“Some third-level demon isn’t enough to thwart him, so I hope you got the best. He’s only going to get angry. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Then why are you pounding on my door and threatening to break it down?”
“Let me in, Grace. I just want to talk.”
Grace could hear Petru puffing like a pregnant hippopotamus trying to run straight up Mount Everest. With his large bulk likely rearing back to locomotive through her poor, defenseless door, she had no choice but to open up.
Actually, she could have hexed him so that mosquito larvae hatched in his sinuses and flew out his nose, but this was much more fun; she’d get immediate gratification. She opened up and stepped out of the way just as the bull moose charged. The look on his face was priceless: a startled yak with lost footing. He bashed his round melon-head straight into the opposite wall, straight into the hanging silhouette portrait of Grace’s grandmother, Seraphim Stregaria, and fell to the ground.
A long, low sound started in the back of his throat. “Baba Yaga,” the large mobster whimpered, falling in seeming slow motion to land on his rump. He was staring at the silhouette portrait, clearly horrified at the thought of violating a likeness of Seraphim Stregaria.
Grace was amused. Her granny’s name had been whispered in what Seraphim had called the old country, in Russia—a tale told to frighten little children—or so she’d claimed, though Grace always thought that her dear old gran was a bit of a ham. She had liked living in that run-down Victorian in that bad neighborhood, daring kids to play “ding-dong ditch” or to come get their ball from her porch. Once, Grace had seen a child’s face go white as the bloated belly of a dead fish in her gran’s presence. While his eyes darted here and there for any manner of escape, Gran had laughed so hard that she’d choked on her false teeth.
Not that she’d done anything to the child; in fact, she’d tried to give him a cookie. But the hysterical cackle had indeed sounded like a stereotypical Halloween hag and sent the boy running. Which had tickled her more, of course. Gran never minded the “witch” moniker; she was always happy to play it up.
Petru was still sniveling as Grace finished her little jaunt down memory lane. She put a fist on her hip and demanded an answer. “If you fear Seraphim so much, why did you almost break down her granddaughter’s door?”
“I didn’t know,” he howled like a child who’d stepped in a great pile of dog shit and had just been told it wouldn’t wash off. “How did I not know?”
Sasha bowed his head to the remains of the portrait, also clearly surprised. Grace raised her eyebrow at him. “Just wait until I hang up an actual photograph of Gran. That should be interesting.” In some small villages in the Eastern Bloc, there were people who still believed that a photograph could hold a person’s essence, even their soul.
She closed the door and put the latch on it. Not that anyone other than Michael’s thugs would bother her, but it was a habit.
Sasha eyed Petru as if the man were his life’s great cross to bear. He rubbed his blondish beard, which by all rights should have been threaded with gray for all of his hard fifty years. “Look what you did, you great govniuk.”
Petru slapped his meaty fists on the ground, a child throwing a tantrum. “I said I didn’t know.”
Grace didn’t have the patience. “So, what is it that you want?”
“I swear, Grace. We did only come to talk.” Sasha held out his palms, as if that alone would convince her of his innocence.
“You’re a bad man, Sasha Dubenko. You do bad things. Why should I believe you?”
“For one thing, because you’re Seraphim Stregaria’s granddaughter.”
“You fear her wrath even from the grave? Then, how could you take my child from me when he was born?”
“That’s what I’m here to talk about. Your grandmother is alive.” Sasha bowed his golden head to look at Petru again. “And, dear Heaven, will you please tell this govniuk that Baba Yaga will not come and carry him off for her dinner?”
“I don’t know, Petru. You did destroy her likeness. She might think you did it on purpose. . . .” Grace trailed off and shrugged, figuring they both deserved it for saying her grandmother was alive. That was just cruel.
The mobster grabbed the hem of her robe and pulled so hard that the garment was practically torn from her shoulders, revealing flushed skin beneath. Sasha almost choked, turning a bright shade of red before spinning around to face the wall. He managed to work in a kick at Petru, who looked up at Grace and saw what he had done.
