The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04
Page 92
She couldn’t bring herself to go to him, to touch him; she wasn’t that brave. “Thank you.”
His eyebrows flew up, but she didn’t stick around to see if he had anything else to say.
A wall of noise and the scents of cooked food greeted her when she entered the living room. The informal part of the house was much more open than the front half, incorporating a dining room and a massive set of French doors that led to an entertaining courtyard. Afternoon light filled the richly decorated space, filtered through two long vertical panes of stained glass windows set into the French doors, casting dark rainbows on the carpet.
All of the guards and maidens fit into the rooms comfortably, as well as Yevgeny’s wolves, plus several she hadn’t met before. Nadya wasn’t there, but Ivan and the two wolf guards she’d met in Central America were; she couldn’t remember their names. Alexi wasn’t there either, and Emma knew that shouldn’t disappoint her — but it did.
Yevgeny came to show her through the door, looking much more subdued than when she’d last seen him. “Please, come, eat something. You are skin and bone.” She supposed that was his attempt at friendliness. Obviously being alive for hundreds of years didn’t make you any better at complimenting women. She said nothing as he led her to the enormous dining room table where Fern, Horne, Andres and Red Sun were already sitting — Red apparently going for a world record on just how much could be eaten in one sitting. A whole goddamn course must have been piled on his plate. He winked at her as she came to the table, unable to talk around the half a quiche he’d just put in his mouth.
Yevgeny pulled out a chair for her. The room quieted. Fern subtly moved around to her side of the table and seated himself next to her, and Anton did the same under the pretense of wanting access to the food; he heaped his plate with eggplant in some kind of sauce out of a serving dish. He hated eggplant.
Ivan came to the table and whipped a chair out, swung it around and sat with the back between his legs, arms slung over it. Emma realized he reminded her of a very young, very unkempt Billy Idol. Like, during his drug years. Somehow she didn’t think Ivan would understand or appreciate her sharing.
“Yes, little girl,” he said with his thick accent, lip curling. “Eat. You look weak.”
Red stopped chewing and gave Ivan a perplexed look; no anger, just confusion that someone so much smaller could be trying to insult Emma — within punching distance.
Anton slouched back in his chair, jungle green eyes hooded and fixed on Ivan. Emma knew that look. “You haven’t seen her in action.” He pretended to pick something out of his teeth. “And if any of us has anything to do with it, you never will.”
Oh, sure, Emma thought loudly. Bring Anton, he’s good with guns. Not so good with his goddamn smart mouth, though.
Fern almost choked on a mouthful of duck confit. Ivan stood up, said something short and sharp in Russian, and then his thighs tensed. A few months ago Emma wouldn’t have seen it, but she’d learned to pay attention.
Yevgeny was just suddenly there with one fist in Ivan’s hair, the other hand loose at his side. He jerked Ivan around to face him, knocking the chair over.
Emma stood up so fast her chair rocked, but it didn’t fall. “Don’t,” she said too loud, too harsh.
Yevgeny looked at her with the deceptive emptiness of the beast filling his eyes for a moment before they cleared, and he frowned. “He insults you, and he is my second in command, not some pup who does not know better.” He gave Ivan a little shake, still holding him up by his hair; Ivan’s lips pressed together, but he made no move to escape or anchor himself. “He must be punished.”
Emma put her hands on her hips. “Not if you want me to eat.” Yevgeny’s momentary look of surprise almost made her laugh. “Either send him away or don’t,” she said, “I don’t care. But I’m not gonna eat my lunch while you beat up on him for being a dick.” She sat, holding Yevgeny’s gaze. “And I’m hungry, Yevgeny, so make it quick.”
18
Yevgeny dropped Ivan and barked something at him in Russian. Ivan eyed Emma, hair sticking up where Yevgeny had grabbed him, and with a stark, uncomprehending look, left the room. When he was gone, Yevgeny looked at Emma as though she were some new and fabulous species of insect.
