by Lynne Stevie
My heart sank. A tiny portion of my wonderful pasta dinner came up and I had to swallow it back down. It never tastes as good the second time. But why would he feel guilty? She must have tricked him, taken advantage of him somehow.
I couldn’t make sense of this scene. My mind was muddied and slow from the wine. My body, on the other hand, was preparing for conflict. Ripples of anxiety crawled down my spine. Hello again, little red fire ants! I thought of Zeke. Maybe Ben or Zeke would hear if I screamed loud enough.
“Zeke!” Bully for me. My voice didn’t betray how out of control I felt.
Zeke didn’t reply. Neither did anyone in the room.
“Alan, what’s going on?”
Confusion was bleeding into anger, so when he didn’t answer again, I turned my focus to the woman.
“Who are you?” The fear that started as a ripple up my spine was now tingling through my muscles, and the itch on my forehead turned into a burning sensation. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“Darling, be a peach and introduce us, will you? I’ve been so excited to meet her.” She shook him again as if she wanted to make sure he was awake.
“Lexie.” He wouldn’t look at me, and I knew I was right—he felt guilty. But for what? He pulled his arm away again, and this time the woman let him go. He slowly walked over to me with his hands out, as if he was trying to calm a wild animal.
“Alan, get behind me. You’ve gotten yourself mixed up in something that you can’t possibly understand. She’s not human. She’s an immortal, and she’s using you to get to me.” As I spoke I pulled him to me so I could protect him. All the while I kept my eyes on her. Smiling, she clasped her hands, rocked a little on her feet, and looked around the house.
“Alexandria, you have a beautiful home.” Her eye caught sight of the draped plastic that separated the kitchen from the destroyed sunroom. She “tsked tsked” and walked a few steps further into the room so she could get a closer look through the doorway.
“We were sorry to hear of the misfortune that befell you and most grateful that you survived the attack,” she said with a beauty-contest-winning smile. Her outfit was something out of The Matrix, but she sounded like one of the ladies from the Junior League here for a cocktail party. The ants on my spine picked up the pace. Shit.
“Zeke!” Where was he? I could really use backup right about now.
“Zeke won’t be coming back, Lexie.” Alan’s voice was dull; there was no life to it. He sounded like a recorded message for the time and date.
“What are you talking about?” A sense of foreboding pulled through me, taking my breath and twisting my stomach into a knot. I stumbled away so that I could see them both. Alan didn’t respond to my question, but spoke to the woman.
“Why didn’t you wait until I was gone?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wasn’t supposed to be here when all this went down.”
“Alan!” I roared. “What do you mean?” He flinched, but he didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on the door.
“Oh, Alan, my master is so grateful to you for giving him the opportunity to meet Miss Alexandria that he wanted you to be here when we all met.” She smiled at him again. Alan started toward the door. She didn’t stop him.
“Alan!” Oh, God, he was leaving. My world was unraveling. I was swimming in anxiety and confusion. I willed myself to see some explanation that didn’t involve Alan’s betrayal. I managed to sit on the coffee table before my knees gave out.
“How do you know this woman, Alan?” Even as I asked, I foolishly hoped everything was all a mistake.
“Isn’t it obvious, Lex?” Keeping one hand on the door, he didn’t turn around as he spoke to me.
“No. It’s not. Do you know what she is?”
“Of course I do.” His knuckles turned white and his body shook with anger.
“How? I mean…why are you leaving me here? What did you have planned?”
“This is why I wasn’t supposed to be here. Dammit!” He hit the door.
“Ahhh, don’t be testy, Alan. She deserves an explanation.” The woman’s voice was a surprise, and her smile ran shivers up my back.
“Shut up!” He roared at her. When he turned toward me, I jerked back. I knew this was Alan, but I didn’t recognize him. His smile was twisted and his eyes were huge and wild.
“Little Miss Detective,” he spat. “Didn’t see this one coming, huh? I guess you’re not so perfect after all.” He must have enjoyed my expression, because he started laughing.
