Lovers Awakening

by R. A. Steffan

  “Let’s not hear of such talk so early in the conversation,” he said silkily. “I harbor no ill will, Timur. Perhaps you would be interested in hearing my other proposition before you make your final decision?”

  Timur remained silent and wary, but did not rise to leave.

  Bastian didn’t allow the smile to reach his lips as he continued, “I operate a… business, of sorts, in Belarus. It might be of interest to you.”

  “Interest to me?” Timur demanded in a sullen voice. “You speak in circles. It was interest in your business that landed me here in the first place.”

  Bastian let a slow grin develop. “This would be more along the lines of leisure time for you and your men, rather than being strictly about profit margins. Consider it a token of my gratitude. Something I will add to sweeten the deal, if you will.”

  Timur raised a heavy eyebrow, looking intrigued almost despite himself.

  Bastian took another drink, raking his eyes over Timur for a long moment. “I can give you all you need to indulge your more… animalistic instincts. Everything necessary to fulfill the wildest fantasies of your most perverted men.” He lingered over the words, savoring them.

  Timur’s face cleared with understanding. “Ah, yes. I see. Women?”

  Bastian nodded coldly. “Women. Men. Boys. Girls. Whatever you need. They have long ago learned the price of disobedience; you will have no problem controlling them.”

  Timur’s face flushed and his eyes grew hungry, the eager light in them plain, even through the darkness.

  “Girls?” he asked, leaning forward and dropping his voice.

  “Their beauty and innocence is incomparable. I only take the best.”

  The Russian sat back, stroking his graying beard and surveying Bastian thoughtfully. “You are a difficult man to understand, Mr. Kovac. You prey upon pain and pleasure in the same meeting? What am I to understand from this?”

  Bastian allowed inhuman intensity to fill his voice, making it smooth as oil and dark as night. “What are you to understand? That you have no idea who you are dealing with.”

  The sentence hung heavily in the air between them as Timur continued to stare at Bastian, clearly apprehensive.

  “What are you proposing? Precisely?” he finally asked Bastian. “What type of… merchandise… do you need? Your initial messages were oddly unspecific on that point.”

  “That is because I needed first to discover whether you were a trustworthy man,” Bastian replied easily. “I need something very specific. Something sophisticated, uncommon, and easily transported.”

  “Biochemical?”

  Bastian’s eyes narrowed. “Am I a cut-rate terrorist looking to give his enemies a stomach ache? Think bigger, Timur. What could I want from the Russian mob that I could not get more easily elsewhere?”

  Timur cocked his head for a moment before his expression cleared in understanding. Avarice lit his eyes. “Ah. Now I understand you, I think. Yes. I have access to what you need. Six devices that can be carried in a backpack by any relatively fit man.”

  It was Bastian’s turn to look hungry. “That,” he said, “is exactly what I need.”

  “It will cost you,” Timur warned.

  Bastian waved a careless hand. “Money is no object. I will provide you and your men access to my… business in Belarus, and pay you ten million American dollars for each device.”

  Timur looked as if he were going to argue for a moment, but decided better of it. “Those had better be some truly exquisite girls, Kovac.”

  “You will not be disappointed.”

  They shook hands warily—Timur cringing a bit at the cold clamminess of Bastian’s skin—and agreed to meet again the following day to make arrangements for the devices to be transferred. Bastian departed feeling triumphant.

  As he passed out of a side door to the alley running beside the dilapidated bar, he felt a shadow loom over him. Within moments, it settled into a dense cloud that surrounded him, smothering him in cold, clinging vapor.

  He fell to his knees, opening his palms skyward and waited. The power infusing itself into his surroundings pulsed and throbbed, going from cold to hot, heating Bastian from his core. The cologne that he wore to disguise the putrid smell of rotting flesh steamed away as the demon Bael entered his body, coiling through his awareness to read the thoughts of his best lieutenant, his servant, his greatest creation.

