Her Vengeance: Siren's Revenge Book One (Siren's Vengeance 1)

1. Yana

Fyodor’s Rules #5 - Always have at least two exit plans.

The screaming had finally stopped.

They didn’t always shout. If I could keep them calm at the start, most of them would just sit still while I worked, as though we were having a pleasant conversation, nothing more. It was the ones with good mental defenses, or the very few who knew who I was before I started, that were the loudest.

His screaming couldn’t last forever, though. Just like every person who had sat in my chair before him, the man was finally quiet. His head bowed, chest rising and falling in steady breaths. I could finally work in peace, slowly sorting through his mind to find what I needed.

My ears were thankful. The work I did was delicate enough and required as much concentration as I could muster, the noise really didn’t help. He was going to be lucky if I didn’t end up making a mistake and doing some actual damage to his mind. At least it hadn’t been the high-pitched screaming some people had forced me to endure while I was working in the past. I hated it when they shrieked like the world was ending.

People thought Sirens were just scions with a pretty voice who hypnotized people. While some of us were certainly capable of that, it wasn’t the only thing we could do. We had quite sensitive hearing, and an ability to identify and filter through sounds that would make some animals jealous. Unfortunately, all his cries had drilled into my head. If this job hadn’t been so important, I would have buried a knife into his vocal cords an hour ago.

It wasn’t like his memories were worth fighting for; I could say with almost certainty that this man had done nothing worthwhile in his entire life. In fact, the only reason he was here was because he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right one, depending on your perspective. His brain held one small piece of information that I needed. All this fuss was over a simple memory, the combination of a safe.

I was sifting through his memories, trying to locate the one that I needed, when I heard a new sound intrude upon the peace of my workspace. An alarm that told me someone was approaching the house. Turning my attention away from the man tied to the chair, I walked over to my desk and pulled up the security feeds. This was the last thing I needed right now, all I wanted was to get this job done. Afterwards, I’d planned to take a long hot bath with a bottle of red wine, washing away the grime of both the day and the man’s mind, then to sleep for at least ten hours. I always needed a good long sleep after this type of work.

A quick check of the security cameras set my racing heart at ease. It was Fyodor, walking up the long driveway. He didn’t seem to be in a rush, but it meant that my time with the man I was questioning was at an end. I wasn’t sure whether I should be happy. On the one hand, I didn’t have to listen to any more screams, but on the other, I hadn’t been expecting to see Fyodor for at least a few more weeks. His unexpected arrival was unlikely to be a good thing, as he wasn’t the sort to just drop by for a chat.

Hurrying back to the man I was working on, I grabbed him by the hair and wrenched his head back. His eyes were bloodshot and panicked as they looked into mine, but he would find no mercy from me. I preferred not to work this way, but I was out of time. If Fyodor was here in person rather than calling first, it was because something had gone wrong, and we needed to leave. And I now had a protocol to follow.

I reached into the man’s mind, searching rapidly for what I needed. The groundwork I had done earlier helped me narrow it down, but not enough. I had to scoop out far more of his memory than I wanted, with the plan to sort through it at a later time. Blood started pouring from his eyes and nose, and he was back to screaming again.

The fucking noise set my teeth on edge.

Having collected what I needed, I put a blissful end to the screaming with my dagger, the sharp blade piercing through the soft flesh of his neck. I had to step gracefully to the side to avoid the torrent of blood spilling down his body. This dress was expensive, and blood was always so annoying to get out of clothes, and my high-end shoes even more so.

I left the man to bleed out, not needing to watch the light dim from his eyes. He was just another in a long line of bodies, and there was nothing remarkable about his death. It was just as much of a waste as his life had been. Besides, I had other pressing things to see to next.

I quickly backed up and shut down my laptop and disconnected it from the screens and the rest of the hardwired systems. With another press of a button, fires simultaneously started on the desk and the cabinets holding my documents. It was only a few paces from the desk to reach the closet from where I grabbed my go bag and tugged it up onto my shoulder.

On the way to the front door, I picked up my purse, sliding my laptop inside. One last glance around the house that had been my home for the last year, and I flicked the lower of the two light switches on the wall. Sparks raced around the walls and burn marks magically appeared through the paint, as the fail-safe system I had set up to destroy the house did as it was designed.

The house would be nothing but an inferno in a few minutes.

I stepped outside just as Fyodor was stepping up onto the porch. His eyes went to my bag, and he nodded, like it was what he had been expecting.

“I am sorry to have to drag you away, rybka. You have been doing good work here. But there is now work that calls us home.”

Home.

I hadn’t been home in a little over a decade. Not since the incident with my brothers had driven us away. Fyodor had gotten me out of Chicago before something terrible could happen to either of us, and before my brothers’ betrayal could lead to my death. So all I suffered was a broken heart and a headful of regret. Since then, we’d been moving around Europe gathering information, friends, and allies. Doing whatever we needed to do to stay alive. Although now we were doing more than that, we thrived and were getting ready to strike back.

