Blood Sin (6 page)

He sat still with shock under her hand, as if his testosterone had melted. But at Emma’s name, something flashed again in his eyes.

“Take your dismissal like a man,” Elizabeth warned. “True—before you say it—of course your love life is not my concern, but stalking, threatening, or intimidating my students
is
. There’s a watch on you, Gary. I’ve initiated it. For now it’s unofficial, but if you step out of line, if you so much as look at her—or anyone else—the wrong way, action will be taken and more than your reputation will be ruined. Do you understand me?”

His mouth twisted. Elizabeth removed her hand and stepped back.

At once he leapt to his feet, breathing like an angry bull. Even now, he hoped to stare her out. There was a lot of pent-up anger there. The question was whether he was prepared to use it against her. She knew without any doubt that it wouldn’t do him any good. Although he was bigger, he only imagined he was stronger. She was faster—she was a powerful descendant of Tsigana and the Awakener of Saloman. He couldn’t possibly know it but the boy didn’t stand a chance.

“Do you understand me?” she repeated. For an instant longer, it hung in the balance. Bafflement began to replace the anger in his face, as if he still didn’t quite understand how she had the upper hand. He gave one brisk nod, just as the door opened and her colleague Joanne came in.

“Elizabeth, have you got a—” Joanne broke off, gazing at the confrontation before her. “Everything all right here?” she asked.

“I think so,” Elizabeth said.

Gary turned away without a word, snatched up his bag from the floor, and strode past Joanne, barely avoiding a collision in his hurry to get out of the room. Joanne raised her eyebrows.

“Gary.” Partly Elizabeth wanted to see if he’d respond. Partly she had one more thing to say. He paused, at least. An instant later, he twitched his head in the direction of his shoulder. It was as good as she’d get, and she thought it was enough. “You’re a good student, Gary, one of the best. Don’t spoil that.”

He didn’t answer, just swung out of the room without troubling to close the door.

“At least he didn’t slam it,” Joanne observed. “What was that all about?”

“Inappropriate male behavior.”

“Is that Gary Jackson? I’ve heard he’s becoming a handful. Might have been a good idea to get department support from Richard before you confronted him.” Joanne gave her a quick, anxious scan. “Are you all right? Do you need Richard to intervene in this?”

“I’m fine. And I think I’ve made my point,” Elizabeth said. Somewhere, she was surprised that both statements were true.

“So, what are you doing during the holidays?” Joanne asked as they shared sandwiches for lunch in her office. Feet up on her paper-strewn desk, almost on the computer keyboard, she looked ultrarelaxed, but her gaze was uncomfortably penetrating. “Going back to Eastern Europe?”

“Maybe for a week or so,” Elizabeth answered. “I have a few friends out there I’d like to keep in touch with.” Mihaela had already offered her spare room. “And Richard suggested I think of expanding the thesis into a book. . . . But I’ve got no plans. I can’t really think beyond the PhD thing right now.”

“Well, that’s one definite plan,” Joanne said with enthusiasm. “The whole department will be out celebrating with you as soon as you hear the result.”

“Providing it’s the right result,” Elizabeth said ruefully.

“It will be. Your thesis is brilliant.”

It’s a load of bollocks. Or at least some of it is. You wouldn’t say it was brilliant if I’d written the truth: that most of these superstitions are based on the fact that vampires have always existed.

“There’s a permanent post about to come up at Glasgow University,” Joanne observed, reaching for another sandwich without moving her feet. “You should go for it.”

“I might.” Trouble was, she liked it here at St. Andrews. Unfortunately, her post was for only this year.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t come back when old Doughty retires,” Joanne encouraged. “But you can’t wait for that. It might only be a year, but it might be three, or even five if he holds on by his fingernails. Richard will still take you before any other candidate. In more ways than one,” she finished with a wicked grin.

Elizabeth threw a paper bag at her, just as her phone began to ring. Although she took some time to locate it in the depths of her bag, and she didn’t recognize the number, she pressed the receive key before it rang off.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is that Elizabeth? Elizabeth Silk?” The voice, echoing on speakerphone mode from when she’d called Mihaela, sounded American and vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it.

“Yes, that’s me,” she admitted.

“Hi, it’s Josh here. Josh Alexander.”

“Josh!” She jumped to her feet, alarm outweighing her surprise. She’d doubted she’d ever hear from him again. She certainly hadn’t expected it to be so soon. What the hell could have happened since last night?

Oh, shite, is he here? Is Saloman here again?
Inevitably, the possibility spawned a surge of conflicting delight and fear, longing and dread.

“What’s the matter?” she demanded.

“Nothing.” Josh sounded amused. “I just wanted to ask you a favor. Listen. I know it’s short notice, but I’ve been invited to this dull party in the Highlands this weekend and I was hoping you’d come with me to save me from boredom.”

“Party?” she said faintly. “What party?”

“Grayson Dante’s. He’s a bigwig senator back home, been visiting—and working—over here. He’s invited us to his weekend bash.” She could still hear the lilt of appreciation in his voice, because she hadn’t leapt at his invitation the way most normal women would.

Josh Alexander had invited her to a weekend party.

Laughter caught in her own throat. “Thanks for asking me,” she managed. “Especially when you think I’m insane. But to be honest, it sounds a bit posh for me. I’d be out of place.”

“Nonsense. You hold your own in any place,” Josh said gallantly. “But you’d be my guest and I wouldn’t desert you.”

Elizabeth bit her lip. Every personal instinct urged refusal. Social gatherings such as she imagined this one to be were her idea of hell. Plus, she rather thought Josh Alexander’s world would be completely alien to her. Gazing at Joanne’s uncharacteristically dumbstruck face, she wrestled briefly with her conscience. How could she refuse another chance to convince Josh of impending danger? It might make all the difference to whether he survived.