  You have done well, my faithful one, a voice murmured in his ear. Bastian could feel the demon’s breath sliding like black oil down his neck and back. He reveled in it, wallowing blissfully in the strength and awesome power of evil.

  “Yes, my master.”

  Death surrounded him. He could sense the reek of it rising up from earth, centuries of filth and decay filtering up through the cracked pavement of the alley, swirling around them as Bael lavished praise upon his head.

  You will use those tools to usher in my kingdom, and bring back the darkness from which we have been cast.

  Bastian breathed in the stench, allowing it to fill him and burn like glowing lava inside his empty frame.

  “Yes.” He exhaled, feeling clarity settling over him. “I will destroy the humans and bring terror and chaos where there was once love and light. You will be avenged, and I will sit at your right hand forever—your most devoted servant.”

  Bring about my reign, dog. Nothing else matters to you, Bael commanded harshly. Seek not your own glory or dominion, for I am your creator, and you will always bow to me. You are but a speck of dirt on the ground, animated only by my power.

  Bastian dipped his head, feeling a horrible weight press down on him. “Yes, my master.”

  The weight lifted incrementally. Before my final triumph can come to fruition, dog, I have sensed a great danger which we must face, and soon.

  “Master?”

  Another of the failed six is approaching his fated mate. They must not be allowed to come together.

  Bastian remained silent, sensing his master’s discontent. He had learned the hard way the price of interrupting Bael. After several moments of silence, however, Bastian tentatively spoke. “How do you wish me to proceed, master? Should I find the bitch?”

  Bael did not answer, but Bastian could still sense his looming presence.

  “I could destroy her for you,” he whispered, shivering with pleasure at the thought. His knees were pressing hard into the cracked and filthy pavement, growing damp with the sickly dew that had descended all around him. “I could break her mind and body under torture, and demolish every last memory of the vampire she so foolishly loved.”

  No, Bael said, so sharply that Bastian jerked in surprise. No, we shall wait. She is near. And she will draw one of the abominations straight to us.

  “To us?”

  Her mate will come, but we will be waiting. When the vampire is in our trap, we will find out what he knows, and destroy him. His cursed half-life will collapse around him like a house of cards.

  Bastian nodded submissively and touched his fingers to his forehead. “It will be as you say it will be.”

  Yes. It shall. Go now, dog, and bring forth my kingdom.

  SIX

  TRYNN SAT UP SLOWLY in bed, wiping her brow with trembling fingers. The dream had been so vivid, it was as though she had stepped through a doorway leading back in time, to a different life that was every bit as much hers as this dingy hotel room.

  Rather than try to make sense of something so fundamentally nonsensical, she shook herself awake and turned her attention to the single greatest comfort in her life. Work.

  Padding across the room in her socks, Trynn sat down at the desk and rubbed her finger over her computer’s track pad to wake it from power-saving mode. She looked at the screen and sucked in a breath. While she’d slept, it appeared that the facial recognition software had found a match.

  “What happened to my notification alert, damn it?” Trynn murmured, since the buzzer had failed to wake her out of the seductive darkness of her drea
ms. She could tell that it had gone off, though, as the alert was still showing on her computer.

  Sighing in frustration, Trynn reviewed the search results. It seemed that her Hot Hypnotist had indeed arrived in Cyprus via plane a few days ago. The date stamp on the security footage noted that he had arrived at approximately eleven o’ clock at night, three days previously. Curiously, there was no security footage from the city of Cyprus during the day. His face was only captured after dark, under the glare of a streetlight near the exclusive Merit Lefkosa Hotel.

  He could be staying there, she thought. I wish I could find a more definite picture of him either entering or leaving, though. Seems like this guy is a bit of a recluse and a night owl, when he’s not busy swooping in to save the day like some kind of mild-mannered, khaki-wearing superhero.

  Still, Trynn wasn’t overly bothered by this. She, too, felt more comfortable moving around outside after nightfall. The bright sun had always hurt her eyes and made her feel overly hot in her pantsuits and sleek, tailored dresses.