Grace sighed. It was her own fault, egging the dancing bear on when he was so obviously frightened. Gran had been such a powerful witch that it was believed she’d shrugged off the dark embrace of Death and returned as Baba Yaga, the goddess witch incarnate said to devour human flesh to keep her magick strong. Grace could just see it: her dear old gran standing over some gargantuan black kettle, stirring the thing madly with a gleam in her eye and reciting in a singsong voice, something from Macbeth about “Filet of a fenny snake, double-double toil and trouble, boil cauldron burn and bake . . .” She’d have gotten a kick out of it.
“Petru, it’s okay. Really. Just don’t try to break my door down again.”
“Slavny, Grace! Thank you.” He was on his knees, still trying to kiss the hem of her robe.
“Petru, I need my robe back.”
He looked up again, only then seeming to realize that she was half-naked. It was as if he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. He threw himself against the floor, prostrate.
Grace could tell his comrade wanted to kick him again. “It’s okay, Sasha.” She pulled up her robe and made herself decent. “You, too, Petru. Come, sit, tell me what you came to tell me.”
“Slavny, slavny, Grace!” Petru gushed.
From hours at her gran’s knee, she was sure that he was saying something kind. He kept calling her “nice” or “good”—which was totally off the mark, because she’d just summoned a Crown Prince of Hell to deal with their employer. She hadn’t thought too much about the other people who might get in the way.
Then again, what did she care if these two idiots got hurt? They were the ones who chose to work for Michael Jizzhat Grigorovich. That wasn’t her fault. They’d helped Michael steal Nikoli from her. They deserved everything they had coming.
Unfortunately, this was when the little voice in the back of her head, the thing called a conscience, decided to return from its extended “vay-cay” wherever the hell it was sipping little drinks with umbrellas while she’d been naked and sweating with a demon. She did care what happened to these two. Especially when she looked at simple Petru. Double damn.
“So, what did you want to tell me, Sasha? I’d really like to get back to my bath. Although, my water is most likely the temperature of a current off the coast of Iceland by now.”
Petru was mumbling to himself. He had apparently decided to make himself at home, sure now that Grace had forgiven him. He was rummaging through her refrigerator and, like any good carnivore, was shoving everything into his mouth that could be remotely described as meat.
Sasha was watching him with something that seemed akin to loving disgust, if such a thing were possible. The sort of look a mother would give a monstrous child that had torn down fruit displays in the grocery store after biting a clerk and sat among the ruins happily stuffing food in his mouth. “I apologize for him. He . . .” The blond mobster shrugged.
“Dear God in Heaven, get on with it! Petru can have whatever he wants in that fridge, as long as he doesn’t strip me naked again.” The thought occurred to Grace that keeping these men on track was like trying to corral a few hundred preschoolers hyped up on gummi bears and chocolate milk. She motioned irritably for him to continue.
“Nikoli isn’t your son.”
Sasha waited, and Grace blinked owlishly, not sure if she’d heard correctly.
“I know this is hard to hear, but Nikoli is just a memory implant. He isn’t real. He’s part of Micha
el’s bargains with the demon Ethelred to send you on a sleigh ride down the slippery slope to damnation. He needs you to make the ultimate sacrifice for Nikoli’s return—your life—so he can achieve demonhood. Four years he’s wasted, or you’ve outmaneuvered him. He’s only got thirteen more days to do it or his soul is forfeit.”
Grace’s bodily reaction to the news seemed to cover the gamut of the animal kingdom. Her eyelids fluttered like the wings of an inebriated hummingbird, her eyes were mosquitoes buzzing around in her head—or was that the ringing in her ears? Her mouth fell open like a largemouth bass with a hook in its lip, and she was gasping so much that she sounded like a hiccupping mouse, which included the strange little sound coming out of her nose.
