Grand Master (Demons, #3)

by Simcoe, Marina

  The sorrowful gaze of the fire lion rose in my mind once again. Was Vadim self-aware enough in this state to figure out how to find me?

  He had been able to accurately identify Keller during the first summons. But would his mind be sharp enough and his memory clear to note and remember the exact geographical location of this place?

  And if so, would the demons be fast enough to come to me in time?

  DID I HEAR SOME DISTANT voices outside, or did my frozen mind play tricks on me?

  Footsteps? My eyes closed, I jerked as the first drop of icy water hit my skin.

  Not footsteps. Raindrops pounded the packed dirt on the top of the dome outside.

  Lifting my eyelids, I felt big, fat drops of water hit my body in vaguely stinging shards that barely penetrated my awareness. Everything inside me was numb by now. My body seemed to have lost any feeling to cold or pain, too.

  Mesmerized, I watched light sparkle on the raindrops that floated down through the air as if in slow motion to splash against my skin.

  The thumping sound I’d heard grew louder, sounding like boots hitting stone. Had the rain gotten heavier?

  It didn’t seem to be the case . . . The sound got louder and closer.

  Warm light moved from the stairwell and into the room, but I paid no attention to it, hypnotized by the flying raindrops.

  “God Almighty! Jade!”

  Someone ran to me, touched my face, cupped my neck.

  “Say something, please.”

  Zayne, the name rose in my mind, connecting the voice to a face.

  I tried to do what he told me, but I couldn’t even open my mouth, let alone move my tongue. My body no longer felt like it belonged to me at all.

  With a screeching sound, the cuffs were wrenched from my wrists and legs.

  That’s right, demons are strong. It’s good to be strong, no one would ever keep you in cuffs against your will.

  He lifted me carefully off the ground, and I jerked from the agony of it. A weak moan left my sore throat.

  “Thank heaven, you’re alive.” Zayne lifted me in his arms, pressing me to the hard chest plates. He must be wearing Incubi armour, although I was positive he had no helmet on.

  I groaned again.

  “You’ll be fine now. I promise.” Holding the flashlight and me, he ran up the stairs, making an effort not to jolt my aching body too much. “If this is the last thing I’ll do in this world, Jade, I’ll make sure you’re well and healthy again soon.”

  OUTSIDE, THE NOISE increased by a thousand, with red and yellow lights hovering above us. It took me a few seconds to realise it was a large, black helicopter descending from the dark night sky. Its blades hurled shrapnel pieces of sand against my naked body, the stings felt strong enough to pierce my skin.

  Zayne turned his back to it, shielding me from the wind and rain, and I spotted several demons in their charcoal uniforms bring a group of women from the direction of the huts.

  An Incubus rushed to us, armoured but also without a helmet. Ilya.

  “Found her!” Zayne called to him over the noise of the helicopter.

  “How is she?”

  “Alive. I’m going to take her to the house now. Can you handle things here?”

  With a nod and a wave, Ilya jogged back to the women as Zayne jumped into the helicopter with me.

  “Get me some electrolytes and a blanket,” he ordered to someone inside.

  “Just a moment.” Boris, another Incubus I recognised from the Base, crawled from the front to us with a bag in his hand as the helicopter took off with a sway through the air.

  Settling on the floor, Zayne held me with one hand, taking his armour off with the other. He unzipped the grey jacket they all wore under the armour, and cradled me closer with only a thin t-shirt separating his skin from mine.

  The warmth of his body heat prickled over me as sensation returned to my limbs, bringing a new wave of pain.

  “How is she doing?” Boris asked, handing Zayne a bottle with pink liquid in it.

  “Some degree of hypothermia, dehydration,” Zayne reported before screwing off the lid of the bottle with his teeth. Boris inserted a drinking straw, and Zayne brought it to my lips. “Bruises . . .” He shifted my head to the cabin light. “She’s been beaten.” He heaved an inhale, the hardness of his chest pushing against my side. “I couldn’t even spot the life force in her right away. Wasn’t sure she was alive at all until she moaned.”

