Right before she hit the Neanderthal, he moved aside.
‘‘What was that?’’ she whispered.
‘‘My idea of hell.’’
Chapter Twenty-four
The rust-colored desert and its dangers fell away and the blue sky embraced them.
"What are you doing?" the tower screamed at them. ‘‘You did not have takeoff clearance! Return to the field immediately! A violation has been filed!’’
Warlord reached down, flipped a switch, and the speaker went silent. Elevating the long middle finger of his clenched right fist, he rotated it with a flourish and pointed straight ahead.
‘‘What does that mean?’’ Karen asked.
Warlord grinned. ‘‘Screw them. I filed visual flight rules.’’
Karen grinned back. ‘‘Where are we going?’’
‘‘Turn the pointy end of this aerial vehicle to northwest. Three-three-zero should be about right.’’
As they arrived at a nice, safe, mountain-clearing altitude, she engaged the autopilot and turned to Warlord.
He looked like hell. A long cut on his chest oozed blood onto his crumpled two-hundred-dollar shirt, and his eyes were closed hard, the skin over them crusting over, as if he were trying to keep evil visions at bay. One fist rested over his heart, the other over his gut, and his legs were braced as if he were fighting a grim battle.
She was sorry, but she didn’t have time for sympathy. ‘‘What’s the plan here? You’re in bad shape, and to tell you the truth, I’m not feeling so good myself.’’
He stared at her through one dull green eye. ‘‘It’s the poison. Even a trace is toxic to someone like you.’’
‘‘I’m not dead, just feeling ill.’’
‘‘You also swallowed a few molecules of my blood, and that will fight the venom.’’
‘‘Why? What’s so special about your blood?’’ Other than the fact that it makes me see things you’ve seen, hear things you’ve heard, fall into your memories, your mind.
He grimaced and didn’t answer.
‘‘It’s because you’re one of them.’’ And that made her furious all over again. ‘‘You’re a . . . a Varinski.’’
His unwounded eye sprang open, and he glared fiercely. ‘‘No, I’m a Wilder. My name is Adrik Wilder. Remember that.’’
‘‘Why should I?’’
‘‘Because if I die of this, I want one person to remember my name.’’
‘‘You’re not going to die.’’ Not after all this, he wasn’t. She wouldn’t allow it.
‘‘No?’’ He groaned and moved his long legs as if the joints ached. ‘‘Go back in the cabin. Get in the right overhead. Get out my clothes.’’
She did as he commanded, and when she came back in he was naked, huddled on the seat, his formal wear crumpled on the floor beside him.
She sized him up with a single glance. His body looked longer, thinner than it had been in the Himalayas, and yet the muscles were sculpted. He had scars on his shoulders, pale and crisscrossed, and across his chest and down his arm, a vibrant tattoo, two thunderbolts of glorious red and gold.
Despite her fervent hopes while they were apart, his genitals were still intact.
‘‘When did you have time to get a tattoo?’’ She touched the thunderbolt lightly.
‘‘It’s not a tattoo. It’s the mark that came to each Wilder boy at puberty, the one that proves he’s part of the pact with the devil.’’ He winked. ‘‘It’s a swell gift to get along with a cracking voice, body hair, and inconveniently timed erections.’’
‘‘But you didn’t have it before.’’
‘‘I did, but as I grew more evil, the stain shriveled and became black.’’
‘‘Like your eyes.’’
‘‘Yes. Like my eyes. And as with my eyes, as I’ve stepped back into the light, the color has returned.’’ He shivered, and goose bumps spread over his skin.
She started to shove his arms into the black T-shirt, but when he leaned forward she caught a glimpse of his back. The crisscrossed scars covered him from his buttocks all the way up his spine and from shoulder to shoulder. Some were deep, cutting ridges through his skin. In outrage she asked, ‘‘What happened to you?’’
‘‘It doesn’t matter.’’ He took the T-shirt and pulled it on.
‘‘Doesn’t matter!’’ She pushed him into the black flannel shirt and wrapped him in the thigh-length camouflage coat. ‘‘How could that not matter? Someone beat you!’’
‘‘Doesn’t matter,’’ he repeated.
