As if she felt his surge of lust—which, on reflection, she probably did—she looked directly at him. He almost exploded.
Angyalka changed direction and came to meet him, her gaze flickering watchfully but quite without anxiety to Luk and their followers.
“Grayson,” she said in English, her exotic accent doing quite unexpected things to his nether regions. “How nice of you to come back. I see you no longer need Dmitriu.”
Now her eyes did widen slightly as they flashed around his companions as if searching for something.
Luk spoke telepathically to him alone. She’s trying to reach Saloman, he said in some delight. I’m blocking her, and though she feels that, she has no idea how or who’s doing it. You never told me you’d already annoyed Saloman to that extent.
You read all that from her?
Of course. I suppose I should have read it from you. What other secrets do you keep?
A pain, sharp and agonizing, shot through his head. Dante couldn’t help clutching it in both hands, but Luk’s interest was apparently brief, for he was released almost immediately. It felt like someone had loosened some huge steel clamp around his skull, and withdrawn the massive iron bolt that had bored its way through his brain.
Angyalka hadn’t moved. “What can I get you, gentlemen?” she asked mildly.
Relieved of pain, Dante let his libido rush back to the fore. He smiled. “A little wine,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist and jerking that soft, luscious body against him. “And a lot of sex,” he whispered in her ear. “Take me upstairs.”
He could feel that was where she lived. A room upstairs, behind the club, redolent with her scent, her presence.
She didn’t shove him; he didn’t land winded against the bar. And yet he felt as if he had. Somehow, she’d extricated herself from his arm and stood now a foot away from him.
“I do not have sex with fledglings,” she said contemptuously. She said it loudly enough for all who cared to hear, and in the sudden silence of the room—the band had just stopped playing and were coming down from their stage for a break—he guessed many did. However, before embarrassment could strike, if it was going to, Luk provided a most unwelcome distraction.
He let out one of his wilder laughs. “Is that another of your pathetic rules?” he asked. “Like no feeding?”
Without any further warning, he reached out one arm and seized a passing human male, who happened to be the band’s handsome singer on his way to the bar.
“I’m hungry,” Luk said to the surprised youth, and sank his fangs into his jugular.
Dante groaned. His plan was aborted, as it were, at takeoff.
As once before, Elizabeth found the door of Saloman’s huge house in Budapest simply opened when she pushed it. And as always at the prospect of seeing him again, her heart hammered in her breast so hard it seemed to curtail her breathing. Ridiculous. He might not even be here.
He could still be in Istanbul, where, she knew, a major vampire battle had been waged. In fact, she and the Hungarian hunters had been preparing to go to help their beleaguered Turkish colleagues when word had come from Mustafa that things were quiet in the city once more. One of Luk’s living victims, a wealthy and respected businesswoman, had come forward to tell the hunters all she knew: that Luk had left the city and wasn’t coming back.
Inside Saloman’s front door, Elizabeth closed it and dropped her suitcase to tug her hand through her soaking hair and wring out the rainwater. Shaking herself like a wet dog, she dragged her bag along the spacious hall before abandoning it at the foot of the stairs. As she began to climb, a flash of lightning seemed to spring from several points in the house before the crash of thunder filled her ears.
Saloman’s head appeared over the banister from two floors up and she paused, overwhelmed by the whole setting.
Her heart lurched with pleasure and with hope. But he was too far away for her to make out the expression on his face, to read his difficult but not impossible body language.
“Hello,” she called, feeling slightly foolish. “Can I come in?”
“Always. I left the door open for you.”
He’d probably sensed her arrival in Budapest, felt her drawing nearer to him across the city.
“Come up,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
She’d never been in this portion of the house before. Most of her time had been spent in his bedroom. Intrigued, she climbed up past the landing where both drawing room and bedroom were located and found him waiting for her at the top of the next flight. Taking her hands, he kissed each of them in turn and then, briefly, her lips. But when she would have returned for a longer kiss, he was already leading her away. “Come.”
