Blood Guilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

hunter.”
    She closed her mouth and began again. “Why is this burden so great? What’s going on?”
    “I don’t know. And you need help to find out. Help beyond your hunter friends. The vampires are young, yet strong in their minds.”
    Mihaela frowned. “In what way? How?”
    “I don’t know. I had little time or ability to investigate. Saloman needs to know.” His eyes closed again, as if consciousness, existence itself, were slipping away from him. Frightened in spite of herself, she leaned over him, and his eyes snapped open. “And the tremor. Tell him that too. It’s important.”
    Mihaela straightened, half-embarrassed at being discovered so close to him, at betraying any concern whatsoever. “You tell him,” she snapped again. “You can talk to him from here, can’t you?”
    There was a pause, then, “No. Not today.”
    “Because you’re too weak? Then tell him tomorrow, if you must.”
    He moved so fast that she had no time to prepare. Her wrist was in his hard, cold grasp, and again she felt that electric frisson shooting up to her fingertips, spreading through her whole body. He said, “No games. Don’t be petty. It’s beyond that. Tell him.”
    Mihaela dragged the stake from her pocket, at the same time wrenching her hand free. He let her go, closing his eyes once more, and abruptly, she understood.
    Maximilian was dying. For him, there would be no tomorrow.
    She sank down onto the other bed, staring at his white, closed face. “What will happen?” she blurted. “Will you just turn to dust in the night?”
    There was another pause, going on so long she thought he might be asleep. Then: “I suppose so.”
    “Don’t you care?” she demanded. She didn’t know why it made her so angry.
    “Not very much, no.” His eyes opened, regarding the stake she still held poised and aimed at his heart. “You can use it if you like. I will make you much stronger.”
    “I’m strong enough,” she retorted, annoyed to be granted permission for something she was sure she couldn’t do anyhow. “Hell, how can you just die? Vampires don’t die from injury!”
    “They do if they have no blood to heal.”
    She stared at him. “Then all you need is blood?”
    Once again, his gaze dropped to her throat. Her vein tingled as if he’d actually touched it, and her breath caught. Oh no. I’m not doing that. And yet, when his eyes moved deliberately back to hers, she couldn’t look away.
    She’d never seen hunger like it. It flooded his eyes, darkening them like tarnished silver, dragging her into their bottomless depths. He needed blood more badly than an addict needed a needle. She could live with that, since there was very little he could do about it. Or would do about it. What hurt was the strange, personal link forming between their eyes, the knowledge that his hunger wasn’t merely impersonal but focused on her , and deeply, disturbingly sexual.
    She’d felt it before, the weird, physical attraction of older vampires, but never this strongly. His sheer beauty made it so much worse, as did the flood of dream memories that hit her without warning. The hot, shameful dreams that had disturbed her sleep in the months since the battle against Luk in Budapest.
    She jumped to her feet, as if movement could dispel past and present desires. He never needed to know much she’d wondered… Would still wonder.
    If she left now, by morning, he would no longer exist. He wouldn’t even make it to biting the chambermaid who’d been worrying Mihaela since she’d decided to take him to a hotel. But there were still questions to be asked.
    Something changed in the vampire’s gray, reflective eyes. A different kind of pain that she couldn’t begin to guess at. Then his eyelids closed, and a faint smile formed on his full, sensual lips.
    “We’re both running away,” he observed. “I can’t blame you.”
    Mihaela’s heart thundered in her breast. She could not run away. She had the power, for good or ill,