“Yes,” he agreed. “Your mother. And Pietr.” He ran the back of his hand along my cheek, and my vision fuzzed. “The two you trust the most.” His hand traced my jaw, ran down my neck, and played along my collar. “You can trust me, too, Jess,” he whispered with such urgency, such blinding vehemence, something twisted in my head and for a moment I believed him.
And then it didn’t matter anymore, because his lips were all over mine.
In the back of my head a little voice was muttering. Telling me it was okay, that I had always wanted Derek, that now I had my chance, he was safe—secure. Stable. That I’d never be pulling bullets out of his flesh after a horrific fight …
The scene from that awful night played out all over again in my head as our kissing deepened and my hands pushed his jacket off his shoulders and found the bottom of his sweater. My fingers ran along his stomach and chest—just like I’d imagined doing with Pietr.… And I was safe, the voice insisted, no rage-filled wolf eyes, no teeth, no claws … no danger … just kissing … heady kissing.… I moaned, sinking against him, just as he was torn out of my arms.
“Wha—?” My eyes came back into focus, and I fell to my knees, breath jolting out of me, head throbbing like I’d been baked in the noonday sun. Not five feet from me, Derek and Pietr battled.
“Don’t you ever—” Pietr snarled, grabbing Derek by the front of his sweater and lifting him off the ground.
“She doesn’t want you, Pietr.” He laughed, pushing the words out as his collar choked him. “She wants safety. Normalcy.”
Pietr tossed him to the ground, straw and woodchips flying up from the impact.
Derek grinned up at him, fixing his hair with a steady hand. “I know she’s said it—she dreams of it—a normal life. It’s in her blood, like the farm and the horses. Like the stink of manure on a summer day. A normal, absolutely average, life. And you can’t give her that, can you, dog?”
Pietr roared, body quaking as he held back the change.
“Pietr,” I whispered.
He turned his head to me, face red, cords standing out on his neck—so much anger bubbling, surfacing … My head still scattered from Derek’s touch and Derek’s taste, I shrank back.
“Go ahead, Pietr,” Derek taunted. “Remind her of the monster you really are.”
Pietr ran his hands through his hair. A breath racked his body. “Jess,” he hissed, stricken.
I wanted to vomit, still feeling Derek’s tongue in my mouth. I clutched a nearby haybale, dragging myself to my unsteady feet. “You know,” I accused Derek. My eyes flew to Pietr, begging him to trust me. To know I trusted him beyond definitions of man and monster. Beyond judgments of how far he was willing to go to save me, his mother, or himself.
“What?” Derek snapped.
“You know what Pietr is.”
“I’ve known since I first saw him,” he confirmed. “Near my parents’ vacation place in Farthington. A little powder blue Cape Cod.”
Pietr jumped, his lips sliding back, teeth pointing.
“I didn’t get to visit often,” Derek said almost apologetically. “My parents liked to keep me on the Hill, watched by the help when they worked. I learned a lot in one visit, though. What pushes people apart and what slams them together.”
Pietr snarled, and I reached for him.
“Yeah,” Derek blustered. “My old man and your old woman,” he grinned, mouth full of malice. “Who would have guessed it? Oh. Yeah. Me. I gave Pops the big idea.” He looked at Pietr, his hand twitching toward a shovel resting by the wall.
My hand slipped along the wall and silently I pulled down a loose set of reins, weighing them inconspicuously in my hand.
“So what do you think?” Derek chuckled. “Did they do it—doggy style?”
I snapped the reins out, the length of leather slicing across Derek’s face and cutting his cheek as Pietr launched at him with a roar, pulling the shovel from his hand as he swung it toward Pietr’s head.
“You’re the reason we failed that night,” Pietr growled, “your vision … I’ll pluck your eyes out.…”
My heart pounded and I twitched the reins in my grasp, eyes wide as Derek wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand.
“Yeah, I’m the one who got you shot,” Derek grinned. “You won’t get near Mother while I’m with the company. You need to just heel, boy,” he said. “Cooperate. Obey. Submit.”
“We’re not out of options,” Pietr promised. “We will free Mother. Maybe Max is right,” he muttered, eyes cooling by mere degrees. “Maybe we must eliminate you.…”
Derek flinched.
