by Anna Abner
“Connor,” Ali snapped. “How do you plan to kill the Destroyer? This sounds like a suicide mission.”
“That’s because it is,” came a strangely familiar voice from the doorway.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ali turned in surprise. A disheveled, dark-haired teenager stood in the open doorway dressed in dirty trousers and a bloodstained V-neck.
Before Ali could wade through the panic to a logical thought, Connor tackled the guy. They slid across the floor, a tangle of arms and legs. Roz pulled her gun, cocked it, and aimed it at the pair of them.
“I’m not here to fight!” the kid shouted. Connor pulled back and slugged him in the side of the face, a brutal, crushing blow. Blood spurted. “Stop!” Connor raised his arm to strike again, but Volk caught his fist in his palm.
“Listen to me.” He did not let Connor loose, no matter how hard he struggled. “I just want to talk.” For a long few moments, neither moved. Finally, Connor backed off, and the vampire released his fist.
Connor put himself between Ali and Volk, shaking his hand as if it hurt. “I’m listening. But talk fast.” He growled, a low rumble in his chest. “I don’t like you.”
“You wound me.” Volk didn’t look insulted, though, more like oddly pleased.
Magic fluttered in the air. Roz called her power, and directed it at the new arrival.
The youthful looking vampire straightened his clothes, and tried vainly to smooth out the wrinkles. But under the old and new blood stains, beneath the filthy and rumpled clothes, he held himself with a confidence beyond his years. And despite the state of his attire, he was handsome with dark hair and blue eyes.
“Maksim Volk.” Olek’s right hand man.
“You know me.” Maks held Ali’s gaze, placing a hand over his heart. “I’m flattered.” He stared at her for an absurdly long time.
She couldn’t drag her gaze away, either. He was a lot younger in person than she remembered from the bus crash. Though tall and strong, he still had the body of a seventeen-year-old. He spoke and behaved like a full-grown man, but he had the soft, sweet face of a not-quite-grown male.
His blue eyes zeroed in on the stitches in her neck. “Did I hurt you?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry.”
Connor sidestepped in front of her, breaking the staring contest.
“I have a proposition for you,” Volk said to Connor.
“I don’t make deals.”
He smirked. “Even so, brother, you’ll hear me out.”
Connor grunted. “I can’t think of a single reason not to kill you where you stand.”
“You can try.” Volk flashed an amused grin that clashed with the bloody and torn state of his clothing. Even his hair was messy. God, had he come from a brawl? Or a massacre. “But it’ll be safer for you to listen.”
“So the others can surround the house?”
“There are no others,” Volk assured. “I’m alone.” He flicked his gaze in Roz’s general direction. “Speak your spells, Witch. I have strength to spare. But please point that cannon somewhere else. I’ve already been shot more than once this week.”
Roz hissed her spells under her breath. If the rage behind her eyes was any indication, she was trying to set him on fire with the power of her mind.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you,” Connor said.
“Fine.” He straightened his sleeves, and then brushed at each, as if they weren’t irretrievably ruined. “I overheard your plan. It’s crap.”
Faded bruises shadowed both eyes. He’d been hurt badly if he hadn’t yet healed from it. Someone had fought back.
Ali couldn’t stand it any longer. “What did you do?” She gestured at his clothes.
“This, my sweet, was done to me. There was a vampire on your trail, so I killed him. And along the way I got shot by a very unpleasant woman.” Volk tried to make light, but he swayed ever so slightly on his feet. He was wounded, and he hadn’t fed.
Connor said to her over his shoulder, “Don’t believe anything he says.”
“You killed my cousin,” Ali cut in. “Did you know that? You cut my cousin Stefan’s throat.”
A beat of silence made Ali wonder if Volk had known the identity of his victim.
“I have a peace offering.” Maks moved toward the door, grabbing a purse off the front step. Her purse.
“How did you find it?” Ali exclaimed, leaping forward. Connor stopped her with an arm across her midsection.
