“What? You’re bothered by my tits?”
Rudd sniffed. “No need to be vulgar. It’s just that with the blood and all, the bare breasts . . . things look lurid enough without you adding the element of orgiastic ritual sex to the mix. It’s just . . . ugh.”
She put her shoulders back. Stuck them out. “Fuck you, Rudd.”
Suddenly, Aaro grabbed her arm, jerked her close to him, and plunged the hypodermic into her arm.
Nina jerked, screamed. The needle burned, and her body jerked and arched, but Aaro held her close, muscles trembling with strain until the thing was empty. He flung the syringe away and collapsed, a faint look of triumph in his eyes. “There,” he said. “Done.”
She stared at him, utterly betrayed. “You bastard!” she shrieked, and raised both hands to whale on him, but she couldn’t hit him, damn it, he was shot, he was bleeding. She smacked her hands down onto the wet floorboards, again, and again. “Goddamn you, Aaro!”
“I love you, too,” he whispered.
The strain of holding her struggling body had made his bleeding worse. She jerked into action, pressing down on the cloth. He winced, but barely had the strength to react.
“It won’t make any difference now.” Rudd’s voice was petulant. “She’ll die anyway, you idiot. I’ll see to that. And now you’ve wasted what I assume was the last of Helga’s B doses on her. There were people who wanted to study the contents of that syringe! Powerful people! I have to answer to them! It’s very awkward for me!”
“Your powerful people can blow me, Rudd,” she snapped back at him. “He needs a doctor!”
Rudd shook his head. “No. I’ve had quite enough of you people. It’s time to cut my losses.” His eyes darted around the deck.
“Let’s see. Looks like a murder suicide. Lover’s triangle. That works with the bare breasts. Caught by one lover while passion-ately involved with the other. The spurned one threw you over the edge, and then they shot each other to death. Is that squalid enough to suit you, my femme fatale extraordinaire?”
She pressed the cloth against Aaro’s wound. He seemed to have fainted. “He’s not going to die,” she said, as if repeating it could make it more true. “He’s not.”
“He’ll be dead by the time the medics get here.” Rudd smiled thinly. “Count on it. On your feet, Nina. Walk.”
The sensation began. Just like it had been in the cabin, but harder. The roaring pressure of his psi power, battering her shield.
It swelled, until it became an unbearable, head-splitting pain.
He grabbed her arm, jerked her to her feet, and began frog-marching her toward the railing. She resisted, but the mental pressure increased. Every separate cell in her brain was going to explode. There was an enormous hive of gigantic wasps inside her skull.
When the noise and the pressure suddenly stopped, she was draped over the railing, splintery wood digging into her chest.
“Climb,” he said.
She put her foot on the first two-by-four riveted to the logs, and climbed onto it. The wind gusted, making her skirts flap and whip around her knees. The darkness beyond the railing was a sea of endless nothingness. Wind whistled and howled. The voices of the damned.
“Another. Keep climbing,” Rudd said.
“Stop,” someone else said, from behind.
It was a deep and rasping voice that she did not recognize, but the roaring pressure, the head-splitting agony suddenly ceased.
She stared out into the void. Afraid to move, to even think. The wind lifted her hair. Rain gusted in her face. She swayed, precariously, as Rudd let go of her. She heard him suck in a sharp breath. Almost a squeak.
She turned to look. Rudd clutched his throat. His eyes were wide, panicked. Gasping for breath, but he could not seem to get any.
“I’m not allowing his lungs to expand, you see,” a voice said.
That croaking rasp she’d heard before. She turned, swaying dangerously in the wind. Her knees were locked. She couldn’t feel her legs.
“Careful, my dear. Here, let me help you.” A large hand seized hers. She placed one wobbly bare foot on the lower slat, then the other, and then she was standing on the boards again, staring at a burly, stooped old man in a tuxedo, with a cane. He had a broad face, sunken eyes, pitted skin, but fierce intelligence burned in his slanted green—
Green eyes. Those eyes. Those cheekbones. Of course.
“Hello, Oleg,” she said.
