Of course, even to her own ears her protests were a little too hot. And she knew she sounded petulant, but she couldn’t help it. Or she didn’t want to. Who cared, really? Of all the ways that this could end, none of them was good. Not for her, at least. Caspian wouldn’t be hurt. He would just go on with his demonic business.
“You’re upset about something,” he said.
You think?
“What’s wrong, Grace? I can’t fix it unless you tell me.” Caspian rolled to the side and with gentle fingers pushed errant strands of hair from her forehead. “This isn’t like you.”
What was this pile of horse apples? She’d just had a tantrum and he was indulging her? He was asking her what was wrong? Why wasn’t he just washing his hands of her? And, how would he know what was “like her” or not? She could be a Bitch Kitty Deluxe on a red wagon for all he knew.
A faint and silly hope sparked to life in her breast: He
cared
for her. He had to! Joy burst through her limbs in a molten rush, but it congealed like cold lead when she realized that Caspian still had to go. There was Nikoli. Even if they managed to save him, she couldn’t very well raise her son with a demon. And she couldn’t forget what would happen when she got old. She would still age, still die. It was inevitable. Her life functions would cease, while Caspian was eternal. Why would he want to court that? And what about when her beauty was gone, when her “velvet-walled Heaven” was more like an abandoned cabin built of poison oak? Would he stay with her then? Could she even ask him to?
No. It was better to make him go away before he realized he cared. Caspian was a glutton, devouring any sensation he could experience. He’d suck the marrow out of her until there was nothing left. Even knowing the impossibility of their relationship, that’s what he would do when he realized he had feelings. He’d glut on them—on the sensations, at least. She’d be left with nothing. Not her heart, not her soul. He’d take those both away.
No. Actually, Grace knew better. He wouldn’t take her heart and soul; she’d give them away free and clear. She could already see it on the horizon, like a thunderstorm rolling across a prairie. And here she was, galloping forward at a hundred miles an hour.
What was she going to do? Should she really tell him what was wrong? Images flashed through her mind of Caspian in all his fiendish glory. While the sight was beautiful, it was also terrifying. She believed that he would never hurt her on purpose, but what if she made him angry, called forth the kind of rage that sometimes masked pain? Grace had really stepped in it this time, stepped in it with bare feet. With every second that passed she could feel badness oozing through her toes.
“Why do we have to rut like dogs in heat every time we’re together?” she accused. Great. Perfect way to drive home the fact that she wasn’t having feelings, pushing him away like this.
Goddess, though, she sounded like an Olympic champion nagger. Her voice was shrill and irritating, and she didn’t like herself, not talking like this. She didn’t know how Caspian put up with it. Or maybe he was just acting the way she’d expected, his attention like a crow’s: on her until something better and shinier distracted him.
“Because you like it?” he said.
Part of her wanted to say that she didn’t, but that would have been a big fat lie. There was no amount of language tampering that could make that statement true. She’d just end up choking on her words.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it, but I . . . want to do something else.” She almost hadn’t been able to get that one out, because all she wanted was to feel his body working hers in that primal rhythm, slick and hot and hard. She imagined his hands, his mouth—oh, his mouth!
His lip curled in distaste. “What else is there?”
“I don’t know. You could take me out to dinner.”
He sounded hopeful. “Afterward, as you so eloquently put it, can we come back here and ‘rut like dogs’?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He sighed. “Grace. I hate to remind you, but . . . I, uh, already paid for it,” he said.
“Really.”
Apparently Grace was also one of those people for whom the word was also a warning. This wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a declarative, either. It was filler. It was a placeholder to prevent her rage from spewing forth in a tsunami. For he’d just given her what she needed to escape him.
Caspian must have realized his mistake. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”
“How did you mean it?” Grace’s mouth was a thin slash that barely concealed her teeth. She felt her face pinch with displeasure.
Caspian was backing slowly away, as if she were a lioness with a paw caught in a steel trap. He was clearly smart enough to know dealing with a woman’s sensitivities was a brutal business, even if he was contractually in the right. “I just meant that we’d traded. That we’re still trading. That ...”
“That I’m just some whore. Your Mephistophelean contract binds me for fucking and suddenly I’m your property?” The last of it was half a question because her voice broke off at a higher pitch. Grace was angry, but her heart was also falling to pieces along with Caspian’s dark but shining armor. She’d always assumed it would.
“I see that you’re upset,” he began.
Upset didn’t even begin to describe this, but the situation was ultimately a good one. It was a good thing that her silly dreams and impossible hopes were shattered like spun glass on the concrete of reality. It would make the future easier. It would make what she had to do easier.
