A baby’s cry jarred my thoughts. An unfamiliar sound these days. I wondered where the father was. Who knew? Life was harder for humans nowadays. He might’ve traveled for trade as that was the only way to survive now. And travel was dangerous. Too many demons stalked their domain, looking for easy pickings and a new plaything. Or food.
“Klaus.” The older girl, probably thirteen, stepped from the room, her face flushed pink, her eyes bright with joy. “Come see our baby brother,” she said in German. She summoned him inside with a wave.
Unable to keep still, I edged to the now open doorway. The mother, black hair slick along the sides of her face, held a small mewling bundle. Klaus and his two sisters, both also dark-haired like their mother, hovered close. The boy brushed a forefinger along the baby’s forehead. A beautiful moment in this human family’s world. It was this genuine love of life, this zeal for joy and beauty, that had always pricked my conscience into helping humans for the centuries before the apocalypse had even begun.
I was riveted by the waiflike woman with platinum hair only a shade darker than the white nightgown she’d worn under her cloak. She stood to the side, her hands clasped against her breast, watching with obvious happiness written in her expression. She cared for this family, for their well-being. The tender emotion I’d once owned in abundance had been mostly eviscerated in those months I’d been in Estonia. To see it shining on her lovely face gouged deep inside my chest, like a jagged blade splitting open my sternum. The barrier I’d erected since Estonia had been well in place, allowing only one emotion to breach—rage. Only one motive—wrath.
This quaint, provincial scene stung in a way I couldn’t quite recognize. Or perhaps in a way I wouldn’t admit.
“Nadya,” I whispered low.
The family hadn’t noticed me until then. The mother looked up, her mouth dropping open at the sight of me. She crossed herself and whispered a prayer. I suppose it wasn’t every day an angel stood in the doorway to your bedroom.
“It’s okay,” said Nadya. “He’s a friend.”
Once upon a time, the sight of an angel was considered a blessing, a miracle. But their presence these days meant only one thing, that demons were nearby.
Frau Stegemann’s gaze softened as she looked on me, probably remembering the paintings of her church, thinking me a savior and guardian of her kind. I’d never relinquished that role. And though my goal now was centered on exacting justice for myself, ridding the earth of Vladek would be the best miracle I could offer humankind. He was a blight upon this world, a high demon who reveled in death and mayhem and cruelty.
Nadya whispered something to Frau Stegemann, placing a hand on her brow before sweeping a brief kiss on the newborn infant’s head. My stomach clenched into a tight ball at her compassion. Then she joined me in the den.
“I should stay the night,” she said, turning to face me. “To be sure she doesn’t need me.”
She looked down at her blood-stained hands before disappearing into a bathroom. I heard the faucet jolt to life. Interesting they still had plumbing. Parts of the civilized world had broken down, electricity faltering in most towns and cities. But plumbing and even cell towers still remained up in various places.
Glancing into the bathroom, Nadya splashed her face after washing her hands, then dabbed all dry with a towel. With a sigh, she twisted her loose hair into a braid, tying it off with a scrap of ribbon she’d found somewhere. I couldn’t keep from watching her, trying to riddle out who this witch truly was.
There was no fireplace but a coal-burning stove in the open room kitchen off the den that emitted heat enough for the small apartment. There were only two bedrooms beyond this main room that I could see. Even so, Nadya lifted her cloak from over the back of a chair and draped it around her shoulders, nestling into the threadbare couch. But I found her nervous fidgeting, picking at her long sleeves and sweeping the skirt of her long gown over her folded legs, a sign she was more concerned with modesty than warmth. Interesting.
The demon witches I’d encountered had reveled in displaying their bodies in the most revealing clothes they could manage. This one took great pains to cover herself up.
“How did you end up in Lisabette’s keep?” I asked, unable to avoid my curiosity any longer. I needed answers about who she was, what she was.
She flinched, staring down into her lap for a moment before licking her lips and meeting my gaze. I’d settled with my shoulder against the wall next to the window where I could keep watch.
“Lisabette brought me there.”
I grunted. “Yes. I know that. But how? Why? You’re not like the other demon witches in that realm.”
Sucking in a deep breath, she avoided eye contact. “She promised me it was a safe place for people like us.”
“For witches.”
A stiff nod. “She said without a master, a keeper, we were in danger out in the world.” She continued to stare at her fingers. She was hiding something.
“And were you safe in her palace? Safer than out here?”
Finally, she angled her head toward me, her face pale, her lips tightened into a line. “No. I was in much more danger there with her.”
“Mmm.” I crossed my arms and my ankles, relaxing at this news. She wasn’t one of them at all. She was tricked or caught unaware. Like me. Something shifted inside. It felt like a sliding door falling off its track. “And how did you get out? I didn’t see you very often. You must’ve been able to move elsewhere.”
Her eyes left me then, skating to the window and the drifting snow. “I didn’t live at Lisabette’s.” She swallowed twice, her delicate throat working to get out words she obviously didn’t want to say. But she said them anyway. “I lived in…Ivangorod.”
An acidic lash sliced through my gut. I stiffened. “In Vladek’s castle?” My voice was grating and harsh, but I couldn’t say the demon prince’s name without malice. It dripped from my every pore.