“Nina, isn’t it?” He kept hold of her hand, pulling her to where Aaro lay. “My Sasha’s brave and lovely bride.”
Nina dropped to her knees at Aaro’s side, fumbling for the cloth to press against his wound again.
Rudd finally sucked in some air. “Who are you?”
The old man’s head whipped around. He fixed Rudd with a cold stare. “You,” he said. “You did this”—he pointed at Aaro—
“to my Sasha? You beat and terrorized and abused his bride? You have hunted and harassed him, and for what? For a stupid, fucking drug? You will soon see who I am, turd. And it will be the last thing you ever see.”
Rudd’s face tightened into a grimace of concentration.
Oleg began to laugh. “Oh, no, no, no. You are one of those junkie scum who think that power can be swallowed in a pill, ey?
Power is a gift of God. You don’t even know what power feels like.” Oleg turned to her. “I am about to call the crowds, my dear, so you might consider—”
“Crowds?”
“Of course. We want witnesses for what is about to happen.
But as I was saying, people will soon be flooding out here, so you might want to pull your dress up, my dear, before—”
“What is it about my dress?” she shrieked. “Like I give a flying fuck about my dress! Aaro needs a goddamn trauma surgeon, right now! This instant! So if you’re going to call a crowd, do it!”
“As you wish,” Oleg said mildly. “Be as bare-breasted as the angel of liberty, if you prefer. I’m sure no one will complain.”
He straightened up, squaring off his body so he was staring at Rudd, still transfixed by the railing.
Soon, Rudd began to move. Stiffly at first, but then smoothly, as if it were of his own volition, he began to climb the railing.
Meanwhile, voices and the noise of running feet began to sound behind them. Shouting.
Nina turned to the people arriving. “Call an ambulance!” she yelled. “A man’s been shot! Go ask if there’s a trauma surgeon in the room! Or any doctor! Fast! Please! Now!”
Rudd held the top of the railing, placing one foot carefully on the top rail, and then the other. He balanced there, squatting.
Perfectly poised, facing out. The shouts and pleas began.
“That man’s going to jump!”
“Oh, my God! No! Please, no! Don’t!”
“Stop him! Somebody grab him! Quick, he’s about to—”
“Rudd? Oh shit, that’s Harold Rudd! Harold, no! Don’t jump!”
But Harold did. His bent knees straightened into a powerful spring, arms spread wide. He let out a loud, despairing wail as he leaped, legs flailing as if he were trying to run upon the air.
In the sudden and terrible silence, everyone heard the awful sound when he hit the ground.
Things got loud and chaotic for a while. Screaming, shouting.
Noise, movement. Oleg yanked up one of the flounces of Nina’s skirt and tore it off. He pushed aside the soggy, blood-soaked rag in her hand, and pressed the new, somewhat dryer wad of cloth against Aaro’s wound. He placed her hand upon it, and then covered it with his own.
“Do you, ah, want another piece of the skirt for him?” she asked, jerking her chin in Dmitri’s direction.
“No,” Oleg said.
“No? Isn’t he your nephew? Doesn’t he work for you?”
“He did. Let him bleed. If he lives, I will deal with him later.”
She grabbed Aaro’s cold hand, feeling for his pulse. At first she could not find it, but there i
t was. Faint, but there. Hanging on.
She was crying, she realized. And she didn’t care. She was so far beyond embarrassment now. Like the bare tits. Who gave a shit. About anything. Rain poured down, harder than ever. The sky wept. All of existence wept with her.
Presently, people showed up who seemed to know what they were doing. They gently pushed her away from Aaro and got to work on him.
Someone wrapped a jacket around her shoulders and tried to make her get up. She refused to move, just sat there on the boards, watching them minister to him. Her eyes focused on Aaro’s gun, sticky with blood. It lay forgotten, half hidden beneath the bloody rags of her dress. Voices began to register. The first one she understood filled her with panic. Oleg, as they strapped Aaro onto the gurney.
“. . . want him airlifted to Denver. I will not have my Sasha taken to your local hospital. He must have the very best.”
“But, sir, it’s an extra forty minutes, and he’s lost so much blood.”