Kneeling at his feet, she fed his legs into long underwear and a pair of camouflage combat pants. ‘‘It was that Varinski, wasn’t it? The guy who defeated you in battle.’’
‘‘How do you know that?’’ he snapped.
So she was right. She had seen into his mind. Into his memories.
Every time she tasted his blood, their minds’ connection grew stronger. . . .
But he didn’t realize it, and she didn’t want to explain what she couldn’t comprehend herself. ‘‘Doesn’t matter,’’ she imitated him.
‘‘You are an aggravating woman.’’ He pulled up the pants, dug in the pocket, and found a piece of paper. He shoved it at her. ‘‘In an hour, call that number. You’ll get Jasha. Give him these coordinates and tell him Adrik needs him.’’
‘‘Who’s Jasha?’’
‘‘My brother.’’
‘‘Why don’t you call him?’’
‘‘There’s a pretty good chance he hates me.’’
‘‘You have that effect on people.’’
He caught her by the back of the neck, held her as he leaned down, and kissed her hard. ‘‘But not on you.’’
‘‘I do hate you,’’ she said automatically.
At least, she had hated him for two years, and for good reason. But no matter how hard she’d tried, she hadn’t forgotten him.
Now, as she stared at his face, so close to hers, as fever flashed through him, as his pupils narrowed and he shuddered in agony, she knew what he’d risked to rescue her.
Maybe she still hated him. She didn’t know. But death pumped through his veins—through her veins, also—and she would not let it take them.
They had unfinished business.
Warlord sat back, his face twisted. ‘‘Whether he hates me or not, there’s a pretty good chance Jasha will come. If he believes you.’’
‘‘I can’t wait to make that phone call.’’
‘‘I prefiled the flight plan with the FAA. We’re about to change it.’’
She remembered the guy on the runway. ‘‘Good idea.’’
‘‘Descend as low as you can comfortably fly and turn north, across the Great Basin.’’
She disengaged the autopilot and did as he directed.
He continued, ‘‘We’re headed for the Sierra Nevadas just south of Yosemite.’’
‘‘And then where?’’
His mouth set in grim lines. ‘‘That’s all.’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’ She wasn’t going to like the answer, she could tell.
‘‘We’re flying this baby right into the side of Acantilado Mountain.’’
Chapter Twenty-five
"No. Oh, no." Karen clutched Warlord’s arm. "Have you lost your mind?"
"We’ll jump in tandem so we don’t get separated. " He handed her a sheet of paper.
She glanced at it. It was written instructions to get them to the site where they would meet Jasha . . . if he decided to come.
‘‘Are you afraid?’’ he asked in apparent concern.
‘‘No, I’m not afraid! Why would I be afraid?’’
‘‘You’re afraid of falling.’’
‘‘I’m not afraid of jumping!’’ Did he think she was some kind of coward? ‘‘But look around you. This is a Cessna Citation X. It’s a beautiful bird. Crashing her would be a crime!’’ Karen frowned. ‘‘Actually, it probably really is a crime.’’
He considered her as he might consider a butterfl
y. ‘‘I’ve been a mercenary. I’ve killed and robbed. Do you see me as someone who is worried about the criminality of crashing my own airplane?’’
‘‘I suppose not. But the Cessna . . .’’
‘‘Did you see him?’’
At once she knew who he was talking about. The guy in her dream. The guy who had stood there and watched the airplane come at him without a sign of fear. She nodded, her gaze fixed on Warlord.
‘‘That beast is Innokenti Varinski. Remember that deal with the devil? His ancestor made it. Their ancestor . . . they’re trackers. They’re mercenaries. They find their prey wherever it runs. And they’re after you.’’
‘‘But . . . !’’ She patted the perfectly functioning, beautifully sleek controls.
‘‘I know.’’ He caressed his leather seat. ‘‘We’re going to crash it in a remote location in the High Sierras. It’s winter. Rescuers will have a hell of a time finding us.’’
‘‘They’ll follow the homing signal from the emergency locator transponder.’’
He looked at her incredulously.
And she knew. ‘‘You removed the ELT.’’
