The Siren's Dance (26 page)

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.”

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.

She greeted her sister with a joyful hug, dragging her to the sofa. “Tell me everything.”

Anya searched Sergey out, her brows arching in a question.

In answer, he turned to Dmitri. “Can we talk?”

The ex-boxer shrugged his massive shoulders and then followed Sergey into the bedroom. “You gonna tell me why you’re being a dick to your girl?”

“She’s not my girl.”

“No? Because it sure seems like she thinks she is, and before you went into those catacombs, you stuck to her like a guard dog.”

“I had to.”

“Don’t give me that shit. I know all about
I had to
.”

Sergey started to pace.

“Guess this is going to take a while.” Dmitri flopped onto the bed, his hands cradling his head against the wall.

In the catacombs, Sergey had hovered on the razor’s edge, so close to giving in, so close to challenging his father for the right to possess Anya, not as a lover, but as his prey. “When we were down there, Demyan got in my mind. He made me want fucked-up things.” He swallowed. “I don’t think it will go away.”

Dmitri scratched his chin. “So what? You want me to forbid you from going near her, make the tough decision for you?”

Yeah, that was exactly what Sergey wanted. “No, no. Of course not. I just want your advice.”

“Well, this is the only advice I can give you,” Dmitri said. “Being married has taught me women don’t like having decisions made for them based on what we think is best. You gotta talk to her.”

* * * *

Anya told the whole story to Sonya, who gasped and cheered and sniffed tearfully at all the right times.

“I am so proud of you.” She embraced Anya. “And while you were gone, I thought about what Sergey said. I was wrong to tell you to let it go. I was wrong about a lot of things.”

Anya’s smoke-burned eyes stung with tears. “It’s okay.”

“When I was in San Francisco, fending off the
rusalka
trying to steal my soul, I saw Mama and Papa’s spirits.”

“They’re ghosts too?” Anya leaned forward, confused.

“No, no. They were just speaking to me from beyond, and they asked me to come find you. They were so worried about both of us--that we hadn’t joined them in the afterlife”

The old Anya would have accused her of polite lying, but new Anya held her tongue. “Really?”

“Really. They loved you so much.” Sonya smoothed a lock of hair behind Anya’s ear. “If Mama knew the truth about Stas, she would feel terrible. If she’d known then, she’d have killed him herself.”

Anya chuckled to think of Mama, statuesque and always with a scarf tied under her chin, brandishing a broomstick at the charming man. Her sister was probably right.

“She was so proud of you.” Sonya took Anya’s hand. “But you rebuffed her when she told you as much, and so she gave up. She used to say, ‘If something ever happens to me, you make certain your sister knows I love her. She just makes it impossible to tell her.”

Anya sucked in a deep breath. She’d made things impossible for her parents sometimes, and her sister’s words were a balm on the ache of unresolved misunderstanding. Maybe they’d known her better than she’d realized.

She sank into the cushions on the couch and glanced at the closed door that hid Sergey and Dmitri.

Sonya yawned and waved at the same door. “It will be all right in there. If he’s feeling like he doesn’t deserve you, or he can’t trust himself with you, Dmitri’s the best one to talk sense into him. Do you want me to wait with you?”

“No. I’d kind of like to be alone.” The sentiment surprised her, but now that she was free of her slipper, she didn’t have to fear solitude anymore.

Sonya kissed her cheek and then quietly slipped out.

Anya stared at the door and willed it to open. When that didn’t work, she found a nightgown among the clothes Sonya had sent and put it on. Then she crossed the room, opened the window, and knelt with her head outside. She was free, fully human, and could command the wind like any
vila
. She should be thrilled. But Sergey was the one who had made her want to live again, and she wanted to share this life she’d been given with him.

She sent a gust rustling through the trees lining the street, just to test her powers once again.

“Queen Jerisavlja, what now?” she asked into the night, not really expecting an answer.

An icy blast of wind replied, knocking her onto her butt. When she got back up and peered out the window, they hovered at her eye-level, a cadre of pretty ghosts with their queen, sparkling and sylph-like. The one who had first spotted Anya on the riverbank waved shyly, and then Jerisavlja began to clap. The whole group broke into applause.

“You have shown both mercy and courage,” the queen said. “So in turn you have been rewarded an astonishing gift. The only
vila
who is also human.”

Anya might come to regret her flesh and her ties to gravity if she lost Sergey, and she might especially rue the loss of this sisterhood.

“But what do I do? I love a man who fears he is a demon, and I think he will reject me to protect me.”

“He is a nightmare like your Demyan? An incubus?”

“Yes. He’s Stas’s son.”

Jerisavlja’s ethereally beautiful face glowed with a smile. “Now I understand your extraordinary reward. He could not drain your
vila
power, even if he wanted to. You are the perfect mate for a
zmora
.”

“Truly?” Anya pressed her hand to her chest, recalling all Stas’s cryptic comments about her power withstanding his appetites.

“Indeed. And if your love did lose control, you could fend him off just as you did Stas.”

Instant relief bubbled up inside Anya. Surely that would convince him.

Jerisavlja continued. “Though it pains me to tell you these things. I had quite looked forward to your company.”

In spite of gravity’s power, Anya felt like she could float. “And I yours. Thank you for visiting me every year. You kept me sane.”

The queen bowed. “We may visit yet again. Kupula Night comes every year.”

“I would welcome it.” Anya returned the bow, her heart full.

“Who the hell are you talking to, harpy?” Dmitri asked.

She turned and found him standing there with Sergey, both watching what must look like her talking to herself.

“The
vilas
have come for her.” Sergey guessed the truth. Tension poured off him, but Anya couldn’t begin to read his intentions.

“What will you do, Anya? Go with them?”

Anya turned to see them already sailing away, their gossamer gowns billowing behind them as they sang.

“No. I can’t go with them. Which begs the question, what will you do, Sergey?”

Dmitri cleared his throat, already heading for the door. “I’ll just leave you two to work this out.”

* * * *

Sergey swallowed past the tension squeezing his throat.

“Anya--”

But still, he had no idea what to say.

She looked up at him, her eyes pitying but her lips quivering with repressed amusement. Neither emotion landed as especially reassuring.

He better just come clean. “Listen. When we were down there, Demyan put all sorts of evil ideas in my mind. He made me want things… Hell, maybe I always wanted those things.” It surely had something to do with his lackluster connection to all the women he’d ever dated until Anya. “I don’t trust myself with you. What if I hurt you? What if this love I feel turns into a selfish appetite?”

“Love?” Her eyes crinkled at the edges, and his heart thudded.

“Yes, but…” He wanted to fill her with hope and pride, but something deeper in him also wanted to possess everything that she was, to take her into himself and make her his.

She reached up and fingered the collar of his T-shirt, began tracing its lines and seams the way she had when she’d first materialized. “You know, the queen of the
vila
just told me something interesting.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m still a
vila
, full of this power Stas called intoxicating. I’m strong enough to protect myself from you, even strong enough to let you do your
zmora
thing without hurting me.” She stroked her inner arm.

His mouth went dry and shame heated his face even as his cock began to throb. He shouldn’t even want that. “No.”

She walked her fingers down his torso to the waistband of his jeans, then stroked up his erection. “Your body is not saying no.”