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gentleness. She had a tired, overworked look mixed with the remnants of youthful beauty that reminded Dmitriu a little of Maria.
    Refusing to be distracted, Dmitriu took another swift glance around the room, confirming everyone’s position in his mind. If it weren’t for Zoltán, he and Saloman could take the others easily. But Zoltán . . . Zoltán could be their undoing. He wanted to shake Saloman.
    “The woman is not a bribe, by the way,” Zoltán said. “Nor is she poisoned.”
    “I know. A great leader like you would not fear me enough to commit either offense.”
    Saloman’s sarcasm was beginning to sound too much like flattery for Dmitriu’s taste. He wondered when the hell they were going to leave, or at least do whatever they’d come here for.
    “I don’t,” Zoltán said too quickly.
    “And yet my blood is a draw. The blood of an Ancient is powerful.”
    “I could take it,” Zoltán said. His hands, resting on the arms of his chair, convulsed, and Dmitriu tensed.
    “My good sir,” Saloman said, turning the woman in his arms, “I didn’t come here to do anything so foolish as to fight with you.”
    The woman gazed up into his face, trustfully now—mistake. Saloman spared her a quick glance, a half smile before he bent toward her neck. At the first touch of his lips on her skin, she gasped and threw back her head. The scratches on the faces of the quarreling vampires bore testament to her previous fights, but Saloman she didn’t even try to resist. She welcomed him, as they all did.
    Wouldn’t make her any less dead.
    Saloman drank. The woman clawed his shoulders in agony and ecstasy, and then gripped hard, as if holding him to her. The other vampires gawped, openmouthed.
    Zoltán snapped, “Then why?”
    Saloman lifted his head and licked a drop of blood from his lips. The woman moaned. “I would suggest an alliance,” he said, and returned to her wounded throat. She sighed with satisfaction.
    Dmitriu’s grunt was anything but satisfied. Alliance? What the... ?
    Zoltán laughed. “An alliance? Why would I need an alliance with you? I control all the vampires in three major countries. Those in three others would not dare to cross me. I have dominion over zombies and worldwide support. What do you have, apart from your bitch?”
    He cast a contemptuous glance at Dmitriu who curled his lips once more and watched Saloman finish his meal. Her fingers no longer gripped him as she hung nearly lifeless in his arms. One more pull of his savoring lips, and he’d had it all.
    Releasing her, he let her slide to the floor at his feet. Despite witnessing the unspeakable horror that had clearly unhinged her mind beyond any power of healing, she died happy in the end.
    Saloman, unstained by as much as a droplet of blood, said, “My—er—bitch has more strength in his little finger than you will ever possess. Without me. You need wisdom as well as brute force, my friend.”
    “To do what?” Zoltán jeered. “What more is there? Conquer America?”
    He was a smug bastard, overly pleased with himself. Dmitriu began to wish he’d killed him after all, decades ago when no one would have minded.
    “You think too small,” Saloman chided. “You said it yourself—you rule the vampires of three major countries. How many beings is that, precisely? Even throwing a few mindless zombies into the calculation, not many. The majority of the population of those countries, as of all others, even America, is—er—human.”
    Zoltán frowned, still not getting it. Dmitriu got it, though—and was appalled. Saloman would turn the world upside down and regain the power that was his at the dawn of time. Humans would be his slaves once more, because they had betrayed him three hundred years ago.
    Not just Elizabeth Silk, but the world would pay for Tsigana’s actions.
    If he succeeded. But either way, Dmitriu knew his peace was over.

    More annoying than anything was Saloman’s refusal to talk about it. As they