A childlike moan stuck in her throat.
“Give me another chance. I can do it,” Roksana blurted, unplanned. “I can kill him.”
Inessa snorted at the request and rested the club on her shoulder. “It is a shame you must die tonight, daughter. There is a mission to be completed back in Coney Island. Unfortunately, it not only requires the disposition of a warrior, but entry into Enders—and I have it on good authority that last time you were there…” Her eyes flashed dangerously. “You fought alongside vampires.”
Hisses went up around the basement and a cold shiver traveled down Roksana’s spine. The accusation was true. She’d made the epic mistake of bringing Ginny to the slayer bar for a birthday drink, but her mortician friend wound up writhing in pain on the floor instead, imbued with Jonas’s then-suffering. Not knowing what else to do, Roksana called Elias and next thing she knew, there he stood with his friend Tucker, ready to take on a bar full of slayers.
Roksana chose the wrong side to fight on.
As confusing as it was, she’d been physically incapable of fighting Elias.
The prospect of him being hurt or killed made her nauseous. Made her dizzy.
No. No. Next time, she would fight through it.
“I make no excuses for what I’ve done,” Roksana managed. “What is the task in Coney Island? Send me and I will complete it. I know that neighborhood now like the back of my hand and…I will find a way to get into Enders.”
Her mother considered her with skepticism, but truthfully, Roksana had fully expected to be dead by now, so the delay was welcome. “Why should I allow you a second chance when I never give them to anyone else?”
Because I’m your daughter. “Because I’m a better slayer than every single one of them.”
Inessa remained silent for a moment, then threw her head full of blond spiral curls back and laughed. “If you fail, I suppose the slayers would kill you anyway, since you’re known as a traitor.” She turned to face the basement filled with the Russian contingent, her mouth in a pout. “Though my loyal comrades were so looking forward to the bloodshed of a traitor tonight, weren’t they?”
They pounded their fists against the walls, shouting for vengeance, and Roksana barely checked the urge to hug her elbows to her belly. She favors them over me. “I can do this. Tell me the task.”
Her mother’s expression grew pinched and the battle cries died down. She paced another circle around Roksana, the club tap-tap-tapping against her palm. “May I ask, Roksana, what have your feelings for this vampire given you? Sexual gratification? Affection? Companionship?”
“No,” she whispered, the weight of her heart increasing to that of an anvil. “Nothing.”
“Nothing. That’s right. He’s brought you nothing but a death sentence and the ridicule of your own kind.” Inessa bared her teeth against Roksana’s ear. “Men will always disappoint you. I learned my lesson with the bastard who fathered you, then left for another before you could walk. A woman who wouldn’t make him insecure about his own strength, like me. Was there hurt? Yes. But I learned, and now I possess myself. I own myself and I owe not a soul. Especially a man.”
Roksana breathed in the motherly lesson like an addict inhales smoke. This was useful. Her mother loved her and wanted to see her successful. And wasn’t Inessa right? What had Elias given her but one, single night where hope existed?
Now that hope was extinguished she needed to wake up.
To grow up.
“The task, Inessa. Please. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Her mother hummed in her throat, moving to face Roksana fully once again. “You think it will be easy? It won’t. You will probably die.”
“I will live and be triumphant. You underestimate me.”
Inessa backhanded her across the face.
Ignoring the ringing in her head and the laughter from the surrounding slayers, Roksana snapped back to attention.
“There is a poker game on Wednesday night. At a well-appointed home near the Arbatskaya metro station. There is money at stake, but the pot will hold something much more valuable.” She lowered her voice for Roksana’s ears alone. “The winner receives a binding marriage decree for Mary the Mad. Whoever holds it can dictate who she marries.”
Hello left turn. “Who is Mary the Mad?”
“She is the daughter of Tilda.” Inessa inclined her head. “Tilda is the owner of Enders and she wants to decide who Mary weds. Unfortunately, her husband crafted this decree and now it has been compromised. See how men fuck everything up?”
“Why are people competing for this decree?”
