“Seriously, Kseniya? A gay bar?” Djibril muttered next to her.
The perfect cover, indeed. Without a word, she ambled up to the eponymous Vince, leaning forward across the counter to catch his ear.
“Jericho sent me,” she said, giving him the code name of the Corpus agent Vince worked for as an asset.
“Where you from, luv?” he asked, appearing nonchalant, but she’d seen the spark of recognition in his clear gray eyes.
“The uppers,” she said.
“Name?”
“Anna Pavlovna.”
He nodded. “Take the stairs and go on up.”
She gave a nod of thanks then pulled Djibril with her when Vince pushed the half-panel at the end of the counter so they could slip behind and then make their way to the upper floor through the door camouflaged in the mirrored wall, next to shelves of liquor bottles. The dark stairway opened into a stark room done in drab pea green, with a beat-up sofa bed on one side and a desk at the other end.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Djibril asked.
Oh, he of little faith. Rolling her eyes, she went to the desk, pulled out the second drawer, and punched in a number—four, seven, two, eight—into the numeric keypad at the bottom.
A panel of the wall to their left seamlessly tore itself up to reveal another darkened stairway.
“Bloody hell,” Djibril cursed.
Pulling his hand, she started down the stairs. Motion sensors on the inside once they’d passed sealed the door shut again, and she blinked a few times, summoning her night vision, to navigate the rest of the steps along two floor levels. They emerged into a stone cellar completely swathed in darkness, but she knew enough about the layout to reach the table in the middle and find the matches to light the single candle on the surface. A soft, yellow glow bathed the area now, even though the light didn’t extend into the still-dark corners.
“What is this place?”
She’d been just as much in awe the first time she’d been here. “It’s a seventies era secret room. SoHo used to be a sex village at the time, and many unscrupulous business owners used such concealed settings to carry out their business.”
He blinked. “Fine. But what are we doing here?”
She took in a deep breath. The moment of truth. He’d been pulled into this now; she had no other choice.
Well, she did have one. Dispatch him to kingdom come ... but that was not really an option, no.
“It’s a safe house.”
He stood gaping at her, mouth hanging open. “A what?”
She waved her hand. “I’ll tell you more soon. We have more pressing matters to address.”
A few quick steps took her to a box in a nook of the room. Inside, she fished for a phone, emerging with a clam-shell mobile still operating on the 2G network. Great, that should work even from down here. She punched in a number and hit call, then cut it after two rings. A few seconds later, the phone vibrated in her hand, and she answered.
“Operator. How may I be of assistance?” a female voice asked.
“Catering request,” she said.
“For when?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How many guests?”
“Five.”
“What plan?”
“Private gala,” she replied.
“Your order has been duly placed,” the woman said before cutting the call.
She’d started dialing the same number again when Djibril’s voice stopped her.
“Un-fucking-believable,” he said.
She glanced up at him. “What?”
He glared at her. “What? You have the gall to ask me that? What the fuck was that all about? People just tried to kill us, and you’re ordering catering for a gala? We just killed a woman …”
I just killed a woman, possibly, he left unsaid, but she heard it nevertheless.
More explanations. She had her work cut out for her. She held a finger up, asking him to wait, as she dialed again, cut the call, then answered when it vibrated once more. This time, instead of replying, she punched in a long series of numbers, and the operator noted her request to contact fellow Corpus agents in the British capital.
On a sigh, she turned to Djibril, then grabbed his hand to pull him to the table, where she dropped onto a chair. Hot energy coursed through her, but she barely registered it. Exhaustion was getting at her, and she needed to get off her feet. Her heart rate was also picking up. Not a good sign, that.
“You a movie buff, Gabe?”
She made sure to use the nickname, even though she recalled he hadn’t called her Kiki but Kseniya since they’d woken up to the sound of intruders in the house. Something in her chest grew tight at this realization, but she pushed it aside, already needing to focus on her labored breathing. Thinking of it only reminded her of the pain in her side. Shouldn’t forget she had a bullet lodged in there.
He threw his hands up. “What are you on about now?”
“John Wick. Ever watched that?”
Again, he stared at her as if she’d gone mad. She was starting to get used to that expression.
“Long story short, he’s an assassin in the story, and there’s a point where he calls and makes a dinner reservation for twelve people.”
“And your point would be?” He sounded exasperated.
“Again, as I was saying, long story short, that call was code for requesting a cleanup crew to come get rid of the twelve bodies he’d just left inside his house after they’d come to take him out.”
It seemed to take him a few moments to string everything together and come to a conclusion. “That was …?”
She nodded. “Yes. A request for gala-type catering, which means a full, all-out cleanup, and for five guests at a private gala means for five dead bodies at my residence.”
He stared at her for long seconds, and the scrutiny made her iffy. The pain grew in her side, and she recalled she was still holding on to the glamor to make them unrecognizable. Letting that go, she could breathe a bit better, though the damage had been done. Her control started slipping, and the wetness on her side grew stronger. When she peered down, she could see her glamored clothing steeped in blood.
