Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

T his cannot be real. That was a fever dream. A nightmare.

Her wrist was bruised from the pinch of her own fingers.

This is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up.

“Lady, you need help?”

She stared straight ahead, afraid to look out the windows in case Oleg was chasing her.

“Can you take me home, please?” Her voice sounded like she was speaking into a hollow tube.

“Give me the address and I’ll take you anywhere.” The man turned around, examining her, even as the cars started to honk behind him. “You need a hospital? The police?”

“Just go,” she whispered. If she closed her eyes, would she wake up? “Please go very fast.”

“Is someone chasing you?”

“Please just go!” She recited her address by rote, and the drive didn’t even balk at how far away from the city center he was going to have to drive.

“Okay, okay—relax.” He started moving. “See? The traffic is going now.”

Tatyana’s heart would not slow down.

Oleg knew where she lived, but she had to go home. Her mother was at home. She needed to get her mother and run.

But how was she going to run… from that ?

Oleg didn’t have a phone. Mika probably did. Maybe she could get to her mother before Oleg could call Mika.

“Close your eyes, volchitsa.”

“Oh God.” Tatyana bent over, resisting the gagging urge to vomit when images flashed in her mind.

Dead eyes. Showers of blood. There had been an arm—a torn-off arm—on the cobblestones and rivulets of blood running down the seams of the street like rain.

Tatyana hadn’t known blood was dark like that. It hadn’t looked red, it had looked black, and when she dared to steal a glance at Oleg, all she could see was the black stain down the front of his bare chest as fire danced in his arms and his lips curled back, revealing a set of long, thick fangs.

Fangs.

“Please pull over,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Pull over!”

The moment the car reached the side of the road, she pushed the door open and—gripping her bag to her chest—vomited her fancy dinner all over the sidewalk.

The cab driver ran around and put a hand on her shoulder. He was a round man who reminded her of her grandfather except he was wearing a Yankees baseball cap.

“Girl, you need to go to the police. Or the hospital. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault and you need to report?—”

“I can’t.” She shook her head, and her heart rate spiked again. “It’s not safe.” She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket. “Please, I just need to go home before he can find her.”

The driver’s eyes were wide and sad. “Whatever this is, I am so sorry it has happened.”

Tatyana felt tears threatening, but she couldn’t break down. “I’m sorry we had to stop; I didn’t want to puke in your cab.”

“Don’t even think about it.” He helped her to her feet and back to the car. “You’re more considerate than the average drunk asshole.” Once she was back in the car, he carefully closed the door, then rushed around and got driving again. “I’ll get you home fast. I know a shortcut or two.”

Even with shortcuts, it was fifteen long minutes before they reached her neighborhood.

The driver nodded to the left when they came to a stop. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

Tatyana had told him to drive up the street behind her house. She didn’t want anyone watching the house to see her return. She was just praying her mother was safe.

“You don’t want me to get you closer?”

“I can go through the neighbors’ fence. I know where the gate is.”

“There’s a car in front of your house.” He turned to look at her. “They’ll see you leave.”

“We don’t park our car at the house. It’s at a small garage nearby,” she said. “I need to get my mother and we can sneak out the back. They won’t know we’re gone.”

He kept his eyes on her. “Do you want me to wait here?”

Tatyana racked her brain. The man had been more than helpful, and she didn’t want to involve him any more than he was.

Then again, she didn’t have many allies right now.

“If you want to help, can you go and sit at the end of the street?” she asked. “You don’t have to talk to anyone or even get out of the car. Just act like you’re waiting for a fare maybe?”

“I can do that.” He nodded. “I’ll park in the middle of the road. They won’t be able to drive out of there with me parked like that.”

“Are you sure?” She had no idea if Oleg’s drivers carried guns. Then again, when your boss had fangs and could control fire, probably guns were not all that necessary.

“It’s not a big deal. Are these guys mafia or something? Is that what it is?”

“I don’t know, but they’re dangerous.” She opened the car door and ducked out quickly as the overhead light came on, shoving far too much cash in his hand. “Please be careful. And if they come near you, just drive away. Quickly.”

He reached out and grabbed her hand, dropping the cash to the floor of his cab. “I still think you should go to the police.”

