Blood Eternal Read Online Free PDF

disaster, the figures had a horrible tendency to go up and up until they stopped meaning anything comprehensible in terms of human tragedy.
     
    It was raining again by evening, and the gathering gale hurled it at Elizabeth’s living room window with enough force to drown out the sound of the television. Perhaps that was why she kept losing the plot of the convoluted crime drama.
    Elizabeth shifted restlessly and wondered how the detective could possibly have come up with so implausible a theory. It didn’t match the evidence, so far as she could recall, anyway, and it was, besides, bloody stupid.
    Her hand brushed the envelope lying on the sofa beside her, and she glanced at it in annoyance. Why wouldn’t it just go away? It was addressed to the University of Budapest and contained her acceptance of the lecturing post. She just couldn’t bring herself to send it.
    What the hell am I afraid of? Frightening him off ? Cramping his style? Appearing too needy and clingy?
    Oh, yes.
    The trouble was, she hadn’t seen him since the job came up. It had been a recent and totally unexpected approach by the university, followed by several e-mails and a telephone call before the offer was made. And it wasn’t something she could tell him about telepathically. He was too much in command of that form of communication. He could read everything from her while revealing only as much as he wanted to, and she needed, she really needed, to see his reaction to the idea of her being in Budapest for a whole year, possibly longer if the post was extended. He moved around a lot, but if anywhere was home for him, it was Budapest.
    The credits began to roll on the crime drama, adding to Elizabeth’s sense of dissatisfaction. She stood and wandered over to the window. Thick clouds had darkened the night sky further, and the wild, white froth on the heaving sea shone like neon. Waves crashed over the harbor wall, a reminder of the frailty of man and all his works before the awesome power of nature.
    Her throat began to ache. She wished she’d gone with Saloman when he’d left Scotland. He’d asked her to and she’d refused, mainly because she wouldn’t reduce herself—in her eyes or in his—to the position of mere follower. She was his companion, but not a blind acolyte, and if she was to do anything useful, if she was to be everything to him as he was to her, he had to acknowledge her as . . . as . . . more . More than an extension of himself, more than his lover.
    “But there is no more than that,” she whispered to the rain-lashed window. “How can I reach you if I’m never with you?” It had seemed so simple, that decision she’d made in his arms three months ago to win his eternal love, to do something good for the world, but sometimes it seemed that nothing had changed. They were companions, yet too much apart.
    She couldn’t let herself become his slave, which Mihaela had accused her of being already. Was she just proving the hunter wrong? Was this the real reason she didn’t travel with him, why she hesitated over the job in Budapest? Because she couldn’t bear the accusing glares of her friends, to whom she was a traitor?
    You chose your path, Silk. See it through; live with it. He’ll come soon. Or at least contact you soon, and then it will be easier.
    An echo of the morning’s twinge of alarm came back to her and she shivered. Surely there was no point in worrying over the safety of the most powerful being on earth? Turning away from the window, she threw herself back down on the sofa and changed the channel to BBC News.
    Government scandal—yawn. And the earthquake in Peru. Instantly, Elizabeth felt guilty for her self-pity and made a determined effort to throw it off. Compared with an earthquake disaster, her problems were puny.
    “However,” the announcer read, “no casualties have yet been reported. The epicenter of the quake was in a remote, mountainous region of the country which is very sparsely populated.