“They tried to save me,” I said, once I got closer. “If they hadn’t come, I’d probably be dead.”
Othello clenched her teeth and shut her eyes, nodding once.
Serge rested his hand on her shoulder, offering what little comfort he could. “They would have been glad to know they did not give up their lives for nothing,” he said.
“We’ll come back for them,” Othello said. “Come on, let’s go check on Vitaly.” She rose, and together the three of us went to find Othello’s cousin, who had apparently been left in the care of Lisandra following Rasputin’s fall. In the end, we found her, Vitaly, and Warren tucked away beside one of the few relatively undamaged tents which still stood. Lisandra had Vitaly’s head cupped in her hands, staring at his face with so much intensity I thought she might kiss him any second. But of course, she didn’t. What she was doing had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with magic.
We halted a few steps back, watching in fascination as the skin of Vitaly’s forehead regrew, forming a scab that eventually fell free to land in the man’s lap, revealing a line of pale pink flesh. Lisandra sat back, releasing Vitaly’s face. The Russian man glanced over her shoulder at us and smiled. “Comrades,” he said, “it is good to see you all among the living.”
“And you,” Othello said, voice catching. “You had me worried, cousin.”
“It is good for you to worry about family. Now maybe you will think to call me more often, da?” Vitaly winked.
Othello smiled, fished a tear from the corner of one eye, and nodded. Lisandra and Warren, I noticed, had moved a little to the side and were discussing something in hushed voices. The psychic wore a three-piece suit that looked remarkably out of place among all the blood and chaos but seemed utterly comfortable in it. Lisandra hadn’t dressed up nearly as much, but then she never struck me as the type to get dolled up unnecessarily; her pale green blouse and khaki slacks brought out the natural highlights in her hair, the blue of her eyes. I sauntered over to them, trying my best to let my displeasure show.
“You should know I asked her out,” Warren said, turning to face me before I could get within striking distance. “Not the other way around.”
I halted, too surprised to say anything.
“Lisandra turned me down several times,” Warren went on, “but I insisted. Persisted, even. Lisandra said you wouldn’t approve, but I told her I didn’t care.” He flashed me a goofy, crooked smile. “I mean, I cared, but not enough to refrain from seeking her affections.” He slid his hand in Lisandra’s and stood there, waiting for me to tell him, them, how strange I found their relationship. I had a feeling they’d gotten that reaction a few times by now. Objectively, I could acknowledge the discrepancy between the two individuals: Warren was several inches shorter than his leggy counterpart, with few of the physical attributes you’d expect to see in a would-be suitor. And yet, holding her hand with that loose, casual intimacy, I knew it didn’t matter one bit what I thought.
“I’m glad ye found each other,” I said, finally.
Warren’s smile became a full-fledged grin. Lisandra’s eyes widened momentarily, but she recovered quickly. “Thank you,” she replied, adjusting her glasses, sliding them up the perfect slope of her nose.
Before any of us could say anything else, however, a pain-filled groan drew us around. It took me a minute to find the source, but once I did, I found myself moving towards the huddle of vampires clustered around a large, bearded man clutching a woman to his chest. I recognized both instantly.
It was Dimitri, cradling Natasha’s body.
Chapter 46
I didn’t get too close. No matter how I felt about Natasha or Dimitri at this point, I still didn’t trust the vampires not to turn on us if it suited them. Unfair, maybe, but then they’d gone from allies to enemies and back again enough times now that I had every reason to be cautious. Of course, even from several feet away I could see the awful wound that had taken Natasha’s life—four diagonal slashes of varying depth that had torn out her throat and most of her chest. Looking at her now that she was dead, truly dead, I realized she’d been young when she’d first been turned. Too young, maybe seventeen at most. It’d been some force of her personality, I guessed, which had made me think she was older. That jaded expression she so often wore, or the fear she’d displayed—few young people seemed to be scared of anything, these days.
