Dmitri’s face started to show a distinctive change of heart.
* * * *
Chapter 14
Renault stood up from behind a flipped over table and wiped away a line of blood running down his cheek from a gash in his forehead. He eyed Aaron with one of those smartass looks. The fucker had escaped all the action. Aaron knew if he checked Renault’s rifle, the clip would be full.
Aaron shook his head. “Way to go, tiger. Douche bag.”
For a moment it looked like the bastard was swinging his gun in Aaron’s direction, but instead he lifted his middle finger and spit. “Abruti.”
Urvashi didn’t seem to notice anything beyond Dmitri. She and Ivan watched Dmitri regain his feet, favoring his left arm and ribs where Aaron had flayed him open. A dark stain of blood seeped down Dmitri’s torso to his leg. Thousands of dollars in designer clothing ruined. Having taken a whopper of a hit, the asshole bajillionaire still carried himself with dignity and power.
Michelle held her ribs, a wince of pain in her face as she moved up on Dmitri with that look – the psychotic hunter look. Aaron stepped in closer to warn her off.
She pushed Aaron gently and reassured him with her eyes, then focused on Dmitri. “I hope you try to run.” She licked her bloody, busted lips. “It’s been too long since I had this much fun hunting. I don’t want it to be over yet.”
The thump of footsteps approaching from the stairs drew everyone’s attention. A dark-haired woman in a brown suede leather coat with a bushy grey fur-lined hood walked into the room. She stopped at the sight of them all, her over-sized hazel-green eyes filled with shock.
Katya growled and raised her gun to the woman. “Kristina!” The wolves zeroed in on her instantly, all rifles pointed her way. She started backpedaling out of the room. “Stop or I’ll blow your kneecaps off!” Katya put a bullet in the floor two feet in front of Kristina and sighted her rifle on the woman’s knees.
Kristina’s hands flew in the air in surrender and she stopped moving. The woman positively stunk of fear. She looked like she was about to piss herself, and she reeked like the fear-adrenaline stench of food. Aaron’s teeth dropped as he recognized prey.
Urvashi waved her sword towards Kristina. “Bring her with us. She may be useful.”
Katya squinted at Urvashi. “I claim her for the pack. She owes us her life.” Katya looked to Ivan with such intensity.
His jaw hardened and he nodded. “She comes with us. Once Urvashi has what she needs, Kristina will be dealt with by the pack.”
Aaron just wanted to take a taste of the gorgeous little terrified morsel. She might be pack property, but, he was going to tap that neck before they finished her off. The woman was surely dead meat. Her betrayal had caused the death of two packmates.
Kristina’s eyes flicked to Dmitri, and something silent passed between them. Aaron dug into Kristina’s mind hard and fast and hit that same barrier he found in Dmitri’s head, though not quite as solid. There were some small leaks and hints he snatched from her, but, no direct thoughts. Dmitri must have trained her to protect her mind. How interesting.
Aaron glanced at Urvashi who was hauling Dmitri towards the door by his jacket sleeve, her sword pressed against his ribcage, ready to shish kabob his dark little heart. Was it Urvashi’s mind probe they had learned to evade? Or were there other telepathic supernatural beasties roaming the European countryside looking to dip into someone’s head? Aaron sensed layers upon layers yet to be revealed, and he had nothing but the thin outer skin to go on.
Kristina caught him trying to dig in her head. Her eyes locked with his, and he sensed only the slightest nuance of acknowledgment. She knew he probed her.
Ivan exchanged looks with Nikolay and Anatoly. They both nodded in silent permission to leave them behind. Anatoly signaled with his rifle. “Make sure the demon dies. Slowly.”
Rifle pointed at the back of Dmitri’s head, Ivan yelled to his downed comrades. “I will be back, I promise.” With his heavy, muscular build and Slavic accent, he presented a creepy similarity to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Katya advanced on her niece and whipped the butt of her rifle in a loud crack across Kristina’s forehead. The woman hit the floor with a squeal of pain and surprise. Katya kicked her hard in the gut and caught another squeal from her victim.