“He knows them.” It was the easiest thing to say; the easiest explanation that she knew he’d believe. “But I have a place to hide. I promise, I just need to get my mom.”

“You’re a good daughter.”

That was debatable, but she didn’t have time to argue. “Thank you.”

“Be careful. I’m going to drive away so they don’t look at me too long. I’ll just circle around and wait at the front of the road.”

“Thank you.”

She had pulled her sweater out of her bag and used it to cover her hair, which was far more visible than she’d like in the moonlight.

Tatyana hurried over the rough ground on the side of the neighbor’s house and ducked under their clothesline until she made it to the back stairs of the old three-story house.

Climbing up, she tried to be as silent as possible to avoid waking the neighbors, and eventually she made it to their back balcony and the kitchen door where she saw her mother snoozing under a lamp with her glasses falling down her nose.

Tatyana eased the door open, noticing the shadow at the front door of the house.

She tiptoed over to her mother and bent down, touching her knee and putting a finger to her lips when Anna’s eyes flew open.

“Mama,” she whispered, “I can’t tell you what’s happening right now, but you have to trust me. Grab a few things, all the cash you have, and we need to go out the back door. Now.”

Anna’s eyes went to the silhouette of the man standing outside the front door, and then she looked back at Tatyana, nodded, and silently stood.

They drove out of the city on back roads, avoiding the motorways until they were well away from Sevastopol and heading northeast.

When they were past Simferopol, Anna finally spoke. “It’s another two hours to the farm. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“My new boss is not who I thought he was.” Hopefully that would be enough.

Of course it wasn’t.

“What a surprise. The wealthy, handsome man who buys you designer coats and Italian leather bags isn’t a typical businessman. I am so shocked.”

“Mama, can you not?”

“I don’t know what you expected. First you take this very strange job working for that crazy girl who didn’t even let you go into the office, and then when she stops paying you, you find the one who helped her start her company and expect him to be an honest person.”

“Yes.” Tatyana sighed. “This is obviously all my fault.”

“If you had applied for a job at the city office, none of this would have happened.”

“If I’d applied for a job at the city office,” Tatyana snapped, “the farm we’re driving to right now would belong to a developer.”

That shut her mother up.

So far the escape had been seamless, which made Tatyana somehow even more nervous. Her mother had cooperated. So far.

Anna was suspicious by nature, so disaster never really took her by surprise. She’d grabbed Pushkin and put him in his carrier, taken the backpack she kept in the pantry for emergencies, and retrieved all her cash from the garish pink shoebox she’d hidden in her closet.

Tatyana had grabbed her backups, a change of clothes, some extra underwear, and nothing else. She dumped the fancy leather bag that Oleg had given to her, suspecting that it could have a tracker, along with all the clothes she’d brought from Odesa.

She pulled on a black hoodie to cover her hair, a ratty old barn coat, and her baggiest jeans. By the time she and her mother were sneaking out the back, she felt like even if Oleg stepped right in front of her, he wouldn’t recognize her.

Then again, maybe he could track her by smell.

“Did you just… smell me?”

“You’re wearing some fragrance. I like it.”

“I didn’t put on perfume before dinner.”

“This morning then? Maybe your shampoo. Whatever it is, it’s lovely.”

She’d been flirting with the man.

The monster.

She’d even entertained the ridiculous idea of taking him up on his offer to date. Not while she was working for him, of course, but she’d allowed herself to wonder if something might be possible when the job was done.

He was charming.

Intriguing.

Tempting.

And yes, wealthy and competent and successful. Oleg took charge of their every interaction, and for someone who’d had to be the caretaker for too many years, it felt amazing to have someone else steering the ship.

Tatyana had allowed herself to daydream about being with a man like Oleg.

When she’d thought he was a man.

Anna sat up straight and looked out the window. “Why are you going this way?”

Tatyana had passed the old turnoff for the local road. “I’m taking the highway, Mama.”

“Hmm.” Anna set her lips in a grim line. “If the police are looking for us?—”

“I don’t think he’s going to go to the police.”

“All those gangsters have police in their pocket.”

“Maybe.” Tatyana didn’t think Oleg could be classified as a gangster. He was something… much worse. “Mama, have you ever seen something… like something out of a story?”

Anna frowned. “What kind of story?”

“Like a folktale. Or a… a myth. Something unnatural.”

