Blood Sin (2)

by Marie Treanor

  She didn’t like that idea. Restlessly, she stood up, pacing the large, empty room and wishing there were even one window she could see out of. Even in the dark, there might be something to distract her from unpalatable self-analysis.

  Saloman, Saloman.

  Shaking herself, she bent and began to pile up the used plates and food containers. She stood with them and walked across the room to the door through which Dmitriu had brought them earlier.

  “Dmitriu?”

  It seemed to be some kind of kitchen. At least, it had a sink and running water and a slightly rickety table at which Dmitriu sat, apparently staring into space.

  He glanced up and gestured to the sink. “Thank you.”

  She dumped the dishes in the sink and shoved the containers to one side for later. It felt cool enough in here to be a fridge.

  The taps worked too, running both hot and cold water over the plates and cups. Eventually, because she so much wanted to know, she asked, “Are you talking to him?”

  Dmitriu smiled faintly, watching her lay the second washed cup on the draining board. “No. I was just thinking. About you, actually.”

  Elizabeth rinsed off a plate and balanced it, dripping, against the cups. “There’s no point. I’d be bad for your digestion.”

  Dmitriu let out a surprised laugh. “Damned right,” he said with feeling. “Saloman would turn me inside out.”

  “I’m not so easy to bite these days either,” she said, unreasonably annoyed.

  “So I hear. The Awakener’s power is strong and growing stronger with every kill.” At her involuntary twitch, he smiled. “Interesting. You still don’t like that word. You don’t enjoy killing my kind?”

  “No,” she said, low. She added the second plate to the draining crockery and for honesty added, “Sometimes I enjoy the fight.” Like at Travis’s, with him behind me . . .

  Dmitriu’s lip curled. “Like us.”

  Inside, she screamed in protest. It was what she had been avoiding ever since the conflict at Travis’s, and she was damned if she’d think about it now in front of Dmitriu.

  “It tears you up, doesn’t it?” he observed with detached interest. “Being the hunters’ best friend and Saloman’s mistress. Being so much like us when we embody everything you hate.”

  Christ, he was nearly as bad as Saloman. She swung back to the sink. “I don’t want to kill,” she muttered, throwing down the bread knife with excessive force.

  “And you have a pact with Saloman not to kill each other.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “He told you that?” Slowly, she turned back and lowered herself onto the empty stool opposite Dmitriu.

  “No,” he admitted. “But you’re still alive. And your love is as obvious as his.”

  Heat pounded through her body into her face. “He doesn’t love me,” she whispered. “He’s thousands of years old and I pass a few nights for him.” Oh, fuck, did I really say that?

  But Dmitriu, it seemed, was not inclined to make fun. His eyes were unexpectedly serious as they met her desperate gaze. “You think that feeling is less intense for him because he’s lived so long and felt it all before?”

  It was so exactly what she did think that there seemed to be no point even in nodding. She continued to stare at him in bafflement.

  He gave a half shrug. “It’s true he lives very much in the moment, seeks out novelty in all its forms to keep himself entertained. I could see it amused him to sleep with his Awakener before he killed her—especially when she was as beautiful as you.”

  Elizabeth wrenched her gaze free and shoved back the stool until it ground unpleasantly on the floor. When the pain was bearable, she’d stand up and walk away.

  “Only he didn’t kill you, did he?” Dmitriu mused. “He let you walk away from him not once but twice. And damn me, here you are again, close enough to be joined at the hip.”

  Frowning, Elizabeth lifted her gaze to his.

  “He even gave you power over the sword,” Dmitriu observed.

  “Is that what he did?” Involuntarily, she spread her hands on the table, palms upward. “It doesn’t burn me anymore.”

  “It will protect you now,” Dmitriu said carelessly, and Elizabeth lifted one shaking hand to rub her forehead free of the pain. “It can’t have escaped your notice that, living each moment to the full as he does, he uses many of them to, er, plan future moments.”

