With the morning came the usual London hustle and bustle - cars, buses, and people all hurried up and down the streets, everyone moving with purpose and a sense of belonging. The scent of diesel mingled with more enticing odors drifting from a nearby bakery. My stomach rumbled as I clutched tighter the paper bag of food Belinda had pressed on me. There would be time to eat it once I found a safe place to hole up in. I wandered around to the back of the block-long building in which the pub was located just in case Adrian had hung around waiting for me, but he wasn't there.
"Whoa!" I jumped back in surprise as Christian landed suddenly on the ground in front of me, having leaped, I assumed, from the second-story balcony outside Belinda's apartment.
He jerked his coat up around his neck, pulling low over his head an Indiana Jones-ish hat as he glanced upward. "You stay here, Allegra. I will follow the trail of the Betrayer."
I looked up as well. Allie leaned over the balcony and yelled down, "He's not worth it, Christian! I know your tolerance of the sunlight is growing, but it's not strong enough for you to go haring around London!"
"Perhaps I won't need to chase him. Perhaps this one will tell me where he is hiding." His head turned to look at me. Before I could do so much as blink, he had my neck in a painful grip, his face near mine, his black eyes narrowed. Suddenly he stopped, sniffing the air a couple of times.
"You have Joined with the Betrayer?" he asked, releasing my neck.
I stepped back, rubbing my bruised skin. "Not that it's any of your business, but, yes, I have. And I'd appreciate it if you'd stop trying to kill him. He's mine, and I don't intend to let you or Sebastian or anyone else who thinks he has a grudge do anything to him. So why don't you and Ward Girl there leave us alone!"
"I'm a Summoner, not a Ward Girl," Allie corrected me. "Christian, come out of the sun. Your chin is turning pink."
Christian's eyes narrowed on me as if he were seeking proof I was lying. A strange pressure invaded my head, a touch that wasn't Adrian's.
"Stop that!" I yelled at Christian, backing up. "No one is allowed in my head but Adrian!"
"What do you hide?" he asked, stalking forward.
I stopped retreating and raised a hand. "I know a curse that will strip you stark naked where you stand. If you don't stop trying to get into my brain, you'll be barbecue."
That stopped him.
"Oh!" Allie cried, firing a glare at me that all but spat fury. "You wouldn't dare! Don't you move, either of you! I'm coming right down!"
Christian gave me a considering look from under the shadow of his hat brim.
I raised my eyebrows. "Don't think I won't do it! I'm leaving now. I don't know how you found us here, but it won't do you any good to follow me, because I'm not going to where Adrian is. As a matter of fact, I don't even know where he is. So good-bye, so long, hasta la vista."
My hands fisted as I walked past him, half expecting him to grab me, but he didn't reach for me. Instead he waited until I was halfway down the alley before calling after me, "We didn't follow you here. We were seeking Saer. What confuses me is why the Betrayer would seek him as well."
"Maybe if you asked yourself who is the real villain of this piece, it might make more sense," I said over my shoulder. "You'll have to do it on your own, because I don't have time to straighten you out. Thanks to you, I don't get to spend the day with Adrian on a nice comfy cot."
When I glanced back as I turned the corner at the end of the alley, Christian was being tugged into a yawning black doorway by Allie. I gave a mental shrug, figuring that I might have given Christian enough to chew on so he'd leave us alone.
There was always the possibility that he didn't believe me, though. And it was for that reason that I made my way to the nearest tube station, and dug through the coins I had filched from Adrian earlier in search of something I could use in a phone. I managed to round up enough for a three-minute overseas call to my friend and next-door neighbor Sabrina.
"Hulluh?"
I peered through the morning throng to a distant clock and did some quick mental arithmetic. "Ooops, sorry, Sabrina. I didn't realize it was one a.m. there."
"Nell?" Her voice was thick and fuzzy with sleep.
"Yeah, it's me, and don't ask questions. I only have two and a half minutes left. I need you to call a hotel in London... uh... sec..." I flipped open the phone book and turned to the hotel pages, picking out the first name I saw. "I want you to call the Dorchester Hotel."
"Hotel? Nell? London?"
"Yes, it's me, and I'm in London. I want you to book me a room in the Dorchester Hotel for a couple of days. Use your credit card to pay for the room. I'll pay you back later, OK?"
