His entire spine prickled with alarm. It could be any vampire—Jacob again, with backup this time, including the seriously threatening Basilio. Or Béla, hacked off by his relationship with Angyalka. You didn’t need to be telepathic to spot that Béla didn’t like him.
He couldn’t see anyone watching. He just had to hope the disruptor prevented any vampire from actually noticing him. His neck still tingling, István climbed into the car and started the engine.
****
Angyalka glanced toward the club door as it swung open, but it was two perfectly ordinary humans who walked in. She returned to her customer, realized she’d already served him, and found Béla sliding onto the stool in front of her instead.
Looking for someone? he asked telepathically.
She shook her head.
Angyalka. He isn’t coming back.
He’d said he’d call for her at sunset. Two hours later and there was no sign of him. Could Béla be right?
It’s a good thing, Béla assured her. A human, a hunter, isn’t worthy of you.
She tried for a light touch. Oh, I don’t know. He’s a fun human and has been useful to me.
Perhaps you’ve stopped being useful to him. Or perhaps he was just so appalled by what he saw last night that he’s run away.
She poured him a vodka shot. Don’t be small-minded, Béla. He knows exactly what I—we are.
Béla shrugged and picked up the vodka. Knowing and seeing are different things. Some humans put their lovers on pedestals. I expect he didn’t like your true nature being rammed under his nose.
He didn’t, Angyalka agreed. Even if it hadn’t been there in his eyes, his shock had almost leaked from his pores. He’d been so desperate to get away from her that it had hurt. And yet she’d been so sure he’d come back. Just once to keep his promise.
You don’t need him, Angyalka.
It was true. She’d only ever needed the Angel. What she really didn’t need was feeling like this: churned up, angry, yearning…
She’d lost control. And that had always been what István was about. Because he’d taken control from her once during the hunters’ raid on the Angel, she’d wanted to turn the tables on him. And yet at the same time, she’d wondered what it would be like in a more personal sense. Well, now she’d found out. It had its highs—fabulously pleasurable sex and rich hunter blood. A temporarily helpless vampire certainly had a lot more fun than a continually helpless human, a position she’d wanted to die to escape from.
But she’d done the experiments now. It was time to take back control. Not with sex, since that was largely how she’d lost so much of it in the last few days. But by moving on. She’d go by herself to the end of the street, later tonight when the club was quiet. And gradually, she’d go further, lose her fear and her demeaning dependency on Béla, find her own prey and forget the human hunter who’d shown her the way…
“Well, I don’t need a pep talk either,” she said briskly. “If we have a quiet spell tonight, could you bring up some flattened boxes from the basement and leave them in my apartment? I want that damned picture wrapped and out of harm’s way until Saloman or Maximilian can look at it.”
Part of her wanted to destroy it utterly, but then their chances of discovering the culprit were severely reduced.
Béla drank his vodka in one. “Sure. Or I could just disenchant it.”
Angyalka regarded him thoughtfully. Béla was good with enchantments, particularly good at unraveling them. And she didn’t actually want to burn Maximilian’s picture. Hmmm…
“No,” she said at last, with reluctance. “We can’t risk anything being left behind. And if the enchantment’s gone, we’ll never trace it.”
Béla shrugged and slid off the stool. “I’ll bring the boxes up before the end of the night.” As he moved, his gaze fixed on someone walking toward the bar.
Angyalka’s heart jolted. István.
He wore faded jeans that emphasized the length of his legs and the leanness of his hips, and a denim jacket with the collar slightly turned up at the back—more from carelessness than a fashion statement, Angyalka suspected. His straight brown hair falling across his high forehead glistened with raindrops. It looked enticingly soft.
Although he knew where she was—he was heading straight toward her—he wasn’t yet looking at her. Instead, ever the hunter, he scanned the room, looking for trouble.
How does he do that? Béla demanded. He’s beginning to seriously creep me out.
