“I can,” Saloman said so that everyone could hear, telepathically and physically. “And I will. It’s over.”
From the watchers, as Saloman drew the pointlessly resisting body to him for ritual execution, came a wave of terror or exaltation, depending on the allegiance of the individual. Only Volkan continued to spit out his rage. He’d nothing left to lose.
“It’s not over! Don’t you understand? We don’t need you, Saloman. They don’t even need me. They always have another leader, strong enough to protect them, wise enough to let them do what they choose.”
It gave him pause, but only for an instant. “Wise? My insane cousin, Luk? He can’t even protect himself. There is no feasible choice but me. Make it.” His words were aimed at the whole rebel community and they knew it. But he had little time to analyze their effect. Police sirens were drawing closer. The hum of agitated human speech was increasing. He could sense hunters.
Saloman bit into Volkan’s throat and cut ruthlessly through the dying vampire’s mental babble of fury, fear, and resistance. Where is Luk? Where did you meet him?
Here in Istanbul. You’ve done all this for nothing. It will only begin again.
Saloman finished the conversation by ending Volkan’s existence. And when he lifted his head, glaring through the scattered dust at his unruly people below, they began to disperse with swift, silent efficiency. A few scattered sticks lay on the ground. One of Saloman’s allies dispatched an injured rebel currently incapable of moving. When the police arrived, they would find nothing.
The door into the tower opened and Saloman’s ally Mettener came through. For an instant, he stood in silence beside Saloman, watching as three humans strode down the street.
“Hunters,” Mettener observed. “They’ll give out it was a human riot that dispersed at the sound of police sirens.”
“Many people live here,” Saloman said, glancing up the length of the street, then turning to walk around the balcony that circled the whole tower. The stunning views of the city and the sea, which hadn’t changed so very much in nearly seven hundred years, were incomparable. The Genoese had known what they were about when they’d built this tower to protect their colony.
“The truth can’t be completely suppressed,” Saloman said. Every cloud has a silver lining. . . .
“Had he seen Luk?” Mettener asked.
“Oh, yes. He’s here.” An unseen and unfindable focus for discontent. Volkan was right: It would all begin again. That was bad enough, but what truly concerned Saloman was that it could spread across the whole world. That everything he’d built so far would come crashing down and all his great plans would amount to nothing.
“Amyntas,” Mihaela said, when she and Elizabeth had recovered their breath after climbing what felt like hundreds of steps. “I wonder who he was?”
“Rich dude from the fourth-century B.C.,” Elizabeth answered vaguely, gazing at the fascinating tomb in front of her. Like several others, it had been carved into the hillside above the town of Fethiye. From a distance they looked like temples; close up, they were more like little houses.
Mihaela glanced into the empty tomb chamber. “Always worth taking a historian with you when you visit historic sites,” she said sarcastically.
Elizabeth laughed. “Seriously, I don’t think anyone knows much more than that! I wonder if he’d be surprised we were still talking about him two and a half thousand years after his death?”
“I think he’d be gratified. You wouldn’t have a tomb like this if you were happy to sink into historical obscurity. It’s like living forever.”
“Hmm,” Elizabeth said doubtfully, taking her water bottle out of her backpack and unscrewing the lid. “ ‘Who wants to live forever?’ ” she quoted.
“Vampires,” said Mihaela, taking a swig from her own bottle. She lowered it suddenly. “Hey, do you suppose Saloman was—” She broke off with a quick, almost embarrassed shrug, as if she’d inadvertently brought up a taboo subject.
“Around when this guy was?” Elizabeth finished for her, determined to keep the conversation natural. “Yes, probably. He might even have known him if he was that important. I’ll ask him.”
Mihaela took another drink and put the top back on her bottle before she glanced again at Elizabeth. “Doesn’t that freak you out?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “No. Not that part of it. To be honest, it always fascinated me how much I could learn from him. He was a friend of Vlad the Impaler, King Stephen, emperors and princes, soldiers and scholars throughout known—and unknown—history.”