“Don’t look at me like that.” She looked away, searching for a free plate. “You were going to punish him for insulting me, but I find violence at the dinner table pretty rude.” She shot a glance at Anton, just so he knew she blamed him just as much as Ivan. He looked unrepentant. She resolved to ignore him for as long as she could — probably about a minute and a half. On the other side of the room, the maidens resumed their quiet chatter, but the Russian bodyguards were silent.
Yevgeny took the seat at the head of the table, his movements slow and careful. He smoothed a napkin over his lap. “You are entirely correct,” he said, voice soft. “In my defense, I am so accustomed to keeping Ivan in line, I simply did not think. And I should have.”
Emma ignored the appreciative look Red was throwing her way; evidently he was enjoying the hell out of watching her put everyone in their place. She’d enjoy herself a lot more if it wasn’t necessary.
“What’s Ivan’s problem, anyway?” She refrained from mentioning that she’d disliked the show of violence just as much at the front doorstep when they’d first arrived; but sometimes discretion was the better part of valor and all that.
“He is my second in command,” Yevgeny said as though that explained everything. He glanced up when he sensed Emma’s expectant stare. With a twist of his mouth, he sighed and reached for a dish with some kind of stewed meat in it. “I took him in ten years ago, as a favor to the Finnish pack. He was one of their more powerful members, but he started to…” Yevgeny struggled for the word. “Deteriorate,” he said finally. “No one knew why; they thought perhaps his age was beginning to tell on him, as it can in some rare cases. By the time he came to my pack, he was already quite unstable.”
Emma paused with a forkful of roast potato halfway to her mouth. “How old is he?”
Yevgeny mirrored her movement with his own spoon. He shrugged delicately. “About six hundred. I could not say for sure.” He ate, chewing thoughtfully, oblivious to Emma’s shocked stare.
“He can’t be that old.” She couldn’t believe it. The old ones… they had an air about them, something thick, strange. Well, Ivan was certainly strange in a creepy kind of way, but six hundred years old?
Yevgeny chuckled humorlessly. “It is harder to tell with the ones that turn bad. And he certainly does not act his age.”
Emma chewed for a while. She was just never going to get the hang of this — and she realized she’d been taking a lot for granted, assuming she knew more than she did. If she’d known Ivan was that old, she’d never have been so dismissive with him and Yevgeny — that was not a power struggle she wanted to foul up.
Finally, she asked, “Aren’t you afraid to have him around, with Katenka?”
Yevgeny’s eerie amber eyes lit with surprise, then softened. He pushed food around his plate. “No. Ivan has been initiated into the pack, and my pack is royal. The bond runs deep. It is his connection to this pack that allows him to occupy the place of my second, and no matter how old or powerful he is, he could not hold his position if he were not part of the pack. And as part of the pack, he cannot harm Katya, for the pack exists to protect the young and the weak.” He sat back, done with trying to eat. He smiled tightly. “We live to raise cubs. They are our reason for being on this earth. When Ivan is so far gone for even that instinct to have abandoned him, then I will know it is time for him to walk into the snow, and never return.”
Suddenly the sunny dining room didn’t feel as warm and cheery as before. “Walk into the snow — you mean kill himself.”
Yevgeny cocked his head. “A dominant wolf could never take his own life. It is easier to let another do the job. But I do not think Ivan would go quietly, which is why I hope it never comes to that.”
Yevgeny smiled broadly. “Yes, Daryna and Kalyna. They belong to one of our younger mated pairs. Hannah and Yakiv both work in the city, so the cubs stay here during the day. Katenka likes the company.” His face sobered, and he leaned forward. She knew he was going to try to talk to her about it — about the ritual with Seshua. “Emma, I would —”
She held up a hand and shook her head. “Don’t. You don’t need to thank me, you don’t need to ask me if I’m sure, it doesn’t matter. I’m doing it. That’s all that matters, right?”