Creeping out a vampire was no mean feat. Nor was disguising the approach of a hunter from one.
Science, Angyalka replied.
He came right up to the bar and nodded to Béla before finally turning his dark gaze on Angyalka. His lips quirked upward in the way that made her want to kiss them. “Hello.”
“Hello. What will you have?”
“Nothing, unless you’re going to take half an hour to get ready.”
She lifted one eyebrow. “Is there a dress code for going to the end of the road?”
“In this weather, probably a raincoat.”
“I believe I won’t melt.” She nodded to Matthias, the human bar manager, to let him know she was leaving, and walked to the bar hatch. Béla still stood, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching.
You’re really going out? he said in her head.
Yes, I’m really going out.
Should I wait up? he enquired with heavy sarcasm.
No, she said irritably. Although she wouldn’t be more than five minutes, his words felt constricting, interfering. She was rather more than a human child who had to be checked up on. Without looking at either of them, she sailed past István and Béla toward the club door.
Behind her, Béla stayed István with one word. “Hunter.”
There was a pause, as if István turned back toward him. Angyalka refused to look.
“I meant what I said before,” Béla said.
Another pause. “So did I,” István replied.
And then she was out of the door, and a second later, so was István. The two vampire bouncers nodded to them, and they walked down the long flight of dirty stairs in silence.
At the foot, Angyalka asked, “What did Béla say to you ‘before’?”
“That if I hurt you or even upset your day, he’d kill me. I might be paraphrasing.”
“And you replied?”
“That he could try,” István answered, opening the outside door and holding it for her.
She wanted to sail out past him like the aristocratic ladies she’d once watched sweeping past servants in the palace she’d worked in. It seemed appropriate. But the world was big outside. The knowledge of how big was pumping at her heart, sickening her stomach. She didn’t want to go out there. Not even with István. She had no reason to go out there.
Focus, Angyalka. Hide behind the conversation; that’s what you’re good at.
“Béla is overprotective,” she managed. Her voice sounded a little tight, but it didn’t shake, and even as she said the words, she drew strength from them. “He takes care of me. The trouble is, I’ve just understood that he isn’t helping me at all. Without Béla”—she forced one leg forward, then the other, and the first again, and she was outside—“without Béla, I’d have had to deal with my fear long ago, do my own hunting, or face true death.”
She came to a halt, trembling. István let the door close, shutting off her escape, and she had to squash down the surge of panic that rooted her to the spot. Then he stood beside her, the warmth emanating from his body like some soothing balm for her petrified soul.
She realized he held his crooked arm out to her in a half-mocking, old-fashioned gesture. Laughter caught at the back of her throat. She seized his arm as if it were her only lifeline, and he tucked her hand close into his body. They began to walk with slow, even steps.
He said, “Not quite the beer-cellar stagger this time.”
“Or the raunchy-rooftop grind,” she managed.
“More a
civilized stepping out.”
“In the rain,” she said, finally noticing the damp and turning her face up to the sky. Soft raindrops pattered on her nose and cheeks and throat. Pale clouds scudded across the moon, allowing glimpses of winking stars. “Fuck, it’s beautiful,” she whispered. “The world is beautiful. István…”
“Yes?”
She moved her hand in his arm to find his bare hand and squeeze it. “Thank you. I’ll always be grateful for this. More than you’ll ever understand.”
“Hey, it’s not even dinner yet,” he said lightly. “I thought we could work up to that. Or maybe the theatre.”
“István, stop pretending. There’s no need. You know this is finished.”
His fingers grasped hers. “Angyalka, I don’t even know what this is.”
She smiled. Above her, the few visible stars seemed blurred. It must have been the rain. “Unfinished business. Inappropriate attraction. And a hell of a lot of fun.”
“Oh yes,” he breathed. “A hell of a lot. And yet our business is now finished?”
