Blood on Silk (15 page)

Instead, he tried for common sense. “You’re moving too fast,” he objected. “You need rest to improve your strength. God knows what you need to improve your mood.”

Sex, probably. Despite all his “f ” words on awakening, although he’d fed plenty, the frolicking had been pretty much in the way of business, apart from the nightclub visit, and Dmitriu was almost sure there hadn’t been any fucking at all. It worried him. Either Saloman was weaker than he let on, or, even worse, he was still obsessed with Tsigana. After three hundred years? In this day and age he could have his pick with ease. Well, he always had in any age, vampire or human.

“Travel,” Saloman replied. “Tantalizing new blood. And—er—tarts.”

Dmitriu roused himself from the unaccustomed ache in his heart. “I never cared,” he said, “for the letter ‘t.’ ”

Saloman leapt across the rooftops of Bistriƫa, reveling in the uplifting freedom of movement. To human observers, he would just be a blur against the blue-black sky.

Although he’d run like this from Sighesciu to Bistriƫa, he’d been far weaker then, unable to enjoy it because of the massive aching of muscles he hadn’t used in more than three hundred years. Even walking had been hard enough then. But in four days and nights of rigorous exercise, his body had begun to strengthen and rejoice. The old skills returned, and his senses grew increasingly sharp, which was how he knew where the traitor and murderer Karl was. And how he knew which house was occupied by his Awakener.

He couldn’t resist pausing on the roof of the small, insignificant suburban house. The sound of her voice made his ears twitch and the blood flow faster in his veins. He jumped lightly to the ground, just beside the front window, but they’d closed the shutters and there was only a tiny crack to squint through. Sacrificing his dignity, he looked anyway.

They were all there. The girl whose throat Zoltán had damaged while trying to feed from the Awakener; the two men who’d interrupted his promise of passion last night; and Elizabeth Silk herself.

Just for an instant, he thought he was going to have to rescue his long-anticipated supper once again. Dressed in cut-down denim jeans that seemed to lengthen her already-alluring legs and a tiny top that looked more like an undergarment, she brandished a stick and circled the other similarly armed woman. Her normally rather unworldly face bore an expression of such fierce concentration that it fooled him for a moment, before he realized the fight wasn’t real.

The sticks they held were blunt. The furniture had been carefully moved aside, not scattered in anger. And from the sidelines, the German issued instruction, encouragement, and praise.

Silently, Saloman began to laugh. They were teaching her to fight vampires. Did any of them seriously imagine such knowledge would protect her from
him
?

But then, perhaps she was joining the hunters, becoming one of them—and abandoning her research? Even if recent events had shown her plausible theories to be total bunkum, she still had a historian’s insatiable curiosity. He hadn’t missed the light in her eyes, the barely contained questions that sprang to her lips and remained unspoken only through pride when she’d realized all the things he could tell her—if she could trust his answers.

Christ, she even moved like Tsigana, graceful and sure. For some reason, the recognition didn’t please him. There was something too about the deceptively delicate structure of her face, which had thrown him on their first encounter. She looked and smelled too much like his old, treacherous lover. He preferred to look for differences—and found them. Her large, beautiful hazel eyes were very much her own, gentle and expressive—they only tried to be secretive—and her full, sweet lips, even now when they were clamped tight with the effort of her fight, spoke of a personal vulnerability that would have been quite alien to Tsigana. Beneath the disconcerting smell of their shared blood, Elizabeth had her own, subtle, alluring scent that called to all his senses, feeding his hunger for her body as much as for her blood.

And then it was good to see that she, Elizabeth, was faster as she flung herself aside to evade the Romanian’s lunge, and spun on her heel only to stop and face her opponent once more, steady and watchful. Her quickened breathing was deep but even, lifting and dropping the soft, enticing breasts he’d caressed last night. A bead of sweat glistened between them, trickling down her skin and out of sight.

Peering through a crack in a shutter was not the correct position from which to appreciate Elizabeth Silk. She did the same things to his loins she’d always done, from the moment she’d first leaned over him in the crypt, her whole beautiful face alight with fascination. Her sensual touch exploring his body, on his lips, the first he’d known for centuries, had been almost unbearable. Lust was hard to deal with when one’s body was frozen and couldn’t react as normal. It was as if his very blood had ached, and yet he was sure it had stirred with excitement because of her beauty, and her blood, and her scent of Tsigana. Likewise, he had no time now to indulge such desires. He had to stop imagining those long, smooth legs wrapped around his hips in passion, and just appreciate their speed of movement.

As the Romanian closed with her and they fell onto the carpet, Elizabeth twisted in an effort not to be trapped beneath, as the brutish vampire had done to her the night before last.

She was learning already. It made him curious. He wanted to see her defend herself in reality, her red-blond hair flying out from her soft, delicate face, as she fought and defeated her enemies. Her small-boned body, which looked and felt as if it might snap under his hands, was in fact strong and flexible. But then she bore Tsigana’s blood, and Tsigana was one of his “killers.” Elizabeth had strengths she didn’t yet dream of.

He knew an urge to tear down the shutters and crash into the room, to hold the others captive with one commanding point of his finger while he pressed Elizabeth’s delectable little body into his.

She would fight it as she always did, but before he took her, he would make her respond with the passion he sensed that she needed. He was sure she wasn’t a virgin—how refreshing of this age to disregard that “virtue” once more—but she was largely un-awakened. Her unconscious responses, as well as her shock, told him that. It would make it all the sweeter to take her, to push inside her hot, welcoming depths and give her pleasure as he drained her blood.