She stood from the sofa and maneuvered to the farthest side of the window away from me, staring out.
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, fear stiffening her spine, pain etched in her face. “With him.”
Fucking. Hell. She wasn’t just one of his creatures. She’d been one of his concubines. A lover of that insane, sadistic monster. My breathing quickened. Clenching my fists, I fought to keep calm under the sudden gutting realization that she’d been the lover of my greatest enemy. It took several minutes before I could trust myself to speak. All the while, she said nothing at all, her gaze adrift like the snow falling over the rooftops.
“I take it you weren’t fond of the arrangement if you chose to leave.”
A choking laugh coughed from the back of her throat. When she finally met my gaze, her own was saturated in bitterness and hatred.
“No,” she answered low and frighteningly steady. “I wasn’t fond of it at all. I was able to beg leave to visit my—” She shook her head and licked her lips. “To visit my friend, Lisabette, who wasn’t a friend at all. But she was a means to get away from him. For a time.”
Her pain was a tangible force rippling an aura of isolation around her. “Why did Skaal help you?”
She looked back out the window. Though the sun or moon never fully shone through the constant cloud cover of this apocalyptic world, there were times when its light pressed through the canvas as the moon did now. The dim moonlight cast an ethereal glow on her alabaster face. So perfect. Like porcelain. So lovely. I had the sudden urge to reach out and run the backs of my knuckles along the smooth curve of her cheekbone. I clenched my hands into fists.
“Skaal is one of Vladek’s top men working in the outer reaches to maintain his territory beyond his Russian home base. Skaal witnessed many…events at Ivangorod. He saw my misery. And pitied me.”
Her avoidance of these events only compelled me more. I wanted to know what happened to her
. Needed to know.
“And then he fell in love with you.”
She gave me a sad smile. “He did.” She faced me more fully. “He’d visit me often at Lisabette’s as there were less eyes on us. He spoke to me with kindness. And confessed his wish to set me free. Of Vladek.”
“I imagine he wanted you to be his own concubine in return.” I don’t know what made me interject with dark emotion, but I did.
“No. He said he wanted my freedom.”
“How did he make that happen?”
“There was a giant feast held for the celebration of Vladek’s hold on central and eastern Europe. One of the bands who played that night was Axel’s. You know him?”
I nodded. She went on.
“Apparently, Skaal knew Axel well enough to entrust him with our plan. That night, the wine and music flowed as much as the blood. I knew Vladek would be intoxicated by it all, by his victory, surrounded by his worshippers. It was the perfect night to make my escape. So, when Axel’s band packed up their equipment and left, they carried one extra canvas bag they hadn’t carried in.”
Something clicked, a flicker of memory. Lisabette had left her palace in Estonia for a few days only to return with fear in her eyes. The day after she’d returned, Vladek showed up.
I was chained to her throne in the great hall in naked humiliation as usual. But there were few of her minions hovering about that day. Only Gibbon, her skeletal and beady-eyed advisor, her two hellhounds sprawled at her feet, and the seraph angel who was her favorite pet—besides me—were allowed in her presence.
The blonde seraph stood at the center of the great hall in her gossamer gown, singing a sad lament. Lisabette behaved as if in mourning.
A stirring at the entrance dragged my million-yard stare from the end of the hall to Vladek striding through the archway, surrounded by eight large, bulky, scary-as-fuck demon guards at his side. His presence carried the same terror his name did. To most people anyway. I feared nothing. Not even him.
Clad in leather from head to toe, his long dark hair hung loose as he stormed toward Lisabette’s red carpet before her throne. His black claws and black horns that curled out of his skull like a ram’s might’ve been enough to make any man cower, but it was his obsidian eyes that were more arresting than any part of the too-sharp, too-hard angles of his face. The row of silver piercings along one brow highlighted the ebony depths of his eyes. The double piercing in his lip only accentuated his cruel mouth when he spoke with sharpened canine fangs. If that wasn’t enough, his nearly seven-foot stance in a tightly muscular form made most men take a step back. But not me. We were even in height and form. Except I was bound by his own essence and Lisabette’s black magic. I met his gaze as he strode with violent intent across the marble floor. But he wasn’t coming for me.
Lisabette made a whimpering, choking sound and threw herself off her throne in her regal silver gown. She prostrated herself on the red carpet, her arms stretched out in supplication as he made his way straight to her. The seraph had stopped singing, watching with wide eyes from her pedestal. Gibbon took two steps backward.
“Master! Please. I’m sorry for your loss. Please…” She cried. Actually cried. I’d never heard her utter a sound of weakness or vulnerability in all the time I’d been in that hellhole.
He stopped before her, hands on his hips, staring down at the back of her head as she mumbled apologies and begged his forgiveness.
“Zatknis!” He chose to speak in Russian, adopting the language of his earthly realm.
The hellhounds whimpered a cry and actually cowered behind me. Silence pervaded the room as he commanded. He didn’t move for a long moment until finally he reached down with a swift, clawed hand, fisted her dark hair, and jerked her to her knees, snapping her head up to look at him. She raised her trembling hands, palms up.
