The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (The Nadia Tesla Series Book 3)

by Orest Stelmach

  “This old thing?” Victor said. “An obvious thought. The boy Adam killed in New York? We looked into his background. Discovered his father’s identity. As I’m sure you did when you proved Adam innocent of the murder charge last month. He was a member of a hunting society called the Zaroff Seven. My colleagues made some inquiries about them. When we learned two more vanished mysteriously during the exact same time you were here, we knew who your antagonists had been.”

  “And the ring?”

  Victor slipped the ring off his finger. “Saw them wearing it in a book on hunting clubs. Old book, like me. Seems they’re famous for it, if you know who to ask. And the boss and I have a few connections, don’t we Maxim?”

  “It’s not who you know, Victor,” Milanovich said. “It’s who you know that owes you.”

  “A jeweler made us a dozen knockoffs,” Victor said. “We had our men wear them in case they were seen. By you. By anyone.”

  “To make it look like the Zaroff Seven were doing the killing,” Simmy said. “Ksenia Melnik. I bet the babushka is dead, too.”

  A moment of silence confirmed Simmy’s theory. Victor glared at Milanovich as though the murders were his doing, and Victor didn’t even know about them.

  Nadia remembered the babushka and the story of the pet hunters, her rifle, and the root cellar. But mostly she remembered the old woman saving her life.

  Victor tossed the ring to Bobby. “Keep it,” he said. “As a memento. They should make you an honorary member. After all, you are the prey that got away, aren’t you?”

  Bobby studied the ring and did what any teenager would have done. He put it in his pocket.

  “I knew you would come,” Victor said. “I knew you would come for your girl. And I knew you had enough brains, guts, and strength to succeed. I didn’t know how you would do it, but I told them to expect you.”

  Bobby remained stone-faced.

  “How did you find Eva?” Nadia glanced at the girl after speaking her name. She didn’t seem frightened. Instead she acted like Bobby’s female clone. Calm, cool, and calculating.

  “The babushka led us to Ksenia Melnik,” Victor said. “She knew of the legend of the formula. Said Dr. Arkady loved the boy and the girl like they were his own. He called them Genesis II because they would carry the knowledge to change the human race for the better, but they could only achieve that goal as one. Ksenia Melnik knew the girl’s death had been staged to protect her from the Zaroff Seven. She knew she was a student at a university in Japan, one of the last places anyone would ever look for her.”

  That didn’t explain how Eva knew to send Bobby an e-mail. How she knew her locket contained half the formula, and how she knew where the second half was. Dr. Arkady must have told her, Nadia thought. He must have deemed her the primary beneficiary of the inheritance he bestowed upon them, if there was one. Given she was older—and her relative maturity would have been much more palpable three years ago—that made sense.

  “As fate would have it, there is no formula,” Victor said.

  He pulled two lockets out of his pocket. The gilding had been scraped off both of them. One contained etchings. It was Bobby’s. The other didn’t. It had to be Eva’s.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Milanovich said. “We haven’t had a real conversation with her yet. The kind where a girl tells a man all her secrets in exchange for not being fed alive to my pet tiger. And that would be after the necessary biological and genetic tests were conducted on both of these mutants to see if their body chemistry has been altered by this formula. To see if there is money in their blood or bones.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Simmy said. “What are we here, barbarians? Experiments on children for the sake of money? You want money? I’ll give you money.”

  “There are two problems with that proposition,” Milanovich said. “First, if there is a formula for a countermeasure to radiation, and the insides of these young people can give it to me, you don’t have that much money. And if you do, you wouldn’t part with it, so stop playing the hero, Simeonovich. Even your woman doesn’t believe your bullshit.”

  He was right. Nadia could see Simmy generously parting with some amount of money, but he wasn’t going to pony up a billion dollars or more.

  “We can discuss that,” Simmy said. “You invested in a venture with time and labor. I can guarantee you a certain return. I can guarantee your portfolio grows.”

  Milanovich took a sip of his drink and rubbed his chin. “Now that you put it that way—and you’re quoting me back to me—you have a point. Perhaps there is a number. But that still doesn’t solve the second problem with your proposition.”

