by Anna Abner
She shrugged the man off and caught Maks’ eye across the room. He was seething mad, tensed up, and ready for a fight. She had to smooth things over quickly or he’d reveal himself.
“I’m fine,” she said loudly. “I’ll go with you, but these people aren’t holding me against my will. They’re good Samaritans. After I escaped, I needed food and a shower. They opened their home to me.” She reached for the door, casting Maks a look that she hoped would telegraph to play it cool.
“Violet…” he growled.
“Stop hurting him,” she said to the uniform on her way out.
“You sure this punk isn’t bothering you, miss?” He jiggled Maks aggressively. Maks clenched his jaw, but controlled his temper.
“Absolutely.”
The detective hustled her down the elevator and outside to a waiting car. The man asked her once more if she was hurt or injured, but when she answered no, he didn’t say anything else until she was in the police station sitting behind a desk in an interview room.
“Good morning, Miss Russell.” A harsh-looking young woman entered the room shuffling a file stuffed with papers. “Can you tell me where you’ve been for the last two months?” She stared at Violet expectantly.
This was a bunch of bullshit, but Violet would play along if it kept Maks, Ali, and the rest of them safe. “I was kidnapped from the back of the Farce Club by Oleksander the Destroyer and used as a blood slave. The first chance I had to escape, I ran.” The woman’s eyebrows rose a degree or two with each of Violet’s statements.
“Vampires,” she said flatly. “All the vampires were rounded up and killed in Prague in the early 2000s.”
“Not all of them. They’re back and in the city.”
“And they held you against your will? Do you know where you were kept?”
Violet shook her head. “I ended up in the abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town. That’s where I escaped from.”
“We’re going to search it,” the detective warned.
“Yes, please do,” Violet said.
From there, the questions seemed to go on forever. A need for details about Oleksander, Sergei, and the hospital. Names, faces, descriptions. The detective wasn’t letting her off the hook gently. She wanted to know everything.
“Alright.” The detective made a couple notes and then stood. “Your family flew in to the city after you phoned. They’re waiting at the Stardust Hotel. I’ll have one of the officers drive you. Do you have any bags?”
“No. I had to borrow these clothes.” From a bunch of supernaturals, Violet thought. She chewed at her bottom lip to the point of pain. “You didn’t arrest any of the people in the hotel with me?”
“They were interviewed at the scene,” the detective answered. “Their stories check out. You’re sure they weren’t involved?”
“I’m sure,” Violet lied. “Do you know if my son is with my mom?” She couldn’t wait to see him, to hold him against her chest and breathe his scent.
“Let’s go find out.”
#
Maks needed a fucking distraction. As soon as the police departed, everyone else had scattered to their own corners of the hotel, leaving him alone in a suite pining for someone he could never have.
She belongs to a different world.
She isn’t safe here.
I can’t protect her. Obviously.
None of his inner arguments were working. He fought an almost overwhelming desire to hunt her, to follow her scent and know for certain she was safe.
Instead, Maks opened the door to the refrigerator and stared blankly at neatly sorted bags of human blood. Connor was a spoiled vampire, and this was a new existence for Maks. There were no blood bags in the Old World, only blood slaves. He wondered what kind of man Connor would be if he had to scrabble for food the way vampires had in the Ukraine. Would he be so noble, then?
“Maks. There you are.”
Speak of the devil. Connor appeared behind him, flanked by the junior wolf, Markus. One of them smelled of Ali’s blood, and he bet it was Connor. His instinct was rage, possibly violence, but he forced himself to remember Ali loved the man. As an adult, she had every right to let her boyfriend drink from her, but all the logic in the world couldn’t quell Maks’ parental outrage.
How dare he drink from Maks’ little girl when blood bags were practically overflowing from the fridge? Maks knew, as well as anyone, bagged blood could never replace the ecstasy of blood fresh from the vein, but none of that mattered when his daughter was involved.
“Evening, brother,” Maks purred, slipping into his old role of smirking monster. It came so easily, felt so comfortable, and had saved his life countless times. Right now, it just might save Connor’s life. “Feet working again?”
“Steady as a rock.” He nodded at the stocked refrigerator. “Drink later. I want you to meet some folks. And Ali says you need a new obsession. Or a healthier one. Something like that.”
Scowling, Maks closed the fridge and followed Connor into the outer hallway. “Are you taking me for some quiet time?” he teased. “You’re not really my type, but I’ve been known to dabble.”
It was his experience that being led away from the group was never a good thing.
The wolf snickered, but Connor just clenched his jaw and pulled a key card. “I ended up renting the whole floor. Until we figure out what the hell we want to do or where we’re going to house this little army of ours.”
Unable to come up with a sassy retort—Maks must be more distracted than he thought—he stood beside Markus as Connor opened the door to a suite of rooms very similar to the others. Two bedrooms, formal dining area, full kitchen, and luxurious living areas decorated as if nineteenth-century France had puked all over every surface. Maks sensed movement in both bedrooms and what sounded like several warm bodies. Connor and Markus headed for the room on the left.
“Meet the pit vampires,” Connor said, sweeping open the door.
