Chapter 1

Chapter One

T he vampire traced a finger over blood-red tesserae set into the intricately composed mosaic that lined the walls of his day chamber.

Sire.

Lover.

Mate.

Brother.

Friend.

Each one singular. Each unique.

Each one dead by his hand.

One after another after another, each tessera flashed in the light of his fire before dissolving into the shattered pattern that made up his endless night.

He spread a thin layer of cement next to the newest section of the mosaic—a jagged landscape filled with deep blues and greens—and placed a large glass tile onto the wall, red glass snipped and melted into the shape of a half-moon.

The new tile positioned, he quickly placed smaller tesserae around it, counting each like the victims of the vampire he’d helped to kill. He turned the solitary moon tile into a burst of scarlet bleeding into the blues and greens.

After the tesserae were placed, he stepped back and looked at the rhythm and balance of his work. The pattern was even and blended well with the larger motif.

He would wait until the cement cured before he set the grout that would fix the glass tiles into place among the ceramic and stone tesserae he’d used over the centuries.

The cold stone walls of his castle in the Eastern Carpathian Mountains had been gradually decorated over centuries by his own hand. The fortress rose from a river valley and spread into the surrounding mountains, a grey stone citadel teeming with vampires and the humans who served him, all of them surrounded by the intricate art that covered the corridors and ceremonial rooms. Even his armory was decorated with mosaics.

But this particular chamber was his alone, and few had trespassed in nine hundred years. This chamber was locked against the sun, barricaded against those who might harm him, guarded by loyal humans during the day and his own fierce reputation during the night.

Oleg Sokolov, the fire vampire lord of Kievan Rus, heir of Truvor the Red, and anonymous head of numerous multinational corporations, stood shirtless in his day chamber, playing with a lick of fire that danced in his hand and contemplating how he would finish the border of the pattern that had occupied his mind for over a week.

The mosaic in his day chamber was a record of his life, the only one he hadn’t destroyed, and it covered two-thirds of the stone walls with scenes of blood, conquest, and victory over his enemies.

The chamber was as much studio as bedroom, the wall behind him lined with strictly organized shelves containing glass in all colors, ceramic tiles, and carefully cut stone. The tools of his art were a mix of ancient and modern, but most had been custom made for him and had lasted for centuries.

He heard a firm knock on his door. Only one of two people would disturb him in his private rooms. Walking toward the heavy oak door, he tossed the dancing flame in his hand toward the fireplace in the corner, then flipped open the wooden cover over the small window cut into the door.

The grim face of his current chief financial officer stared back. “I need to talk to you.”

He’d told Elene he wanted the week to himself, and she wouldn’t have disturbed him if it wasn’t important.

He let out a short grunt and snapped the window closed, then walked back to his workbench and pumped water into a basin to wash his hands before running a damp rag over his bare shoulders to remove any dust. Finally he forced a comb through his wavy russet hair.

Glancing in a small oval mirror tacked to the wall above the basin, he made sure his beard hadn’t grown wild in the heat and humidity of his chamber, then threw on a shirt hanging from a peg and buttoned it halfway up his chest.

Oleg kept no modern technology in his day chamber—the magic of the current world had its uses, but not where he rested during the day. This stone room was illuminated by multiple braziers he lit himself. He had no need for electric lights that would buzz and irritate him like summer insects.

Neither did he have need for hot water to bathe when he preferred the cold mountain stream water that soothed the elemental fire running under his skin. A simple pump carried the water to his chambers for washing and to keep his rooms damp enough to control his element.

Warm air was circulated by vents designed by a wind vampire four centuries before, and plumbing consisted of concealed drains along one wall.

“Oleg!” Elene shouted through the door. “I don’t have all night.”

“I’m coming.” He had no need for modern communication devices when he hired humans to keep in touch with the modern world so they could report to him.

The most important human was the woman on the other side of the door.

Oleg grabbed a bottle of blood-wine from a sturdy cedar cabinet before he walked to the door. He hadn’t fed in a week, and it wouldn’t do to let his fangs down around Elene. She’d only be irritable.

He fed on the blood of the people who served in the castle and filled his belly with game from the forest around him. Elene was a trusted adviser and partner, not a blood donor.

His life had changed little over the centuries, the biggest shock wave being the death of his mate a decade before, but he and Luana had been estranged and she’d never spent much time at his citadel in the mountains, preferring to be near her own element and live by the sea.

Oleg opened the door and stepped into the antechamber where Elene waited.

