by P. N. Elrod
“So, you’ve seen. But that doesn’t explain what else you want.”
He shrugged with a casual smile. “I’m very old, too. I am not easily fascinated. I like being fascinated. A few centuries from now, you will be like me, a slave to intrigue and curiosity.”
“Fall back. I don’t know who you are or—”
“I already told you. I am Anastas Baranov, but to clarify, made in the sixteenth century in Poland. Sadly, that bastard Dimitri turned my father, who immediately came home and savaged my mother and sisters … and I was injured while trying to save them. I killed him, but I had already been badly bitten and lost a lot of blood. I think I survived three nights, but escaped my own funeral. In those days humans were wiser. They drove a stake through your corpse’s heart or beheaded it if they even suspected … but I digress. That is unpleasant conversation for a lady. How about that drink?”
“And now you come to claim Dimitri’s inheritance by assassinating me.” Tanya stood her ground, immovable.
“No. I want nothing he owned. He took all that meant anything to me. But I have been systematically wiping out his line for centuries. It was an old grudge match between us. Haven’t you wondered why none of his made have come to you?”
Tanya tilted her head slightly; the subtle gesture was all that she would allow right now as a possible concession.
“Correct,” he said, giving her a slight nod in return. “Your lair should have been flooded by all whom he made. But you’ve only sent out telepathic desires, yes?”
“And?” Tanya could feel her hands balling into fists; the line of questioning was hitting too close to home. It made her nervous. She hated people knowing more about her than she knew about them, especially people she didn’t know squat about.
Anastas gave her a broad, toothy grin. “Those loyalists are afraid because they know that having them does not please you. Fear makes them dangerous, but they cannot kill that which has made them once fully turned. It is vampire law. So they avoid you like the plague until you call them for a specific task. But do not make it a big task, as there are not so many of them left now.” He chuckled and began walking away from her. “This last month I’ve culled the ranks. I had to act quickly while you were still learning.”
“And you think now you can come for me!”
He turned slowly to face her. “I do not wish to kill you, but I will do so if you force me to defend myself. My complaint was with Dimitri, not you. Now he is gone, so I have no complaint.”
“And you just showed up for giggles and grins after killing anyone who could help me.”
“Or kill you,” he replied calmly. “Dimitri was a cruel master. Many wanted him dead, but none dared to try. They couldn’t. But who knows what pledges they have made, what bargains were out there in the streets? My killing them sent a message. I don’t think they will attempt any more backroom alliances now for a while.”
“And I guess your thugs will—”
“I work alone. I always have. I have never eaten from an innocent or turned anyone else into this abomination that you and I have become. If you do not understand anything else, know that.”
She watched him lift his chin with dignity, scanning him in search of any deceit. “All right, then, how about that drink?”
* * *
They sat at a bar in an upscale sushi house, watching the ebb and flow of the human traffic with a merlot before her and a fine vodka before him, both drinking nothing.
“Did Dimitri ever come for you?” she said in a quiet tone, staring into the ruby liquid in front of her and wishing it didn’t have to be blood. She missed wine. A lot.
“Plenty of times. That was the great game of it. I wanted to drive him insane with anger. I wanted to make him kill me as badly as I wished I could kill him. But he was stronger. So I had to chip away at his peace of mind and erode his borders.”
“Gangsta,” she said with a smile, and then looked up at Anastas. “So, you could kill his lesser made men because you were made by your father—not by Dimitri.”
“Yes,” Anastas said, and then brought the vodka to his nose to savor its scent. “Dimitri did not directly make me, so he had no direct control over me. He would have told my father to force me to come to him, as he controlled my father, and my father would have controlled me. The one problem Dimitri always had was that I’d escaped my father’s control by stabbing that murderous bastard in his heart with a chair leg. That is how a rogue like me … and you … is created.” Anastas clinked his short rocks glass against Tanya’s long-stemmed wineglass. “This is also why you fascinate me so. You killed Dimitri much like I killed my father, through much good luck, and have now set edicts in place that go against every decadent principle Dimitri ever infested the world with. This I like.”
Tanya gave Anastas another half smile, but this time she could feel a slight hint of fang beginning to show. “And how do I know this isn’t bullshit?”
Anastas shook his head and chuckled. “You already know it is not. You have scanned me for fraud or you wouldn’t be sitting here with me now. Do not try to bullshit an old bullshitter.”
This time he made her laugh.
“Okay, but seriously, what do you really want?”
His smile faded. “Somewhere to go.”
His sudden seriousness caught her off guard, but the intensity in his gaze told her that he’d spoken the truth.
“I don’t understand,” she said just above a murmur.