“Despite her mental shortcomings, Mary has quite a…value.” Inessa trailed the top of her club along the slope of Roksana’s throat. “Win the decree, bring it to Tilda. And in exchange, she will give you something I want. A game piece, so to speak. Bring it back and place it in my hand.”
“What is it?”
“That’s for me to know,” Inessa said lightly, though a threat flickered in her eyes. “Only me. Is that understood?”
Roksana nodded. “Yes.”
Inessa pressed the club to Roksana’s jugular, twisting. “But before you come back here, you will kill Elias Perry or you’ll be slaughtered as soon as you set foot in Moscow. His existence is offensive to humanity. With your failure to end him, he’s now an offense to me, as well. You will never be strong until you overcome this weakness. He is your weakness and you will obliterate it.” The words landed like a vicious backhand. “One task. Three parts. Can you do it, Roksana, or should we simply kill you now?”
“I can do it,” Roksana gasped, her voice emerging unnatural because the club was cutting off her air. “You have my word.”
Inessa removed the club and Roksana sucked in a lung full of oxygen. With it came gratitude. Hope. She wasn’t going to die tonight. Instead, she would get a second chance to earn her mother’s respect and maybe, just maybe, the love she’d proven herself unworthy of so many times. Suppressing the urge to throw her arms around Inessa’s neck, Roksana took a backward step toward the door—
“Oh.” That single word from Inessa stopped Roksana in her tracks. “You didn’t think you were just going to walk out of here without any consequences. Did you?” Whatever took place on Roksana’s face made her mother laugh. “Aw. You did. But that’s not how it works.” She gestured for the other slayers, dozens of them, to attack at the same time. “Leave her alive.”
Twenty minutes later, Roksana stumbled out of the back library entrance and fell to her knees, blood pouring from her nose and bottom lip, her eye sockets screaming with pain. The bruises to her stomach and back wouldn’t be formed yet, but they were trying, pushing up from beneath her skin like miniature beds of spikes. Was one of her ribs cracked?
Roksana coughed and blood misted onto the concrete steps.
Don’t curl up and die. Don’t curl up and die.
Not yet.
One of her eyes was swelling closed, but she looked ahead with her good one, locking her attention on the market in the distance. The place where she’d bought the chocolate bar.
Just get there. Get there.
She refused to acknowledge why the market was her goal or why she’d used the credit card there instead of paying cash. Not thinking too deeply wasn’t a challenge when the physical pain was so immense, either. She simply crawled on hands and knees across the quiet street, leaving a trail of blood in her wake, her bones shrieking with every inch she traveled. Until finally she collapsed in front of the now-dark store, her damaged eye using the cold sidewalk as a makeshift icepack.
Roksana drifted in and out of consciousness, rousing only when people passed, so she could deem them safe or a threat. Pain. So much pain. It hurt to breathe, to lift her head. She just wanted to sleep and…she refused to name the other thing she wanted, because it made no sense. She’d never really had him to begin with and definitely didn’t have him now.
The effort of staying alert eventually became too great
, but just before she drifted off, a hallucination crept in. The streetlamps overhead guttered, flickers of light raining down and hissing in the gutter water on either side of the street—and the outraged howl of a man shattered the night. Her broken body was lifted off the sidewalk and cradled in arms she trusted enough to finally give in to blessed unconsciousness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Roksana woke up neck deep in warm water.
A single bulb hung down from a stained ceiling and swayed, only giving off a modicum of light, the pull chain rattling quietly.
Panic bottomed out in her stomach and she pinwheeled, her arms and legs flailing and splashing water in every direction. The abused muscles of her abdomen protested mightily, but she couldn’t stop fighting. Where was she? How had she gotten here?
“You’re safe, Roksana,” said Elias’s gruff voice in her ear. “Stop fighting or you’ll injure yourself even worse.”
She went limp with relief. Hated herself for it.
But she had the immediate, indisputable faith that she was sheltered. Why? How dare she have such conviction about this vampire when she knew so well what he was capable of doing to a human being? She’d seen it with her own eyes.