The competent human usually had a briefcase with her and a portfolio of papers for him to read and sign. There were contracts and tax forms and any number of legal documents involved in being a legitimate businessman in the twenty-first century, and he had to sign all of them with one alias or another. It was Elene’s job to keep all that straight.

That night there were no papers spread on the carved oak desk. No briefcase. No terse recitation of tasks he needed to accomplish to keep the human money and vampire gold flowing.

Elene sat on a velvet settee with her hands folded on her lap. “You need to come to Odesa with me.”

“Why?”

“To meet an accountant.”

His irritation was immediately pricked. Sitting across from Elene, he leaned back and stretched his arms across the back of the sofa as a servant brought in a tea service.

Oleg handed the servant the bottle of blood-wine, and the woman silently walked to the sideboard, opened it, and handed him a full goblet before she continued serving Elene tea.

“I’m sorry,” Oleg said. “Say that again because I think you’re mistaking me for someone who deals with minor financial issues.”

“Which is me?” Elene raised an arched black eyebrow at him.

“Which is your assistant’s assistant, Elene. Or do you need to hire more people?”

She sighed and took the tea the maid held out. “Thank you, Serena. You may go.”

The maid silently left the room, and Elene waited a few minutes as her steps retreated down the hall.

Oleg heard when the double doors to his wing of the citadel closed. “We’re alone.”

“You need to meet this accountant.” Elene sipped her tea.

“Why?”

“Because she might know something about your daughter.”

The benefit of Oleg’s citadel was its remote location, which was also its liability when it came to business matters. Luckily, Elene had come by the same car that took her back to the private airstrip where a plane waited for her and Oleg.

As they were flying to Odesa, Elene handed him a file. “Tatyana Otsana Vorona.”

Oleg flipped the file open, and the image of the woman in the photograph arrested his gaze. She was blond and blue-eyed, a pale beauty with delicate features and a wide mouth set in a firm line. Faint lines surrounded her eyes, more from stress than age because the woman looked to be in her late twenties at the most.

“Miss Vorona attended the national university in Kyiv and graduated with honors with a double major in accounting and mathematics. She also studied computer science during an internship, and Mika’s sources say she was casually involved in the Kyiv hacker community when she was in school. She’s currently unemployed.”

The resemblance to Oleg’s late mate was unmistakable, and Elene had to have seen it, but she didn’t say a word.

“Where is she from?” He couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. The twist in his cold heart was unwelcome, and he felt his fangs aching in his jaw.

“We’re not sure. Her mother is from the Crimea, but the parents are divorced and her father wasn’t involved in her life past putting his name on her birth certificate.”

Crimea, where Luana had died but not where she was born in her human life. Maybe it was all a coincidence. Maybe he was seeing ghosts where none existed.

“You said she knew about Zara?” Oleg had numerous vampire children, but none as maddening or problematic as Zara.

“Don’t rush the story,” Elene muttered.

Oleg snapped the file closed. “Then get to the point.”

“She worked as an entry-level accountant for a financial firm in Kyiv for a time—very typical job—then it appears that her mother started having health problems after her grandparents passed away. She moved back home, and there is no record of work for about a year. Then…”

Oleg crossed his arms over his chest as the plane bumped over some turbulence in the mountains. He could feel his skin heating as he waited. “The point?”

“She started working for an import-and-export company in Sevastopol a few years ago. She was a bookkeeper.”

“The firm?”

“A small company called ZOL Enterprises.”

“Fuck.” ZOL was the subsidiary he had set up for Zara to run after Luana’s death. It was supposed to be something to keep her busy but had turned into a front for any number of schemes his daughter had used to undermine him.

“Yes, and even better, the official records we have for ZOL don’t have Miss Vorona anywhere on them.”

Oleg frowned. “What does that mean?”

Zara had disappeared two years before, leaving Oleg with a financial and political mess in a region that was quickly becoming even more unstable because of human politics. He and Mika had been trying ever since to sort out all those she had offended and the human and vampire victims she’d left in her wake.

Technically Zara hadn’t disappeared. She’d fled to the protection of a powerful vampire lover in Istanbul, taking millions of dollars of Oleg’s money with her.

Elene continued, “She wasn’t on ZOL’s books because she was keeping Zara’s real books, not the official ones with the reports she was sending to us.”

“So Zara was skimming money.”

“We already suspected she was, but this confirms it.”

Oleg picked up Tatyana’s file again, paging through the school records, tax receipts, and credit reports, all very typical documents for a law-abiding woman who looked like she was very accustomed to following the rules.

