Once Burned

“Take Shrapnel and four others to the abbey,” Vlad stated. “Only one of you is to enter at a time to secure prisoners or collect our dead, and be conspicuous about who. You’re being watched, but Szilagyi won’t detonate the charges if he sees that I’m not there. He can only bring down the mountain once.”

Maximus bowed to Vlad, but he stared at me while he did it, and the emotion in his gaze was unsettling. Then he left, and when Vlad turned back to me, his expression was harshly amused.

“I never thought a woman would come between us, but you might. If Maximus wasn’t loyal to the last drop of blood in his body, I’d kill him for how he looks at you.”

His tone was casual, but once again, I didn’t know if he was using a figure of speech or being serious.

“He’s just grateful that you’re not going to die today.”

A brow rose. “You think this is the only time he’s stared at you that way?”

I hadn’t known that, but it didn’t change anything. “You can’t kill someone for how he looks at me. That’s crazy.”

I thought I heard, “I can if he keeps it up,” but I wasn’t sure, and his next words startled me into forgetting that.

“I’ll see you in a few hours. I don’t want to be far behind Maximus and the others.”

“You’re still going?” I blurted, astounded.

His smile was coldly anticipatory. “Not inside, but someone is watching that abbey in order to detonate those charges. With luck, it will be Szilagyi himself.”

I wouldn’t link to the puppet master to find out; if he was there, Szilagyi would sense that I was spying on him and leave. Instead, I grasped Vlad’s arm with my right hand. If I saw another image of his death, I wasn’t letting him leave this room no matter what he said.

Nothing. I let out a huge sigh of relief.

“Go ahead.”

He stroked my cheek, that deadly little smile never leaving his face.

“Don’t fear. Szilagyi needed to bring a mountain on me to kill me because I’m too powerful to fall in a normal ambush.”

Then he was gone, my hair rustling with the speed of his exit. Vlad had the devil’s own ego, but according to myth, pride was how Lucifer fell. His arrogance could turn out to be his Achilles’ heel if Szilagyi exploited it the right way.

My teeth ground together. That wouldn’t happen. Vlad would search for him in his way, and I’d do the same in mine. So far the memories locked inside those bones from the club hadn’t yielded more information, but I’d keep sifting through them. With luck, one of them would lead to Szilagyi’s location, or to whoever might be helping him. Vlad said he thought that some of his “allies” really wanted him dead. He’d been seeking out items for me to touch the night of the club fire, but since we’d discovered the identity of the puppet master, combing through people he knew to determine friend from foe had been back-burnered.

Still, someone had snatched Marty off the streets, and Szilagyi had been tucked in his concrete box at the time. It could’ve been the young-looking vampire with the prematurely silver hair, but as Vlad had said, Szilagyi had waited centuries to make his move because he needed enough people supporting him first. If Szilagyi was close to us as Vlad surmised, maybe his secret cadre of allies were, too . . .

As sudden as the bolt of electricity that had changed my life, I realized how we could find Szilagyi without spending weeks on painstaking searches of abandoned structures or poring through memories contained in his people’s bones. All we’d have to do was to give the puppet master what he wanted.

Me.

Chapter 35

I’d been waiting in the indoor garden, and I jumped up as soon as I heard the front door slam accompanied by the mutter of voices. But close as I was to the entrance, I still only caught a glimpse of a red-soaked Shrapnel and Maximus restraining an equally bloody stranger before they disappeared toward the entrance to the underground stone staircase. More vampires I didn’t recognize appeared and disappeared just as quickly, one of them cradling a body with achingly familiar curly brown hair.

Ben. Tears pricked my eyes that I fought back. I’d grieve for him properly later. Right now, I had to trap the vampire responsible for his death.

“I’ll be there shortly,” Vlad said in a tone I never wanted to hear directed at me. Then he strode toward me, smelling strongly of smoke and charred meat, but as usual, without a singe mark on him. The only things that marred his gunmetal-colored shirt and black pants were smears of red that required no explanation.

“Vlad—” I began.

“After your vision, I wanted you to see for yourself that I’m safe,” he cut me off in a much gentler tone, “but I must join Maximus and Shrapnel now. We only managed to take one of Szilagyi’s men alive and I intend to question him myself.”

He’d already turned away, moving with that inhuman speed toward the entrance of the staircase that led to the dungeon, when my voice chased after him.

“I doubt he knows where he is. Szilagyi considered anyone at that abbey expendable since he intended to flatten it with the mountain. Besides, I know how to find him tonight.”

That stopped him cold. He whirled to face me, green sparking in his coppery gaze.

“How?” A single word heavy with surprise and lethal intent.

“You’re not going to like it, but hear me out.”

His brow went up at that. Then he walked over in a leisurely way that somehow looked more dangerous than his supersonic bursts of speed.

“Continue.”

I glanced around. I didn’t see any of the dozen or so guards he had on this floor, but they were there. Maybe I should’ve waited until we had more privacy.

“I trust everyone in this house implicitly, so speak,” Vlad stated, overhearing that in my mind.

“Let me go into town by myself. I’ll pretend to run away, then link to Szilagyi and tell him I want to switch sides. He’ll snatch me up, take me to where he is, and then I’ll link to you and you can come and fry him.”

Vlad said nothing. Time stretched until the silence was painful. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking from his expression. It was so bland, he might have been daydreaming.

“Even if he didn’t have his men kill you on sight, Szilagyi won’t let you discover where he is,” he finally replied. “He’d make sure you were unconscious when you were transported to his location. Before you arrived, he’d have you stripped of any objects, clothes included, that you could link through in order to contact me. Then, because he wouldn’t trust you, he’d torture you until he was satisfied that every word you told him was the truth. In short, it’s a brave but stupid idea.”

I bristled. I might not be the world’s most famous vampire like some arrogant people I knew, but I was not stupid.

“How do you think I connected to you when I was trapped at the club?” I snapped. “I hadn’t seen you that day. Your essence wasn’t on a single piece of my clothing, yet I still managed to link to you. Szilagyi could have me stripped naked without a single clue as to where I was, and in ten minutes, I could still be transmitting my location to you.”

“I thought you’d brought something I touched with you,” he muttered, his gaze narrowing. “How did you do it?”

I walked the last few paces that separated us, taking his hand and not flinching at the stains that coated it.

“You’re in my skin,” I said. “The day before, you’d traced my mouth with your hand and almost kissed me, so I followed the essence you imprinted on my lips back to you.”

His eyes glowed, emerald against bronze, as he brought my hand up and kissed it. The gloves I’d put on meant I didn’t feel that silky brush of flesh, but I imagined that I could still feel his heat through the current- repelling material.