"London? I thought you were in Prague?"
"I was, but now I'm in London. Here's the number. Make the reservation under the name Diane Hall." I read the number off to Sabrina, repeating it a couple of times until she seemed to have it.
"Who is Diane Hall?"
I signed, watching the seconds count down on the phone screen. "Me. It's way too long a story to tell now. I'll fill you in when I get home. Just call the hotel now and pretend you're my secretary or something, and pay for a room for a couple of days."
She yawned. "You're going to owe me more than just money for this, Nelly."
"Bottle of wine and a box of Godivas, I promise. Gotta go, time's gone. Thanks a million!"
The phone clicked off in the middle of her response. I hung up the receiver, consulted with the big station clock, and went to find out just how long a walk I had to the Dorchester Hotel.
I'd like to think that being bound spiritually to a vampire meant I had all sorts of superpowers, but I didn't seem any different than before when I flopped down on the hotel bed. My body was sore and tired from the long hike, my mind was exhausted, and the toe blister born on the walk from Christian's castle had blossomed into adulthood.
"The least Adrian could have done was give me some sort of extra resilience or wonderful pain-blocking techniques," I grumbled as I hauled myself into the bathroom, dredging up enough strength to run a bath. "There's not a lot I'm getting out of this deal. Eternity with a weak left side, crooked smile, and blisters. Oy."
I fell asleep in the tub, but managed not to drown myself. By the time I dried myself off, crawled into bed, ate one of the two sandwiches and an orange Belinda packed for me, I was at the end of my strength. I roused myself enough to make sure that no dark-eyed vamps were lurking at the end of the hotel hallway, staggering back to bed to collapse into the soft pillows. Worry about Adrian was uppermost in my mind, worry that made me feel ill and restless despite the exhaustion, but I comforted myself that he had taken care of himself for several centuries - surely he would be all right on his own for a few hours.
I missed him. I missed the touch of his mind on mine, the warm security of his body. I missed the way his eyebrows arched when I said something outrageous. I missed the way his eyes darkened when he was aroused, the heat he fired within me with just a flick of his eyelashes, the joy we shared when we merged bodies and minds. But most of all I missed the piece of me that he had taken with him.
It's hard to sleep when your heart is off somewhere else.
Six hours later I limped (the blister still hurt, despite the three band-aids I had begged from hotel housekeeping), up the front steps to the British Museum. The sun hadn't set yet, but I had gotten little sleep despite my body's fatigue. I figured I might as well start looking around the British Museum. It certainly couldn't hurt to scope out the area, just in case Christian or Sebastian were out looking for us.
I stopped in the Great Court at one of the information desks and inquired about the location of an ivory griffin-headed figure. "It's from Toprakkale," I added as the information woman entered keywords to search the BM's collection.
She looked up. "How do you spell that?"
I told her.
"I'm afraid that item is being held in a conservational storeroom in the basement. It is not open to the public."
I heaved an inner sigh of relief. My memories of the cursed cloth that had resulted in Beth's death were enough to convince me that any article that had come in contact with a demon lord posed a hazard to unwary observers. "That's all right, I don't mind going off the beaten path, so to speak. If you'll just tell me where it is - "
"I'm sorry, but it is museum policy to limit access to such items to approved students and visiting scholars."
"Perfect! I'm an assistant professor at the University of Washington. That makes me a visiting scholar."
"Oh," she said, brightening. "Do you have your credentials?"
My hopeful look dimmed. "Um. As a matter of fact, no. I... er... left them behind. In my hotel. And I don't have much time, so I'd really like to see the figure this afternoon."
"We must see credentials," the woman said firmly. "Do you have anything with your university affiliation on it?"
"No," I said, biting my lip. I was familiar enough with museum security to know it would be no easy task to break my way into a storeroom. I much preferred just walking in. "Oh! I know. The UW website. My page has my picture on it. Would that suffice?"
"Well - "
"You can look it up. Start at the UW main page and work your way back to the antiquities. You'll find me in Medieval History."
"I'm not sure - "
I smiled my most winsome smile, trying to remember exactly what Adrian had done when he used my power to give a customs official on the train from the Czech Republic to Germany a brain push.
"I would really appreciate it," I said, sending the feelings of trust and agreement to the woman. "It would mean a great deal to my research if I could view the figure."
