“Finally.” He held her gaze, fingering the blemish through her coat and sending peculiar stabs of pleasure through her. “You were so stubborn, relentless. Few have been so resistant.”
But even as he said so, her resistance seemed to be melting away, replaced by her old longings.
“And now, still, you are strong.” He craned his neck to speak to Sergey. “There is plenty of this one to share, my son.” He slid her jacket off her shoulders and let it fall behind her, then placed an open-mouthed kiss to the place where he’d fed from her, his hot tongue dampening the fabric. She hated the way her nipples leaped to attention and her sex clenched.
Sergey watched her, his face frozen and unreadable. Was he fighting his inner demon just as she fought her old longing for Stas? His blank expression grounded her. She loved this man, and she would not let Stas have either one of them.
I love you, she mouthed to him.
He blinked. Me too.
Demyan jerked his head up and turned to Sergey, like a startled animal that had sensed danger.
She raised the hem of her blouse. “Please, Stas. Take everything you want from me. I’m ready here, now.”
He returned his laser-like focus to her and licked his lips. “Not here, we could be interrupted too easily. We must go down.”
“Yes, into the tunnels.” Sergey took a step closer to the pair. “I’ve sensed you there.”
Stas patted his shoulder. “Good, good. I always hope my children will return to me.”
He guided Anya into the dank back room where she’d slept. It had remained more or less unchanged since her time there, including another tattered sofa. He went to the basement door and opened it wide.
The vila shied, recoiling from the blackness, and Anya remembered her dream, when she’d been unable to summon wind in the airless tunnels.
“It’s all right, Anya,” Stas said. “This is what you’ve always wanted; you simply did not understand.”
Anya had wanted his love and approval, had wanted to belong with someone, not to be his prey. But she followed him to put an end to his evil once and for all.
“Are there others like me below?” Sergey asked.
Stas angled backward to answer, and Anya had never seen him look bereft before. He shook his head, gazing fondly at his son. “Not at the moment, my boy. Sometimes my offspring forget their place, that they exist only thanks to my generosity. If they try to take what is mine, I cannot let them live. Alexei, Havril, and Kliment paid for their disobedience.”
Anya faltered on the stairs. Those were the names of the three brothers who’d been drowned at the lighthouse. Stas had killed his own sons. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to hate him even more, and yet she did.
“Heed the lesson, Sergey, and do not challenge me,” he said, and she shuddered.
“What happened to Alexei’s woman, the ballet teacher?” Sergei asked.
“Yes, he said you met her. Such a loss. Under his thrall, she lured many women to us. But foolish Alexei crossed the line. It is not possible to feast on a woman and keep her for a lover. She cannot not survive it.” He spoke sentimentally, as if he hadn’t killed the men and probably the woman too. “Though the power I sense in Anya will keep her strong for a long time. She might not ever grow weak.”
In her veins, Anya’s blood prickled with an icy chill.
Down, down. They descended so far below the city it felt like he was taking them all the way to hell. And with every downward step into the catacombs, she grew more compliant, the urge to truly surrender building in her, like some evil magic in the air or a dark drug in her veins.
Finally, they reached bottom. Kerosene lanterns lit the limestone walls of the catacombs, and Anya expected to find some craven den, the home of a predator. Instead, Stas led them inside a well-furnished room, a gentleman’s study, with books lining the walls. At the far end, a fireplace had been carved into a wall. A luxurious rug stretched the full length of the room. Nothing was tattered in this, the demon’s true home.
“This way, darling.” He guided her toward the crackling fire and said, “Make yourself comfortable. You’ll be staying here with us a while.”
She stood by the blaze, trying to absorb its warmth, while Stas went to a record player and dropped the needle onto the vinyl disc. As the first notes of the score floated to her, she was not surprised to hear Giselle. Finally, he was giving her the part she’d desired.
Sergey had held back, in all semblance of obedience. Was he succumbing to Stas’s seductive powers too?