Yevgeny sat back in his seat. “Seshua explained it to me. Your…theory. That Katya might improve.” He looked away, breathing deeply; if Emma hadn’t been paying close attention, she might have missed the way his eyes glittered with some emotion he refused to unleash. Finally he met her eyes again, calm facade in place. “How can I ever repay you?”
Emma pushed her plate away, thinking. She knew he hadn’t meant it to sound like it had to her ears — like he thought he could somehow give her something to make up for what she was prepared to lose, like there could ever be any kind of payment for what she was going to do.
But there was something. She met his eyes again. “What can you tell me about the Zimayi pack? They migrated from Eastern Europe, a long time ago, to North America, but they were the only pack —”
“Of that name.” Yevgeny nodded. “I know it.” He leaned forward, eyes narrowing with interest. “Why do you want to know about them?”
“We’ve kind of adopted what appears to be their only living heir. The entire pack was wiped out almost three months ago.” She cleared her throat. “They were massacred, and one boy survived.”
Yevgeny’s face hardened. “How?”
Red Sun answered; miraculously, his mouth was no longer full of food. “Nobody knows how. The alphas were tortured for information before they died. What do you propose could do that to a senior alpha of an ancient royal pack — hold ‘em long enough to question, then slaughter them all?”
A growl sounded from across the room; the dark haired bodyguard started pacing. Yevgeny looked like he was either about to swear, or lose his lunch. “Not much on this earth could do that. An army of something, perhaps, but if they killed cubs…” He shook his head. “Wolves have turned berserk for less than the death of a cub. It surprises me there was only one survivor.”
It surprised Emma too — surprised her the survivor was still alive. But what Yevgeny had said about wolves not being capable of killing themselves made sense — Rain had tried a lot, but never that.
“Yeah well, he’s not in great shape.” At Yevgeny’s questioning frown, she gave a little shake of her head. “Nothing physical, not from the attack. But he’s not okay. He won’t talk to anybody but —” She caught herself before she mentioned Zach. “He doesn’t talk much,” she finished. “And he’s terrified of most men.”
Yevgeny sighed heavily through his nose. “His attackers were probably men then, that much is obvious. But about his pack, the name is familiar to me — I’m sure I have records in my office which would be of use to you. You are trying to track down relatives, yes?
Emma nodded. “We’ve been told he needs pack, other wolves, or he might never recover. I’ve no idea how useful it’ll be searching for relatives here in Russia, he could never travel. But we’ve gotta start somewhere.”
“Yes,” Yevgeny stood. “Yes you do. And if you are done here, then we may start now.” His amber wolf eyes were alight with purpose. Emma hadn’t realized the wolf king, too, needed something to do to keep his mind off tonight. In a way, Emma had it good: at least she knew what was going to happen to her, but for Yevgeny, it could go either way. Either his daughter was saved, or doomed.
A distraction was sounding pretty damn good all of a sudden.
Emma hadn’t realized Yevgeny’s office would be a different room to the drawing room at the front of the house, but he assured her the drawing room was just for show. “The real stuff,” he said, pushing open the doors that lay at the end of the west wing hallway, “Is in here.”
“Here” was a library three times the size of the drawing room. Two massive oak desks graced the polished wood floor; one piled high with books, the other painstakingly neat, with an old fashioned blotter and a very new laptop arranged side by side.
Y’know, Emma sent to Fern as she turned in a circle, trying to take it all in, When he said “office” this was not what I expected.
They spent the next three hours poring over records and histories, most in the form of journals — all of which would have a dedicated historian foaming at the mouth with excitement, considering they dated back at least seven hundred years. Yevgeny had to translate all of it; Emma and Fern got a chance to rest their eyes every time the wolf king picked up the phone to confirm something with other packs, whose location ranged from France to eastern China. The Zimayi pack had migrated to North America some five hundred years ago, and so the problem was tracking down their descendants still living in Eastern Europe, or Russia, or Mongolia — or wherever the hell they were living.