“I’ve arranged for two liters of O negative to be waiting in the helicopter. It will be landing in the pad on top of the Convention Center, in ten minutes,” Oleg said firmly. “You will accompany us.”
“No!” Nina sprang to her feet. “No, you can’t!”
Oleg’s eyebrow twitch was so eerily similar to Aaro’s, it was unnerving. “I most certainly can,” he said. “My Sasha will not go to a substandard country hospital to be tended by dogs and pigs.”
“My Sasha! My Sasha!” Her voice was quivering. “You always say that! That’s your problem, Oleg! That’s always been your problem!”
Both brows shot up, affronted. “Oh?”
“You think he’s yours! That he belongs to you! But he doesn’t!
He belongs to himself! That’s what makes him special, but you don’t get it! You just keep trying to make him part of you! Give it up! Let him go!”
“Calm down, my dear,” he said. “You’re delirious.”
“I won’t let you take him!” She lunged toward the gurney.
People grabbed her and held her back. “He’s been trying his whole goddamned life to get away from you! I will not let you take him back!”
“You will have nothing to say about it,” Oleg said, his voice steely. “I will do what is best for my son.”
Nina lunged for Aaro’s gun, grabbing it from beneath the folds of the bloody cloth on the ground. She swung it up, aiming at Oleg’s chest. “No!” She stared around wildly. “Don’t let him control you!” she yelled at them. “It’s what he does! Don’t let him decide!”
Panicked voices swelled around them, but Oleg did not flinch.
He stared at her for a moment.
So different from Rudd’s coercion. Oleg’s felt like a quiet, smothering blanket of absolute authority. He stepped forward, his big, bloodstained hands seized hers, forcing the gun barrel down. He pried her hands loose, and took the gun, slipping it into his pocket. “No, my dear,” he said gently. “He is mine, and I will take him.”
She stood there, frozen with despair. Her head swam, her vision blurred.
“. . . certainly I don’t intend to press charges.” Oleg’s voice blared back into focus. “Anyone can see that the poor girl is out of her head. God knows what she’s just been through. Just look at her. Poor thing.”
Sure. They could look all they wanted. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. The jacket placed on her shoulders slipped to the ground as she watched them wheel Aaro away, with Oleg stumping along close behind. Aaro’s face was so still.
Beaded with rain.
Panic rose up inside her. This was it, her last glimpse of him.
She wanted to run after him, to beg them to let her stay with him, but her muscles wouldn’t move. She would not even have that bitter solace, of being with him at the end. If he died from his wound. If he died from the drug. Either way, she would not be there to hold his hand.
This was all she got.
She flung her head back and let the rain mix with the tears until someone came up to her, pulling her inside, out of the rain.
Setting her down, who knew where. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter.
A sting in her arm, and it all faded blessedly away.
Chapter 33
Aaro stared at the sunlight that streamed through sheer curtains. He looked around at the room, when it finally came into focus.
Too comfortable and luxurious to be a normal hospital room, but too bland and antiseptic to be an actual house. Telltale signs of a medical facility, like the grab bars and handicapped toilet that he could see through the bathroom door. He tried to get up onto his elbow, and thudded back down, with a whistling gasp of agony.
Ah, fuck. So that was how it was. Bummer.
He was pinned to an IV rack. There was a snarl of confused, bloody memories in his mind. Desperation. Hopelessness. The B doses, found, and then lost again. The loss meant death. But he was alive. Wasn’t he? He looked down at himself. With this much pain, he had to be alive. Only life hurt this much.
Nina. Why wasn’t Nina here? He could think of a bunch of reasons why Nina might not be there. None of them were good.
He tried getting up again, and sweet holy shit, it hurt. But he couldn’t just lie here like a lump. He ripped the IV off, left the needle dripping, and choreographed movement to utilize gravity as much as possible, to spare his torn abdominal muscles. Finally, he was on his feet, blood seeping through the bandages. He was in a hospital gown, the kind that tied in back and let a guy’s ass hang out. Great.
He took a step. The world did a big three-sixty, and went dark.
