by Anna Abner
Roz gave him a look. “I’ve literally been searching for a cure for twenty-four hours straight for your girlfriend. So, don’t take your anger out on me.”
“Fine,” Maks returned. “But have you found the witch? And Violet’s not my girlfriend,” he added, “she’s my fucking victim.”
Throwing up her hands, Roz glanced at her friends for moral support. “You guys want to put in one big study session? Like in the old days?”
Maks couldn’t care less about the old days. “Just hurry. I want to be near Violet and Jackson in case one of them wakes up.”
“Go ahead,” Roz said. “I’ll bring the books.”
Julia met them at the door. “Oh, there you are. I gave her something to help her sleep, but she’s running out of time. Her body’s not absorbing nutrients. I don’t know how much longer she can go on like this before it causes irreversible organ damage.”
“We’re on it,” Connor assured. “Thanks for your help.”
“Okay.” Julia gathered her things. “I’ll check on her tomorrow.”
“I’ll walk you down,” Markus offered. “I need to get home before curfew.”
“Aren’t you a little old for a curfew?” Julia asked as they left.
Before the door closed, Maks caught Markus’ reply. “My dad doesn’t like me hanging out here.”
Connor tossed Maks a book and sat at the kitchen bar with one of his own.
Maks flopped onto the sofa and cracked the Encyclopedia of Notable Wiccans. “She lived in the Ukraine,” he reminded them, “but I don’t know much else.”
Those months directly after Maks had been infected were a blur of blood and violence. He’d somehow proved, through his ability to keep silent during even the worst torture, that he was everything Oleksander desired in a lieutenant. But hidden deep in the morass of memories was a story of a witch in the Carpathian Mountains. It was at the time when supernatural creatures were blooming all over the world. The Four Sons with the vampire infection. The First Witch. Shapeshifters. Seers. And countless other abnormalities. The witch was just one slice of the new paranormal pie.
But if there was any way the First Witch could help Violet, Maks would track her ass to the ends of the earth.
“I found her,” Roz announced, flopping back into her chair from the laptop she’d been staring at for the last hour and a half.
Maks roused himself from Roz’s antique histories of witchcraft. It was, so far, a horrible waste of time. “Found who?”
“The First Witch,” she said. “Also known as Svetlana the First. There are stories of her living in the Carpathians, but before she went into hiding, she was the most powerful spellcaster in the world. In fact, this site calls her the source of all magic on earth.”
“Sounds promising,” Ali agreed. “But how do we find her?”
Roz sighed and bent over her laptop. “I’m going to start with the village and then comb satellite images of the mountains around it. It shouldn’t take me more than forever.”
“Just keep looking,” Maks told her.
#
At quarter to two, Maks detected whimpering from Violet’s bedroom. He set aside the Witchcraft Compendium, stood, and stretched as he listened. Agitation heightened into fussing.
Maks crept into Violet’s bedroom, lifted Jackson from the pack-and-play, and grabbed the child’s diaper bag.
The moment Maks held the warm baby to his chest, Jackson clung to him. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “I’m here.”
“Do you need help?” Ali asked when Maks carried Jackson and the diaper bag into the living room.
Maks smiled slightly. “I’ll be okay.”
“You’ve done this before.” It wasn’t a question.
The memory of being a father and a husband hit Maks hard. For a brief, aching moment, he was back in the Ukraine with Katya and little Anya. But twenty years of torture lay between that happy moment and this one.
Maks swallowed the bittersweet emotions, not daring to make eye contact with Ali when his sentiments were in such flux. Instead, he changed Jackson and then made him a warm bottle of formula.
“Hush, little one,” Maks whispered to Jackson as he settled onto the sofa with the baby in the crook of his arm. “Here’s your milk.”
Jackson drank thirstily. His warm little body fit perfectly against his chest, and his tiny fingers held on to Maks’ hand over the bottle. Maks bent and inhaled Jackson’s sweet baby scent. When he looked up, Ali was staring.