  “There’s a solution for every problem,” Simmy said.

  “Not this one,” Milanovich said.

  “Impossible. What is the problem?”

  “You’d have to be alive to pay me.” Milanovich turned to the nearest bodyguard. “Kill him.”

  The bodyguard thrust his hand under his jacket. He whipped out a gun and aimed it at Simmy’s head.

  An object flew in out of nowhere. It connected with the bodyguard’s neck. His body crumpled. His severed head fell to the ground.

  The same sound echoed behind them. Nadia turned.

  The second bodyguard’s head rolled off his body. His body fell limp.

  A fierce-looking man came flying down the steps. His gun was drawn. He pointed his gun alternately at Milanovich and Victor. What amazed Nadia was that he’d killed two men without firing a shot or making a sound. And he’d killed them in such an unconventional manner that everyone in the room was paralyzed. They were all just trying to comprehend what was happening.

  Eva’s father, Nadia thought. The man Bobby had met. Was he Eva’s father?

  Bobby pulled a knife from its sheath around his calf. He stood up and grabbed Eva’s hand with his left. Glanced at the man coming down the stairs. Nadia caught a glimmer of the excitement in Bobby’s eyes.

  The man was Eva’s father. He had to be.

  Then another bodyguard appeared at the top of the stairwell. Nadia shouted a warning, but it all happened too fast.

  The bodyguard shot Eva’s father in the back.

  CHAPTER 52

  LUO REALIZED THE girl was his daughter. He knew it by the gleam in Adam’s eyes.

  She was a dark angel. A lithe beauty. She had her mother’s athletic frame after all. Her father’s inscrutable eyes. Even under dire circumstances, with boomerangs and bullets flying, there wasn’t a hint of panic about her. How strong she looked. It was his proudest moment, to know he was seeing his offspring in the flesh. It was just as he imagined it would be in his wildest dreams. All that was left was for her to look him in the eyes. She’d glanced at him once as he glided down the staircase, but Bobby had grabbed her hand and yanked her from the sofa before she could realize who he was. Before she could see that it was her long-lost father who’d come to her rescue—

  A gunshot. A blow to the back. Someone set his shoulder blade on fire.

  Luo tumbled down the stairs. His head bounced off wood. He tried to remember where he was and what was happening, but he couldn’t. All he knew was that he was falling and there was nothing he could do about it

  A second gunshot. His thigh burned.

  A third gunshot. A noise beside his head. Something pierced a surface beside him.

  What surface?

  His eyes regained focus. A white ceiling. A staircase above him.

  He was on the stairs in a criminal’s house with his daughter and the boy. A man in an expensive-looking suit was coming down the stairs and shooting—

  These Russian mafia types and their clothes . . .

  Luo lifted his gun. Stared down the barrel of the bodyguard’s weapon and squeezed the trigger.

  Two shots rang out.

  A force knocked Luo back to the floor. A bullet. A hot
iron in his chest. Near the heart. He’d been shot.

  Luo lifted his head. The bodyguard lay slumped on the stairs, a hole in his forehead. Luo looked down at his chest. His shirt was soaked. Right near the heart. He could feel his constitution weakening. He’d seen enough chest wounds to know he was bleeding out.

  He was dying.

  Luo’s mind raced. He’d never speak with Eva. She’d never look into his eyes. Their souls would never connect. At least not above ground.

  It didn’t matter.

  He was dead, but she was alive and would survive. The boy would see to that. No matter what the obstacles ahead of them, the boy would protect her. Luo’s final vision was of the boy scaling the wall. He’d never seen anything like it.

  The boy would be able to protect her.

  The boy was no longer human.

  The boy was something more.

  CHAPTER 53

  BOBBY AND EVA rose from the floor. They’d dropped to their stomachs as soon as they’d heard the gunshot, seen the bodyguard firing at Luo from behind.

  The bodyguard’s third bullet pierced Luo’s chest. Luo collapsed to the floor, his body limp. The bodyguard dropped his gun and fell down the stairs. He remained limp on the floor, a hole in his head just above the eyes.

