“You did right by telling us,” Zoltan assured him. “I’m worried about them, too.”
“That arrow you wanted to know about—” Russell poured the last of the Blissky into his glass. “The healer gave it to me. Lord Liao killed her sister, so she asked me to use her arrow to kill him.” He sipped from his glass. “If you still have the arrow, I’d like it back.”
“I’ll get it for you.” As far as Zoltan knew, it was still stuck in the tree branch where he’d pinned the note.
Howard reached for a donut. “I think the warrior women will make good allies against Master Han.”
Zoltan nodded. “I’ll keep seeing Neona so I can gain her trust. And I’ll convince the women that we’re on their side. They’re so outnumbered that they’re going to need our help to defeat Lord Liao and Master Han.”
“Sounds good.” Howard bit into his donut. “And Russell needs to find out more information. We’ve got to know what Han and Liao want from these women.”
“Will do.” Russell finished his drink.
“Take a sat phone so we can call you,” Howard added.
Russell scoffed. “No, thanks.” He vanished.
“Dammit,” Howard muttered and stuffed the rest of the donut in his mouth.
Zoltan pushed back his chair and stood. “I’ll be going, too.”
Howard jumped to his feet. “Where?”
“Upstairs to the library. Do I need permission?”
“No. But I want to talk to you about the tours. They’re a huge security risk, so I’m wondering why you allow it to go on. From what I can tell, you don’t need the money.”
“I don’t.” Zoltan carried the empty glasses to the sink. “But the villagers do. The restaurant, hotel, and shops stay in business because of the tourists. And the ladies giving the tour make a nice salary. The guy who drives the bus makes a living for his family. The women who make the shawls and jewelry that are sold in the shops—”
“Okay, I get it.” Howard raised his hands in surrender. “And you trust all those people to keep you safe?”
Zoltan tossed the empty Blissky bottle into the recycle bin. “It’s worked for centuries. I keep them safe, and they return the favor.”
“It only takes one unhappy villager to offer your story to the media for a tidy sum of money.”
“And the other villagers will tell the media that he’s crazy.” Zoltan sighed. “Look. There will always be folktales about vampires, especially in this part of the world. If you tried to hush it up completely, it would only look suspicious. It’s better to play along with it, like a joke no one really believes.”
“I guess so.” With a frown, Howard closed the box of donuts. “But it’s still my job to keep you safe. How is your security in Budapest? Do you have bodyguards?”
“I have a butler and housekeeper who live there. They’re husband and wife, and they’re the only ones who know where the secret door to my bedroom is hidden. I keep the door locked and barred from the inside, so no one can enter unless I teleport inside and open the door.”
“Another vampire could teleport inside.”
Zoltan snorted. “They would have to know where the room is. And they’re not going to teleport during the day because they’re as dead as I am. Trust me, Howard. My security system isn’t high tech, but it works.”
“I’ll want to check it out personally.”
Zoltan waved a hand dismissively. “Not tonight. Go see your poor neglected wife.”
“She’s not neglected!”
“Good night, Howard.” Zoltan strode upstairs to the library off the Great Hall. He gave the bellpull a tug to let his steward, Milan’s grandfather, know he was back in the castle. Then he paced about the room, thinking about everything Neona had told him.
Her mother, the queen, could communicate with birds. Neona’s deceased sister had been able to, also, and another woman, Winifred, could. It seemed too big a coincidence that his own mother had possessed the same gift as three other women in Beyul-La. His mother had come from the East, so he suspected she had lived in Beyul-La. If so, how had his father managed to find her? How had he convinced her to come to Transylvania?
And then Neona had wanted Lord Liao killed with her arrow. Did the women have a long history of seeking revenge against those who had killed one of them? According to the few survivors in 1241, a group of fierce warriors and monsters had killed his father and most of the villagers before setting the buildings ablaze. Had those warriors been the women of Beyul-La? Were they the monsters, or had there been something else with them? How had they traveled such a long distance? How had they disappeared afterward with no trace other than the one arrow embedded in his father’s chest?
“My lord.” Domokos knocked on the door.
“Come.” Zoltan had tried years ago to convince Milan’s grandfather not to address him so formally. But as far as Domokos was concerned, Zoltan was a count from an ancient line of counts, so all the servants had to give him the respect he was due.
Domokos entered with a tray laden with a warm bottle of blood and a wineglass, which he set on the table in front of the hearth. “Would you like a fire, my lord?”
“No. I’m fine, thank you.”
Domokos opened the bottle and poured until the wineglass was half full. When his hand shook, Zoltan moved forward to help him.
“Allow me, my lord.” Domokos set the bottle down and regarded Zoltan with tear-filled eyes. “May I say how honored we are over Milan’s promotion. His success wouldn’t have been possible if you hadn’t paid for his education and taken him under your wing. He will do his best to make you proud.”
“I’m sure he will. Thank you, Domokos. That will be all for this evening.”
“Yes, my lord.” Domokos bowed his head and hobbled to the door.
When had he started to walk like that? And when had his hair turned silver? “Domokos.”
“Yes, my lord?”
Zoltan hesitated. How long had Domokos been his steward? Thirty or forty years? “Are you watching out for your health? You can retire whenever you like at full pay. Just let me know.”
He smiled. “I know, my lord. There are enough servants here that all I really do is supervise. I choose to do this one chore every evening, since it is my pleasure to serve you in person.”
Even after eight hundred years, Zoltan could get caught off guard by the loyalty of those mortals who surrounded him. True, he took care of them the best he could, but they seemed more of a blessing to him than he deserved. “I am the grateful one, Domokos. You’ve taken care of me for . . . years.”
Domokos’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “Sixty years, my lord.”
Zoltan blinked. “That long?”
Domokos grinned. “Yes, my lord. Good night.”