“I don’t want this anymore,” she said. And what do you know, it was the truth. It wasn’t a half-truth or even a convenient stretch; she really didn’t want this. She didn’t want the pain, the complication, or the abject despair when he left her.
He moved away from her, making a show of getting up off the bed, though he could have just teleported himself away. Despite the fact that she had no patience for women who wouldn’t say what they were thinking and expected their men to simply know, part of her was still hoping that he’d argue. It had been so easy to cast the first stone before she’d moved into this glass palace. But he didn’t oblige. She wondered if he knew more than he said.
He flashed her a devastating smile and turned to leave. “Whatever you want, Grace.” He paused by the dresser and turned to eye her once more. “If you change your mind, I’ll be around.” Then he was gone.
“
I
won’t,” she declared, needing the last word. Also, speaking aloud made her intention more real, cemented her resolve. It would be so very easy to call his name and bring him back, to forget everything but the heat between them, his cock pounding into her, filling not just her body but those dark, despairing places of her soul that would still be empty when they finished.
A sudden ache between her thighs drowned out all else. She remembered Caspian’s demonic tongue teasing her clit while stroking the inside of her, his hands all over her body. How did she get herself into these messes? This infernal sex drive was like an STD. She hoped there was a cure, because she needed it now. In an attempt to find relief, her fingers traced her body, following the same paths, invoking memories of Caspian. They slid inside her very wet passage, and her thumb worked her clit.
It wasn’t the same. She gave up and went to the dresser. Ha! No demon appendage could match her secret weapon. This miracle of modern science was purple and glittery, and it had a rotating head and another piece that snuggled against her anus, and still another that vibrated her clit. Of course, she hadn’t asked Caspian to try. Who knew what forms he could—
Enough! No more Caspian. She would use the Rabbit. There was no way the batteries would die, because this bad boy plugged into the wall and had more get-up-and-go than a Smart car—which was a good thing, because she had miles to go before she slept. The wicked always did.
Grace pulled open the drawer with expectant joy only to gasp and cover her mouth in horror. This was why the demon had stopped at her dresser before departing. Her Rabbit had been brutally murdered, an untimely death to be sure. Its murderer had taken a trophy, too. The rotating clit-hugger had been amputated and the device had been fried like bacon. There was still smoke coming off the molded plastic gel head.
Before her eyes, the thick, imitation man-sword wilted like a dead flower, sagging sadly in a parody of its former erect glory; this was how she imagined John Holmes on his one hundred and tenth birthday.
“Caspian, I’m going to kill you,” she vowed, pushing the drawer shut with reverence while at the same time raising the maimed appliance. Grace shook her fist in the air as if she were Scarlett O’Hara and her Rabbit a turnip, declaring she would never be hungry again. The corpse of the Rabbit flopped in phallic punctuation.
To Caspian, watching from the shadows, it would have been the funniest thing he’d ever seen . . . if his previous words about scorned women weren’t ringing in his ears like a fire alarm.
C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN
A Sacrifice
S
asha Dubenko was a man of few words, a predilection that had served him well in his career as a confidence man and consultant for the Vasilyev family. It was for that reason he knew where so many dark secrets were buried, including Nadja Grigorovich.
He’d outright lied to Michael when asked if he knew where Nadja was hidden. Sasha had witnessed the last battle between her and Seraphim firsthand. He’d been with Nadja as her living flesh hardened to stone, and he’d promised he’d take care of her. Nadja’s magick even kept him young and fit, well enough to do her bidding, if not so much it was overtly noticed.
His appearance was unassuming. He could have passed for any of the mourners that miserable day: white, middle-class, and American. He was a forgettable backdrop in his camel-colored trench coat and dress shoes, and he was wearing a matching hat to keep the rain off his black-framed glasses. He was completely nondescript.
It was bad luck in the village where he’d been born to step on new earth in a cemetery, so he kept to the manicured walkways, careful not to tread on any of the freshly turned dirt. Sasha believed in things like the evil eye, throwing salt over his shoulder just in case the Devil perched there, and the witch eternal known as the Baba Yaga. He wore a pewter charm shaped like a three-petal flower with intricate knot-work designs to repel all of these evils.
His fingers sought the charm and rubbed it absently. Nadja had made it with her own hands, infused it with her power, charged it with her own blood, and there was a smoothness that wasn’t quite an indentation but was what his mother would call a worry spot. He often sought out the comfort provided by the remnants of Nadja’s magick. Touching the amulet was as close as he could get to touching her. But today was different. He was going to see his beloved, was going to make a desperate offering. He was going to see if he could break the curse that held her in living death. He was going to break her suspended animation.
