Angyalka slid off her stool and strolled toward them. But after a couple of steps, a frown creased her brow; her gaze glanced off Elizabeth without interest before she actually looked around Saloman to see who else was with him. Angyalka began to run, and Elizabeth stood still, braced to meet her attack.
It never came. Angyalka flew past her and Saloman without a word, and when Elizabeth turned, she saw the vampiress embracing Maximilian. A greeting of old, long-parted friends. Or lovers. It didn’t matter. Vampire relationships were not so very different from human ones.
Saloman’s arm was firm at her back, urging her on toward a vacant alcove table. Behind them, the live rock band reached a crescendo, carrying the audience with it in a blaze of stamping feet and rhythmic shouts.
Saloman’s eyes gleamed. “Rock and roll,” he said. “We must dance again.”
The fading flush rose up her body once more. She hoped the friendly lighting would cover it as she slid onto the sofa.
“You brought me here for a bit of public flirtation?” she murmured.
He sat beside her, his thigh hard against hers. “I don’t mind whether it’s public or not. The flirtation itself was such fun the last time, I look forward to repeating it when you’re not scared for your life.”
A quick surge of something that wasn’t quite laughter caught in her throat. “That’s what gets me about you, Saloman. Just when I think we are alike after all, you say something like that. How could you enjoy it, knowing I was scared?”
His dark eyes didn’t waver. “I enjoy everything about you.”
It was part of the alien “experience everything, value everything” philosophy of his people. It was weird, but when the outrageous words came from him, she almost understood them. Maybe the hunters were right about her enslavement. At that moment, she didn’t care. She wanted to kiss him, but made do with rubbing her cheek on his shoulder in a quick caress.
Dmitriu and Angyalka slid in beside them, one on either side.
Angyalka set down a tray of champagne and five glasses, and looked at Saloman. “He came here just to be your bodyguard?”
Saloman raised his eyebrows and reached across Elizabeth for the bottle. “Maximilian? If that’s what he said, it must be true.”
“Of course it’s not what he said. He doesn’t say anything. It’s what Dmitriu said.”
“Then of course it must be a lie.” Saloman began to pour champagne into the glasses.
Dmitriu hooted and stretched out his legs under the table, but Angyalka was not to be deflected. Leaning forward, she said, “This isn’t some perverse revenge of yours, is it, Saloman? You wouldn’t bring him here just to—”
“I didn’t bring him here at all,” Saloman said, putting down the bottle. “Apparently he came of his own volition.”
“Saloman, Maximilian more or less gave me this place, helped me make it safe. I can’t and won’t forget that. If you kill him—”
“What makes you think I have any intention of killing him?” Saloman interrupted, presenting Elizabeth with a glass of champagne.
“Oh, just the fact that he killed you!” Angyalka exclaimed. “You can’t expect me to believe you’ve forgiven him. You don’t forgive.” Although, distractedly, she curled her fingers around the glass Saloman gave her, she didn’t seem to be aware of it.
Saloman smiled and pushed the third glass toward Dmitriu.
Dmitriu said, “He does forgive.” Leaning forward, he picked up his glass and gave a slightly twisted smile. “I won’t say he forgets.”
Angyalka swung on him. “Do you?”
Dmitriu shrugged. “Neither. That isn’t important. We need him against Luk.”
“And because he came out for you in Scotland, you trust him.” Angyalka sat back, her gaze flickering between Dmitriu and Saloman. She seemed to make a decision. “Cheers,” she said, and drank.
Elizabeth looked around the room. “Where is he?” she asked curiously.
“Gone to block out the noise.” Dmitriu grinned. “He’ll be back when he’s, er, psyched himself up.”
“I love modern language,” Saloman murmured.
Angyalka, her most pressing concern apparently dealt with, turned her disturbing gaze on Elizabeth, who might have found it harder to cope with had she not already grown used to Saloman’s.
“Welcome to the Angel, Dr. Silk.”
“Thank you.” What else could she say?
“The last time you so honored us, there was a little . . . contretemps.”
