InsistentHunger (35 page)

Gavril nodded. “You think I should leave you to your
ignorance. I should leave you alone to bumble through until you do something so
unforgivably stupid that another demon or another demon hunter notices you? I
think not.” Silence followed that and Paige could feel panic circling in her
stomach.

“Then what do you want?” Paige rested her hand on her gun.
She doubted the gesture intimidated Gavril, but Paige felt better with the cold
steel under her palm.

“A quiet territory. Subordinates who know their place and
many missions that will keep Hunter and his insults far away from me,” Gavril
answered quickly. “Some of those are more likely than others.”

“You want me to be a subordinate,” Brady said, stepping
forward.

“You already are,” Gavril said. “I wish for you to honor
that gracefully and without me having to chain you to a wall or watch you plot
behind my back.” Gavril looked around the room and his expression made it clear
that he found Dorothy’s lair inadequate at best.

“I don’t want to make trouble.” Brady said the words so
slowly that Paige was reminded of a man inching out onto thin ice.

“Good. I would rather not destroy a full
blajini
. It
is bad luck.”

“
Blajini
?” Paige pounced on the unfamiliar word. She
hadn’t heard that one before. Gavril turned and studied her.

“Were you simply human, such impudence would earn
punishment. Be careful that your poor manners do not teach others to tread
where only you are allowed,” he said, the veins in his eyes turning red for a
moment before the red faded.

“Were I…what? I am human,” Paige protested.

Gavril looked amused at that. “How many times have you fed
young Brady? How many injuries have you healed? Your ignorance will destroy
yourselves or others.” He shook his head as if Paige was some kid who had just
stuck an entire crayon up her nose. “You are
strigoi
.”

“What is that?” Brady asked. Paige was too busy feeling
creeped out to ask.

“Where I once lived, the
strigoi
were called witches
or vampires.”

“I am not a vamp,” Paige protested. “And I am not a witch
with a ‘w’. I’m more the kind with the ‘b’ in front.”

Gavril frowned in confusion for a moment. “To call the
strigoi
witches was simply a way to justify the killing of them. The
strigoi
have access to power. In human form, they are lucky. They can read people,”
Gavril said with the sort of uncertainty that non-natives used when they wanted
a native speaker to tell them they’d gotten an idiom right.

“Lucky?” Brady swallowed and looked at Paige.

“Don’t say it,” she warned darkly.

Gavril continued. “They have
blajini
blood; they are
descended from us,” Gavril said as he looked from one of them to the other.

“Wait…I’m…no way. No fucking way. My mother was never lucky
and my father lives at the bottom of a bottle, so unless you think liver
disease is lucky, you’re wrong.”

Gavril gave her another of those condescending looks that
made Paige want to shoot him. “The blood is not strong, but it flows through
your veins. One of your ancestors was from our world.”

“Our world?” Brady stepped forward, away from Paige. She had
to stop herself before she reached out to pull him back.

Gavril nodded and gave Brady a much nicer smile than the one
he’d used on Paige. “Before I became
blajini
, I remember my grandmother
making an Easter feast for those who lived on the other side of the disk on
which we live. My people believed the world was a round disk with humans on
this side and the others—the
blajini
—on the other. My father would say
the
blajini
were exiled by Moses, washed away to the underside of the
world because they had taken a stand against God’s people. My grandmother said
they were the sinless ones who lived forever in God’s light. In the end, I know
only what my host knew when I came into this body—that I am
blajini
from
another world, a soul moved into this body when the first Gavril died in
battle, when his blood and the chanting of a priest of Tengriism opened a door
for me.”

“Then I’m not a demon?” Brady’s voice had such a hopeful
note to it that it broke Paige’s heart. No matter how many times she told him
he wasn’t evil, he didn’t believe her.

“In a human use of the word, you are. You are not human,
born not in this world but in the underworld, and you feed on the lives of
others. For humans, that would be a demon.” Gavril turned his back, utterly
ignoring Brady’s devastated expression.

“You turned into a chatty Cathy,” Paige commented. “Why the
sudden need for sharing?”