“Look at you! Soooo confused. I love it.” He nodded to the woman. “You know, you’re right. I will give her an explanation.”
As he turned back to me, I saw a stranger behind the face I’d loved for most of my adult life.
“I’m not your little lap dog anymore, Alexandria, living in your house on your money.” He picked up the small entry table and threw it down the hall. The woman sidestepped the projectile easily. The destruction didn’t curb his rage—if anything, it made it worse. I could feel the blackness around him now. How had he kept this hidden from me?
“Does this surprise you, Lex? That I don’t want to live second to you? Listening to everyone making jokes about being a kept man, a house boy. Does it surprise you?” He paced in front of the door, looking more like a caged animal than the man he had once been.
“Alan, I never thought of you—”
He whirled to look at me and my mouth stopped.
“DON’T!” He roared.
“But…Alan. We just…tonight. I love you.” My vision was clouded with tears.
“Yeah, that was nice, Lex.” He walked to me and ran one finger over my cheek. Even as my mind told me to back away, I leaned into his touch. His finger traced my collar bone and down between my breasts. The touch was gentle, but when I looked up, his expression made me jump. I almost tripped over the coffee table, trying to put some distance between us. He just laughed.
“You should see the look on your face! It’s priceless.” His eyes widened as he said priceless, showing too much white. He walked back to the door and reached for the handle.
“I’ve known what you are for years. Your father worried that if something happened to him, you’d be vulnerable. But he didn’t want to scare you unnecessarily, either. Being the trusting soul that he was—and me the ever-faithful, always-loyal lackey—” he spat the last word as if he would choke on it, “he told me of a letter in his safe that was for you. If anything odd ever happened to him, or you started looking for your dead mother, I was to give the letter to you. Now, he told me not to read it...but you know me.”
Well, I’d thought I’d known him. He was my husband, after all. But evidently I didn’t have a clue.
“I’ve never been good with surprises, so I opened the letter,” Alan said. “Of course, I thought your old dad was crazy at first. I didn’t think much about it until I started doing some research.” The door handle rattled under his grip.
“Damn it, Lex, as if I needed another reason for you to be so special. Your shadow is swallowing me, strangling me slowly.” The hatred seemed to seep out of his pores. “So I took the unbeaten path.”
A light bulb suddenly went on over my head.
“You’re giving me to them? How could you? I love you.” Even as my heart collapsed in my chest, I knew that’s exactly what he was doing.
“Yes, and I loved you, too. And wasn’t it nice of you to take care of me all these years. Lexie is so smart. Aren’t you proud of Lexie, running her own business? How does it feel to be a kept man? Do you have to ask for pocket money? Everyone laughed with me. I was the butt of their tired jokes.”
Zeke’s growl snapped me out my dark thoughts.
Alan and I both jumped at the sound of Zeke hitting the front door. As if the handle burnt him, Alan immediately let go and stepped back.
“I thought you took care of that thing!” Alan screamed at the woman as he backed away.
“Yes, well, he seems to be more resourceful than you
imagined. No?” She tapped Alan on the head as she passed him stumbling away from the door as she went to open it. Alan looked horrified, but she still had the same beauty-pageant smile on her flawless face.
“No! Don’t let that thing in. He’ll kill us.” Alan took a few more steps back as she turned the handle.
“What are you doing?” Alan’s voice was almost a cry. “I did everything you asked. What more do you want from me?”
She smiled at Alan as she opened the door and waved Zeke in with a flourish. With her beautiful pale skin and flowing grace, she reminded me of a gothic Vanna White.
Zeke burst through the open door, snarling and growling, slobber and spit flying. His deep voice penetrated the room and vibrated through the wood floor straight up my body. Alan looked like one of the Three Stooges as he stumbled back from the door, scrambling to get behind me.
I reached out and touched Zeke, and he stopped his charge. He continued to growl and spit, but he stayed by my side. I backed us farther away from Alan. The woman was on my left blocking the front door, and Alan was now on my right, blocking the plastic opening to the sunroom. As I rubbed Zeke’s head a thought occurred to me.