Roksana peered down into the bathtub, but it was so dark, she couldn’t make out a single thing in the water’s depths. She could only feel the position of Elias behind her. Around her. His body was a hard, muscle-packed cushion between her and the back of the tub, his legs extended out on either side of her, his right knee raised. A washcloth was clutched in his fist, resting on the elevated leg, as if it had suspended in animation when she woke up.
Wait. Whoa. She was in a bathtub with Elias.
The intimacy of the act started her breath racing and she rushed to slow it down, lest she inhale a fatal dose of his perfect, spiced pine scent. Seriously, why couldn’t his scent have changed when he lost his humanity? “Am I naked?”
“No. And neither am I,” he drawled without missing a beat, as if he’d been anticipating that question. “We’re in a vacant apartment in Arbat. I wanted to get you indoors fast—”
“So you went into the closest building and looked for empty buzzer tags,” she said in a rush, still sounding breathless, dammit. She’d had no time to gather her wits. “I know that trick. I’ve done it many more times than you.”
Elias dipped the washcloth into the water, lifted it and wrung the water free over her shoulder, sending a cascade of heat over her sore muscles. “If your hurt pride is giving you the need to boast, you can give it a rest,” he rasped, bringing the cloth to her face and carefully scrubbing caked blood from her cheek. “I didn’t come to your rescue, I just owed you one.”
“Right,” she murmured, knowing very well the favor he referred to. “This is payback for the time I found you half dead in a slayer prison, da?”
“More like slightly incapacitated, but sure.”
She ignored his amused correction. “This does not mean you are safe from the ultimate payback, vampire. If I could lift my arms right now…” She whistled through her teeth, a sound totally at odds with the feeling welling in her throat. “You would be in big trouble.”
“Yeah,” he said solemnly. “It would be slaughter city.”
Roksana tried to turn her head and pain in her tendons robbed her of sight. She dropped her head back onto his shoulder, winded, her teeth buried in her bottom lip to keep from crying out. “Don’t humor me.”
She could hear his hard swallow against her ear. His voice was torn up gravel when he said, “I can’t believe your own fucking mother did this to you.”
Her teeth broke the skin on her lip. “She can’t take it easy on me just because I’m her daughter. There are consequences to my actions. Or lack thereof.”
Was it her imagination or were Elias’s muscles taut to the point of vibrating? “There is a difference between consequences and beating her own flesh and blood half to death.”
This was getting too real, too personal. They didn’t operate on this level. She was the slayer sent to end his objectionable existence and he was the cold, sarcastic visage of the man she’d once fallen for in a Vegas casino. She’d arrived in New York eighteen months ago with the intention of killing him, but always found an excuse to wait one more day. One more day. In the meantime, she’d made herself useful by staking vampires that she deemed a risk toward humans, but this man who was a definite risk? She couldn’t seem to seal the deal.
One night after arriving in New York, she’d found Elias and his friends, Jonas and Tucker, hanging out in a secret vampire pub. Instead of sucking on bones of the innocent and toasting their general evilness, she’d witnessed them counseling newbie vampires through the transition. Giving them money, guidance and a community. The Russian High Order were a bunch of ancient assholes who let their vampire subjects run amok. At the time, before Jonas took the king’s seat, the American High Order had been cutthroat as well, though with stricter rules than the Russians. She’d been raised to believe vampires rampaged without mercy. So she’d been surprised by the trio’s seeming…grace. Perplexed by their apparent goodness, she watched them from afar for months, but they never slipped up.
Roksana was perched on a rooftop watching them leave a different pub one night when Tucker looked up and invited her over to watch Netflix. Under the guise of keeping her enemies close, she’d accepted. She’d become grudging friends with Jonas and Tucker, while Elias usually spent their hang outs glowering at her from across the room. When the tension between them became too great, she usually skipped town for a few weeks to cool off, only to arrive back to an even more pissed off Elias than she’d left behind.
