Blood Ex Libris Read online

  “Obviously, a woman such as you, using your feminine perception and natural instincts, must surely feel how wrong it is to endanger your precious self so recklessly. I wonder at my old friend that he would heedlessly risk such a jewel in the company of thieves, as many of our number could be named, I am sorry to say. Yes, I am offended on your behalf, sevgili, and I do not wonder at your own wounded feelings. No, no—no need to protest, no need to say a word. I understand all!

  “I am afraid there is more which my dear old friend—I say friend despite his failures in this and other matters—there is more he has not disclosed to you, and of a darker and more dangerous nature. I know your immediate safety may be compromised, and yes, you are right, of course, but I must ask you to consider how well you know Kazıklı bey and know his history? Both his history with you—and how often has he failed you, I wonder?—and his history as Vlad Drăculea, stretching back through many dark years?

  “Come, I would not be so forward with you if I was not deeply afraid for your safety, for your very life! I know you know in your soul you have been treated shamefully and villainously, I would say, if Vlad was not such a dear old friend! But don’t just listen to my words. Who am I, after all, whom you have just met? Speak to others. Ask them the questions in your heart. Ask them about the man who has tied you to him in such an indecent hurry. But hurry, sevgili; danger is all around you! Of course, of course, I have kept you too long, I am sure, and my old friend is not one whom it is good to anger, as so many of us have learned to our cost.

  “Sevgili kızım, come speak to me whenever you want true answers. My door is always open to you. Any of my men will lead you to me. I offer you a safe haven in any storm. Remember this: if you need me, I am here!” With that, he slid away down the corridor, leaving me speechless and dazzled by his free-flowing bullshit.

  I started walking in sheer bemusement, not choosing a direction, my feet just going on autopilot. Where the hell did he get off, puffing His Nosy Self up, and worse, implying all that shit about Sandu? I mean, all his fancy words about “pampering” me probably meant he’d lock me away in a harem or whatever the am’r word for it is. Respect? If by “respect,” you mean, “treat like property!”

  Obviously, Sandu had his odd notions, like taking charge of my wardrobe. But he’d always chosen stylish and sexy—and surprisingly comfortable—clothes, pieces I’d have chosen for myself if I’d had the budget.

  On the other hand, he did make some valid points about Sandu I couldn’t deny and needed to consider. Sandu had explained more than once that he came from a time I couldn’t understand, and he’d said he’d changed over the centuries. But in the recent past—well, since I’d known him—he’d certainly had demonstrated some serious failures to communicate.

  I needed to make a list of things I needed to know and demand the answers without digression, no matter how interesting, or distraction.

  I had asked him stuff, and he’d always seemed like he was giving me thorough answers, but I kept being caught short on matters I could and should have known at least a little bit about. He didn’t do well with volunteering stuff before I needed it, either.

  That would have to change. But Sandu wasn’t keeping stuff from me, and not actively lying to me. Of course not. But how would I know?

  And Mehmet wasn’t the first am’r to warn me that I didn’t know enough and was in more danger than I understood.

  My wildly vacillating thoughts and the unfamiliar corridors I wandered were equally confusing, and that increased the intensity of each. I stopped and looked around. I hadn’t miraculously walked right to the big front doors or even the back entrance of the Rave Cave, although I had to admit I’d been hoping just the teensiest bit I might do just that. I was somewhere in who-knew-how-many miles of vampire-hewn underground passages.

  I could be across the border of Romania by now and never even know it. And speaking of “who knew,” what was going on back at the big dramatic council session? Had they chosen who’d take the Ring to Mordor yet?

  Damn, I was getting slap-happy now, along with literally and figuratively getting nowhere. My person was jangling with distress, and I did not know what to do.

  Maybe the best thing really was to just sit down and wait for Sandu to come to my rescue.

  The very thought was humiliating enough that I started walking again, taking a random left because I felt the Rave Cave was definitely in that direction.