Maks glanced away, embarrassed. He was showing too much emotion. Emotion was weakness. Even in front of someone as important to him as Ali.
Jackson fell asleep before he’d finished the bottle. Maks wiped the milky drool from the baby’s chin, balanced him in one arm before picking up The Coven: From Ancient to Modern Times, and paged through it. When Jackson wiggled, Maks bounced him. For a long time, he felt Ali’s eyes on him, but he purposefully did not look up.
“You’re good with him,” Ali said. Then, before he could say anything in response, she asked, “Found anything interesting yet?”
He sighed, staring at the open book beside him. “The Coven has its roots in the Ukraine, which I didn’t realize. Maybe we should focus back on them. They must know about the First Witch.”
“You were there,” Ali said, shaking her head. “They won’t tell us anything. Even if they did give us information, I wouldn’t trust it to be true.”
“I found where she lives,” Roz exclaimed, breaking into the conversation.
“How in the world did you find her?” Ali asked.
“She left a welcome mat.” Roz positioned her laptop on the coffee table where both Ali and Maks could see the screen. There was a satellite photo of a cabin surrounded by woods. On the roof, someone had painted in bright white letters: Witches welcome.
Chapter Nine
Maks put Jackson to bed in his pack-and-play around three a.m. Friday morning, and five hours later, he stood at the dining room table staring at a blank laptop screen beside Ali and Roz.
“This is going to work?” he asked, unconvinced. Some of the technology Ali claimed to use didn’t sound possible.
“Give him a minute,” Ali said. “We’re all tired. No need to get snappy.”
The screen fluttered and then Connor’s face appeared, live and in color. “We just unloaded everybody and had the tour,” he said. “So, tell me what you came up with.”
Maks recognized the mounted animal trophies behind Connor from the desert cabin. So, he’d gotten him, Lukas, and all five pit vampires into hiding. Good. One less threat inside the city.
Lukas shouldered Connor aside and sat beside him, parts of both their faces visible on screen.
“Hey, beautiful,” Lukas said, presumably to Roz.
“Morning, handsome,” Maks returned. “Sleep well?”
Roz shoved him out of range of the camera. “You’re a douche,” she complained. Then, to Connor and Lukas, she said, “The First Witch’s house is at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. We can fly Violet in, convince the witch to help us, and be back here in three or four days.”
“Okay. I’ll stay here,” Connor said. “Besides training the pits, someone has to hold back the tide of new vampires. I’d be too afraid of the city I’d return to if I left for four days.”
Lukas nodded in understanding. “I’ll stay too. And I’ll ask Markus and the Las Vegas pack to back us up.” He glanced at Connor beside him. “The girls can take care of themselves without our interference.”
“Jackson too?” Connor asked.
“He’ll be safe,” Maks assured, though he had his doubts, particularly when he thought of Jackson and Violet’s fragility. She was slowly starving to death no matter how much she ate, and it was starting to show. She’d be useless in a fight and easy to wound. He’d have his hands full protecting her, Jackson, and the other women, though if the stories about Ali were true she could take out a platoon. And he knew Roz could more than handle herself in a fight.
But sweet little Violet was without claws, spells, or weapons of any kind. As soon as they landed in the Ukraine, he was buying her both a gun and a knife.
“Sounds like a plan,” Ali agreed.
“I’ll hire a private plane out of Vegas tonight,” Connor said. “But, just curious, how are you going to sneak one of the most recognizable vampires in the world in and out of the country without being caught?”
“Fake ID?” Roz supposed. “A disguise?”
“I’m not wearing prosthetics,” Maks said, only half kidding.
Ali studied his face intently. “Maybe we just hammer you inside a crate and load you into the cargo hold.”
Sighing, Roz said, “We’ll figure something out.”
“Maks,” Connor said, startling him out of his musings of engine fumes and boxes full of packing peanuts. “Can I trust you to protect the girls from whatever or whoever you might meet in the Ukraine?”
