Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Chapter Four

  Even though it was after midnight in Los Angeles, the big house behind the high walls was still showing many lights in its windows.

  Sasha looked up at them, pleased that he would not be waking anyone.

  The guard handed him back his passport. “It does appear you’re on the list, Mr. Mikhailov.” He stumbled over the pronunciation. Sasha had heard worse efforts and didn’t comment.

  “I’ll let you through the gate,” the guard said. “Another guard will let you into the house. You’ll have to go down to the back door, though. This late at night, all the humans will be asleep.”

  Sasha blinked at the man’s implied referral to vampires. It was very casual. If the man had been working for Patrick Sauvage for very long, then he might well be used to vampires.

  In Russia, vampires were still spoken of in whispers. None had declared themselves publicly. They were afraid to. The GRU and other Russian authorities were keeping a careful eye on them, anyway. That had made Marcus incredibly angry, when he had learned about it. “You lot are so freaking paranoid, you make people become enemies because of it!” he’d railed.

  Sasha thought of Rick. He had seen the report on his seat screen on the flight over from Russia. It had not upset him that Marcus had not reached out to him, that he’d learned about Rick’s death via a public news broadcast. No one would have known how to find him, anyway. For the last four months he had kept moving. The passport he had used at LAX was not the same one he had just shown the guard. Such measures were habits, now. Purely automatic.

  He made his way around the house, following a path set with Spanish tiles. There were flower borders on either side and little lights set in among the leaves, illuminating the path. As he moved, Sasha looked up at the house. It was much larger than it appeared even at the gate. There was far more of it going farther back than there was facing the gate.

  The path split, with one half of it heading off in the same direction, to bend around what looked like a greenhouse attached to the back of the house. The other turned and ran up to a door with a little portico over it and a light shining on the step below.

  The door opened as Sasha stood deciding which path to take. A man held the door open. “You’re Marlen?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

  “Sasha Mikhailov.”

  “Mikhailov. That’s the name Jerry said. Come in.”

  Sasha went over to the door. Over the man’s shoulder, he could see a big country-style kitchen, with copper pots hanging over the large gas range built into the island in the middle. There were café curtains on a bay window and an oval table tucked into the curve of the bay, that matched the bow of the window precisely. There was a laptop open on the table.

  Sasha let his gaze flicker over the man holding the door open for him. He was wearing a cotton jacket, even though the night was still sweltering. That would be where he had his main gun. From the hang of his jeans, Sasha guessed there was another smaller gun strapped to his ankle.

  This, then, was the interior guard.

  “How come you say Sasha when your passport says something else?” the guard asked as Sasha drew closer.

  His tone was friendly, although Sasha wasn’t fooled. “My full name is Marlen Alexandrovich Mikhailov,” he explained.

  The guard didn’t move out of the way. “So?” he said, puzzled.

  Sasha resisted rolling his eyes. This was the States, he reminded himself. “Sasha is short for Alexander,” he said.

  “Alex is short for Alexander,” the guard replied.

  “Not in Russia.” Sasha waited patiently, not forcing the issue.

  The guard finally relented. “The house is full of vampires,” he said. “If you try anything you won’t get far.”

  “They’re not out hunting right now?” Sasha said and stepped into the kitchen. The air conditioning was on, making the room cool and comfortable.

  “Not tonight,” the guard said. “There’s been a family upset.”

  “I heard about it on the plane.” Sasha let out a heavy breath.

  The guard sat back at the table. “Mr. Sauvage will be down in a moment. The front gate would have alerted him you were coming in. Take a seat, if you want.”

  “I have been sitting for far too long already, thank you.” He leaned against the island, keeping his hands down by his sides. The guard was good. He was watching Sasha even while he appeared to be staring at the laptop. He would keep Sasha in his sight until Patrick had cleared him. So Sasha kept his hands in view for the guy, so he could relax a bit.

  Sasha didn’t bother engaging him in small talk for the same reason. Besides, it always took a few hours for his English to reassert itself when he was back in an English-speaking country. He was too tired to reach for nouns and pronouns and all the slippery exceptions and rules.

  His heart was heavy for Marcus, too. They had never formally been brothers-in-law, yet in practice, they were. Sasha knew Marcus better than anyone else on the planet. Marcus would be devastated by Rick’s passing. The second great loss in his life…Marcus was too good a man to deserve such sorrow.

  Patrick Sauvage came into the room. He moved with a cat-like silence and Sasha jerked upright, startled by his sudden appearance.

  Patrick came right up to him. “Sasha. I remember you from Nial’s house, before the Summanus broke out of the stone.”

  “I was there when the stone was broken, too,” Sasha reminded him.

  Patrick nodded slowly. “Yes, I recall that now.” He grimaced. “Things have changed since then, haven’t they?”

  Sasha shrugged. “Things do change, if you wait long enough.”

  Patrick gave him a small smile. “That sounds very fatalistic. Very Russian. Are you here because of Rick? I mean…you and Marcus are related, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sasha said shortly, not bothering with the long tale that the strict truth would involve. “Marcus is in England, though.”

