Blood Eternal (31 page)
Vampire fencing.
Elizabeth slid inside the room, closed the doors, and leaned against them, spellbound by the sight of Saloman and his two “sons” stripped to the waist, muscles rippling across backs and chests, shoulders and arms as they leapt around the huge room, their blurred swords thrusting and parrying faster than Elizabeth’s eyes could easily see.
There was blood. She could see drops of it on the floor and on Dmitriu’s light-colored trousers, but when you healed with vampire speed there was little point in practicing with blunted swords. In any case, they couldn’t kill one another this way; they needed wooden stakes for that. Unless the head was cut off and kept separated from the body. This was their idea of training, perhaps, or lighthearted swordplay. Fast, violent, graceful, and strangely alluring.
It wasn’t just the beauty of all three fit, seminaked male bodies whirling, spinning, stretching, almost flying through the air, that mesmerized her. Despite their exertions, not the faintest sheen of sweat clung to their pale skin. There was no panting, no yelling, no pauses to gather breath, which added to her sense of unreality, like a sanitized picture. Elizabeth couldn’t look away.
Maximilian halted in front of her, the muscles across his broad shoulders rippling as he moved from side to side to see which of his opponents would attack first. It was Dmitriu, lean as whipcord and just as fast. There was a brief, hectic duel, and then suddenly both hurtled across the room in different directions, and Saloman stood there, his sword raised in front of his face.
In spite of herself Elizabeth’s heart thundered. It didn’t seem to matter how often she saw him. The lust only increased. She defied anyone not to desire this magnificent, seminaked body, his thick, dark hair flowing over his powerful shoulders, half obscuring his handsome, predatory face.
“That,” Saloman said to the other two, “is how quick he will be. You can’t afford to waste time on duels. No showing off. If you can’t kill an opponent immediately, disengage. Always face Luk.”
“There isn’t always an option,” Dmitriu protested. “Disengage, face Luk, and some fledgling could stick a stake in my back.”
“A vampire of your caliber is more than capable of dealing with peripheral inconveniences. You bear my blood. Honor it and use it.”
Saloman turned, lowering his sword, and bestowed a smile of welcome on Elizabeth. Taking her hand, he kissed it in a courtly fashion that made her blush. “How are the hunters?”
“Pursuing leads. So far without success.” She lifted her eyes from his chest to his knowing dark eyes and wondered whether they could fit in a quick lovemaking before she changed.
As if he read her thought, Saloman’s eyes darkened, and he smiled. “There is a time for everything. Today is a time for survival. Learn from them and from me.”
“What?” she asked, confused. Her mind still lingered on the many delicious things she could do to his gorgeous body, and what he would do to hers in return. Dampness that was not due to the heat spread between her legs.
Saloman strode to the far wall and pulled down one of the last two swords that hung there. He threw it to her and she caught it by the hilt from pure instinct.
“Practice with us,” Saloman commanded. “You need it.”
Elizabeth couldn’t deny it. Since this had all begun a year ago, she had fenced regularly, kept up with judo, trained with the hunters when opportunity offered. But even with the hunters, lately, she hadn’t felt her abilities or potential had been stretched. No human, however strengthened by vampire kills, could move with the speed of an Ancient.
Slowly, Elizabeth stretched out the sword, flexed her arm, tried a few passes through the air.
“All right,” she said. “But remember I bleed. And I die.”
Under Saloman’s harsh gaze, the vampires were too careful with her at first. It wasn’t until she actually sliced into Dmitriu’s shoulder and Saloman laughed that they began to take her seriously.
“Come on,” Saloman mocked. “She doesn’t bleed that easily! She’s the Awakener, not the bimbette next door.”
Dmitriu regarded his wound with disfavor. “Consider it revenge,” Elizabeth said. “For the thorn.”
The thorn he’d planted in her palm a year ago, so that it would later bleed over Saloman and awaken him. Dmitriu grinned, unabashed, and bowed with a flourish. “En garde.”
After that, it was more fun. In fact, it grew increasingly exhilarating as they all took more chances. They adjusted quickly to her speed and skill and tested her accordingly. After a while, Saloman joined in too, and they fought in rotating teams. The best was when she finally came up against Saloman himself, one-on-one. In him she had implicit trust, and held nothing back as she tried her damnedest to get through his guard while maintaining her own. She could almost feel her movements grow faster and faster, her reflexes sharpen and hone. This was the joy of the fight without any of the bad stuff, and it felt marvelous.
She barely noticed the other two dueling close by. There was only Saloman’s sword and her own. Until without warning, a sharp pain sliced across her fingers, causing her to drop her weapon.
Abruptly, Saloman jerked up his sword. “What is it?” he demanded, seizing the hand she held dizzily under her face.
“Nothing. I thought . . .”
I thought you’d cut me.
She stared at her uninjured hand. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on it.
I thought you’d cut me.
She stared at her uninjured hand. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on it.
Saloman dropped her hand and looked across at Dmitriu and Maximilian, who’d stopped fighting to see what the problem was. Maximilian’s hand was bleeding sluggishly from a healing gash across his knuckles.
Elizabeth frowned, uncomprehending.
“Pain transfer,” Saloman said, as though pleased. “Your telepathy is growing very strong. Again,” he added, raising his sword.
