"Visit us again soon." Zorana had been only sixteen when she'd moved with Konstantine to the United States, and her accent was almost imperceptible. "We miss your visits."
Miss Joyce cackled. "I was up here every week while your kids were in school. Tonight really brought back the memories." She looked at the boys, still covered with soot and grinning, then at Firebird. 'They almost made me quit teaching."
"Luckily for us, no one else would take the job." Jasha hugged his old teacher around the shoulders.
"Because of you kids. The Wilder Demons. The worst kids in the state." Miss Joyce's voice rang with pride. For thirty years in their tiny town of Blythe, she'd been the schoolteacher for grades seven through twelve. So when Konstantine's oldest had entered seventh grade, the elementary school teacher had breathed a sigh of relief, and Miss Joyce had girded her loins for battle.
Luckily, she'd had a lot of experience teaching— by then she'd taught for eleven years in a high school on the Houston ship channel, and after the incident with a student involving a knife that resulted in her six months' stay in the hospital, she'd come to Blythe and taught. No teacher wanted to instruct forty kids of different ages in a single classroom, so Miss Joyce had continued long past sixty-five. She said teaching kept her young, and maybe that was right. Only when Firebird graduated and Miss Joyce retired did she develop a dowager's hump and begin to use a cane.
But her eyes sparkled as brightly as ever.
"Do you need someone to drive you home?" Rurik asked. " can take you."
"You're just trying to get out of cleaning up," Firebird said. "I'll take her."
The children began to squabble, but Miss Joyce held up a hand and an almost magical silence fell. "The Szarvas family brought me. I'll return with them."
"I've got to learn how to do that hand thing," Kon-stantine muttered.
"It's too late for you, Hubov maya." Zorana patted his cheek. "Let us help River and Sharon Szarvas load up their guests. Some of them are much the worse for drink."
The Szarvases were artists of some note—Sharon painted amazing landscapes; River and their daughter, Meadow, fashioned beautiful, magnificent works in glass—and every night the floors of their rambling old house and their barn studio were full of sleeping bags and cots as other artists, young and old, came to leam and to serve as apprentices at the feet of their masters. The master artists used all their money to pay for food, blankets, heat, and teachers for their students.
They were good people.
Tonight they'd brought five students. Five students whose eyes had lit up at the sight of the loaded table. The three guys and two women who talked incessantly about their art. They'd eaten their own weight in blini. And they'd drunk—too much.
Now Konstantine threw one thin, pale, lank, unconscious young man over his shoulder and carried him to the rusty Volkswagen van.
Sharon and Zorana walked behind, their hands full of baskets and blankets, chatting about the day and the town and the weather.
River walked with Konstantine. "Sometimes the kids've got no talent, but they want it so badly they come and stay with us in the hopes it will rub off. And that's fine—maybe they'll catch a whiff of the fever."
Konstantine nodded. This boy probably didn't weigh 130 pounds dripping wet, but he was heavy enough to make Konstantine gasp. Must be getting old.
"This young guy"—River nodded at the man over Konstantine's shoulder—"he's been with us for a week. Hasn't done a thing the whole time, just watched everyone create and learn. Sharon and I, we thought he was one of those, the ones with no talent. But you wouldn't believe what he did tonight. I can't wait to show you."
"Show me?" Konstantine didn't have the breath to say more.
"Right before he passed out, he told me it was a gift to Zorana." River shook his head. "It's amazing. Extraordinary."
A tingle shot through Konstantine's hands where he touched the young man. Odd. Disturbing.
"Fling him in there." River opened the door to the van. "This kid so has a crush on Firebird.”
Konstantine placed the limp boy on the carpeted floor.
River gathered a towel-wrapped something out of the front seat. "Come on."
They headed back toward the fire and leftovers stacked on platters and the neighbors visiting before the drive home.
Sharon and Zorana followed, prodded by curiosity.
"Look!" River placed the thing on the table and pulled the towels away.