“Where. Is. She.” His guttural voice was low and dark and deadly.
“I don’t know, Master.”
He backhanded her with the one not still fisted in her hair. I couldn’t help but feel a twisted kinship to the demon prince for a fleeting moment, having done to her what I’d longed to do since my captivity.
He leered closer, baring his fangs, and whispered, “She is mine, witch. I want her back. If you had anything to do with her escape—”
“No, my lord. No! I would never. She has always been defiant. You know that.”
His gaze glazed over with lust, but it wasn’t for the witch in his clutches. It was for the one who’d left him.
“Yes,” he said dreamily. “She has always been defiant, my little bird,” he added with an erotic groan. “If she contacts you, you will notify me immediately.”
“Yes, my lord. Immediately,” she whispered, holding his hand that gripped her hair, his hold obviously growing more painful.
With a fleeting contemptuous glance at me, he tossed her to the floor and stormed from the room. That was the last time I saw Vladek. And the only time I saw Lisabette cry out in fear or agony. Until the night Dommiel came for me and burned her alive in her bed.
Reeling back from the memory, I stared at Nadya. It struck me that I’d never put two and two together at the time. While in captivity, I had no reason to think the witch who’d once helped me escape a particularly brutal beating by Lisabette was also the famous concubine who’d escaped Vladek.
“You are the one he still pines for.” My sources among demonkind claimed he would still take no woman to bed. Not since she’d gone. “He’s still looking for you.” My body had stiffened into a steel rod. A maddening fever was taking root in my chest and hazing my brain.
She gripped the locket at her throat, meeting me with those haunted, pure-blue eyes. “Which is why I live here. In the middle of nowhere. He’ll think I’ve taken up with another demon lord somewhere.”
“But you have no wards around you.”
She shrugged.
I took a step closer, her nearness wafting over me like a cool balm to the skin. “You have no real protection, Nadya. That teenage boy stumbled into your cottage without one hindrance.”
“Well, except you,” she countered coolly. “Why are you so angry?”
I didn’t answer but asked another question of my own. “Do you have a death wish?”
And there. The slight widening of her crystalline eyes, the parting of her soft lips. Assent. Yes, this demon witch was ready for death should Vladek find her again. That’s when I knew that she and I were the same, but also different.
She’d experienced some hellish torture at the hands of the demon prince. And I’d endured the same from his demon witch. The difference was, she planned to hide away from the world, run from her scarred past, and accept death should he come knocking at her door.
Not me. Not since I’d clawed my way out of there. And certainly not since I’d met her. I planned to barrel my way into his world…and fuck it all to hell.
Chapter Seven
Nadya
Sleep evaded me once we’d returned to my cottage from Frau Stegemann’s. The mother had little bleeding through the night, her body seeming to heal just fine. The newborn was suckling easily. A blessed and rare birth of a beautiful child into the world. All seemed well.
Then why did I feel so rotten? So on edge?
“Here, Deimos.”
I gave him some scraps of fatback from the pork I’d cooked down in a skillet in the stove with some broiled potatoes and carrots. My feline companion lapped up his meal greedily, purring like a little motor.
It was Uriel. And his digging into my time at Ivangorod. I’d avoided thinking of that place for so long. But his reminder that Vladek was still searching for me had put me on red alert. Of course I didn’t want him to find me. But neither did I want to live in some cave or barricaded fortress for the rest of my mortal life. I’d been caged for as long as I’d planned to be. If he recaptured me,
then I’d take a permanent way out.
Deimos had shredded his meal, leaving bits on the woven rug under his bowl. When he walked away, I lifted the rug, curling the ends inward, and opened the door to shake it out.
The snow had stopped during the early morning, leaving a frosty blanket on the field and woods, the trees looking like ghostly statues in the gloom. I’d noticed Uriel walking the perimeter when I first awoke. I peered around as I shook out the rug but didn’t see him now. Deimos poked his tiny head out of the cracked door, sniffed the frigid air twice with his pink nose then ducked back inside. Smart kitty.
Just as I turned to follow him, movement caught my eye. From across the field, Skaal strode through the drifts. I waved. He nodded with a smile but halted at the old road that wove alongside the field about fifty yards from my cottage nestled into the trees. He looked to the left and right, hands on his hips.
What was he doing?
Bracing my hands around my mouth, I shouted, “What’s wrong?”
He pointed to nothing along the road. Frowning, I stepped farther into the yard as he shouted back, “I see you’ve got wards now.”
What?
I shook my head, walking closer, when Uriel flew down out of nowhere, flapping his magnificent white wings with two sharp beats to slow his descent. Stirring up the snow around Skaal, who watched him land. He took two strides and said something to Skaal. My demon friend nodded, then Uriel gripped him by the forearm, walked across the road, and then dropped his arm.
Huh.
Uriel had put wards around my cottage. The only way a demon could cross was by being walked across with one of angelkind. Sifting within wards—at least strong ones put in place by a powerful otherworlder—was impossible. It was the reason I’d needed another way out of Ivangorod. Except for Vladek’s hidden unwarded hotspots, no one could sift in or out of his domain.
Coldest Fire (Dominion series) Page 6