  I heard—or felt, or something—the barest hint of someone coming towards me, out of sight because the corridor curved ahead of me. Consternation flooded me. While it couldn’t get much worse than His Nosiness Mehmet and I’d bumped into him already, there was still an all-too-high percentage of am’r I did not wish to meet while lost in a lonely passageway.

  I looked around, belatedly desperate for a hiding place. There were no nearby right or left turns to take, nor an alcove to hide in.

  Alcoves were among those missing useful landmarks that might help a person find her way through miles and miles of tunnels, dammit. Couldn’t have those.

  Old-fashioned black robes came into view, and I made out Neplach’s face and felt my distress melt. My only reason to trust him was Sandu’s and Bagamil’s obvious like and trust of him, but my gut feeling was that Neplach was a good guy, or at least someone who wasn’t out to devour or otherwise do something bad to me. By this point, that was good guy enough.

  “Anushka! Glad am I to find you. Sandu has been getting more and more unquiet about your continuing absence, and we who know him feel it, even though he is well-schooled in hiding emotion. Still, it began to trouble me as well, and I came away to see if I could find you. Why are you,” Neplach indicated the corridor with eyes and hands, “here?” He looked at me with all-too-shrewd eyes, and I felt myself squirm like a naughty schoolgirl who’d been caught smoking cigarettes. Did he think I was meeting someone for an assignation? Or running away? From the beginning, I’d felt respect for Neplach, and I wanted him to respect me as much as an aojysht could respect the rawest am’r-nafsh.

  So I told him the truth. “I have to admit that I’m a bit lost, um, sir.” I could call Bagamil by his name—or “Mister Sunshine,” in my head—but Neplach was not the sort with whom I felt I could be on a first-name basis. “I was trying to get to the Rave—um, great hall, but I couldn’t find it.” So much for gaining his respect.

  He produced the very first smile I’d seen on his face. So far, it had been set in a coolly detached, fixed reserve. He wasn’t the youngest-looking am’r, but I realized that when he smiled, he looked to be maybe in his thirties. It was when he wore his impassive, emotionless, not-so-much-cold-as-closed expression that it became obvious he was an aojysht. Or showed me what aojyshtaish should be, at any rate. “Moje dcera, you have my sympathies. You are in a hard situation right now, and everything must seem like it is too hard, like it is stacking hard-upon-hard. We shall not say lost but say exploring. No, reconnoitering. Is it the better word?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, it’s much better. ‘Reconnoitering,’ that’s it. Thank you, sir!” I was touched and close to tears—my emotions were too fucking close to the surface these days—that this imposing elder with plenty of concerns of his own would take the time to show compassion about my silly little emotional upheavals.

  Neplach indicated the way to go. I tried not to wince since it was the direction I had been walking away from when he found me. I followed him, and he continued, “It does take some time to learn this place. You will become used to having time. It is one of the significant things about becoming am’r: you have the time to learn patience. Although,” he scowled, which was a daunting expression on him, “your patar is perhaps not the best am’r to teach you. He seems never to have learnt it himself.” He paused, then added, “If you ever wish to talk, you may come to me. I would be pleased to be of assistance to you. However, you also have Bagamil as a teacher and guide. You could not ask a better model, thus you will not also need my meager understandin
gs.”

  “Oh, no! I would be honored to learn from you! Please, there’s so much I need to learn, and I always feel lost—not just in the halls but in understanding—now that I am here.” In this am’r world, I meant.

  “Well. Then it shall be so,” was all he said, but I could tell he was pleased. I was pleased too because not only did I now have an additional resource for how to live the life vampiric, but also because Neplach seemed to like me. To me, that was a pretty big deal.

  We went back. We went right. We went left. We went down. We went up. Not in that order, but don’t ask me what order it was because I couldn’t remember. In a surprisingly short time, we were passing through the back door of the Rave Cave. “Look as if we have been in serious discussion,” Neplach said in such a soft voice I wondered whether I’d heard him right. But I had no time to question, so I turned my head to him and said, in normal speaking tones, which was pretty much shouting to a roomful of am’r, “Yes, I think so, too.”