Yes, annoying him had become her favorite pastime and damn, did she excel at it. The scar-lipped vampire followed her from deep in the shadows at night, during her outings, always waiting and watching just out of her sightlines. But she held no delusions that he was concerned for her. Or that he was capable of romantic feelings for her. No. He merely wanted to return the favor he owed her. If he was angry on her behalf over the beating she’d taken, Roksana rejected the illusion of sympathy. It was too tempting to believe he was the kind of man who cared, instead of the monster who’d massacred her friends.
“You’re just pissed you had to come halfway around the world to give me a bath. Did you have to cancel a hot date or something?”
He chuckled under his breath. “Yeah. Had to cancel dozens of them.”
“You can probably make it back in time for at least one. Maybe two.” The jealousy swelled rapidly, even though she was responsible for inciting it—and what sense did that make? “I’m fine now to take care of myself. I was even thinking of looking up an old boyfriend—”
“And show up looking like your parachute didn’t open?” Elias growled the question. “You won’t be looking up anyone.”
In a snap, her worry was blanketed with stardust. Her world was free of worry.
“Yes, Elias,” she murmured obediently, before the worry and horror of the last twenty-four hours blew back in, scattering the protective layer of stardust from her thoughts. “D-did you just compel me?”
“I’m…” He trailed off with a curse. “I didn’t mean to. I can handle the blood, but try not to provoke me.”
She jolted, pain rippling through her limbs.
How in God’s name did it take this long to occur to Roksana that she was sitting in a bathtub tinged liberally with her blood, being held by a vampire? In her weakened condition, if Elias wanted to feed on her, kill her, she wouldn’t be able to fight him off.
Come on, couldn’t she even conjure a smidgen of fear over that fact?
“How long did it take you to learn such willpower?” she asked, her toes curling in the water when he dragged the washcloth slowly along the curve of her neck, loosening her tight muscles like magic. “We both know you didn’t possess any self-control in the beginning.”
For just a brief second, his ministrations paused. “Like I’ve told you hundreds of times,
Roksana, I don’t remember anything about that night.”
“Convenient,” she managed around the object in her throat. “Would you like me to tell you again what happened?”
“No,” he said roughly. “Once was enough.”
How pitiful that guilt should turn down the corners of her mouth. What did she have to feel guilty about? Still… “Have you…blacked out the windows yet?” she asked lightly, her eyes roaming around the dim bathroom. “Not that I’m concerned for you.”
“No, of course not.” The return of his dry humor relaxed her curled fingers. “You were frozen. I haven’t done anything but run this bath and put you in it.”
“I’m thawed now.” Urgency nipped at her. “The sun will rise soon. At least, I think so. I don’t know how long I was lying there—” She ignored his prickly growl. “Like I said, I can’t lift my arms. Cleaning up a pile of dead vampire dust would be bothersome. Go fix the windows.”
“You’re coming with me.” Before she could protest, Elias stood, holding Roksana in his arms, and with her head lolling against his shoulder, she got the first look at his face since waking up. He was paler than usual, lines of strain bracketing his mouth, but even in the muted light, she could see his pupils expand like drops of black ink when their gazes met. “You can’t keep yourself afloat. Fishing a drowned slayer from the bottom of the tub would be bothersome,” he said, the words barely audible, his Adam’s apple lifting and plummeting. “You lied to me about your flight time, Roksana. Your heart barely skipped a beat doing it.”
“It won’t be the last time I lie to you.” The sound of water dripping from their clothing was the only sound in the small bathroom. That and her rapid-fire pulse, which he could definitely hear, could always hear, but rarely admitted it out loud. “Did you really come here to repay a favor, Elias?”
“Yes.” He stepped out of the tub. “And that probably won’t be the last time I lie to you, either.”
She was still deciphering that cryptic statement when they entered the empty flat. Heat rattled in through a wrought-iron gate in the corner, blowing around dust bunnies. Old pots and pans lay forgotten on the counters. Apart from a full-size bed in the corner, there was no furniture. “Homey,” she muttered.
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