  She knew with complete certainty that she wasn’t going to be able to let this rest without digging further. With a sigh, she picked up her cell phone. Her boss was on speed dial, and she tapped the button with a feeling of trepidation.

  “Mandy?” Trynn asked in a quiet voice as soon as she heard the bark of the bossy voice on the other end. “Yeah, it’s Trynn. Look, I finished up my job at the Hellenic Bank here in Nicosia, but there was, uh… an incident.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line “Wait. You had an incident? Tell me you didn’t break your record of not having to talk your way out of a security detainment. I had a bet down that you’d last another six months!”

  “Er, not exactly…” Trynn replied, the words emerging with uncharacteristic hesitation. Despite her determination to stay collected and professional during the call to her boss, Trynn felt unwanted emotion well up as she remembered the hours of terror she had endured in the bank lobby.

  Apparently her silence communicated more than her words because Mandy spoke in an anxious voice. “Trynn. What happened? Talk to me.”

  Trynn swallowed several times, trying to keep her voice steady. “I went into the bank, launched my cyber-attack, tagged the target accounts, and got out of the system clean. There was nothing triggered by my hacking. As I was trying to leave, though, I walked out into the lobby right into the middle of a… of a fucking hostage situation.”

  “A what?” Mandy’s voice rose in pitch.

  “Yeah, you heard me right. Some guy was standing there with a bomb strapped to his chest. He was completely out of his mind and he grabbed me before I could get out the door.”

  “Oh my God, Trynn! Are you okay?”

  Trynn paused again. She was not sure there was a word that described the horrible sensation clawing its way up her chest or the swirl of emotions that was making it feel like she couldn’t breathe.

  “Yeah, um. Not great, I guess,” she finally admitted. “I mean, I’m not really hurt or anything, but—”

  She could tell Mandy had fallen effortlessly into Awesome Boss Crisis Mode.

  “What do you need?” the older woman asked. “How did you get away? Did the police catch the guy? Do you need me to fly out there?”

  Trynn’s head was spinning under the barrage of questions. She sat down heavily on the bed, dropping her head into her hand as she pressed the phone to her ear. “No, look. I’m fine, really Mandy.”

  “Is that right? Because you sound like hell.”

  Trynn rubbed her brow, unable to hold back a weak snort of amusement. “Okay, okay. I’m not my best, but I don’t need you to come flying out here or anything. I just need…”

  Her voice trailed away again. What did she need? Sleep? Alcohol?

  The last option sounded pretty appealing at the moment, but she wasn’t about to tell her boss that she wanted to go on a major binge-drinking episode. And anyway, that really wasn’t her style. She’d probably pass out from exhaustion after the third shot of tequila and get hauled off to the drunk tank.

  Finally, she settled on a thought. “I think I just need some time off.”

  Mandy didn’t even hesitate. “Done. I’ll smooth it over with the higher-ups due to the traumatic situation. Do you need to talk about it with someone? You probably should, you know. We have an employee assistance program you can access, if you need it.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out, feeling her clamoring nerves start to quiet a bit. “I think I’m okay. Honestly, right now I’m trying to track down the man who saved us. I need to talk to him.”

  “How did you get out of there, anyway?” Mandy asked.

  Trynn really didn’t feel like going into detail, but she knew she owed Mandy at least a basic explanation. “A guy came in and convinced the suicide bomber to give up, which gave us all time to escape. I don’t know what happened after that—I ran straight out the door and didn’t look back.”

  She heard Mandy blow out a breath. “Did you give your statement to the police?”

  “No, I ran through the barricade. Someone tried to stop me, I think, but I shook him off. I guess they had other things to worry about at the time.”

  Trynn could tell by Mandy’s hesitation that she did not approve, but didn’t want to push the issue, either.

  “Under the circumstances, they probably understood,” she assured Trynn in a quiet voice. “Look, Trynn. Please don’t hesitate to call if you need something. Take as much time as you need.”