"Very well," she agreed, blinking a couple of times before she started zipping through websites to find the appropriate faculty page. I thanked my stars that the university had seen fit to put our pictures on the page, and after agreeing with the woman that identity photos were never flattering, I toddled off clutching a temporary ID badge marking me as a visiting scholar - a passport to most of the restricted areas in the museum.
A map of the museum in hand, I wandered through the Great Court to the north stairs, pausing now and then to hold up the map and scan the room, as if trying to find my bearings. No one appeared to be interested in me, nor did I spy either Christian or Sebastian, although if what Allie had said - which meshed with Adrian's announcement that he could tolerate weak sunlight now that we were Joined - I didn't expect Sebastian would be up and about yet.
Once downstairs I showed my badge at three different security points before being allowed into the part of the museum which had been recently remodeled into storerooms. I passed a conservation workshop, a room devoted to the storage of Japanese ceramics, and several rooms filled with armor that I positively salivated to examine, but the thought of Adrian kept my feet on course for the farthest room, where the information woman had said Asmodeus's figure was kept.
As I passed a steel door to a stairwell, an arm snaked out and clapped a hand over my mouth, tugging me backward into the dim stairs. My shriek of surprise was muffled by the hand, but just as I was baring my lips to bite the fingers covering my mouth, a soft chuckle filled my mind.
I do not object to you biting me, Hasi, but I can think of many other places I'd prefer it than my hand.
"Adrian!" I squealed beneath his hand and spun around, throwing myself on the shadowed figure. He grunted as the force of my body slammed him back against a wall, but he didn't complain before claiming my mouth. The taste of him was hot and wonderful and so Adrian, I smiled into his kiss.
His tongue swirled around mine, dominating my mouth in a way that never failed to make my knees go weak. I pressed myself tighter against him, wanting nothing more than to merge body and soul into him. His arms were hard around me, and even through the thick wool of his coat and the clothes he wore beneath, I could feel his heat. Passion rippled around us in waves, licking against me until all I could think of was my physical need for him.
"You're hungry," I said when I managed to pull my lips from his. "I can feel it gnawing at you. I'm hungry too..."
I let him see in my eyes the form my hunger took. His turned indigo in response. "Hasi, nothing would delight me more than to take you right here, against this wall, but we must restrain ourselves. Our encounter this morning with Dante means he is working with Saer. No doubt both will arrive with reinforcements. I have located the room in which Damian is being kept. It would be best to free him and escape before the sun fully sets."
"All right, I won't rip your clothes off and have my wicked way with you right here on the stairs, but you can at least feed. That won't take but a minute or two, and I have a feeling I'm going to need you running on all four thrusters when I go to use Asmodeus's ring."
His gaze caressed me as I tilted my head back, baring my throat, his lips soft on my flesh as he murmured German endearments against me. I held myself still, my hands limp at my sides, my back pressed against the cold brick wall. Every last ounce of my being clenched in anticipation for that exquisite moment of pain when his teeth would sink deep. His tongue swirled fire over my skin; then the sharp, hot sting of pain melted into a euphoric sensation so unlike anything I'd experienced before Adrian, I didn't think there were words to describe it.
As he sated one form of hunger, another rose within him, matching mine, the two twining together into something that outstripped simple need and formed an elemental drive that almost overwhelmed me. Adrian stood close to me, his body shielding me, almost touching, but not. His hands were fisted against the wall on either side of my head, his mouth providing the only bridge between us. The sensation of his lips on my throat joined with the bone-deep satisfaction he felt in possessing me, changing into something so erotic that just the brush of his hair against my face, his indefineable scent, and the feel of his mouth on my neck pushed me to the point where I thought I would burst into an orgasm.
I was seriously contemplating just how long it would take for me to tear off all his clothing and make love to him when his mouth caressed me one last time, reluctantly parting from me.
"You are my life, Hasi," he said simply as he brushed his thumb over the still-sensitive pinpricks on my neck, but I felt the profound sense of gratitude in him.
"Just see that you remember that when you're talking about giving in to Saer," I answered, my voice almost as shaky as my legs. The act of his feeding had left me trembling on the verge of a climax, unfulfilled and unsatisfied, my body tight as a bowstring as it screamed for a finish to the torment.