  I took a drink through the straw. The sweet-salty liquid washed the dryness from my mouth, my tongue felt like I could move it again.

  “Vadim . . .” My throat burned with pain.

  “He is with the search group up north.” Zayne stretched his jacket over both of us, and Boris tucked a reflective blanket all around me.

  “Dmitry and I,” Boris pointed at the pilot in the front, “will go get him after we drop you off.”

  As if he could hear his name through the headphones he was wearing, Dmitry looked over his shoulder with a wide smile. The chipped tooth in his mouth, as well as the signs of aging on his face, betrayed him as human.

  “Vadim has probably started hiking to the house already, the moment he got the message,” Zayne muttered.

  He shifted on the floor, settling both of us in a more comfortable position, then leaned back, his body relaxing. “He went berserk there for a while when he learned that you were gone. No, taken,” he corrected himself, with a wince.

  A flash of light from the front brushed across us, bringing out a huge, purple bruise on the side of his face.

  “Are you okay?” I gasped, making an attempt to lift my hand. “Did . . . he do this?”

  “I deserved it,” Zayne replied gloomily. “For letting them take you.”

  “Oh no.” I dropped my hand back into my lap, the effort proved too exhausting. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No. It’s me who should be sorry, Jade. And I am so, so much . . . I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, I’m sure I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You’re not to blame,” I said quietly. “There is nothing to forgive.”

  The last thing I wanted was for this terrible experience to drive us all apart in any way.

  “I’m still sorry,” Zayne whispered stubbornly, placing his chin on the top of my head.

  Chapter 38

  “WE RENTED THIS PLACE as soon as we got to Kazakhstan, to store equipment and re-group as needed,” Zayne told me when the helicopter landed about an hour later. “Vadim made sure it was comfortable enough to bring you here when we found you.”

  When not if. They had kept hope.

  Zayne gestured to the small cluster of lights far to the side as he walked from the helicopter, carrying me in his arms. “The village over there used to be a fishing town before the Aral Sea was drained in the last century. The water is coming back slowly now, but the life is slower to return here still.”

  The low, white structure, with small square windows, sat surrounded by sand dunes interspersed with short, sparse vegetation.

  He carried me through a spacious main room. The floor and walls inside were covered with large, colourful rugs. The bedroom had a low, wide bed where Zayne placed me on top of the quilt.

  “How are you feeling?” He brought more blankets over and wrapped me in them. While on the helicopter, I’d started to shiver violently, and the shakes wouldn’t seem to ease. “Much better. Thank you,” I managed, despite my chattering teeth.

  “Well, ‘better’ doesn’t say much, considering how I found you.” His features settled into a deep frown. “I’ll warm up some broth for you that Ilya left in the fridge.”

  “Is there a way to have a shower here?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “But it may take a few minutes. The house has cold running water, I’ll have to start the heater to warm it up.”

  Shaking uncontrollably, I wrapped my arms around my knees, drawing my legs in, and lay on my side as Zayne exited the room.

  Boris had said it
would take them about an hour to get Vadim. And right now it felt like an eternity. I desperately needed him with me. If I thought I could walk any distance, I’d start out hiking through the desert myself if it meant I could see him sooner.

  I was glad it wasn’t Vadim who found me, though. Knowing how strong his feelings for me could be, I was afraid that seeing me in the condition I’d been in would have crushed him.

  “In this part of the world, they drink from bowls.” Zayne walked in with a small clay bowl in his hands. “They don’t use spoons for drinking broth, but I can bring one if you prefer.”

  “No, I’m good. Thank you.” I smiled. “Chances are I’ll spill more using the spoon.”

  He sat on the bed next to me, holding the bowl out. Only now did I spot the bandages on his hands. Each finger was wrapped individually, and some were shorter than they should have been.

