Blood Sin (2)

by Marie Treanor

“Oh, for God’s sake, this is no time for—”

  “Josh, you saw what it did to me!”

  “I saw what Dante did to you,” he said grimly. “He did the same thing to me the night I first showed him the damned sword. I thought at the time I was just drunk and imagining things, because in the morning there was no sign of any burn marks. But now I know it was Dante. He wants the sword and he’ll go to any lengths to get it, even doing this to you.”

  Elizabeth opened her eyes to stare at him. “You think it was some conjuring trick? Even though the same thing happened to you?”

  “Dante was present on both occasions,” Josh said dryly. “And trust me, I’ve held that sword many times, and only when Dante was present has anything like this ever occurred!”

  “Because he’s awake,” Elizabeth whispered.

  “Who’s awake?” Josh asked helplessly.

  “Saloman. I wakened him. Before that, the sword didn’t care where it was. Now he’s awake and he wants it back. . . .” She focused on him. “When it burned you, when was that?”

  Josh dragged his fingers through his hair. “Last year. Autumn, maybe.”

  “And before that, when was the last time you’d touched it?”

  “God, I don’t know, years ago, possibly.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “And between last autumn and now, how often did you touch it?”

  Josh’s gaze fell away. “Actually touch it with my bare hands?” When Elizabeth nodded again, he sighed. “Never. To be honest, my experience with Dante left me with a dislike of touching it. I carry it, wrap it, and unwrap it in the coat without ever laying hands directly on it.”

  “There you are, then,” Elizabeth said flatly. “Don’t you ask yourself why all those other people can touch it, yet you and I can’t?”

  “Because Dante wants it!” Josh exclaimed. “He tried to tell me in New York that it’s some kind of warning, that it’s not right for the sword to be with me. As if it ‘wants’ to be with him!”

  “Or any of those other men. It’s not like that at all. The sword attacked us because we’re the descendants of Tsigana. Her blood, the blood of Saloman’s killers, flows in our veins. The sword recognized that. We’re its enemies.”

  “Elizabeth, please don’t talk such bollocks, not tonight. Just let me see to your hands.”

  As he spoke, he turned them over in his and opened the palms. A few of her fingertips were still red and there was a sore-looking patch on her right palm. But there was no sign now of the blister she’d seen forming right after the incident.

  Josh said, “It doesn’t look as bad as I thought.”

  “I heal quickly. So do you. You must have noticed that.”

  “I’ve been lucky enough never to hurt myself very badly.”

  “Stop fighting it, Josh. It doesn’t change what you are. Be grateful that Tsigana’s crime brought you some good. Even if the worst does outweigh that somewhat.”

  “The worst being?” Josh inquired, with the air of merely humoring her.

  “That Saloman will drink your blood and kill you. As I said before, your blood is particularly valuable to him. And, Josh . . .”

  He’d leapt to his feet with more than a hint of impatience, but at her plea, he did at least glance back to her. She gazed helplessly back at him. When it came down to it, she just couldn’t give Saloman away, even to a man who didn’t believe in him.

  “Dante,” she said aloud, frowning. “Does Dante know what it is? Why does he want the sword so much?”

  Josh shrugged. “He’s an obsessive collector. And in case you didn’t notice, although he’s a nice guy most of the time, he doesn’t like to lose. Men don’t get to be as powerful as he is by losing.”

  “Does he know about Saloman?”

  Josh frowned, as if trying to remember. “I told him what my father called it—the Sword of Solomon—and he got quite excited.”

  “Solomon, Saloman. It’s the same name, really. I expect it just got corrupted over the many generations the sword’s been in your family. But seriously, he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with here.” She needed to speak to Mihaela. And Saloman himself.

  Her stomach twisted as she remembered their last encounter. But she couldn’t go there. This was about more than hurt pride.

  She said abruptly, “I don’t think you should have the sword anywhere near you.”

  His lips twisted. “You’re not going to tell me to give it to Dante, are you?”