To Volk, he said, “Put it down.”
“It’s not a bomb.” He set the purse on the ground. With the toe of his loafer, he kicked it toward her.
Ali ducked Connor’s reach and grabbed her purse, digging through it. Her eyes welled. It was all there—her wallet, her coin purse, her cell phone, and a charger. But before the thought of thanking him even crystallized in her mind, Connor was there, blocking her like a living, breathing concrete barrier.
“Stay back,” he growled.
She leaned around him and said, “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me, though it doesn’t make up for the murder. You understand that, right, Volk?”
“Call me Maks,” he said, turning his gaze on Connor. “And if you want to take down Olek, you have to do it from the inside. Not by taking a sledgehammer to the front door.”
Connor crossed his arms, refusing to reply.
“We both want the Destroyer in the ground. The only way to do that is as a team.”
Connor laughed loudly. “I’ve heard enough.” He took a menacing step nearer.
“We need each other.” Volk held up both hands in surrender. “You can’t kill him by yourself, and neither can I.” He narrowed his eyes, watching Ali’s face.
Connor took another step. “Stop looking at her.”
“I can’t.” He murmured. “She looks so much like her mother.” He touched the side of his head, near his ear. “Not the hair, of course. But everything else is the same.”
“You knew my mother?”
He nodded slowly.
“Is she alive?” Ali had feared her mother was loose when Irina had told her the story of that day in Nadvirna.
His face darkened with rage, as if a switch had been flipped. One moment Maksim Volk was a charming teenager, and the next he was a murderous, vengeful monster. “My little bird was destroyed by the army that spent twenty years taking me apart and putting me back together.”
“She’s really dead?”
He nodded.
She threw off Connor’s grip and advanced past him. “It was you? You’re the dark-haired demon from Nadvirna?”
A bit of his charm returned as his anger ebbed. “Guilty.”
“You’re the monster my mother chose over her husband.”
“I’m the man,” Volk corrected, “she loved enough to start a family with.”
The floor tilted beneath her. Couldn’t be. “We were not a family.”
He didn’t respond, but his eyes seemed to conceal secrets upon secrets upon secrets.
Ali said, “My dad told me my mom died in childbirth in Odessa.” She shuffled nearer to her mother’s lover, and Connor placed a restraining hand around her wrist. “I lived my whole life believing a lie.”
Roz’s harsh voice rattled off spells behind them, words like sap, weak, and cripple, but no one paid her any mind.
“Uri was smart,” Maks said, “and cruel. I suppose it was his way of keeping you safe.” He exhaled weakly. “After our defeat in Prague, I never saw you or your mother again. I told myself you were both alive somewhere, that you’d escaped the army and were safe in the Ukraine. Believing you two were happy and untouched was the only way I could survive the torture.”
“I want to know everything.” Ali had Irina’s story, but she wanted to hear his, too.
Connor braced himself as if for an attack.
“I won’t hurt her,” Maks told Connor. He held up his palms, turned them over, studied them
. “My little bird changed so quickly, instantly, and then you were born into my hands,” he said.
That couldn’t be true. And yet the expression on his face said he was remembering every moment of her birth. Somehow, beyond all logic and reason this creature had loved her mother with his whole being. Ali couldn’t hate him anymore. She had the strangest desire to throw her arms around his neck and give him the hug he looked like he sorely needed.
Not that she would. The guy was still a murderer.
“We were a happy family,” he said. “For two years, we lived in a cottage among the horde, content. I had to fight at Olek’s side when he attacked Prague or risk all our lives. We were annihilated by drones in the sky and tank stoppers on the ground. Whoever wasn’t already in pieces were rounded up into trucks by the Americans. I only found out later that Katya was captured,” he swallowed thickly, “and that you were returned to Uri.”
“That’s impossible,” she hissed.
“You’re living proof, Anya, that nothing is impossible.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” she said. How could such a thing have happened to her and she have no memory?
“You were a baby, my sweet.”
