Blood Guilt (6 page)

“Is it guilt?” she pursued. “Is that why you were so drunk?”

“Yes,” Maximilian said unexpectedly. “That’s why I was so drunk.” He stood up. “You will protect the child.”

“Oh yes,” she said, baffled. “I’ll do that. Where are you going?”

“To Edinburgh. To kill the vampires.”

“No,” she protested, jumping up in agitation. And now it was she who’d given too much away, and he whose eyes glinted with mockery.

“No? You consider that form of murder to be your own prerogative? Or would you like to call the British hunters for permission first?”

She curled her lip at him. It was the best she could do.

He said, “Or should I just leave Gavril alive for you?”

She dropped her gaze, tried to brush past him with annoyance while racking her brains for some way of going to Edinburgh tonight while still keeping Robbie safe. Maximilian didn’t budge from her path. Instead, his hand snaked out; his fingers gripped her chin and forced her to stop and look up at him.

Tension crackled. He’d almost kissed her mouth last night, after drinking her blood. As if he’d liked her. As if he wanted her. The memory surged, heating her body from the inside out.

He said, “What is Gavril to you, little hunter?”

She clenched her fists, glaring at him, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her struggling against a force she already knew to be superior. The strength in his fingers was terrifying, implacable, and he wasn’t even exerting himself. What had she been thinking of to give him her blood? To let him affect her like
that
? And God help her, it was happening again.

She said stonily, “He killed my parents and my sister, and would have killed me too if hunters hadn’t rescued me in time.” She gave a short, bitter laugh that only just avoided being a sob. “At least I think he did. I have to see his ear to be sure.”

Maximilian’s lip twitched. “
You
damaged his ear? What did you do? Bite it off? How old were you?”

“Seven. I was seven years old.”

“I’m five,” Robbie offered, his voice muffled, as if full of food. It was.

Maximilian released her, and she all but fell back down on the sofa. She rubbed her forehead with one shaking hand. Why was it so damned hard to think around him?

“Is he safe from the vampires here?” she asked abruptly. “Can they sense him? Or you?”

“I’ve masked us both.”

“How will I know when the threat is over?” she asked, jerking her head toward Robbie.

“I’ll come back for him. And you.”

She felt her eyes widen. “Let’s be clear, Maximilian. Neither of us is going anywhere with you. I will not smuggle this child out of his own country or let you take him. And do you really imagine you can deal with all those vampires on your own?”

Unfazed by her change of subject, he gave only a faint curl of his lips in response, lifted one hand to Robbie, who grinned at him, and walked out of the room. Mihaela hurried after him, determined to quarrel some more, but the front door was already closing behind him. By the time she got back to the living room window, he was little more than a shadow vanishing around the corner of the street.

****

Maximilian found he was enjoying the experience of driving, now he was more used to the way the car worked. He’d stolen it from the hotel car park at dusk, and the journey up to St. Andrews had been more of an experiment than anything else, achieved by means of little more than his own fast reflexes and a one-hour observation of Saloman’s driving during his stay in Budapest. Now he rather liked pushing the car to its limit and speeding down roads, overtaking with, to mere human perception, too little space, time, or vision of the road ahead. For this reason, he traveled to the accompanying blare of other cars’ horns, which struck him as amusing.

He didn’t remember very much else amusing him in the last couple of hundred years.

It felt good to be entertained again. It felt good to be thinking and planning again—especially when he sensed Gavril and the other vampires traveling as they were meant to, straight to St. Andrews.

Chapter Five

Since there were no children’s toys or games in Elizabeth’s flat, Mihaela made do with a pack of cards and played snap with her young visitor. And while she did, she dredged her mind for a solution. Robbie could not stay with her indefinitely. In fact, he shouldn’t be with her at all. Yet to call social services and have him returned to Edinburgh would surely put him back in danger, at least until Maximilian had dealt with the vampires who were pursuing the boy.