  Her hand stilled. For an instant, she looked at Dmitriu through her fingers; then she let her hand drop back onto the table.

  “With me?” she whispered. Stop leading him, you idiot. How do you know why he’s saying these things? He knows you want to hear them too much.

  Dmitriu smiled sardonically. “Of course. Among other plans, certainly, but yes, with you. I’ve seen him stay agonizingly celibate for you. I’ve seen him take other women without love to forget you, but still he brings you back. Is he monogamous by nature? I don’t honestly know. But it’s more than a few happy fucks he seeks with you. That much is obvious from watching him with you.”

  Her heart beat, and beat so hard she felt it would break out of her chest. “Then what does he want with me?” she whispered.

  Dmitriu curled his lip. He might have been sneering, but she didn’t think so. “Companionship,” he said. “Whatever that means to him. Or to you.”

  Companionship. More than a one-night—or a two-night—stand, more than friendship. Like New York, only all the time.

  She gasped, banishing the yearning that threatened to overwhelm her. “Like Tsigana?” she said harshly.

  Dmitriu’s eyebrows flew up. “Tsigana?” His eyes searched her face, dropped to her throat and breasts. “You don’t look like her, if that’s what you want to hear. And there is more to you, more beneath the surface—and, of course, you’re more clever.”

  Alarm bells rang at that. Flattery. Was he testing her? Seeing what she would do if he convinced her of her emotional hold on Saloman?

  “True or not,” she said more briskly, “why, exactly, are you telling me all this?”

  He shrugged. “Because I want him to have what he wants. And when he offers immortality, if not before, you have to be prepared. You have to know how far you’re willing to go.”

  Elizabeth’s lips fell slack. “When he offers . . . He didn’t even offer that to Tsigana! Why would he even think of—”

  “Because he never once looked at Tsigana as he looked at you over that sword.”

  Some wild, fierce emotion was trying to get out, to make her shout and run and burst with happiness, but she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t so stupid.

  “He killed his cousin for Tsigana! He killed Luk, whom he loved!”

  “He killed Luk because Luk was insane.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “You’re lying. He told me he couldn’t kill him for that. Until Tsigana went to Luk.”

  Dmitriu leaned forward, peering into her face. “Elizabeth, it wasn’t Tsigana’s betrayal that hurt. Do you think he’d have taken her back if that were the case? Oh, Tsigana fascinated him with her caprice and her sheer weaknesses. She was one very flawed, selfish, charming little being; he cared for her, looked after her, forgave her. But her acts were never betrayal, because he never trusted her in the first place.”

  Elizabeth stared. “Then why did he attack Luk in the end?”

  “He didn’t attack Luk. Luk attacked him. That was the betrayal he couldn’t forgive. That was why rage set in, and instead of disarming Luk, as he could have very easily by then, he killed him.”

  Elizabeth’s hand crept to her throat. “My God,” she whispered. “No wonder he—” She broke off, swamped suddenly by the memory of Saloman’s agony as he told her the part of the tale he was prepared to. And even then he’d had to distract himself with lust, with fierce, deliberate, delicious sex, just to get the words out.

  Her body flamed as her mind relived the strange scene, and she tried desperately not to believe, not even to want to believe, that his feeling
for her was greater than for the flawed, beautiful, treacherous Tsigana.

  “He’s loved many women,” she said, touching her hot cheeks with her fingertips. “But he didn’t make any of them immortal. He told me he created only you and Maximilian.”

  Dmitriu inclined his head, still watching her with mingled curiosity and fascination. “That is true.”

  She stood up. “Well, for the record, Dmitriu, I don’t want to be a vampire. I wouldn’t accept immortality at any price.” But I would like to be offered it. . . . Just to know he cares. Just to be a little special.

  She walked out of the kitchen, her mind still spinning with Dmitriu’s words and with her own tangled emotions, not least of which was self-loathing. There was an undeniable sweetness in the fantasy of being with Saloman and never growing old, but fantasy was all it was. The reality of so-called immortality was bestial murder, eternal darkness, and drinking human blood. In her heart she knew that accepting vampirism from Saloman, even through love, would be as great a sin as Dante taking it from Dmitriu or Travis or any other vampire he could convince. No, she wasn’t even tempted.