She clung to the vila, the part of her that could resist him.
The music hypnotized her, stirring her muscles and joints to dance. It tugged at those traitorous, weaker parts of her, trickled over her still-new body with a sensuousness that inflamed her arousal. Then he came to her as he always had, his movements clean and clipped and graceful. He spun and lifted her in a compact version of the pas de deux they’d endlessly rehearsed. The music took her out of her body and onto a plane of pure sensation.
Vaguely, she realized he’d brought them to a standstill and begun to caress her. The music melded with his touch on her neck, her breasts, her belly. Her knees turned weak, and she gasped when he roughly cupped her mound, rubbing her through her slacks in all the ways she’d only just learned she liked under Sergey’s deft touch. She couldn’t help but respond to Stas, writhing, growing wet under her clothing. As surely as she had a siren’s powers, this demon could command her arousal, though her stomach twisted, revolted by his touch.
“My son,” Stas beckoned him over.
Poor Sergey. His eyes clouded with desire even as his jaw rippled with forceful tension. Could he really mean for her to play along with this, or was he as lost as she was to the dark forces Demyan employed? Tears stung her eyes even as she felt the pressure of pleasure build.
Her puppy made low, guttural sound.
Demyan stilled his hand. “Yes. I feel your desire for her--your lust and your hunger are both fierce. And rightly so. She’s very ripe, her body finally ready for my purposes. But make no mistake. She’s mine. I don’t think I will share her after all. You must learn this lesson right away, or as your brothers did, you’ll pay for it with your life.”
Again, he stroked her through her slacks, rubbing that same sensitive place that he’d only teased when she was alive. She shuddered, fighting off the climax he was calling forth, not wanting to give him the satisfaction, not wanting Sergey to see her so weak.
He had broken out into a sweat, his jaw still clenched, his neck red and strained, a thick erection pressing against his jeans. He looked at her precisely as Demyan had said--with both lust and hunger, like he longed to consume her in every way. He fisted his hands, as if he were losing his self-control.
Seeing her lover falter, she gritted her teeth and found more restraint. She had to resist being pulled over the cusp of pleasure.
The demon withdrew his hand and looked from her to his son and back with his hazel eyes narrowed just slightly. If she had not spent two years of her life studying his every gesture and expression in search of crumbs of approval, she would not have seen the suspicion.
She was going to have to act fast. She would be Giselle, who broke through the powers of hate and vengeance to rescue her beloved Albrecht, before she was free to rest in peace.
Oksana had said pride was a zmora’s Achilles’ heel. Anya would strike his a blow.
“Stas, your son is so like you, so handsome. Won’t you please give me to him first?” She stared at Sergey, though she addressed his father. “Let me be his reward for coming to you. Then I will be all yours.”
“Would you like that, Anya?” Demyan rasped, drawing very near to her. His body was leaner, slighter than Sergey’s. But his every movement was menacing--a graceful, beautiful threat.
His nostrils flared, and he seemed to be smelling her. Then he marched over to Sergey and inhaled again.
He retur
ned to Anya, sliding his nose along her neck, then his hands up her sides until they curled around her throat. Her vila powers fluttered, not liking the prospect of being deprived of air. She drew on them, let them fill her with power, hoping like hell her nightmare wouldn’t come true.
The fire flickered--of course, its chimney would vent outside.
“His scent is all over you,” he snarled, tearing at her blouse, baring her breast and shoulder. “But you know that you are mine. I groomed you for so long. Have you betrayed me?”
Playing along had led her too far into his grasp. She covered herself, but he yanked her arms away from her chest.
“No, Stas. You betrayed me, with your promises and your lies.”
“In the end, I always keep my promises, Anya.” He slid one hand down to the waist of her pants as he lifted her arm to expose her scar. “I am going to take you, take everything from you, and you will like every second of it. And I’ll let Sergey here watch you pant and scream for me. That will help him learn his lesson.”