“I haven’t invited the hunters this time.”
“They seem to have decided to leave me alone,” Angyalka observed.
Elizabeth searched her curious, unreadable eyes. Was she fishing for information? What was the correct response for the hunters’ friend? For Saloman’s companion? Elizabeth drew in her breath. “I believe they will, so long as your own current rules are followed.”
Saloman set down his glass. “However, it may be that you’re forced to, er, relax your rules, at least on a temporary basis. And even admit the hunters.”
Angyalka’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Luk. He’s planning some major attack that will strike more at my prestige than at my existence. I don’t know where that will be, but the Angel, given my support of it and your loyalty, is one possibility.”
Angyalka groaned. “I knew as soon as I saw you sit down in here a year ago that my peace was over, one way or another.”
“But they’ve already been here,” Elizabeth pointed out. “They’ve already proven they can walk in when they like.”
“The same with your palace,” Dmitriu added. “Which would be the obvious choice.”
Angyalka’s lips fell apart. “They broke into your house?”
Saloman shrugged. “Luk did. He was making a point. I’m surprised you didn’t know already. He won’t do it again.”
“What about your offices?” Elizabeth suggested. “Adam Simon’s businesses?”
“They would be easy targets,” Saloman allowed. “But I can’t see their destruction impressing vampires.” He picked up his glass once more. “For now, I think our best hope is for me to reach Dante again and discover the rest.” His gaze drifted beyond his companions, to the dance floor and the stage, where the band was now playing a slower and marginally softer ballad.
“Elizabeth.” Amber flame sparked in his black eyes. “Would you care to dance?”
Since Angyalka promptly stood up to let her through, it would have been churlish to refuse. She didn’t want to refuse, except for the opaque stares of the vampires boring into her back as she walked beside Saloman onto the dance floor. In fact, she suspected the stares pierced more than her back; they were coming from all over the club.
Saloman turned and drew her into his arms quite naturally. Despite her mental discomfort, her body reacted from pure instinct, fitting itself to his as they began to sway together to the music. Elizabeth gave up caring about the stares, disapproving or otherwise. There was only Saloman and the delicious excitement of his powerful arms around her, and his erection growing against her abdomen.
His lips nuzzled her ear. “So how does it feel without the fear?” he murmured.
She couldn’t help smiling. “Weird. And strangely right. But then, it felt right the last time too—that’s what scared me most.”
“It was very exciting, each of us pretending, playing a game to trap the other. And yet . . . not. I wanted you so very badly, and I knew you would be worth waiting for.”
She caught his hair in her fingers and tugged until she could see into his face. “And am I? Still?”
“Still,” he agreed. The smile on his lips began to die. The half-amused, half-aroused glint in his eyes altered subtly, confusing her. “I will not lose you, Elizabeth Silk. Not to the suspicions sown by your friends and my enemy. If you can bear what’s inside me, I will show you.”
A frown tugged at her brow, even as her heart beat harder. “To keep me?” she whispered, unsure wh
ether it was awe or disapproval that choked her voice. “Or because you want to?”
“Questions, questions.” His fingers tangled in her hair, gently pulling. His lips parted to speak and then closed. His body pressed closer into hers with something akin to desperation. At last he said, “I couldn’t bear to lose you through something I hadn’t done. If knowing me kills your love, then that is different.”
The music played on, raw, emotional. Elizabeth held his face in both hands. “Saloman . . . You don’t believe my love is real. You think it’s an illusion. You think I don’t know you already.”
“You know you don’t.”
“Learning the layers,” she whispered, “is part of the love.” Reaching up, she kissed his mouth, achingly, as if the kiss could convey what words could not: her fear that she had too few layers to hold so ancient a being, her realization of his, that he had too many.
I’m not afraid, she told him. I want all you can give.
His mouth hardened on hers, deepening the sensuality of the kiss. You want everything. Except eternity. I know that; I’ve always known that.
She gasped into his mouth. You never asked. Her mind spoke without permission, blurting more than she would have shown of accusation and hurt.