  And yet, she would like to be asked.

  And to be with him for a little. Even valid decisions can be changed.

  There was no sound from the sofa, no movement to tell her Josh was awake. She wished she could sleep too. She looked around for the sword. She wanted to handle it while Saloman wasn’t here, to see if she could indeed hold it without burning. She wanted to touch something that was his, because this feeling was getting so out of control that—

  Where’s the bloody sword?

  “Josh?” She spun around to the sofa. “Josh, wake up! Where did you put the—” She broke off, for Josh wasn’t on the sofa. He wasn’t anywhere in the room. Josh and the sword had vanished.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Struggling up from sleep, Josh felt wildly disoriented at first. The electric light stabbed at his eyes; the huge, wide space of the warehouse room made him blink before memory began to flood back. He sat up, shaking himself and rubbing his eyes. The sight of his father’s sword, propped casually against the wall, made him pause, dropping his hands from his face.

  They’d just left it there, alone with him. It was his, and they weren’t even afraid he’d take it back. Because, presumably, they reckoned he was too afraid of vampires. When even Elizabeth Silk could kill them one-handed. All you needed was the right tool. And the knowledge not to be afraid.

  Josh stood silently, listening to the distant sound of Elizabeth’s voice, interspersed with the vampire Dmitriu’s. Although he didn’t quite understand her part in all of this, he acquitted her of malice. He was sure she’d done everything with the best of intentions, but vampires were freaky to say the least. Fucking scary was another description, but he was damned if he’d let fear keep his father’s sword from him—fear of either the good vamps or the bad ones. If there really was a difference . . .

  Walking silently across the room to where he’d dropped his travel bag, he took out the leather jacket, then spilled out a pile of shirts and pants to make some room. With the leather jacket over his hands for protection, he advanced on the sword and gingerly picked it up. Hastily, he flung it into the travel bag and zipped it. The hilt stuck out, so he disguised it with a shirt. Then, before either Elizabeth or the vampire came out to notice, he crept downstairs, shoes in one hand, bag in the other.

  At each step, he expected to hear Elizabeth cry out, or the vampire to fly at him. His skin prickled and sweated with the effort to move with speed and silence. At the foot of the stairs, ignoring the pain of jagged stones and rubble in his soles, he raced across to the door, where he paused to stuff his sore feet in his sneakers, and then carefully eased open the door far enough to squeeze through. He didn’t close it; he was too afraid the vampire would hear that and come after him. He jogged off into the night, still amazed he hadn’t been heard. What in the world had Elizabeth been talking about with Dmitriu? She’d sounded intense and pained, while the vampire’s tones were moderate and reasonable. But whatever they’d been discussing, he was grateful it had kept them distracted, because Elizabeth had told him after the Travis incident that vampires’ senses were far more powerful than humans’.

  When he reached the main road, he slowed to a walk, grinning to himself because he’d outsmarted everyone and gotten his sword back. Now he’d head back to the airport, get the first flight home to the States, and put the sword in a safe-deposit box. He wouldn’t get to look at it much, but hey, he’d never done much of that anyway. At least it would still be his and he wouldn’t have that nagging feeling of having let his father down.

  His father, who’d believed in all of those things Josh had denied until this week. Dad had been right all along, and Josh entirely wrong to doubt him. He supposed, as he began striding along the road and scanning for taxis, that he should feel guilty, even ashamed of his determined skepticism, but in fact, what he chiefly felt was a pleased pride in his dad that made him grin.

  He was still grinning when the car skidded to a halt with a screech of brakes just after passing him. An instant later it reversed at speed, narrowly avoiding the horn-blaring truck forced to swerve into the next lane. Josh didn’t even feel the lurch of panic until Travis jumped out of the car and grabbed him.