  Bobby jumped to his feet to help Luo. He was Eva’s father. He was Bobby’s friend. Bobby wanted to save him, whatever the cost. Without Luo, Bobby would have been dead twice already. But a calmer voice prevailed. It was the voice of his father, instructing him to stop indulging in sentiment and focus on his own survival.

  Eva was already rising to her feet. Bobby reached out with his hand. As she took it, Bobby saw Nadia and Simeonovich getting up, too. The latter held a gun in his right hand.

  “More guards upstairs,” Bobby said. “Down is better.”

  Eva passed Bobby. He didn’t wait for a reaction from Nadia. He raced to catch up with her. It dawned on Bobby that he hadn’t seen Victor or Milanovich. They were probably still on the ground, he thought. Still hiding.

  The bodyguard’s corpse lay beside Luo’s body on the upward staircase. Eva rounded the corner to the downward stairwell. Bobby was two steps behind her.

  Another guard rounded the flight of stairs from below. He was nine steps away from Eva. The guard looked up.

  His eyes met Eva’s.

  The guard raised his rifle.

  Bobby leaped down the staircase. He pushed off his right knee and propelled himself with all his might. His gut resisted the leap. It was too long a distance to cover. His instincts told him he’d land at the man’s feet just as he was ready to fire.

  His gut was wrong. His instincts were wrong.

  The thrust from his thigh catapulted him onto the man in a flash. The guard’s rifle got caught between their bodies.

  Bobby plunged the knife through the guard’s left eye. Rolled off his body and looked up at Eva.

  “Come on,” he said.

  The sound of the blade sliding through wet and soft flesh echoed in his ears. Bile rose up his throat. What had he done? Killed a man. Why had he done it? To protect Eva. Bobby willed the bile back down to his stomach. Resisted the urge to glance at his wreckage.

  Eva sidestepped the body without taking her eyes off Bobby. She appraised him with a mixture of awe and fear. Awe was good, Bobby thought. He wasn’t sure about the other part.

  They raced down the stairs. The second floor opened up into a corridor. Bobby spied the entrance to an enormous kitchen on one side, a dining room on the other. Voices shouted from the opposite sides of the walls. Transmitters squawked.

  Bobby made a downward motion with his head. Eva followed him another flight down the stairs. They emerged on the first floor from a side entrance. A second staircase—a grand one fit for a king—wound its way up to the second floor. In front of it was a foyer with marble floor. The door outside was thirty feet away but Bobby could spy guards through the windows.

  An explosion rocked the castle.

  CHAPTER 54

  NADIA SENSED THE man behind her. She couldn’t hear, see, or smell him. But she knew he was there. Simmy must have experienced the same sensation because he started to turn.

  “Don’t turn around,” Victor said. Nadia saw the gun pressed to the back of Simmy’s head. “You heard what the boy said. Downstairs is better. Run. Both of you.”

  Victor had ulterior motives. Nadia realized this immediately, but Simmy didn’t. How could he? He didn’t know Victor as well as she did.

  Nadia stepped forward, but Simmy hesitated. The muscles in his gun hand twitched. No doubt he didn’t like being given orders. She wondered when he’d last been in a position where he was forced to yield to another man’s will.

  “Live to play another day,” Nadia said.

  Simmy pressed his lips tight, as he’d done in the car when he told her about Milanovich. He’d survived and prospered in the new Russia for a reason. A second later he was running across the room beside Nadia. He didn’t bother to look over his shoulder.

  “Faster,” he said. “I gave my men the signal to attack a minute ago.”

  They found a dead guard in the middle of the stairwell. A knife protruded from his eye. Nadia recognized the knife. It was the one Bobby had pulled from a sheath wrapped around his calf. How had he overpowered a man with a rifle? Where had he found the fortitude to perform such a gruesome task?

  Eva, she thought. The girl was most definitely Eva. He’d killed the man for Eva.

  As she rounded the stairwell, a deafening noise filled the house. Nadia stopped in her tracks. The castle trembled.

  Bomb, Nadia thought.

  She wondered if the place where she was standing was about to blow up next. The thought sent a wave of fear down her spine.