As the squeaking mouse act was not allowing enough air into her lungs, or into her brain for that matter, she promptly fell over. On the way down, she cracked her head on the ornately carved and expensive corner of her coffee table, the one her granny had brought from the old country. The last things she saw were the beautifully lacquered scenes of the Baba Yaga fairy tale that had been etched into the top of the table. The colors swirled in her narrowing vision in the most pleasing way.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Colder the Better
Michael Ivan Grigorovich was a bastard in every sense of the word. It was a badge he wore proudly. He was calculating and cruel, and he took every opportunity to showcase these traits. Also, his mother never married his father.
His father had been a bastard first—and a dickhead. Ivan Vasilyev was a firm believer that sparing the rod spoiled the child. He’d believed the same about lovers, like Michael’s mother, Nadja, from whom Michael got his magickal powers. Not a day went by in all of their time together that Ivan didn’t lay his hands on her. Even when she surpassed all of his expectations and demands, he still gave her a healthy slap just to remind her of her place. Michael had never done that to Grace, so he didn’t see what exactly she had to complain about. Nikoli? Bah. Even if the kid were real, she was better off without him. At least, that’s what his mother would say.
Nadja claimed it was somehow Michael’s own fault that he’d been born; her son was so determined to come into the world that even a mandrake-infused hot chocolate had refused to root him from her womb. If not for Michael, Nadja would have left Ivan a hundred times over. There had never been any love there. No, what kept Nadja from leaving Ivan had nothing to do with affection for her son. It was simply a desire for power.
While she’d never wanted him, Nadja was willing to use Michael. She’d wanted to make sure that when his blood—Rasputin’s blood—drove him to seek magick and power, it would be her influence that guided him. It would be her darkness that would take root in his heart. Nadja would wield him as a weapon against his father and the world. So, when her son came to her, his blood urging him to seek the old magicks and arcane knowledge, she’d taught him what she knew and had no problem whatsoever explaining the ritual for taking Ivan’s head to offer the demon Ethelred. Yes, Nadja had held her son’s hand down the primrose path to Hell. It had been her pleasure, and her son knew it.
That didn’t stop him from wishing for her counsel. There were thirteen days to make this mess of a plan come together. If she were here, it would already be done; he wouldn’t have been deterred from the original design at all. But she was gone and Michael couldn’t think that way. Nadja was trapped somewhere, imprisoned by the Baba Yaga for her arrogance. She’d be no help to him; she couldn’t even help herself.
Grace had been a convenient choice for the original plan and she’d been especially suited for his mother’s purposes, being the granddaughter of her enemy. Michael was to seduce a girl and make her fall in love with him, and then sacrifice her. He’d first planned to slit Grace’s throat on their wedding night, but when she started to disobey him he knew they’d never make it that long. Especially after she refused to summon Ethelred. That’s when he and his mother hatched the idea of Nikoli.
He’d had to be patient for this to germinate, layer after layer of touch and memory implanted in Grace’s mind. She had to believe it had all happened, her separation from her baby. Four long years of memories, of the birthing, of court battles and lawyers, all the while that ache growing for her son, the magick making her dwell on the hollow sensation of arms empty of a child. It was a carefully measured poison administered in precise doses. Yes, four years was a long time to wait, but Michael had cultivated Grace’s pain like an exotic flower, feeding and tending it from afar. Grace would soon do anything for the child he’d conjured, even give up her own life. It was worth the wait, for this sacrifice was no longer simply a step to demonhood, but a deal that would fulfill all his other bargains.
Michael rubbed his hands together absently, pondering his machinations until an unwelcome voice shrilled him out of his thoughts.
“Are you going to fuck it or stare at it all night? I got things to do, Michael.”
He didn’t pay these bitches to talk or think; he just wanted them flat on their backs. Who did this hooker have to do that was more important than he? Didn’t she know who he was? He was the son of Ivan Vasilyev. He’d been inked with stars on his kneecaps and shoulders; the tattoos signified his heritage, that he bowed to no one and was a man of status and tradition. He was a leader of men. He was motherfucking royalty.
He slapped the hooker with just enough force so that she got to keep her teeth. The next blow wouldn’t be so forgiving. She didn’t flinch, didn’t cry. He assumed that she knew better. She damn well should.
