Blood Eternal

by Marie Treanor

  “Don’t worry about it.” Elizabeth reached out one hand and found Mihaela’s, which grasped hers strongly.

  “It’s half past three,” Mihaela murmured. “I don’t think they’ll come now, do you?”

  “I suppose it’s less likely so close to dawn.” There were still two hours until dawn, and they both knew it.

  Mihaela said, “We stand a better chance tomorrow, when the others come home.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and Mihaela lapsed back into silence. Elizabeth lay back down and gazed at the small, frosted-glass windows that were all the natural light the library had. Although they stood at pavement level outside, they were never, apparently, damaged by accident or design. More of Luk’s protection?

  “Elizabeth?” Mihaela whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you afraid of dying?”

  There was only one honest answer to that. “Yes,” she whispered.

  There was a pause, then: “Are you still getting those pains and sick spells?”

  “Not so badly,” Elizabeth said lightly. She hadn’t been thinking so much about those as about losing Saloman, about death without sleep. Eternity. “Saloman thinks it’s because my telepathy is growing. I’m picking up other people’s feelings of pain and illness.”

  “Makes sense,” Mihaela whispered eagerly. “Don’t you think?”

  “Sometimes it’s certainly true,” Elizabeth agreed.

  “But you don’t really believe it.” The anxiety was back in Mihaela’s whisper. Elizabeth could barely hear her.

  “I do,” she protested. “Mostly. I just can’t shake the feeling that however true it is, there’s more to it. That scares me too.” But if the illness kills me, I have time to decide. If I die tonight, would I let Saloman turn me?

  You mustn’t lose who you are. . . .

  She shifted restlessly. There was no point in thinking ahead, beyond the fight.

  “Elizabeth,” Mihaela said, low-voiced, “about last night—”

  “Forget it, Mihaela. We go beyond quarrels.”

  Mihaela’s hand came up, rubbing at her forehead. “Yes, but I accused you of dishonesty when I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

  Elizabeth smiled into her sleeping bag. “I got over that a long time ago.”

  “I’m not talking about the ancestry business,” Mihaela said impatiently. “This is something else. We found a book, a prophecy, that we think relates to you. We didn’t tell you because . . . well, because we thought you’d act differently if you knew, put yourself in greater danger. We’ve tried not to think about it ourselves, not to let it influence us, but I can’t get it out of my head. And when you told me about your illness—”

  She broke off, dropping her hand on the floor with a soft thump. The knot of unease that had been sitting at the bottom of Elizabeth’s stomach, quiet and ignored, began to tighten.

  “What prophecy?” she asked. “What did it say?”

  “That you would cleave to Saloman’s enemies—us—and smite his friends—vampires.” Mihaela turned her head and met Elizabeth’s gaze. “And something else about giving up the world to see the new age. It’s stupid. It contradicts itself and is open to so many interpretations that it might not even apply to you! Only . . .”

  Mihaela trailed off, so Elizabeth finished it for her. “You thought I might be about to give up the world. By death.” Or undeath. She wouldn’t bring that up here.

  “Yes,” Mihaela whispered.

  “And if I’m not dying, then I can still be killed, especially in a battle against huge odds. Is that why you’re telling me now?”

  “Partly. I’m sorry. It’s probably rubbish, but I wanted you to know the facts.” She waved one self-deprecating hand. “If we can call it fact.”

  “Is it Luk’s?” Elizabeth blurted.

  “The prophecy? Yes, according to the medieval hunter who noted it down.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Luk had seen her in visions; she was sure of that. Although some of them might have been of her ancestress Tsigana. Hell, Mihaela’s prophecy could equally apply to Tsigana, although she wasn’t sure what that lady had ever done to smite Saloman’s friends. But she couldn’t dwell on that stuff here. Right now, she needed to calm Mihaela, and herself. And that meant talking, not thinking about things she couldn’t change.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Are you afraid of death?”

  Mihaela shrugged. “No. I never have been. I think I’ve always believed I was on borrowed time anyway.”

  Elizabeth turned back to her. “Since your family died?” she asked with difficulty.