He came to on the floor, a frowning face hanging over him. He knew the face, but wished he didn’t. Angry, harsh, pinched. Not flattered by being seen from below. Who . . . ?
Oh, Jesus. Rita, the hell-bitch. His stepmother, only nine years older than he, putting her in her late forties now. But she looked older. Once so beautiful, but now, she looked like she was pulled tight over angular bones that were too large for the shrunken bag of her skin.
She gazed down at him with distaste.
“I guess I’m not in heaven,” he said to her. “Not if you’re here. So this is just regular life, right? Or is it hell?”
Her frown line struggled to engage in her Botox-numbed brow. “Charming as you ever were, I see. Oleg!” she called.
“Your offspring is showing his usual intelligence, lying on the floor, bleeding like a slaughtered goat. Come deal with him. Because I absolutely cannot.”
She stalked out, and left him on the floor, bemused. Oleg?
The black rubber tip of the aluminum cane planted itself on the floor a couple of inches from his nose, with polished black shoes behind it. Perfectly pressed cuffs. He let his eyes slide on up to his father’s face.
They stared at each other, in blatant fascination.
Son of a bitch. He wouldn’t have been surprised at the barrel of a gun, or a knife’s edge, or even poison from Oleg. But high-end medical care in a swank private clinic—that surprised him.
Oleg sat in a chair next to the bed, folding his hands over his cane. A pair of male nurses came in, hoisting Aaro up, getting him back into the bed, reinserting the IV.
“I thought you wanted me dead,” Aaro finally said.
“Never that, my son. I wanted you with me, fulfilling your potential and the promise of your heritage.”
Aaro suppressed the adolescent eye roll with some difficulty.
“Where is Nina?” he asked. “Is she all right?”
“Nina is fine,” Oleg said dismissively. “I do not wish to talk of Nina.”
Like he gave a fuck what Oleg wanted to talk about. “How did she get away from Rudd? I know it wasn’t thanks to me.”
“Me,” Oleg said modestly. “Rudd leaped off the terrace railing, onto the rocks below. Had delusions of grandeur. Thought he could fly.”
“Oh,” Aaro said. After a long, confused pause, he added,
“Thank you. For saving her life.”
“And yours,” Oleg said pointedly.
Aaro nodded. “And mine. Of course.”
“So stiff,” Oleg said mournfully. “So formal.”
“It has been a while,” Aaro pointed out.
“Yes, it has,” Oleg said. “Twenty-one years, four months, twenty-two days, and give or take eight hours.”
“Ah, yeah. Long time. So, ah. Where is Nina, then?”
Irritation flashed across Oleg’s face. “Causing trouble, no doubt. A more stubborn, irritating, persistent female I have yet to come across.”
“You got that right. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“She’s been hounding me.” Oleg sounded aggrieved. “Phone calls, police, lawyers, what have you. She wanted to see you. But I was not obliged to tell her where we were keeping you. Not that anyone could have compelled me, of course, but still. The principle of the thing.”
“Keeping me? I don’t want to be kept.” He struggled up against stabbing pain. “Why didn’t you let her come to me?”
Oleg’s face hardened. “She defied me. Openly, in public. She brandished a gun at me, Sasha. She dared to scold me. And you expect me to invite the bitch into our life?”
“Yeah, well. The scolding. You get used to that,” Aaro said.
“She should be here with me. She’s my wife. Never call her a bitch again.”
Oleg’s eyebrow twitched, but he let it pass. “She said she was your wife, too. She had no documentation to that effect, however.”
Aaro thudded back onto his pillow, sweating with the effort.
“That’s going to change real soon,” he said. “I need to see her.”
“What’s the rush?” his father asked. “She seems like an exhausting personality. Very intense. Wouldn’t you rather get stronger first? Relax a little, before you face her again?”
“No,” Aaro said. “I want her now.”
Oleg’s eyes were hooded and inscrutable. “So it’s like that.”
“Oh, yeah,” Aaro said. “It is so like that.”
Honesty had never been a wise course of action around Oleg, who could twist anything to fit his own agenda, but Aaro didn’t have it in him to be crafty, not when he was this desperate.
One Wrong Move Page 41