The still-damp lump of clay had been formed into a statue of Firebird. The boy artist had captured her as she stood with one hand on her hip, the other on her belly, watching the children play.
"My God." Zorana backed away. "My God. It is ... Firebird."
"It's perfect." Konstantine threw the towel over the statue. "It's lovely!"
They didn't understand. None of the people here, the American people, understood. Zorana was a Gypsy. She was superstitious. Her people did not give life to lumps of clay, and this statue . . . this statue was amazing. Lifelike.
Eerie.
Zorana backed into Firebird's arms.
"Is that like me, Mama? I don't see it." Firebird hugged Zorana and whispered in her ear. "It's okay, Mama. It's okay."
Zorana slid an arm around her daughter's waist. She was so tiny beside Firebird, dark-skinned and dark-eyed where Firebird was fair and blond, and she allowed Firebird to comfort her. To River, she said, "When your young man awakes, thank him for his art."
River nodded. He was an artist. He saw things most men did not. He understood things most men did not. . . but he didn't understand why the Wilder family hated that statue.
The neighbors from the surrounding farms, from the Chinese restaurant in town, from the only burger drive-in for fifty miles, lined up to say good-bye.
Konstantine shook hands with everyone, so happy that they came, that each bore witness to his home, his family, his life here in America.
The Catholic priest Father Ambrose reluctantly quit playing poker and joined the line. He was a traveling priest, wandering the roads of western Washington and celebrating Mass in small-town living rooms and backyards. He was a good man.
Konstantine respected him. Konstantine feared him. Putting his hands behind his back, he bowed low to the priest.
Father Ambrose laughed. "I wish all Catholic boys were as respectful as you are, Konstantine Wilder. Someday I'll get you to come to Mass."
"Not even." Reverend Geisler, the Congregational-ist minister, shoved Father Ambrose aside. "When he comes to the light, he's mine."
Father Ambrose shoved back, laughing. "You're only interested in his tithes, you self-serving Protestant."
Reverend Doreen, the New Age minister, walked up behind them. "Everyone knows Konstantine Wilder is already in the Eght."
The two men rolled their eyes.
But all three were preachers of the Word, and Konstantine bowed to them all, but did not take their hands.
At last, the party was over. The last taillights had disappeared down the road. The dust settled. The family stood alone around the bonfire while the flames died down to a huge tumble of red embers.
A thin thread of smoke connected the earth to the heavens. The crimson glow bathed their faces, and Konstantine felt the first rumbling in his gut, that animal instinct that foretold trouble.
But they'd lived here for so long. So long. They were safe here.
"We are a normal American family? Papa, you have guts!"
Konstantine allowed Rurik's laughter to comfort him. '''What?" He spread his hands wide. "We are a normal American family."
"Yeah, if normal American families grow grapes, speak Russian, and transform themselves into wild animals at will." Jasha was unsmiling, unamused.
"So." Konstantine shrugged. "Not so many Americans speak Russian."
Zorana slipped her arm around his waist and squeezed.
"I don't transform myself into a wild animal at will, and I'm part of this family." Firebi
rd smiled her old, pert smile, the one that had been missing since she'd returned from college. "Do you, Mama?"
"No, I don't transform myself, either."
"Once a month you both turn into bears," Jasha muttered.
"We do not talk about that. Those are women's matters." Konstantine frowned at his unruly sons.
"Like laundry, “ Rurik said.
"Oh, man. You are in such trouble now." Jasha backed out of the way.
Konstantine thought so, too.
But Zorana didn't slap Rurik. Instead she looked up at Konstantine and said, "You didn't talk about Adrik."
Pain stabbed at Konstantine's heart, but he answered steadily, "Adrik is dead to us."
"No." Zorana shook her head.
"Dead to us," he repeated. His family watched him, all hurting for the loss of their brother. But Konstantine was the patriarch. He had to remain strong.
Adrik had disobeyed him. He had reveled in his power to change, and the change had taken him deep into the heart of evil.
