by Lyn Gala
“Leave her alone.” Brady snapped out the words.
“Shall you tell me what to do, young one?” Gavril’s voice was soft, but Paige could hear the danger in it.
“We just want to be left alone,” she said. She wanted to get the opening bid in their negotiations out on the floor. Only then could they figure out what this man wanted. Paige sucked in a breath when Gavril moved so fast that he was standing beside her before she or Brady could even twitch. He raised his hand to touch her cheek and Brady threw himself forward. Unfortunately, he managed to somehow miss Gavril altogether and slam himself into the far wall.
Gavril looked at him with an amusement that made Paige want to shoot the older demon in the kneecaps. That would hurt him. “Calm yourself. I will not take your human. I have trouble enough with the ones I have now,” Gavril offered, turning his back to both Paige and Brady. “While useful, they can be most troublesome. For example, Dorothy was once a young woman who came to me, begging for help.”
“And you killed her,” Paige said. She backed away, eager to get closer to Brady, even though her gut was starting to warn her that neither of them had much chance against this demon.
“I saved her,” he corrected her. He gave her a superior smile before his gaze slid over to Brady. “And she chose to become something more powerful, she wanted the authority. So many humans do.”
“That didn’t work out so well for you, did it?” Paige asked with a nasty tone in her voice. She mentally kicked herself for aggravating the psychopath, but Gavril chuckled.
“It worked out quite well for a few decades, but you’re right. It did not work out well in the end. The power is rarely enough and she wanted more. She thought I would not follow her to a place with so many police officers and that the investigation would keep me away until she had grown a court of her own, until she could defend herself from my wrath. She was wrong.” His smile grew cold. “I don’t take challenges to my authority well.”
Paige wasn’t sure how true that was. He put up with Hunter and Hunter didn’t seem to respect this man’s authority.
“We aren’t challenging anything,” Brady said. “We just want to be left alone.” With Hunter, Brady had been aggressive, his fists curled and his body angled for attack. Now his shoulders had dropped and he seemed to be shrinking in on himself. It didn’t make her feel better about their situation.
Gavril nodded. “You think I should leave you to your ignorance. I should leave you alone to bumble through until you do something so unforgivably stupid that another demon or another demon hunter notices you? I think not.” Silence followed that and Paige could feel panic circling in her stomach.
“Then what do you want?” Paige rested her hand on her gun. She doubted the gesture intimidated Gavril, but Paige felt better with the cold steel under her palm.
“A quiet territory. Subordinates who know their place and many missions that will keep Hunter and his insults far away from me,” Gavril answered quickly. “Some of those are more likely than others.”
“You want me to be a subordinate,” Brady said, stepping forward.
“You already are,” Gavril said. “I wish for you to honor that gracefully and without me having to chain you to a wall or watch you plot behind my back.” Gavril looked around the room and his expression made it clear that he found Dorothy’s lair inadequate at best.
“I don’t want to make trouble.” Brady said the words so slowly that Paige was reminded of a man inching out onto thin ice.
“Good. I would rather not destroy a full blajini. It is bad luck.”
“Blajini?” Paige pounced on the unfamiliar word. She hadn’t heard that one before. Gavril turned and studied her.
“Were you simply human, such impudence would earn punishment. Be careful that your poor manners do not teach others to tread where only you are allowed,” he said, the veins in his eyes turning red for a moment before the red faded.
“Were I…what? I am human,” Paige protested.
Gavril looked amused at that. “How many times have you fed young Brady? How many injuries have you healed? Your ignorance will destroy yourselves or others.” He shook his head as if Paige was some kid who had just stuck an entire crayon up her nose. “You are strigoi.”
“What is that?” Brady asked. Paige was too busy feeling creeped out to ask.
“Where I once lived, the strigoi were called witches or vampires.”
“I am not a vamp,” Paige protested. “And I am not a witch with a ‘w’. I’m more the kind with the ‘b’ in front.”