  “No, I don’t think he should have it either, but at least he isn’t a descendant.” So far as I know . . . “Couldn’t you keep it in a bank vault or something? Or maybe I should look after it, just until I find out what we should do about it.”

  Josh sighed, looking at her fixedly. After a moment, he came back and sat down on the bed beside her. “Elizabeth, I like you, insane and muddled as you are, but you’d better understand this at once. It’s not up to you to decide what to do about the sword. It’s mine.”

  No, it isn’t. You only think it is. She said abruptly, “You saw him too, didn’t you? Saloman. When you touched the sword. Didn’t he say his name? Didn’t he remind you of anyone?” Like Adam Simon?

  “He reminded me I shouldn’t drink so much.”

  She regarded him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re just thrawn?”

  He grinned. “Can’t say they have. Is it good?”

  “In these circumstances, no. It means a particularly annoying kind of stubborn. I wish you’d trust me on this.”

  “Trust me, it’s Dante,” he countered. “And first thing in the morning, we’re leaving. I meant what I said; he really has gone too far, and I’m damned if I’ll have anything more to do with him.”

  “It wasn’t Dante,” she said, almost automatically, but he’d stood up and didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Have you got some burn cream for your hands?”

  “They’ll be fine by the morning. I’ll put a wet cloth on my palm overnight. Let’s sleep on the rest.”

  “Good night, Elizabeth.” At the door, he paused again and glanced back over his shoulder, almost apologetically. “You and Adam Simon, are you—”

  “We’re not even friends,” she interrupted. “Good night, Josh.”

  “Where’s the sword?” Josh demanded. Discovering the smaller sitting room empty and his sword gone, he finally confronted Dante, about to enter the drawing room on the ground floor.

  Dante paused, his hand resting on the door handle. “I put it in the safe with my own stuff. How’s Elizabeth?”

  “As shocked and injured as you might expect.”

  “One phone call and I can get her a nurse or even a doctor to look after her.”

  “Yeah I know, you probably could.” Reluctantly, he added, “It doesn’t seem to be as bad as I first thought. But that doesn’t alter the fact that you were fucking out of line.”

  “Don’t swear, Josh. Maybe I was remiss, considering what it already did to you, but it seems I didn’t have all the facts. Who is that girl? Is she really your cousin?”

  “Sort of. Distantly. Don’t change the subject!”

  “Oh, I’m not, believe me. I’m as anxious as you are to get to the bottom of this. Does she want the sword?”

  “No, she doesn’t want the damned sword!” Frustrated, Josh dragged his hand through his hair and glared at the senator, whose face displayed only concern and an anxiety Josh could have sworn was genuine.

  “Good,” Dante said, nodding. “Because I don’t think either of you should have it.”

  “Why the hell not?” Josh demanded.

  “Because it hurts you,” Dante said dryly. “Or had you forgotten that?”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten that, or the fact that you were there on both occasions!”

  Dante shrugged. “Luck. And Elizabeth, what does she say happened?”

  Josh waved an impatient hand. “Some nonsense about our descendant killing the original owner of the sword and the sword recognizing us. Have you been talkin
g to her? Shit, you haven’t set me up, have you?”

  Josh froze with his hand halfway to his hair again, staring at Dante as the suspicion rose and spread.

  “Of course not. I wasn’t aware of her existence. But she intrigues me. She appeared to be a skeptic earlier, and yet now she’s attributing magical powers to the sword. Who did she say it belonged to?”

  “Saloman,” Josh said reluctantly, letting his arm fall to his side.

  Dante’s eyes flashed. “That’s close to what your father told you. And how does she know about Saloman?”

  Josh shrugged. “Research. It’s her specialty. She believes he really was a vampire.” As soon as he spoke the words, he wished them unsaid. It felt like betraying Elizabeth’s little eccentricities. Dante, even now that Josh was so angry with him, just had a habit of calming you down and making you talk. Of making you believe he’d done nothing wrong. And yet in this case, if Dante hadn’t done it, then who had?

