“When did you meet?” London asked. She had never heard the story before. She had never wanted to know until now. The kinder, fiery Remi was back, standing there in front of her. It was that Remi who had kissed Neven. She had seen it in his eyes.
“We met in 2004, in Belgrade,” Remi said. “Kristijan was twenty-two and just starting to make his bones with the crowd he was running with.” He didn’t look away from the view outside. His expression was distant, as if he was peering at faraway places…which he was. “I was bored with life. Bored with everything. You have to understand what it can be like for us, sometimes. Life repeats, over and over and over. Humans make the same mistakes, they squander their short years and it all starts to feel quite hopeless. Then I met Kristijan and he was so alive. He had plans—so many plans I could easily get dizzy listening to him and the exuberance in him.”
“You didn’t care that all those plans were criminal?” London asked.
Remi sighed. “It was all mild stuff, back then. Credit card scams. Pick-pockets, on a grander scale than anyone had ever seen, yet still just fleecing tourists across Europe. Non-existent car yards. Everything he did depended on the ability of the target to talk himself into an irresistible deal. Short and long cons, scams I’d never heard of. Twists upon tweaks upon wholesale renovations. Kristijan was brilliant at dreaming them up. Anything that would part a sucker from his money. It was…” Remi sighed. “Exciting,” he finished, with a downturn of his mouth. He looked at both of them. “I fell in with him, happy to play along. Then, in 2007, Kristijan bit off more than he could chew. He was shot for his efforts. I found him in time and turned him.” He shrugged. “I wanted him back. I wanted the fun to last a bit longer. I don’t think he ever forgave me for doing that to him. He certainly tried to live as a human despite it. I believe that was why he changed. He turned dark and got lost.” He looked back out the window.
London held her breath. She didn’t want to move, in case it stopped him from speaking.
“I didn’t think vampires could change,” Remi added. “For a long time, I told myself that he’d always had the capacity for blackness. The night he made what I thought was his first kill, he actually laughed at me and told me what his first kill had been.”
Remi turned and leaned against the wall next to the window, looking at both of them. His arms were crossed. “Neven, do you remember the Ćuška Massacre?”
London looked at Neven as he gave a small gasp. His face was pale and dots of sweat appeared on his temple. “Ćuška…” he breathed. The flesh above his mouth took on a sickly gray color.
“Remi, help me,” London said quickly, grabbing Neven’s arm as he swayed.
Remi leapt to Neven’s other side and held him up. “The big chair there,” he told London. Between the two of them, they put Neven in the chair. He folded up as though he had no strength and bent over his knees, breathing hard.
“Water,” Remi murmured.
“No,” Neven said, his voice weak. “I won’t be able to drink it.”
London bit her lip and watched him, her heart thudding uneasily. She glanced at Remi. He moved over to the fragile-looking coffee table and tested it with his hand, bearing down on it. Then he sat on it and studying Neven. “You do remember Ćuška,” he said softly. “You and he share the memory.”
Neven lifted himself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the palm-covered cushions. “I didn’t remember it until just now, when you mentioned it. It all came back…” He wiped his forehead with his hand. “I don’t think Kristijan remembers it the way I do. I think that is where our timelines split.”
“What happened there?” London asked. She sat on the edge of the companion chair, just so she could bring her head down level with the two of them, although the last thing she wanted to do was sit down. “What was the Ćuška Massacre?”
“Kristijan never told you about it?” Remi asked.
She shook her head. “If it was during the war… He would never talk about the war.”
Neven breathed in and let it out. His eyes closed briefly. “Ćuška was—is—a little village in Kosovo. It was where I was born.”
“You’re Albanian,” Remi said softly.
“Yes,” Neven admitted. “Up until the war, it didn’t matter a damn that we weren’t Serbian. During the war it did matter to a lot of people and we were caught up in it. My father and my two brothers were in the Kosovo Liberation Army, fighting the Serbian army every day. Dodging bombs and gas. They wouldn’t let me fight. They said I was too young. In 1999, at the end of the Kosovo war, I had just turned seventeen. A Serbian paramilitary group called the Jackals rolled into town. They were the roughest of mercenaries, in the war for the adrenaline surge, although I didn’t realize that at the time.” Neven sighed. “I’ve read about the massacre since then and it didn’t trip my memory at all. It was just something that happened in the war.” He closed his eyes again and held them closed.
“Tell me what happened to you,” Remi coaxed.
“The same that happened to Kristijan,” Neven said. “The Jackals went through the town, rounding up anyone they thought were KLA, including kids and mothers and wives. They took my father and my brothers, who were KLA and lined them up with everyone else against the wall of the church. While they drank the whiskey they found in town, they fired off potshots, betting each other who could shoot from behind their back and hit the target and other stupid games, while everyone against the wall waited to die.” He bent again and put his face in his hands. “I could see they were getting close to my brothers, so I threw myself at them, screaming that they should let them go. The general—he called himself General, at least—he grabbed the back of my neck and hauled me over to where they were all sitting about with their guns, playing Russian roulette and betting each other. They shoved a shotgun in my hands and made me face my father and brothers. They told me to shoot them, to prove I was loyal to Serbia.”