“My purpose is over. I have won,” he said in a sad, far-off tone, and then looked out the window beyond her. “For hundreds of years my goal was to make Dimitri’s existence miserable—taking sick joy from the vengeance. Then in one night, he gets careless and allows himself to get killed by a woman of dubious principles, but principles I admire nonetheless. So, now, where will I go? I have made no others to stand with me. The other covens shun me, for a rogue in their lair is a dangerous thing. Other rogues are few and far between. Most do not last as long as I have. And so,” he added with a sad chuckle, bringing his gaze back to hers, “I am without a purpose. Shall I eat and exist for more centuries with nothing to do? Or shall I ask to be adopted by the one being that bested my nemesis … with a pledge of loyalty to protect you from other covens that may wish to annex power.”
“You said having a rogue in your lair was a dangerous thing.”
Anastas nodded and stood. “It is. But I can teach you how to elude other masters. The offer stands. We both have time to decide, but first I think we should have that drink.” He inclined his head toward an Asian businessman speaking to what looked like an elderly Wall Street banker. “They have eaten well and have high blood alcohol content. Their souls are also dirty as hell … so?”
“I’ve never done it like this before—just picked them up at a bar.”
“I suspect there’s a lot you’ve never done before as a vampire, even though you own Dimitri’s memories … and not all of it is bad. I will show you.” He gave her a sexy smile, one so intensely erotic that she had to look away from him toward their targets.
“I’ve always gone for those in the midst of a commission of a crime—followed a robber or stopped a purse snatching or derailed a rape. I guess I just didn’t trust myself beyond that right away.”
“And yet you aspired to more. To reach the levels of the human masters, yes?”
She nodded. “But how did you know?”
“Everything you want resonates through every artery of your line down to the remotest capillary of it. This is how we know you still exist versus that time when your nights will become embers—and may that be an eternity from now, dear Tanya.” He took up her hand and pressed a tender kiss to the back of it. “Our job is to know what you want and how you want it, if we are yours.”
Tanya swallowed hard, feeling a pull to this man that she hadn’t expected.
He threw down a wad of bills on the bar to pay for their untouched drinks and then held out his hand again to her. She accepted it, qu
ietly taking in the feel of his broad, slightly callused palm and long fingers, and then stood.
* * *
Sated, they left the bodies in the limousine that had chauffeured the businessmen to the restaurant, with a stunned driver none the wiser. Anastas dabbed the corner of her mouth with his thumb, wiping away a tiny trickle of blood.
“Are you all right with what just happened?”
Tanya nodded. “They were bad men to the core … fleecing hardworking souls out of millions.”
“Much worse than a poor junkie sticking up a convenience store, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m doing math in my head, is all.”
He stopped walking and looked at her. “Mathematics?”
“Anastas, how many bodies do you have on you after being around for hundreds of years?”
She stopped and turned to look at him when he didn’t answer. “That’s my point, man.”
“It is unavoidable, unless you have human minions who donate.”
“They do at the blood clubs.”
“And now you’re talking suicide to go there, unless your forces are extremely formidable—which at present, they aren’t.”
“Here’s a safe bet,” Tanya said with a casual shrug. “The masters dine on whatever they want and wouldn’t have to show up at a blood club. They have private gorging orgies in their lairs and don’t risk unnecessary exposure.”
“But their made men and women would.”
“Right,” she replied quickly. “Now you’re catching on. So, what better way to even the odds but to blow away a bunch of bottom feeders like the ones that just came after me?”
Anastas walked away from her in the opposite direction. “Now you are mad. I see how Dimitri was tricked. He thought he was dealing with a sane and beautiful woman only to be deceived!”
“No, think about it,” Tanya said, jogging to catch up with him. “If I hit the local blood clubs, wouldn’t that not only cull the other local masters’ ranks to be about equal to mine, but would also let them know not to send any of their thugs my way trying to pull a bullshit coup? Not to mention, it would get a helluva lot of vampires off the streets and allow us to walk into a blood club with some solid street cred under our belts.”
“And I supposed we’d just go in guns blazing?”
“No,” she said, laughing, and keeping up with Anastas’s long strides. “If you haven’t noticed, regular bullets don’t work, and I don’t have humans that can load my clips with silver or hallowed-earth-packed shells.”
He stopped walking and turned to stare at her. “Hand-to-hand combat so outnumbered is pure suicide.”
“Puh-lease,” she scoffed, and began walking again. “That’s old-school. How about blowing a gas line beneath a building or something simple like that? Working for the mob boys did teach me a thing or two. Besides, the other masters have been sending their hit men out to smoke me ever since the night I died. I need to let them know two can play that game. So, are you in or what?”
“You are mad,” he whispered, pushing a lock of her windblown hair away from her face.
“I’ve been called worse,” she murmured. “Much worse.”
“And if I go along with this insanity?”
“What’s in it for you?” She smiled.
“No. That is not my entire question.… Well, perhaps it is, but it was poorly phrased.”
She placed a palm gently at the center of his chest and watched him swallow hard. “My bad.”
“This will not wipe out the species, Tanya. As long as we’re left, as long as one is left, there will always be Vampyre. It is like a virus, just like polio still exists, the bubonic plague still exists. Evil still exists no matter how many dirty bankers and politicians—”
Her deep kiss stopped his words just as his full mouth and total embrace stopped her breath. “We can let tomorrow take care of itself and save blowing up a few blood clubs for another night.”