This wasn’t good. The blood loss must be massive to appear through glamored clothing.
Djibril frowned, then his gaze darted to her side, and he was out of his chair in a flash and crouching beside her, looking at her wound as emotions flowed over his face. Confusion, puzzlement, horror, panic. He lifted his hand, as if to touch her—
“Don’t,” a male voice said from the stairway entrance. “We don’t know the extent of her injuries yet.”
Djibril blinked upon seeing the newcomers—a couple in their thirties. The tall, big man had long, ash blond hair brushing his shoulders and a med-bag in his hand. He strolled over to her and lifted her from the chair to place her on the solid floor, then pushed a wad of something under her legs to elevate them before settling his fingers on her wrist to gauge her pulse. Kseniya closed her eyes for a moment and forced her mind to make sure the glamor came across as fully tactile clothing.
Kali, the tall, pale-skinned woman with a short black bob and thick bangs on her forehead, came over and knelt by her side. “What happened?”
“Excuse me? Who the fuck are you?” Djibril railed.
“They’re … friends,” Kseniya said, her breathing suddenly stilted as her control over her glamor faltered and she had to focus on the clothing.
Djibril was by her side a second later. “What’s wrong?”
“Hypovolemic shock,” the man said.
“What?” Kali asked her husband, Ash Gilfoy, a paramedic with the London Ambulance Service.
“Loss of blood. I’d say at least twenty percent of her blood flow and fluid supply given the apparent symptoms, but I believe she can pull through.”
“I think she took a bullet,” Djibril said.
Ash shook his head. “I can patch her up and get her on a blood transfusion. It will take a whil
e, but it should do the trick. If needs be, we’ll get her to Prague.”
“Prague? But it’s a bullet! You should be removing it or something, no?” he continued, the frustration evident in his tone now.
“Removing a bullet can actually cause more damage than good. The reason they removed bullets in the past was because these were made from lead, which could bring on lead poisoning if left inside the body. If she recovers, we don’t touch it,” Ash said.
He was echoing her own thoughts, but she was too tired to speak now. The glamor must not falter. Only Alexis knew of her dragon origins. These two didn’t.
“Remind me again, Anna Pavlovna,” Ash said. “AB-negative, right?”
She nodded. That very rare blood type was something all dragons shared.
“Well, you’re in luck,” he said. “I have just the thing for you. AB plasma,” he continued as he started an I.V. line and got the fluid running into her veins.
Her system’s initial reaction was to block the intrusive element, and pain hit her from all sides, her body desperate to arch off the floor from the horrendous assault. But humans wouldn’t react that way to a plasma transfusion, so she had to keep herself in check. It took all she had, but she gritted her teeth and fought.
“What happened?” Kali asked.
She peeked to find the woman—the Corpus’ most deadly assassin—addressing Djibril over her prone body.
“I don’t know!” he yelled. “Can anybody tell me what the hell is going on here?”
The anger and frustration inside him couldn’t be concealed, and the volatile emotions caused a surge of hot flames to flare up inside her as she proved unable to contain his fire power inside her. The sudden outburst shattered her composure, and, as she held on so very hard to her glamor, darkness started creeping in on her.
She would be going under soon, and she couldn’t let this situation run off before she’d spoken to Djibril.
“Gabe,” she gasped. When he dropped by her side again, she let her eyes flutter closed. “I’m sorry.”
7
Djibril had no idea how long he sat there on the floor, yearning to cradle an unconscious Kiki in his arms but prevented from doing so—something about needing to keep her flat on her back, especially her head.
At some point, the guy—Ash, apparently, and the woman was Kali—came to tell him they needed to transfer her to the small bed set against one wall. After showing Djibril how to handle her to avoid spreading damage—he insisted he’d be the one to perform that task—he picked her up and gingerly deposited her on the mattress, trying to ignore the musty odor of the sheets and pretty much the entire space.
Getting on his knees by her side, he reached out to push away a few stray tendrils of hair off her face. How beautiful she looked like this. How peaceful, as though merely sleeping. She’d lost a lot of blood, though, and this showed on her face, paler than usual and also clammy to the touch.
As the other man spoke, he got all the equipment ready to give her the blood she needed. The process took him a good few minutes, requiring several trips in and out of the secret room. Djibril refrained from asking how he had known to bring enough stuff to turn this shithole into an emergency room. Leaving the cellar again for a bit after he’d hooked Kseniya to a heart monitor, he returned with a large cooler and set it carefully on the table. Opening it with disposable gloves, he removed the packet and put it in a tray hooked up to a machine plugged into the wall socket. The thing started to shake. When it stopped, he grabbed the pouch and hung it up on a portable unit next to her bed.
“We know her blood type,” Ash started.
AB—all dragons had that rare type. Only zero point six percent of the human population had such blood, especially with a negative Rhesus factor. They had it in stock here?
“That device I just used will make sure there are no clots in the pouch when we give the blood to her,” he explained to him as one would a child.
All this time, Kali sat quietly on a chair, hands on her lap. Not a word or sound came from her, though her piercing blue-gray eyes missed not a thing happening inside the room.