How well Konstantine knew that heart. Sometimes, at night, he felt as if he lived there still.
Every intimation of sun had disappeared. The moon hid her face, and the stars blazed like bits of broken glass in a black velvet sky.
The Wilders stood alone in the vastness of the primal forest. Alone . . . and yet their brothers and sisters stirred in the underbrush. The breeze ruffled the tree branches, and the cedars scented the cooling air.
Zorana broke Konstantine's hold on her. She turned her back to her family and stood with her hands clenched tightly. "I hate that thing."
"What thing?" Jasha hadn't seen it.
"Mama, leave it alone." Firebird sensed the wrong-ness, too.
"It's not right." Zorana tossed the towels away from the figure the artist boy had made. "It's not right." In sudden frenzy of action, she attacked the soft clay, smashing it with her fists.
"No, Mama. No!" Firebird caught her mother's arm.
And everybody froze.
No one knew why. They only knew something had happened.
Or something was about to happen.
Slowly Zorana turned and faced the embers, and she was . . . different. A stranger.
Her voice, when she spoke, was low, deep, smooth.
Not hers. Not his wife's. Not Zorana's.
"Each of my four sons must find one of the Varinski icons."
"Four . . . sons?" Konstantine looked at his children. At his two sons, at his daughter . . . and he thought about the only son left, his Adrik.
"Only their loves can bring the holy pieces home." Zorana's eyes were black—and wild. "A child will perform the impossible. And the beloved of the family will be broken by treachery . . . and leap into the fire."
Zorana was in a trance.
Before she married Konstantine, she had been the One, the female of her tribe who saw the future. But from the time he had seized her and taken her from her people, she had never had a vision.
Now it was as if all the repressed prophecies had overtaken her.
Zorana raised her hand and, one by one, pointed at her children.
"The blind can see, and the sons of Oleg Varinski have found us."
Jasha straightened and as if he could command the tides, he said, "Mother, stop this at once."
Foolish lad.
She didn't hear him. She was not now of this earth. "You can never be safe, for they will do anything to destroy you and keep the pact intact."
Her finger steadied and pointed at Konstantine. "If the Wilders do not break the devil's pact before your death, you will go to hell and be forever separated from your beloved Zorana. . . ."
"Mama, why are you saying this? Why are you talking about yourself as if you're not here?" Firebird's voice tottered on the edge of hysteria.
"And you, my love—" Zorana's eyes filled with tears, and for the first time, Konstantine realized that she was not gone, but here, and she knew exactly what she was saying. "You are not long for this earth. You are dying."
Answering tears sprang to his eyes. He couldn't breathe for the weight of his sorrow. like a feral cat, the nagging pain in his chest dug its claws into his flesh and tore the flesh from the bones. Bright colored lights flashed in his brain.
And like a great felled oak, he crashed to the ground.
Chapter 2
All her life, Ann Smith had followed the rules. When she laughed, she covered her mouth with her hand to muffle the sound. When she cried, she cried in the privacy of her apartment. She didn't use the /-word except for that time when she dropped the casserole and spread lasagna all over the kitchen floor, and even then, she had been alone.
Of course. She was single, and always alone.
She dressed appropriately, first for a typist, then for a secretary, then for the executive assistant to the president of Wilder Wines.
So what was she doing driving from California to Washington, on her own initiative, adorned in her new, inappropriate clothes, to deliver important papers to her boss's vacation home on the coast?
What else? She was in love. In love with Jasha Wilder.
Yeah. Who wasn't?
He was tall, six three and a half. Which was good, because she was six feet in her stocking feet. Or her stalking feet, as her friend Celia Kim said. He had the face of a fallen angel: dark hair, dark brows, long, dark, curly lashes that framed eyes a most peculiar shade of gold, and a tattoo that rippled down one arm from his shoulder to his wrist. The tattoo twisted like two snakes twining together, dark and mysterious against his tanned skin; silly, but it made her feel as if they had something extraordinary in common. Not that she ever wanted to explain to him what it was—or even could.