The question in his voice soothed her aching heart. “I’m a vampire. I love being a vampire and I won’t change. I couldn’t if I wanted to, and I don’t. I’ll never apologize for the things that disgust your human, hunter soul.”
“Angyalka—”
She turned into him, halting them both in their tracks under a flickering streetlight. She touched his lips with one finger. “Sh-sh. Don’t. The funny thing is, I like you all the more for your unchanging human, hunter soul.”
His arm came around her. He pressed his warm rough cheek to hers, and she closed her eyes. “Yet you’re sending me away.”
She slid her arms around his neck. “The sending was all done last night. This is our stolen time, our prize for all the fun.”
He stood quite still. Only his erection grew against her. The sexual chemistry was still there with a vengeance. She could never deny that. Slowly, he raised his head and gazed down at her. She couldn’t read his melting human eyes. They might have been desperate. They might have been relieved or just plain lustful. Somewhere lurked pain, but like her, he hid it.
“Then we have tonight?” he asked.
She ran her fingers through his soft, damp hair. “It’s our date.”
“I couldn’t go without kissing you,” he whispered and did with a sweet, aching tenderness that broke her dead heart. And when it was over, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him back. She meant it to be short, almost chaste, but when his tongue slid between her lips, passion flared, and suddenly their mouths were locked together as if they’d never part.
He pushed her back against the lamppost, deepening the kiss even further while his hips held her captive and he ground his erection into her.
“Give me tonight,” he whispered into her mouth. “One more night with you…one more long, amazing night. Angyalka.”
“I’ll bite you,” she said in anguish, nipping angrily at his lips to show him. But instead of wrenching free, he sank his mouth back into hers in another churning, arousing kiss.
“So bite me,” he said when he came up for breath. He even threw his head back, revealing his throat and the rich vein full of rushing, excited hunter blood.
Laughter and pain choked her together. “Last orders, please,” she said and grazed her teeth over his vein. He didn’t pull away, and the hunger overwhelmed her. She licked the skin over his vein, slowly, thoroughly, giving him time to push her off, to change his mind. Oh Jesus, don’t change it now. I want this, I need this…
With a sound like a sob, she bit into his flesh. His gasp vibrated through her, urging her on. She growled low in her throat at the taste of his gorgeous blood in her mouth. She sucked, pushing herself hard over his erection, rubbing herself on it for her greater pleasure and his.
His hand clutched her hip, slid under her dress to her thigh and inwards. Although his fingers shook, he managed to shove aside her panties and bathe his fingers in the flooding moisture of her lust. She moaned at his touch, writhing, and his finger left her, twisting instead to get at his own zipper.
Oh yes, oh God, yes. Fuck me too.
She forced herself to slow her drinking until he pushed his hot cock inside her, and after that she clung with teeth and hands and legs, straining into him, thrusting and grinding with him in a hard, furious race for completion. He was panting, groaning her name when she took a last mighty suck and fell into orgasm with him. His seed burned its way into her womb, feeding her as his blood did.
It was an instant of perfection, of deepest union and sexual bliss in the beauty of the night. Rain trickled down his face onto hers. She released his throat and pressed her healing tongue to it until it stopped bleeding.
There was no sound but István’s heavy breathing and the patter of rain on the road and on a nearby parked car. The street was empty here, save for her and István still joined under the lamp’s warm glow.
Angyalka kissed her way from his throat to his mouth, was almost relieved as well as glad when his lips clung and kissed her back with profound, satisfied sensuality.
She smiled against his mouth. “The sweetest farewell.”
“Not yet. We have the rest of the night, don’t we?”
Her eyebrows twitched with uncertainty. She drew back.
He moved lazily inside her. “Don’t we deserve that much?”
“We’re just making it harder,” she whispered. The anguish was back.
“Angyalka, I’m beginning to think it couldn’t be any harder.”
His eyes were too serious, his meaning too deep. She squeezed him with her internal muscles. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said throatily and was rewarded with a breath of laughter that swept the grief away. Until morning.
