Karolina Dalca, Dark Eyes

by M. R. Noble

  His genuine admiration, lust, and need swirled within me like a storm. Those feelings grew, until they peaked and stunned my senses. The room around me spun. I felt intoxicated.

  He found the edge of my shirt, then the top of my jeans. His fingers glided across my hips. I tilted my head back and bit down on my lip. Blood flavored my mouth. In the fog, my mind slowed on my memories of the dorm. Where we left off, what we didn’t do.

  He tugged at the edge of my jeans.

  I met his gaze for the first time since he entered the room. His eyes were very, very blue, like a beacon for me to focus on in the haze, while my senses climbed higher.

  “Please forgive me?”

  My anger at him was gone. It had evaporated with the world around me. I was angry about how I felt about him. Not what he’d done. His deception had been real and calculated, but he’d put his plan in motion before he’d changed. I knew it, and in the daze, I could no longer lie to myself.

  A steamy heat turned inside which wasn’t my fire magic. It rose up and turned unbearable. My back arched, and I kissed him. He parted my lips with his tongue, then reached down and hoisted me into the air, wrapping my legs around him. Hot air blew out over my face. I was pinned between him and the pillar.

  I ran my hands over his skin, feeling his excitement peak at my touch. I felt the hardness of him between my legs. His pleasure bled into mine, making me feel like my body was spilling into his.

  A tiny rational part of my mind buzzed at me like a bee. Is it the bond or is it real?

  A sound escaped Andre, as he jerked my pants down to my thighs. The warmth of his skin slid between my legs.

  No, no. I had a thought. Something important. The bond. It was the bond. I spread my hands against Andre’s chest and forced him back. His mouth parted from mine, allowing a gust of the cool room air on my face, sobering me just enough.

  “I can’t,” I slurred.

  Andre backed up enough to let my legs slide to the ground. He looked shaken, leaning against the pillar with both arms on either side of me.

  I jerked my jeans up. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is it?” His breathing was still labored.

  “I just. I can’t. I’m sorry.” I ducked under his arm, and bee-lined it to the doors. Andre whispered inaudibly just as I left the room.

  By the time I found my suite, I still hadn’t cooled off. I closed the hotel room door, whipped off my clothes, and hunted out the shower. At the risk of the cold water being counterproductive, I banned all thoughts of Andre. The ice water numbed my skin, and slowly the furnace inside of me cooled.

  I toweled dry and explored the hotel room. The Princess Suite was various shades of light pink to deep crimson. The characteristic gold accents continued. Loukin or perhaps Ina had some essentials laid out on the couch in the living room for me. Next to a warm set of pink pajamas, there was a cell phone and laptop. Ina had to be the culprit.

  I pounced like a cheetah. Hello, social media. Hello, texting my friends again. Hello, celebrity gossip and countless hours spent with online videos. I sprang to action on the keyboard, but my fingers froze after I started keying in the internet access code. I couldn’t do any of those things. I was still a wanted fugitive in Canada. The risk of my accounts being flagged for activity wasn’t one worth taking. I slapped the laptop lid closed.

  A cold chill cascaded down my back.

  I turned my head to the hallway door. The lock was in place. A chilly breeze blew inward from underneath the door. I sat in silence as a shadow flickered across the bottom of the doorframe. A white envelope slipped under the wood and glided across the carpet on a gust of air.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Blood for Blood

  The cracks of the hallway door lit up fluorescent white. I shielded my eyes. Then, the light was gone. I slid off the couch and prowled to the door. I looked through the peephole, then flung the door open. The hall was empty.

  I stepped out, fists clenched and ready for a fight. A squeaking noise traveled along the carpet behind me. I spun around. A bug-eyed bellboy with a trolley stopped. He stared at me as the suite door behind him clicked closed. I tightened the towel around my torso and backed up into my room.

  When I walked toward the couch, the white envelope crunched underfoot. I summoned my Charmed senses. There was no tingle or abnormal feeling to signal any magical tampering. I scooped it up and held it to the light of a chandelier. There was a note inside. I tore into it.