My eyes widened.
“Where’s your audience now?” Pietr challenged him, pacing off a slow circle. “Where’s your power?”
“Pietr,” I warned. Eliminate Derek?
With a flourish, Derek bowed and pointed at me, flicking blood from his fingertips. “Jessica’s all the battery I need, hound. Her emotions are rich. She’s so easy to get going.… Has she told you how easy it was to get her going in my room? On my bed?” He screamed with laughter, holding his gut at Pietr’s stunned expression.
“Pietr,” I whispered. “Pietr, focus. Nothing happened between him and me.”
“God, the way she lies!” Derek roared. “And the way she lays…”
I fought for words. “Nothing, Pietr. He’s trying to get you to make a mistake. Focus, Pietr,” I begged.
“I wonder if this is how it went down with your folks on their last night together,” Derek mused, watching Pietr’s face turn from him to me and back again. “Did she beg forgiveness? Did he go so nuts they had to put him down? What totally broke them? I wonder if it was something Pops said. What could I say…?”
The words poofed out of him as Pietr bowled him over, their bodies rolling together in the dirt just outside the barn’s open door.
No battle of titans, just two teen boys, wailing on each other like mad men with wild punches and kicks.
Until Rio stomped her hooves, snorting, as she caught a good look at the insanity. And Derek yelled, flinging Pietr off of him and all the way into the barn.
Haybales tumbled as Pietr crashed into them.
Derek was juicing up. I tried to tamp down my emotions, tried to limit his pull on my stress and fear.
Pietr stood, covered in hay, eyes blazing. He shook himself like a wolf coming out of the rain and he peeled off his shirt and unbuttoned his pants, eyes never straying from Derek—steaming with vengeance. He’d barely unzipped when the wolf tore free.
Derek scrambled to his feet in the swirling chaos of fall leaves, keeping a measured distance as he watched the wolf. “His kind are dangerous, Jess. They need to be controlled. Tamed and trained.”
“What about your kind, Derek?” I whispered, struggling for calm.
“My kind’s who does the controlling. You think a werewolf can be top dog? They can’t even show their real face in public. My kind is built to hold their leashes. Teach ’em to roll over and beg.” Just inside the barn, he reached for a pitchfork.
This time I lunged, wrenching it away from him with all the force my weight carried. It flew out of my hands, landing in a haybale, quivering. He grabbed my shoulders, shaking me, and I kneed him in the groin, falling out of his grasp, my vision clearing just as it had started to fog again.
I had to stay out of his reach.
Pietr’s wild red eyes rolled from Derek to me. He leaped, knocking Derek back, their bodies rattling the stall door of one of my geldings. Derek seemed to grow a little more, and he threw Pietr back again, so hard the wolf yelped when he hit the wall.
“I guess I will need a little extra juice after all,” Derek muttered, rubbing his hands together and stumbling to the haybale to pluck out the pitchfork. He smiled at me as he drew back and flung it.
Into the wall just beyond Rio’s neck.
“Damn,” he said. “Missed.”
Rio reared up in terror, snapping the reins, hooves flailing and slicing
as she screamed in fear. Pietr knocked me out of the way and falling to the ground, I heard Rio squeal as she turned and bolted from the barn.
Derek crowed with laughter. “That’s a rush!” he said, his voice deepening, eyes darkening with the power brought by Rio’s fear and my worry.
The wolf fell on top of me, straddling me, anger boiling in his body alongside his growl.
The horses went wild, panic-stricken by Rio’s frightened departure and Pietr’s fury.
“This is the problem with your breed, Rusakova—when the wolf takes over, you’re quick to react but slow to learn.”
In their stalls the horses whinnied, pawed, and snorted, eyes rolling as Pietr shook out his dark coat, rumbling like thunder. All shadow and stealth, he stank of a wild and untamable tundra that horses only dared dream of running. He stepped toward Derek. Away from me.
Hooves hammered against the walls and I pulled myself up, weak-kneed, to whisper soothing words to the horses. I moved down the line, stroking anxious faces, blowing my breath—so familiar—into their flaring nostrils. Filling their noses with my scent, their eyes with my face.