Gavril frowned in confusion for a moment. “To call the strigoi witches was simply a way to justify the killing of them. The strigoi have access to power. In human form, they are lucky. They can read people,” Gavril said with the sort of uncertainty that non-natives used when they wanted a native speaker to tell them they’d gotten an idiom right.
“Lucky?” Brady swallowed and looked at Paige.
“Don’t say it,” she warned darkly.
Gavril continued. “They have blajini blood; they are descended from us,” Gavril said as he looked from one of them to the other.
“Wait…I’m…no way. No fucking way. My mother was never lucky and my father lives at the bottom of a bottle, so unless you think liver disease is lucky, you’re wrong.”
Gavril gave her another of those condescending looks that made Paige want to shoot him. “The blood is not strong, but it flows through your veins. One of your ancestors was from our world.”
“Our world?” Brady stepped forward, away from Paige. She had to stop herself before she reached out to pull him back.
Gavril nodded and gave Brady a much nicer smile than the one he’d used on Paige. “Before I became blajini, I remember my grandmother making an Easter feast for those who lived on the other side of the disk on which we live. My people believed the world was a round disk with humans on this side and the others—the blajini—on the other. My father would say the blajini were exiled by Moses, washed away to the underside of the world because they had taken a stand against God’s people. My grandmother said they were the sinless ones who lived forever in God’s light. In the end, I know only what my host knew when I came into this body—that I am blajini from another world, a soul moved into this body when the first Gavril died in battle, when his blood and the chanting of a priest of Tengriism opened a door for me.”
“Then I’m not a demon?” Brady’s voice had such a hopeful note to it that it broke Paige’s heart. No matter how many times she told him he wasn’t evil, he didn’t believe her.
“In a human use of the word, you are. You are not human, born not in this world but in the underworld, and you feed on the lives of others. For humans, that would be a demon.” Gavril turned his back, utterly ignoring Brady’s devastated expression.
“You turned into a chatty Cathy,” Paige commented. “Why the sudden need for sharing?”
Gavril sat in an old chair with his back to them both and Paige was insulted that the man couldn’t even pretend to be afraid of them. Brady had super-strength and she was armed, but Gavril sat with his fucking back to them. “To convince Brady he has good cause to come with me. The alternative would be to beat him until he is not able to object. I fear Hunter would enjoy that too much.”
“I won’t go with you,” Brady said firmly. “I won’t cause trouble like Dorothy did, but I don’t want to go with you.”
“I did not ask about your wishes. Your ignorance is dangerous. It’s dangerous to me and to others, including your strigoi. Many people would see you dead because of what you are, a full blajini rather than one of those weaker creatures. Others would wish you to die if you were unclaimed by an elder. And most hunters are not aware of the arrangements between the eldest blajini and the senior hunters. They would see all demons killed, so those who cannot hide themselves will not last long.”
“Then we’ll hide,” Paige said firmly. Paige stepped forward so that she stood at Brady’s side. She felt a temptatio
n to reach over and take his hand. She wasn’t a high-school girl who had to cling to a boyfriend during a scary movie. However, it felt like that. Gavril gazed with ever-reddening eyes and the little prey part of Paige’s brain ran in circles and screamed for her to flee. She had to fight to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground.
“With a strigoi, you might hide better than most, but hunters will find you. You will have to kill to protect yourself. You will live in ignorance,” Gavril warned.
“We can handle whatever comes,” Paige said firmly. He tilted his head and studied both of them.
“I have vrykolakas to return to their place on the other side of the disk. We can talk when I finish with the last of them.” Gavril left, his speed leaving Paige a little speechless. Her knees knocked together so badly that Brady got an arm around her waist and helped her to the chair Gavril had just abandoned.
“Are you okay?” He knelt in front of her and took both her hands in his.
“Freaking out,” Paige said. “He’s a little overpowering.”