“No.” She fought him, trying to get free. But he was too strong, his hands like iron manacles, fingertips digging into her hips. And his mouth on that scar on her inner arm, it was bliss, shooting right to her sex and melting her resistance. She looked to Sergey for help, but his hazel eyes had changed completely--all his sweetness turned dark and predatory. The puppy eaten by the panther.
Stas laughed, a merry but hollow sound. “He’s already mine. He fought me off valiantly for a while, but the moment he let me into his mind and saw what delights await him here with me, he surrendered to his nature. I think he will be a good boy after all.”
At that horrible declaration, her vila powers broke loose, and with them came a plan. The air began to churn, drawing volumes through the chimney. The wind blew out all the lanterns so only the fireplace lighted the room. She coaxed the air, fanning the fire and catching the sofa aflame.
“What are you, Anya?” Demyan whispered in astonishment, his face in shadow as the fiery orange tongues danced behind him. He must have sensed her power, but he seemed oblivious to the blaze, and he held her hard. If she couldn’t get away, she would burn up with him.
“I’m summoning the wind. I’m a vila, just like Giselle,” she replied, as the flames leaped onto the rug.
“How perfect, my prima.” She couldn’t see his smile, but it sounded in his words.
He raised up her arm as if to feast on her powers.
A sob tore from her throat. Behind Stas, Sergey snarled like a dog protecting its bone.
Demyan stiffened and twisted to look at his son who’d bared his teeth, clearly fighting his father’s control.
Without a plan, all strategy gone, Anya shoved Demyan. He fell backward and into the fire. His mouth fell open into a scream as his clothing caught. He lunged for her, but she pushed him back with a powerful gust, pinning him against the flames.
His wailing was terrible, and the vila rejoiced in it more than Anya ever had his praise. But she’d also become human again--by reuniting with Sonya, or falling for Sergey, or forgiving Gregor--probably all three. Demyan’s suffering twisted her stomach just as much as his unwelcome caresses had.
He rose up, tried to stumble from the bonfire, but she blew him backward on a column of air, straight into his certain death.
His howling battered her. He was a monster who’d hurt an untold number of woman, most of whom had not escaped as Anya and Oksana had. He had to be stopped. But he had likely not chosen his demonic nature any more than Sergey had, or than she’d checked a box opting to become a vila upon the occasion of her death. Stas had taught her to be the best dancer she could, and he himself danced exquisitely. But now, he was reduced to the shrill screams of death, and Anya pitied him.
Finally, he went quiet, collapsing. She yanked Sergey farther away from the fire, where he watched the father he’d only just met burn. But after taking Oksana’s stories to heart, Anya wouldn’t let up her focus on Demyan, in case he tried to crawl away.
The smoke stung her eyes, and she began to cough. He burned fast, faster than she would have thought a human would, but then again, he wasn’t a human.
Finally, all that remained of him was a pile of ash and bone. With the vila’s power, she pushed the smoke from the room, back up the chimney.
She rekindled one of the lanterns and returned to Sergey, shaking him. He rubbed his eyes, and when he focused on her, the blank expression had gone and her puppy looked back at her.
“Oh, thank God.” She hugged him, but he kept stiff and distant.
Setting her gently aside to walk to the pile of ash, he said. “Good work, Anya.”
Her chest tightened. What was wrong with him? Clearly, he hadn’t turned into a demon as his mother had feared. Did he grieve for Stas, or perhaps for the father he wished he’d had?
He pulled out his phone and used it as a flashlight to examine the pile of ash. “Look at this.” He used the toe of his boot to kick at the cinders and bone, then to move something into the beam of his light. A smoking, black egg.
“We should crush it,” she said.
“You should have the honor.”
Okay. So he didn’t seem particularly grief stricken.
“I had the honor of burning him alive,” she said, “and I’m willing to share. Maybe you need the satisfaction of beating him, to know that you can resist the part of him inside you.”