“I had hoped you killed yourself from the shame of what you did. We loved you like a sister, a daughter.” Katya spit at her in disgust. “Our blood is on your hands. Abram and Vitaly died for your betrayal. Ti u menia za eto poplatishsia!” You will pay for it!
Kristina wiped blood from her temple and stood on shaky legs. She turned eyes brimming with tears to Katya, then Aaron and Ivan. “There was nothing I could do. Dmitri found out I was spying on him. He suspected me from the very beginning. He took my Lana and forced me to tell his lies.” Her eyes flicked to Dmitri and her fear of him shone through her pain and despair. “He took my daughter. He won’t let me see her. I don’t even know if she lives.”
Katya shoved the business end of her rifle into Kristina’s face. “Why should I care about the bastard child of a bloodslave whore?”
Tears streamed down Kristina’s face and her chin quivered as she choked on her words. “She’s no bastard! Lana is Abram’s daughter. When you sent me here to spy on him.” Her finger darted out at Dmitri. “I was pregnant.”
Katya got in her face in an instant, fist cocked back, ready to brawl. “Did Abram know? During the seven years you spent fucking Dmitri, did you ever once tell Abram you had his child?”
Kristina’s chin quivered more as she shook her head.
“And why the hell not? We’d have got you out immediately! The girl should have been with her father, raised with the pack!”
Kristina went weak in the knees as she cried and sobbed, looking to Ivan and Katya for an ounce of understanding. She locked eyes with Aaron and pointed at him. “He knows why I cannot leave. Vampires never let go of their women. They own them.”
Aaron shook his head and Katya snorted. “Fucking bloodslave whore.” Katya punched Kristina square in the face and snapped her head back. Kristina hit the floor again with a bloody-broken nose. “You raised a child in this corrupt house, so you could live with your beloved Dmitri, coddled by his filthy money. Now you can die with him. The child is ours.”
Despair turned to hatred as Kristina speared Katya with a vicious look. “You sent me here. You and your precious pack brothers sent me into this den of vipers with Abram’s child. I loved you, all of you, and you sent me to Dmitri. You have no idea what it’s like … what he did to me.”
Aaron stepped up to Katya and laid a hand on her shoulder. A surge of anger rolled through him at the way she treated Kristina. The fury and pain in Katya’s eyes reminded him of how she had broken down in his arms, bawling in great heaving sobs, as the grief of her murdered brothers overwhelmed her. Though Katya understood the difficulty of life as a bloodslave, she felt the loss of her brothers deeply. Katya’s grief fueled a murderous rage for vengeance. Kristina was looking to the wrong person for mercy.
From the coiled tension he sensed in Katya, Aaron thought she might backhand him too, but she only watched him, a fierce intensity of emotion in her eyes. He stepped between her and Kristina. “Let’s do what we came here to do. We can figure out what to do with Kristina later.”
Katya bit back a retort and nodded. “You take her. I cannot stand the sight of her.”
Aaron pulled Kristina to her feet.
Urvashi’s commanding voice called out to Kristina. “You know where he keeps the synthetic venom? Take us there as a show of good faith. There may be hope for you yet.” Aaron sensed his master sizing up Kristina. The wolves may want her dead, but Urvashi held no grudge against her, not if she could provide what Urvashi wanted.
Kristina wiped blood from her nose and whimpered. “I will give you anything you want if you bring me my Lana.”
Urvashi seized Dmitri’s arm and squeezed. The sound of grindin
g bones accompanied Dmitri’s yip of pain. “Is her daughter here? Is there nothing sacred, Dmitri? Not even children?”
The grin was gone, replaced with pure malice. He had no fear of Urvashi, only hatred. “A life for a life.” Dmitri glared at her, daring Urvashi to choose between him or an innocent child.
She assessed him with her cold, inscrutable gaze. “What are the lives of mortals to me? They are a blink in the eye of eternity. Yet some rules of the universe are immutable. Each decision carries consequence. Are you prepared to pay the consequence of this child’s blood on your hands?”
Compassion for a child was a foreign concept to Dmitri. Aaron suspected Dmitri had stopped worrying about the consequences of his actions a long time ago. The thing masquerading as a man laughed in Urvashi’s face. “My life for the child’s life.”