  “Your concurrence pleases me. It has been beneficial speaking with you, Anushka, frithaputhra of Țepeș. Thank you for your time.”

  “Oh, uh, no problem! Sir! It was an honor for me to, um, be of assistance to you.”

  “And think about what I have said. Remember it.”

  “I promise I will, sir. Thank you.” I put as much emphasis on my thanks as I could without making it sound like I was thanking him for rescuing me from a deserted hallway and other fates worse than death.

  He escorted me over to Sandu, who did not in any way externally exhibit having been worried about me. He merely smiled warmly, as if I had only been away for a brief moment. Neplach inclined his head and said, “Thank you for allowing me time with your frithaputhra, Drăculea. She has imparted much to me about this fascinating ‘information science,’ and I look forward to seeing our archives put in place. Indeed, I hope you will call upon me for any aid I can provide? And I may have some documents for Anushka to…is it ‘scan?’” He turned to me, and I swear there was a hint of a naughty twinkle in his dark eyes.

  “Yes, you know it’s ‘scanning,’ sir,” I tossed back playfully, giddy with relief at being in Sandu’s presence again. I turned to him. “He understands it all, Sandu. He’s as tech-savvy as anyone, so don’t let him pretend he doesn’t get all this modern lingo.”

  Sandu slid his arm around me, which nearly had me in tears of relief. I leaned against him gratefully. “Ah, no, draga mea, I have too much respect for Neplach’s knowledge to believe he does not understand everything of which he speaks. And does not speak. He is a man of deep understanding, and I owe much of my own to him. Thank you, opat.” He reached out his hand, and Neplach took it, and I, being closest to them, saw them communicate by look and touch alone.

  Neplach took both my hands in his and pressed them avuncularly. I wanted to give him a hug, but you didn’t do that sort of thing. His barrier of distance and dignity was back up in force, and it repelled indecorous gestures like hugs.

  After Neplach was out of sight in the crowd, I realized I’d been leaning on him more than I knew. I abruptly felt less safe, and I realized in my time away from Sandu, some of my unthinking faith and trust in him had been shaken. I’d wanted nothing more than to be back at his side, but now that I was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here, after all.

  Maybe I should have stayed in the suite. His suite, of course—I had nothing of my own here. Everything was his, including me. Would I trade all the sex and excitement and travel and being Super-Librarian, Savior of the Universe for being my own person again, in my own house, where there was no one around who wanted to chug all the blood out of my body?

  There was a crabby part of me, which possibly overlapped with the piss-your-pants scared part of me, that said: Yes, yes, yes! Get out of here, find the airport, get back to Centerville, and get your ass out of being in over your head!

  While I was working through this, another am’r had come up to Sandu, who casually kept his arm around me while they talked. I am pretty sure I was introduced to said am’r and responded in a reasonable manner, but the second it was over, I could remember not one part of the interaction.

  “Noosh,” Sandu said, sotto voce even for an am’r, “did anything happen to you? I smell your tears, and they are on your shirt. Are you well?” I didn’t know how to respond. All the doubts I’d ever had about Sandu crowded into my mind. I could see him standing there, handsome as hell, his wavy black hair loose around the face I thought I’d grown to love. But did I know him? I mean, beyond what he liked during sex, did I truly know him?

  And if I didn’t know him, could I love him? And could I trust him?

  I could probably trust him to take care of me because he’d made it plain that an am’r-nafsh was a valuable thing...but could I trust him to tell me the truth? Or tell me anything in a timely manner? Doubt swirled around in my head. I pulled away from him.

  “What. Is. Wrong?” Sandu subvocalized at me out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes traveling around the rest of the room, watching people. I didn’t know how to answer him. I had willingly given him all my trust when he first bit me, and when he’d shared blood with me the critical third time, and again when he’d told me to pack a bag and run off with him, and yet again when he’d brought me into an underground vampire warren. But now, my trust felt broken.

  But why? Because of the stuff his immortal enemy had said about him?