“Good night, Domokos.” Zoltan watched him close the door. Sixty years? How did time pass by so quickly? Working five years with Milan had felt like five months. Apparently he’d become such a workaholic that years were zooming by him unnoticed.
Something nagged in the back of his mind. The six women of Beyul-La. He’d seen them from a distance while they’d sat around the fire, eating. They had all appeared young, most probably in their twenties, but that couldn’t be right. One of them was the queen and Neona’s mother.
He strode to his desk and turned on the computer. He needed more information. Something concrete that he could investigate. Maybe Frederic?
He sat down and typed Frederic Chesterton in the search box. To his surprise, there were several articles. Frederic Chesterton had been one of the members of a doomed British expedition to the Himalayas. They’d planned to map a northern approach to Mount Everest, but the team had gotten lost in a sudden snowstorm in Tibet. In 1922.
Zoltan’s mouth dropped open. This couldn’t be right. He kept reading. A surprising development had occurred in 1933 when a man calling himself Frederic Chesterton arrived in England with a six-year-old boy. His surviving family accepted him back, claiming he truly was Frederic Chesterton. He’d aged eleven years but had no memory of that time. When newspaper reporters tried to interview him, he told them he had suffered from amnesia and couldn’t tell anyone where he had been or who had given birth to his son.
Zoltan swallowed hard. According to Neona, Frederic had fathered two daughters with Calliope. But if the two girls were born in the 1920s, they would be elderly by now. And all the women of Beyul-La looked young.
A chill ran down his back. Was the myth of Shangri-La based on fact? Was Beyul-La a valley where no one grew old?
He recalled the words Neona had said about her sister. The sentence had seemed odd at the time, but he’d figured it was her grief that had been coloring her words. Now he wondered if her grief had actually caused her to be honest.
You don’t understand how long we were together, how long we will be apart. Was Neona facing an eternity without her twin? Was that why she sat crying by her sister’s grave in the middle of the night? And how long had they been together before her sister’s death?
A memory flashed through his mind of his first sighting of Neona. She’d been dressed in armor, looking like an ancient Greek soldier sacking Troy.
“Good God,” he whispered. How old was Neona?
Chapter Nine
The next evening after sunset, Zoltan quickly showered and dressed. He was eager to see Neona but nervous about asking her about her age. Normally that would be considered rude, but in this case, it might be cause for murder.
She’d tried to kill him the first time they’d met, and she’d mentioned several times that men were not allowed there. So he assumed the women were guarding a secret they couldn’t trust with anyone else. Eternal life would fit the bill.
Was that what Master Han and Lord Liao were looking for? As vampires they already enjoyed the possibility of eternal life, but maybe they thought the women’s secret would enable them to live during the day. That would give them a huge advantage over the Vamps who were dead and vulnerable during the day. If Master Han possessed the secret, he could rule the vampire world.
It would also give him a tremendous amount of power over mortals, since he could decide who received the gift of eternal life and who didn’t. He would be a god among mortal men.
Zoltan walked into the kitchen for a quick meal and found Howard seated at the kitchen table, polishing off his box of donuts.
“You’re going back to see your girl, right?” Howard pushed a sat phone and a knife across the table. “Neona was her name?”
“Yes.” Zoltan dropped the sat phone into his pocket but ignored the knife. How could he win her trust if he arrived with a weapon?
“I e-mailed a report to Angus. He agrees with us.”
Zoltan finished his glass of blood. “Where is Angus now?”
“Still in London with Emma.”
Zoltan walked over to the fridge while he considered. “Can you ask Angus to check on something for me?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“I want to know what happened to a guy named Frederic Chesterton. He may be dead by now, but his son might be alive and remember something.”
“Remember what?” Howard asked.
“Something from the first six years of his life.”
Howard frowned. “Does this Frederic own the cabin Russell mentioned?”
“He lived there for eleven years.” Zoltan slipped a plastic bag of blood into one of his jacket pockets and zipped it shut. “I should be going now.”
Before Howard could object, Zoltan teleported back to the clearing where he’d first met Neona. She was almost four hours ahead of him, so midnight would come soon. He levitated up to the tree branch to retrieve the arrow Russell wanted back, then hurried down the mountainside to Frederic’s cabin in the valley.
It was an idyllic place. Green meadows, forested hillsides, a gurgling mountain stream, and the waterfall shooting out of Beyul-La. He could see why Frederic Chesterton had stayed for eleven years. Especially if he’d been in love with one of the women.
As Zoltan approached the cabin, his heart beat faster. No woman had ever intrigued him as much as Neona did. She was such a fascinating mixture—tough but innocent, fierce yet tender. Beautiful, but totally unaware of it. He’d never met someone who needed love as much as she did. She was a lonely soul like him and, he suspected, an old soul as well.
Somehow their paths were connected. He’d felt that from the beginning. She held the answers to the mysteries from his past. And he was becoming more and more certain that she was his future. He just needed to convince her.
He would hold her in his arms and woo her with kisses. He would gain her trust. And her love. The prospect made his heart pound with anticipation.
He strode into the cabin. “Neona?”
His heart sank. The cabin was empty.
Was he waiting for her? Neona glanced up at the moon, which was three-quarters full in the clear starry sky. Zoltan had said he’d meet her at midnight, but she didn’t have a way to know the exact time. Her contact with the outside world was so limited that she’d never needed to keep track of time.
She’d seen a clock before. Frederic had owned a pocket watch that he’d given to Calliope before leaving. Freddie was the proud owner now, even though the watch had broken years ago.
Neona wandered over to the grassy mound where Calliope was buried. Moonlight glistened on the long grass, lending it a silvery hue. A breeze blew down the mountainside, rustling the trees that flourished higher up the hill.