He didn’t hesitate to raise up his knee and stomp on the egg. It oozed a blacked substance that sizzled on the hot stones and replaced the odor of fire with the stench of sulfur.
She wanted Sergey to open his arms to her, but he kept them at his side, staring at the sickening mess of blackened eggshell and acrid smoke.
A door slammed. The tunnels beyond the room thundered with sound--footsteps, shouts. Someone appeared in the door in a helmet, a handgun pointed into the room. “Odessa politsiya. Hands up.”
Chapter 27
Sergey raised his hands and nudged a soot-smeared Anya to follow suit.
“I’m Sergey Yuchenko,” he called out. “Badge 7351 of the Kiev politsiya.”
“Gregor Lisko said you’d come down here in pursuit of a suspect. Is he detained?”
“He’s dead, and this room is secured.”
The officer lowered his weapon.
In turn, Sergey and Anya lowered their hands.
“Lisko said it was a kidnapping?”
“That’s right. He insisted on leaving the cops out of it, just wanted to pay the ransom. I tried to talk him into reporting to the authorities, but he feared for her.”
“Probably justified. What kind of creep hides out down here?”
“Seriously.” Sergey nodded, even though he happened to be the kind of creep who liked to lurk in the catacombs himself. “I did request authorization to enter the premises, but you boys have been busy.”
“Those murdered brothers.” The man nodded, then shook his head. “Nothing but dead ends.”
Sergey’s stomach soured. His half-brothers, killed by Demyan over rivalry.
Anya came to his side, let their arms touch as if she knew he needed comfort.
“You take out the kidnapper?” the officer asked.
“No, the victim lit him on fire.”
Anya waved at the officer, who stared at her and then whistled his admiration. “Good work, ma’am.”
Even now, in her sheepish mode and smudged with black ash, she was glorious. She’d defeated her enemy and retained her power, and come to stand at his side to offer comfort, even though he was a monster, and surely she’d seen the truth of it.
“There’s something else.” Sergey stepped toward his fellow cop, putting some distance between himself and Anya. “You might have trouble getting the DNA to prove it. But this man confessed to the brothers’ murders. Said those men were his sons, wanted a share of the ransom Lisko would pay. I’m sure Anya will make a statement to that effect. But right now, I�
�d like to get her up to the fresh air, if you don’t mind.”
Then they were swept up into the police procedure, questioned, examined. Sergey stumbled through, his body leaden, wrung out by the night’s events. But Dmitri stayed by their sides, kept them together, helped Anya manage questions and keep her story straight when Sergey stumbled, and soon they were free to go.
She slid into the car independently and Sergey missed her touch acutely, but this time, he took the front passenger seat. He hadn’t spoken directly to her since they’d come up from the catacombs. What the hell could he say? He’d wanted to do despicable things to her in there. Wanted it badly. Would probably want to again.
“Sergey?” she asked, so many questions sounding in his name.
He looked at her.
“You all right?”
How did a guy answer a question like that? He shrugged, grunting.
Dmitri cast him a sidelong glance, but it was head-on disapproving. Sergey wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He just wanted to keep her safe, and now that included protecting her from himself.
Lisko pulled up to the hotel, and Sergey reached to get out of the car.
“Huh?” Anya muttered. She patted the seat and then bent to look at the shadowy floor of the car. “My purse. It’s not here.”
Dmitri flipped the key, starting the car again. “We can--”
“No.” In spite of Sergey’s black mood, a grin took hold of his face. “Let the damn thing lie. She’s free.”
She smiled at him, radiant and full of pride. She’d freed herself.
“I did like that purse,” she said, a mischievous sparkle in her eye.
Dmitri chuckled. “We’ll get you another one, harpy.”
From the back seat, she smacked his bald head with her open palm, but she was still smiling. These two would make quite a pair of in-laws.
Gregor was asleep in a separate room, but Sonya waited in the living room of the suite Anya and Sergey had shared.
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