How had this rule-follower become involved with his criminal daughter?

“Well…” Oleg pursed his lips. “As Zara’s sire, I would be disappointed if she wasn’t skimming money.”

“You were always too lenient with her.”

“Luana loved her.” It was all he had to say to make Elene stop her chiding.

“Still.” Elene looked out the dark window. “She left a lot of chaos, Oleg.”

“I know that.” And he would clean it up. Eventually.

The vampire world didn’t have governments like the human world. What it had was a complicated network of secret fiefdoms and territories run by powerful vampires and those who served them. Trusted people were often placed in human governments to protect secrets the immortal world wanted to remain hidden.

Zara had used Oleg’s connections to fool and humiliate powerful vampires. She’d used his connections to cheat him and others, only to run away to a new protector.

Oleg was powerful, but he wasn’t the only dangerous vampire in the world. Zara had seduced Laskaris, a water vampire who ruled a territory that stretched from Athens to Istanbul and controlled the Bosporus, which was Oleg’s only access from the Black Sea to the larger world.

“You know Zara is probably cheating the Greek now that she can’t cheat me.” The idea gave him perverse pleasure.

“I imagine you’re correct,” Elene said. “No matter how much your daughter had, she always wanted more.”

Oleg had been diverting some operations to his export subsidiary in Saint Petersburg, but the human government in Moscow was a constant headache with delusions of empire that regularly got in the way of his business dealings.

The Black Sea ports were more central and far more lucrative. So for Elene to grow his legitimate operations, Oleg was forced to pay millions to Zara’s lover Laskaris to obtain access to the Mediterranean Sea.

If he failed to pay the bribe, the ancient Greek immortal would sic human authorities on his largest shipping company, SMO International, forcing Oleg into the light or out of business.

He hadn’t worked for centuries building careful alliances and eliminating rivals to have all of it taken away by one errant and vengeful child.

Oleg would find Zara and he’d find the money she’d stolen. And once he found her, he would teach her a lesson that all his children and the entire vampire world would witness.

He flipped to the front of Tatyana Vorona’s file again. “If this woman worked for Zara, why is she coming to us?”

“Zara didn’t pay her,” Elene said.

Oleg looked up from the file. “You are joking.”

Rule number one of a criminal enterprise was to pay your accountant on time.

“I am not joking. Tatyana Vorona worked remotely for three years, sent all her work to Zara directly, and then Zara didn’t pay her for six months. She claimed that there was something holding up her accounts in Sevastopol?—”

“ I was holding up her accounts,” Oleg muttered as he looked back at the human’s file. “But Zara always had money.”

There were school pictures in the file along with copies of awards Tatyana Vorona had won. A promising dance practice had been abandoned when the mother couldn’t pay for classes. Anna Asanov was a government clerk who had grown up in the country, graduated from local schools, and hadn’t attained entry to a university. She had a government pension and no particular skills of note.

Tatyana Vorona didn’t come from a family with money or power. A human who didn’t come from wealth was not going to abandon six months of wages without trying to recover it.

His daughter had made a dangerous mistake.

“Zara thought she could cheat the human out of her wages.” The corner of Elene’s mouth turned up. “Luckily for us, Tatyana doesn’t seem to be an ordinary human.”

Oleg narrowed his eyes. “She knows about our kind?”

“About vampires?” Elene shook her head. “Not that I can tell.”

Elene had been raised by humans already involved in the vampire world. She’d known about and worked for immortals her entire career, and Oleg had stolen her from a rival decades ago. After a short romantic relationship, they’d decided they were much better suited to be friends and business partners instead of lovers.

“She doesn’t know about the immortal world,” Elene said. “But she did manage to connect ZOL to SMO when she realized Zara had cheated her.”

“You said that would be difficult to do.”

“It was difficult to do.”

“So she’s intelligent.” Oleg shrugged. “She can’t find Zara, or she wouldn’t have come looking for me. So why is it so important that I meet her?”

“Because according to the accountant that met with her, Tatyana Vorona claims to have her own copies of all of Zara’s books.”

“The real books?” Oleg asked. “Not the doctored reports she sent to us?”

“Exactly.”

So the human woman was suspicious. Oleg approved.

“If we play this right,” Elene continued, “Tatyana Vorona might give Zara’s bookkeeping records to us in exchange for six months of wages.”

“I’d get my money back,” he muttered.

“And if there’s something in the books that proves Zara is cheating Laskaris, we might even get the Greek to abandon her too.”

For the first time that night, Oleg smiled.