By the time the sun streaming through the stained glass windows was starting to angle down toward the horizon in earnest, Luka came in to tell them that Katenka was awake, and asking after Emma. Yevgeny surprised her by telling her to go up and keep the princess company without him; there were only a few hours until nightfall, and he wanted to get as much done by then as possible.
So Emma and Fern — and Andres, who had the job of minding them for the afternoon — got roped into several games of Zelda on one of Katenka’s three game consoles, and had to watch several episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was season two though, so that was all right. Katenka was trying to convince them to start on season three when Nadya called them down for dinner at six. The princess was disappointed until she found out she was going with them. Nadya bundled her up in a plush white blanket and carried her downstairs with surprising strength and grace. Emma had to keep reminding herself they were werewolves.
Thankfully, Seshua wasn’t at dinner — still busy in the drawing room, with God only knew what. More disturbing, Alexi was still nowhere to be seen.
When Emma asked Horne about it, he shrugged, pulling her chair out for her. “He’s been walking the perimeter. Or that’s what he says.” Horne took a seat next to her, slipping out of his black dress shirt. His guns blended into the black of the tee underneath, but they were still obvious — none of the guards had gone unarmed all day. Emma, on the other hand, had shrugged out of her rig when she realized she was going to spend most of the afternoon reading, and then carried it with her to Katenka’s room. She’d had to either put it back on when they were called down for dinner, or leave it lying around, and one of the first things she’d been taught about guns was to never, never leave them lying around. At least she fit right in at the dinner table — Fern at her left was still armed, though he’d shed his jacket, and the rest of the guards all bristled with weapons. Only Red Sun, at the other end of the table, wasn’t visibly armed, but then he didn’t need to be. He was formidable enough with only one fist.
Yevgeny helped seat Katenka next to him, and then briefed Emma on what he’d found — in short, nothing. “No living descendants of the Zimayi that I can find — and, more interesting, no clue as to what kind of information the pack might have had that anyone would want to kill for. It is this part which disturbs me the most.” He filled his wine glass, along with Emma’s.
Emma took her cue from Yevgeny — if he was okay with discussing murder at the dinner table with Katenka there, then she may as well speak freely. “You think that if we could find out why they were tortured, we’d know who did it?” Katenka’s eyes widened and she looked like she wanted to say something, but was too polite to talk around a mouthful of
steak.
Yevgeiy nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “Shapechangers are cruel, but they rarely do this kind of thing, and certainly not for sport.” He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “It was not far from your current sanctuary in California. Could it have been someone searching for information about you?”
The table went silent. Emma actually felt the color drain from her face. She took a sip of her wine; it didn’t taste half bad, but it burned all the way down, and her hand shook when she returned it to the table.
Yevgeny looked around, eyes going wide and sharp.
“Is there someone, specifically, who would be willing to go to such measures to find you?” His shoulders stiffened as he took in the stark faces. “Someone with the power to overcome an entire pack of wawkalaki?”
Emma let go of her fork. The clink as it settled against her plate was loud in the silence. Her hand itched to cover the diamond at her throat. Katenka watched her from across the table, and guilt twisted in Emma’s stomach, low and hot and awful; Katenka was only a couple of years younger than Rain.
Had Rain’s entire family been slaughtered in an effort to locate Emma?
She found she couldn’t meet the princess’s eyes. Saving Katenka’s life could never make up for that.
It was only a few days after we moved to the ranch that Rain’s pack was killed, Fern sent. It couldn’t have been Alan. He didn’t reach out to her, but he pushed as much warmth at her as he could — even so, she suddenly wished for her jacket. Or a hot shower. Something, anything.
She cleared her throat and prayed her voice didn’t waver. “It doesn’t make any sense.” She looked around the table at the guards. They were more familiar with the California mountains, where the ranch was located, than either she or Yevgeny. “Rain’s pack was killed less than ten miles from the ranch, how could they get so close and then come up with a dead end? They’d have to be desperate to do…that, to the Zimayi pack.”