Smothering her disappointment, she asked, “What is it?”
“I’ve had some more rooms made livable. What do you think?”
Reaching past her, he flung open the door on her left. Elizabeth walked past him into a large, bare room with three sets of shuttered windows. At the far end another door opened into another empty room beyond. They were gracious, well proportioned, with the high, decorative ceilings of the nineteenth century. If you really looked, you could see where some of the ornamental plaster had been repaired in a couple of places. The floors were polished wood; walls and ceilings were painted white. A large, elegantly carved fireplace occupied the center of one wall.
Elizabeth walked through the empty space, gazing around her, and peered into the next room. They were mirrors, really, of the rooms he largely lived in below, except without the character of opulence and comfort he’d achieved there.
“They’re lovely rooms,” she acknowledged. “What will you use them for?”
He came and stood beside her in the doorway. “I thought I would give them to you.”
She blinked. “To me?”
“For when you are here. You can decorate them, furnish them as you see fit. Have a sitting room and a study if you like. Or a bedroom, a gymnasium, a library, whatever. They are yours to do with as you wish.”
Stunned, she took a moment to take in his meaning, to recognize the gladness that seemed to surge upward from her toes until it constricted her throat. And yet she still had to ask: “You’re not even doing this to keep me out of your hair, are you?”
He shook his head. “The opposite, in fact. I thought you might feel more at home if you had a space that was entirely yours.”
She smiled, letting her doubts fall away. “In this house, it would never be that. I like to share with you.” Leaning forward she touched her forehead to his hard, cool shoulder and closed her eyes in pure happiness. “Thank you, Saloman.”
He touched her at last, his fingers stroking through her hair. “Then you like this? You have ideas?”
She smiled again and lifted her head. “I have a thousand. Saloman . . . ?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a job,” she blurted at last. “At Budapest University. For a year, with the possibility of extension. Or at least, there was a job. I never sent the acceptance because this stuff with Luk came up before I had a chance to post it.” The chance or the courage.
His eyes searched hers. “Well, you are in Budapest,” he observed. “It is easy enough to give your acceptance in person.”
She swallowed. “You’d be happy for me to do that? To live here for a year?”
His hand slid down under her chin. He was smiling. “I would like nothing better. Unless it was two.” He bent and kissed her mouth, and she wound her arms around his neck. “You think too much, agonize too much over things that are basically simple. Is this what’s been eating you up?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “And I suppose I worry that there’s nothing in me to keep the attention of a being who’s lived for millennia. I’d rather die than trail around after someone who simply tolerated me, or didn’t notice me.” As his expression changed, she bit down on her lip to shut herself up. “I’m sorry. I—”
“No more self-deprecation,”
he interrupted. “You more than anyone should know that we do not choose whom to love; we do not need reasons. Thirty years old or three thousand makes no difference to that. I would always have been drawn simply to who you are, the beauty that is you.”
“Truly?” she whispered.
“Truly.” His gaze shifted to her neck. “But you . . . you grow day by day, and that fascinates me beyond love.” He bent, drawing her up against him so that she could feel his growing hardness in her abdomen, his silken lips on her throat.
Her eyes closed.
“Let me taste you,” he whispered, and she gasped soundlessly as his sharp, wicked teeth grazed the skin over her vein. The familiar rush of helpless desire caused her to fall back against the wall. She twisted her head in blatant invitation. Somehow, there was almost as much sensual pleasure in offering herself to him like this as in the strange, tugging ecstasy she felt when he sucked her blood into his own body.
Moving against her, he pierced the skin of her neck and she moaned aloud. Saloman held her in his arms and began to suck.
It wasn’t a long drink, more of a hello. Withdrawing his fangs, he licked the puncture wounds with tenderness and lifted his head. “Now come to bed,” he whispered. “And be loved.”