Gavril sat in an old chair with his back to them both and
Paige was insulted that the man couldn’t even pretend to be afraid of them.
Brady had super-strength and she was armed, but Gavril sat with his fucking
back to them. “To convince Brady he has good cause to come with me. The
alternative would be to beat him until he is not able to object. I fear Hunter
would enjoy that too much.”

“I won’t go with you,” Brady said firmly. “I won’t cause
trouble like Dorothy did, but I don’t want to go with you.”

“I did not ask about your wishes. Your ignorance is
dangerous. It’s dangerous to me and to others, including your
strigoi
.
Many people would see you dead because of what you are, a full
blajini
rather than one of those weaker creatures. Others would wish you to die if you
were unclaimed by an elder. And most hunters are not aware of the arrangements
between the eldest
blajini
and the senior hunters. They would see all
demons killed, so those who cannot hide themselves will not last long.”

“Then we’ll hide,” Paige said firmly. Paige stepped forward
so that she stood at Brady’s side. She felt a temptation to reach over and take
his hand. She wasn’t a high-school girl who had to cling to a boyfriend during
a scary movie. However, it felt like that. Gavril gazed with ever-reddening
eyes and the little prey part of Paige’s brain ran in circles and screamed for
her to flee. She had to fight to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground.

“With a
strigoi
, you might hide better than most, but
hunters will find you. You will have to kill to protect yourself. You will live
in ignorance,” Gavril warned.

“We can handle whatever comes,” Paige said firmly. He tilted
his head and studied both of them.

“I have
vrykolakas
to return to their place on the
other side of the disk. We can talk when I finish with the last of them.”
Gavril left, his speed leaving Paige a little speechless. Her knees knocked
together so badly that Brady got an arm around her waist and helped her to the
chair Gavril had just abandoned.

“Are you okay?” He knelt in front of her and took both her
hands in his.

“Freaking out,” Paige said. “He’s a little overpowering.”

“Yeah,” Brady agreed. His head turned toward the windows and
Paige followed his gaze. Gavril was walking up to one of the vamps and the
vampire just stared at him. When they met, Gavril’s hand went up to stroke the
vampire’s cheek. Paige chewed her lip and tried to deal with her feelings about
the vamps. They ate people, which in general was a negative. However, she
couldn’t think of them as monsters the way Hunter did.

“Is he right about your world?” Paige asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Brady said with a sigh. “I know he’s old. I
know he knows more than I do, but that doesn’t mean much because I know pretty
close to nothing.”

Outside, Gavril reached up with his second hand to cup the
vamp’s cheek and then he twisted the vampire’s neck until the whole head turned
almost backward. Paige jumped, horrified at watching someone die. For a second,
the vamp stood there, and then the skin shrank back from bone and she was
staring at an old, old corpse before the whole skeleton vanished into dust. Her
heart pounded and Brady tightened his hands around hers.

“He would have eaten you,” Brady said softly. Gavril turned
and looked in the window for a second before he turned to walk away.

“A lion would too, but I never watch those shows where they
chase poachers, because seeing one dead lion is enough to depress me for a
week,” Paige pointed out. Brady shuffled forward so he could rest his knees
against the chair. He was straddling her legs and she pulled her hands away
from his so she could stroke her fingers through his dark hair. He was such a
beautiful man, but he wasn’t really a man any more than those creatures outside
were.

“Am I part…whatever you are?” she asked.

Brady rested his hands against her thighs. “You’re
different. I thought you felt so different because I love you.”

“Maybe you don’t love me at all. Maybe you’re drawn to me
because I’m one of these
strigoi
,” Paige countered.

Brady’s hand moved up to brush her hair back away from her
face. She usually pulled it into a ponytail or bun, anything to get it out of
her way, but her hair band had obviously given up somewhere during the drama of
the day. “I love you. If this gut of yours comes from some ancestor, I don’t
care. Your willingness to help me when I was scared and your ability to kick
the ass of anyone who gets in your way—those don’t come from an ancestor.”