“Yeah,” Brady agreed. His head turned toward the windows and Paige followed his gaze. Gavril was walking up to one of the vamps and the vampire just stared at him. When they met, Gavril’s hand went up to stroke the vampire’s cheek. Paige chewed her lip and tried to deal with her feelings about the vamps. They ate people, which in general was a negative. However, she couldn’t think of them as monsters the way Hunter did.
“Is he right about your world?” Paige asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Brady said with a sigh. “I know he’s old. I know he knows more than I do, but that doesn’t mean much because I know pretty close to nothing.”
Outside, Gavril reached up with his second hand to cup the vamp’s cheek and then he twisted the vampire’s neck until the whole head turned almost backward. Paige jumped, horrified at watching someone die. For a second, the vamp stood there, and then the skin shrank back from bone and she was staring at an old, old corpse before the whole skeleton vanished into dust. Her heart pounded and Brady tightened his hands around hers.
“He would have eaten you,” Brady said softly. Gavril turned and looked in the window for a second before he turned to walk away.
“A lion would too, but I never watch those shows where they chase poachers, because seeing one dead lion is enough to depress me for a week,” Paige pointed out. Brady shuffled forward so he could rest his knees against the chair. He was straddling her legs and she pulled her hands away from his so she could stroke her fingers through his dark hair. He was such a beautiful man, but he wasn’t really a man any more than those creatures outside were.
“Am I part…whatever you are?” she asked.
Brady rested his hands against her thighs. “You’re different. I thought you felt so different because I love you.”
“Maybe you don’t love me at all. Maybe you’re drawn to me because I’m one of these strigoi,” Paige countered.
Brady’s hand moved up to brush her hair back away from her face. She usually pulled it into a ponytail or bun, anything to get it out of her way, but her hair band had obviously given up somewhere during the drama of the day. “I love you. If this gut of yours comes from some ancestor, I don’t care. Your willingness to help me when I was scared and your ability to kick the ass of anyone who gets in your way—those don’t come from an ancestor.”
Paige smiled at him. “Masochist,” she accused him softly. He gave her one of his grins and she traced his bottom lip with her thumb.
“You know, this guy didn’t come after Dorothy himself. He sent Hunter. He may look impressive, but he’s not infallible or all-powerful. It doesn’t matter what he wants as long as we stick together. We’ll make our own choice.”
Brady sighed and pulled back so that his hands rested against her knees. “What choice, Paige? I look at how he moves and I know I should be able to move that fast, but I can’t.”
“You have to grow into your powers. You’re a lot faster now than when you first tried to take a bite out of me,” she pointed out. Now that she’d seen this hidden world, she could safely say that the creature that had shown up at her doorstep that night had looked more like one of those vrykolakas than Brady. Brady blushed at the memory.
“I can’t put you in danger.”
“I’m a cop,” Paige pointed out dryly.
For a long time, Brady stared at her knees. Finally, he looked up. “Then as a cop you know you can’t go into a fight without training. You don’t walk into a situation blind and you don’t go up against perps when you don’t know how they’re armed.”
Paige’s heart stuck in her throat as she realized what Brady was saying. “You want to go with him.” Her words came out cold, but her guts were burning. She wanted to vomit right there.
“Want? No,” Brady shook his head. “But I need to. He has the strength to teach me how to have the quiet life I want. I just know that.”
“So you’re trusting a man you just met?”
Brady pulled away and went to stand next to the window. Paige could feel this constriction in her heart that made her want to throw herself at him, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t make a fool out of herself. She might, however, shoot Hunter. That was sounding pretty good. Her eyes prickled and got warm and Paige blinked back tears.
“I knew Dorothy had something wrong with her the moment I met her,” Brady said softly, “and my gut tells me that Gavril has told us the truth.” He stared out and Paige fisted her hands as she tried to keep herself from flying into a million pieces. “What does your gut tell you?” Brady asked.
“That he’s dangerous,” Paige said, louder than she’d intended. She had to work to quiet her voice. “That he would kill you in a second.”