  Mihaela nodded. “It doesn’t matter, though,” she said, still in the low, whispering tones they’d both used throughout the conversation. “I never wanted to die for nothing. I wanted to make a difference, root out evil to make the world safer.”

  “You have,” Elizabeth said fervently.

  “But this? If we die, Elizabeth, the world won’t be safer at all. Not if the hunters’ network and all our knowledge is destroyed. Not if Luk defeats Saloman.”

  “And if Saloman defeats Luk?”

  “I’m beginning to think the world stands a chance,” Mihaela said ruefully. “More of a chance, at any rate. We need at least to talk to Saloman.” She kicked inside the sleeping bag, and Elizabeth could only guess who was at her imaginary receiving end. “Maybe the world is changing and we have to change with it. Or maybe we’ll never have the opportunity.”

  “Don’t say that, Mihaela. We have to win now.”

  “You really think we can win?” Elizabeth had never heard her sound so hopeless. “After what you said this morning?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth whispered, just a little too loudly. She lowered her voice back to a whisper. “I do. And whatever happens, Mihaela, it won’t be for nothing.”

  Mihaela’s fingers gripped hers harder. “Because Saloman will still be here?”

  “And us.” Elizabeth squeezed her hand in return. “Believe that, Mihaela, and stay alive.”

  Elizabeth. Saloman’s voice invaded her mind with all the ominous force of forked lightning. They’re here. It’s time.

  Chapter Twenty

  How many? Elizabeth asked urgently.

  In spite of the cold shell he’d built, grief swamped Saloman. He couldn’t prevent his sense of the world crumbling around him. Eleven from Budapest had betrayed him. And the incomers from Romania and Croatia were going not to him but to Luk. It was a bitter blow, and the odds were now powerfully stacked him against him. But he couldn’t give in.

  He showed Elizabeth a brief picture direct from his senses. Luk and twenty-four vampires. More are coming this way.

  Twenty-four! My God, we can’t do this! It’s disastrous. We’re hopelessly outnumbered.”

  It can be done, Elizabeth. There is hope. Saloman’s brushed her agitated mind with his, a caress of tenderness, encouragement, and comfort, before he turned his thoughts elsewhere.

  Angyalka.

  It’s happening, isn’t it? Do you want us now?

  Only as a last resort. If Saloman won out tonight, it was important he be seen to respect the hunters’ wishes as much as possible. With a feeling of dread he despised in himself, he asked, How many are with you?

  A few, Angyalka said evasively. Saloman closed his eyes. Elek is here, she added. And that at least was a grain of comfort in the ugly mess before him.

  “Get up, Mihaela,” Elizabeth breathed, scrambling to her feet and dragging the hunter with her. “They’re here.” Before she’d finished speaking she was already sprinting across the room to the reception desk, where Konrad and István sprawled at their ease. István lifted his head from the desk, blinking at her.

  “It’s now,” she said urgently. “From the windows.”

  “The detectors,” Konrad disputed, staring at his computer screen.

  “Are slower than Saloman. Trust me.”

  István grabbed his stakes and leapt over the desk to join Mihaela. Aroused by the fl
urry of activity, Lazar and the other hunters threw off their sleeping bags and drew closer. Everyone was armed with a stake in one hand and a sword in the other; a belt or pouch full of more stakes hung around their waists.

  Konrad came around from the desk to join the line of poised hunters, and twisted the computer monitor around to face them.

  “Still no sign. What do you know, Elizabeth?”

  “They’ll come through the windows. One Ancient, twenty-four other vampires of assorted strength.”

  “Twenty-four? Oh, shit,” Mihaela muttered. The monitor screen flashed red.

  “Now,” said Konrad grimly, and with the others, he turned to face the wall at the top of which the five long, narrow windows seemed to stare back at them blankly. “Stand back,” he warned. “If they land on you with the force of that jump, you’re dead.”

  “Guys,” said István, “it’s been good.”

  Oh, but it has; please don’t let it end, Elizabeth thought in blind, pointless panic. The windows exploded inward, spraying glass at the waiting hunters. At almost exactly the same time, five vampires shot into the room like fearless children down a slide, surrounded by glistening haloes of crumbled, flying glass.