Mihaela reached out and ran her hand over the rough stone pillar. “He could have built this. Hundreds of years before Christ was born.” She shivered. “Who wants to live forever?” she repeated. “Saloman does.” She turned abruptly back to face Elizabeth. “Do you?”
Elizabeth smiled ruefully. “No.” She moved to lean against the ancient pillar and gaze down over the picturesque town and the sparkling blue sea dotted with boats. The sun shone on her face, hot and relentless. It felt good. “But sometimes I think it would be nice to have a little longer.”
Mihaela turned her back on the sun, frowning. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m thirty-one years old and sometimes I feel ninety.”
“Don’t we all? A vampire hunter’s work is never done—and that gets depressing after a decade or two.”
“Yes, but I mean physically.” They were being normal tourists, normal friends, and she hadn’t meant to spoil that, not today, not on this strange, peaceful hill. But the words seemed to tumble out without permission, as if someone had opened a locked door. “What does vampire killing actually do to you, Mihaela? Does anyone understand how their power makes you stronger when you kill them? What if all it does is speed everything up, so that you move faster but so does your whole life? Do vampire hunters ever live to be old?”
“Yes,” Mihaela said staunchly, but she sounded frightened all of a sudden, and she moved closer to Elizabeth. “Of course they do. What is this about?”
Elizabeth gave a quick, embarrassed laugh. “Nothing. You asked if I wanted to live forever, and the answer is no. I don’t want to be immortal, and I won’t be turned to ‘the dark side.’ But I would like to live beyond thirty-five.”
“Is there any doubt of it? They way you fought those vampires at the villa, nothing and no one can hurt you.” Her breath caught. “Elizabeth . . . are you . . . ill?”
“Oh, Lord, no.” Wishing she’d never spoken, Elizabeth tried to shrug it off. She’d wanted someone to hear and laugh at her stupid fears; she hadn’t wanted Mihaela to look like that, as if she were already dead. “I thought it might be something to do with the vampire killing, that’s all.”
“What might be to do with the vampire killing?”
“I get spells where I feel ill,” Elizabeth blurted. “Sick and dizzy and so tired I can barely stand. Something hurts, physically, so much that my whole body trembles, yet I can’t always locate the pain.”
“When you kill vampires?”
“No . . . I don’t think so. I feel strong then.”
“Then is it reaction afterward?”
“No, I don’t think it’s that either. It seems to happen at all sorts of odd times, when I’m nowhere near vampires or any of this stuff.”
“How often has it happened?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe six or seven times in the last couple of months.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“Oh, yes. I went for a checkup after the third episode or so. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me. I suspect I’ve developed hypochondria, worrying about nothing. It’s not as if it ever lasts more than a few minutes.”
“When did it happen last?”
“The other night, when the vampires attacked. After we’d killed the ones in Konrad’s room and I was looking out the window to check for any more.” Elizabeth eased her shoulder off the pillar. “It was very brief. I seemed to be a
ble to throw it off by willpower that time—which is another reason I think it can’t be serious.”
“And yet it happens.”
Elizabeth took another drink of water and knelt to replace the bottle in her bag. “It happens,” she agreed. “I don’t suppose anything similar ever happens to you? Or the others?”
Mihaela shook her head. “Not to me. And no one else has ever mentioned such symptoms. I don’t think it’s anything to do with vampire hunting. I think you should see another doctor. I’ll ask Mustafa about—”
“No, no,” Elizabeth said hastily, already feeling she’d made far too much fuss. “I’ll see my own doctor again when I go home. Look.” She pointed down the umpteen stone steps and the steep slope of the hill. “I just climbed all the way up there in ninety-degree heat. I don’t think I’m actually ill!”
Mihaela slung her bag over her shoulder and took two steps before spinning back to face Elizabeth. “Shit, you’re not pregnant?”