Crouching down by her side, Ash studied her arm. “Bloody hell, this is not good. I don’t understand how her veins could’ve kinked already; it’s not that cold in here.”
So Ash didn’t know she was an ice dragon. Her nature would’ve taken over, especially in times of duress like this.
“I’ll get it, though,” he said in a low tone, as if talking to himself, before removing the catheter and picking up her other arm. After using a tourniquet and tapping the crease of her elbow, he deftly placed in another catheter and removed the needle, then affixed the tube leading to the pouch. “All done,” he said with a smile in his tone and on his face.
He turned around and eyed Djibril.
“Hey, changing the subject for a sec. I prefer Formula One to tennis, but I know a champ when I see one. Hard to miss when that face is all over social media and the big sports mags.”
Djibril realized that with all that had happened, his glamor had worn off—or he’d let it go, instinctively putting all his reserves into this most urgent situation. He’d felt it when Kseniya had wrapped more of it around them just outside the bar, and he’d used his energy to feed hers as it had kept the magical disguise around them.
He simply nodded, his gaze never leaving the woman lying on the bed.
After checking her blood pressure, temperature, and pulse, Ash sat back on his haunches. The man exchanged a nod with Kali, the gesture reeking of complicity and that kind of sixth sense entente long-time couples developed as the years passed. These two were together, then? Yes, the thick gold bands on their left ring fingers didn’t lie. He still had no idea who Kali was, though, other than Ash’s wife. At first glance, with her pale skin, black hair, and delicate features that immediately screamed Russian origins to him, she could almost pass for Kseniya’s sister.
So, another sibling he didn’t know of? How many secrets shrouded this woman? He also couldn’t dismiss the guns—
“How do you know her?” Ash asked, breaking through his thoughts.
“Just … happened to be in the same place at the same time once,” he replied vaguely, unsure how much he should tell him, and not in the mood for small talk.
“Huh-uh.”
The blood snaked down the pipe, making its way to her veins, promising life. Why did it go so slow?
“This will take a few hours,” Ash said. “And we probably need a couple more of these to replenish what she’s lost. Even then, however, she might be weak for a while.”
Djibril sank his teeth into his lower lip and sucked on it.
In response to a question he held off asking, because he couldn’t bring himself to, Ash said, “She’ll be fine—just give her a bit of time. She’ll be back to her old self, I’m sure.”
So, the man was also a mind reader, it seemed. Or maybe just experienced enough to know what anyone would ask in such a situation.
He sighed when Ash and Kali left the room quietly, as though knowing he needed space to process what had just happened. Standing to his feet, he paced the room, running a hand over his head, feeling the regrowth. He slumped into the chair he’d occupied earlier, his back to her. She’d be under for a while, Ash had said, her hemorrhagic shock potent though not catastrophic …
Resting his head in his hands, he shook it, still in disbelief. What had all this been about? It should’ve been so simple, right? But no. It had been … He didn’t even know how to describe it all, much less relate it in a manner that would come across as sane. In his mind, he went over everything he’d done from the moment he’d arrived at Fire Island in response to his father’s summons. He could hardly believe it had barely been a couple of days since then.
Kseniya had taken a bullet. Another seemed to have narrowly missed her. He’d shot a gun, hitting his target. Had he killed that woman? Had he snuffed out a life, just like that? In all his years, he’d never engaged in so m
uch as a scuffle, with the exception of his capoeira training. He’d been taught to settle arguments with dignity and diplomacy. Well, sometimes, that shit didn’t work, but to the point that you had to shoot a bullet? His world didn’t have that, and he hated that—hated the fact he’d had to do it.
But hers did, though.
This woman, the ice dragon he’d made love with last night—she could kill someone at the drop of a hat. She’d been prepared for it, too. Trained for it.
So what, now?
Some moments in life define us—bringing out the persons we are, shaping the ones we become, and separating the part of us we project to the world versus the one we hold close to us, visible only to a few. We hide what we wish to hide from those who might not understand us. Kiki had hidden a great deal from him. Fair enough—until recently, they’d been nothing more than enemies who’d never crossed paths.
What were they now?
Separately, they’d lived out a succession of experiences and milestones that had led them here.
Djibril could count several important moments over the course of his relatively short existence—the day his sister was born, the day he first shifted into dragon form, the time his coach had told him he had what it takes to be a star athlete after winning his first tennis game, then taking the cup in his first championship.
There’d been so many firsts, bad and good, like the first time he’d made love. Not a memorable experience, but a coming of age thing.
And past all that, the black moments. The first time his heart had been broken—a young, tender heart back then. The first instance the paparazzi got a hold of him, and that time he’d been first maligned, his private life put on every front street through words all twisted up with lies in the gossip papers. Since then, he’d enjoyed offering them a taste of what they sought. They wanted dirt? He could give them that.
But no, those times hadn’t been the worst. Filling his mind now was the moment he’d realized Kseniya had been shot, and then when she’d lost consciousness.
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