Elizabeth, melting at his words, resisted from instinct when he released her. She clung to him with all her strength, grinding her body against him in blatant, demanding lust. “Let’s christen this room instead.”
Flames danced in his black eyes. “You want me to take you on the floor? Hard and rough?”
“Oh, yes.” She pressed her mouth to his, drawing him through the doorway, already burrowing under his shirt to feel the smooth skin and hard muscle beneath. He tugged once at her top, and as the buttons rolled to the floor, his hand found its way to her naked breast. And then he paused. Maddeningly, his eyes lost their exciting focus.
“What?” she whispered against his lips.
He closed his eyes tight with a sound like a groan. And when he opened them, they blazed like burning coals. “Anticipation will have to sustain us for now. I must go.”
“Go? Go where?” Inclined to outrage, she tried to draw back and found herself pulled hard against him once more in a quick, enveloping hug.
“To the Angel.” Releasing her, he stepped away. “Luk and Dante have broken cover at last.”
Dante doubted it would make any important difference to the outcome, but at least Luk chose not to kill the boy. His weak human heart still beat when Luk dropped him, and he slumped dizzily to the floor.
“And now that I’ve got your attention,” Luk said, “let me introduce myself.”
Dante actually felt the mask slipping away as Luk revealed himself, and knew he’d been right: that the Ancient had been propping up his own clumsy mask. The vampires in the club all stared. Several stood up and came forward for a better view. Humans glanced in their direction, uneasy, bewildered at what had happened to the singer sitting on the floor absently rubbing his neck, and wary of being involved in any violence.
Angyalka herself lifted one hand to prevent the advance of her vampire muscle, who either didn’t register or didn’t care about Luk’s identity.
“I am Luk,” said the Ancient with a flourishing bow. “Guardian of the Undead Prophecies. And I come to offer you the greatest gift of all: freedom.”
“How kind,” Angyalka said politely. Her eyes were wary but unafraid. If Luk had unmasked, Saloman would know he was here. The only trouble was, they didn’t know where Saloman himself was. He could be in Budapest or still in Turkey. Or anywhere else in the five continents. “Er . . . freedom from what?”
Luk smiled. “Silly rules. Vampires should live as vampires, not as slaves to the oppressive controls of my cousin Saloman. Behold your savior. Follow me and win back your freedom.”
He may have been mad, but he’d just replaced Dante’s cautious plan with a much bolder move of his own, and he was an impressive bastard. In the same sort of way Saloman was impressive. And, of course, he was saying what the rebellious vampires’ spirits wanted to hear. Dante could swear there wasn’t one of them not touched by the prospect of doing what the hell they liked. Like life-sentence prisoners suddenly released en masse into the community. How the hell could he and Luk control that?
Quashing his sudden panic, he realized they didn’t need to. All Luk needed was the overlordship, the acknowledgment, the backup to fight his powerful cousin. Dante saw several pairs of eyes flicker between Luk and Angyalka, known to be Saloman’s friend. At least in this place, they would take their lead from her.
She smiled. “I regard the Angel as a microcosm of the world,” she said conversationally. “And here we enjoy the freedoms we do only because of the rules I insist on. Rules you gentlemen have just broken.”
There was a backward movement as the club vampires aligned themselves physically away from Luk. It didn’t matter. The invitation was made and would spread. Away from the Angel, support would rush in.
“I must, therefore, ask you to leave.” Angyalka was perfectly safe saying that. She knew just as well as Dante did that Saloman could be on his way, and that they were not ready to face him, certainly not with all the vampires of the Angel on Saloman’s side.
“You are too beautiful to disregard,” Luk said gallantly. He wrinkled his nose. “Besides, the place stinks of my cousin. Until we meet again.” He gave another of his flourishing bows and swept from the room with effortless speed. The humans wouldn’t even have seen him go. Dante, emphasizing the pecking order, spared Angyalka a wink before he swept past the Turkish bodyguard and followed Luk downstairs.