Inside, four people either stood or turned in his direction. Two men and two women, all in their twenties, all looking a little worse for wear, but upright and mobile.
“Interesting,” Maks mused, sizing each person up. The men were moody and morose, but physically strong. Maybe not at their ideal weights yet, but tough. In contrast, the women were haunted and jumpy. They’d been through some harsh shit. In fact, if he were being honest, they looked the way he felt inside.
But he held himself in check, his smirk firmly in place. “Nice to meet you all,” he said. “But I’m afraid I don’t know what a pit vampire is.”
“Outside your cell,” Connor said, his voice tight, “the army buried dozens of vampires, some still alive. These five people were the only ones we could rescue.”
Maks blinked. It took all his inner strength not to grab the doorframe because for a moment he was back on his knees in a disgusting hole filled with gravel and body parts. For the space of a blink of an eye, he was once again holding Katya’s severed head in his hands.
And then he was back in the present staring at four pairs of spooky eyes. They’d been in the ground for the past twenty years? They’d starved and desiccated to mummified corpses while the world moved on without them? What was it like to wake up after so much pain and find yourself out of time? No wonder they looked like refugees.
Did he look the same way? Were his eyes as haunted as theirs were?
“You said five,” Maks remarked, clinging to the one thing that didn’t require him to feel the pain of grief. “I only see four.”
“Who the hell is this?” a red-headed male huffed.
“I know who it is,” a woman in leather pants and short, frosted tips spoke up. “He’s the Destroyer’s little bitch. He swigged vodka from the bottle while my sister was beheaded. Do you remember me, Volk?” She tilted her head and smiled coldly. “I was one of four women on their knees, but the only one Oleksander infected. The other three, my sister included, were murdered while you stood by and watched. Ring a bell?”
>
He sneered, his emotions too close to the surface to control. “Honey, if I had a nickel for every time four girls got on their knees for me…”
Frosted tips lunged, but Connor slipped between them. “This is not why we’re here, Anastasia. The past is the past.” He whirled on Maks. “I was there when you went out of your way to protect Ali. And I watched you catch Violet, and I thought maybe you’re not a total douchebag. Maybe, without Olek pulling your strings, you might even help me with the vampires—the decent ones and the vicious ones. Was I wrong?” He loomed over him.
It annoyed Maks that Connor was taller than him. He used it to overwhelm other men the way Olek used to.
“Yes, you were wrong,” he snapped. “I don’t give a flying fuck about you or your righteous mission or these fuck-ups who were stupid enough to get buried alive.” With a final disgusted curl of his lip, he turned to leave.
A cry started from the second bedroom that escalated into a desperate, blood-curdling wail. It reminded him of Violet, of violence, of the pain he’d felt being victimized. He couldn’t ignore it. Acting purely on instinct, he opened the second room and barged in. Right behind him, Markus panted with what could only be called worry.
A small blonde woman in a set of lavender pajamas was curled in the corner by the en suite bathroom, her knees drawn up tight to her chest. Methodically, like some kind of compulsion, she banged the side of her bowed head into the white plaster wall. But she’d been doing it so long, the plaster was crushed and her pretty hair was streaked with blood.
She didn’t react as Maks approached, but as he crept closer, he realized her crying had substance to it.
“I want to go home,” she whimpered. “Let me go home.”
Maks took another step, and she ceased crying.
So, she did know he was there.
At one time or another, Maks had sat in the exact same position, rocking because he couldn’t stop. In prison, he’d never banged his head against the wall, but he’d clawed his own arms to the bone so many times, just to feel something real, he’d started to worry they’d cease healing. He knew how much captivity could destroy a person. He’d been broken to the point of shattering more than once. This girl was him on his worst day.
The young wolf eased nearer, his eyes pinned to the woman. Carefully, Markus crouched beside her. When he offered her a hand, palm up, she grabbed it without hesitation, as if they’d done this before.
She didn’t make eye contact or say anything, just continued rocking and smacking her skull, her tiny hand swallowed up by the wolf’s larger one.
“Hey,” Maks greeted gently, taking a seat on the floor against the same wall. “They kept me in a metal cell for years,” he admitted. “Alone. They’d only open the door to gas me. I was unconscious so long, I lost track of entire years of my life. Every time I closed my eyes, I wasn’t sure whether I’d wake up. Or worse, that I’d wake up different.” He couldn’t lift his eyes from the thick, off-white carpeting, but he sensed the girl’s crying had slowed. Her head banging also seemed to have lessened. She was listening.
“The only things keeping me sane,” he admitted, “were memories of Ali and my little bird and the hope I might see them again.”
The young woman slowed to a full stop.
Maks closed his eyes, pushing out the words that stung to say. “I finally escaped that blasted cage, but the worst torture they could possibly inflict on me came true. They killed Katya. And not after I got out, but decades ago. Probably at the same time they locked me up. All that time I was dreaming of her, she’d been moldering in a pit in the desert sand.” He looked up then, and the woman with the blood in her hair and the dazed eyes stared directly at him.
“I saw you,” she said, her voice scratchy and raw. “You were naked on a table, and the doctors were laughing.”