The thought of going home filled me with both fear and excitement. If Fyodor was taking us to Chicago, then we either had everything that we needed or we were out of time. Either way, he wasn’t likely to tell me anything more until he was ready. It had always seemed such a distant goal. I couldn’t believe it was now close enough that we were actually moving the pieces into place.

I returned his nod and handed him my bag. The smirk he gave me in return made me smile. He was a big, tough werewolf, he could carry my go bag.

Heat caressed my back as the house went up in flames quickly, just like I had planned. It hadn’t been a sturdy house to begin with, and the wiring was easy enough to change. We had learned to prepare each place we settled so we could make a quick getaway, if necessary, leaving as little trace behind as possible.

I had no intention of burning alongside the house, so I strode down the driveway. Fyodor shouldered the bag and followed me, no sound passing between us except for the crunching of my heels and his boots on the gravel. Why he hadn’t driven up to the house, I couldn’t fathom. Maybe he had wanted me to know, so that I had the time I needed to finish my current task. Nothing about this seemed rushed, so I was trying to keep myself from thinking through all the reasons we were leaving right now. There was no point in getting lost in all the possibilities. There would be plenty of time to talk in the car, and failing that, on the plane.

Fyodor had left the car on the roadside, engine running and headlights on, with one of our regular drivers behind the wheel. Sliding into the back of the Escalade, the first thing I did was put on my seatbelt. Our exit was calm at the moment, but there was no telling if this was going to turn into a car chase through the streets of Brussels.

Seatbelts saved lives.

Once Fyodor slid into his seat beside me, the car took off toward the airport. We were traveling at a reasonably sedate pace, not speeding, and clearly we were not being chased. This helped relax me a little more, maybe everything was finally coming to a head. I didn’t know the complete plan yet. I had the bits and pieces that I had gathered for Fyodor over the years, but no idea how they slotted into the larger picture.

What had happened in Chicago all those years ago had made him cautious, bordering on paranoid. However, life had proven him right often enough that I now gave him the benefit of the doubt. Not to mention, I owed him my life. That kind of experience builds trust between people.

It wasn’t a long drive to the airfield. Doing the speed limit, we could get there in twenty minutes. We had arrived in eight during one drill, but that had been when Fyodor had been driving, and he had better night vision and reflexes than most. The man driving us now was just a regular human. It spoke again to how calm Fyodor was about us leaving this time.

As though he had waited for me to settle completely, he now turned to me, drawing my attention to him like a moth to a flame. There was a weight to Fyodor’s gaze, the burden of his expectations pressing down on your spine, impossible to ignore.

“I trust you extracted the information we need. That number is important.” There was no question in his tone, no option for failure in my mission. Failure was something that wasn’t tolerated. Over my years with him, I had to pay for each mistake, and the price was steep enough that I never repeated the missteps.

“I was working on it when you arrived. Unsure how much of a rush you were in, I also extracted everything around it. It will take me a little time, but I will sort through it while we are on the plane.” I kept my tone even, presenting him with the facts, not excuses.

Fyodor hated excuses.

He didn’t look happy with my answer, but he nodded. “I want it before we land.”

Not a request, not a question, just the expectation that I would do as I was told. And I would. Sifting through the memories would take most of my concentration, but there shouldn’t be anything else on the flight that needed my attention.

If nothing else, it would keep me from thinking about our likely destination.

Reaching into the pocket of my purse, I took out a bottle of painkillers, shaking two into my hand before I returned it. Dry swallowing them, I closed my eyes, and let the rumble of the engine and the movement of the car wash over me for just a moment. I didn’t have a headache yet, but sorting the man’s memories was going to give me one.

Memory extraction was not an ability native to Sirens. However, with Fyodor’s training, all of us had been pushed beyond our natural abilities. Some of it was done with pact magic, and some by sheer force of will. Drinking water from the River Mnemosyne had granted this ability to me, but that sort of reach for power did not come without a cost. Though headaches were a small price to pay, for how useful my expanded abilities were. And the painkillers would take the edge off once the pain truly kicked in; sure not as much as a bottle of vodka, but sometimes you had to choose your poison.

“Everything is waiting when we arrive. I have set up a new house so no unneeded attention falls upon us until we are ready to make our move. We don’t want to tip them off too early.”

I opened my eyes to take in his expression. I knew who he was talking about. We hadn’t spoken their names, even to each other, since the day everything had happened in Chicago. That was going to have to change, though. You couldn’t make a plan if you refused to talk about the people you were plotting against.

“I am sure wherever you have set us up will be perfect.”

It had been so long since I had spent more than a year in a house or apartment that I really didn’t care where we stayed. Home was nothing but an abstract concept, something for children, and I hadn’t been a child in a very long time.