The Siren's Touch (20 page)

Next—

The voices slithered into her mind. Vicious words in the sweet and familiar tones of her parents.
“Kill him and join us. Kill him.”

She shook her head, trying to silence them. He was in Kiev, if Uncle Gregor was even the right him.

“Kill him. Kill him.”

Then the trembling started, as if the words had called the rusalka from her depths. Anger pulsed through her, a dark need for vengeance. When she opened her eyes, the room had a strange green cast. She pressed her fingernails into his muscular chest, digging, wanting to rip into his skin and draw out flesh and bone.

Dmitri opened his eyes, blinking. He gulped and then gritted his teeth, grabbing on to her hips and pumping, fast, faster. She matched his pace, slamming their bodies together over and over again, desperate to satisfy her hunger with something other than his blood.

Her ears rang, she panted, her thighs ached, and finally the orgasm unfurled like heat from a burning coal, spreading from her womb into her limbs and out the top of her head. She cried out and fell atop him, his hard chest wet under her cheek—her tears and his blood.

“Oh my, God, Dmitri. I’m so sorry. I—”

“
Sshh
. Sweetheart, it’s over. I’m fine. You’re okay.”

“You’re bleeding.” She ran her fingertips over the drying blood.

He smoothed her hair. “Scratches.”

“I wanted to hurt you. Kill you—”

“But you didn’t.”

She couldn’t look him in the eye. Rolling off him, she felt his seed gush out of her, hot on the inside of her leg—a cruel reminder of every possibility she’d lost. She held her breath to lock in the sobs. With one arm wrapped around his torso, she dangled her other off the side of the bed, rummaging through his bag.

“What are you looking for?”

Under her new sweater and that fancy towel, she found the teapot and wrapped her fingers around the cool ceramic handle. She pulled it out of his bag and lowered it carefully onto the carpet. She had to get away from him before she hurt him for real—wrongly meting out justice on this man she’d come to love.

The teapot had been her refuge for half a century. Surely, she could hide there again and buy them both some time.

Only, inside her would-be sanctuary was a photo—three young men in their militsya uniforms, smiling and raising their glasses to the camera. They wore wool coats and black hats with winged gold seals on the visors, except the blond one, whose cap lay on the table.

The memory came back to her all at once, as if cut from whole cloth—the smell of silver polish in the back room where she’d worked through a display of jewelry, the jingle of the shop door, the tall man entering and examining rings. He’d asked about the necklace, and Papa had sent her home to help Mama. Later, over dinner, he’d instructed Mama to begin packing their things.

The memory riled up her rusalka power and it shook her, but it didn’t stay contained in her body this time. The light bulbs burst in both nightstands.

“Fuck.” Dmitri gathered her to him. “Sonya. Can you get it under control?”

“I don’t know,” she cried.

“Try, sweetheart. Breathe. Breathe.” He stroked up and down her spine, the calluses on his hands a comfort on her bare skin. “You’re Sonya. You’re alive. You’re okay.”

The trembling stopped, and her breathing slowly returned to normal. She handed him the photo. “Dmitri, who are these men?”

He held the image up to the face of the clock, its big green numbers illuminating the rectangular paper enough to see their faces. “Damn it. You recognize them?”

She nodded. “Just this one.”

“That’s Boris Makar. The two in the hats are Uncle Gregor, and my father, Ivan Lisko.”

Even in the dark, she could see he had the same hard eyes as his father, but Gregor’s handsome jaw and beautiful mouth.

“Is Boris the one that killed you?” Her heart ached at the hope in his voice.

She bit her lip and closed her eyes, trying to gather all the details of her memory. When Makar had spoken with her father, his accent had revealed him to be from the countryside. The men with the guns certainly spoke in the capital’s subtly distinct dialect.

“No. The men who killed my family were from Kiev, and this man is from the east, near Kharkiv, maybe.”

The look of admiration in Dmitri’s eyes just about killed her all over again. To be desired, cared for by a man like him—

What more could a woman want, but to be alive?

And she wasn’t. She was a rusalka barely holding on to the threads of her soul, hungering for any blood, guilty or not. And she was out of time. This photo meant they had all the puzzle pieces, but she couldn’t remain to assemble them, or she might just kill the wrong man.