“Enough.” Connor yanked her into his shadow. “The reunion’s over.”
“Fine.” Maks dropped his hands and focused all of his energy, such as it was, on Connor. “Cards on the table. Olek sent me and two others to collect Anya. I killed one. I’m guessing you took care of the other or you wouldn’t be standing here.”
The third vehicle wouldn’t be popping up, after all. The gears in Ali’s mind creaked and groaned as she tried to make sense of this newly updated version of Maksim Volk.
“You are not taking her to Oleksander,” Connor said.
“No. I’m not.”
Connor glanced back at her, his brow furrowed. But she didn’t have any answers. She was just as confused as he was. Maybe more so.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not bringing Anya to my master,” Maks said, “but if I bring you, Olek will be too damned curious to keep us out. The two of us, together, can kill him.”
“You can barely stand up.”
Volk’s mouth tensed. “I’m stronger than I look.”
“You’re his favorite. I can’t believe you’d be willing to kill him.”
Maksim nodded, his eyes bright. “I serve him, and I loathe it.”
“Then why do it?” Ali blurted out.
“Because I belong to him,” he said, his voice quivering ever so slightly. “When he infected me, and then spared my life, I became his plaything. If I make him unhappy, or if I try to leave, he’ll make me suffer more than all the others combined.”
“Bullshit,” Connor spat. “You’ve been his pet for over twenty-five years.”
Maks’ gaze flickered upon Ali’s face again. “Believe this, even if you believe nothing else. You won’t make it ten feet inside the gate before you’re ground beef. Those animals will defend their lord to the death. You can’t sneak around them. You can’t negotiate. You can’t turn them to your cause. You want to get in? I can walk you right up to the man himself. You want to take him down? You do it my way. Your way sucks.”
Connor kept his back to Ali for a very long few moments. She never expected him to look like he was actually considering this. Sad eyes or no, Maksim Volk could not be trusted. Connor was the one who’d told her that.
“We can do this, brother,” Maks said. “We can take him out.”
Indecision was written all over Connor’s face. He couldn’t really be considering it.
“No,” she said, grabbing his sleeve. “No way.”
Shrugging her off, he said to Maks, “Fine. I’ll do it.”
Ali made a messy, frustrated sound, jerking angrily at Connor’s shirt. “No!”
Roz stopped speaking spells so she could scream, “Are you insane? It’s a trap. He’s going to kill you!”
Connor wouldn’t look at Ali. “You two, drive straight to Los Angeles.” There was a quiet urgency in his voice she didn’t like. “Get on the first plane out of the country. Stay safe, and I will find you.”
“Screw that,” Roz said. “She can run and hide. I’m coming with you.”
“No.” There was no room for arguing in his tone, but Roz tried it anyway.
“I made a promise. I’m coming.” Roz holstered her weapon and threw her shoulders back.
“I release you from your promise,” he said, his voice growing eerily quiet. “I need you to get Ali out.”
Enough. Ali stepped between them and pushed him, hard, in the chest. He didn’t seem to feel it. “You’re not going with him.”
Connor tried to leave, but she grabbed his forearm, digging her nails into his skin. “I watched you die once. I will not do it again.” Her voice hitched at the end, betraying how utterly, bone-deep terrified she was.
If Connor left with Maksim Volk, he was never coming back. Volk was a liar. Famous for it, actually. He’d use Connor, and then cut his throat. He’d infected her mother, infected her, for all intents and purposes. And Connor was being a selfish son of a bitch. She needed him. Roz, too.
Connor’s expression tightened as if his words pained him. “To keep you safe, I have to do this. It’s why I’m here.”
“There must be another way,” Ali exclaimed. “We’ll find it. You don’t have to die for us.”
“This is the only way,” Connor said.