  Dearest Karolina,

  I am requesting the honor of your presence for a formal introduction. With so little family left, we must cherish our precious moments while we have them. I would come to you, but I thought your friends may not favor my visit…and then I would not favor them. I hear the wolf introduced himself to my men in Romania, and now Russia. I thought it was a lovely gesture. One so lovely, I would like to return it to his parents in Canada. That is, if I’m not preoccupied by our visit. My men will be waiting for you in the main park at 11:00pm.

  Sincerely your Tzar,

  Kazimir Nabokov

  I crumpled the letter. If I didn’t meet Kazimir then he would go after Roman’s family. The majority of ransom notes ended in death; it was just one of the cold statistics of policing. I would be lying to myself if I believed I’d be excluded. I remembered Roman’s mother, and how his father retired from carpentry work as his body got older. Now that I knew Roman was a werewolf, I wondered if his father’s charismatic strength passed down to him. Why else had Roman gotten so strong in adolescence, and his father suddenly so weak? With Roman here, both his parents might be defenseless.

  Kazimir also referred to my friends. Werewolves and vampires could fight for themselves, but the civilians at the Grand Hotel had no abilities. Loukin said he was at war with Kazimir. He would have prepared for an attack. The hotel was warded. But he said it himself; his wards were not Miruna’s. I considered how weak his wards were in the hotel lobby. I hadn’t even felt them. The hotel might not survive a massive assault, and if it didn’t, its occupants wouldn’t either.

  His wards also couldn’t protect the surrounding towns. I weighed the events of the parade. Kazimir’s men were confidently venturing into Loukin’s claimed territory and abducting people from the streets. When I questioned the war for title of Tzar, Loukin snapped at me. It wasn’t obvious at the time, but it was now. His irritability was more than anger birthed from betrayal. His resources were draining. Could it be this was a war Loukin was already losing?

  The clock on the wall read ten-twenty. I picked up the phone and dialed zero. With a ring and a half, the operator answered.

  “Ello,” a woman said.

  “Roman Lupei, spasiba.”

  The call beeped to voice mail. “Hey, Ro, I guess you’re out and about.” I twirled the phone cord in my fingers. “I just wanted to tell you; I’m going out for a bit. I may not be back for a while. I just wanted to let you know, I love you. Thank you for being my best friend.”

  I rolled my neck, and with a large crack the tension eased up. I walked through the living area to the bedroom and found the closet. As I hoped, arrangements had been made for clothing. I rifled through the hangers and gambled Ina wouldn’t fail me now. At the back, there was black spandex. I took the pieces of clothing from the hangers and ripped off the paper tags. It was a training outfit.

  I climbed into the skin-tight fabric and caught a flash of my dark silhouette as I passed by the mirror to get a set of runners. In the current setting, I looked ridiculous. I recalled the image of Tod dressed in all black during the daylight. But once I was out in a park at night, I’d blend into the shadows. I found my key card and tucked it into the safest place for a busty woman: the inside of my bra.

  The main hotel level had filled with more people. As the evening was still new, the crowds would get worse. I squeezed my way through the throng into the main lobby. As I hoped, it thinned out the closer I got to the door. People were heading in rather than out. I wove into a group
which had stopped to ask for directions from a babushka telling fortunes. Just when I was about to celebrate my escape a hand took my arm. But Lady Fortuna had still given me an edge, as the hand belonged to a cute young man.

  “Excuse me, Miss Dalca. But we’ve been advised not to let you leave the grounds tonight.”

  “Oh, but you wouldn’t deprive a girl from her workout routine, would you?” I touched the muscle of his arm and sloped my back, letting my natural attributes shine. “It looks like you keep up with yours pretty regularly.”

  He took the opportunity to check out what I was selling, but he didn’t buy it. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you leave.”

  “Look, I’ve had the worst day and all these people are smothering me. Please. Even if I just jog along the ward line, I need to get outside for a run.”

  “Fine,” he said. “You’ve got ten. But just before the ward line, like you said.”

  “Thank you.”