  From behind Elizabeth, the air whooshed. Something—a piece of cloth or the edge of a boot—grazed past her ear, and even as Konrad shouted in warning, two tall figures landed in front of the hunter’s line, facing the attacking vampires.

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” Elizabeth shouted. “Saloman is here with Dmitriu; they fight for us.”

  And then there was no time for more. The lead vampire resolved into Luk. Something burst into flames in his hand and was hurled over everyone’s heads into the depths of the library, while more vampires dropped through the windows.

  “Put out the fire!” Lazar yelled, but István had already pulled back from the line, running for the wall extinguisher.

  As Elizabeth leapt forward, stake and sword raised to meet the onslaught, the number echoed in her mind with ever-increasing dread. Two. There are only two of them, Saloman and Dmitriu. Maximilian has betrayed him again.

  Luk knew he was insane. It didn’t bother him because it didn’t make him careless. If anything, it made him obsessively careful. He forced his followers to comb the area around the hunters’ headquarters with him several times, checking with their eyes as well as their paranormal senses for Saloman, or for any other vampire who wasn’t one of them. A couple were drifting through the town, unknown Romanians. Smirking, Luk sent them a telepathic beacon to guide them. But of Saloman’s remaining loyal supporters, there was no sign.

  “Good,” he said, satisfied at last. “He hasn’t cottoned on yet.” From the roof opposite, he gazed down at the blank, doorless side wall of the hunters’ building. Where the wall joined the pavement, a line of dull, oblong windows winked in the dim streetlight. The row of crowlike figures on either side of Luk gazed too, with a ferocious hunger that couldn’t begin to approach his own. “So let’s bring him.”

  With a glorious sense of freedom, Luk threw off his mask and lifted the protective cloak from his followers.

  “Come, my children, let’s hunt the hunters,” he said with relish, and stepped off the roof. According to Maximilian, the hunters were relying on instruments that detected vampire presence. Right about now, they’d be shitting their smug, overconfident pants.

  As his followers landed in a long, silent line beside him, he saw no reason to speak quietly. “Grayson, stick close to me; Maximilian and Timucin, you come in last, so keep checking for Saloman and his supporters. Let us bring death and destruction and the dawn of the new age that will devour us all!”

  He wasn’t quite sure where the last words came from, or what they meant. Grayson gave him a half-irritated, half-fearful look, which he ignored in favor of the task at hand. He stared at the window in front of his feet, which was only just large enough to let a grown man slide through horizontally, and with the power of his mind, he simply blew it in. The energy caught and spread like a virus, popping each window almost simultaneously, and with a cry of joy, Luk threw himself through, feet first, to create the doom of mankind and find his own.

  Through the mist of falling glass, which seemed to sparkle in the hunters’ lights as he shot into the room, he made out an unexpectedly poised line of humans. He smelled Elizabeth Silk. And then, even as he made his telepathic command to his next wave of followers to advance, he saw Saloman and Dmitriu leap over the hunters’ heads and land squarely in front of him.

  For an instant, he stared into his cousin’s black, implacable eyes. Something rose up inside him that might have been rage or joy or a combination too confused to separate. Fuck, but you’re annoying.

  I know, said Saloman.

  Luk laughed. Then let it be now. Bring it on! And summoning the fire, he hurled it from his hand deep into the core of the hunters’ pride and joy. While the hunters panicked, Saloman and Elizabeth Silk both leapt for him. He sidestepped Saloman, reaching for the stake at his belt while with his sword he swiped off the nearest hunter’s head.

  Elizabeth yelled, a peculiar sound of agony and rage, cut off as suddenly as it began. And when Luk whirled around, it was Saloman’s sword that clashed with his. Memory flashed, vivid and inconvenient. He knew that sword. He’d given it, and the bastard still wore it after what he’d done. In fury, he hacked, driving Saloman back with the sword and swiping viciously with the stake.