  “Zayne, what happened?” I leaned back, searching his eyes.

  “It will all heal in time,” he dismissed. “Drink.”

  The fragrant broth warmed me from the inside when I took a sip.

  “How did you get hurt?” I insisted. “Was it Vadim, too?”

  “No. It wasn’t him.” He stared at his hands for a few seconds, as if seeing the bandages for the first time. “I tried to stop the car.”

  “The night they took me?”

  He nodded.

  “I punched through the trunk with my fingers, but cut them when the car took off.”

  I stared at him in silence for a few moments, trying to imagine how it all happened.

  “I’m so sorry, Zayne,” I whispered. “It must have hurt so much.”

  “They’ll grow back.” He shrugged it off.

  “You regenerate body parts?” I knew Incubi didn’t heal quickly, and that they felt pain, just like humans did. This, however, was new.

  “There’d be much less of me by now if we didn’t.” Zayne smiled. “I’ve lost each limb at least once through the centuries.”

  “It must be awful.”

  “The truly awful thing is that I failed to stop them from taking you.” He got off the bed. “I’ll check if the water is warm enough. You finish your broth.”

  ZAYNE PUT ME IN THE tub and used the hose with a showerhead on it to wet my hair. I shampooed it the best I could. Then he scrubbed my back while I quickly washed everything else.

  At this point, I was way past feeling shy or self-conscious about being naked one on one with him. Well aware that Zayne had seen me writhing in the throes of passion on the table in the meeting room months ago, I hardly felt any trace of awkwardness being cared for by him now, just a sense of deep gratitude for helping me do what I couldn’t do on my own yet.

  The fact that he didn’t seem to be bothered by any of it either put me even more at ease. His movements were quick and efficient. Gentle enough, the touch of his hands with surgical gloves over the bandages was similar to that of a medical practitioner—caring but far from sensual.

  “What is going to happen to the women now?” I asked, as he rinsed the grime and dried blood off me, letting the dirty water drain. “I thought they all had run away.”

  “No, they hid in the huts.” He plugged the drain and started filling the tub with clean, warm water. “A few took off and hiked for hours to the nearest village. I heard about some women escaping a demon cult and managed to get someone from the village to show me the location the women talked about.”

  “So they still ended up helping me, even if unwittingly.”

  “It would have taken us much longer without them,” he agreed.

  The thought of the possibility of not being found at all came with an icy lick of fear.

  “Vadim didn’t know where the summons took place?”

  “No. When you’re summoned, you simply follow the call, without any clear sense of the geographical location or direction. Vadim made a conscious effort to memorize as much as he could see, though. So he was able to recognize the desert from the satellite shots, but we had a hard time narrowing it down. He kept talking about a building with a high dome ceiling, and that was what we searched for. That building, however, turned out to be mostly buried in the ground, with only the top of the roof partially visible from the air.”

  I hugged my knees tighter, watching the clean, warm water rise in the tub.

  “Will the women be able to go home?”

  “From my quick talk with some of them, most seem to be from the surrounding countries. Some are Russian, a few spoke English. Ilya and the others will question them all and see if they can be returned to their families.”

  “When can we go back to Minsk?”

  “As soon as you’re well enough to travel any sort of distance.” Zayne brushed his hand over his short, dark hair. “I hope before Saturday.”

  “Why Saturday?”

  He hesitated for a moment, then replied with a shy glance my way, “I have a date.”

  “You do? A date?” I stared at him in surprise. “Have you been seeing someone?”

  “Well, technically, no. Not yet.” He rolled his wide shoulders back and rubbed the back of his neck. “This would be our first date. Tanya is taking me to the movies.”

  “Tanya?” I’d thought they didn’t like each other, but they had obviously worked things out. “Do you like going to the movies?”

  “I’ve never been.” Sitting on the edge of the tub, he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I’ve watched a lot of television but haven’t been to a movie theatre yet.”