  “And why,” Dante asked softly, “would she think that?”

  “Oh, this ridiculous fantasy that she awakened him. She’ll have met some other trickster like you.”

  “Josh, Josh, the world is not so full of tricksters.” The senator patted his arm, and yet Josh could see his mind was elsewhere, on something that excited him far more than this conversation. Irritated, Josh jerked away from him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said flatly. “We’ll be leaving early in the morning and I’ll need the sword.”

  Dante sighed, turning the handle of the door. “If you insist. I’m always up early. Why don’t you come and play some poker? Adam’s taking us all to the cleaners.”

  Saloman. Saloman, speak to me!

  It was no good. Although the house was quiet and she had no difficulty at all in filling her mind with the ancient vampire, he was blocking her efforts to reach him telepathically. Well, she had no time for his games.

  Scrambling off the bed, still fully dressed in her elegant evening gown with her favorite sweater pulled over the top for warmth—it was a drafty old house—she left her room with grim determination to track him down. Part of her knew she was wasting her time—unless he chose to “broadcast” his presence, she hadn’t a hope in hell of finding him, especially if he was outside, hunting. However, by eliminating the bedrooms she knew to be occupied by other people, because they’d told her in idle conversation that evening or because she’d seen people coming and going from them, she managed to narrow Saloman’s down to one of four.

  A couple of pale night-lights shone from the ceiling. At the end of the corridor, a tall window with open curtains let in what feeble starlight could wink between the clouds. Elizabeth padded the length of the hall and back again, wishing she had a vampire’s ability to “sense” presence. She tried to build on the warning of danger she’d felt just before the vampire attacked her in St. Andrews last autumn, letting her mind search out a similar presence. But this was Saloman. . . .

  In the end, she chose the old-fashioned method and simply put her ear to each possible door. She eliminated another bedroom immediately, since she could hear outrageous snoring, and she couldn’t imagine Saloman making so uncivilized a noise—supposing he ever slept.

  At the second door, she heard nothing at all. At the third, two women talking, amid the clink of glasses and the odd giggle. She thought one of them might have been Jerri Cusack. And at the fourth, which she had already guessed to be the largest, corner room, she heard Nicola Devon saying, “How’s that?” in a low, teasing voice.

  Elizabeth drew back at once, clutching the sweater over her heart, where it felt as if someone were twisting a knife. It wasn’t Nicola’s room; she already knew hers was on the next floor. But Dante was “courting” Adam Simon; he’d have given him one of the largest bedrooms. Could even Saloman go straight from kissing her to screwing Nicola?

  It didn’t matter. She should be more concerned about him biting Nicola, about what the hell was going on with that sword that had blasted her across Dante’s sitting room. And yet she was physically and socially incapable of reaching out to open the door.

  She closed her eyes. Saloman, I need to talk to you. Come out.

  The words bounced back at her. She stepped back, waiting, but all she heard was a very real feminine squeak and a creak of the bed. Defeated, Elizabeth turned and trailed back to her bedroom.

  She felt as if she were letting everyone down. What if she was wrong about Saloman behaving in a discreet and circumspect manner? What if he decided he didn’t care and went on a feeding frenzy?

  The image of a shark with Saloman’s face swam into her mind, bringing a sour, unhappy smile to her lips. For now, she’d phone Mihaela in Budapest, see what was known about Saloman’s sword. At least then she might gain more insight into his plans and work out what the hell she could do to combat them.

  She turned the handle of her bedroom door and walked in. Immediately, her heart plunged in fear. In the shadows behind the bedside lamp, which was the only light in the room, stood the tall, dark figure of a man.

  Saloman.

  Chapter Six

  Saloman knew she was there, on the other side of his bedroom door. In spite of everything, including the fact that the seminaked Nicola was doing her very best to seduce him as he lay on the bed, he willed Elizabeth to come in. He even unlocked the door with his mind, careless of the consequences of her discovering him like this. Part of him wanted her to see, to suffer. Part of him just wanted her with him.