Conscience, damn it, won.

“All right.” She sighed. “I mean, thank you, I’d love to. Where do I go and will they let me in?”

Josh laughed. “I’ll pick you up on Saturday, say around twelve? I’ll call when I hit St. Andrews and you can give me directions to your place.”

“What do I wear?” she demanded, as another pitfall sprang to mind.

“Anything,” Josh said unhelpfully. “See you Friday!”

“Typical bloody male!” Elizabeth stared indignantly at the dead phone.

“Elizabeth,” said Joanne, who’d been listening in quite blatantly. “Tell me that wasn’t
the
Josh Alexander, because you know, it even
sounded
quite like him.”

“It was,” Elizabeth said smugly. “He’s a cousin of mine. Sort of.”

“Fuck me,” said Joanne faintly. She took her feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Can I come too?”

“I wish you could,” Elizabeth said with perfect truth.

Chapter Three

T
he early morning sun struck the high, tiny windows of the hunters’ library in Budapest, dazzling Mihaela as she raised her head to find her colleague.

Konrad, more suited for action than for research, had already put his books away. Like herself and István, he dutifully came here to pursue the ongoing case of Saloman whenever he had a spare moment. But they were heading for the Transylvanian mountains as soon as István got here, and Konrad clearly figured his research time was over.

Apart from the librarian himself, she and Konrad were the only occupants of the library, so Mihaela broke with custom, raising her voice to call, “Konrad, come and look at this.”

Her excitement must have leapt through her voice, because Konrad actually brightened as he came back to the table, and even Miklόs’s frown of disapproval quickly vanished. Shifting position, Mihaela pushed the sixteenth-century book across the table, jabbing her finger at the passage that had caught her eye. “Read that. It’s a prophecy supposedly made by the Ancient vampire Luk, Saloman’s cousin.”

Konrad groaned at the Latin. “Why couldn’t these guys write in Hungarian?”

“Read it,” Mihaela commanded, and with a sigh Konrad did.

“ ‘She who stirs the Ancient,’ ” he began haltingly, “ ‘will end his power and make way for the rebirth of the world, for the dawn of the new vampire age. She will smite his friends and . . . cleave? . . . to his enemies, who would end all undead existence. To see the new age, she must give up the world.’ ”

Konrad raised his head, frowning at Mihaela. “It’s contradicting itself. Someone will end an Ancient’s power, and yet will cause an era of vampire domination? Doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Prophecies rarely do,” Miklόs observed, peering over Mihaela’s shoulder. “What book is that?”

“Memoirs of Szilágyi Gabor, the sixteenth-century hunter. He had a few run-ins with both Saloman and Luk, and lived to tell the tale. Seems to have been during one such encounter that Luk suddenly sat down and made this pronouncement. Although Luk was apparently vulnerable during the time he was speaking, Szilágyi was too ‘awed’ to attack him.”

“Interesting,” Konrad allowed with a hint of impatience. “But what makes you think it’s important?”

“ ‘She who stirs the Ancient.’ ” Mihaela stabbed her finger at the gothic line of text as she spoke. “What if the Ancient is Saloman, and ‘stir’ means awaken?”

Konrad’s eyebrows lifted. “Elizabeth?” he hazarded, and Mihaela sat back watching him read it again. His breathing quickened, but his expression remained calm as he raised his gaze to Miklόs.

“Prophecies are bunkum, right?”

“Not necessarily.” Miklόs straightened and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “Their problem is in the interpretation, and it’s only too easy to make a later event fit some old and vague prophecy. The early texts are full of them, though, showing that both vampires and humans took them seriously at the time.”

He bent and carefully picked up the book, supporting its spine in both hands. “This one is intriguing. I’ve never seen it before. And I thought we’d checked through everything surrounding Awakeners last year. I think it’s never been filed correctly, but you could well be right, Mihaela, and it does refer to a future Awakener, possibly Elizabeth.”

“Then Elizabeth really could be destined to bring him down?” Mihaela heard the eagerness in her own voice, and yet behind that, fear for her friend rose up and drowned the excitement.

“Let’s hope not,” Miklόs said dryly, “since it seems she would be doomed to leave this world—to say nothing of the new vampire age she would apparently facilitate!”

“It doesn’t make much sense,” Mihaela agreed. “If she can defeat Saloman and smite his friends, you would expect that to curb vampire activity.”

As the library door opened and István slouched through, she turned her worried gaze on Konrad. “I don’t think we should tell her about this. It might make her take risks if she believes in some dubious destiny thing.”

“It might also,” Miklόs pointed out, “cause
you
to urge her toward a path she isn’t capable of taking. Prophecies are fickle and vague and should never be accepted at face value. They should certainly never form the foundation of hunter strategy.”

“Then we shouldn’t tell her,” Konrad said decisively, and stood up as István approached the table.

“Tell who what?” István asked.

Mihaela rose to her feet. “We’ll explain on the way. But if any of this stuff can be believed, Elizabeth might have been prophesied.”

“Cool,” said István.

Inevitably, despite the warning phone call for directions, Elizabeth was nowhere near ready when her doorbell rang on Saturday. Mostly because Joanne had come over and hung around the flat asking questions about her “date,” as she insisted on calling Josh. On the other hand, when Elizabeth had invited her to stay and meet him, Joanne had grabbed her coat and fled, intoning, “No, no, my dear. Far be it from me to stand in the way of love’s young dream. I’m off.” She turned and winked. “Just get his photograph for me. The more intimate the better.”