He stepped back. He could no longer see into the room, watch her gaze at the German with trusting concentration, or observe the Hungarian boy staring at her with disguised lust of his own. She didn’t see it. He suspected she saw none of it, lost in her academia as much as in her own faulty view of herself. She intrigued him, not just by her pale, refined beauty of which she seemed quite unaware, but by her contradictory characteristics: lonely and self-sufficient; unworldly and cynical; solemn and humorous; fearful and unexpectedly courageous; standoffish and passionate. . . .

Fuck. He could break in and end it now, take all the semimystical strength she had to offer, both as his Awakener and the descendant of his “killer.” It would be useful in Budapest.

But on the whole, he preferred his original plan. He’d let her find him, buoyed up with hunter training. He would enjoy the fight all the more, and her end would be all the sweeter.

A man and woman passed in the street, a dog at their heels. The dog whimpered and cowered in at their legs, casting quick, furtive glances into the garden where he stood. Saloman didn’t trouble to soothe the animal. He tensed his legs and soared into the air.

Feeling stronger with each leap, he ran west with ever-increasing speed into the Carpathian Mountains, following the sour stench of Karl’s fear. He didn’t trouble to mask his identity or his presence. There was nowhere left for Karl to hide, and it did his vengeful soul good to know the vampire was fleeing before him in panic.

Saloman’s honed senses would have found him alone on any mountain peak. Karl clearly knew that. He sought refuge in a crowded village tavern. He may have imagined Saloman’s senses wouldn’t be able to distinguish him there. He may have imagined Saloman would choose not to kill him before human witnesses—though where such an absurd notion would have come from, Saloman couldn’t imagine.

He halted at last in the street outside the tavern, once again merely a leather-clad man to any passing human—or perhaps not. An old woman sat on a stool by her gate across the road, enjoying the cool of the night. Most humans he’d encountered so suddenly since his awakening ignored him, assuming they just hadn’t noticed his approach. This woman made the sign of the cross with one hand, and the sign against the evil eye with the other, and fled inside, abandoning her fallen stool as she hobbled away.

Saloman curled his lip. A place of old knowledge, it seemed; yet Karl had just arrived here—on this visit, at least.

Saloman strolled up to the door, nodding at the men he met in the doorway. They muttered polite greetings and stood aside for him to enter.

The place was noisy and smoky. Several men glanced at him as he entered, but Karl wasn’t one of them.

The vampire sat at the back of the bar, sharing a table with several burly farmers who all but squashed him into the corner. Karl’s face was turned toward one of them as if deep in some interesting conversation. He might have been. Karl was quite a charming fellow at one time. In fact, it offended Saloman to see him like this, pretending, cringing, masking with desperate futility, consumed by fear of the stronger being he had betrayed and joined with others to kill. There was no more fun to be had here. This was one to finish quickly.

Saloman looked neither to the left nor right, although he was aware of every gaze that followed him. He ignored them, walking straight toward Karl, staring at his face until everyone at the table looked up expectantly at Saloman, and at last Karl was forced to do the same.

Miserable worm
. He lacked even the courage to face the consequences of his actions. Saloman halted and reached across the table. Karl jerked back as if to avoid him, moving fast enough to be a mere blur to the humans, but Saloman found his shoulder.

“Karl, my friend. At last.” As he pulled Karl toward him, the men at the table made way. They couldn’t see that Karl pulled back, resisting all the way, or that Saloman had to use considerable force. The struggle was secret, desperate, but the result of the encounter was never in doubt, at least not to Saloman, who pressed the vampire into his side and marched him from the tavern.

Across the road, curtains twitched. Saloman didn’t care what the old woman saw. He lifted off into the air, taking Karl with him. He bounded across the village rooftops, coming to rest on the high, stout branch of an ancient willow tree.

Karl moaned, as if aware at last of the precise stage of Saloman’s recovery. To him, Saloman was the same powerful being he’d been at his “death.”

He wasn’t, of course. But no one, let alone this worm, needed to discover that.

“You disappoint me,” he said in a low voice. “I expected at least a fight, a chase. But you’re barely worth the kill. The strength of your blood is outweighed by the meanness of your spirit.”

“Then don’t kill me,” Karl almost squeaked. “I made a terrible mistake, but come on, Saloman, it’s been three hundred years! Can’t you forgive and forget?”

Saloman curled his lip, more at the use of his name than the wheedling that made him feel physically sick. At this rate, he’d have trouble keeping the bastard’s blood down. He should have taken Elizabeth Silk with her strong, sweet blood and alluring body that would have trembled with desire as well as fear as she fought him. The puny, mortal woman had a spirit and courage way beyond this five-hundred-year-old vampire’s. Karl would always be paltry.

Finish it. As the first blood of vengeance, it’s pretty poor—but very necessary.

“I can’t forget. And I never forgive.” Saloman bent to his throat and, with the night world spread out below him, felt immeasurably better. Perhaps it helped that his victim began at least to scrabble at his hands, in a vain and feeble attempt to release himself. The willow branch swayed under them—another pleasing sensation.

The funny thing was, one serious blow would have damaged Saloman, but the idea never even crossed Karl’s mind. Fear was a powerful weapon. He’d taught that knowledge to many human princes in the past.

Karl was still gibbering. “I never acquired the strength of the older vampires. I never sought it. Spare me and I’ll give you Lajos, whose blood is far stronger than mine!”

Ignoring him, Saloman closed his mouth over Karl’s throat and bared his fangs.

“I’ll give you Maximilian!” Karl screamed.

Saloman paused. For the first time, possibly ever, Karl interested him. He lifted his head. “Maximilian,” he repeated. “You really know where Maximilian is?”

Even Dmitriu didn’t know that, and Saloman’s senses couldn’t reach him—yet. But the worm was babbling again. “I had it from Lajos, and you know how thick the two of them used to be. . . .”

“Speak,” Saloman interrupted.