‘‘Disabled it,’’ he said. ‘‘When they do finally locate the crash site, it’s going to appear that our bodies have been incinerated in the fiery crash. The Varinskis will be suspicious, but this is the only chance we have of putting them off our scent, of buying ourselves time to escape.’’
Questions and protests whirled in her head. ‘‘If the Varinskis are mercenaries, who’s paying them to find me?’’
‘‘No one. They’re hunting you for themselves. ’’
‘‘Why? Why me?’’
‘‘Because you’ve got the icon.’’
‘‘Why? Is it that expensive that they have to have it?’’
‘‘No. It’s powerful. If it is united with the other three Varinski family icons, the pact with the devil will be broken and they will be like other men.’’ He pulled on the socks she’d brought him.
‘‘How do you know this?’’
‘‘After I held the icon, after it burned me, I was haunted by the realization that I was in league with the devil. That whether I liked it or not, I was the same as Innokenti, distasteful to heaven.’’ Warlord watched her steadily. ‘‘And not worthy of the woman who obsessed me in my dreams.’’
She shook her head. She didn’t want that responsibility.
‘‘Oh, yes. You kept me alive in the dark, and somehow you possessed one of the Varinski icons. I didn’t believe that was coincidence. Those icons have been hidden for a thousand years. So after I . . . after . . . about a year after you left, I got myself together and I made it my business to find out what was happening. I visited the old Varinski home in the Ukraine.’’ Warlord laughed. ‘‘That place was a joke, a huge old house with rooms added on wherever, broken windows stuffed with rags, cars in the yard overgrown with weeds. There are at least a hundred Varinskis living there. They’d killed their leader the year before and were fighting among themselves to see who would take over the family business.’’
‘‘Who would hire these . . . assassins?’’
‘‘Mostly dictators and military leaders, but really, anyone who can afford their price. And don’t forget the Varinskis have been doing this for a thousand years. They’ve got the reputation to charge whatever they please.’’
‘‘Is this big business?’’ she asked incredulously.
‘‘Is war big business? Is murder big business?’’
That was answer enough. ‘‘So the Varinskis are rolling in money.’’
‘‘Let’s say they have good reason to fight like hell to maintain the status quo.’’ He was fumbling with his hiking boots, acting as though his fingers were numb.
She put the plane on autopilot again, knelt at his feet, and pushed first one, then the other, into his hiking boots. ‘‘So you sneaked in the house somehow?’’
‘‘No.’’ He grinned. ‘‘I walked right in like I belonged.’’
She had to admire his guts.
‘‘Apparently I look enough like the rest of the family that no one paid a bit of attention. I wandered around, listened while they talked, and found out someone had made a prophecy—’’
‘‘Who? A medium?’’ She wavered between sarcasm and belief.
‘‘Sort of. Uncle Ivan is this old Varinski. He’s blind—the first Varinski ever to go blind.’’
‘‘No Varinski in a thousand years has gone blind?’’
‘‘The deal with the devil guaranteed good health and long life, but now there’s illness, and that is a sign the pact is disintegrating. From what I could tell, Uncle Ivan has these white, cloudy eyes, he drinks all the time, and pretty much is incoherent and drooling. Except every once in a while he speaks in Satan’s voice.’’ Warlord shivered. ‘‘He warned their leader that he’d better find the icons or else, and when Boris turned out to be a failure, he had the Varinskis kill Boris.’’
Nothing made sense; legends and mythical beasts were playing on a great big plasma screen that made the monsters—and the heroes—look more real than anything in the real world, and she was scared.
‘‘What about you?’’ she asked. ‘‘Will you be like other men, and never change into a cat or . . . ?’’
‘‘I assume.’’ His good eye became a fevered slit, and he looked . . . hungry. Anguished.
Warlord said she shone with light. She didn’t believe that, but she tried for a little optimism. ‘‘If the Varinskis are in such disarray, you’ve got a good chance of winning.’’
‘‘Yes, except . . .’’
‘‘Except what?’’