If only she’d agreed to relinquish her powers. If Nadja hadn’t tried to steal the magick of the Baba Yaga from Seraphim Stregaria, she would have been able to keep them. But no, she’d been as hungry for power as some others were for bread or meat. The battle with the other witch had left her all but dead.
Seraphim had been within her rights to take Nadja’s life. For some reason she had not. The woman was powerful, the most potent witch the world had seen in an age. She’d endured human trials, suffered the most horrific tortures that humans could inflict on one another. In the concentration camps such evil had been done to her, so it was a miracle she hadn’t burned the world out of vengeance. Nadja would have. Seraphim had not. Therein was the only reason Sasha wanted to help Grace Stregaria defeat Michael. As much as he’d loved Nadja Grigorovich, he’d known she could never be allowed to claim the power of the Baba Yaga. Michael had been born with that same hunger. Mated with Ivan Vasilyev’s evil, he was a destructive force. Too destructive.
Sasha hoped the sacrifice he’d brought earlier was still asleep; it would be easier for all parties if she slept through what was to come. He imagined how awful it would be, to feel your conscious mind slipping away into nothingness while knowing your body would belong to someone else. A horrible thing, yes. But necessary. The woman had to die so that his Nadja could live. It was a trade that he was willing to make. Sasha would do anything for Nadja—well, anything but see her become the Baba Yaga.
He pushed open the wrought-iron gate and produced a large brass key from his pocket. It fit the heavy lock on the crypt, turned with no resistance, and Sasha gave a perfunctory glance at his surroundings for witnesses or anything out of the ordinary. A moment later he slipped inside.
He saw nothing suspicious but cast a ward on the door nonetheless. Michael had been searching for this tomb for a long time, mostly because he was the one with the power now and wanted to make sure that his mother understood. He wanted to give her an irrevocable demonstration. But Sasha wasn’t ready to be parted from her simply to satisfy Michael’s infantile ideals about revenge.
The vessel was still slumbering where he’d left her, at Nadja’s feet. Her arms were bound in front of her, her ankle shackled by a chain embedded in the far wall. If by chance she happened to get free of her ropes, she still wouldn’t be able to escape the crypt. It would have been easier to secure her arms behind her back, but Sasha didn’t want to cause Nadja any discomfort when she pushed the girl’s soul out of her body. All of the sensations that the shell experienced would become hers. It wasn’t as if his reluctance to tie her had something to do with him being a kind man.
This girl was a virgin; he’d made sure of that. She had nice childbearing hips, breasts that could feed a third-world nation, and a dainty waist. Just how Sasha liked them, just how Nadja had looked all those years ago. Her hair was an unfortunate mousy brown, but this had been the closest Sasha could come to a body that both he and Nadja would approve of. At least, he hoped she’d approve.
He approached the marble statue in the center of the room. Pulling ajar of fresh rose petals from a hidden pocket in his trench coat, he scattered them around the base. When he was finished, he bowed before approaching the statue, ever the supplicant.
His hand found the marble cheek of the carved goddess and its eyes opened, bright with madness. That moonlight gaze fell upon the form below, the figure in chains, the sacrificial vessel. When Sasha kissed the cold, frozen lips of the statue, the eyes closed again. This was a dangerous transference: If the host body died, Nadja would, too.
The first deed was tackled with the blade of his
athame
. Sasha tried to be quick and gentle; after all, his Nadja was going to feel the aftermath. But virgin blood was necessary to begin the transfer of souls.
Sasha next began the invocation, continuing the ritual Nadja had left written out for him before her battle with Seraphim, wanting to cover all of her bases. It had taken him many years to find all of the special ingredients she’d listed, as well as the woman who would suit their needs. Michael had finally purchased her through his special channels. Sasha had never asked Vasilyev’s kid for anything before, so Michael had been happy to oblige. Sasha was glad he hadn’t asked any questions, though. Still, if he had, Sasha would have said anything to accomplish his mission.
Yes, virgins were highly priced commodities in these precarious times. American girls traded their virginity to hang with the popular crowd; Eastern Bloc women traded theirs for food. The choices kept getting younger and younger, and Sasha had had no desire for a child. He’d been specific that she be in her twenties. This one had been kidnapped from her doting papa—her doting, rich, and royal father who would do anything to get her back. Which meant Nadja would have the money she’d always wanted. Sasha would become her new bodyguard. It was the perfect plan.
He finished the incantation, mixing the vessel’s blood with diamond dust ground up in the incarnadine light of the harvest moon.