  You’re losing it all, Saloman. The library burns, the hunters are dying, damn their treacherous hearts, and your followers defect in scores—starting with your beloved Maximilian. Are you there yet, Maximilian?

  I’m here, Maximilian said close beside him. But Timucin isn’t.

  Maximilian spun, leaping toward Grayson, who was plunging a stake toward Dmitriu’s unprotected back, and struck hard and sure. Luk stumbled with shock, feeling Saloman’s blade bite into his shoulder, barely comprehending that the dust of Maximilian’s kill belonged not to Dmitriu but to Grayson, his last creation.

  Now Dante isn’t here either, Maximilian observed.

  Thanks, said Dmitriu, already leaping onto a table after one of the Hungarian vampires.

  You’re welcome, Maximilian returned.

  For an instant, grief almost undid Luk. Grayson was gone. Unthinkable. How had he let that happen? It forced him to disengage from Saloman, to jump back and take stock.

  Grayson had awakened him with Saloman’s blood for his own ends. He’d taken advantage of Luk’s weakness and confusion, and then of his strength. There was no love of his creator. And if Luk thought about it, as he did among the mayhem of the fight he’d begun, Luk felt no real love for his creation. In fact, he felt more emotion toward Maximilian, who was now fighting merrily along beside the enemy, damn him.

  Oh, who cares? You were ever a treacherous bastard, Max! How well do you trust him, Saloman?

  Implicitly, said Saloman, who’d obviously grasped that several of Luk’s vampires were converging on the Awakener as instructed. Advancing at speed, he staked two of them at once. Elizabeth whirled and got another.

  The hunters, though overwhelmingly outnumbered, were all battling with enough lethal fury to be dangerous. It was time to finish it before any more of his vampires died.

  So fast that the humans wouldn’t even have seen it, Luk leapt on Saloman. His cousin threw him off at once, with so much force that he dropped his sword. But that didn’t matter; he’d made the touch, got the connection; and now, with fierce, vengeful satisfaction, he reached in and seized Saloman’s mind.

  By the time Cyn found the vampires, she was shaking with the feeling she’d called “malevolence” ever since she’d been old enough to know what the word meant. Here, on a respectable, quiet street in the middle of the night, the malevolence was overwhelming.

  “There,” she whispered, nodding farther down the road. A fight was already taking place. One man against another three. Except as three vanished in quick succession, she
knew they hadn’t been men.

  “Wow,” Pete said, awed. “Is he a vampire hunter?”

  “No,” John answered in a strange voice. “He’s a vampire. He’s talking to others inside that building. Telepathically.”

  “Can you hear them?” Rudy asked. “All of them? Do you know how many?”

  “Lots,” John said, tugging at his hair as though his head hurt, or he was trying to sort out the babble of voices. “They’re trying to kill someone called the Awakener. Oh, shite, is that—”

  “Elizabeth?” said Rudy. “Oh, yes. Let’s go.”

  The sidewalk-level windows were broken, and from inside came the sounds of total carnage. Awkwardly, John got the ropes out of his backpack.

  “Hurry,” Cyn said, shivering, keeping her eyes fixed on the end of the street. “There are more coming.” She’d be all right once the fighting started, but until then, all she could feel was the chill of evil.

  “Let’s go,” Rudy said.

  Saloman had stuck to his plan. Since Maximilian had agreed to go with Luk to keep track of events and to do what damage he could from that end, he and Dmitriu had entered the hunters’ building early in the afternoon, so deeply masked that the staff they’d encountered had barely noticed them, let alone recognized them.

  Even the business of breaking the shield enchantment to get in, and of building it again behind them, had been accomplished quickly and discreetly. In the library, they’d moved past all the researchers and librarians and taken up position at the very back of the cavernous room among the deepest shadows. So when the detectors were switched on and reset at five o’clock, they accepted him and Dmitriu as part of the environment. They remained silent, just as Elizabeth had hoped they would.

  And although a couple of the hunters, especially Mihaela, had taken too many glances into the shadows, as if something there disturbed them, no one had truly seen them through Saloman’s masking, because no one had truly had expected to. Apart from Elizabeth.