“Alan, how did you remember the Janecks? I mean about their murder. You mentioned it earlier tonight, and, well, not many people have a memory of that except Ottie and Maloran.”
Just saying Maloran’s name hurt. Alan’s face fell again. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“Alan! What have you done?” My hands opened and closed, fisting tightly as my palms ached for my dagger. I couldn’t speak for a moment as reality slipped over me like a wave.
“You hired the Janecks to take me! They would have killed me, Alan! One of their men tried. If not for Zeke,” I rubbed his ear, “I’d be dead.”
I didn’t wait for an answer.
“What are they are giving you, Alan? What’s my asking price?”
He turned to the woman. “Look, I’ve delivered her. Here she is. I’ve done what you asked. Now give me what I want!”
He was frantic and his eyes were open too wide. I was intensely aware of my blood pumping through me, rushing to my face. It seemed to create a fire behind my eyes. How could I have been so blind?
“Not just yet, my pet,” she answered casually. “Not to worry, though, my master has a verrry special ceremony planned to give you everything you’ve earned.” Her voice felt as soft to my ears as the creamy leather she wore. Like the caress of a boa constrictor before it squeezed you to death.
The woman approached Zeke and me. I stood my ground. I wasn’t really all that brave—I was stuck in a corner and couldn’t have backed up if I’d wanted to. But I held my head up and met her gaze until she dropped her eyes to Zeke and rubbed his head.
“Ooh, you are a big bad boy, aren’t you?” she cooed.
Zeke snapped at her, his teeth sharp in his wide-open jaws, but he was only warning her. If he’d really wanted to take her hand off, he could have.
“Now, now, Guardian, I’m not here to harm her. Behave yourself.” She shook her finger at him like a teacher to a student. Zeke backed her up a little by stepping in front of me and letting a low growl rumble in his chest. She put her hands on her hips as if waiting for him to behave.
“Ah, ah, ah!” She called to Alan without turning away from Zeke. Somehow she’d noticed Alan working his way around the island, trying for a straight shot at the front door.
“Alan, darling, what’s wrong?” She walked back to block the path to the front door. “You look positively ghostly. Where do you think you’re going at this hour?”
She was right. Alan looked pale as he stumbled back toward the dining room.
“Are you surprised that her guardian does not attack me, but would happily have you for dinner?”
“Yes.” Alan was folding in on himself. His face seemed to have aged by ten years. His shoulders slumped; he looked all used up. All the anger and rage seemed to have sucked the light from him.
“Zeke, as she refers to him, will attack only if provoked. He knows that neither I nor my master is a threat to her.” She placed an ivory hand on Alan’s cheek. I could see him tremble.
“Mmm, we’ll have so much fun tonight. Don’t worry, Guardian,” she called over her shoulder. “I will take care of him for you.” She released his face and turned back to me.
“Master was overjoyed to learn about you, Alexandria. We had no idea that you even existed until Beatrix contacted us. What a joy to see her again and to learn of your growing powers.”
As she spoke, I was trying to work my way around Zeke and angle myself closer to where I’d hidden my dagger.
A new—deep—voice caught me mid-stride.
“I think the saying is that he helped me ‘kill two birds with one stick.’”
Startled, I turned to see who had joined the party. B was coming through the front door with the most unusual-looking man I’d ever seen. He was at least 6’4”, thin and gangly, with dazzling, light green eyes. His hair hung to his bare shoulders and a scraggly goatee hung down to his chest. He wore an old fashioned fedora and a black tank top with a thick gold chain around his neck. He wasn’t handsome in the classical sense, but something about his natural confidence made him memorable. He had that thing—charisma or personality. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I was momentarily mesmerized.
“Stone,” B said, correcting him. “Kill two birds with one stone, that’s the saying.”
“Да , yes you’re right. Thank you, Beatrix.” He caressed her hand where it lay on his arm, like he was petting an animal and closed his eyes as if he was letting a piece of chocolate melt in his mouth. “I love the way your name feels on my tongue.”
