by Anna Abner
Ali visibly tensed. “Uh.”
This was not going well. He started over. “Ali, why don’t you tell me what you already know?”
“Nothing,” she blurted out. “I mean, next to nothing, and what I have heard is probably false.” She settled more deeply into her seat, breaking eye contact, and crossing her arms tight. “I was told my mother died in childbirth in Odessa. Afterwards, my father and I immigrated to the UK. He told me her name was Katherine.” She shrugged. “That’s about it.”
Maks decided to dive in at the beginning. If he overstepped his bounds or insulted her somehow, she’d have to tell him to shut up. “I fell in love with her the first time I ever saw her,” he began, a wisp of a smile spreading across his face. Katya had been such a beautiful woman. “She stepped out of a car, her red hair fluttering around her shoulders, and our eyes met. That was it. I was totally smitten. There was something so sweet and delicate about her, and yet she was tough. Tougher than she looked. She had to be.”
“Why?” Ali asked, loosening her crossed arms a fraction.
“She was in an abusive marriage,” Maks said, trying to ease the blow as best he could. No girl wanted to believe her parents were at war. “She was pregnant and feeling stuck in a life she didn’t want.”
Ali’s face closed up. “She didn’t want to be pregnant.”
“No,” Maks assured. “It’s complicated. She adored you. One of my favorite memories, one of the only things that kept me sane in my cell, is of her cradling you in her arms and singing an old Ukrainian lullaby. The thought of her perfect love for you and how much it made me love her in return is what kept me calm all those years without her.”
“Was she a fighter?” Ali asked. “A soldier in the horde?”
“Oh, no,” he assured. “She was sweet, delicate, and had the voice of a songbird. You were her top priority, not the horde or Olek. No, she cared about you, me, and our family.”
“She liked to sing?”
He smiled with the memory. “She had a voice that comforted me on many dark nights. She sang to you, she sang to me, she sang in the kitchen while I washed the dirty dishes. Her voice could cheer up a grizzly bear.”
“Your picture of her is so different than the one I’ve always had in my mind,” Ali admitted.
“She would be happy that you know the real her.”
Ali frowned. “How did you two become separated? What really happened to her?”
Dark thoughts swept in, stealing any joy he’d had in telling his story. “Olek ordered me to lead the invasion of Prague at his side. The only way Olek would let me live with you and Katya as a family was if I followed his directives without question. I left you both that day, and every day since I’ve regretted it. The coalition’s forces captured the fighters at the front, and then went back for you, Katya, and anyone like you. The last time I saw your mother alive was in a transport vehicle driving us into the Nevada desert. Once we arrived, the men and women were separated, and then Olek and I were separated from the other men.”
“How sad,” she lamented.
At some point after, Katya had been dismembered and her remains thrown into a pit. Had she suffered much? Had she hoped he would save her?
Blinking rapidly, Maks said, “This was special to her.” He fished under the collar of his shirt and pulled out the pendant he’d taken from Katya’s corpse. “She wore it everyday. I want you to have it. She would want that.” He unclasped it and then laid it in her palm.
“It’s beautiful.” By the welling tears in her eyes, he knew it would be special to her too.
He helped her fasten it at the nape of her neck, avoiding fading bruises near her carotid. For a moment, he almost broached the subject of Connor’s feeding, but selfishly, he didn’t want to get her defenses up again and possibly ruin the first real conversation he’d had with her.
“It wasn’t easy growing up in London with my dad,” she confessed. “He was…cold.”
“We didn’t abandon you by choice,” Maks assured her. “If there was anyway I could have escaped and found you, I would have. Ironically, it was your boyfriend who finally released me.”
“I’ve been curious for a long time,” she said, “how did you know infecting my mother wouldn’t kill me in utero?”
Maks inhaled deeply before answering. “I didn’t.”
Horrified, she drew away from him and nearer the window.