She pressed her palms into the bed and raised herself to kiss him, letting her tongue linger on his full lower lip. When he grabbed her head to deepen the kiss, she shook him off.

She combed her hair out of her face and took a good long look at him. “Thank you for everything.”

Then she rolled of the bed and ghosted before she hit the floor, swishing right into the teapot. Its hinged lid slammed shut before everything went black.

Dmitri shook the teapot again for the thousandth time. “Sonya. Come out.”

Only silence. No vibrating, no ghostly mist pouring out of the S-shaped spout, and no spectral beauty assuming her pearlescent form in midair.

“Please.”

Nothing.

His knees ached from kneeling and pleading with the crockery. Could she even hear him?

He sat on his ass and tilted his head up to stare at the ceiling. If he was going to help her, he needed answers.

There was nothing else to do but find Makar.

Maybe he’d already split, abandoning San Francisco.

But something about the old man’s cold stare before he disappeared into the rush hour crowds—those clear eyes—they didn’t belong to a coward, or the kind of man who would run from his problems. A clammy, cold foreboding slid over Dmitri. Come to think of it, Makar had looked like he’d been expecting the visit.

One single email, an accidental disclosure of his location—good chance it wasn’t a slip up at all.

Still, it might be a long time before the guy showed his face out in that cold, drizzly neighborhood where he apparently lived. Sure, Dmitri could canvass door-to-door, plaster on his best smile. Hello, I’m selling magazine subscriptions…

Yeah. That would work great. Everybody was happy to have a guy like him knock on their door.

There was one possibility. If Makar had gone back to church for an evening chess game…

Long shot, for sure, but it was worth a try. Anything to find out the truth, and keep Sonya from going all green-eyed crazy forever. He couldn’t stand for that to be her fate, especially after seeing that sexy-monster version of his sweet ghost in the fountain.

“Sonya, I’m going to look for Makar, see if I can get some answers.”

Still no response.

He lifted the lid, although he felt guilty about peeping into her space. Round and tea-stained, the sight of the empty inside scraped against his heart. Where was she?

“I don’t know how long it will take me.”

He could carry her with him, bury her fragile vessel in his pack under her clothes. But it seemed like she needed some space after—

Hell.

Maybe the sex thing had been a bad idea after all. Though it sure hadn’t felt bad. It had felt perfect—like he’d found the soul mate he wasn’t looking for.

Problem is, she happened to be only soul.

He snorted at his own bleak joke. Dressing, he missed the awkward shuffle as they’d pulled her clothes on in the dressing room. He’d known all along he couldn’t keep her. Now he had to suck it up and make sure she reached the afterlife safely. So he slid his arms into his holster, re-loaded his weapon, and shrugged into his coat.

How many times had he fantasized about firing one clean shot into Makar’s forehead? Usually after beating the man down to raw hamburger. But now he was on an information-gathering mission. It would require some serious restraint. He clenched his fists, cracking his knuckles. Maybe the old guy wouldn’t feel like talking, and Dmitri could work out a little stress before he gave in.

In an elevator with gleaming mirrors and damask wallpaper, upbeat smooth jazz played. He’d killed targets in balcony seats at the ballet, and in the men’s room at the opera, like a real-life double-O-seven. This elevator ride wasn’t the most surreal he’d been on. In fact, he appreciated the happy music as he ran through scenarios, feeling almost optimistic about his prospects.

He made a beeline across the lobby toward the hotel receptionist.

“I’m a bit turned around. Can you tell me where the Ukrainian Orthodox church is from here?”

She typed on her keyboard. “North two blocks, east four. But you know it’s Friday night, right?” She eyed him warily, as if only crazy people went to church anytime but Sunday.

“You know, guys like me don’t show up there often, and for the chance to save our black souls, they are glad to see us any time of day.” He couldn’t resist winking.

She half-giggled and tossed her hair over her shoulder, glancing down at the ballpoint she twirled in her fingers. His whole life he’d scored with women just like that—a flash of bad-boy charm. And it turned out the only woman he wanted liked him because she believed deep down he wasn’t a bad boy at all.