“No! We’ll do more research.” Ali was grasping at straws, willing to promise him anything if he’d stay. “You can’t solve this by killing Oleksander. There will be another and another. We have to fight the disease, not the people!” He wasn’t listening. He’d made up his mind. So, she did what she hadn’t been able to until now. “I’m falling in love you,” her voice broke. “Let’s leave here together. I don’t want to make it through this if it means you die.”
“It’s worth it.”
“Not to me.”
Connor pried her fingers loose, and though Ali tried to hold on, it was no use. She was losing him. And there was nothing she could do about it. She clenched her jaws together, and her color rose. She didn’t care anymore who saw it. Let the whole world, Volk and Oleksander included, see what was inside her.
He turned to go, walking shoulder to shoulder with Maksim Volk. Roz followed on his heels. He turned in the doorway, shaking his head. “Roz, do what I told you.”
“I’m coming.”
“I’m sorry.” He gave her a little push, not enough to hurt her, but she landed on her bottom. “I can’t worry about you, too.” He walked out the door.
Roz sat defeated, not even calling her power.
His boots crunched across the yard, taking him further away. Ali tamped down her power, locking away her rage, buckling it deep inside herself and ran to the front step. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed. But he and Volk were gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Connor gunned his truck’s engine, threw it in reverse, and skidded away from the house. Away from his best friend. Away from Ali.
The pain in her eyes when he’d left.
Fuck.
He’d never put his hands on a girl before and definitely not Roz, but there hadn’t been any other choice. The witch would follow him, no matter what he said, to the ends of the earth. Backing him up had become so ingrained in her, she would never have left him alone. He regretted it.
And Ali. Oh, God. There was a hole inside him, a dark and empty place where his guts used to be. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was hurt her.
But he had.
“How do you do it?” Connor blurted out, turning on Volk. “How do you get out of bed every day like this? How do you not lay down on some railroad tracks?” He glanced at Maksim riding shotgun in his ’73 F-350. Freaking surreal. “Does it ever get better?”
Volk didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. Something in his expression, a softening around the edges, told him every
thing. This freaky son of a bitch kept living because he’d loved someone, and her memory made all the pain, the blood, and the bullshit worth it. Connor believed that. Because right then the absence of Ali was like a death.
“Anya’s not infected?” Maks asked, ignoring his question. “I’ve always wondered.” He crossed his legs, exuding a casual confidence Connor didn’t buy for a second. No man executed a coup on his own lord and master without a little anxiety.
“No.” Connor didn’t like talking about Ali with Volk. She was none of his business.
“But she’s not human, either, is she?”
“That’s enough.” He shot Volk a warning look. He wasn’t going to listen to criticism of Ali. He couldn’t handle it on top of the jumpy suspense rattling through him.
“She glows.”
So, Volk couldn’t take a hint. Fine. “Do you even have a plan? Because the only thing I know about you, brother, is you’re a great liar.”
Maks inspected the nails on his left hand. “I’m a survivalist.”
“Fine. What is your plan?”
Maks grew more serious. “He’ll be waiting for me, and he’ll be furious when I show up without Anya. But he’ll want to see us. We attack the moment he comes at me.” He peered thoughtfully at Connor. “Are you any good at killing your own kind?”
Connor nearly laughed aloud. Instead, he pulled the handgun from the rear waistband of his jeans and rested it on his thigh. “It’s a .45. You ever see one of these rounds blow through a body?”
Maks rolled his eyes. “Useless against the Big Man. You need a knife. Don’t worry, I have a spare.” He reached for his boot.
“I have a knife,” Connor snapped. Did he think he was an amateur?
Volk laid his hands flat on his knees. “Good. Carve him up from navel to neck, and don’t stop until you have his heart in your hands. You understand? Tear out his guts as fast as you can—intestines, liver, kidneys. He’ll keep fighting until you remove his heart or his head.”
Connor’s stomach roiled. This guy had allied himself with the Destroyer twenty-five years ago, and now he’d cut him in half without thinking twice. Not that Olek didn’t deserve it and worse, but the big picture became clear in Connor’s mind, like a strike of lightning in the dark.