Rejection is never good for a relationship.
She broke the kiss, somewhere between a sob and laughter. “Why are we having this conversation here?”
“Because it came up,” said Saloman, rubbing suggestively against her. She pressed her hips into him, glorying now in the lust as well as the awed exultation of her discovery. He wanted more. He wanted her, for eternity.
The music stopped. Around them, the dancers cheered and applauded as the band members took their final bows and left the stage. Her gaze still locked to his, she slowly laid her head on his chest. One arm dropped away from her; the other moved her forward off the dance floor and back toward their table.
Maximilian was glad to get away from the noise. On the roof of the Angel, he could at least hear himself think. He had been isolated too long to be comfortable in crowds, even when they contained old friends and those he’d once loved.
For many years, he’d had little to do but perfect his masking techniques and scan for danger. It was second nature to do it now, gazing over the city that might not have been his hometown but nevertheless brought back too many memories. Blotting out the vampire presences in the building below, he concentrated on the rest. It was still a city of vampires, their signatures dotted here and there on both sides of the river. And one close by.
Skirting the glass dome that formed the centerpiece of the club, he gazed across the roofs until he found what he’d sought. Another lone vampire, masked as strongly as he. Had he not been so close, he’d never have seen him at all. And there was something odd about this mask; it didn’t seem to come from the vampire himself.
And considering he was watching the Angel, there seemed to be only one explanation for that. He was one of Luk’s followers.
To speak to him telepathically would be to lower his mask, and he wasn’t yet ready to do that. So he did it the old-fashioned way.
In seconds, he startled the watcher by appearing at his shoulder.
“Hello. I hear your master is looking for recruits to defeat Saloman. Do you think he’d find me of any use?”
Angyalka and Dmitriu had vanished from the table. Neither was there any sign of Maximilian. Perhaps he’d simply gone home.
Saloman looked thoughtful as he raised his half-drunk champagne. “Your friend Mihaela spoke a lot about trust—to both of us. Not surprisingly. We have not always had the same aims. Do we now?”
A trifle bewildered by his sudden turn from the profoundly emotional to the practical, Elizabeth dragged her thoughts into some kind of order.
“Mutual cooperation,” she said at last. “Yes. Revelation of the vampire world to humans . . . Yes, if it were done in such a way that would avoid panic and chaos. There has to be honesty if we live together. But it isn’t something that could happen overnight, probably not even in my lifetime. I’m prepared to help make a start, if we do it in agreement with the hunters.”
Watching her, Saloman drank.
Elizabeth said, “I realize this wasn’t your original agenda.”
“Revenge and world domination. I’ve had my fill of one—for the moment—and I haven’t given up the latter. You’ve just convinced me to do it in a different way.”
Elizabeth frowned. “That wasn’t quite what I meant by ‘cooperation.’ ”
“I know. But it would never be a partnership of equals, would it? I have both the power and the experience.”
“And we have the numbers.”
Saloman sat back, a smile shimmering in his dark eyes. “I think I said once that I needed you to make me happy. But your role was always meant to be more, wasn’t it? You can make me palatable to humanity.”
Elizabeth picked up her glass and sipped, regarding him over the rim. “And I can make you behave.” Please, God . . .
“I think I might enjoy that,” Saloman said softly. “I wonder if that’s what Luk saw in his vision?”
“What vision?”
“The one that distracted him and gave me the chance to throw him back out the window. He saw something then involving you and me. He called you the missing piece.”
“Missing from what?” Elizabeth demanded.
“Who knows? He probably doesn’t anymore. The visions were largely what disturbed his sanity in the first place, and it was one involving me that turned him against me.”
“Did he ever tell you what it was?”
Saloman shook his head. “No. As far as I know, he never told anyone. Which normally meant he hadn’t worked out exactly what a vision signified, if anything. In this case, I suspect he’d deduced that I was some kind of threat, either to him or to the world. But his mind was failing by then, and since he no longer trusted me, I couldn’t help him interpret whatever it was he saw. I’ve had to guess from his behavior, which was jealousy of every tiny power I gained, and of Tsigana, of course.”