Then, in the wall-sized mirror behind the reception desk, he caught a glimpse of Thug lurking behind a potted palm tree. Damn. He really, really did not need a scuffle with those guys right now.

The skinny, over-groomed receptionist met his Kiev nightclub standard for beauty well enough, but she couldn’t hold a match—much less a candle—to Sonya. He rested his elbow on the countertop and leaned in, smiling. He read her name badge, thickening his accent. “Emma, I could use your help. I am a businessman from Ukraine, and a former employee of mine has followed me here. He is untrustworthy, and I do not wish to speak with him. Yet I see him loitering behind that tree.”

Her lips formed an O. Since he’d already impressed her as a bad boy, whatever assumptions she made about his business were likely colorful—maybe even accurate. She’d get security on Thug before he could reach the door. Dmitri strode across the lobby and rounded a bright green frond by a couple of inches, blowing Thug a kiss. At the same time, two brawny guys in blazers flanked him. The shock on his face was priceless.

Dmitri shot a photo for Gregor with his phone. His phone.

Damn. That had to be how his uncle was tracking him. After he pressed send, he stepped outside and dropped the device into the gutter. It skidded into a narrow sewer opening.

Drizzle moistened his face, the whole city now submerged in a giant cloud. Droplets of water stuck to his eyelashes, making them heavy. On his bald scalp, drops merged together and streamed down his forehead. He drew his coat around him tightly, the lightweight wool better for summer in Kiev than the bizarre cold of July in San Francisco.

In no time, he rounded the corner of the block where the domes of the church glowed unevenly, lit with poorly aimed spotlights. The comforting press of his weapon at his side reassured him. If God was going to strike him down, surely it would have been when he’d killed that woman Katya. Now he was on a saintly mission—justice for Sonya.

No lights shone from inside the sanctuary. He slunk through the alley’s shadows toward the residence and found more darkened windows. Apparently, God’s workers went to bed early. If he banged on the door and roused the household, could he get some information about Boris?

Next to him, a cardboard hovel shimmied on the sidewalk and startled the hell out of Dmitri. He stepped around the blanket-wrapped feet that extended from the box and jogged across the street where he vaulted over the low iron fence of the residence. Using the grip of his Glock, he pounded out an unholy rhythm on the door. He cast a glance over his shoulder to spy on his witness. The guy’s feet hadn’t budged. No one came to the door either.

Dmitri banged again and the sounds echoed off the building in the narrow alley. Stepping back from the door, he scanned for signs of life inside.

Nothing. As silent and still as the inside of Sonya’s teapot.

His long shot had just turned into a freaking dead end.

Should he bust open the door and search the place? Nah. He knew in his well-tuned hit-man gut that no one was inside. Church folks wouldn’t be able to ignore that kind of racket.

He pulled out a smoke and lit it before taking off down the alley toward a street busy enough for taxis. He’d catch a cab west and begin his potentially futile stakeout—he’d do it for Sonya.

Rounding the corner, he nearly collided with a group of smokers huddled against a building. A neon sign extended over the door with several letters burnt out, spelling an unintelligible word. The slanting martini glass glowed brightly though, and it said it all if you were in search of a drink. The scent of stale beer wafted from the door—a universal odor that oozed from every bar in every nation on the planet, or at least the ones he’d visited. Saliva flooded his mouth, and he craved a shot of vodka or two, just to blunt his frustration.

But two would easily become four. And what if he got so bleary-eyed he missed Makar?

Return to Sonya a drunk failure, disgraced? No way. A detour into a bar would only screw things up for both of them. He tossed a quick glance inside, expecting another craving to rear up. Huh. Nothing. It turned out the temporary numbness of being drunk didn’t hold much appeal compared to helping her. He passed by the last smoker, bundled in a khaki coat and a hat pulled low.

The hair in the back of Dmitri’s neck bristled and the soles of his boots stuck to the ground. Turning slowly, he dropped his cigarette and reached for his gun.

Leaning against a window, Boris Makar raised his cigarette to his lips, as calm as a Siberian tiger even with Dmitri’s Glock pointed right at him. He couldn’t read the old man’s shaded eyes any better than he could the neon sign, but for sure, they held no fear. Inside the fogged-up glass hung lights advertising various beers, and beneath them, posters and flyers were taped up.