  After a few minutes of jogging, I figured I kept up the ruse long enough. When I was clear of sight I dove through the bushes. A twig scratched my face, but I kept going at a full run across the street. There was a tourist park in the center of town, which we passed on our drive in. It was logical to think the main park would be the largest. I tracked beams of moonlight on the tree leaves up into the northern sky. When I found the moon, I got my bearings. If I hoofed it in this general direction, I’d eventually stumble across the park. I dumped all my vampiric strength into my run, covering as much ground as I could within the seconds I had.

  A sign confirmed I chose the right direction. I kicked up turf and sprinted off the sidewalk across a neighboring lawn. My sights narrowed on a grouping of trees. I stopped at the mouth of the park entry. The last light of twilight disappeared. The town was immersed in blackness. The quiet filled with the sound of crickets and my shoes squishing on the freshly watered lawn.

  I prowled the park. The smell of freshly cut grass masked any other scents. What looked like the outline of a man in the darkness now appeared to be a tree. I called up my vampiric eyesight and focused on the surrounding noise. My eyes adjusted to the night. Shrubs surrounded me.

  A twig snapped and I reacted by calling my fire. It was a mistake, as I started glowing.

  Lady Fortuna was known for being a fickle bitch.

  “Vot!” A man’s voice called from a shrub no more than three meters from me.

  The sound of thunder clapped. A dark bolt let off a sinister glow as it streaked through the air. The bolt blew into my shin before my fire grew. A searing pain snaked around my ankles, entrapping my other leg. I slammed into the ground. The whiplash knocked the air from my lungs. More pain screamed up from my legs as the lightning bonds charred deeper into my skin.

  The silhouette of a man streaked before me against the backdrop of the night sky. There was a crack and his face lit up with an eerie light.

  Another dark blaze of lightning shot toward me.

  I shielded my face. I called my fire again, but I felt the dark magic on my skin block it from my access. The bolt slammed into my wrists, snaring them in a blistering pain. It coiled up my forearms. I cried out as the smell of burning flesh wafted to my nose. The echo of my screams cut off, as I gagged down the contents of my stomach.

  A fist hammered down into the side of my face.

  ****

  The pressure in my temples pulsed into my eyes. My head pounded. I considered rolling over, but even the idea made me nauseated. I lay still, barely conscious, trying to get orientated to my surroundings.

  A swift kick landed on my gut.

  It took me off guard. My muscles didn’t flex, and I hadn’t even recoiled. Either I was still way more asleep than I realized, or I had put up with a beating for a while. My face felt hot and swollen with fluid. Patches of swollen skin thumped with each pulse of blood. Some areas of me felt warm and wet. Other parts of skin ballooned with pockets of cool blood. A new welt started to form on my stomach.

  My ears filled with the sounds of droplets hitting the floor. My hearing was back. I focused on the drops. They fell from my abdomen to below. My head rested on the inside of my outstretched arm. The loud slapping of the drops continued, so loud, they had to be falling on a surface made of metal. In front of my eyes was dark, but I could make out a faint slit of light. I was blindfolded. I kept my eyes closed and focused on the floating feeling of being in motion, the wind whooshing. The odd bump below caused the area I was on to jostle. I was in a van.

  A group of voices laughed, and a woman’s high-pitched cackle pierced the air.

  I flinched this time. Which told me I was back, as much as I could be, and so was the pain. The pain I felt when I first awoke was a massage compared to what it was now. My teeth ground together, and I started to count the voices in the room around me. One, two, three…the pain broke through and I lost my focus. I had to remain calm. I knew my survival depended on it.

  Weight shifted on the floor and my focus was redirected back inside of the van. The sound of heavy boots paced toward me. A few of the voices murmured in Russian. The sound of the last footstep hovered around my ear. The heavy breathing of a man hung in the space above me.

  I recoiled. My wrists tugged hard against the crispy bonds which had charred into my skin. I cried out, yanking them deeper into the raw burns. It was another mistake. I gave myself away; they now knew I was awake. Though the dark magic was depleted, I lost any edge I had.