Urvashi watched Dmitri as Ivan shook his head. Ivan opened his mouth, but Urvashi cut him off. “Trust me, Ivan. No matter what happens tonight, we will find the child.”
Kristina started shaking. Aaron could see the heartache plainly in her face. If she was acting, the woman deserved an Academy award. Aaron hated this back and forth drama. He wanted to find what they needed to find, kill who they needed to kill, and get the fuck out of this damn country. “Are we gonna do this shit or what?” His patience with the smirking fucktard Dmitri had worn thin.
Urvashi nodded. “We go. Kristina will take us to the serum, and we will do everything in our power to recover her daughter.” She seized Dmitri in her inhumanly strong grip.
Kristina’s eyes flared with a spark of hope, but then darted towards the staircase in fear. “His vault is in the other building across the plaza. I can take you there.
Aaron pulled her in close with a grip that probably hurt her, but, he didn’t give a shit anymore. “Keep your word if you want to live through the night.” He glanced back to the silent, smirking bastard Dmitri, locked eyes with Urvashi, and flicked his head towards the stairwell. “I lead, you follow.”
* * * *
Chapter 15
Kristina directed Aaron and Michelle up the stairs, back out to the foyer, and to the front door of the mansion. Renault, Urvashi and Ivan followed with Dmitri in tow.
Something about the situation wasn’t sitting right in Aaron’s gut. Too easy. Kristina had walked right up to them, like nothing. Too convenient.
Kristina led them down the broad bricked steps into the subzero Russian winter through the circular driveway towards the other building. Aaron’s nagging suspicions grew with each step. He watched the rooftops on either side, scoped out the edges of the great stone fountain in the center of the driveway, and then the twenty foot tall juniper bushes that lined the center of the main road between the two mansions.
Kristina’s eyes darted back and forth. The bitch knew something was up. Aaron speared a silent message to his master. {{Something is wrong, this is all wrong.}}
Urvashi returned immediately. {{I know. Kristina was sent as bait. We are being watched.}}
{{I can get the truth. Give me a moment.}} Aaron jerked Kristina around to face him, and she squeaked in protest. He growled in her face. “Stay still.” He buried his teeth in her neck whip-fast, like a viper. He latched on tight as she tried to squirm out of his grip. A moment later she stilled, and his deep psychic connection seated in through her blood and bypassed her mental shield.
The first thing he caught was the depth of her bloodslave addiction. She’d been hooked on Dmitri’s bite for years, experiencing the same addiction Katya dealt with every waking moment. Kristina luxuriated in Aaron’s bite. Her struggles ceased and she simply held onto him for the ride. Dmitri hadn’t bitten her for several days and she needed it sooo badly. Aaron caught a sense of all the thousands of times she had given herself over to this euphoria, how it had weakened her resolve to fight Dmitri. Naturally paranoid, he’d been suspicious of her motives from the beginning, but gradually began to trust her. Once Lana was born, he graciously allowed the child to be raised in his home. Her vulnerability with her infant child led Dmitri to trust her more and more with the inner workings of his business operations.
He’d hooked Kristina on his bite by the second month of her undercover assignment as a secretary. What was supposed to be a six month plan stretched out indefinitely as Kristina faced the harsh reality that she could never be apart from Dmitri for more than a few hours. The wolves had warned her not to get involved with him personally, to never let him bite her, but Dmitri was like a force of nature. He simply could not be denied. The man took what he wanted, when he wanted. Once he set his sights on her, she never had a chance.
Over the years living with him and the other bloodslaves he kept close at hand, she found several opportune moments to set him up for an assassination. She’d begun to anticipate where he would be, and the comings and goings of his massive security detail. But the timing was never right. One attempt after her first year had failed miserably and almost exposed her. Though she tried to arrange something on three more occasions it never worked out. The wolves were always disappearing for months at a time in their mercenary adventures in the Middle East or various parts of Africa. They drifted from one conflict to the next. Kristina had been all but abandoned in her solitary post spying on a vampire who owned her and her daughter’s lives.