“You know,” Derek said, hands running along the barn wall, searching for a new weapon, “when your maker first realized you actually existed, he was horrified by what he’d created. He knew he’d failed. There were so many—abominations—beasts—monsters. He hunted and eradicated all he could find—put them down like dogs,” he sneered. “Probably some of your relatives, I guess. You all started as a government plan initiated in a single village, you know.”
The wolf snorted.
“Oh. You didn’t know that, either, did you? Shit. Everyone’s keeping secrets around here. Everyone’s telling lies.” He looked at me and laughed, the noise sending shivers racing up and down my spine. “Go ahead—Bolkgorod—look it up sometime. And ignore what they say about it being wiped out by an avalanche. That happened after they had the kids they needed and the parents’ bodies were at risk of being found. One big bang covered their tracks neatly. Russian ingenuity.” He chuckled. “Hey. You keep track of time, right, mutt?” Derek asked.
The wolf blinked, muscles sliding beneath his thick coat, coiling to spring.
“Time’s almost up!” Derek shouted, barreling toward me. His feet flew up, connecting with my knee with a crunch. I fell, twisting awkwardly, screaming, my eyes streaming. My knee burned like someone had a torch on it. Derek raced toward the barn’s back door, disappearing.
Pietr, still wolf, started after him, but skidded to a stop, hay flying into the air as he spun back for me.
I gasped, struggling for breath and clutching my knee as the wolf licked my tears away and nuzzled my neck. “Shit, shit, shit!” I snapped.
And then the wolf was Pietr, his nose in my hair, warning softly, “Language,” as he reached down to my aching knee, his wary eyes watching the doors.
With careful fingers he explored the joint, testing my leg tentatively. “Badly sprained.”
I snarled. Mad as hell. I’d kept him from getting Derek under control. Maybe if they could catch him—not kill him—please, no more killing … And not be near his hands too long … “Crap. We need to find Rio.…”
Pietr leaned over and kissed me, slipping an arm under my back to raise me to him. I whimpered as my knee straightened and he readjusted our position, pressing his mouth along the line of my lips. “Shhh. Let her calm down. We’ll get her in a moment.” I opened my mouth to him—to my hero, wanting to have his taste, scent, and feel blot out the poison Derek had left in my mouth and my mind.
“Pants,” I whispered into his lips, and he nodded, easing me onto a haybale.
In a flash he was back. The events of the day washed over me and I sobbed, shaking. Pietr threw his arms around me, pulling me onto his lap and rocking me ever so slightly, his mouth by my ear, making soothing sounds.
“You’re safe now,” he promised. “I’ll have Max and Alexi deal with Derek. I’m not leaving your side. Your father will have to cope—or I’ll have to tell him the truth.” He sighed. “God. This isn’t easy.”
“Stating the obvious,” I said, kissing him into silence. I didn’t want to hear anything, think anything—just the pounding of his heart, the gentle panting of his breath.… Just another minute or two of peace in his arms and we’d go for Rio. And then we’d face my father. Together.
We could make our own normal.
We both heard the car pull up. Doors opened, feet crunched on gravel and ground across dirt.
“This is awful,” Wanda whispered. “Look at her, Leon,” she said to my dad. “What the hell has she done to herself this time?”
“Done to myself?” I asked, numb, pulling my face away from Pietr’s fiery chest to see Dad, Wanda, and Dr. Jones watching us. “I’ve never done anything to myself.…”
“The gun under your pillow. The slash on your arm. The number of times you showed up to counseling late or disheveled—hurt and with no good explanation,” Dr. Jones said, listing my offenses. She held out a clipboard to my father. “And here you are with a boy—”
“Who just got suspended for fighting,” Dad whispered.
“He was protecting me!”
Dr. Jones intoned, “It’s like we discussed. We need to take more drastic measures.”
“More drastic…?”
“We have to protect Jessie,” Wanda urged.
My stomach soured as my father accepted a pen and scrawled something across the papers on the clipboard.
“Protect me … What are you talking about?” So far nobody’s attempts at protecting me had helped me at all. “Dad,” I whispered, “Rio’s run off. We need to find her.…”
Dad glared at Pietr.