Maks’ stomach dropped. “What?” He glanced briefly at Markus, who registered only surprise at the sound of the woman’s speaking voice.
“I was on a break between surgeries, and I saw you,” she said, her fingers tight on the wolf’s. “They were laughing as they stuck electrodes into you and watched you jump.”
“I don’t—” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you,” she said.
Is that what they’d done while he was unconscious? He’d tried not to think about what inhuman humiliations they’d put him through. “They tested me in every way they could. Once they took samples of my brain. I know because I was awake when they sawed through my skull.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat.
“I didn’t laugh at you,” Mercy said in a tiny voice.
“What?” Maks asked.
“When the doctors made your arms and legs flop, they laughed at you, but I didn’t.”
“I appreciate that.” He stared, stupefied, at the floor. “They loved to test the limits of our immortality—drowning, burning, amputations, electrocution. They ran the gamut. Eventually, only Olek and I survived.”
“I thought you were a kid,” she said. “But you’re not, are you?”
“No. I am not.”
“Neither am I. I feel ancient.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Maks said, and then, “What did they do to you?”
“No,” she said pleadingly. Ducking her head, she went back to smashing it against the wall.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s none of my business. My name’s Maks.”
“I know who you are,” she said. “You infected me.”
The wolf growled, possibly without even realizing it, but Maks ignored him and scooted closer to get a better look. There had been so many vampires in the Ukraine in the beginning and in Vegas right after their escape. Olek was always demanding a larger, crueler army. It was one of Maks’ most important and most reviled jobs—infecting innocent humans to be Olek’s soldiers and playthings.
“I don’t remember,” he admitted.
She raised her chin, revealing her full, waxen face. “I was on vacation in the Ukraine,” she said. “You walked into our pub, and when you walked out, every person inside was either dead or infected.”
That sounded familiar. Details came back to him. “What’s your name?”
“Mercy,” she said.
“I swear to you, Mercy, no one is going to hurt you again, me included. You’re safe. You can learn to live again if you give yourself half a chance.” He stood and offered her a hand up. She did not take it. “How about a hot shower and something to eat?”
“No,” she said, folding in on herself once more.
Dropping his offered hand, Maks nodded. He wouldn’t push. “When you’re ready,” he promised.
Maks turned and discovered Connor standing in the doorway listening to their conversation.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are,” Connor said as Maks passed him in the hall. “Who’s the real Volk? Huh? The sensitive hero or the slimy sociopath? Cause I don’t have the faintest idea.”
“Fuck off.” Maks stomped out of the suite and down the wide outer hallway. Returning to Connor’s fridge and grabbing two bags of blood, he added, “You don’t know the first thing about me or what I’ve been through. You live in an ivory tower. You’ve never struggled for anything. Most of our kind go through very different experiences.”
“You don’t know anything about me or my struggles,” Connor countered.
“You’re right.” Whatever. He didn’t care anymore. Maks returned to the pit vampires’ suite, handed Markus a bag of blood for Mercy, and then ventured to the living room sofa to drink his own.
He knew Connor followed him because his aftershave mixed with Ali’s blood scent made a reappearance.
“What are you planning for the seven vampires you’ve got locked up?” Because bars or no bars, the suite was a cage they’d soon grow tired of. They were wild animals not used to captivity.
Those pit vampires needed a strong hand and a firm leader. To them, Olek had been a horde
general only days ago. They’d missed a lot rotting in the ground. With him gone, one of them might decide to take over.
“I want to give them a chance,” Connor said. “If they’re decent, they can stay and fight with us.”
“And if they’re psychotic?” Maks asked, swallowing large mouthfuls of blood. It tasted cold and bitter.
Connor didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. The pit vampires were on borrowed time. They either straightened up and lived right, or they’d have to be put down.
“Good luck with that.”
The other man left, slamming the outer door on his way out.
Maks sat for a moment, listening as Connor called an elevator and descended alone. Where was he going? At night? By himself?
By the time the elevator returned to carry Maks downstairs, he’d lost Connor’s scent in the teeming crowds. He strolled through the resort’s promenade for a bit to see if he spotted the man, passing shops and food kiosks, occasionally bumping into foul-smelling adults on his way toward the enormous buffet at the end.
He didn’t trust Connor Beckett at all. Not even a little bit. If he was out trolling the Strip, Maks would bet he was up to no good.
“You’re not good at making friends, are you?”
Maks jumped, and then froze at the unexpected voice beside him. Where no one had been a moment ago, a girl stood.
“Ilvane,” he said as his heart rate returned to a healthy rhythm. “We didn’t have such a great experience last time you popped in.” Violet had been cursed, and now she was long gone. Probably boarding a plane for the east coast. Far from his toxic reach.
“Call me Caitlyn,” she said, noisily chewing gum. “And you should be nicer to Connor. He needs you.”
Maks grunted in quasi amusement. “He needs his ass kicked.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But you should look out for him.”
“Not likely. And while we’re at it, did you know Violet would take the curse for me?”
Caitlyn seemed distracted by the shops’ lights and sounds, but he suspected it was an act. “The what now?”
“Don’t play with me,” he warned, low and serious. “Did you know?”