She lived for Lana. For Lana she guarded her heart and fought the silent battle against the monster that had enslaved her. She held on for years living in Dmitri’s mansion, vying to create a window of opportunity to get Lana out of the country, to safety, and ensure the wolves could make their move to kill the master she couldn’t live without. The turning point in Kristina’s enslavement happened when Dmitri’s pharmaceutical company, Pharzyme developed the serum nicknamed ‘otrok’ – slave. Kristina finally found a glimmer of hope that the drug could enable her to survive, free of Dmitri’s bloodslave bond.
Her tenuous grasp on hope had been shattered when Dmitri’s head of security – ever suspicious of Dmitri’s bloodslaves – found her hidden cell phone and traced all her calls and messages to the pack. She had lost her secret war in one fell swoop. Kristina hated and feared Dmitri almost as strong as her self-loathing. Only Lana had given her enough hope to keep from killing herself. In punishment, her master cut her off from the drug and his bite. In delirium and agonizing withdrawals for seemingly endless weeks, Dmitri still couldn’t break her, not until he took the one thing she held most dear, Lana.
She had tried so hard to hold onto sanity, but the loss of her child shredded her spirit. The man had stripped her of every ounce of pride, of her very soul, all for Lana, and the drug she needed more than anything else. Reduced to a shell, begging for the mercy of God, she had finally capitulated to Dmitri’s demands. She betrayed the wolf pack and led them into a trap of Dmitri’s design.
Just like right now.
Aaron broke his connection with Kristina and let up for air, full of the knowledge of what Dmitri had planned. “It’s a trap! We’re surrounded!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Ivan put a bullet through the back of Dmitri’s right shoulder. As the vampire staggered, cussing up a storm in Russian, Ivan yelled out to the darkness. “We die, he dies! Show yourself or I kill him now!” Ivan pressed his rifle to the back of Dmitri’s head.
Urvashi’s face had turned cold and hard as stone. Everyone knew Ivan would kill Dmitri anyway, simply a question of when. The slant of Urvashi’s eyes accompanied a silent message to Aaron. {{No matter what happens, Dmitri cannot die before we find the vault.}}
And just how was Aaron supposed to stop Ivan from killing the bastard? Aaron wanted him dead more than ever, for all that he had done to the pack and Kristina, and simply on principle. Dmitri had wreaked havoc on the Royal family, countless victim bloodslaves, shit, all of Eastern Europe. He was a thing of wickedness with no purpose in the world but to bend everyone and everything to his will, for his benefit. High time the son-of-a-bitch died.
Michelle crowded in on Aaron and sq
ueezed his hand once to get his attention. He looked into her eyes and she dropped her mental shield, just for him. She was sending him a silent message. I will handle the bloodslave. You ensure Dmitri doesn’t escape.
So there it was, the ugly truth. No matter what happened, Dmitri had to die. Venom or no venom. Michelle was right, Ivan was right. The only person who wanted something more than Dmitri’s head on a platter was Aaron’s master, and she would be sorely disappointed when he disobeyed her to do what needed to be done. Goodbye Dmitri.
Aaron nodded agreement with his lover and handed a very worried Kristina over to Michelle. Kristina balked. “No! Keep her away from me…”
Aaron pegged the squirming woman with a shut-the-fuck-up-or-die stare. She took the hint and stood quiet under Michelle’s supervision. Silently, Aaron drew both his swords and moved closer to Dmitri.
Renault and Katya scanned the rooftops and the landscaping through the night vision scopes on their rifles. Renault’s roving gun stopped at the left corner of the building while Katya found her mark on the far right side of the hedge line. How many more of them were out there?
Dmitri finished his stream of Slavic obscenities and growled into the night. “My men are former Spetnatz, Russian special forces. My snipers can kill from over two hundred yards. At this range, there is no escape.”
Urvashi raised her sword into position to take the Russian vampire’s head clean off with one swipe. “While your death is assured, mine is not.”
He looked to her with that smug confidence. A look only a billionaire with a private army could muster. “Perhaps. But there is another way. I walk away, and you get the serum.”
As he drawled out his seductive sales pitch, several men popped out of the bushes. Clad in black combat gear, they wore fitted night vision goggles and carried the same snub-nosed assault rifles.