The Ancient had masked again, so it took Dante by surprise to see him standing very still in the doorway to the street.
“Dmitriu,” Luk said abruptly.
“What?”
“Dmitriu is coming. Saloman’s younger creation.”
“I’m only too well acquainted with that bastard,” Dante said with feeling. “You can kill him, can’t you? If there’s a way, I’d like to help.”
“But I cannot feel Saloman. Saloman could be with him.”
“Or he could be a thousand miles away.”
“I’m not ready to take the chance,” Luk said grimly. “Not on an empty stomach. Run.”
Without further warning, Luk seized him by the hand and leapt through the air.
Dante had never run like this. It was terrifying being pulled at such speed and at such heights over buildings and roads, trees and cars, wherever Luk could gain the briefest foothold from which to spring next. After the initial paralyzing shock, Dante began to make his own stumbling efforts to cooperate, to move when Luk did, and discovered he learned fast. It would take years, maybe centuries, to find the speed and height of Luk’s leaps, but the new power exhilarated him, and he took as much pride in his ability to learn as in Luk’s obvious return to strength.
You are so dead, Saloman.
“He went that way,” the vampire Dmitriu said with a negligent nod into the downpour as Saloman settled on the Angel’s roof beside him. Even in the relentless rain, he smelled of the Awakener. “Looked suspiciously like fleeing to me, and he had Dante with him. Can you sense him?”
Saloman shook his head. “Luk’s masking them both.”
“Their bodyguards are still lurking on the stairs inside. They seem a little bewildered as to where their masters have gone.”
“Their masters are a little careless with the lives of their followers,” Saloman observed.
Dmitriu glanced at him. “You want them dead?” They varied in strength; one was strong enough to give a little trouble, but Dmitriu didn’t doubt that between them he and Saloman could easily kill all eight.
“We kill a few; the rest flee,” Saloman said, gazing around the dark streets on either side of the building. His mask was in perfect place, even for Dmitriu—which was unusual enough to alert Dmitriu to the tension thrumming through his powerful friend. A tension that he suspected had little to do with t
he coming fight and everything, surely, to do with the vampires who had fled. Saloman brought his gaze back to Dmitriu. “Damage limitation. Word gets around that Luk abandoned his followers and therefore is a poor choice of leader. And it’s a visible punishment for breaking Angyalka’s rules. She’ll be so pleased, she’ll give me free wine.”
“She always gives you free wine. They’re coming out.”
They jumped in perfect time, and Saloman unmasked. Dmitriu caught a hint of fury, a trace of sadness, and knew that neither would make any difference to the inevitable outcome.
“Merhaba,” Saloman said, seizing the stunned lead vampire and biting into his throat. Draining him was the work of an instant, but it was long enough for the remaining vampires to overcome their shock.
The fight was brief and brutal, and as the third Turkish vampire shattered to dust under Dmitriu’s stake, the door of the Angel opened to reveal several vampire spectators. As one, Luk’s remaining followers fled into the night, their feet casting up puddle splashes that glittered in the streetlight.
Angyalka, hands on hips, observed, “They weren’t the ones who bit my guest.”
“Picky, picky,” said Saloman.
“They’ll spread the word,” Dmitriu assured her. The other vampires, denied the entertainment of a fight, began to drift back inside or off into the night in search of prey.
Angyalka glanced at Saloman. “Was that really Luk?”
The pause was slight. “To all intents and purposes.”
“You have a powerful enemy,” she said with a hint of malice. “I’ll be interested to see how you deal with him.”
“I’ll win him to my side by sheer personal charm and give him your bar as a reward,” Saloman said flippantly.
Dmitriu laughed. Saloman inclined his head to Angyalka in a mocking sort of way, and strolled up the street in the opposite direction from the fleeing vampires. It might have been an illusion caused by the streetlights, but there seemed to be a sort of halo around him where no rain fell.
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