“I see a million things that seem unnatural just by turning on the television these days.” She looked at Tatyana from the corner of her eye. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t have asked.”

“Fine. I saw… saw something impossible.”

“If you saw it, it’s not impossible.”

“It was… something unnatural.”

“Criminals aren’t unnatural,” Anna said. “They’re evil, but they’re not unnatural.”

What Tatyana had seen went far past the criminal. “Do you believe in monsters?”

“I believe in human monsters; my grandparents survived Stalin.” Anna glanced at Tatyana. “Take the next exit and get off the highway.”

She sighed. “Mama?—”

“Do it. It’ll take longer, but if anyone is following us, there are places we can hide on the local roads. There is nothing on the highway.”

She had a point. Tatyana exited the expressway and turned back toward the small town they’d passed. The local road that would take them toward the area around Feodosia, which Anna called home.

Her mother had been born on that farm, and while most of the land was rented out to a local farmer who cultivated almond trees and lavender, the house, the old barn, and the garden was theirs alone.

It was isolated, and as far as she knew, it was still in her grandfather’s name. Maybe it would be enough to keep Oleg’s people from finding it immediately.

“So you saw something criminal,” Anna said. “Did you even think of going to the police?”

“What I saw went far past criminal.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a man, like all men. Maybe he’s an evil one behind that charming smile, but he’s just a man.”

No, Mama, he is not.

Tatyana swallowed the lump in her throat. “I just need to get away and think for a little bit, okay? Those people were in front of our house.”

“And whose fault is that?” Anna snapped. “You brought them to our home.”

The cat decided that was the perfect time to start howling. Pushkin had been surprisingly amenable to this entire adventure when they were escaping the city, but one and a half hours in his carrier was quite enough.

“Yes!” Tatyana shouted over the yowling animal. “I’m sure this is entirely my fault.”

“You never should have taken a job with that crazy woman.”

“Of course not! In fact, I never should have moved away from Kyiv,” Tatyana snapped. “I had a good job there. I would have had a promotion in six months if I hadn’t left.”

Anna clamped her lips together and said nothing.

But Tatyana was on a roll. “Then again, why would I want to stay in Kyiv with my friends and my good job that paid half your bills when I could move back to the place I was desperate to get away from?” Her voice rose to shout over Pushkin’s.

Anna spoke with a clenched jaw. “You have family responsibilities here.”

The cat was howling directly in Tatyana’s ear, the country road rocked and rolled their little compact car, jolting her jaw so hard that she bit her cheek.

Tatyana snapped. “What I have is a paranoid mother who has no friends, no job, and is completely incapable of living on her own like an actual adult. A mother who is determined to keep a farm we can’t afford to pay taxes on because it’s the only happiness she ever had. But you won’t move back, so we have to pay for an apartment in Sevastopol too. But yes, Mama.” She turned and shouted at her mother. “It’s completely my fault that I ended up working for a vampire!”

They pulled into the farm at three in the morning after taking the old twisting roads through the hills and valleys of the Crimean peninsula, dodging skunks that crossed the road and a few drunks in tiny towns that had once been throughways and were now backwaters because of the highway.

They skirted the scattered lights of Feodosia and headed into the hills. The farm where Anna had grown up was only ten miles from the historic town and seven kilometers from the sea.

Tatyana turned off the paved road and came to a stop near an old metal gate. Anna jumped out of the car and went to open the gate while Pushkin finally settled down.

Her mother hadn’t said a single word about Tatyana’s blurted confession. She either thought her daughter was losing her mind, or she was too furious to speak.

Very possibly both.

Tatyana pulled the car forward as Pushkin’s yowls turned to happy meows.

“Oh, you know where we are now, do you?” She glanced over her shoulder. “She’ll let you outside now that you can’t attack her birds.”

Pushkin chirped.

“Oh no, that was entirely your own fault. Rex Harrison was your friend and you maimed him.”

She couldn’t blame the cat; he was an animal. It was in his nature to attack birds, even birds his mistress loved.

What was Oleg’s nature? Was he compelled to attack humans? To feed from them? He hadn’t attacked Tatyana. In fact, the more she thought about the strange night she’d experienced, the less it made sense.

Anna closed the gate and walked back to the house.