  That was neither information nor advice I could trust. But it was more than that. He had earned my distrust more than my trust by not telling me things I needed to know, or only telling me after I’d needed to know—or only five seconds before, which was almost as bad. He had pressured me. He had manipulated me by insisting I make choices when my ability to think was compromised by sex hormones and having drunk a vampire’s intoxicating blood. A cold emptiness flowed through me, replacing my love and lust for him with stiff wariness. I could see him standing there, but it was like a filter was over my sight, removing all colors in the range of love.

  “I don’t...feel well,” I said. A not-dishonest, if not an accurate explanation. But then, I’d learned how to do that from him. “I want to go back to the suite, please.”

  “Voivode?” It was Haralamb, dressed in leathers like he was in an am’r motorcycle club. “You are needed. A matter has arisen.”

  Sandu looked at me, and I could see emotion roiling in his eyes, but his face was blank, and anyway, I had my new filter on. I looked blankly back at him.

  “Take her to my rooms,” he told Haralamb. “See her safely there, and return immediately.”

  Haralamb escorted me sullenly from the Rave Cave via the back door. I could tell that if he missed any action because of me, I’d never be forgiven. Right, left, stairs, blah, blah, and we were at the door with the twice-dead dragon on it. Had he been strangled with his own tail, or had carving a cross down the length of the poor beast done the job? Haralamb opened the door, glared me into the room, and slammed the door shut. If he’d not been am’r, he’d have stomped loudly down the hall. As it was, he stomped off silently.

  Haralamb’s pissiness had rubbed off. Now I felt pissy too, as well as numb and confused. I stomped as loudly as a still-living creature could around the rooms, glaring at everything, even the tempting piles of books.

  Which, let’s face it, had thus far been used only to help seduce me. Diamonds for some gals, ancient and obscure books for me.

  I wondered what was happening down there. Haralamb clearly thought shit was about to go down. Should I have been at Vlad’s side for this—or maybe fighting back to back? I mean, this was obviously the point in the movie where I discovered my hidden vampire-slaying skills and did a fabulously choreographed fight scene to a throbbing beat. Was I going to be missing all that, sulking here in the bedroom? But I didn’t want to be fighting back to back right now. I wanted to be talking to Sandu tête-à-tête, and he wasn’t going to have time for such things until his Vampire: The Gathering LARP in the Rave Cave was
over. It wasn’t about me, anyway. It was about obscure am’r politics, which had been going on since well before I was born. No one, especially not Sandu, had bothered to bring me up to date on any of it.

  Not my monkeys, not my circus. I can have a nap.

  But first, a visit to that nasty medieval toilet. At least I could get there and back without getting humiliatingly lost.

  On my return, a shadow detached itself from the wall and became a female am’r in a black robe and headscarf. They made her movements bat-like, in that way am’r have of living up to their stereotypes. The scarf made her face more striking, emphasizing her dramatically peaked eyebrows and gray eyes strangely like the ones which I saw when I looked in the mirror and making them visually compelling. “Annooshkhaa,” she said, the syllables rolling off her tongue strangely, sounding foreign to my ears. It took a moment for me to realize it was my name.

  “Uh, yes? Who are you?”

  “Call me Shaqîqah,” she said sibilantly, smiling as if she had made a joke. If joke it was, then it was—of course—lost on me.

  “OK, Shah-KEE-kah. Nice to meet you. The Rave, I mean, the great hall is, um, that direction. Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk there.” I assumed the attitude of a person who was in a hurry to get where I was going. I was getting a not-great vibe off of her, and I wanted someone else: Bagamil, Neplach, Astryiah—even Sandu—to be nearby before I had to spend any time interacting with her.

  “Anushka, you will wish to hear what I have to say. There are things, many things, you have not been told by Kazıklı bey, whom you call—what is it? Sandu? Hah! He has as good as lied to you by omitting so much essential information.”

  Well, that had my attention. She wasn’t the first to tell me about Sandu’s lies of omission. Even Bagamil was unimpressed with his frithaputhra in that regard, and it was exactly what I was pissed off about right now. “How do you know what he has and has not told me?” I asked her, still suspicious but unable to pass up a chance to find more things out.