“Perhaps he foresaw this,” Elizabeth said lightly. “That you and I—I, not Tsigana, being ‘the missing piece’—would defeat him here in Budapest.”
Saloman smiled faintly. “Maybe.” He regarded her with unexpected seriousness. “Actually, that isn’t so farfetched. But I suspect there are conflicting visions—one that made him jealous of me and one that curtailed my power.”
Elizabeth curled her fingers around the stem of her glass. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Saloman sipped his wine elegantly. “Prophecies don’t, as a rule. The art of the seer, the Guardian, was more in interpreting the visions than in simply receiving them. The future isn’t written in stone. Events, people, choices, change all the time. A vision, at best, is only ever one possible future.”
Elizabeth raised her glass and took an almost angry gulp. “Then what the hell use are they? Why did Luk get so wound up against you?”
Saloman shrugged. “Because his vision confirmed some deep-seated fear in him. Because he could no longer analyze clearly. Because he was insane and he didn’t want me to have Tsigana.”
“Tsigana . . . She keeps cropping up.” Elizabeth set down her glass and forced herself to think rationally. “What was it about her? Not one but two Ancient vampires running after her. To say nothing of Maximilian. For a young human, however beautiful, she must have had one hell of a personality. Or did Luk just want her because he thought she was yours?”
Saloman regarded her thoughtfully. “I’ve always assumed that to be the case. And yet his grief for her on awakening implies the feeling went deeper. The truth is, I lost Luk a long time before I killed him. I have no idea what goes on in his mind anymore.”
Luk disengaged his teeth from the woman’s throat with a grunt of satisfaction, and reached for her friend. “You know, I think my cousin might be onto something. Keeping his meals on the premises. There’s nothing like coming
home to a favorite dinner. Except coming home to two,” he added, sinking his teeth into the second woman’s throat.
The first, a brunette with blond roots, scooted away from him and huddled in the corner. She was pale from blood loss. Her eyes were huge, both anxious and fervent as they watched him feed from her friend. He’d picked them both up in his fit of euphoria after breaching Saloman’s defenses, and brought them here to this attic, where, on a whim, he’d kept them and fed them between his own feedings.
The second girl wrapped her legs around his hips, pressing herself into him, and Luk was briefly tempted to fuck her while he fed.
“Oh, for God’s sake, do you have to do that here?” Grayson complained from the doorway. Returning from his hunt with the Turkish vampires, he appeared to be offended by the sight of Luk sprawling on the old mattress and cushions while being caressed by his luscious prey. Grayson had a very peculiar puritanical streak.
Luk healed the second girl’s wound with a flick of his tongue and turned to face Grayson. Just to annoy him, he put his hand over the woman’s eager breast.
“Do what here?” he inquired provokingly, and gazed up out of the open skylight to the stars, inhaling the scents of the night.
“Screw your . . . dinner,” Dante said in disgust.
“Modern language is so picturesque. I have not, er, screwed my dinner. Too much pleasure would disturb—and indeed drain—the energy I need to mask all of you all of the time. To say nothing of this place. All it takes is one second for Saloman to be onto us.”
One of the Turks knelt down by the brunette, tugging her toward him with clear intent. Luk swatted him away without so much as a glance, more irritated by the discourtesy than the territorial invasion. He didn’t like living this close to uncivilized vampires. In fact, even Grayson’s whining was becoming annoying. He couldn’t remember any of his other creations ever telling him off or commanding him as Grayson seemed inclined to, even after Luk had been forced to show him physically who was in charge.
Unbidden, a memory of Saloman flashed into his mind, a mere couple of weeks after being turned. A young, eager, awed Saloman, desperate to learn, to fly before he could walk, answering him back with a fearless impudence he had always forgiven because it had never descended to insolence. Besides, there had always been a certain wit about Saloman, a charm that had shone as brilliantly as the sun. . . .
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