I don’t really see what he does, but the helicopter shakes as it lifts off the ground, and I instinctively grab hold of a helpful nearby handle.
“Don’t worry, Lucy.” He looks over at me with a deadly twinkle in his eye. “I’ve done this once or twice before.”
“That isn’t helping,” I say as we rise higher and turn down the runway and then up over the snow-covered city.
It is quite, quite magical from above. And as Dominik pilots us away from the built up areas, the view only gets better and better.
The midday sun makes all the fresh snow twinkle. Dominik has put on a pair of extremely dark glasses and, incongruously, a black baseball cap, the brim pulled down to put his face in shadow. He’s also now wearing a pair of skin-tight black gloves. I watch as he easily manipulates the controls, so we turn in an arc over the winter wonderland below.
“When did you learn to fly a helicopter?” I say into the microphone which is attached to my headphones.
“Oh, I think Da Vinci taught me,” he tosses back.
“Funny,” I respond, wanting to wave my stake at him but at the same time knowing distracting the pilot with the prospect of death might not be the best idea.
“I learnt a few decades ago, when I first got interested in these aircraft,” he says, still looking straight ahead as we turn slightly away from the sun. “I bought the factory,” he adds, as if it’s something people do every day. “I thought it might make sense if I understood the product.”
A vampire with a helicopter manufacturing business. This is not what I expected when I set out to stake Dominik Király in the early hours. Unable to help myself, I stifle a yawn.
“I hope I’m not keeping you up,” he says with a wry smile in my direction.
“Not everyone is a creature of the night who can walk in the day,” I grumble. “And how come you can handle the sunlight without burning to a crisp?”
Dominik lifts his shoulders for a second and then, with some effort, he relaxes them. “A little trick I learnt a long time ago,”he says cryptically. “We’ll be at our destination in an hour.” He changes the subject. “You’ll like it there.”
We fly on, with Dominik making the occasional comment on the landscape below. I must fall into a doze because I’m woken by the helicopter banking sharply to the left, and I see we’re on the outskirts of a small city, which is nestled between hills and a river as we fly past it, and land at the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. Dominik pilots the helicopter expertly inside a huge hangar where there is a black Maserati SUV waiting.
The rotor blades are still spinning as he gets out, removing the glasses and hat, his dark hair mussed up, making him look almost boyish.
He walks around to my side of the aircraft as I scrabble at the door, trying to work out how the handle operates. Dominik holds up a hand, and I stop what I’m doing as he opens the door and says something I can’t hear.
I’m also clipped into the seat and again, it seems overly complicated. Dominik gently takes the headphones off my head, his eyes not leaving my face as he hangs them up.
“Let me,” he says, with a voice filled with gravel, and deftly undoes the clip sitting over my abdomen, allowing the rest of the harness to release. “There’s a trick to it.”
My stomach dips, my core heating again in a way I should not be feeling around this predator. Dominik takes my hand and helps me out of the helicopter.
“Can’t they just…track us here?” I ask.
“For a start, I doubt Damek is that sophisticated. But I have taken precautions. We could have gone anywhere, and they’ll need to make an effort to find us here.”
“Here?”
“Pécs.” Dominik smiles at me. “Let me show you my first city.”
He gestures to the SUV. Outside the sun is low in the sky, the short winter days catching up with us.
What else do I have to lose? I’m already at his mercy, apparently being tracked by another set of vampires who want to kill me, and my family is never going to forgive my failure to dispose of Dominik when I had the chance.
The vampire who has still not divested me of my one and only weapon when he could have easily overpowered me.
The vampire I kissed.
And I think I liked it.
Lucy
There is lesssnow here in the countryside surrounding the city of Pécs than in Budapest as the SUV purrs up the empty road towards the city in the distance. The lights are already twinkling in the gathering gloom.