“If I threatened or challenged him, yes,” Brady agreed. “But if I went with him to learn, if I accepted that he’s older and more experienced?”
Paige wanted to shout that she was his training officer. She fucking trained him. She loved him. She wanted him. Instead, she stared at him. Brady’s breathing grew ragged.
“We can—”
“I walked in here because I could feel Dorothy,” Brady blurted out. “I walked in here and let her take my weapon because I could hear her.” Brady placed his hand over his heart. “I could feel her sing in my heart and I got pulled in. You nearly died because I don’t understand myself well enough to protect myself when someone disarms me and puts me in chains. Only then did she stop singing.” Brady’s voice cracked with emotion. “I nearly got you killed. I thought she would kill you right in front of me to prove some lesson and I’d walked into her chains.” His voice rose. “And I feel that song now.” The hand over his heart closed into a fist. “I can feel the song.”
Paige moved to Brady’s side and wrapped her arms around him. “We can fight it,” she promised.
“How?” the word was a howl of pain and confusion and Paige could only hold on tighter because she didn’t know. She couldn’t hear it. Brady stared at the ceiling, his breath coming in little gasps even though Paige suspected he didn’t need to breathe at all.
“Brady, talk to me,” she begged.
He shook his head. “I don’t…the words aren’t here.” He dropped his head into his hands and Paige felt a wave of helpless fury. They could get through this. They could. She had to hold onto that belief.
Brady twisted out of her grip and headed for the front. “Brady!” Paige chased after him, but she stopped at the door. Vampires might still wander the grounds and she didn’t want to risk ending up someone’s midnight snack. Instead, she stood staring out into the night.
“Silver, you okay?” a voice asked.
Paige didn’t turn around. She didn’t want Jim Hunter to see her crying. “If you say one word, I’m shooting you in the fucking dick,” she warned. Maybe her tone of voice scared him off, but his footsteps vanished without him saying a word.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Paige stood in front of the townhouse, searching for so
me sign that vampires or demons or blajini lived in it. The flowers in the red flowerboxes drooped, the spring grass looked patchy at best and the downspout for the gutters had split during some freeze and the edges had rusted. In other words, it was a perfectly normal house. Not a vampire in sight.
Paige wondered if Hunter had given her a wrong address. He hadn’t exactly volunteered the information. If he had lied, she would find his ass and call in a favor or two to get him thrown in the drunk tank. After a few guys had thrown up all over him, he’d learn to not fuck with her. Just because she was now officially a retired cop didn’t mean she couldn’t throw her weight around.
She knocked on the door and then waited on the step, her discomfort growing by the second. It must’ve been five or six minutes before the heavy door came open. “Yes?” The man who opened the door was older, with white streaking his hair and dark brown eyes that suggested he was all human and very aggravated.
Paige put on her best smile. “I was looking for Mr. Ross or Mr. Gavril,” she said in her most polite voice. The man at the door gawked at her like she was some sort of Jehovah’s Witness trying to convert him. However, if he expected her to back down, he had another thought coming. When she just stared back at him for several minutes, he got the message. She wasn’t going to go away.
He crossed his arms. “This is a private residence.”
Paige was pretty sure she knew that already. Idiot. “Yes, I understand that, but I was hoping to speak to Mr. Ross or Mr. Gavril.” She tried to keep her smile sweet, but she had a hard time not scowling at this guy.
“No one by that name is available.”
Paige noticed that he was saying they weren’t available, not that they didn’t live there. She crossed her arms. “That’s fine. I’ll just stand here and wait until one of them is available.” She gave the man at the door her nastiest smile. “And I’ll have to find some way to amuse myself while I wait. You really should ask Jim Hunter what happens when I get bored.” Her smirk got wider. “I mean I assume he’s going to recover soon, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience for him.” She left her vague threat right there. People’s imagination could always fill in the details better than any she might provide. Besides, the fact was she hadn’t done anything to Hunter. It just always paid to let people wonder how psychotic you might be.