The eyes, the tattoo, and the height made him look dangerous, which he wasn't, at least as long as you didn't oppose him in business.
Then he got his way, every single time.
He had a jutting nose, and a smiling mouth with the most beautiful, gleaming white teeth Ann had ever seen.
Most important, at least for her, was his body. It was perfect. Broad shoulders tapered to a sculpted butt that made her fingers itch to squeeze it. Or them, depending on how one viewed the matter.
She saw his bare legs every day when he came into tine office, sweating from his run, and she could testify that his calves and thighs deserved to be licked. Repeatedly. She would, too, if she had a lot of guts and another job to go to.
Not that she couldn't have; she was an excellent administrative assistant, and other wineries and restaurants throughout the Napa Valley had made offers.
She refused them all. Jasha Wilder operated only one company, and she was interested only in Jasha Wilder.
That was why she was here, driving along Highway 101 as it clung to the cliffs along the coast, the treacherous, narrow two lanes trapped between the raging ocean and the primal forest, and sometimes dipping down between the raging ocean and the rocky cliffs.
Since the tiny Washington town she'd passed twenty-five miles back, she hadn't seen a single house or car, nothing more than a few stray seagulls fighting the wind. She knew that was right; when Jasha bought this place, he'd bought the land for twenty miles in every direction. He said he liked to be alone, but the isolation had begun to prey on her. What if her car broke down?
But she had her cell phone, fully charged, in her purse, and anyway, the car wouldn't break down. The Miata was brand-new and sporty, just the right car for her new image. Like the new clothes, the new hair, the new makeup, the laser eye correction, the new boobs—okay, Jasha paid her well, very well, but she hadn't been able to afford new boobs. Still, she had bought a Wonderbra that gave her wonder boobies. She was an all-new Ann!
She rolled down the window to let the wind blow through her shoulder-length hair, and pressed on the gas, determined to whip around the corners like the professional driver in the commercial.
Do not try this at home!
The wind blasted through the window, to
ssing one artfully highlighted strand in her mouth. She spit it out. Another strand whipped into her eyes. She blinked. When she pried one eye open in time to see a curve, coming fast, she swerved. Overcorrected. With a sickening thump, the tires dropped off the pavement and onto the narrow' shoulder. In a panic, she took her foot off the gas. The car fishtailed. Branches slapped at the side mirror.
She managed to guide the car back onto the road and slowed almost to a crawl, shaking, and so, so glad no one had seen her make a fool of herself. Taking a long breath, she returned to her former reasonable and legal speed, and maintained it through the curves.
She checked the odometer. She still had another five miles to go before she reached the turn to Jasha's house. Then she would see him, and explain about the phone call and the documents, and it would be so close to evening he'd have to let her stay. She'd worn casual oatmeal linen pants with the tight-fitting pumpkin camisole that bared her arms—quite buff after workouts at the gym—and emphasized her narrow waist.
But it was a lot easier to be brave and consider seducing Jasha when she was in Napa, surrounded by grapevines and tourist buses and expensive hotels and civilization. Not here on this wild coast, fighting the wind that blew in gusts off the ocean, seeing the branches thrashing with ever-increasing vigor, watching the gray clouds whipping in ragged streams across the silver blue sky.
If she hadn't been watching the odometer, she would have missed the turn into Jasha's estate.
Tall rhododendrons hid the entrance and once she slammed on the brakes and made the corner, she was on a gravel road so narrow, if she met another car, one of them would have to give way. Her beautiful new car dropped into pothole after pothole, and indignantly she remembered the bill she'd received from the paving company.
And Jasha had signed the check to pay them.
Two hundred feet in, she passed between two stone pillars topped with snarling lions. Suddenly she was driving on asphalt. Here the forest pressed close, deep green, ancient, and lofty.
The road took a wide curve, turning west until she thought she would drive out over the ocean.
Darkness Chosen 01: Scent of Darkness Page 2