“I made a lot of mistakes,” he said, throwing it all out there. She had to accept him, the good and the bad, if they were ever going to have a genuine relationship. “My blood changed you. It entered your system, even in a minuscule way, and altered your DNA. My blood triggered your birth. My blood gave you power. My blood. You may not be my biological daughter, but Ali, you are my child. I’m sorry I couldn’t make that clear a long time ago. I’m sorry your mother and I couldn’t be with you all those years.”
#
Central Ukraine didn’t look as foreign as Violet expected. Despite signs in Russian and Ukrainian, it was like any other small airfield in the States.
Once landed and cleared to disembark, Violet carried Jackson’s car seat off the plane, and Ali pulled the oversized suitcase concealing Maksim Volk across the tarmac outside L’viv. She was nervous smuggling him into the country, but the other ladies did an excellent job of acting at ease, and she tried to do the same.
Enough money, she’d learned, could conceal just about anything.
A porter helped them load their assorted pieces of luggage into a van, and they were all whisked away to a hotel in the city. It was a long drive and Violet kept one hand on Jackson’s car seat and the other on Maks’ suitcase the whole trip. She was so distracted, she hardly noticed the city whizzing by.
Only when they were safely ensconced in their hotel’s elevator, not a single security camera in sight, did Violet drop to her knees and tear open the luggage. Maks sat up groggily, and she wondered for the umpteenth time if he was getting enough oxygen locked inside the suitcase.
“Maks?” she queried. “You can get out now.”
“Oh.” He blinked low-lidded eyes.
She and Ali each lent a hand, and he stood unsteadily.
“Deep breaths,” Violet advised.
“We booked two rooms,” Ali announced as the elevator opened on the fourth floor. “Maks in one, the rest of us in the other.” She squinted guiltily at the paperwork in her hands, and Violet suspected it had been Connor’s idea to keep Maks at arm’s length.
Maks didn’t argue. “Let’s get cleaned up and regroup right here in one hour. If we’re lucky, we’ll find Svetlana today.”
Though she was starving and exhausted, she agreed. Changing and feeding a fussy Jackson took most of her given time, so she rushed her shower. She barely made their agreed upon meeting time—clean, dressed, and carrying Baby J in his car seat.
Maks, already there and waiting, was exquisite in dark trousers and a mauve, fitted, long-sleeved shirt. He was too good looking for someone like her. In reality, she would never have approached a man like him, being too self-conscious. She knew she was pretty, but not nearly pretty enough for a sexual demi-god like Maksim Volk.
The moment he spotted her, he moved toward her.
“Allow me,” he said, reaching for Jackson’s car seat.
She passed her child into his hands, grateful for the help because her strength was waning much more quickly than normal. It was the curse eating her up.
Their group descended in the elevator, and Ali ordered a rental car.
“You feeling okay?” Maks asked her, sidling over.
“I hate that question,” she fired back, watching Jackson gnaw on the seat strap. He might be teething again. Or just hungry. Something she could sympathize with.
Maks watched her as he silently bounced Jackson’s car seat causing his biceps to bulge past all reasonable sizes.
Swallowing, she elaborated. “My mom and dad are always asking me if I’m okay. It’s my least favorite ques
tion. It implies there’s obviously something wrong with me.”
He still didn’t speak, simply watched her as if prompting her to continue.
So, she did. “There’s plenty wrong with me,” Violet told him. “I just don’t want to be asked about it constantly.”
“Mm,” he replied.
Violet couldn’t take his silence any longer. “Are you fucking with me?” she hissed, leaning in closer. “Is this a funny game to you?”
“A little bit.” He cracked a lopsided grin. “I wanted to see how long you’d keep talking.”
Without thinking, she smacked him right on his bulging bicep. “You jerk.”
Maksim Volk, vampire warlord, flinched from her puny blow and snickered. “You kept going and going.”
Despite grinning, too, she hit him again. “I hate you.”
“Hey,” he objected in a partly teasing tone, “I’m holding a baby.”
“Children?” Roz interrupted, stepping between them. “The car’s ready, if you two are done messing around.”
