Chapter 17 Konstantin
seventeen
Konstantin
Rot, piss, and copper crawls down my throat and coats my tongue before I even see him. It’s the kind of smell that seeps into your lungs and clings.
Cressida’s unease brushes against me like static through the bond, but I force it down and lock the steel door inside myself. She doesn’t need to feel the way the darkness inside of me salivates at the scent of death.
But I can’t keep everything from her anymore no matter how much I want to. Not when she’s out there chasing leads with Lucetta and Sunniva. The second her name lit my phone screen, I knew she’d already stuck her pretty nose into shadows that eat lesser creatures whole.
Misha kicks the rusted door off its hinges so that we can move in. The house is a carcass of itself, collapsed from years of severe neglect. Moonlight pours through the cracks in the ceiling, striping the floor in silver bars as our boots crunch through broken glass.
I tilt my head, listening, but nothing reaches me. Not even the heartbeat of the person we’re looking for.
“Too quiet,” I murmur.
“Da,” Misha agrees, his weapon scanning the area.
The heat of old violence still clings to the walls, and my vision sharpens, locking onto the crimson smear leading to another room.
There’s too much blood for anyone to have died easily.
We find him strung up against a steel beam like a grotesque ornament.
Oleg, or what’s left of him, anyway. His chest is carved open, ribs broken wide, and his organs gone.
His glassy eyes point to the ceiling, sewn open with black thread and filled wide with horror as if he was wide awake through the entire harvest. Across his chest, burned into flesh, is another jagged scythe.
Giselda was here and she knew we were coming.
Misha swears under his breath in Russian as he crouches near the body, his lips pulling back into a grimace. “She’s toying with us. Mocking you.”
“No,” I say, crouching beside him and running my eyes over Oleg’s body. “She’s proving a point. Playing a game.”
There’s something black peeking out from his sewn mouth. After snapping the thick pieces of twine free, I pull the strip of black cloth from inside.
The words are melting from being in his mouth, but the red words are still eligible enough for me to read.
You’ll always be too late. Careful your bride doesn’t burn.
The darkness stirs inside me.
When she comes for mine, the sun will drown in fucking ash.
“She’s threatening what’s mine. That is mistake enough to end her.”
“Every move we make, she’s already ahead.”
“She won’t be forever.”
“You sound certain.”
“I am.”
“What happens if she uses that girl against you?” Misha asks, studying me.
The flash of her standing in that alley, daring me to use her as a weapon in this war jolts my brain. Her mouth, her defiance, her fucking fire doing nothing more than spurring on the hunger I have for her. But she doesn’t understand what she’s inviting me to do, what it will cost us.
“Giselda won’t get the chance.”
Misha doesn’t argue, just eyes me with that soldier’s wariness that says he knows I’m lying to the both of us. He leans back on his heels with his eyes on me. “You have changed.”
“Da,” I murmur, climbing to my feet and wiping my hands along my pants.
“She’s changed you,” he presses. “You’re tighter, meaner. And not just because of the bond.”
I don’t answer him because he knows the truth.
Misha is my best friend, so he’s always known.
The bond may chain me to her, but what burns inside me when I look at Cressida .
. . that’s mine. That’s not the fucking fates.
That’s all me. The man who shouldn’t want anything but war yet somehow wants her.
It comes from watching her walk through fire with her chin raised as if she’s daring it to burn her.
From the way she bites her lip when she’s focused, or how her voice shakes when she’s angry, but she says what needs to be said anyway.
Everything about her unravels me.
I stare down at the cloth in my hand, my fingers curling around it tighter.
“You look like you’re spiraling. Want a smoke?” Misha asks, standing and brushing the dirt from his knees.
“Are you offering therapy now, my friend?”
“I’ve been your emotional support Russian for nearly all our lives. Might as well lean into the role now.”
Despite myself, I laugh, shaking my head when he holds out a cigarette.
He sobers. “You sure about this wedding?”
When I glance at him, he clarifies. “Halloween’s coming fast. Every family will be in that cathedral watching two bloodlines unite. Cosa Nostra, Cartel, Irish, The Firm. It’s tinder and gasoline, a lot of volatile egos in one space.”
“They’ll behave,” I tell him.
“You sure?” he asks, always doubting whenever all the families are in a room together.
“I will make them if they don’t. It’s neutral ground. The cathedral has hosted three ceasefires and one demonic exorcism. No one’s dumb enough to start shit there.”
“And Giselda? She won’t need a spark. We’ll be lighting it for her with that many bloodlines in one space.”
“Our great-great grandfathers carved the law in blood. Even the Reaper cannot break it.”
“You have much faith in someone who has failed to play by any rules so far.”
I shrug. “Giselda is someone who wants to win. She knows she would be severely outnumbered if she tries to attack us there.”
Misha chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “It’s poetic, you and her. Tying yourselves together on the one night the veil is the thinnest.”
“Halloween has always been sacred for our bloodlines. My bride would probably tell me no if we didn’t have it on that day.”
Misha claps me on the shoulder. “You are probably right. Let’s get out of here so you can go check on your little psychic murder wife.”
I peer down to the body at my feet. My reflection wavers in the blood pooling beneath him, distorting my image enough that I look exactly what I am—monster and man.
“Let her try to come for my bride. She will choke on her own blood before her hands reach her.”
Misha studies me with an unreadable expression. “You’ll need to tell her about the rest of it soon.”
He’s talking about me and Venatori Nocturnus. About telling her the truth of our bloodlines.
Instead of answering him, I reach down and grab Oleg’s feet.
Misha takes the hint and grabs the other side.
We drag Oleg’s body to the barrel our men have set up outside and toss him in.
The flames catch quickly, lighting the night in hungry orange.
The heat licks at my face, smoke curling into the sky like a signal flare.
The bond kicks sharply as Cressida responds to the anger inside me.
She feels the storm rising.
The Bogeyman is awake, and he’s done chasing shadows.