Blood Eternal

by Marie Treanor

Chapter Six

  Elizabeth opened her eyes with no clear sense of what had awakened her. It might have been the dog in the yard next door, emitting a kind of whimpering half bark, as if unsure whether it felt threatened.

  She and the hunters, having lost the trail early and left Saloman to pick it up again—against Konrad’s better judgment—had driven home and fallen into bed. Like the others, Elizabeth felt a sense of frustration, having traveled so far and come so close to the enemy, and yet failing to engage. And Saloman worried her. After sending his signal to guide her, he’d broken it off, only to communicate telepathically a little later that he’d killed a couple of the vampires but was still on the trail. And then, only a little after that, had come the advice to go home, because the vampires had separated, with Luk and Dante heading suddenly northeast, and the others south, closer to the hunters’ base. Saloman was following Luk, but advised Elizabeth to look for signs of vampire attack in the villages inland from Fethiye. It was possible Dante, or even Luk, had instructed them to create a fledgling army to distract the hunters.

  Konrad especially had bridled at being “advised” by a vampire, but in fact, as István pointed out, it was the only sensible thing to do. Although there were hours of darkness left, pursuing vampires who moved much faster than humans was a thankless task at the best of times. They had to be tracked and ambushed, and that night the hunters had simply gone too far off the right path. At Elizabeth’s urging, Konrad had finally phoned Mustafa to let the Turkish hunters know Saloman’s warning about Fethiye. After which, exhausted and irritable, they’d all retired, aware that they might have to spend the next night executing violent yet more or less defenseless fledgling vampires.

  But Elizabeth could have been asleep for only a couple of hours. It was still dark outside; no call to prayer sounded; even the cockerels were silent. She lay still for a moment, straining her ears. Her heart began to beat faster as she wondered if Saloman had returned. She slipped out from under the sheet and padded across the cool floor to the window. No familiar dark shadow lurked on the balcony or in the garden below. Moving quickly across to the other side of the room, she felt ridiculously disappointed to see no sign of him on the swimming pool side of the house either.

  She should go back to bed and sleep. Only . . . Only, something felt wrong. Straining for Saloman’s presence, she was sure she sensed something else. Something she didn’t like. She moved silently to the bedside table and picked up the stake she’d kept close ever since her early encounters with Saloman. Holding it made her feel better. But not for long.

  A clash of broken glass rent the air, followed closely by a male yell.

  Konrad.

  Before the thought had passed through her brain, she was out of the bedroom door and leaping down the spiral stairs so fast she should have broken her neck. Konrad’s was the first door at the foot, and she hurled herself at it without warning or apology in time to see Konrad standing up on the bed, thrusting his stake into a shadowy figure that promptly vanished into darkness. But two more faced him, while a third advanced toward Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. She flung herself at one of Konrad’s assailants and felt her stake slide in. But the vampire was strong, and twisted so fast that the wood jammed hard against a rib. Snarling with pain, the vampire struck her, knocking her off him. Elizabeth hung on grimly to the stake as she fell to the unforgiving tiled floor. Since the stake came with her, she ignored the pain, hooked her ankle around the vampire’s leg, and yanked.

  Taken by surprise, he fell awkwardly, and, knowing he would rectify that all too quickly, Elizabeth leapt onto him almost before he hit the floor. One powerful hand seized her throat, instantly squeezing, while the other grabbed for her stake. Evading his questing fingers for long enough to swap the stake to her left hand, she plunged down hard. Almost simultaneously, the constriction on her throat relaxed and the vampire exploded into dust. The familiar rush of the dead vampire’s energy into her own body made her gasp. He was strong and she’d been lucky to get so easy a kill, but there was no time for smugness. She had to use his strength, which was now added to her own.

  On the bed, Konrad wrestled with the two remaining assailants. However, as Elizabeth ran to help, István and Mihaela skidded in together and shared the kill, just as Konrad’s last assailant paid the price of his distraction and turned to dust.

  Slowly, Elizabeth reached up and switched on the light. Of their attackers no sign remained, except broken glass scattered under the window and a splash of blood on Konrad’s rumpled sheets.