He opened his eyes and looked at B as if she were the chocolate of his dreams. “It is good to have you next to me again, if only for a little while.” His sorrow lingered in the air like a cloud. B squirmed under his gaze. I recognized her expression; she was fighting her attraction to him—just like I’d fought my attraction to Ellasar.
“Aleksandr, shall we get back to the matter at hand?” She deftly refocused his attention on me. She seemed in control of herself, which was lucky for me, because I felt like I was on a merry-go-round that was spinning around too fast.
“Yes, you are quite right, my sweet.” He squeezed B’s hand and turned back to the woman in white. “Ivanka, be a dear and introduce us to Alexandria. I assume she doesn’t know who I am.”
Ivanka. The immortal’s name suited her: strong and sexy. She could carry off the one-name thing like Cher or Madonna if she wanted to.
“Of course, sir, it would be my pleasure.” Ivanka turned toward me. “Miss Alexandria, I am Ivanka Voronova. And this is Aleksandr Sokolov, your grandfather.” The merry-go-round I was on stopped abruptly, jarring me out of mid-whirl. I think I actually wobbled a bit, but Zeke was beside me to steady me.
I turned to Alan. “Did you know he was my grandfather?” Please, Alan could not have offered me as a gift to earn himself immortality. Alan turned away from me, and his expression squashed my hope.
If Alan wouldn’t answer, maybe B would. I turned to her.
“B, what’s going on?” I saw shock on her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, a noise to my right caught my attention. I whirled around to see Alan rushing at me with my dagger in his hand. Only it was still in its simple garden dobber disguise. He wanted to hurt me with it! Zeke gathered himself to intercept the blow, but I held fast to his collar and let instinct take over. I closed my eyes, put my free hand up, and shouted.
“Annot!”
I heard a collective gasp and opened my eyes. I was clutching Annot to my chest and standing over Alan. The dagger had turned back into my beautiful weapon and was glowing fiercely bright. Aleksandr and Ivanka both had backed up and were sheltering their eyes. B, on the other hand, seemed to be enthralled by its beauty as much as I was.
Alan’s whimpering brought my focus back to what I was doing. Upon ch
anging, the dagger had burned into his hand so deeply that it had liquefied his skin. He was holding his hand and writhing in pain on the floor, unable to open his eyes. Rage rushed through me as the situation became clear to me. I wanted to see his eyes and I wanted him to see mine. The dagger understood and dimmed.
“Open your eyes and look at me.” I didn’t recognize my own voice, but I felt the words leaving my mouth so it had be me who spoke. He didn’t open his eyes.
“Look at me!” Alan’s eye lids flickered, testing the burning light. Then something in my face caught and held his attention. His fear washed over me, and—God help me—I wanted to drink it in. I blinked to clear my thoughts and before I knew it, the dagger was piercing the soft skin of Alan’s neck just under his chin.
Something was different. My eyes were no longer my eyes alone. The dagger was a separate entity, but it lived inside me too. It wasn’t just a weapon that chose me to wield it, we were two halves. When I held it we were two consciousnesses in one body. Its need for self-preservation was stronger than mine. Its rage was stronger, too.
As our rage bubbled within me, I realized if I allowed the dagger to take control, Alan would die. It hadn’t loved Alan for the past seven years. It had no compassion, no reverence for human life. With each pulse, I knew that its only desire was to kill our enemies.
“I will handle this, you need not worry,” the dagger whispered to me. “I will end him. No one will harm us.”
The voice was like cool water on a hot afternoon, inviting and soothing. I wanted to let it take control. If I did, maybe my pain would go away. Alan’s betrayal was ripping me apart. I questioned every aspect of my life, every decision. How could I have been so wrong about him? He’d offered me up so easily. I still couldn’t believe it.
I was floating, disconnected. No ties held me to this life. When I was a child, my mother had abandoned me to become a monster, and now that I was an adult, my husband wanted to trade me for his own immortality. How easy it would be just to close my mind and rest. I took a deep breath and felt the cool water lift me, letting me float with no worries.