“Pregnant?” Elizabeth stared at her, the instinctive scoff dying unspoken on her lips. Pregnant? By Saloman? Was it possible for a vampire to make a child? Without meaning to, she touched her stomach, wondering. Wondering what it would be like to bear Saloman’s child. A rush of regret hit her like a steam train and she had to close her eyes.
Opening them, she said flatly, “It isn’t possible with Saloman, is it? You’re winding me up.”
“Vampires don’t breed,” Mihaela agreed, “but I wasn’t winding you up. You’re an attractive woman subject to the same temptations as the rest of us.”
“I’m also a relatively intelligent woman who knows how to use proper protection!” Since she’d met him, there had never been anyone else in her heart or in her bed. And no protection had ever been necessary with Saloman, who harbored neither disease nor seed in his beautiful, sensual, ancient, undead body.
And yet there is something. . . .
Mihaela touched her hand. “You want that, don’t you? A child one day.”
Elizabeth smiled, able to bear the pain and the regret. “Maybe. Maybe you and I both do.” She took Mihaela’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “As Saloman says, we choose our path. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change it.”
Mihaela’s dark eyes refused to acknowledge her own regrets. “Change yours, Elizabeth,” she pleaded. “Please. Before it’s too late.”
Elizabeth dropped her hand and gazed up at the cloudless azure sky. The sun was blinding, even from the corner of her eye. “Everything’s changing. Can’t you feel that?”
Mihaela shivered in the heat and took the first step back down the hill. “I feel we’ve been deep enough for one day. Let’s go and drink wine by the harbor.”
“Sounds good to me.”
They had lunch with a bottle of local wine at one of the restaurants along the seafront, sitting at an outside table and watching the people and the ships go by. Relaxed by the morning’s exercise and the beauty of their sun-drenched surroundings, they talked of trivia, of Josh Alexander, the problem of Luk, and the internal politics of the hunter organization.
Elizabeth told Mihaela about John Ramsay, the young Scottish soldier who’d survived a Taliban ambush only to be attacked by vampires.
Mihaela topped off their glasses. “Bastards,” she observed. “That’s the sort of carnage that happens when someone rocks the boat and there’s a leadership dispute. It’s happening in Istanbul too. There was a major fight there the other night. A man died. Is he recovering, your soldier?”
“Yes, I think so. He e-mailed me yesterday that he’s out of hospital, convalescing at home. He’s an interesting bloke, though. He could hear them talking, telepathically, while the attack was happening.”
“Really?” Mihaela lifted her glass, frowning over the rim. “Are you sure his mind wasn’t just playing tricks in a highly traumatic situation?”
“I don’t think so. I was talking to Saloman about it, and he says certain humans have a gene inherited from his people—the ones who never became undead, obviously—who interbred with humans. Apparently the gene gives them latent paranormal abilities, like telepathy and enchantment.”
Mihaela frowned. “You mean you have this gene?”
“Apparently. So does Josh, although it’s not inherited from Tsigana. And on the flip side, so does Dante. I think John Ramsay might have it too. And Cyn, one of the rogue vampire hunters I met in New York.”
“And Konrad?”
Elizabeth sipped her wine thoughtfully. Konrad had occasionally heard the voices of vampires at the moment he killed them. “I’m not sure. Maybe. It just struck me that these people must have odd, inexplicable experiences in their lives that might make it easier for them to believe in other paranormal oddities.”
“Like vampires walking among them?”
“Exactly.”
“Let’s hope not!”
“Why?” Elizabeth argued. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m not really sure this secrecy achieves anything. The more people who know or suspect in a gradual sort of a way, the less shock it will be to the masses when the secret is finally out.”
“Elizabeth, the secret will never be out. It mustn’t be!”
“But I think it is, Mihaela,” Elizabeth said, setting down her glass with emphasis. “I think it’s out already and growing. I was following John’s story on the Internet and found lots of references and rumors flung up during the Afghan revolt and spreading ever since. What if that happens here too as the revolt spreads? Admittedly the more bizarre stories are going to be dismissed by most people, like the so-called gang fights in New York this spring, but don’t you think it’s all adding up to more and more people knowing?”