Adrian's brows pulled together as his thumb feathered over the pulse point he had fed from. Even without the ability to merge himself into me, I knew he could feel my heart racing. "Nell - "
"No," I said, pushing myself away from him, struggling to regain control of both my mind and body. "You're right, now is not the time. But, oh, baby, am I going to make your fangs rattle when I get you alone!"
His boyish grin flashed at me as he swept a hand toward the stairs that led downward. "I will hold you to that promise, Hasi. Damian is in a sub-basement."
"How did you get in?" I asked, hurrying down the stark metal stairs. "I don't see a visitor's badge on you. Did you turn invisible, or sneak in without anyone seeing you?"
I could feel his mock regret even without seeing him shake his head. "How you come up with these ridiculous ideas about Dark Ones is beyond me. I cannot turn myself invisible, Hasi. I merely borrowed an employee's badge."
"Oh. That's so anticlimactic. I liked the thought of you going invisible. How about bun hair? Can you turn yourself into an old man with a big white bun hairdo like the guy in the Dracula movie?"
He reached around me to open a heavy steel door marked Arts and Antiquities: Storerooms, his lips twitching despite his attempts to not respond to my teasing. "I will be glad to discuss my bun ability with you at a later date, Hasi. But for now, we must focus on Damian and the task that is to be done."
"You know," I mused as I trotted after him down a brightly lit hallway. One or two people gave us curious glances as we passed, but I adopted the same businesslike expression that graced Adrian's face, making sure to keep my badge clearly visible. "There are some phrases that are just wrong for a vampire to say. Bun ability is one of them. It's way too surfer boy."
Adrian stopped in front of a door, glancing quickly around before opening it and waving me in. I hesitated for a couple of seconds, trying to steel myself to what I'd see inside. Despite the passing of time, the memory of the tragedy so many years ago was still fresh in my mind. I really didn't want to face anything like that again.
"Hasi," Adrian said softly, his fingers stroking the back of my neck. Regret was strong in him, but hope was stronger.
I nodded. "OK, let's do this."
The room was dark, but Adrian flicked on the lights before I was a step or two into the room. I looked around as he dragged a wooden crate to the door.
"Can't you lock the door?" I asked, rubbing my arms through my coat. The room was chilly, the air having a slight refrigerated feel. I don't know quite what I was expecting, but the room was exactly what the sign said - a storeroom. The walls were lined with big open metal shelves containing boxes and wooden crates, all marked with identifications of the contents, dates, and acquisition numbers. In the far corner, a long wooden crate leaned drunkenly against a wall, three smaller square crates stacked beneath the angle it made. Nowhere was there a small boy.
"I had to break the lock to get in. Can you ward the door?"
I continued to rub my arms, glancing back at the long crate. I took a couple of steps toward it, then stopped. The cold seemed to be emanating from it. There was also something else it emanated - a familiar sense of dread and horror.
"I don't think so," I said, wanting to back away from the crate, wanting to grab Adrian and leave the whole damned museum. "Damian's in there, isn't he?"
"Yes." Adrian's voice was so devoid of emotion, I dragged my eyes off the crate and turned to look at him.
His eyes were as pale as the new moon.
"Is he dead?"
"No. He is in what you might call suspended animation. He does not live, but he is not dead."
I shivered as I faced the crate. "Is that something vamps can do, or is it something Asmodeus did?"
"Both. You must help him, Hasi. You are his only hope."
"I know," I said, starting to sweat despite the cold. "And I'm going to, Adrian. I'm going to do everything I can to help your nephew. But it's difficult." He started to say something, but I interrupted, needing him to understand that I wasn't wimping out. Not completely. "The room reeks of Asmodeus. It makes me sick. It's just like that night when I tried to charm the cursed altar cloth and Asmodeus rose and took Beth. I'm afraid I'm going to screw this up, too. I don't want Damian to die. And... I don't want to kill myself either, or turn into a vegetable."
"Damian will not die, because you will not fail." Adrian's arms slid around me, his body warm and solid behind me, his mind open to me so I could feel the confidence he had in me. He poured strength of purpose into me, bolstering my flagging nerve. "I would not allow you to harm yourself. The ring will protect you. It has many powers, and it will keep you from harming yourself or others while you charm the curse. You can do this, Hasi. It is what you were meant to do."