“If you claim me, I will help you write this book.”
He’d obviously gone into her mind searching for whatever pleased her, and that he’d even bothered to do so carved out a very special place for him within her eerily still heart. There was something impossible to resist in being wanted dead or alive.
She touched his cheek with trembling fingers. “You think too much, Anastas Baranov.”
Only inches from her face he stared into her eyes. “No, Tanya … search and you will see that my mind is blank only for you now.”
* * *
He was right to insist that they go down into the vault. Daylight surely would have caught them unaware. But as far as she was concerned, she’d already burst into flames. His touch was like hot embers, delicious long-awaited torture. Each kiss brought delirium, and yet he cried out as she planted more against his chest.
Slowly knowledge seeped into her brain; it was the reverb of her caresses echoing off his touch, trading pleasure back and forth down to the cellular level. His French kiss between her thighs left her weeping; warm, rough palms cradling the delicate skin of tightened nipples left her panting. Passion fusion. It was all too insane. Bodies fitted together as though welded. Sweat and sweet, pungent love essence was the lubricant that slicked all boundaries and made them move together like greased gears.
His hair in her fists, she watched him arch beneath her and give her his throat. The temptation was too great to bear; the deep knowledge rising within her, impossible to ignore. In a blinding flash of pleasure, he was marked as hers. Claimed and wanted, dead or alive. She bit him and came so hard that she was afraid she’d drain him dry.
Anastas’s wail rent the air as his fists wound themselves in the crimson satin sheets while ejaculation spasms tore through him. Her name became a broken mantra panted out in two syllables as the tremors ebbed. She lifted her mouth from his throat and dabbed her blood-wet lips with the back of her hand. Tears filled his eyes and then he suddenly gathered her up, sheets and all, hugging her tightly and rocking her hard.
“Never have I been claimed,” he said in a harsh whisper that fractured against her neck.
“Nor have I,” she whispered back, fighting a sob. “I’ve never been here before either.”
* * *
Tanya waited patiently as one by one, mind-stunned humans found an inexplicable need to exit the massive warehouse building. Pulsing music made the night air throb red. Some took a smoke across the street, staring out blankly at the water. Some walked around aimlessly trying to hail a nonexistent cab. A few claimed to be hungry for pizza and fare not served at the bar, and they squabbled with the huge vampire bouncers guarding the exit doors.
“You know after this there’s no turning back,” Anastas said grimly, staring across the street from the shadows.
“I know,” Tanya replied, and opened her cell phone, then punched in the numbers that would detonate the charges they’d rigged in the tunnels beneath the building. “Call 911 to minimize the blaze and to keep it from spreading to other buildings right after I push SEND .”
Anastas nodded and Tanya watched a slow smile creep across his face. She depressed the SEND button with a French-manicured nail.
The building exploded in an orange inferno. Windows shattered beneath glass-melting heat. Almost knocked off their feet from the force of the blast, they hunkered down against the adjacent building that protected them. Heat and flames licked at broken bricks and twisted metal. Shrapnel from the rubble whizzed by them, but Tanya wrapped them both in a dark energy shield as Anastas hugged her against him tightly. After a moment they both looked up to stare at their handiwork. Humans snapped out of their daze and rushed back and forth outside screaming, but no vampires had exited the building.
“You have sent a large message, I believe.”
“They are gonna be so pissed.”
“Yes … and now that we have visited the Russians, I know of this nice little Polish blood bar in Queens where we can also get a
drink with no troubles. Shall we?”
Tanya just shook her head and laughed.
MIST
Susan Krinard
—an ax age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes
headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.
SAN FRANCISCO, PRESENT DAY
The sword sliced the air inches in front of Mist’s face. She swung Kettlingr to intercept the blow, bracing herself and catching the blade in midstroke. Metal clanged on metal with glorious, discordant music. Her opponent bore down hard for several seconds, his furious gaze fixed on hers, and abruptly disengaged.
“One of these days,” Eric said, his face breaking out in a grin, “I’m going to beat you.”
Mist lowered her own sword and caught her breath. Perspiration trickled from her hairline over her forehead, soaking the fine blond hairs that had come loose from her braid, and her body ached pleasantly from the hard workout. She grinned back at Eric, who sheathed his sword and reached for the towel lying across the bench against the wall.
“You’re good,” she said. “Almost as good as I am.”
He grimaced and scrubbed the towel across his face. “I outweigh you by eighty pounds,” he said. “I don’t want to think about what you could do to me if you were my size.”
Size had nothing to do with it, though Mist hadn’t yet found a way to tell Eric why he’d never be able to beat her. She’d even thought once or twice of letting him win, male pride being such a fragile thing, but instinct was too strong.
There had been a time when her kind had been no more than choosers of the battle-slain, bearing the trappings of war themselves, but never baring their swords. Ragnarök had changed Odhinn’s handmaidens, as it had changed so much else.