Slowly, he withdrew from her and tucked himself back into his jeans. Her dress fell back into place without being tugged or pulled. He smiled at her, his eyes darkening again. “Fuck, you’re sexy.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Sir, is that the language to use to a lady?” She held out her hand commandingly for his arm.
He gave it, walking forward on legs that shook slightly. “Yes, if the lady has just screwed him exquisitely under a lamppost.”
She laughed, hugging his arm to her, and let peace enfold her as she walked along the quiet street, back to the Angel, her Angel, for a last night of passion with the man she was already calling her ex-lover.
The short walk back was rather more relaxed than the slightly fraught outward journey. A little tension-relieving sex helped, of course, and a heady dose of hunter blood. But still, it wasn’t unmixed with anxiety. She hadn’t really intended their “date” to expand to a whole night. Part of her knew it would make the parting harder on both of them. And yet, having made the decision to end the affair, she didn’t doubt her strength to carry it through.
Walking with him, almost entirely free of the fear of outdoors that had haunted her for a century, she was damned if she’d substitute one dependency for another. It was time Angyalka stood entirely on her own feet. It was what she’d so loved about being a vampire in those heady early days of total freedom.
But she liked to feel the man walking by her side, holding his arm close in to the side of her breast. She liked his quiet company and the sense of anticipation of the night to come. Sex with István was unfailingly exciting.
Gradually, she became aware of people outside the club. And once again, there appeared to be trouble.
A lone human male seemed to be taunting a vampire, hurling verbal abuse and vitriol at the top of his voice. The vampire stood in front of him, listening with his head tilted to one side, as if in amused fascination. Other vampires lurked in the vicinity, but Angyalka couldn’t see them. She doubted the yelling human could either.
Finally bored, the vampire shrugged and turned away toward Angyalka and István. He didn’t run, merely strolled away, but the human appeared to take that as contempt and screamed his insults all the louder. Then, in a rage, the human pound
ed after the vampire, who sighed audibly and turned to face him, still slowly.
“Uh-oh,” István murmured, walking faster.
The human, who either had no idea what he was dealing with or no sense of when to back off, hurled himself at the vampire, throwing two punches in quick succession, which, given vampire speed, had no chance of hitting their target. The vampire blocked them easily on either arm, and on the second gave his attacker a shove that sent him flying backward into the gutter.
This time, the vampire had had enough and went after him. But without warning, István leapt between them. He faced the vampire, stake in hand.
Angyalka sighed and stood poised, ready to intervene.
The vampire sniffed the air. “I smell hunter,” he said with distaste. “I’ve got no quarrel with you, but I’ll have that son of a bitch cowering behind you.”
The son of a bitch roared with fury and launched himself up from behind István. István caught him by the shirt. “I’ll take care of him,” he said steadily.
The vampire sneered. “Not to our satisfaction.”
Which was when the other two vampires stepped out of the shadows.
Oh shit.
István didn’t back down. “Tough,” he said, finally getting an armlock on the wriggling human.
The vampire laughed. “You’re going to fight us all with one arm? Hunter, he isn’t worth it.”
With something like shock, Angyalka realized that was just what he would do. He wasn’t even expecting her to help him. It was just what he did, what he’d done all of his adult life—protect humans, worthy and unworthy, from vampires, from beings like her.
Oh yes, it was over.
She moved across the road to stand beside István. “Actually, there’s no need to fight,” she said. “The stupid human is the victim of an enchantment. He doesn’t know what you are or even why he doesn’t like you. He just feels compelled to attack you—and me,” she added as the man tried to lash out at her with his feet.
Ungently, István yanked him out of range.
“Take him back to the Angel,” Angyalka said, then nodded dismissal to the vampires. “Better hunting,” she wished them and turned her back.
Blood of Angels (Book 2 of the Blood Hunters Series) Page 22