Dr. Jones walked toward me, and Pietr held me tighter, his chin on my shoulder as he curled me back into him, tucking me against him.
“We’ve decided you aren’t making sufficient progress during weekly sessions. That you need a more exclusive environment in which to heal.”
“A more exclusive … environment?”
“We’ve arranged for you to have a room at Pecan Place for a while,” Dr. Jones said, smiling.
“Pecan Place—where the nuts gather,” I muttered, remembering what the kids had said growing up. “The mental institution? No,” I insisted, my voice rising. “No, no, no!”
Pietr clutched me closer. “I won’t let them take you, Jess. I promise.”
I grabbed his arm and buried my head in his chest. “Please,” I whispered, “Puhzhalsta…”
A growl built softly in his stomach, rumbling and climbing toward his chest. “Don’t touch her,” he warned.
Dr. Jones looked at Dad.
“Now, Jessie, this is the best thing we can do for you. Your doctor has convinced me of that fact. You need additional time and treatment. You know she’s trying to do what she thinks is best for you.…” He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I want you to cooperate. Pietr, let her go.”
“Nyet,” he replied, biting the word off. “I will not let you take her. She does not want to go.”
“Now, son…,” Dad drawled.
“Let go of her.”
“Nyet, Wanda,” he snapped. His breath was fire on my shoulder.
Dr. Jones made shushing noises. “It’s okay,” she consoled. “This occasionally happens. That’s why we always bring extra help.”
I heard car doors open, and two new sets of feet clomped toward us.
“Let her go,” Dr. Jones suggested. So mildly.
I looked up to see a mountain of a man towering above us. It would easily take three of Pietr to make one of him.
Huge and thick with muscle, he was built like God forgot to grant him a neck—his head on a broad, short column that was just a narrowing of shoulders. He swung his arms at his side, and I saw the flash of a tattoo on the inside of his tree trunk of a wrist. Russian Mafia? But it wasn’t any tattoo I’d seen before—it was more like a single foreign letter.
“Do it, Pietr,” W
anda encouraged.
The mountain’s companion—still bigger—grumbled above us.
Pietr looked up. And up. Pietr’s head finally stopped when he could lock eyes with one of them. “Nyet,” he said.
The giants looked at each other and then lunged. The bigger one fell like a house of bricks on Pietr, pinning him to the floor while the smaller peeled me out of his arms with a grunt.
We stretched toward each other, fingers brushing a moment, as I said, “Witnesses,” warning against the change. Pietr’s expression was a dark echo of mine. Shock. Outrage.
Ten minutes earlier we had been readying to face the truth with my father, together. And now?
Pietr went wild, writhing beneath the big man’s bulk. Then he stopped. Suddenly placid and still, seemingly out of breath, his eyes never left mine. And they shone like hellfire burned him from inside out.
“No,” I sobbed, fists flailing against the giant. The bigger man moved off of Pietr, got to his feet, and brushed himself off. Pietr rushed us, grabbing me, nearly pulling me free, my arms and wrists popping before the big man’s body slammed him down again, elbowing him to the ground, smearing his face across the dirt.
“Now—” Dad started to say, objecting, but Wanda put a restraining hand on his arm.
“We’ve talked about this,” Dr. Jones reminded.
Pietr struggled to look at me, his nose streaming blood, a fresh gash across his forehead spilling red into his eyes. His cheek was ragged, abraded raw.
“Pietr,” I whispered, his name tearing out of my throat as I choked back a cry. I was dumped on my feet and I screamed as the pain in my knee flashed through me, but the man’s arms wrapped me tight, holding me up with unbreakable bonds.
The one who had toppled Pietr sat up again, rubbing his elbow.
Pietr staggered to his feet, swaying, and shoved the big man aside with one more burst of strength, coming for me.
“Stop fighting, boy!” Dr. Jones shouted.
The bigger one grabbed Pietr by the shoulders and hurled him to the earth. I heard the crunch of breaking bones.
Pietr clutched his head, his face contorted in pain. He looked at me and, with a groan, tried to rise. He reached out for me, arms shaking with effort.
Secrets and Shadows Page 29