Paige smiled at him. “Masochist,” she accused him softly. He
gave her one of his grins and she traced his bottom lip with her thumb.

“You know, this guy didn’t come after Dorothy himself. He
sent Hunter. He may look impressive, but he’s not infallible or all-powerful.
It doesn’t matter what he wants as long as we stick together. We’ll make our
own choice.”

Brady sighed and pulled back so that his hands rested
against her knees. “What choice, Paige? I look at how he moves and I know I
should be able to move that fast, but I can’t.”

“You have to grow into your powers. You’re a lot faster now
than when you first tried to take a bite out of me,” she pointed out. Now that
she’d seen this hidden world, she could safely say that the creature that had
shown up at her doorstep that night had looked more like one of those
vrykolakas
than Brady. Brady blushed at the memory.

“I can’t put you in danger.”

“I’m a cop,” Paige pointed out dryly.

For a long time, Brady stared at her knees. Finally, he
looked up. “Then as a cop you know you can’t go into a fight without training.
You don’t walk into a situation blind and you don’t go up against perps when
you don’t know how they’re armed.”

Paige’s heart stuck in her throat as she realized what Brady
was saying. “You want to go with him.” Her words came out cold, but her guts
were burning. She wanted to vomit right there.

“Want? No,” Brady shook his head. “But I need to. He has the
strength to teach me how to have the quiet life I want. I just know that.”

“So you’re trusting a man you just met?”

Brady pulled away and went to stand next to the window.
Paige could feel this constriction in her heart that made her want to throw
herself at him, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t make a fool out of herself. She
might, however, shoot Hunter. That was sounding pretty good. Her eyes prickled
and got warm and Paige blinked back tears.

“I knew Dorothy had something wrong with her the moment I
met her,” Brady said softly, “and my gut tells me that Gavril has told us the
truth.” He stared out and Paige fisted her hands as she tried to keep herself
from flying into a million pieces. “What does your gut tell you?” Brady asked.

“That he’s dangerous,” Paige said, louder than she’d
intended. She had to work to quiet her voice. “That he would kill you in a
second.”

“If I threatened or challenged him, yes,” Brady agreed. “But
if I went with him to learn, if I accepted that he’s older and more
experienced?”

Paige wanted to shout that she was his training officer. She
fucking trained him. She loved him. She wanted him. Instead, she stared at him.
Brady’s breathing grew ragged.

“We can—”

“I walked in here because I could feel Dorothy,” Brady
blurted out. “I walked in here and let her take my weapon because I could hear
her.” Brady placed his hand over his heart. “I could feel her sing in my heart
and I got pulled in. You nearly died because I don’t understand myself well
enough to protect myself when someone disarms me and puts me in chains. Only
then did she stop singing.” Brady’s voice cracked with emotion. “I nearly got
you killed. I thought she would kill you right in front of me to prove some
lesson and I’d walked into her chains.” His voice rose. “And I feel that song
now.” The hand over his heart closed into a fist. “I can feel the song.”

Paige moved to Brady’s side and wrapped her arms around him.
“We can fight it,” she promised.

“How?” the word was a howl of pain and confusion and Paige
could only hold on tighter because she didn’t know. She couldn’t hear it. Brady
stared at the ceiling, his breath coming in little gasps even though Paige
suspected he didn’t need to breathe at all.

“Brady, talk to me,” she begged.

He shook his head. “I don’t…the words aren’t here.” He
dropped his head into his hands and Paige felt a wave of helpless fury. They
could get through this. They could. She had to hold onto that belief.

Brady twisted out of her grip and headed for the front.
“Brady!” Paige chased after him, but she stopped at the door. Vampires might
still wander the grounds and she didn’t want to risk ending up someone’s
midnight snack. Instead, she stood staring out into the night.

“Silver, you okay?” a voice asked.

Paige didn’t turn around. She didn’t want Jim Hunter to see
her crying. “If you say one word, I’m shooting you in the fucking dick,” she
warned. Maybe her tone of voice scared him off, but his footsteps vanished
without him saying a word.