Which was another thing. It made her feel physically unwell to be leaving this to a vampire. To be giving anyone else the chance of killing her family’s murderer. But she couldn’t just park Robbie with a neighbor. Leaving aside the vampire danger, and Robbie’s propensity to run away whenever he sniffed an interesting presence, he’d surely been pushed from enough pillars to posts in his young life.

Besides, rather to her surprise, she was enjoying his company. There was a rare bitter sweetness in having a child around the place. And although he provided an all too lively reminder of her secret, impossible yearnings for a normal family life, the truth was, she found she just liked Robbie himself.

Watching his happy concentration on their game, Mihaela wondered what was really going on in his unique little head. Did he just make the most of every situation? Did he accept abuse as part of care, or believe it simply to be better than being alone? Or maybe the seeking out of telepathic beings was an excuse to be away from his carers rather than a quest for like minds.

“You won’t run away from
me
, Robbie, will you?” she asked.

Robbie shook his head, grinning shyly, and she knew with a sinking heart that if the notion came to him, then of course he would.

“Nah,” he said. “I promised
him
I wouldn’t.”

“Promised who?” she asked quickly.

“Him. The vampire. Max.”

Mihaela’s mouth fell open. She caught her jaw before it bounced off the floor. “You know what he is? The man who brought you here?”

“He told me. He said the other men are the same.”

“They are,” Mihaela said firmly.

“But you’re not. You can’t talk without speaking, and you don’t drink people’s blood.”

“That’s true,” she said faintly, then added more firmly, “But Robbie…you do know it isn’t right to drink people’s blood?”

He glanced at her, head leaning to one side. “Is that why you don’t want to like him?”

“Yes,” she said, dropping her eyes back to her cards. It was as good a reason as any other.

“He likes you,” Robbie volunteered. “He drew a picture of you. So did I.”

Startled, she played her card without looking at it, and Robbie gleefully took the snap.

A vampire who drew pictures?

Why was she surprised? In life, he’d been an artist, a sculptor. Even undead, he’d carved the exquisite angel over the vampires’ club in Budapest.

“May I see your picture?” she asked Robbie, and the boy went and dug a crumpled piece of paper out of his anorak pocket. Smoothing it out, Mihaela discovered a little more than the expected child’s drawing of a head with arms and legs. Robbie had only drawn the head, as if that was all he saw. And despite its stark, childish nature, something about the eyes and lips really did look like her. She smiled. “You’re going to be an artist when you grow up.”

He seemed pleased by that, so as he sat down again, Mihaela risked the questions she needed to ask. “When you were talking to these vampires, did any of them…hurt you? Drink your blood?”

Robbie shook his head. His attention was back on the cards as if he sensed victory. “Nah.
He
asked me the same thing.”

According to Elizabeth, it was one of Saloman’s rules that children never be bitten. It was an Ancient law ignored or forgotten by most modern hybrid vampires until Saloman enforced it. But Maximilian was Saloman’s “creation,” his “child.” Did he follow his upbringing or rebel?

Even fellow vampires found it difficult to trust Maximilian, who’d betrayed his creator for power, which he’d subsequently lost; who’d emerged on Saloman’s side—the winning side—a couple of times since the Ancient’s awakening. And yet no one had been sure which side he was truly on in the battle for the hunters’ library. Both Luk and Saloman believed he was theirs, until he’d made his position plain by killing Luk’s followers.

He saved my life that night. He
was
on our side.

But whose side was he on now? Why had it taken him so long to get home from Budapest? If he meant to eschew the world again, why was he hanging around Edinburgh instead of skulking on his hidden island? There had to be some connection between him and the congregation of young, inexplicably strong vampires gathered in the same place. Whatever, it was, she didn’t trust him, and she didn’t trust whatever instinct had led her to save him with her own blood.

Lust and curiosity, she slammed herself. Women’s besetting sins since Eve first walked the earth. At least according to men.

Robbie gave a little crow of laughter and scooped up the last of her cards. “Want a dog’s chance?” he asked her. “I’ll deal my cards, and if you get the snap first, you get back in the game.”

