No wonder it’s heavy. Fabric fell aside and revealed the mellow shine of gold.
He’d stolen it after all.
The Seal of Sitirris was pure heavy gold, studded with emeralds, Greater Words carved all around its circumference. In the middle, an unfamiliar glyph twisted, the gold shifting soundlessly as the carved contours changed like a Mobius strip. The gold was set in a shallow black steel dish, with a small iron loop set on the bottom. Selene let out a low breath of wonder, setting the Seal down in her lap. She pulled Danny’s notebook out.
Paging through it, she was vaguely surprised she could read down here. The black spidery strokes of Danny’s cryptic handwriting—done in a code only he and Selene knew, since they had invented it in the camp orphanage, scribbling in the dirt—showed up in clear contrast to the greenish-white of the pages.
The last page was full of thin spidery marks, done messily and hastily. Selene traced them with her index finger.
N. only wants me to find it but I’m going to steal it myself. Greater Word of Awakening. Wakes up all sorts of shit. Useful, powerful. Sell to highest bidder. . .Got it! It was easy. . .Guy named G. wants it too, will outbid N. Finally gonna buy Lena that car. Move somewhere warm.
Tears spilled down Selene’s cheeks. “You jackass,” she whispered. “Why couldn’t you just have done what he told you to? Why’d you have to steal this and get yourself killed?”
Delivered by KM but something wrong, cold in the apartment. Danger. Not going to call Sel. Got to get it out of my house. Stole the wrong thing. G. wants N. to suffer. Something’s wrong.
There was one last scrawl.
Danger. G. coming to collect. Took fifteen had to get it out of here.
There was a long string of numbers, and one last hurried sentence. Gonna buy Sel that car.
Selene thought she knew who KM was—Kristian Mueller, one of Danny’s contacts. He lived over on the other end of the bridge on Sommersby Street—the rich side of town.
Nikolai’s side of town.
The numbers puzzled her. She traced them, her sensitive fingertips feeling the little divots in the paper, almost tasting the chemical composition of the ink.
Comprehension hit. She felt slow and stupid. Bank account. It’s a routing string and a bank account. Who did he sell it to?
G. Grigori?
The mysterious Grigori, popping up all over. If Danny was known to be one of Nikolai’s people, someone with a grudge against Nikolai might want to interfere. But Danny was a small fish at best. Why go after him?
Nikolai said the Seal had been stolen in the first place, and Danny only hired to locate it. Did she believe that? And what about this Grigori? His face nagged at her memory, something she couldn’t quite remember.
If Danny had stolen the Seal, why did he have the bank account number? Had Nikolai paid him up-front, and Danny thought to double-dip? It wasn’t out of the question. Dear Danny the overachiever, always with an angle.
God knew they’d both needed every angle they could get.
Bitterness touched her tongue. Now she was free, and strong enough—probably—to defend Danny, and he was dead. There was no justice in the world, and if there was a God or a Jesu like the Gileads had said, he was a monster. She might as well be a hell-fiend.
Tomorrow night I’ll visit Kristian. Getting out of town was a good bet, but finding Danny’s killer was an even better one. What did she have to lose now?
A whole lot of nothing. Especially since she’d shot Nikolai. She didn’t think he’d forgive that.
She closed the notebook, wrapped it with the Seal in the hank of material, and slipped the resulting package back into her bag. Then she pulled her knees up and rested her forehead against them, taking a deep breath.
Oh, God, I shot him, it won’t kill him but he’ll be so angry. I hope I didn’t kill him. That would make two men I’ve killed tonight.
But some part of her hoped she had killed him. Most of all, she wanted to be free. She wanted to get so far away Nikolai could never make her weak again.
She shook the thought away, her forehead knocking against her knees. The medallion warmed against her chest. Her breathing slowed, slowed, and stopped. Nothing happened. She didn’t have to breathe—but after a long time she inhaled again. The habit was just too strong. Her pulse was slowing too, strong evenly-spaced thuds of her heart marking off time.
Sleep fell over her, a kind of death she welcomed even as it drove her down into darkness.