Normally, Maks would say something cutting or sardonic to put the people around him off-balance, but he felt oddly proud that Connor would trust him with so important a duty as keeping the woman he loved safe.
Leaning into the screen, he promised, “I’ll protect all four of them with my life.”
#
Roz snapped her laptop closed and stood next to the gun safe, thinking the tough thoughts. Ali slipped out to pack a bag for their trip.
Maks, though, traveled like a heat-seeking missile directly for Violet’s bed. He was so quick, he didn’t waste time fully closing the bedroom door. Through the crack, Roz watched Maks bend over the pack-and-play to check on Jackson. Then, he kicked off his leather boots and climbed into bed.
If he said anything to Violet before spooning her, Roz couldn’t catch the words.
Maksim Volk in love.
Roz shivered in revulsion, fake gagging into her fist.
Then she pictured nailing a bound and helpless Maks into a packing crate for an eighteen-hour flight, and it cheered her right up.
Dismissing the vampire altogether, Roz marched into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and just stood there. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted a soda, a bottle of water, or a little juice. So, she froze, her eyes going unfocused.
What would the First Witch think of her? Would being a rogue spellspeaker with no mentor or connection to the Coven impress her? Or disgust her?
Roz had more or less come to terms with being an outcast from the witch community. Her life led in a different direction. But the First Witch intimidated her. This was a woman with real power. Real authority.
Would she take one look at Roz and snort with laughter?
Roz closed the fridge without making a decision.
#
Maks sensed when the plane took off Friday night, though he saw nothing in the darkness. He heard some murmurings, a lot of grinding metal, and several fans coming on and off at various times, but couldn’t discern what they signified. As minutes passed slowly, his breathing grew slower until it felt as if the air in the sealed compartment was working against him.
He only closed his eyes for a moment…
The top of his hiding spot popped open, flooding him in blinding light. Shielding his eyes, he looked up into the face of an angel.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he slurred. “No, that can’t be right.”
Violet didn’t laugh as she helped him out of the oversized piece of rolling luggage. “Are you alright? Your lips are blue.”
“Don’t worry, moppet,” he assured, taking several deep breaths. “I can handle tougher threats than an old suitcase.”
“If you say so.”
The five of them—Roz, Ali, Violet, Jackson tucked comfortably in a car seat, and himself—filled half the Gulfstream’s cabin. Roz and Ali chose adjoining seats, which left Maks and Violet standing over a pair of empty recliners.
“After you,” Maks said, gesturing for her to sit near the window.
Ducking her head, she stuffed her bag into the overhead compartment and sat, pulling her sweater tighter around her narrow shoulders.
“Do you want something to eat or drink?” he asked politely, feeling stupid, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“What did you bring?” she asked, her amber eyes searching his face.
He was struck again by how beautiful she was. Even starving, even scared, she was glorious.
“What?” she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. “What are you looking at? Do I have something on my face?”
The words tumbled out, “What in God’s name are you doing sitting within a hundred miles of me?” He sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m a monster, Violet. I’m broken inside, and I don’t think I’ll ever be whole again.”
There was a long moment of awkward silence that seemed to stretch and stretch. He sat back, straightened his clothes, pretended it didn’t matter, that it was no big deal.
“What have you done that’s so bad you can’t come back from it?” she asked quietly. “Because I could say the same thing. I’ll never be the same person I was before.”
First, he unzipped his overnight bag and then passed her beef jerky and a bottle of water. “It’s been a long twenty-five years,” he lamented.
“What about before then?” she pressed, eating a piece of dried meat. “What were you like before you became a vampire?”
Memories flickered through his mind. The twenty years he’d spent a prisoner sat like a cement block in his mind, a blur of pain and desolation. His childhood, though, was a shadow in his mind’s eye.