‘‘There’s one kid, name of Vadim. He smells like . . . evil, and I swear, when I was there he was the only one who knew I didn’t belong. He’s young, so at first he couldn’t seize power. But the old men who oppose him are dying, not by any natural means, and when I was there Vadim was gaining ground. Since then I’ve talked to other mercenaries, listened to the rumors, watched his progress on the Internet, and he’s in charge now.’’ Warlord was grim. ‘‘If he succeeds in stopping us—my family, the Wilders—the devil will keep every Varinski soul for another thousand years.’’
They were flying over the western edge of Nevada. To the east was the dry, brown, flat Great Basin. To the west the mountains rose, shocking white and snowy against the lowering gray sky.
She looked around at the luxurious Cessna. She looked out at the Sierra Nevadas. And she did not want to abandon this airplane. ‘‘You’ve got a brother,’’ she said persuasively. ‘‘You were sending me to him. Why don’t we go to him together?’’
‘‘He’s not happy with me, and he will be less happy when I bring my battle to his doorstep.’’
‘‘That battle is your family’s battle.’’ She finished tying his boots and sat back on her heels.
‘‘Innokenti is fighting for the Varinskis, yes. But he is stalking me. I made a fool of him. He beat me in battle. He imprisoned me. And all the while he thought I was nothing more than a mere human.’’
‘‘So what?’’
‘‘Do you realize how much the Varinskis would love to get their hands on a son of the current Konstantine? Of the American Konstantine Wilder? No, of course you don’t. If they held one of us, me or one of my brothers, or, God forbid, my sister, the battle would be over.’’ He grinned unpleasantly. ‘‘Innokenti had me and never realized who I was. He never realized that burying me a thousand feet underground wouldn’t be enough to keep me confined. He didn’t realize I could generate a revolt that would make the Varinskis a laughingstock among assassins and mercenaries around the world.’’
‘‘It’s personal between you two.’’ The sting in her fingertips was spreading up her arm. Her toes tingled painfully.
‘‘And you’re caught in the middle. I’m sorry.’’ He sounded sincere.
‘‘Not that I like being caught in the middle, but I rather like—’’ She stopped.
‘‘Wha
t?’’
‘‘Nothing.’’ I rather like that you refuse to bring the wrath of the Varinskis down on your unsuspecting family.
‘‘We’ll parachute out of here together. We’ll survive somehow, and there’s a good chance this maneuver will fool Innokenti completely.’’
‘‘Really? A good chance?’’
‘‘A decent chance. The best chance I can make for us. If he believes his mission is complete, that we’re dead, then we’ll be safe.’’
‘‘Okay. Winter in the High Sierras.’’ She thought of the icy peaks, the snow measured in feet instead of inches, the avalanches . . . the cliffs waiting for the unwary to slip, plummet onto the rocks below, and die. ‘‘Goody.’’
He took her hand. ‘‘You won’t fall.’’
When she was his captive, she had hated that he knew her weakness. Now, when danger nipped at their heels and he was scarred by the past and threatened by the future, his words comforted her.
‘‘I know. I really do. I think it’s just a natural fear of falling combined with . . .’’ She could almost hear Jackson Sonnet’s voice snap, God damn it, Karen, stop being so melodramatic. ‘‘Well, just a natural fear of falling.’’
‘‘Combined with your mother’s death,’’ Warlord finished her thought.
‘‘You did your research.’’ How uncomfortable was this? He knew about her mother. He was analyzing her. Seating herself in the pilot’s seat, she busied herself with the controls.
‘‘It wasn’t tough to find that news report.’’ Then he surprised her. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘‘I am sorry. I can’t imagine the pain of losing your mother so soon.’’
To have him talk about her mother and hold her at the same time . . . that made her choke up. Choke up over a death that occurred twenty-six years ago. She furtively wiped a tear off her cheek. ‘‘I’ve never really gotten over it. I should have, but I haven’t.’’
‘‘I did some research on your father, too. He doesn’t sound like the most sensitive guy in the world. Maybe you were never given the chance to get over it.’’
She turned her head and looked at Warlord. She should be incredulous—this man who had held her captive, who placed slave bracelets on her wrists, who spent two solid weeks inflicting the best sex on her unwilling body—he was making aspersions about Jackson Sonnet and his lack of sensitivity.