitchen area, but the sight of Kristjana, a knife raised high in her hand as she ran toward me, screaming what sounded like a Viking battle cry, instantly absorbed all my attention.

“Ack!” I yelled, and, turning on my heel, raced out of the kitchen toward the front of the house, from which all the noise was originating. “Help! Mad Brotherhood woman!”

I dashed into the main room, skidding to a stop at the sight of the room's occupants. Mattias was on the floor, his arms twisted up behind him as Kristoff slapped on the handcuffs that he'd just shed. There was a distinct look of pleasure on his face as he did so. Around him stood four men, all dark haired but for one blond. Alec spun around as I flung myself toward him, Kristjana in hot pursuit.

She was screaming something in Icelandic, but the murderous look in her eyes pretty much translated her intent. She'd gone off the deep end.

Alec shoved me behind him and lunged for her, while one of the other men—I recognized him as being Kristoff's brother Andreas—jumped toward her at the same time. Andreas grabbed her neck in some sort of disabling move, causing Kristjana to fall to the ground with a solid thud.

“Is she dead?” I asked, about ready to scream.

“No,” Andreas answered, prodding her with his toe. “She's just unconscious. For now.”

I shivered at his last words.

“Do we kill them now?” the blond man asked, a wicked light in his eyes as he stalked forward to help Andreas haul Kristjana onto a couch.

Andreas looked to one of the other men. Alec and Kristoff did the same. I examined the two men who were strangers to me—both were tall and well built, although the blond was a bit stockier.

The dark-haired man pulled off his fedora and gave me a long, considering look, his eyes so dark they were almost black. “Not yet. This, I presume, is the reaper you mentioned?”

“This is Pia, yes. My love, this is Christian Dante, one of the members of the council,” Alec said. “The other is Sebastian.”

“You're all vampires?” I asked, gazing at them with a kind of awed wonder. Each and every man could have graced the cover of a men's magazine. I couldn't help but wonder if being drop-dead gorgeous was one of the requirements to be a vampire.

“We are all Dark Ones, yes,” the one named Christian answered. He made a little bow to me, although I noted he shot Alec a questioning glance.

Alec answered by putting his arm around me and hauling me up to his side. “Pia is not Zorya by choice. She is not responsible for what is happening here.”

“You know, I really can speak for myself,” I said, a tiny bit irritated with Alec's protective gesture. I twisted my way out of his hold and gave Christian, who clearly held some sort of a position of authority with the others, a level look. “I did not choose to become Zorya, that's true, but I have accepted the job now, and I am, in fact, responsible for my own actions. But . . .” I stopped, puzzled. “I thought you were in Vienna. Isn't that where you were trying to take me?”

Kristoff, to whom I had addressed the last question, quirked his lips. “Yes.”

“We took a portal,” Christian answered as the blond vampire walked around me, obviously examining me.

“A what, now?” I asked.

“A portal allows one to move from one area to another quickly, via a tear in the fabric of time and space,” Christian answered.

My mouth hung open for a minute before I turned to Kristoff. “You guys can teleport like in
Star Trek
?”

“Not quite,” Alec answered for him. Kristoff shot his friend an unreadable look. “But it's a similar principle. We don't use them often, since they can be tricky at best, but they are sometimes used in a time of emergency.”

“Which this clearly is.” Sebastian finished his examination of me and resumed his spot next to Christian. “An unmade Zorya, a sacristan, and a reaper elder—not a bad day's work.”

Kristoff hauled Mattias to his feet and shoved him into the chair. At the sight of the latter's angry face, it struck me that Frederic wasn't anywhere in the room. “Did you hurt Frederic?”

“Unfortunately, no. He escaped,” Kristoff's cousin Rowan said as he entered the room from the kitchen. He had a nasty burn on the side of his face, which, to my amazement, started fading even as I watched. “He had a car. The last I saw of him, he was headed out of town.”

“You won't catch him,” Mattias said sulkily. “Not before the Zenith gets here.”

Christian spun around and stared at him in surprise. “Your leader is coming here?”

“To welcome Pia as a daughter of the moon.” Mattias shot me an angry glance. “I am beginning to believe Kristjana when she says that you do not deserve to be Zorya.”

“I think it's safe to say that Kristjana is not the most mentally stable person in town,” I said dryly. “And I only know four of the six vampires here, and out of those four, three of them hate me, so you really needn't be so quick to judge.”

“The Zenith is coming,” Christian said softly, sharing a look with his friends. “How very interesting.”

The one named Sebastian smiled. It made me shiver.

“Why do I have a horrible idea that I'm going to be used as bait to capture yet another member of the Brotherhood?” I asked Alec.

He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “It must be, Pia. The Zenith is the leader of the reapers—to have him is to deal a great blow to them.”

“And if I say I won't cooperate?”

“You will not have a choice,” Christian answered. He strolled over to gaze down into my eyes, holding my gaze with one that seemed to strip away everything and leave me bare and exposed. “You are a Zorya, a potential means of horrible death to my people. We cannot allow you to gain the power to do that. Do you understand?”

“Oh, I understand.”

“Good.” Christian nodded and released me from his hold.

“I understand that you're just as blind as the Brotherhood people are.”

All six vampires froze, and I realized just how stupid a thing it was to challenge them when they were en masse. But I have never been known for having an over-abundance of common sense, so I raised my chin and added, “It obviously doesn't occur to you that perhaps I can be a Zorya who doesn't destroy your people. And yet, that is exactly what I intend to do. Assuming I can, that is.”

I shot a quick look at Alec and Kristoff. Alec was looking puzzled, while Kristoff avoided my eyes all together.

“And how do you propose to do that?” Christian asked in a velvety soft voice. He had an odd sort of an accent, part English, part something slightly Germanic, but as nice as his voice was, it was nothing like the silky tones that Kristoff could utter when he so chose.