  Two hands clasped around my shoulders, hauling me up into the air. The others in the room screamed out together. My panic flared, in an instant, the thought of exploding into fire crossed my mind. I could lay waste to this van and those in it—but it wouldn’t get me to Kazimir.

  His breath touched my skin a second before his fangs tore into my flesh. He ripped into my shoulder sideways and flayed my skin from the bone. Pain sizzled up the nerves in my neck, and my fingers contracted. I screamed as the warm liquid trickled down my arm. The endorphins from the vampire bite arrived way too late to counter the carnage he started with. He wanted it to hurt.

  He lapped up the blood from my neck, until his mouth jerked away. His hands jarred from my shoulders and I fell to the ground. The blindfold around my eyes slid off my hair and onto the metal floor. I squinted against the fluorescent lights of the van.

  A meaty vampire knelt before me, his eyes glazed and blood dripping from his chin. A second vampire stood behind him holding him by the neck and screamed into the side of his face in Russian.

  “Mne zhal, mne zhal!” the underling cried. He put his hands into a praying position. “Mne zhal!”

  The second vampire threw him into me, and his knee landed on my bloody arm. I looked down at my black clothes now turned garnet-red and gasped. Blood pulsed from the bone exposed on my shoulder and splashed to the floor. In the latent effects of bite euphoria, I hadn’t felt the blood loss.

  He leaned to me, letting his putrid breath fill my nostrils. His fangs sank into his wrist. He held his arm to me.

  I closed my mouth. I would rather let myself bleed to death, than drink his blood. The room spun wildly.

  He pried at my lips. The blood from his wrist dribbled onto my chin as he fumbled with my mouth. I held my lips tighter. The bright lights above grew hazy. The vampire in command rushed over and flipped me onto my back with his boot. He tried to open my mouth and the watch he wore caught my sticky blood-soaked hair. I winced. He leaned his weight on my jaw, and the muscles of my mouth strained.

  “Drink,” he said.

  When he glared at the vampire who’d bitten me, I understood the vampire had done so without his commander’s consent. The goon had too much wiggle room. He’d bitten me and indulged himself, but I lost too great a volume. If they presented Kazimir a dead Karolina, instead of a live one, the fear on their faces told me they’d regret it.

  My jaw gave way.

  They shoved the goon’s bloody wrist against my lips. The taste of his blood made me shrivel. Rotten capers. The bitter flav
or washed over my tongue, full of blind anger and numbing regret. As I swallowed down the foul-tasting salvation, I could feel the tiny shreds of muscle fibers in my shoulder rejoining to themselves.

  The goon jerked his hand from my mouth the moment the wound on my neck formed a raw scab. He denied me any more blood than I needed to survive, making my half-healed injuries come alive with new zeal. My nerve endings exploded and screamed messages to my brain, shrieking for relief.

  What was worse was through all the bodily pain, the feelings of the lout who’d bitten me started to creep into my body. It was what I feared. When he drank from me and was forced to feed me his blood—the bond was formed between us. I shuddered at the self-loathing and hatred which trickled in.

  This would be my breaking point, like a crack in a breastplate, which would let the next blow shatter it to pieces. This was the chink in my armor. The optimism I had in my strength would be gone. No. He couldn’t be a part of my soul. Not now. Not ever. I glared at them all and a coldness fell over me. With a sweeping bout of strength, I slammed an icy barrier between myself and the man.

  His head jolted back like he was punched in the face. Others caught his arms to stabilize him.

  The van doors flung open, making some heads turn. We’d come to a halt while I was fetched back from the brink of death. The lone woman in the crew kept her gaze on me. It must have been her shrill laugh I’d heard. She surveyed me and the hairs on my skin prickled. Women had to try harder in a man’s profession. I’d experienced it myself. She was a woman looking to prove herself.

  The men bustled out the doors. Their boots smacked down onto a hard floor. It echoed like concrete in a garage. The man I presumed to be the leader was last to leave. He jumped out and turned to me, seizing me by the bonds around my ankles. Pain flared up from my burns. He dragged me to the van doors. My hair caught in the coagulating blood. The van’s uneven metal floor dug into my wounds. The fluid from my blood blisters popped.