Sasha lit a white candle, then a black one. Both were for protection. Then he pulled out a lump of red wax that he melted between the two flames and dripped down into the mortar with the blood and diamond paste.
There were other ingredients, too, secret ingredients that he dared not call by name. If he thought of them for too long, they would brand his aura; he’d be marked to anyone who had the power to see. He couldn’t have that. Especially not with the Baba Yaga snooping about. She was bound to reveal herself soon. She’d never let this charade with Nikoli continue, which was another reason he’d tried to tell Grace the truth.
He smeared the mixture on the forehead of the vessel, then lovingly on his beloved’s cool marble cheek. His hands traced the contours of the statue, gently, and with a reverence imbued with his love for her. The marble cracked, emitting a distinct sound like pottery knocked from a shelf. Bits of alabaster began molting from Nadja, and then the falling rock
was
Nadja. She was shattering, breaking apart.
The bound woman on the floor began to writhe and struggle. Her eyes were wide and her mouth opened to scream, but no intelligible sound came out, nothing but the struggle to force air into her rebelling lungs. There was no more blood, apart from what had been mixed to begin the process, but the host attempted to reject the parasite soul.
It didn’t last; Nadja was too strong. She snuffed the virgin’s light with ease, pushed her into the fringe darkness, and bound her there with the power of her will. Invading the younger body, Nadja’s essence took root like a weed and blossomed. The shards of her statue began to disappear like melting ice, leaving no trace of their existence.
Sasha removed the chain from her ankle and sank to the hard floor of the crypt. “My love,” he said, gathering her near, his fingers tangling in her hair. He noticed that the virgin’s scent had changed, smelled now like freesia and honey, a scent that followed Nadja wherever she went.
She touched his face, his cheek; her thumb grazed his lips before she met them with her own in a hard kiss. She broke free and reached around him while he murmured endearments into her ear.
“I’ve missed you,
golubuska
.”
“Do you love me, Sasha?” Nadja whispered against his cheek.
“More than breath.” He didn’t hesitate, for he felt the answer to the very core of his soul.
“Would you die for me?” she asked.
“I’ve said as much—my very last breath for you.”
Sasha claimed her mouth again in a searing kiss, and Nadja echoed his passion, pressing herself into him, returning endearments in the language of their homeland. She pulled back, looked into his eyes, and smiled, and in that moment Sasha Dubenko thought her a goddess, the most radiant woman in the universe. He thought his heart would burst from love.
And then it did. An impossible pain shot through him, like his chest was ripping apart, like the concurrent spontaneous combustion of all his internal organs. It registered in his brain that this must be death, but Nadja was still smiling. She was gazing at him with so much love in her eyes.
His fingers flew to his chest and found Nadja’s dainty, perfect ones wrapped around his mother’s
athame
. She pulled his hands away, twining their fingers and using her magick to push the blade ever deeper.
“Thank you, Sasha,” she whispered.
Nadja looked down at the man she’d loved and smiled again. She would miss his ardent embrace, his passion. She’d miss knowing that he’d always be there for her, and she was grateful for all he’d done. But she couldn’t trust anyone else to complete this transference ceremony, and the rite required the physical death of a body to keep her soul anchored.
She again pressed her mouth to his lips, a sweet lingering kiss that would be their last. Using her magick, she sapped the last of Sasha’s strength and turned it against him. She used that borrowed force to move the
athame
up through his body and then down again, gutting him like an animal.
It was what he would have wanted. After all, she’d asked him if he would die for her and he’d agreed.
She raised her arms and called a storm. Thunder crackled outside, and clouds covered the daytime sky with inky black depths. The tender rain that had been like tears from Heaven became torrential, crashing down into the soft earth, the drops like bombs, slamming into the landscape and crushing flora and fauna alike. Lightning ripped the atmosphere, tearing asunder the very fabric of reality.
Inside the crypt, another bolt struck. It incinerated Sasha’s body, reducing it to ash. Nadja spoke more words, and that ash merged with the blood and diamond paste to become a whole stone. It burned red with the love that Sasha had held for her.
When the smoke cleared, Nadja picked up the stone. It was warm. She pressed it to her chest and the stone fused there, its power keeping her soul bound to the mortal realm and also feeding her energy from the endless strength of Sasha’s love. He’d always be with her. She caressed the rock, enjoying the incongruent texture with the softness of her new skin, and she smiled some more.
But the time for woolgathering was past. She needed to find a mirror and see what Sasha had given her to work with. Then she had to find her idiot son and bring that self-righteous bitch Grace to heel. The latter would destroy Seraphim Stregaria, which was something Nadja had been looking forward to for a very long time.