Blood of Angels Read Online Free PDF

regarding him. Time to step up the interrogation. “I know who you are too. István.”
    Again, the flicker of his eyes, the surge of excitement in his blood. “I’m flattered that you know my name.”
    “Oh, come, István,” she mocked him. “You’re pretty noticeable too. You don’t say much, but you get the job done. And you’re the one who’s taken the trouble to study us rather than simply kill us. What’s the matter?” she added, since even his face gave away his surprise now. In fact, just for an instant, he looked confused. “Do you imagine we don’t study you too?”
    “Know thine enemy,” he remarked, as the waitress, Maria, laid a tray on the table. She was human and had a smile for István as well as for her boss.
    “Champagne,” István observed as Angyalka nodded dismissal to Maria.
    “Don’t worry, it’s on the house.”
    “Really?”
    “No. I’ll stick it on Saloman’s bill.”
    “Shit,” István said. “I’ll pay.”
    When she laughed, his breath caught. Something warm and deeply arousing flashed in his eyes before his lashes swept down and hid them. Angyalka stuck to the safer discovery.
    “You’re not afraid of him either,” she observed, expertly removing the cork from the champagne bottle without it shooting round the room.
    “Either?” István pursued, watching her pour the bubbling liquid. “You mean you ’re not afraid of him?”
    “I meant your hunter friend, Mihaela.”
    He said nothing. But not, she suspected, because he had nothing to say. He was protecting Mihaela, preserving her privacy. On some level, of course, they were all afraid of Saloman. You’d have to be an idiot not to be. But Angyalka knew Mihaela had seen beyond that fear to Saloman’s vision, perhaps through Maximilian, perhaps through her own intelligence. And Angyalka rather thought István had too. So why the hell was he here?
    She pushed one of the sparkling glasses toward him and lifted her own in a toast. “To Mihaela,” she said. “And Maximilian.”
    István inclined his head and sipped the champagne, watching her with open fascination now as she lifted her glass to her lips. As if he’d never seen a vampire drink anything but blood. In fact, Angyalka rarely did, but the advent of a hunter, this hunter, in her bar seemed to call for some special mark.
    She made sure he couldn’t see her fangs, though.
    “So why,” she asked, lowering the glass after a sizeable sip, “are we sitting here to toast them rather than doing it in their own house at their own party?”
    “Because you weren’t there.” Deliberate flattery colored his voice, and yet she picked up no sense of an actual lie.
    Why had he wanted her to be there? She had absolutely no intention of telling him or anyone else why she wasn’t, although, just for a moment, she remembered her temptation, her fantasy that she would go. She’d known he, István, would be there…although she’d imagined it would be in a wheelchair. He’d have been dead without Elizabeth’s extraordinary healing powers, which were obviously even more powerful than Angyalka had known.
    Exactly what was he up to? Under her steady regard, his lip curled in self-deprecation. She let her gaze hover between his mouth and his eyes but didn’t quibble with his answer. There was no point. Instead, she said, “I have a business to run.”
    “A slightly more dangerous business these days, from what I hear.”
    “Nothing we can’t handle,” she said, keeping her tone bored. Was that his mission? Checking out her security for the hunters?
    “What started it off?” he asked, casually enough.
    She shrugged. “Tonight? As usual, young men looking for excitement, something new on which to vent their aggression. They’d obviously heard rumors about this place and had come for a fight. They began by touching up my female patrons—humans as it happened—and trying to nibble their necks. I don’t let my own kind bite here, so I’m damned if I’ll