“My mother was beautiful,” he said without thinking. “My father was wealthy, and she was his trophy wife, but even after years of marriage, she was still stunning. Men watched her wherever we went.” He pictured a random memory, of dinner on a balcony overlooking the Sukhyi Bay. Heads had turned to follow his mother’s movements, almost to the point of annoying Maks. “But she wasn’t something to ogle, not to me,” he said. “To me, she was an angel who gave me hugs and kisses before bed and packed my school lunchbox.”
“So, what happened?” Violet asked. “How did you go from darling son to second-in-command of the vampire horde?” She smiled when she said it, obviously amused, but he didn’t so much as smirk.
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“Oh, you have to tell me more.”
Maks leaned across his seat. “I got swept into a fight after school one day,” he explained. “A boy from the opposing group fell off a bridge into a river and drowned. There was no way to save him. He broke his neck falling onto rocks. Immediately, the other boys ran off, but I followed his body downstream. His eyes remained open, even after death, and I was morbidly fascinated.”
“That’s how Olek found you?” she guessed.
“Olek was recruiting killers. He thought he’d found a teenaged psychopath,” Maks said. “Within minutes he’d nearly drained me unconscious, infected me with his blood, and dragged me away.”
“You were so young.”
The plane hit a bubble of turbulence, and her snacks slid sideways across the tray table. Maks caught them before they hit the ground.
“I was young,” he agreed, “but I was smart and adaptable. I did whatever I had to do to stay alive.” He chanced a glance at Violet and read the compassion in her eyes. No, he didn’t deserve her sympathy. “I killed innocent people, Violet,” he stressed. “And I watched as others killed and tortured innocent people.”
“You were seventeen years old,” she argued. “I can’t blame you for surviving.”
“There are no excuses,” he said. “I should have done something different. I should have fought harder.”
“Since you escaped prison,” Violet asked, “have you killed anyone?”
“Besides the vampire chasing Ali and the witches who cursed you, no.” He slid his palms down his pants legs and then fisted both hands. “I don’t want to be a monster,” he admitted, “but the mold is set. There is no salvation for me. No second chance.”
>
The plane hit another patch of turbulence, bouncing them both in their plush, recliner seats.
“I heard your story,” Violet said, turning toward him. “Now, I want to tell you a couple things. You’ve committed horrible acts, but they were done as a boy. Once you became a man, you chose a different path. I know this because I saw and felt firsthand what you were like in the abandoned hospital. You drank from your donors, but only enough to survive. You fought to protect yourself. You stood up to Sergei to save me. You stood up to Oleksander to save your daughter. So, you don’t have to feel badly anymore. And you can stop trying to convince me you’re the devil incarnate because I know better. Deep down, you’re a scared kid trying to make things right.”
“Why forgive me?” he hissed. “It’s not logical. Forget all the crimes I’ve committed upon other people. We both know I could have released you a long time ago. I could have tried to stop Oleksander from taking you in the first place. I didn’t even try.”
“You’ve got a lot to make up for,” she said calmly. “You owe me a lot for not trying harder.”
Irrationally, Maks wanted to repay her. He wanted to do right by her and square their accounts if it took the rest of his unnatural life.
In the quiet cabin, Maks sensed Roz moving in the direction of the bathroom.
Violet nudged him. “There’s someone else you need to make amends with. You should go talk to Ali.”
He frowned. “Now?”
“She can’t stop looking at you.”
Maks swung his head to the left and caught Ali staring at him. “Okay.” A little nervous—an unfamiliar emotion for him—he set his tray table aside and crossed the aisle. Then, scared Ali wouldn’t want him, he stuttered, “May I sit with you?”
“Oh.” Flustered, she swept Roz’s dusty books off her seat. “Yeah, of course. What’s up?”
“I just…” He was famous for his charm and wit, for always having a cutting, ironic remark ready punctuated with a raised eyebrow. Here he was finally sitting next to his daughter with her full, undivided attention and he couldn’t force words past his tongue. He took a deep breath and clenched his hands in his lap. “I thought you might want to know some things about your mother.”