  “He and Ilaria have been in the air for forty minutes,” Patrick said. “They’ll be here by morning. We thought it best to keep them here, surrounded by vampires and the best security money can buy.”

  Sasha nodded. “Good. That is very good, yes. I would like to see him, to speak of my regret.”

  Patrick looked at him with a patient expression.

  Sasha shrugged. “I am not here for anything, although if I can help with anything at all, I will.”

  Patrick frowned. “Running away, Sasha?”

  “Something like that,” Sasha said. “A strategic retreat.”

  “I know what those are all too well.” Patrick’s smile this time was warmer. Sasha remembered from the American TV and internet that the most famous star in Hollywood was now the most successful Summanus hunter in America, which had only made him even more famous and beloved.

  Patrick stirred and let his arms drop from the defensive cross over his chest he had been holding them in. “There’s room here, if you’d like to stay. Do you have luggage?”

  “My bag is with the gate guard,” Sasha said. He’d left it there so he wouldn’t be slowed down and would have both hands free. That had also been automatic, for he had been heading into unknown territory.

  “I’ll have it sent to the house,” Patrick told him, “although you might not get it until tomorrow. We don’t insist anyone move around too much at night. I imagine it’s like that in Russia, too.”

  “In Russia, there is a curfew. The patrols shoot anything that moves after dark and are not challenged if they do. It only took two civilian deaths for the people to realize the curfew was not negotiable and stay indoors.”

  Patrick looked at him sideways as he led him through a very large room with a very high roof and huge windows on either side. It appeared that this room was the center of the house. It took up the entire width of the house. There were groups of sofas and armchairs here and there and a gleaming grand piano in one corner by the window.

  There were rooms on the other side of the big one
, with closed doors, all except one, from where normal incandescent light shone. Sasha could hear the murmur of voices. Patrick was leading him there.

  From the big windows on the west side of the room came a muffled, thudding bass beat.

  Sasha looked at it, frowning. For the windows to vibrate with the beat of the music playing outside, the music had to be very loud. Out in the open, without walls to bounce off, sound played at a normal volume dispersed too quickly.

  “The neighbors don’t complain about the noise?” he asked.

  Patrick grimaced. “They’ve given up. It’s directional, anyway—it doesn’t sound nearly as loud on either side of the house. Just here, where the pool house directs the sound right against the windows. I think it’s louder than it is in the pool house. Not that I’ve tested it.”

  “You have someone out in the pool house?” The idea of a whole house devoted to swimming pursuits and the activities that took place next to a pool was a strange one. In Russia, people pursued leisure activities indoors, or they took them right out into the country. Swimming was not high on that list. Despite visiting western worlds frequently and living in the States for a whole year, Sasha still found little oddities like this one amusing.

  Patrick actually sighed. “You haven’t met Azarel yet, have you?”

  Sasha knew the name from conversations with Marcus. “The Serene One who became human to experience humanity properly? So we could all be judged fairly by the Serene Ones?”

  “That’s him.” Patrick glanced out the window once more, his frown growing deeper.

  “If he is human, shouldn’t he be sleeping?” Sasha asked. “It is only fools like me who have been using heavier-than-air travelling machines that are still awake.”

  Patrick shook his head. “When you meet him, you’ll understand. Azarel has embraced humanity more thoroughly than any of us expected.” He turned his back on the windows deliberately and started moving again. “Nial and the others are in the office. You should say hello before you go upstairs.”

  They stepped into the room where the light was shining. There were banks of computer servers in the far corner and long tables holding up a small army of computers and peripherals, supplies and equipment. One of the long tables ran down the middle of the room and Sebastian and Nial were sitting behind a computer each.

  Nial was reading his screen, while Sebastian typed with dexterous speed. They both looked up as they entered.

  Sebastian got to his feet. He didn’t smile. “Sasha. You heard then.” He held out his hand, over the top of the screen. “It’s good to see you.”

  Sasha shook his hand. Sebastian didn’t crush his fingers. Vampires, as a rule, tended to overcompensate for their great strength and most often, their handshakes were pathetic things.

  “I was already on my way here when I heard about Rick. I’m sorry, Nial. His loss is enormous. Not just in the war against the Summanus do I mean, either.”

  Nial got to his feet. “We’re all sorry. It’s a blow. Although, if that is not what brought you here, what did? No one has been able to find you for weeks.”

  “I did a deep dive,” Sasha said. “Even that wasn’t enough, so I bailed completely.” He took a breath and let it out. “The GRU are going to make a move against vampires, Nial. I thought you and your friends should know, only I couldn’t reach out from Russia or the GRU would have found me.”

  “You’re on the run from the GRU?” Sebastian said. He blew out his breath. “Wow.”

  “I did not agree with them that vampires are the reason we have been blighted with the Summanus.” Sasha rubbed his neck, feeling the dull, impotent anger that had been his status quo for weeks. “You must understand. It is a Russian thing. We cannot defeat the Summanus. Therefore, those who decide such things will ignore them. At the same time, doing nothing is also intolerable, so they will focus on what they can do. Dealing with vampires is something they can do, so they will do it with zeal.”