I leaned back against him for a moment, soaking up his heat and determination and strength, warming myself in his confidence. Then I nodded and stepped out of his embrace, pulling up the ring from where it hung under my sweater.
It was warm again, far warmer than it should have been from just my body heat. I slipped the ring over my thumb and faced the crate. Adrian moved around to stand next to it. I nodded. He jerked the lid off, revealing the body of a small boy packed in straw. The boy's eyes were closed, his skin waxy. If Adrian hadn't said he was alive, I would have sworn he was dead. My feet wanted to turn and run from the room. I forced them to step forward until I stood next to the crate, my body wracked with nonstop tremors as the cold wrapped itself around me, sinking into my bones, slowing my blood, slowing my heart...
"Hasi!"
I roused myself at Adrian's sharp bark, realizing that what I was feeling were tendrils of the suspended animation snaking out to me. It was so cold it hurt, making my joints grind as I moved, little spikes of pain shooting through my body. I ignored the pain and leaned closer, examining the red pattern of the curse that had been bound over the boy.
"Book." Without looking at Adrian, I held out my hand for the charm book he had stashed in his satchel. The cool leather-bound book was placed in my hand. I turned to the page I had noted earlier, one concerning the confinement curse of a demon lord. The ring grew tight on my thumb as I spoke the words of the charm, sketching the symbols of purification over the curse. "Blessed be thou who lie bound. By my art, thou will be changed. By my blood, thou will be freed. By my soul, thou will rise. I wrap thee in softness; I bind thee with love; protection surrounds thee, below and above."
The ring grew tight on my thumb as the words hung in the air for a moment. I felt Adrian move behind me as I leaned closer to the boy, unsure if it was just my imagination or if his flesh really was beginning to lose its waxy appearance.
"The brightest of blessings fill thee this eve," I murmured as my hand swept above the curse. It glowed hot for a moment, darkening until it was a rich purple. The ring was heavy, dragging my hand down until it touched an angled corner of the curse pattern. I jumped at the cold that flowed up my arm from the curse, fighting the voice of self-preservation that screamed in my head. Adrian was counting on me to save his nephew. I couldn't turn craven now. Biting back a moan of pain, I grabbed the beginning of the curse, and drew my finger along its intricate path. As my finger unmade the curse, it glowed black, then dissolved into the air. Pain stung my arm, creeping upward with frigid claws until my body shook so hard, my finger wavered on the curse. I struggled to unmake the curse, half expecting the brilliant white pain to lance through my head at any moment. It didn't, but that could be simply because my body was coping with as much pain as it could tolerate without passing out.
I continued to untrace the curse, the charm book clutched in my left hand, my eyes blurring with tears of pain that I blinked away madly in an attempt to see. I was almost blind with the combination of cold and tears, but the ring seemed to guide my hand, not needing my sight to unmake the curse. As more and more of the curse dissipated, the cold intensified until I felt as if I were standing naked in the Arctic. Gritting my teeth, I spoke the last words to the curse itself. "Thy power is dispersed. Thy desire is undone. Thy darkness is revealed. All who were bound to you, heed only my voice."
The last little curl of the curse glowed black, then burst into a white flare that threw me backward with the force of its unmaking, slamming me into Adrian. light dazzled my already blinded eyes, filling my head, filling my soul, filling the entire room with one moment of absolute joy.
"What was that?" I heard my incredulous voice ask, my body still tingling with the residue of the wonderful feeling.
Adrian gently propped me up against the side of a metal shelving unit, quickly returning to the crate.
"It was the ring," he answered as he pulled the body of the boy out of the crate.
I rubbed my left hand over my eyes, surprised to note that, for once, it was the stronger of my two arms. My right arm hung cold and heavy at my side, apparently lifeless. "Did it work? Is he alive? Is the curse unmade?"
My vision cleared enough to see the boy standing on his feet, engulfed in a bear hug, Adrian's tender kisses being pressed onto his head.
I sniffed with happiness at the sight. It was worth a little pain and frostbite to see such a loving reunion. If only Saer could witness his son being greeted with such love.
The boy pulled back slightly, turning to look at me. He was dark-haired and blue-eyed like his father, and even had the family frown. "Papa, who's that?"
My jaw dropped at his words. "Papa?"