Despite reading a guidebook and searching blogs on Ali’s cell phone, stepping out of the hotel was like entering another world, an alien world. The further Roz drove their rental car away from busy L’viv and into the countryside, the more it looked like they were traveling back through time. Horse-drawn carts and bicycles replaced cars and trucks. Modern fashions were exchanged with prairie skirts and headscarves. Cities and suburbs gave way to farmland dotted with goats. Busy highways became rutted dirt roads crawling with cows, chickens, and stray dogs.
“I can’t figure out the name of this town,” Ali complained from the passenger seat. “I’m getting simply awful reception out here.” She shook her cellphone as if a jiggle would fix the problem.
“Pull over next to this guy,” Maks said, gesturing out the window.
Roz did as he asked and parked the rental car at an empty crossroads where a man in trousers and a leather vest sat smoking cigarettes upon a fallen tree. Maks climbed out, stretched, and called, “Vitayu. Mene zvaty Maksim,” in smooth Ukrainian, and went on to explain their predicament. Or so Violet assumed.
She rolled down her window as the man offered Maks a cigarette. They smoked companionably, chatting between puffs of white smoke. Resting her elbow on the door, Violet listened as Maks conversed in his native language. He had a beautiful voice, never more so when he spoke his own language.
She began to wonder what he must have been like as a young father. She pictured him carrying baby Ali around, finding her toys, tucking her in at night, and it strummed something inside her. She missed seeing a man care for a child. She missed it on Jackson’s behalf as well, even though he didn’t know what he was missing. She knew, though, all too well.
Stubbing out the cigarette, Maks stood. “Dyakuyu,” he said and marched across uneven earth toward the car. “I know where we are,” he said, climbing in and taking the paper map from Ali. “About forty kilometers ahead, there’s a turn toward the mountains. We should take it.”
Roz started the car and rolled forward.
Leaning across Jackson’s car seat to see Maks more clearly, Violet said, “Your language is beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“Say something to me in Ukrainian.”
With a devilish smile, he said, “Pryyemno poznayomitisiya, Violet.”
Even her name sounded foreign. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Violet.”
She frowned. “Is it?”
Without missing a beat, he answered, “It has been a nonstop pleasure parade since the day I first saw you shaking your ass on a bar in Caesars Palace.”
#
Roz’s experience with witches was ninety-nine percent negative. In general, witches made her twitchy. No matter how powerful she became or how much confidence Lukas helped her gain, she would always be a failure who couldn’t hack it in the Coven like a ‘real’ witch. Instead, she’d forever be a rogue spellspeaker—a pretender.
Not long ago, Sara—an acolyte of the Coven—had manipulated Roz into applying again. She hadn’t finalized the application before Sara went nuts and Ali dusted her, but it felt like a mean trick. The Coven didn’t want anything to do with her, nothing good, anyway.
From it, Roz had learned she had a coven of her own—Connor, Lukas, and Ali. She didn’t need those crabby witches in their dark tower.
But here she was travelling into the mountains to meet with the very first witch. Maybe this was a huge mistake.
Roz drove onto a dirt road that was little more than a path through the woods, nearly obscured by fallen leaves and pine needles. The light disappeared beneath a canopy of trees, and fairy tales starring crones in the dark woods came to mind. Svetlana couldn’t have chosen a more obvious place to hide from the world. The path veered up, up, and up into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.
At last, to the right, squatted a cottage in a clearing amongst gardens and flowering plants. There was no automobile to speak of, but a horse and some barnyard animals weaved in and out of the trees in the rear of the yard. A wisp of white smoke emerged from the stone chimney.
Maks, Ali, and Violet must have been as hesitant to climb out as Roz because for a moment no one moved.
Finally, Roz had to toughen up and open the car door. As she marched across the clearing toward the cottage, the others followed in her wake. She knocked twice on the door. There was no reply or noise from inside, but the door swung open and a sexy redhead stood at the threshold. She had shrewd eyes, but the dewy face of a twenty-one-year-old.
“Look at you,” the woman greeted in accented English, her green eyes scanning Roz, “all burnt around the edges.”