Dimitri leaned over her, staring down into that slack face with such pain that I realized he’d been in love with her, once. Maybe he still was. “She died protecting me,” he said, voice choked with emotion.
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, or if he was even talking to me, so I said nothing.
“I forced her to do this,” he said. The vampires gathered around looked away as one, as if uncomfortable with their Master’s suffering, his weakness. Or maybe they simply agreed and didn’t want him to see their faces. Whichever, it left me the only one still looking at the two of them. Dimitri gave me his eyes, and they were bloodshot. “I gave her no choice.”
“What d’ye mean?” I asked, because I figured he needed me to. I’d been raised Catholic; I knew a guilty conscience when I saw one, and Dimitri desperately needed to confess his sins to someone. Granted, I thought he’d chosen a poor substitute for a priest by coming to me, but I wasn’t going to leave him lying there with a woman he’d loved dead in his arms.
Unless he said some shit I really didn’t like.
Then we’d see.
“She was pregnant when we found her,” Dimitri said. “Did she tell you that?”
I shook my head.
“She gave birth before I turned her. A boy. We all thought he would die, but he did not. At first, I had planned to give him away, but Natasha begged me not to. She begged me to let her raise him, to be the mother she would have been had life been less cruel. I allowed it. But in time Natasha grew to resent me, to resent what she was. Her son grew, but she did not age. Soon, he was older in life than she had ever been. She rebelled.” He looked away. “I turned her son and made him one of us. I thought if she only loved one of us as much as she loved him, she might come to enjoy this existence. To love others among us. To love me.”
“But after that, she hated ye,” I said, turning it into a statement.
Dimitri nodded. “As never before. She hated me and could not look at her son. So, I sent him away to America. After that, I knew she would never accept what she’d become. That she would seek out her own death, one way or another. So, I did what I had to. I told her she had to serve me, to stay alive, or I would send for her son and kill him myself. That threat kept her in line for many, many years.” The Master of Moscow stared down at Natasha’s empty eyes and brushed a hand down her cheek. “She stepped between me and one of the bears. Why would she do that?”
The question seemed rhetorical, but I decided to try and answer it, anyway. “She almost died on the Road of Bones,” I said, “would have died, had Othello and I not stepped in. Her last words were for ye.”
His head jerked up.
I held out a hand. “She never got to say the words, but I can guess what she would have wanted ye to know.”
“What?” he whispered.
“That, had she not hated what she was—what had happened to her—quite so much, she might have loved ye.” I shook my head. “There’s no way to be sure, but I saw ye two together. There was hate there, aye, but other t’ings, as well. Finer t’ings.” I fought the urge to glance back, to find Jimmy somewhere out there, to draw parallels that would only cause me pain. “Maybe if you’d have been honest about how ye felt, t’ings might have been different.”
Dimitri shook, not crying, but rocking back and forth as though he held a sleeping woman in his arms, and not a dead vampire. I left him to it. I’d said all I could say to make him feel better. If Dimitri had wanted forgiveness, he’d come to the wrong person.
I didn’t deal in forgiveness.
Chapter 47
Lisandra ope
ned several Gateways over the next hour or so. Dimitri and his vampires were the first to depart, taking Natasha back to his club in Moscow just as the sun was coming up. It broke the horizon as the few remaining inmates asked to be deposited in their various hometowns, presumably hoping to take back their lives. I’d considered introducing myself and finding out who exactly Leo and his team had freed, but I simply wasn’t up to the challenge of meeting new people. Instead, I hung around Othello, Vitaly, and Serge. We filled the two men in on what had happened in the other realm, after which they told us what had happened here in the real world. Apparently, the Russian soldiers hadn’t bought the overturned diesel truck story Vitaly had concocted to explain the fire and had sent for reinforcements—including an armored tank.
“We let them chase us for a day or two, but they got lazy, and so we stole the tank,” Vitaly said, shrugging, as if stealing their equipment were the natural thing to do when being hunted by the military.