  A lump rose in Trynn’s throat, but she swallowed it. “Thank you, Mandy. I think I’ll be okay with just a few days.”

  “Good luck with the search for your rescuer,” Mandy said kindly. “If you need any help with that, I’d be glad to lend a hand.”

  Trynn smiled, feeling better now than she had a few minutes ago. She was truly grateful, at times like these, to have such a wonderful boss. “All right. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  She ended the phone call and set her cell phone down on the bed next to her. Leaning back on her hands, she stared blankly at the ceiling, lost in thought for several moments.

  I have to talk to him. I might be crazy, but I have to try to understand what happened when our hands touched.

  Straightening abruptly, Trynn climbed to her feet and marched to the tiny bathroom, shedding clothes along the way. In the shower, she tried to wash away the memories of the traumatic events, scrubbing at her skin, which was tight and itchy with dried sweat. Afterward, she toweled her hair dry and applied enough make-up to hide the bags under her eyes and the pale cast of her face. Stepping back out into her room, she surveyed her supplies carefully, trying to take stock of what she had available.

  She threw on a nice outfit and packed her bag with her laptop and several electrical devices that were basically props. They looked impressive to the untrained eye, but she never actually used them.

  Outside, the sun beat down on her head. As it always did, her body grew uncomfortably warm within minutes. Normally, she hated the overheated feeling, but today she felt like it was thawing out a part of her that had gone icy and cold while trapped in the lobby of the bank.

  Banishing that thought, she turned her attention to the unofficial infiltration mission before her. A short cab ride later, Trynn was standing outside the grand entrance of the Merit Lefkosa hotel. She checked her reflection in the dark glass before stepping confidently into the building, nodding politely to the bellhop.

  “Can I help you, miss?” a young man with wavy black hair asked from his station behind the massive front desk. His suit and tie were crisp, and his nametag read Adrien.

  “Yes, I got a call about a server problem?” Trynn replied in a tone caught somewhere between boredom and professionalism.

  Adrien’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Miss?”

  She let silence hang for a beat. “A server? You know, that thing that you log into on your computer,” she answered with a faint note of derision, trying to put t
he young man on edge. To further illustrate her point, she gestured towards his computer. “I’m here to fix it.”

  The kid—was he even twenty?—looked down at the screen, then back up at Trynn. “I’m showing no errors with the computer, miss, and I can’t let you past the lobby with our new security protocol.”

  Trynn sighed aloud. “It’s only a partial outage. I need to assess the locations to figure out why your bosses are suddenly looking at kill screens and their RAM is being depleted, which, in turn, is bogging down the entire operating system.”

  Her voice was laced with annoyance, and she spoke slowly, as if addressing a small child. It was clear to her that this individual knew very little about computers, as his face flushed and he looked uncomfortable.

  “I have clear instructions…” he said into the growing awkwardness.

  “Fine,” Trynn snapped, spinning on her heel. “Look, I don’t get paid enough to deal with this kind of bureaucratic miscommunication and incompetence. If you’re not going to let me look at the server, then why did you call me all the way out here for nothing? I’ll just leave, and let you deal with the fallout. If this turns into a system-wide problem, it’s likely everything will crash. Good luck dealing with your security protocols when all the electronic locks on the room doors suddenly pop open at once.”

  She made it about ten paces before the desk clerk caught up with her.

  “Wait!” he said breathlessly. “Wait, I’ll let you see our operations room, just let me get a copy of your ID first, please.”

  Trynn turned back with a put-upon sigh and passed him her fake identification. They returned to the desk, and she tapped her fingernails on the top of the marble counter in a bored rhythm as he copied the ID and scanned it into the system.

  “Sorry about the confusion,” the hotel clerk muttered, sliding her card back across the counter to her. “We’ve just been under a lot of pressure about security, what with all the crazy things going on recently.”

  “Yeah, sure. I understand,” Trynn said, giving him a half smile. She readjusted her computer bag over her shoulder and followed him down a short hallway and into a room where the hub of the technology in the hotel was located.