Mihaela smiled. “Dog’s chance it is, then. Give me a second, though.”

She stood up from her lounging position on the floor and went through to the bedroom. She dragged her almost empty suitcase from under the bed and opened it. Inside one pocket were the two vampire detectors she’d brought with her and ignored until now. It struck her that it would be useful to know if Maximilian still lurked close by or if he really had gone back to Edinburgh. If he wasn’t close by, the detector couldn’t locate him, of course. But at least she’d know he wasn’t here.

Extracting both detectors, she closed the case, shoved it back under the bed and stood up. She dropped the Ancient detector into the pocket of her long cardigan, since Saloman was the only vampire it was any use for, and switched the other one on as she wandered back to the living room.

Robbie sat poised with his first card dealt and his hand hovering over the second. Laughing, Mihaela hurried over, put the active detector in her other pocket, and dropped down opposite Robbie.

“Go!” she commanded, and Robbie began to deal. Mihaela did him the courtesy of concentrating this time and duly won back a handful of cards. “Always liked dogs,” she said, and Robbie laughed.

She laid down her next card, just as the detector in her pocket vibrated.

Jolted, she delved for it.
The bastard hasn’t gone after all. What the hell is he up to? Why bring Robbie to me and then hang around?

“That’s a funny phone,” Robbie commented as she stared at the LED. Yards away, probably in the street, and closing.

Leaping to her feet, she ran to the front door, locking it and fixing the chain she knew Elizabeth never bothered with. Then she grabbed both stakes from her coat pocket and put them in her cardigan pockets instead.

The directional needle was going haywire, and every time it moved, the distance indicator changed too. More than one vampire.

Mihaela spun around and found Robbie staring at her from the living room doorway. “Can you feel them too?” he asked.

“My funny phone can,” she admitted and took his hand to lead him back to the living room. “Is it Maximilian? Is he calling you?”

“Not him. The others.”

Maximilian had said the others couldn’t find him, that he’d masked Robbie from them. The lie shouldn’t have felt like a knife twisting in her gut. It was what she expected of vampires.

“You mustn’t go to them, Robbie,” she warned, edging along the wall to the window, still holding his hand.

“I don’t want to. I’ll stay here with you. But they’re not calling me.”

Mihaela spared him a frowning glance. “They’re not?”

“Nah. I just
feel
them, ken?”

Mihaela peered outside, trying to avoid being seen by watching eyes. She couldn’t see anyone in the street below. But the distance indicator, when it stayed still for long enough to read, was displaying smaller and smaller numbers.

“Do you know how many?” she asked calmly.

Robbie counted on his fingers. “Four,” he said, with a grin, though whether his pleasure was with the vampire presence or his powers of calculation wasn’t clear.

“I don’t suppose you know where?” she asked, turning to face the living room door, from where she could see the front door of the flat.

Robbie shook his head.

Four. She’d need a hell of a lot of luck to deal with four vampires on her own, especially when she needed to protect Robbie at the same time.

She said, “I think there might be another fight.” Reaching over to the table, she grabbed her phone to do what she should have done at the beginning: call the British hunters. Rules were there for a reason. She could almost hear Miklόs and Konrad saying it. It was almost the only thing they agreed on. Her overdeveloped sense of this one vengeance had put Robbie in danger. There was no one to protect him if she died.

But as she scrolled down, a thud from across the hall distracted her.

Shit!
“They’re coming through the kitchen window,” she said calmly. “You have to stay behind me, keep as far away from the fight as you can get.” She crammed the phone into his hand. “If anything happens to me, you call this number. You can trust the voice that answers.”

There was no time for more. She grabbed the arm of the sofa, pushing it around a hundred and eighty degrees so that its seat faced her and it stood between her and whoever entered the room—a poor defense but all she had. The vampire Gavril strolled in.