“Is your whole family like this?” I asked Othello.
“Like what?”
I raised an eyebrow and jabbed a thumb at Vitaly. “Like this.”
“Oh. Da,” she replied.
By the time he’d finished telling his story—full of more hi-jinks than I would have thought possible—Leo and his people were on their feet and ready to go. We met them halfway, surveying the encampment as we went, most of us probably wondering the same thing: how in the hell would this look, once news got out that a military installation in the remote Siberian wilderness had become a warzone?
Fortunately, Lisandra had a solution. “I’ve already spoken to the Academy,” she said. “We’ll have a clean-up crew come through and get rid of the evidence.”
“Just like that?” Leo said.
The tall blonde nodded. “It is part of our role to keep the world from seeing things like this.”
Leo didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t argue, which was good because I wasn’t too excited about the idea of him pissing off our only ride home; considering I’d lost my bags at the airport, my passport, and basically anything that could prove I was who I said I was, flying back wasn’t an option. And—judging by the attire and expressions of those around me—I think we all knew we were in the same shitty, metaphorical boat.
“Where to, everyone?” Warren asked.
“Boston,” Jimmy and I said, simultaneously. We glanced at each other in surprise, and I felt something pass between us in that moment. Not forgiveness, or even anything romantic, but a renewed awareness of each other. A knowledge that we’d left things unsaid, but also a promise that we would talk about it all one day. Maybe not soon, but one day.
Christoff nodded, stepping up alongside us. “Yes, I want to see my children.”
“Actually,” I said, wincing a bit, “they’re in St. Louis.”
Othello slipped her arm through Christoff’s. “I will take you to them. But first, I think we should buy you some new clothes. If you show up wearing these,” she tugged on the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit, “Tory might not let us in. She’s a fantastic headmistress, but very protective.”
“Yes, I would like to thank the woman who has looked after my children,” Christoff said, nodding his head in agreement.
“Leo?” Warren asked, turning to his boss.
“We need new clothes, too, but we should probably check in. Which means we head back to Salt Lake.” He turned to study Lisandra. “You know I hate Gateways,” he said.
That earned a small smile from the normally taciturn woman. “Yes.”
“We all owe you our lives,” he said, as if those two things were somehow connected. Lisandra’s eyes widened, as did those of Leo’s team. Lakota seemed especially surprised, almost as if she’d seen Leo grow a second head. But he plowed forward as though they hadn’t. “I’m sorry for doubting you and your people.” The FBI agent held out his hand, and Lisandra took it.
“In the future, Agent Jeffries, I hope you’ll consider working with us,” Lisandra said. “From what little Warren has told me about what you do, I think the Academy’s assistance could prove valuable.”
“I’ll consider it,” Leo replied, before releasing her hand.
“And what about us?” Vitaly said, throwing one arm around Serge’s shoulders, breaking the slight tension that still rode the air.
“Get Felix and Felicia,” Othello said. “You two can come with me to St. Louis, for now. I’ll drop you off later.” The two men nodded and wandered off, jostling one another as they went. Othello turned to me, still arm-in-arm with Christoff. “You sure you don’t want to come to St. Louis? I’d be happy to take you shopping for some new clothes. Maybe a few new toys.” She waggled her eyebrows, knowingly.
I shook my head. “I know what you’re tryin’ to get me to do, but I’m not ready to talk to him, yet. I have t’ings I need to do in me city, affairs I need to settle, before I push that particular button.”
Othello smiled. “Can’t blame a girl for trying. But that’s alright. I guess I will simply have to come to you, and you can take me out for once.”
I laughed. “Why do I have a feelin’ me bank account won’t like that one bit?”
“Because you’re smarter than you look,” Othello said, eyes glinting.
Chapter 48
It turned out Othello was true to her word. She did return, albeit much sooner than I’d thought she would; I’d been in Boston less than two days when she called, inviting me to come down to Christoff’s pop-up bar. She sounded remarkably like her old, playful self over the phone, which made me wonder what exactly I was in store for.