He stopped. London could see his throat working. Her own had clamped down into a tight, constricted channel. She reached out for Neven’s hand, without thinking about it. Warmth touched her heart when he gripped her hand tightly, even though he was crushing her fingers.
“You didn’t shoot them,” Remi said.
“I couldn’t,” Neven said. His voice was hoarse. “I just couldn’t.”
“Kristijan did shoot them.”
London gasped.
Even Neven raised his head to look at Remi with haunted eyes.
Remi nodded. “They were his first kill. He shot all three of them, to save his life, for they had a pistol to his head.”
“Yes, they did,” Neven breathed.
“The general was so impressed, he recruited Kristijan right there on the spot. He became their mascot, their youngest recruit. The war only lasted a month after that, although Kristijan learned in that month how to fight and take what he wanted from a world that didn’t want to share. He ended up in Serbia a year later, a minor hero.”
London moaned. “He never had a chance…” she breathed.
Remi shook his head. “He could never sleep, even when he was human. The nightmares he had would shake the bed. Triggers—and there were so many of them—they would push him into recalling the massacre and what he did there. When the memories took him, he would freeze, unable to move, while it played out like a movie reel in his mind.”
“That, what you’re describing, is classic PTSD,” London said.
Remi nodded. “I only found that out later. Much later. Kristijan said the flashbacks were reminders to remember his roots. He was suffering through a flashback when he was shot and killed. He couldn’t move.” Remi grimaced. “After I turned him, it all went away, I thought.”
London gripped her hands together. “The nightmares would have. The flashbacks, too. Only, the damage was done, wasn’t it?”
Remi sighed. “The change didn’t happen at once. You know what they say about boiling a frog?”
“You can’t dump it into
boiling water, it’ll just hop out,” Neven said. His voice was scratchy with strain. “However, if you put it in cold water and heat the water, the frog will stay there and boil to death. It doesn’t notice the water getting hotter and hotter.”
Remi nodded. “That’s what happened with Kristijan. He always had an edge. It’s what made life interesting, so I…stuck around. The change happened so gradually, I didn’t notice it. When he killed what I thought was his first victim and he told me about Ćuška, I reasoned it away. I told myself he was fine. It was just that he was operating in a world that demanded such things. I wanted it to be true.” Remi shrugged. “Then you arrived and I realized how much he had changed since I met him. You are what he might have been.”
“No, I’m not,” Neven said.
Remi frowned.
“We both went different ways from what we might have been,” Neven said.
“What happened to you in Ćuška?” London asked. It was hard to speak for the tightness in her throat and her chest. Her eyes ached.
Neven links his hands together. The knuckles grew white. “I stood there with the shotgun under my arm and looked at my father. He looked right back at me and I remembered fishing with him on the river, the summer before the war started. It had been a perfect day, even though we hadn’t caught a thing. The general was bawling at me to shoot, waving his pistol around. My brothers were crying. My father just…watched.” He drew in a breath that was unsteady. “Then, suddenly, I was on the river, lying back in the boat, just the way I remember it. My father was sitting in the stern, whistling off key as he brought in his line. It was perfectly clear. More clear than any memory I’d ever recalled. I thought that perhaps I had mentally escaped.”
“Your first jump,” London whispered. “You said they happen at moments of stress.”
Neven nodded. “That was my first jump. I didn’t know it was a time jump. I laid in the boat, enjoying the last moment I would have with my father. Then I fell asleep and woke up next to the church in Ćuška. It was dark. Everyone who had been standing against the church wall was dead, including my father and brothers.” He hung his head. “They had killed them when I failed to. I was lying on the ground. Maybe they thought I was dead, too. I’d hit my head on a rock. There was blood all over the side of my head. When I could stand, I crept off into the night. The next day I joined the KLA—what was left of it. I fought until the war was over and never, not until just now, did I remember what had happened the day before.”
London squeezed his hand. “Then you must have jumped again, later.”
“Barely a month later,” Neven said. “Just before the war ended. I flipped back to when I was a small boy. It was so real and so exactly as I remembered it, except that I could change things, right there and then. I went up to my room and hid my favorite bear in the basement, the bear that had sat on my window right up until the end of the war. When I came back to the present, the bear was gone from the window and that told me I had not merely imagined it.” Neven looked at London. “You arrived only a few minutes later and told me what I had suspected; that I was a time jumper and that I must learn how to do it properly, or destroy futures with my stumbling.”
London shivered. He was speaking of the version of herself who went back to train a newly made man, a soldier, and ended up being seduced by him.
“I don’t think either of us ended up the way we would have, had Ćuška not happened,” Neven told Remi. “You, though, you remained loyal. You did not change.”
Remi looked startled. Then uncomfortable. His gaze shifted to her, then to the ground at his feet. He ruffled his hair. “Well, the sex was good.”
Neven smiled. “You value loyalty and you give it rarely, but when you do, you remain true. Look at what you did for London.”
Remi jumped. “I did nothing,” he said quickly.
“So you say,” Neven said easily.
London stared at Remi. “What did he do?” she demanded of Neven.
Remi shook his head. “Made sure you got your ass to Serbia every two months,” he growled.