  Nial pinched the skin over the bridge of his nose. “I’m guessing ‘dealing’ with vampires will not be simple interrogation, either.”

  “Russian interrogation is anything but simple,” Sasha said gently. “The problem is, even though we have registered and kept track of vampires inside Russia for the last ten years, my leaders in the GRU are convinced there are far more out there they are not aware of.”

  Patrick shook his head. “That’s bad. Wholesale paranoia distorts judgement.”

  Sasha sighed. “I do not remember the cold war. It was before my time, although I suspect the secrecy and suspicion driving the GRU is much as it was back in the days when they thought there was an American under every bed.”

  “How soon before they start rounding people up?” Nial asked quietly.

  “I do not know,” Sasha told him truthfully. “When my opposition to their plans drew the attention of the wrong people, I took a sudden vacation and never arrived in Kaliningrad, where I said I was going.” He shrugged. “There are others in the GRU who also think their plans are wrong, although they will be more circumspect in their opposition and will merely slow down the decision process. My personal history with vampires would have made them look at me sideways anyway. I could afford to be vocal, only it cut me off from all but emergency communications. I will hear when the operation begins, not before. I am sorry.”

  “For what?” Sebastian asked.

  “If I had been more careful, I could still be there, a resource that would actually be useful to you.”

  “Not if they were already suspicious about you,” Nial said. “Don’t worry about it. We can use you here, if you’ve a mind to help us.”

  “Of course,” Sasha told him, relieved. If Nial was making the offer unprompted, then his help was genuinely needed. He had been uncomfortable about arriving unheralded and expecting them to welcome him freely.

  Patrick rested his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you to a room. You can get a few hours’ sleep before the morning madness begins.”

  “Madness?” Sasha asked as Patrick headed back to the big room and over to the grand, sweeping stairs that curved up to the second floor, there.

  “I had no idea how much noise three teenagers getting ready for school could generate,” Patrick said. “Even in this big house, they seem to rattle the architraves.”

  “Azarel at night, teenagers in the morning. You have your hands full,” Sasha said politely. He didn’t mind children. There were no children in his life, although at one point, he had been braced to become an uncle. Katya and the child she had been carrying were years dead.

  “Oh, my three put Azarel to shame,” Patrick said, sounding suddenly wise and old. “If you sleep through it, count your blessings.”

  Chapter Five

  Francesca cracked open the sliding glass door of the pool house and wrinkled her nose at the aroma that washed over her like an invisible, billowing cloud. She recognized stale macoña and resisted the need to cross herself. Marijuana was no longer a thing of the devil.

  Then she corrected herself. The world was not black and white. Things were never simply good or bad. There were shades and variations and degrees. So said Dominic. He had been saying such things all his life, teasing her when she was a child. Now she was in America, though. Dominic was once more alive when she had thought him dead, so now she tended to listen more carefully to his advice.

  So Francesca pushed the door fully aside to let the room air out and stepped inside, hauling the heavy bucket of cleaning supplies inside with her. She put it on the floor and looked around, wondering where to start.

  The room was blazing with sunshine, for the early morning sun was almost directly in front of the pool house. The pool house was all glass walls on this side, looking out over the big blue-green curved pool. Opposite the pool was the big house, where Francesca was lucky enough to live.

  This room was her focus, for now. It was a mess. There were dirty glasses littering the coffee table in front of the sofa. The sofa cush
ions were scattered over the tiled floor. Pizza boxes were strewn across the sofa, the table and the floor. At least one of them had the remains of pizza still inside, which added to the stench.

  The ashtrays were full and the tequila bottles were not. The glass bong sitting on the table still had dirty green water swirling at the bottom of it.

  There was also a plastic bag with capsules and tablets in a range of different sizes and colors. It lay open, the contents spilled onto the table, among the ashes and pizza bones and sticky rings of dried-up alcohol.

  Francesca might have supposed a party had happened last night, except this was the sight that greeted her every morning. She had learned to come prepared.

  With a sigh, she went back to the bucket and pulled out one of the plastic garbage bags at the bottom and unfolded it. First, the garbage. Then clean. Then decide on the best way to wake him.

  She only now glanced at the bed in the corner of the room, a flickering look to confirm he was there. He always was, although sometimes his sleep was so uneasy that not even the sheets survived his tossing. As he slept naked, Francesca had learned to just peek, first. Then, if it was safe, she could look more thoroughly and assure herself he had lived through the previous night’s excesses.

  Azarel was asleep, as always, lying face down. This morning the sheet was hooked up over his buttocks, hiding his bare flesh, so Francesca took a moment to listen for his breathing.

  He wasn’t alone in the bed. That was also usual. This morning there were two of them, both women, which seemed almost too ordinary for Azarel. Francesca had seen men, women and combinations before, including a man and two women, all tangled up with Azarel on the big bed like sleeping kittens exhausted from the night’s activities.

  She carefully didn’t speculate on what those activities were. She was a good Catholic girl and these days she needed her faith more than ever. She set about picking up the garbage, not worrying too much about the noise she made. Azarel could sleep through just about anything.