Of course, I hadn’t expected to be put to work.
“It is good for you,” Christoff said, patting my back with one of his large, calloused hands as I moved furniture around, helping him set up for Halloween and his bar’s grand re-opening. The theme, he’d insisted, would be Monster Movies, although that still didn’t explain why I was doing all the heavy lifting when he had employees to do this shit.
But, honestly, I was simply too glad to see him doing better to bitch.
His rugrats ran around the bar, playing with Othello and—very surprisingly—a cheerful Scatach. In fact, the red-headed warrior was currently engaged in the most intense game of peek-a-boo that I’d ever seen. Around the two kids, I noticed she was almost a different person. The kind of person you wanted around your kids—someone who gave children every ounce of her undivided attention, as if they were the most important things in the world. Othello, meanwhile, had been content to play second fiddle, stealing the children’s attention away only when Scatach needed a break from the manic, scatter-brained personalities all kids that age seemed to develop.
I hoisted one of the heavier boxes, carrying it easily, and set it on the bar. It clinked, which meant I was probably handling alcohol. But of course, it was best to be sure. I had my hand halfway in the box when I felt Christoff slap my arm, lightly. “Not until we are finished.”
I glared at him, but a knock on the door stopped me from chucking the Russian widower through a window on principle—that, and the fact that the way things were going I’d probably be the one cleaning up the shattered glass. We all froze, turning slowly as if half-expecting to find something monstrous and awful at the door.
Traumatized, who us?
Hilde waved. “Are you going to let me in?”
Christoff grinned and crossed the bar with wide strides, revealing some of the industrious energy I’d come to associate with the man. I noticed he’d already put on a few pounds, which I thought was a good sign. “Welcome to my bar,” Christoff said, holding the door wide, arm flung out graciously. “Come inside and have a drink, please.”
“What, she gets a drink, but I don’t?” I called.
“Once we are done with work, then we drink!” Christoff called back.
I muttered something impolite under my breath, but went back to moving furniture, momentarily oblivious to Hilde’s presence. I was so busy, in fact, that I’d just settled
a large cutout of Bela Lugosi as Dracula into one corner of the bar when I noticed the energy of the room had changed. I turned to find Scatach and Hilde staring at each other from maybe a foot away, something like recognition playing across their features. Christoff, who stood between them, seemed taken aback, as if either or both had said something they shouldn’t have.
“Ladies,” I barked. They both jumped a little, then turned to me, wearing identical, unhappy expressions. “Play nice in front of the wee ones.” I jerked my chin towards the two children, who seemed to have picked up on the sudden tension. Christoff’s little boy actually looked a little frightened, which made me wonder how perceptive the kid would turn out to be.
Both the Valkyrie and the Huntress had the grace to look embarrassed. Hilde muttered an apology first, then Scatach, and suddenly we could all breathe easy again. At least until Hilde reached back onto the bar to retrieve a package she’d brought with her. I frowned, realizing there was something odd about the way it had been wrapped. No, not the way it had been wrapped, but what it was wrapped in. Hilde held up the bound leather bundle for all of us to see. The instant Scatach saw it, however, she danced away, hissing. “Why did you bring that here?” she demanded, reaching for the sword at her hip.
A sword that hadn’t been there a second ago.
Hilde held the package lightly, raising an eyebrow, though I could feel the temperature of the room lower a bit—a sure sign that Hilde wasn’t happy. “It’s a gift. For Quinn.”
“From whom?” Scatach asked, eyes wide.
“From the Allfather.” Hilde faced me. “Odin wished to offer you a boon for freeing Skadi. He’d thought her lost forever. She’s the mother of a few of his children, you know.”
I nodded sagely as though polygamous, misbegotten love-children were totally natural, common occurrences. “What’s the gift?” I asked.
Moscow Mule: Phantom Queen Book 5 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 21