Out in the country and miles away from the bloody alley in Sevastopol, Tatyana finally took a breath.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” she told her mother. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Humph.” Anna crossed her arms. “Tell me about the vampire.”

“I’m probably going crazy.”

Anna shrugged. “All myths come from somewhere, Tanya.”

“You don’t think I’m delusional?”

“You?” Anna snorted. “You didn’t even like to read the stories about the wizard boy when you were young because you thought they were silly. You read Crime and Punishment when you were thirteen. You have no natural imagination, so you wouldn’t make something like that up.”

She didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved. “I am so boring.”

“Not boring. Practical.” Anna nodded. “So you saw a vurdulac?”

Oleg was so far from tales of hairy wolf-men who drank human blood she nearly laughed. “I don’t think he’s anything we know about.”

“So what did you see?” She raised a hand. “You know what? Don’t tell me; no good for both of us to have nightmares.”

“In an odd way, he was protecting me.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were walking along the waterfront after dinner?—”

“So he eats food?”

Tatyana had to think about it. Yes, Oleg had definitely eaten food. He’d also drunk wine.

At least she thought it was wine.

Of course it was wine—her glass had been poured from the same bottle.

“He eats food, and he drinks wine.”

“Vampires don’t eat food,” Anna said.

“Maybe this one does. Maybe he’s not a vampire.”

“How was he protecting you?”

Tatyana steered the car through a narrow alley of ash trees and up the hill to the old house that was nestled in the rolling orchards and lavender fields that surrounded it.

“We were walking back, and I wasn’t paying attention. We turned in to an alley and there was no one around. Then these men—there were eight or nine of them, I think—they just walked into the alley and they were drunk. I’m sure they were drunk and maybe high too. Some of them had knives.”

“Oh Tanya.” Anna reached across and put her hand on Tatyana’s arm. “They could have done anything.”

“Oleg told them to leave us alone.”

“This is a mistake. You do not want to bother me and my friend.”

“This is a mistake. You should leave now or I will kill you.”

“He told them twice, Mama.” She turned past the last ash tree and into the farmyard where a low stone wall surrounded a beautiful cottage. A barn was built across from it, and a rusted tractor was silhouetted by the full moon.

She parked the car between the house and the barn, finally able to think clearly. “He told them twice to leave us alone. But they ignored him, and he killed them all. He was so fast.” She shuddered. “It all happened in moments. Just… minutes. Maybe less.”

“Then he came after you?” Anna was reaching for Pushkin. “How did you escape?”

“He didn’t come after me.” Tatyana blinked. “I ran away. He was on fire and I ran.”

“Fire?” Anna’s eyes went wide. “I thought fire would kill vampires.”

“I don’t know, but he was…” She spread her arms out. “Throwing it. He shot fireballs, like a dragon.”

“But he had fangs, yes?”

She nodded. The fangs were burned into her memory. “Yes. He definitely had fangs, and he definitely ripped a few necks open when he?—”

“Ah, da da da da.” Anna held up one hand and took Pushkin with the other. “I don’t need to know.”

Tatyana unclasped her seat belt and got out of the car. “I’m not going to be able to sleep until the sun comes up. Do you think we should hide the car?”

“Who says this vampire dragon man is even going to come after you?” Anna seemed oddly unconcerned. “If he wanted to kill you, he would have done it right then.” She walked toward the front door of the cottage. “I’ll get Papa’s shotgun from the barn, and then we’ll take turns watching out for this monster until daylight.”

Tatyana grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, oddly reassured that her mother seemed to be taking all this in stride.

Then again, Anna was always happier at the farm. Tatyana paused by the car, looking at the battered old compact with the rack on the roof. The dirt was crusted on it from rain on the road, and there was a crack in the windshield.

The house behind her was snug and cozy, but the furniture was the same as it had been for the past thirty years. And all the tools in the barn were left over from when her grandfather had farmed twenty years ago.

With the faint smell of cow manure in the air, gourmet dinners, private jets, and luxury suits seemed about as fanciful as vampires.

“Come on, get inside,” Anna called. “We’ll prepare things better tomorrow, but right now you’re ready to jump out of your skin and there’s not a soul around.”

Tatyana wandered into the farmhouse, grateful that at least something seemed familiar when everything in her world seemed upside down.