“What does that mean?” Roz asked, defensive and uncomfortable on the witch’s front stoop. She felt the other woman had the advantage, and she didn’t understand how. “I’m here to meet Svetlana. Is she around?”
“I’m Svetlana,” she said. “And it means you’ve been accessing powerful magics.” Svetlana stepped aside, waving them inside. “Come in, come in. I just put on a pot of tea. I hope you’re thirsty.”
Chapter Ten
The interior of Svetlana’s cottage matched the exterior—farm chic. Scattered upon various tables were tools, rags, some food, some butchered animals, plants, and books. But it smelled warm and cozy, especially with herbal tea brewing in the kitchen. Violet sat on an afghan-covered sofa with Jackson in her lap, and Maks and Ali joined her, squeezing in together. But Roz couldn’t sit. She was too wired.
“You’re Svetlana?” Roz queried. “I expected someone older. I mean Maks has heard of you, and he’s ancient,” she glanced at the man in question, “back when the horde lived in this area. What—twenty-five years ago?” She didn’t look any older than mid-twenties, and Maks certainly hadn’t mentioned the First Witch had been a baby when he knew her.
“I am the first witch,” Svetlana said, as if it should be obvious. “I am the source. The wellspring of power burning inside me keeps me young and healthy. Maybe forever. Who knows?”
“Okay,” Roz said, shaking off the oddity to re-focus. “We came to ask for your help.” Roz followed Svetlana into the kitchen nook. The woman hummed as she mixed milk and sugar into a pot of steaming tea. “My name is Roz Carrera. These are my friends. We’ve come from the United States to find you.”
“Hmm,” was all she said until she’d finished preparing and pouring five cups of tea into mismatched china teacups.
“We came for your help,” Roz continued, trailing Svetlana into the living room. “Violet was hit with a blood curse. She’s dying, and you’re our last hope to save her.”
Svetlana passed out the teacups, pushing one into Roz’s hands, and taking one for herself. She didn’t sit, but stood and sipped thoughtfully.
“Why?” Svetlana asked.
Maks rose from the sofa. “Because of a prophecy,” and then he switched from English to what must be Ukrainian. Maybe Russian.
; “English, please,” Roz snapped.
With a snarl of annoyance, Maks repeated, “The Oracle said, ‘The beautiful devil from Odessa will re-make the horde in his own image.’ The Coven came to kill me, but Violet got in the way. Please, Svetlana, bud’laska, can you break the curse? I would owe you a favor.”
“A favor from the devil of Odessa,” Svetlana mused. “Quite a gift.” Her shrewd eyes flickered over Roz’s face. “Are you from the Coven?” she asked between sips.
“No,” Roz admitted. She dropped her gaze. “They denied my application. I’m on my own.”
Svetlana let loose an amused cackle. “Well, of course they did. Tricky witches. They can’t have a powerhouse like you walk through their doors, now can they?”
Roz frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“The Coven is controlled by the most powerful witch willing to accept the position,” Svetlana explained.
“Isn’t that you?” Ali spoke up.
“I’m retired,” Svetlana said with a shrug.
“Who controls them now?” Roz wanted to know.
“The circle of six,” Svetlana said. “Six witches with a lot of power, but not any more than you have.”
Roz shook her head. Svetlana must be under some false assumption. Roz wasn’t powerful. Certainly not anywhere close to the leaders of the Coven. “I’m not…”
“Girl, you could walk into any Coven headquarters and prove you’re the witch to beat. They’d have no choice but to turn over the keys to the kingdom.”
“No,” Roz said. God. Her stomach flip-flopped. She couldn’t even get through the receptionist at the front desk. Maybe Svetlana was just as crazy as the Oracle. “I’m not interested in taking on the Coven. There’s too many of them, and they’re too powerful.”
“Just for fun,” Svetlana said, “I’ll teach you the spell.” She called her power and said, “Kneel,” in a steely, uncompromising voice.
Roz dropped to one knee as if pulled by magical strings. Like the time Marta had made her freeze in place, but much, much stronger. Roz couldn’t have fought it if she’d wanted to.