“
Bunã seara
,” he said, and held out one inviting hand. It might have been for herself or Robbie, but since another vampire pushed past him, and a crash against the front door told her a third was breaking in from that direction, she didn’t pause to find out.

As the second vampire ran at her, she leapt at the back of the couch, forcing it over to crash down on the vampire’s knees. An older vampire would have moved fast enough to avoid it. This one was knocked over, and Mihaela jumped hard over his knees to break them. At the same time, since luck favored her by not hiding the vampire’s chest under the fallen furniture, she staked him through the heart.

It was her last luck of the evening, she suspected, for a third vampire, one she hadn’t even seen enter the room, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back against him. Both stake arms were pinned uselessly to her side. Back-heeling his shins and knees in quick succession drew growls of rage and pain but didn’t loosen his grip. While she struggled, Gavril moved at last, strolling from the door toward Robbie, who, good boy, backed away from him.

“Robbie!” she yelled uselessly.

“It’s okay!” he called back in his high, childish voice, cutting straight to her heart. That the child had to comfort
her
for making so many unforgivable mistakes. With a mighty twist, she managed to reposition her left-hand stake and stab her captor in the thigh.

He screamed, and she pulled free from his loosened arms just as a fourth vampire grabbed her by the throat. She kicked out at the one she’d just stabbed, to delay further attack from that quarter, and jabbed the new attacker in his throat.

Whether it was her blow which distracted him or the sudden crash of breaking glass as a fifth vampire cascaded into the room, she found she could wrench his arm down and twist it behind his back, giving her the instant she needed to stake him through the heart.

Somewhat to her surprise, while she did so, the strong vampire she’d stabbed in the leg leapt over the couch, throwing himself on top of the newcomer. There was a brief, snarling struggle for position before the newcomer sank his fangs into the other’s throat and snapped his neck. Through the puff of dust, Mihaela’s stunned gaze met Maximilian’s.

Robbie laughed with glee. What the hell was going on? There was no time to ask, for Gavril, who’d grasped Robbie’s arm, dropped it again and turned to face Maximilian.

There was only Gavril left, but from where she stood, the Romanian vampire looked murderous enough to manage the job of the three already turned to dust. As he and Maximilian closed, Mihaela ran forward and leapt onto Gavril’s shoulder. If Maximilian turned him to dust before she could see his ear, she’d never know…

Gavril fended his enemy off with a slashing stake, but he spared her a snarl over his shoulder, and with that she knew. Dizziness threatened. She clung to his shoulder for support now rather than attack, for just so had he glared at her when she’d spat bits of his own ear into his face and vomited the rest on his shoes.

She snatched up his hair, shoving it up to reveal a torn, jagged earlobe, perfectly healed but with a lump out of it the size of a child’s mouth.

But she had no time to celebrate the culmination of her lifetime quest. Even as fury and sickness surged inside her with equal strength, his blow sent her flying across the room, clutching her face. She couldn’t see for the pain in her nose and the water streaming from her eyes.

She managed to roll to a more defensive position, but neither of the vampires was paying her any attention. They struggled on the floor. She heard a clatter as Gavril’s stake hit the wall. She didn’t know which threw it, but, wiping her eyes, she guessed it was Maximilian, for he lay over Gavril, pinning the Romanian vampire down.

They glared into each other’s faces in perfect silence. And yet Mihaela was sure they were communicating. Gavril’s expression changed constantly, as if he was hurling words at the vampire who’d defeated him. Maximilian frowned but otherwise looked much as he always did, giving away neither words nor emotion. Until he shrugged.

“Your choice,” he said aloud and bit into Gavril’s throat.

Inside Mihaela, something snapped.

“No!” Sheer instinct propelled her into Maximilian. Instinct and rage. Finally, after more than twenty years, luck had smiled upon her, brought her face-to-face with the vampire she’d sought through the mountains, villages, and city streets of several countries. She’d sacrificed everything—family, friends, every hope of normality or happiness—for this one moment she’d given up believing would ever come. And now that it had, Maximilian was taking it from her.