“The security detail that watched over you in Chelsea,” Neven said. “You knew about it, yes?”
London nodded. “They were discreet, although I knew they were there. I thought Kristijan was watching me.”
“He was,” Remi growled. “He got a report every week.”
“Only, the security detail you spotted was there to protect you, not spy on you,” Neven said. “I’ve been going through the records, you see. I saw the monthly checks that went to the little investigation agency in Chelsea. It’s a one man operation. No checks were written for a large security firm, or the type of detail that actually watched you. There was nothing for them because Remi was paying.”
London looked at Remi. “You put them there?”
Remi looked like he was on the horns of a dilemma. He hissed and got to his feet and moved over to the window. “That’s about enough of the chest-beating, yes?”
London had no idea what made her get up. She followed the impulse, because it was still the Remi she liked, standing and looking through the shutters as if he wished he could float through them and escape. His discomfort bothered her.
Neven caught her hand as she walked past him and looked up at her. London glanced at him.
“Kristijan never knew that Remi was flying to England every two weeks to pick you up. Remi never told him.”
“Yes, but how do you know that?” Remi demanded, spinning around from the window to glare at him. “How did you know about the security detail? None of it was written down. Anywhere.”
Neven’s mouth twitched at the corner. “I guessed,” he said and sat back.
Remi’s scowled was thundery. “Fuck!” he breathed and turned back to the window. Tension was pouring off him.
London moved over to him. She hesitated. His back was partially turned towards her. She knew she could no more turn him around than she could shift a lump of lead if Remi didn’t want to turn.
She inserted herself into the space between him and the window and looked up at him.
Remi’s gaze ricocheted from her face to the window. He looked away. “I was just looking out for another innocent.”
“Like the kittens in Božidarko,” Neven added.
Remi growled under his breath. “I’m not a good guy,” he said, his voice low.
“You are to me,” London breathed. She stretched up on her toes and kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Remi stood as still and solid as a stone. His lips were soft, yet they were motionless. He wasn’t quite thrusting her from him, but he might as well have been.
London settled back on her feet once more, acute disappointment searing her chest and her eyes.
Remi watched her. “I told you. I’m not who you think I am.”
“He’s better than that,” Neven said, making her jump, for he was standing right behind Remi.
Remi glanced over his shoulder. “You’ve both got me wr—”
Neven grabbed his face and kissed him. The movement turned Remi on his feet. His shoulder bumped into hers. London looked at the two of them, their mouths together and their eyes both half-hooded.
Remi drew in a breath and let it out as Neven let him go. Neven was smiling. “Now, kiss London. She deserves a kiss and I know you want to. This time, kiss her with feeling.”
“What are you doing, Neven?” London breathed, her heart thudding erratically. Her body was tight, strained from standing almost sandwiched between them as they kissed.
“That’s what you want?” Remi asked. “For me to kiss London?”
“It’s a start,” Neven said.
“That’s why you brought us here? For this?” London asked.
“No. I spoke the truth when I said I needed breathing space. This…” He put his hand on Remi’s shoulder and hers and London shivered at his touch. “We all want it.”
“A threesome?” London breathed. “Until just this moment, it n
ever even occurred to me! I’m a one-man-woman, Neven.”
“Yet you want both of us,” he said calmly.
London bit her lip. She looked at Remi. He was watching her, the old wariness raised, hiding everything. “No, not like he is now, with his cast iron shield in place. I’ve never wanted him that way.”
Surprised flickered across Remi’s face. “But you do want…what?” he breathed. She didn’t understand the odd note in his voice. It couldn’t be hope. She was not so foolish as to think he might even mildly lust after the woman that had tried to take away the love of his life.
“You’re both lying,” Neven said shortly. “To me and to yourselves. London, you just admitted that knowing the truth helps. It helped you deal with Sofiya. It has changed your life in under forty-eight hours. Yes?”
London couldn’t look at Remi or Neven. She nodded. “Yes,” she admitted.
“Remi, hasn’t the truth, hasn’t frankness, helped, these last two days?”
Remi grimaced. “It has got us into a shitload of trouble. That woman is crazy enough to yell for Usenko and when she does, all bets are off the table on whether we survive that.”
“I’m not talking about Usenko. I’m talking about you. Here. This scarred old thing of yours.” Neven reached over his shoulder and rested his hand on Remi’s chest.
“Confession being good for the soul, etc.?” Remi asked dryly.
London watched him, seeing for the first time that the shield was only skin deep. It was an act, a defense against exposing himself. Why had she never seen that before about Remi?
“You can stop hiding, just for a while,” Neven told him.
London could see the doubt…the fear in him.
“I want both of you,” she said aloud and felt her own mouth drop open. Had she said it? Right in front of the two of them? Confusion swamped her.
Quick pleasure crossed Neven’s face. Then she saw the expression in Remi’s eyes. It was shuttered hope.
Her confusion evaporated. “Yes,” she said. “I want to. Only, I’ve never done anything like it before. I’ve never been adventurous.” She could feel her cheeks heating.
Kiss Across Worlds (Kiss Across Time Book 7) Page 28