  “Bastard bit me,” Konrad muttered, holding his hand over his shoulder as he let himself flop into a sitting position on the bed.

  “Let me see,” Mihaela said efficiently. She’d been here before, patching people up after vampire attacks, and she sounded as she always did, cool and capable. And yet her hand shook as she lifted it to Konrad’s wound.

  Elizabeth swayed on her feet. To cover it, she strode to the window, trying to ignore the unspecific but very physical pain that started to consume her. The dizziness combined with a powerful, alien dread that made her grasp the window frame hard to dispel it. Not now! Please, not now . . .

  Perhaps it was just the result of the vampire’s blow. It must be. To her relief, the pain and the awful feeling she had no words for began to recede, at least enough to let her focus once more. There was no sign of anyone else outside, but although that oppressive sense of wrongness had dissipated, she was well aware she hadn’t seen the attacking vampires from her own windows either.

  “The detector’s still registering,” István said urgently. “We’ve got another one.”

  “Where?” Elizabeth demanded, spinning back to face him.

  “Outside, I think,” István said, running out of the door.

  As Elizabeth crossed the room after him, Mihaela stood up. “Hold that over it,” she advised Konrad, placing his left hand on the cloth she’d held to his wound, and his right on the wooden stake he’d used to such good effect. “It’s healing already, so you’ll be fine,” she added over her shoulder, as she left the room side by side with Elizabeth.

  They found István in the hall by the front door. Wordlessly, he showed them the detector, holding the blunt end of the stake over his lips to call for continued silence. From the direction and distance indicator, the vampire waited on the other side of the front door, no doubt ready to grab any fleeing humans. If he were strong enough, he’d already know his comrades were dead, so either he was stupid and relatively weak, or he was powerful enough to be confident of taking at least one of them out by surprise before escaping.

  István pointed toward the living room, and Mihaela tugged Elizabeth’s arm. Elizabeth nodded and crept through the living room to the French doors. The key was in the lock. Elizabeth touched it, remembering that it turned smoothly. She just hoped it was smooth enough to prevent the vampire’s superhearing from picking it up.

  She glanced back at Mihaela, who stood in the middle of the room, from where she could see both Elizabeth and István. Watching István, Mihaela held up one hand and began a countdown with her fingers. As soon as the last finger closed, Elizabeth spun the key, yanked open the door, and leapt outside, stake drawn.

  Although she barely heard her move, Mihaela stood beside her. The night was silent. István should have been through the front door, but there was no sound of fighting or commotion. Elizabeth’s spine felt cold. Exchanging glances with Mihaela, she began to move forward around the outside of the house as Mihaela set off around the other way.

  Each step seemed to bring an increase of tension. The vampire had waited this long; Elizabeth couldn’t believe he’d fled now without a kill. Surely he couldn’t have taken István so easily that there had been no noise?

  No. The long, lean figure of István stood on the edge of the porch, still and poised. Although there was no sign of the vampire, she could still feel him.

  Oh, God, Mihaela!

  But no, István still
had the detector; if it had registered movement, he’d have followed it. Elizabeth’s breath caught. Up. He’s gone up!

  Desperately, she scanned the roof of the little porch. Surely there was a blacker patch in the shadows . . . ? István must know. He was waiting for her and Mihaela to approach before he stepped off the porch, just in case the vampire was faster than he was.

  In which case, distraction was everything. And she just prayed the others would understand her game.

  She began to run, crying, “István!”

  And István understood. He leapt off the porch on Mihaela’s side, just as the vampire jumped from the roof on Elizabeth’s. István spun at exactly the same time as the vampire, and Elizabeth had to shake her head to clear it. For one tiny, vital instant, she thought she was seeing double, before she realized it wasn’t her head that was splitting the dark shadow into two vampires. There really were two, one grabbing for István, the other leaping for her like some impossibly fast darkness monster from her childish nightmares.