  Nicola’s hand slid under his silk robe and swept down his body. In the passage outside, Elizabeth waited, hesitating. Saloman rolled Nicola off him and she squeaked with delight as he pinned her underneath him. He felt Elizabeth calling, but didn’t answer, didn’t let her in. Instead, he reached out to her in secret, and felt a wave of desolation and anxiety so powerful that it shocked him.

  He rose from the bed, as if he’d always meant merely to clamber over Nicola to the other side. Perhaps he had.

  “Go back to your own room,” he advised. “You’re tired.”

  He opened and closed the bedroom door so quickly that it would have been a blur to Nicola, if she could see through her outrage. Saloman didn’t much care. At the other end of the passage, Elizabeth walked the last few paces to her room, her shoulders drooping as if with defeat.

  Saloman ran after her and, when she opened the door, slipped past her to stand by the window in the lamp’s shadow. A boy’s trick, but it did no harm to remind her of his power. And it gave him ample opportunity to watch the play of expressions across her face—shock and fear, relief, and then fear again, all mixed up now with the emotions she refused to give in to. Saloman wanted to make her acknowledge them; he wanted to throw her on the bed and lose himself in her heat and softness.

  “Never lurk outside a vampire’s door,” he said mildly. “It’s taken as an invitation.”

  She swallowed. “Good,” she said, closing the door behind her and leaning on it. “I need to talk to you. There’s a sword here. It’s been in Josh’s family for generations and I think it’s yours.”

  Saloman waited.

  “Is it?” she snapped, with a hint of impatience.

  “Of course it is.”

  “And that’s why you’re here? To take the sword?”

  “I told you there were many reasons. I even recited some of them.”

  “You missed Nicola.”

  He admired the dry tone she managed, mixed even with a hint of humor. If it weren’t for the pain in her lovely, too-open hazel eyes, he might even have believed her.

  He walked toward her, soaking up the alarm in her face, the stiffening of her shoulders as she prepared to resist him. But he didn’t touch her, merely halted a foot from her.

  “What’s the matter? Did you think because you sent me away I should remain celibate for the rest of my very long life? Or at least for the length of yours?”

  She stared at him an instant longer, before her eyelids closed, hiding the pain. “I have n
o right to expect or to ask anything of you. But I need to know about the sword.”

  “It’s mine. That’s all you need to know.”

  “How dangerous is it?”

  “You know.”

  Her eyelids snapped up again, revealing wide-eyed indignation. Slowly, he reached out and took both her hands. They jumped in his, as if she’d pull them free; then she was still, letting him turn the palms upward and gaze on the raw, red skin. Tsigana’s blood flowing in her veins healed her quickly, and yet she must still have hurt.

  He lifted her right hand to his lips and kissed the palm, running his tongue delicately across the injured skin. It was good to taste her again, to inhale the scent of lemon flowers and vanilla and something intangible that was peculiarly Elizabeth.

  She gasped, tugging away from him once more, but he held her firm and took the first injured finger into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the burned tip.

  “I don’t need your help!” she raged.

  He released her finger and turned to the next. “Yes, you do. You’re already angry that I didn’t offer it earlier. For what it’s worth, I thought you’d come to my room to ask.”

  “Then it’s fortunate I didn’t, since you were otherwise engaged!” She bit her lip, obviously angry with herself.

  Saloman smiled around her third finger, then licked the fourth. He could hear her heart pounding, took pleasure in watching the rapid rise and fall of her breasts under the sweater that should have looked ridiculous with her evening gown and yet didn’t. He could smell her sweet, heady blood, wanted to draw it into his own watering mouth. He contented himself with licking her skin.

  Without releasing her right hand, he lowered it and raised the left instead. The burns were less severe here; only her fingertips seemed damaged and a tiny patch on the base of her wrist.

  “Nicola,” she said, gasping, as if trying to focus on something other than his mouth. He twisted his tongue around her middle finger, licking far more than the injured spot, and sucked it into his mouth before releasing it.

  “What about her?” he asked without interest.