  Instinctively, Josh tried to shove him off, but the travel bag was wrenched out of his hands and flung inside the car. Josh yelled in fury, but a second later, he was flung after it, just as if he weighed no more than a tennis ball.

  Dmitriu swore long and fluently in an impressive mixture of languages, finishing in English with, “Stupid little shit. I didn’t even hear him leave. And now I have to go and find him before Saloman notices his bloody sword is missing again. Wait here.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Elizabeth said grimly, grabbing up her jacket.

  “You can’t,” he said irritably, already leaping down the stairwell in one jump. His voice floated back up to her as she ran down the steps. “I need to move too fast. Wait there.”

  Elizabeth forced herself to be sensible. Dmitriu was right. He could move faster without her; he certainly didn’t need her to track Josh. So as the door banged shut behind him, she sat down on the dirty, broken steps and tried to think. Dmitriu wouldn’t hurt Josh; Saloman had told him not to. There was no need to call in Saloman’s protection now. In fact, Saloman might well be so pissed off at Josh’s stealing the sword so soon after his getting it back that he could hurt Josh himself.

  Maybe it would be better if Josh did escape with the sword; only, that left him alone and unprotected and the sword open to any evil being fast enough to grab it first. Elizabeth rested her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, rubbing hard as if to restore her own powers of thought.

  The trouble was, her heart wanted Saloman to have his cousin’s sword. It was her head that knew he couldn’t be allowed its power to add to his own. Could the hunters get to Josh before Dmitriu did? She doubted it, and yet now it seemed abundantly clear that the only safe place for either Josh or the sword was with the hunters.

  She ran back upstairs for her phone, and got as far as scrolling down to Mihaela’s number before she hurled it onto Dmitriu’s leather sofa. “Oh, bloody, bloody hell! I can’t have them running up against Saloman and Dmitriu and fighting over Josh like dogs with some particularly juicy bone! I need to find Josh.”

  Unlikely that she’d get to him before anyone else, but she certainly wouldn’t if she just sat here and waited. Picking up the phone, she dialed Josh’s number instead. Getting no answer, she stuffed it in her bag and ran back downstairs.

  Elizabeth felt slightly numb as she left Budapest airport for the second time in twelve hours. She had been so sure Josh would either be there already or arrive soon after her. But she’d been here for nearly three hours, pacing the entrance hall, haunting the cafés and the American airline desks, and still there was no sign of him.

  Outside, it was daylight. The sky was br
ight blue, building up for a fine summer day. Dmitriu would be back in his “penthouse,” hopefully with Josh. She hoped without reservation now that Dmitriu had found him, because the alternative was unthinkable.

  Walking toward the airport taxis, she wondered if she could actually direct the driver to where she wanted to go. She’d gotten here from the warehouse by a mixture of running and taxi, but Dmitriu’s new home was not in a part of the city that she was very familiar with. She had no idea of districts or street names.

  Elizabeth.

  The voice in her head was electrifying. From a slightly numb dejection, she suddenly seemed to feel everything at once—the seductive effect of his voice, the joy of his presence that was pointless to deny, the wonder of Dmitriu’s words to her last night. And hard on the heels of that, the knowledge that somehow she and Dmitriu had lost his sword, and that there were worse people than Saloman who could have it by now.

  She halted, leaning one elbow against a railing. Saloman. Where are you?

  I’m at Dmitriu’s. Alone.

  Oh, shite. She dragged her hand through her hair. Josh ran off with the sword. Dmitriu and I went looking for him—he shouldn’t have been able to get far in the time he had, but he’s not at the airport, and if Dmitriu isn’t back . . .

  Her hand fell back to her side. Why isn’t Dmitriu back? The sun is well up.

  Saloman was silent for so long that Elizabeth wondered if he’d actually broken the connection. There had been no trace of anger, or indeed of any expression at all in his brief greeting, but he could hardly have been pleased. Even Ancients must be subject to the odd temper tantrum.