  “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.” The warm water almost reached my shoulders now. With most of me submerged, my shivering had slowly been subsiding. “Tanya is a good person, she’s been a great friend. Do you like her?”

  His chest rose with a deep inhale. “I do. But even though I can see her emotions, I’m still not sure what she thinks about me.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Yes. All the time she spoke to me, I haven’t said much. It’s so stupid, but I seem to forget all my words, in any language, when I’m one-on-one with her.”

  “Well. Going to the movies is a good choice for a date then.” I smiled, wishing to cheer him up. Talking about something as mundane as going to the movies brought a sense of normalcy to my reality, calming me, too. “You won’t be expected to talk much there—”

  The sound of loud footsteps caused panic to spike through me. Zayne rose to his feet, his damaged hands fisted at his side.

  “Jade!” Vadim burst through the closed door.

  In full uniform, with his helmet under his arm, he wildly swept the small bathroom with his gaze, stopping it on me—his eyes a dark-green storm.

  My heart thundered, and I gripped the edge of the tub with both hands, under the onslaught of emotions that filled me all at once at the sight of him—achy yearning, warm affection, blissful pleasure, and an overwhelming relief at seeing him, in flesh and blood, once again.

  “Leave,” he growled at Zayne, without taking his eyes off me. His chest heaved so hard he must have run to the house. I doubted he even waited for the helicopter to lower all the way to the ground before he leaped out of it.

  “Well.” Zayne calmly took the rubber gloves off, tossing them in the garbage. “If you need anything, Jade—”

  “She won’t.” Vadim threw his helmet in the corner.

  Zayne slapped his shoulder on the way to the door, and Vadim caught his hand, holding it in his for a second in a silent thank you, I realised.

  It was by far the biggest display of emotion I’d seen between the two—after spending centuries, living side by side, they didn’t appear to need words to communicate. I was glad to have the proof that there were no hard feelings between them after all. Zayne’s bruised face had me worried.

  As soon as Zayne left, Vadim moved my way, silently unclipping his armour. Chest and shoulder plates, bracers, the wide belt around his waist—with a loud clank each, he tossed them all into the corner with the helmet, one by one. He then ripped t
he rest of his clothes off.

  “My treasure,” he breathed out softly, getting in the tub with me and taking me into his arms.

  And I finally lost it.

  Wrapped in the warmth of his large body, safe and secure at once, I let all the fear, stress, and horror of the past two days drain from me in a torrent of tears.

  “He killed people there, Vadim.” I sobbed as he held me. “Slaughtered women like cattle. Right in front of me.”

  “He’s gone now.” Vadim stroked my hair, cradling me in his lap. “He’ll never do it again.”

  “I’m a murderer, now.” I sniffled. “I killed him.”

  “No, I did. And I’d do it again if I had to.”

  “But I ordered you to do it . . .”

  “You did good.” The circle of his arms tightened around me. “It was recklessly dangerous, although incredibly brave, to taunt him into attacking you. Had I known what you were up to, I would’ve never allowed it.”

  “It worked, though . . .”

  He shifted me in his arms, lightly tracing the edge of a bruise on the side of my face.

  “I’m glad the bastard got what he deserved. No one knows what happens to a demon if his woman is gone, but I’ve come way too close to finding it out, and I don’t want to live through anything like that ever again. Immortal or not, I’m not sure I could go on without you.”

  “How have you been doing?” I asked softly, covering his hand with mine.

  “Seeing you there . . . chained like that. It was like watching my own heart splayed on the ground and stomped upon.” He let out a shuddering breath then drew me into his chest again. “I may have a hard time letting you out of my sight for a while,” he warned, burying his face in my wet hair.

  I knew what he meant. A few weeks ago, a statement like that would have raised all kinds of red flags for me. I’d been a ferociously independent person from the day I learned how to walk. Being this close to someone, feeling responsible for him, and caring about him so much still felt new and unusual for me.

  My commitment to Vadim was real, though, and being near him was the only place I wanted to be.