***
“Get up.” A hand around her throat. Clamped down. The zoo stink of werecain. Lots of werecain. “Look at this. In a church.”
Selene lunged into wakefulness, her fist instinctively blurring up in a strike that would break the nasal promontory and drive it into the brain—
His hand closed over her wrist, warm iron fingers squeezing hard enough to break bone if she had still been human. “Lovely. Let’s just chain her, and bring her along.”
Her eyes fluttered open. The exhaustion was still on her, a sheet of lead weighing her down while her body shook off the effects of the daytime. Lethargy receded, but not fast enough. Steel clamped around her wrists—steel, and something that burned. “Ow! What the—”
Her pupils dilated. The greenish light returned. She looked up into his face. Broad cheekbones, strong chin, straight eyebrows. He looked vaguely Asian, his eyes slightly elongated. Beardless, his hair braided into long strings beaded with black lacquer beads gleaming wetly in the faint green glow. A cuff of yellowed lace came up through his collar, framing his throat. He had a long black coat on, just like Nikolai. Pale expressive hands held whatever was clasped around her wrists, whatever was burning almost down to her bones.
The air was full of the smell of werecain, and the smell of heatless power pouring off him. He smelled old, like dust and dry tombs, spice and open steppes. And he also smelled like dry ratfur and blood, ancient power. She recognized the smell, even without its overlay of stinking black werecain.
Oh. My. God. Her throat went dry.
Everything clicked into place.
“You’re him,” she whispered. “Grigori.”
He caught the chain, looped it over her wrists. The cuffs and the length of chain sent a flare of agony down her arms, jolting in her shoulders. “Very good, sugar puff.” His accent was thick, heavy on the Eastern Europe, light on the cuteness. This was a soft, evil voice to make you slit your own wrists and smile as the blade parted flesh. “And you are Nikolai’s little love-bird.” The words almost staggered under a weight of sarcasm as dark as a silted-up river.
She knew that voice. Give my regards to Nikolai.
“I hate Nikolai!” she screamed desperately. He’s going to kill me, he’s going to kill me, the werecain was in my apartment to kill me think fast Selene think fast—”I just shot him! He Turned me and I hate him!”
He yanked on the chains. Selene jerked to her feet. His dark eyes met hers.
Selene screamed again, an inarticulate sound of agony.
Those eyes were lakes of black fire, burrowing into Selene’s head. He is of my Bloodline, Nikolai’s voice said inside her head. Do not resist him, Selene. Tell whatever lies you must, but do not resist.
She had a brief flash, so vivid it was like being in two places at once—Nikolai, driving his fingers into a brick wall, the world rippling slightly around him. The psychic cord between them stretched taut, a refuge in the very back of her mind, a well of strength she had never imagined existed. Was it his, or her own? Did her mind just use him as an image, a mental walking-stick?
You hate me, Selene, Nikolai’s voice reminded her. There was pain—he was biting his own lip, and she wondered hazily why she was thinking about him when she had other things to think about, like surviving this. Remind him that you hate me. You hate me.
“I hate him!” she screamed again. The scraping inside her head intensified unbearably, tore at her skull, pounded at her temples from the inside—but it didn’t crack the safe litt
le corner of her where something crouched, some essential core of darkness that made her think of Nikolai’s eyes. “I killed him! Goddammit stop it, I killed him!”
The chains fell away, sizzling. The older Nichtvren cupped her chin in his hot hand.
There was a low growl. “Quiet,” Grigori said. “Don’t mouth off to me, dog.”
Grigori is abseyatein, Nikolai’s voice whispered urgently, blood in his mouth and his fingers aching from driving into the wall, a low sound like a strangled scream locked in his chest. The psychic cord stretched again, thinning, but held. Beast-master. Be careful, Selene, I beg of you.
Leave me alone! she screamed inwardly, to both of them, yanking her between them in a horrible game of tug-of-war. But Grigori didn’t know she had reserved a corner of herself from him. He thought she was completely open to him.
Completely submissive.
And Selene knew all about submission, didn’t she? Knew all about reserving a corner of her mind, some small part of her soul, while her body wept and went pliable with hot need. Wherever the strength to keep that corner of her safe and inviolate came from, she used it gratefully, unquestioningly—and let Grigori rummage through the rest of her mind.