  A pair of sturdy hands grabbed her shoulders.

  She turned.

  Simmy tilted his head up a notch and squeezed her. His men were coming, Nadia thought.

  No, she realized.

  His men were here.

  CHAPTER 55

  VICTOR STUCK HIS gun inside the waistband of his pants beneath his jacket. He looped around the back of the sofa. He’d seen Milanovich take cover behind it as soon as the heads had started to roll.

  “It’s me, Sergei,” Victor said. “Do you hear me?”

  “Victor?”

  The boss was partially deaf in his left ear. Victor raised his voice. “Yes, Sergei. It’s me. Don’t shoot.”

  Milanovich had pulled out his own pistol as he’d taken cover. He suffered from tremors, the kind that could cause a man to inadvertently squeeze a trigger, especially when he was scared out of his wits. And Victor would have bet a million in Atlantic City that the boss of bosses was more terrified than any of his soldiers could have imagined.

  All rich men shared one thing in common, regardless of the source of their wealth: an obsession with eternal life. It was the one thing they absolutely could not buy. Thus the second obsession most of them shared: sexual relationships with much younger women. They could be bought, and provided a temporary nirvana that came closest to approximating what the rich man thought immortality might be like.

  “Did you hear me, Sergei?”

  “Yes, Victor. I heard you.”

  Victor took a deep breath for good measure and glanced behind the sofa.

  Milanovich sat on the floor cowering behind foam and fabric, neither of which would have stopped a bullet. The gun shook in his hands. It was aimed squarely at Victor’s chest.

  Victor smiled. “The coast is clear. They’re all trying to make their escape. By now the guards are swarming the grounds. They’ll be captured or killed immediately.”

  “They have instructions not to kill the children. We need them for their blood. What if the formula is in their blood? We need them alive to ensure a constant supply. We need them alive.”
>
  Victor stifled his repulsion. He was a Thief In Law, a member of a loose association of criminals from the countries that once comprised the Soviet Union. A thief could not dictate his opportunities. He had a moral obligation to put thievery above all else. He was not allowed to have a family, yet Victor had discovered he was a father and grandfather a year ago. He’d kept this discovery a secret. He would keep his repulsion for Milanovich’s plan a secret as well. If someone had tried to conduct a biological experiment on his grandson, he would have buried him alive in a grave filled with flesh-eating worms.

  “Of course they will remain alive,” Victor said. “They are Genesis II. They are destined to remain alive.” Victor reached out with his hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”

  Milanovich put his gun in his jacket pocket. Victor grabbed his boss’s right hand and helped him up.

  “Where is Simeonovich?” Milanovich said.

  Victor nodded toward the staircase. “Gone with the others.”

  “He’s an amateur. It’s easy to tell when an enemy arrives at your front door pretending to be your friend.”

  “I agree. It’s much harder to tell when a friend arrives at your front door and he’s actually your enemy.”

  Victor pulled the gun from his waistband and shot him in the head.

  He walked to Milanovich’s study behind the great room and pressed a button on a bookshelf. A wall of books opened up to reveal a secret chamber. Victor stepped into the chamber and pressed another button to close the door behind him. He found his protégés waiting for him. One of them was the Gun, the other the Ammunition. Victor could only identify them by the tattoos on their arms. He’d recruited the Timkiv twins out of prison in Ukraine. Computer hackers who looked like California surfer boys with sociopathic tendencies. Perfect companions for an aging thief.

  One of the Timkiv twins led the way down the narrow stairs. The other followed behind. Floor lights built into the edges of the steps illuminated their descent. Milanovich had bragged about the secret passageway he’d built as soon as Victor had arrived. He’d spent the equivalent of three million American dollars to build an escape route in the event the Russian FSB or another criminal organization came to assassinate him. The stairs led to a tunnel that would deposit them at an underground garage. A fully fueled Mercedes-Benz truck awaited them. The ground above the garage was heated by the power plant at the Swallow’s Nest. The garage would open up with the press of a button. The Timkiv twins would drive him to the airport in Irkutsk. The three of them would be back in New York City in less than twenty-four hours.