Tired but willing, Elizabeth raised her own. As the duel resumed, she was vaguely aware of Dmitriu and Maximilian drifting away.
“You’re weary,” Saloman observed when he broke too easily through her guard.
“I can go on a little longer,” she argued, unwilling to give up.
Saloman locked their swords, drawing her inexorably toward him. “No. That’s enough for today. More tomorrow.”
His naked chest came to rest against her damp T-shirt. The hilt of one sword pressed into her chest. She smiled. “All right.”
Saloman, still holding both swords between them, bent around them and kissed her mouth. “You learn quickly.”
“I wasn’t always like that.”
“Then you had the wrong teachers. You should eat.”
“What did you have in mind?”
Amber flames leapt in his darkening eyes. “Lots of things. But first, food.”
Since her stomach rumbled at that moment, she gave in, and, after another hot, delicious kiss, she left him to change and went down to the kitchen to rummage for food. By the time Saloman joined her there some ten minutes later, she was dishing pasta and cheese onto a plate with some salad.
“This could be a good kitchen,” she observed with enthusiasm.
He shrugged, leaning his hip against the table as she sat down to eat. “Do what you like with it.”
She nodded her head in the vague direction of the room next door. “What do you use these front rooms for?” she asked curiously. One was decorated in a bland sort of way as a dining room, the other as a not very comfortable sitting room.
“Entertaining,” said Saloman grandly.
Elizabeth grinned around her pasta. “The neighbors?”
“On one occasion. Other people come to do inexplicable things, like reading meters and asking me to sign petitions or buy things I don’t want.” His eyes gleamed. “If I’m in the right mood, I invite them in for a drink.”
Elizabeth choked and reached for a glass of water, which Saloman obligingly put into her hand. “The really worrying thing about all this,” she said when she could speak, “is not that I believe you, but that I’m not even angry anymore. You’ve bitten your neighbors, salesmen, the man who reads the electricity meter . . . ?”
“And the postman.”
She regarded him with fascination. “Aren’t you at all worried that word will get around?”
“They don’t remember. I don’t hurt them, and they leave very happy. The woman two doors down even came back for more a week later.”
“I’m sure you obliged!”
“Why look a gift horse in the mouth?”
She frowned, uncertain and not quite comfortable, however blasé she’d grown about his feeding proclivities. “It doesn’t seem right not to ask,” she said at last.
“In theory you’re right, of course. And one day I hope there
will
be only willing providers. But the world has to be educated for that to happen.”
will
be only willing providers. But the world has to be educated for that to happen.”
“You really think that’s possible?”
“Don’t you?”
She smiled deprecatingly. “More than I once did. The hunters think I’m mesmerized, enslaved, blinded, brainwashed, whatever.”
“Not you,” he said with surprising warmth, and when she gazed up at him, he reached down and touched her cheek. “Come with me tonight. Meet my world, my people. Come to the Angel.”
Chapter Fifteen
T
he Angel was not the easiest place for Elizabeth to return to. The last time she’d been there, she’d set out as bait to trap Saloman by seduction and had ended up being kidnapped and seduced herself. Memories of her behavior and his still made her body flush from head to toe. On top of which, arriving with Saloman and an escort of two other powerful vampires, she had no hope of not being recognized as the Awakener. The vampire world must already know of Saloman’s bizarre choice of companion.
he Angel was not the easiest place for Elizabeth to return to. The last time she’d been there, she’d set out as bait to trap Saloman by seduction and had ended up being kidnapped and seduced herself. Memories of her behavior and his still made her body flush from head to toe. On top of which, arriving with Saloman and an escort of two other powerful vampires, she had no hope of not being recognized as the Awakener. The vampire world must already know of Saloman’s bizarre choice of companion.
And so she paused at the door to gather her strength, gazing up at the blurred, undefined carved angel until it became the work of beauty it was in reality.
“That’s what I like about you, Max,” Saloman murmured. “You just throw these things out and then disguise them so that hardly anyone appreciates their true beauty.”
Maximilian, some distance behind them, didn’t say anything.
Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at him. “
You
enchanted the angel?”
You
enchanted the angel?”
“I showed Angyalka how,” Maximilian said briefly.
“He is also the sculptor,” Saloman said dryly. “If he had chosen to, he could have been more famous than Donatello and Michelangelo.”
Elizabeth blinked at this revelation. She wondered if anything would truly surprise her now, but at least it gave her something to think about while she followed Saloman up the bleak, dingy stairs to the club. The vampire bouncers on the landing welcomed Saloman with familiar deference, and herself with a curious but unthreatening stare. The glare they accorded Maximilian looked rather more aggressive, but if he noticed, he ignored it. By that time, the door had been opened for them and the wall of noise blasted out to meet them.
Maximilian swore under his breath. Over her shoulder Elizabeth saw Dmitriu laugh and push him inside when he hung back. Straightening, Elizabeth held her head high, as she’d done on her previous visit, and, side by side with Saloman, prepared to meet whatever hit her.
It was very nearly Angyalka herself. The club’s owner, a beautiful, dark-haired, elfin vampiress in a sexy black dress and boots, glanced up from the bar, and on encountering Saloman, her eyes lit up. A smile, half-mocking, half-seductive, curved her lips, and jealousy curled in Elizabeth’s stomach like a claw. Here was one of Saloman’s lovers—past or present? Elizabeth didn’t know even that much.
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?”
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