“I hope not,” Mihaela said heavily.
“Why?” Elizabeth asked again. “You were happy enough to tell me what was going on when you’d never even met me before. And to warn Josh and the other descendants that—”
“Warn, Elizabeth,” Mihaela interrupted. “It’s sometimes necessary to warn to save lives. And saving human lives is our guiding principle. But all the people we’ve ever told doesn’t amount to a spit in the ocean. It needs to remain that way.”
“I’m not sure you’re right.” Elizabeth sat back to let the waiter remove her cleared plate while Mihaela asked him for two Turkish coffees. When he’d gone, she leaned forward again. “But either way, my point is, if people do become more aware, does the organization have any kind of plans for dealing with it?”
Mihaela shuddered. “For a human-versus-vampire war? Just prayer.”
Elizabeth smiled lopsidedly. “That’s a bit fatalistic, isn’t it? I imagined you’d be much more interventionist.”
“Oh, we’ll be in there, but I doubt many of us will live to tell the tale, let alone get a fine tomb like your friend Amyntas up there.” She jerked her head at the hill behind them, but despite the sardonic humor, Elizabeth knew the idea seriously appalled her beyond all other possible catastrophes.
“I don’t think it needs to be like that,” Elizabeth said. She hesitated, then added, “Saloman wouldn’t want a war either. If you had some lines of communication open with him and the other leaders, you might be able to prevent it. And gradual education of humans might prevent the panic you’re so afraid of.”
Mihaela’s gaze grew bleak. She raised her glass and drank rather more than a sip before setting it back down. “Do you know what I hate, Elizabeth? I hate not knowing whether you’re speaking your own thoughts or his.”
Elizabeth sat back, deflecting the hurt. After all, she hadn’t expected anything else. “I haven’t been possessed, Mihaela. I still think for myself. I still collect and analyze evidence, and I still don’t want people to die before their time. If you think I’m such a monster, why are you sitting here eating with me?”
Mihaela had the grace to drop her gaze to her glass, but a moment later, she glanced up again with a twisted smile. “I don’t think you’re a monster, idiot. I think you’re in love with one.”
Mihaela twisted around in her sun lounger to see István approaching through the darkness. Though she’d switched off the outside lights, her night vision was good enough to make out his distinctive, almost lanky shape.
She straightened. “They’re not coming, are they? All the action’s in Istanbul. Just like Saloman said.”
“Mustafa’s gone there. He asked Konrad if they could call on us for extra help if they need it.”
“That bad?”
“Bad enough.” He sat down on the lounger beside her, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Is that why you’re out here alone? Worrying that we did the wrong thing?”
Mihaela smiled faintly. “If we did, we can still rectify it. I doubt our presence in Istanbul would have made any difference to what’s happening now.”
István didn’t say anything else, simply sat and waited. All around the grasshoppers chirped away, supplying constant background music. Something that might have been a mosquito whined past her ear. Mihaela ignored it.
Elizabeth had spoken to her in confidence today; she understood that. But she needed another perspective, and there was no one in the world she trusted more than István.
“Do you remember the prophecy we found in Szilágyi’s memoirs?” she said abruptly. The memoir of the sixteenth-century hunter had been a chance find among the hordes of historical texts lovingly preserved in the hunters’ library in Budapest. Once again, its significance was nagging at Mihaela.
“The one we thought might relate to Elizabeth?” István said. “Of course.”
“ ‘To see the new age, she must give up the world,’ ” Mihaela quoted.
“Doesn’t make any sense,” István observed.
“Maybe it does. If you take it as ‘see the new age in,’ as in usher it in. Then it could mean she dies to bring in the new age.”
One of the things she liked most about István was that he never dismissed anything without consideration. She could see him considering now, staring down at his hands in the darkness.
“It’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” he said at last.
Blood Eternal Page 15