It was no different than letting them use her body, was it? No different—and no less of a rape, made more horrible by the fact that she acquiesced, that she needed it.
God was a monster, and she was trapped here again. But this time she had a chance, and she used it, withdrawing into the small safe little corner of herself she could lock everything else out of.
The only part of her that didn’t beg.
“What else can you tell me, little girl?” Those eyes blazed, but the intensity behind them was a little less. They weren’t digging into her head like a raccoon going through a garbage can. Instead, they were thoughtful, scorching away dust. “Don’t lie. I can smell falsehood. It is like candy.”
Give my regards to Nikolai.
“I’ve got the Seal.” Her voice trembled. “My brother sold it to you. I’d like my fifteen, I give you the Seal, and we go our separate ways.”
Grigori nodded. His beaded hair fell forward, clacking like bones, rustling against the shoulders of his coat. Beads. Beads in his hair. The texture of the wool glowed. “That is one option. But I have a score to settle with my wayward son, little girl.”
Selene settled her back against the cellar wall. Her wrists ached furiously. If I can just keep him from killing me I’ll be happy. “How did you find me?”
“I’ve tracked falcons and werecain,” he said, and there was a low growl in the cellar. Selene’s eyes darted past him. Six fur-heavy shapes squatted on the dusty floor, near the stairs she’d crept down last night. Cool night wind poured down the stairs, past the boxes, flavored with rain. They must have broken in. No need for subtlety, not for a creature this old. “You are no trouble. As long as Nikolai kept you human and under his hand, I could not See you. He must value you, to have made an unbroken fledgling in defiance of the Law.”
She wanted to rub at her wrists, didn’t let herself. I’ll be damned if I let you see that. The thought was like a slap, waking her up. It felt as if the metal bracelets were still on her, burning sensitive skin. “What was on those handcuffs?”
“A little mixture of my own. Induces a simple allergic reaction, painful but nothing more. Unless it’s swallowed.” He shrugged. “And now I’ll have to request that you come with me.”
You killed my brother, you son of a bitch. I’m going to kill you. Selene shook her head. You never, ever gave in the first time a client named a price. “I give you the Seal, you give me the money, and we go our separate ways.” Her heart hammered. And I thought Nikolai was a tiger. This thing could eat me alive and suck my bones dry. . . if he thinks I don’t know about him killing Danny will he let me live?
Or if he doesn’t care that I know?
“I have you, and the Seal, already,” he pointed out.
Selene’s throat was as dry and smooth as glass.
Why don’t I want him? Sudden confusion made her blink. If this was Nikolai, I’d be a little puddle on the floor.
“Nikolai trapped me. He’s been using me for years. I want him out of my life,” she told the old Nichtvren, her pulse hammering in her ears. “All the way out of my life. Forever.”
Give me something I can use. She huddled in the tiny corner behind the smooth invisible wall keeping her safe. Please, please. You wanted to kill me, but see how useful I am? Don’t kill me, please God, don’t let him kill me.
Let me stay alive so I can fucking rip his heart out. Somehow.
“Of course.” Grigori’s thumb stroked her cheek. “And I want him. Six hundred years he served me faithfully, as a friend and lover, and I want him back. I want him fettered at my feet as I break that regrettable pride.” He cocked his head thoughtfully, examining her. “Now, if you’ll help me acquire him, I’ll set you free. You can wander the world as a Nichtvren without a Master.”
Selene’s entire body shook. “What do you want me to do?” she asked. Her throat was parched, desert dust. The thirst. I want. . .oh, God, I have to feed. God help me.
“Oh, nothing much. One phone call. He’ll come, I’ll have him, and you’ll go free.” He smiled, a purely beautiful, terrifying smile that looked just like Nikolai’s—if Nikolai had been nailed onto a cross and hung snarling down on the populace, just waiting to tear free of the nails and run raving—and feeding—through them. “I wanted to kill you to prove to him there is nothing of his I cannot destroy, but having you betray him is ever so much better. I think that will go a long way toward breaking him.”