  They’d hidden together to disguise their numbers from the detectors. Forcing her legs to pump faster, rather than skid to a halt and run back the other way, Elizabeth lashed out with her stake, drawing blood from some part of the vampire as he flew at her. He landed on his feet with a hiss and made a grab for her. Elizabeth dodged, but already his other hand snaked out and she had to stab it with the stake. His hiss became a snarl that was curiously like laughter. The vampire thought he could win.

  Grimly, despite the sudden chill in her blood, Elizabeth begged to differ. It felt like some weird challenge, turned the lethal battle into a desperate game of tag—or “tig,” as she’d called it growing up in Scotland. The vampire’s limbs moved fast enough to blur, feinting and lunging, pulling back and grabbing. And yet it wasn’t impossible speed like Luk’s; it was nothing she couldn’t deal with. She found she could counter his every move, dodging each grab, reading each feint, and blocking every blow.

  She couldn’t help the sudden, soaring triumph, but neither could she afford to draw this out. A glimpse of István, driving his vampire back into Mihaela’s waiting stake, warned her to finish it. Ducking beneath the vampire’s sweeping arms, she sprang up within them and stabbed him through the heart. His ludicrous expression of surprise before he turned to dust made her almost sorry the game was over.

  Spinning to face the other fight, she saw that the vampire had managed to turn on Mihaela. István, picking himself off the ground, leapt on the vampire’s back and plunged his stake.

  With a yell of fury, cut off like a switch, the vampire exploded into silvery dust. Elizabeth skidded to a halt beside István, who gasped, presumably as he absorbed the rush of the vampire’s strength, and grinned through it at Elizabeth and Mihaela. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” Elizabeth said faintly. “Any more of them?”

  István glanced at the detector fastened to his wrist. “Not that I can see.”

  “We need to check the rest of the house, though,” Mihaela said prosaically.

  Together, they went back inside, relocking both doors. Then they went through each room in the house, including Elizabeth’s and finally Konrad’s once more. The injured hunter appeared to be quite recovered, standing guard over his broken window with characteristic impatience.

  To be on the safe side, Elizabeth accompanied István out to the garden again, while Mihaela guarded the front door. All was quiet, save for a cockerel farther down the street. István collected some wood intended for the barbecue, and took it inside to board up Konrad’s window.

  That done, they all wandered into the dining area and sat down around the table. Elizabeth got up and switched the kettle on, just as the dawn call to prayer began.

  She smiled. “Why is that sound so comforting?” “Because you’re still alive to hear it?” Mihaela suggested.

  “It’s an affirmation of all the goodness and beauty in the world,” István said surprisingly.

  Konrad smiled faintly. “Is that official Islamic doctrine, Professor?”

  “No. It’s my personal interpretation.”

  Only as Elizabeth set the coffee and cups on the table did she realize that none of them was dressed. She herself wore the sexy nightdress that had inspired Saloman to frequent passion in the past—now slightly torn from the fight. The men had only boxers on, displaying their pleasingly muscled if slightly scarred torsos to the world, while Mihaela wore a skimpy pair of shorts and a top.

  Mihaela met her gaze with slightly embarrassed humor. “Maybe we should put clothes on to have coffee,” she suggested.

  “Stuff clothes,” said Elizabeth, flopping down beside her. “They’re overrated.”

  Mihaela raised her cup in a silent toast.

  Konrad sighed. “Well, it looks as if Saloman’s guess as to location was right. We are only ten miles from Fethiye. He just got the mission wrong.”

  Elizabeth looked at him. “You think that’s who it was? Dante’s minions?”

  Konrad shrugged. “A gathering of five vampires in a place this size is rare. As is an attack targeted specifically at hunters. Also, from what you said, they knew how to fool the detectors. That has to have come from Dante.”

  “But how could they possibly have found us so fast?” Mihaela objected.

  “A concentration of human readings?” Elizabeth suggested. “To a vampire, Konrad and I in one place is quite forceful. Only . . . you’re right. I don’t think they’d have found us so fast without help.”

  “Whose help?” Konrad demanded.