His voice was deceptively calm. “If I want to stare at your pussy all night long, I’ll do it. If I want to watch you ex-fucking-sanguinate into my bathtub and splash my goddamn ceiling in a modern art mural with your blood, I’ll do it.”
“I’m sorry.” The whore pursed her now-swollen lips.
Yeah, she was sorry. And she had no idea how much sorrier she was going to be before this night was over. Michael positioned his fingers at the soft indentation of her throat and then spanned the pale column of her neck. He could feel her pulse pounding there, the drumbeat of a scared little rabbit in the mouth of the wolf.
Her mouth fell open and she screamed. It was a huge sound for such a little mouth, especially with the pressure of his hand on her throat. But the whore’s wide eyes weren’t looking at him. They were focused on something else.
That was when he felt the first sting—no, maybe “sting” wasn’t the correct word. It was a pain like no other he’d known, followed by an itching that felt like a sheath of poison ivy had wrapped his dick, which was where the prostitute was staring. He didn’t want to look. Yes, for maybe the first time in years, Michael Ivan Grigorovich was afraid.
He felt the sensation again and looked down involuntarily, closing his eyes at the very last second. He didn’t want to open them; he fought to keep them closed, afraid of what he might see. The whore was still screaming, a high-pitched wail that made a place in his spine tic with homicidal rage. He clenched his hand.
Forcing himself to breathe, Michael opened his eyes. There, doing an Irish jig on the end of his cock, was the most horrible thing he’d ever seen. It was small and red, fat and round like a bloated tick. It was the size of a clementine “cutie” orange, its skin smooth but for the hair that hung off the end of a phallic tail, and it smiled at Michael and revealed a mouth full of tiny razors.
The thing then flipped its tail up, revealing a second smiling mouth. Using its crustacean-like appendages, it dug into his skin and flipped, biting down alternately with the rump mouth and the front mouth. And it was excreting some sort of fluid that made Michael itch so badly that he debated completely cutting off the affected area. But it was his cock.
He grabbed the obscenity and smashed it in his fist, various parts of the creature dripping out of his still-fisted hand. It had popped like a tick. He shook the material from his grip but, as he did, two more monstrosities appeared on the length of his still-hard dick. They scuttled down into the ne
st of his pubic hair, which did little to hide their bloated bodies. In fact, even though he was gifted in the size department, there was little space for any more of the creatures.
Michael heard more screaming, but this time it couldn’t be the whore—he’d cut her air off and killed her already. No, it was his.
The dead whore forgotten, he scrambled off the bed and into the bathroom, where he grabbed a razor and immediately shaved his pubic hair, hoping that would root out the disgusting little bastards. But it didn’t. It just forced them to dig their claws into his flesh as opposed to swinging like Tarzan through the foliage. And what messed with him most was that they seemed intelligent. The bugs smiled at him with those predator’s teeth before flipping themselves over like maniac gymnasts to bite with both mouths. It was disgusting.
Michael found a pair of pliers and a lighter. If they popped like ticks, maybe he could get rid of them like ticks. He was no longer concerned about what they were, but rather whom they were from. He was doubly glad now that Grace was going to die. These little horrors could only have come from her, from that demon she had summoned. This was definitely a trick inspired in the seventh ring of Hell.
A sulfuric odor burned his nostrils, and a low menacing laugh sounded from the shadows. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Well, you’re not me, so fuck off. And you weren’t invited here.”
A figure stepped forward, shedding the shadows like a cloak. It was clearly a demon. “Grace invited me.”
Michael met his visitor’s eyes as he grabbed one of the creatures with the pliers, its little appendages flailing in protest. “I’m not impressed.”
The demon shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Michael squeezed, taking a special delight in killing the creature he’d wrenched off his privates—only to find that two more had appeared in its place. Now there were three.
“I told you so. Demon crabs are a bitch, huh? No fun, my man. No fun at all.” His demon guest whacked him on the shoulder in a good-natured gesture of male bonding, unmindful of Michael’s nakedness.
How to Lose a Demon in 10 Days Page 4