Christos, this guy’s a real winner, ain’t he? Danny’s voice whispered in the little corner of sanity left in her head. Why couldn’t she think in her own voice for once? Agree with him, Selene. You can juke him out. I’d bet my panties on it. It was just the sort of thing Danny would have said, too.
“He won’t come,” she told him. “He’s too smart.”
“He would not have Turned you if he would not come for you. I know him well enough to know that.” Grigori’s hand tensed on her chin, his thumb sinking into her cheek. His claws pinpricked her skin. “What say you, sugar puff?”
I say you killed my brother and I’m going to make you pay. I’m going to make you both pay for fucking with our lives. Selene buried the thought in the very bottom of her mind. Can he read me? God, help me?
God couldn’t help her, but the small corner of her mind Grigori hadn’t invaded pulsed reassuringly. Selene drew a deep breath, a sudden crazy mental image of Nikolai standing, his fingers sinking into a wall and his eyes closed, rose in that deep small hidden place.
If he could do that, reach across distance like that and crawl into her head, would there be anywhere in the world she was safe? Or was her psyche breaking under the strain, feeding her sudden hallucinations to make sense of what was happening to her?
Great. She was either crazy or totally fucked, again.
“You’ve been working on your slang,” she managed, without the faintest idea of what she was going to say next. Her own smell faded under the onslaught of the smell of werecain and the basal fiery aroma of an ancient Nichtvren. It was like vanishing. Panic rose under her breastbone. She pushed it down with a hysterical effort. Why don’t I want him? Why am I not a pile of pudding? He fucking terrifies me, why am I not begging him to fuck me?
She didn’t know.
I’m not a tantraiiken anymore. Not a. . . my God. Oh my God. I reacted to Nikolai. Is it only him now? Jesu. He said so, didn’t he?
I’m not thinking very fast right now.
“Of course. We must change with the times, no? There is no point in staying still while the river flows on.” He smiled, not showing his fangs, his eyes dancing with red streaks like crimson oil on a puddle of black mineral water. The beads clicked and clacked against his shoulders as he moved. Danny had heard that sound before he died. “One phone call. Do we have a bargain?”
Selene swallowed, her throat clicking. “I’m thirsty.”
“If we have a bargain, you can feed, little girl.” He kept stroking her cheek, his thumb digging in. The touch should have made her melt. Instead, loathing crawled under her skin. A spiked mass of disgust made her shudder. Maybe he thought it was desire. What did he know about her? What did he guess? Had he ever Turned a tantraiiken?
“Deal,” she whispered. The thirst twisted in her bloodstream, clawed at her belly, locked its greedy hands around her throat.
His hand left her chin. He lifted his wrist to his own mouth, bit in, and offered it to her.
Selene moaned. Blood dripped, black in the greenish glow. The thirst woke up fully, and her mouth fastened on the cut. Grigori’s hand slid through her hair, cupped the back of her neck, just like a man stroking a puppy while it ate. “Drink deep, granddaughter,” he whispered. There was another low growl that had a weird modulation, as if a wolf was trying to speak. It ended on an inquisitive yip.
It scorched down her throat like pure fire, Nichtvren blood, intensely powerful. Exploded in her stomach, under her breastbone, a bombshell that spread and tingled through her nerves. He must have fed tonight, she thought, her sensitive mouth tasting the sweet lingering effects of human blood.
“He’ll come, Thorvald,” Grigori said. His pulse thudded in her ears, forcing her own heartbeat to follow it. She gulped, and gulped, her jaw distending so she could take as much as possible, greedily. If I feed enough I’ll be able to run. “I know Nikolai. He’ll come to see her one last time. He will think he is freeing her.” A low chuckle. “I may even keep you, exquisite one. And use you to torture my son.”
Use me? I’ve been used all my life. It’s nothing new. But she kept that thought carefully buried, sucking frantically.
Fresh life surged through her veins. “That’s enough,” Grigori said, and the flow stopped. Selene snarled, wanting to bury her fangs into his wrist, but he made a quick movement and she was pinned against the wall, hanging, his hand clamped around her throat. “I said, that’s enough. You have no manners. I’d half like to teach you some.”
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