  He thinks it’s Saloman betraying us. “Luk’s,” she said evenly. “He’s seen me, smelled me; he could have passed that reading on to the others, used it to guide them remotely, if you like, to our house. Three hunters, one of whom is also the descendant of an Ancient-killer, plus an Awakener, is quite a haul.”

  “And yet doomed to bring trouble,” Konrad snapped. “Vampires are rarely stupid enough to attack hunters unprovoked.”

  “We’re dealing with rogue vampires here,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Dante wants trouble. He wants massive trouble to boost the rebellion in order, ultimately, to use Luk to remove Saloman. I don’t think he’s got any idea how effective hunters are against vampires—he saw Dmitriu beat up a whole team, and he’s only seen you fight in Saloman’s company, which probably gave a false impression. He probably thought you were easy meat, easy propaganda. In the short term, he may even have hoped to distract Saloman by this attack on us.”

  “On you,” said Mihaela thoughtfully. She gazed at Elizabeth. “Will it?”

  “No, because I haven’t told him about it,” Elizabeth said calmly.

  Mihaela said nothing more on the subject, but her gaze was uncomfortably penetrating.

  After they’d chased ideas about the vampire attack around for a bit, the men went off to shower, and Mihaela leaned back in her seat, putting her rather elegant feet up on the dining table.

  Elizabeth said, “Are you all right?”

  Mihaela blinked. “Of course. It was the rest of you who bore the brunt. I did little more than turn up for the postshow party. Konrad owes you.”

  Elizabeth brushed that aside. “I was awake. We all did what we had to. I just thought you looked . . . shaken. I’ve never seen you like that before.”

  Mihaela’s gaze fell. “It threw me,” she confessed. She reached for her coffee cup and drained it before she said abruptly, “It’s not something we deal with often as hunters—vampires breaking in. It reminded me of . . . the past.”

  Of the childhood attack that had killed her family. Elizabeth could only imagine the horror of that night, guess at the impact of a reminder such as tonight’s. There was nothing she could say. So she sat by Mihaela’s side in silent support until the other girl set down her cup and deliberately changed the subject.

  “Heard from Josh lately?” Mihaela asked.

  Josh Alexander, the American film star, was Elizabeth’s distant cousin and fellow descendant of Tsigana whom they’
d been forced to rescue from Dante and his vampire allies back in May.

  Elizabeth smiled. “He invited me to the premiere of Psychics 2, knowing I couldn’t go. But I appreciated being asked.”

  “Me too.”

  Elizabeth did a double take to make sure she hadn’t mistaken the added smugness in Mihaela’s expression, and then she began, slowly, to smile. “You and Josh? Now, that I like. When did this happen?”

  “When he stayed with me after we got him out of the castle.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mihaela shrugged. “There wasn’t much opportunity. Things were a bit rushed before you went back to Scotland. And we were celebrating your PhD. Josh and me was no big deal. I always knew that. We’re from different worlds, with no intention of changing things. We were just both . . . needy. And he’s very sweet as well as amazingly attractive!”

  Elizabeth nodded agreement. “He’s also,” she observed, “looking for something deeper than a publicity relationship. He and his wife were very close until she died.”

  Mihaela’s smile was a little twisted. “Well, I can’t have a relationship at all, can I? Public or otherwise. But it was a good week. Made up for all the shit before.”

  Elizabeth knew she meant more than the vampire shit; she was referring to past encounters with unworthy men. Running one finger around the rim of her empty cup, Elizabeth said casually, “Do you miss him?”

  Mihaela rested her head against the back of the chair. “I like to hear from him. I miss the idea, the illusion of someone being there. Maybe I’m getting too old to be a hunter.”

  “Take a holiday. A sabbatical. Hell, you’ve done more than your duty a hundred times over—retire.”

  “That’s the weird thing. I don’t want that either.” She turned her head to look at Elizabeth with a hint of humor. “At the risk of sounding clichéd, a hunter isn’t what I am; it’s who I am.”

  Elizabeth stared at her. “Do you never think you might be more?”

  Mihaela’s gaze held, then fell, as her lips twisted into a smile. “No.”