Chapter 15 #2
“Trust me,” Ivan said, “we do. But you must understand that these things happen sometimes. My people cannot be in all places at all times.”
Oleg didn’t blame Borchin for being irritated. He knew exactly how much the billionaire was paying Ivan for the privilege of immortal security around his plants.
“These things happen?” Borchin’s eyes were darting between Oleg’s silent presence and Ivan. “I have had other offers to take over my security, you know. They warned me this might happen.”
“Who?” It was the first time Oleg had spoken because it was the first time he had a question.
Borchin hesitated, his eyes still darting between Oleg and Ivan. “People.”
“People?” Ivan bared his fangs. “Our kind of people?”
The fear flashed in Borchin’s eyes. “I didn’t say I was going to accept the offer, but there must be some kind of insurance if these things just happen, Ivan.”
The human was smart enough not to threaten Ivan.
Even Oleg wouldn’t blame his brother for getting rid of the man if that were to happen.
Exposure put all their kind at risk, and Victor Borchin was prominent enough to not be written off as a crazy person rambling about strange monsters who lived in the shadows.
But it was normally good policy to keep the humans placated. Despite immortal strengths, their kind had weaknesses too. Namely, they were limited by daylight, where humans like Victor Borchin were not.
“We will make it right,” Oleg said. “I will see to it.”
Ivan shot him a look but said nothing. “Of course, Victor. You will be compensated for the loss. We’ve had a good relationship, have we not?”
Ivan had probably had no intention of compensating the human before the meeting, but since Oleg had offered it, now he’d have to pay for the rebuilding.
Which was good. Ivan should compensate the human, because Oleg certainly wasn’t going to do it. And Lazlo, who was responsible for the entire thing, was watching birds in Sochi.
“Come.” Ivan finally stood. “Let’s have a drink, and you can tell me about your new yacht.”
Oleg stayed sitting and wondered what exactly Ivan would add to Victor Borchin’s drink to make the man sick without killing him. Because that was exactly the kind of thing that Ivan would do. The vampire had no skill for subtlety; he believed in threats and force.
Just as their father had taught him.
Oleg watched carefully as Ivan’s men took out the perimeter guards surrounding the warehouse east of Moscow. The men moved silently and efficiently with little to no showing off.
Well trained.
“Who trained them?” Oleg asked quietly. He’d thrown a cloak over his power, and the world around him felt muffled.
Ivan pointed his chin to the right. “His name is Yury. Cossack from Rudov’s territory originally but sired by one of Pavel’s sons.”
Pavel’s sons. That would explain the discipline.
Snow fell delicately on Oleg’s bare arms, steaming as the flakes met his already warm skin.
There was the crackle of a radio, then a shout of surprise closer to the warehouse.
“Intruders!”
Within seconds, a stream of hard-faced Kazakh vampires flowed from the warehouse, curved swords in hand. The earth moved under his feet, and the Kazakhs moved so swiftly and silently Oleg knew that had he not been there, most of Ivan’s men would be dead before they saw their attackers.
Oleg snapped his fingers, brought blue flames to his palms, and shouted, “Pozhar!”
Immediately, all of Ivan’s men dropped to the ground, and Oleg swept his arms out, casting a wave of flame toward the saber-wielding vampires.
A few screamed, and more than one water vampire pulled ice from the frosty air, creating pockets of safety for the immortals around him.
But it was enough of a distraction that Ivan’s men regained the upper hand; most of them sprang up from the ground, swinging daggers, swords, and axes at the enemies coming toward them.
Oleg walked forward, keeping twin balls of fire in his outstretched palms, rolling his shoulders at the crackling energy that flooded his system.
His axe was strapped to his back, but it wasn’t needed yet.
Ivan was fighting next to him, his bare feet planted in the frozen ground, ripping at the cold, icy earth with his elemental power and swallowing vampires underground.
But many emerged. The Kazakhs were also immortals of the mountains and the plains. There were as many earth vampires as—
“Overhead!”
Ah yes. Oleg smiled, turning his eyes toward the dark sky where a flock of black-robed wind vampires had appeared like dark crows mobbing a lion.
Ivan shouted, “Oleg!”
He needed no instruction as fire shot from his hands, turning the space over their heads into an orange-and-red inferno as vampires screamed and fell to the ground.
The trees around the warehouse lit like matches, unable to withstand the intensity of Oleg’s flames.
Blue fire crawled over his arms, and he punched the air, sending fireballs at the remaining wind vampires, many of whom were shooting arrows from the sky.
How archaic.
He heard Ludmila then, the crack of her rifle sounding from the darkness. A wind vampire jerked his head to the side, and then he fell to the frozen ground with a hard thud.
“She’s lethal.” Ivan grinned.
“Yes.”
Oleg was focused on the air now that Ivan’s men had secured the ground.
There was a gust of wind, then a burning spike of pain in his shoulder as an arrow whizzed past his ear and planted into his body.
He growled, bared his fangs at the archer above, then sent another wave of flames up and over the mass of fighting immortals on the ground.
This fire burned his shirt to ashes, and Oleg fed it. It burned the shaft of the arrow until it was nothing but ash.
Yes. Good. More.
It was a furious cycle, the fire from the trees feeding his energy, which made more fire, which fed him even more power.
He felt the tip of the arrow melt as his body burned; then the metal oozed from the wound in his shoulder, pushed out by his pulsing amnis.
The burning in his ears was swallowed by the fire that danced over his chest and arms, and the world around him looked like a medieval version of hell on earth.
He heard screams in Russian and pulled his fire back.
Back. Come back to me, my lovely.
The smell of singed hair curled into his nose. Burned flesh and smoldering fur from the bodies falling from the sky.
Oleg stalked across the blackened field where snow drifted to the ground, only to immediately turn to steam.
Ivan’s men had fled to the burning forest or run into the warehouse, leaving Oleg alone on the black field surrounding the warehouse. He heard sirens in the distance and knew the humans would be coming soon.
“Boss.” Ludmila fell into step beside him, her rifle secured to her back.
“Nice shooting.”
“Nice fire.”
A low snarl was all he could manage.
“Knyaz.” The moment he reached the door, a wide-eyed soldier fell to his knees and bowed his head. “Knyaz.”
The murmur followed Oleg as he walked through the warehouse.
“Knyaz.”
“My lord.”
“Tsar Oleg.”
“Kral Oleg.”
“Velikii Knyaz.”
Bowed heads and men on their knees surrounded Oleg as he walked through Ivan’s soldiers.
The charred bodies of the Kazakhs were mostly outside the factory, but a few headless corpses lay bleeding on the concrete among pallets of what were definitely not chemicals, and two humans were huddled in a corner, bleeding from wounds and watching Oleg with abject terror.
Ivan was standing over one open crate, lifting a white bag of what smelled like heroine in the air. “I knew they were shortchanging me! Moving volume like this, they should have been paying me twice as much.”
Twice as much money.
Oleg had no regrets about killing the clan of vampires who were smuggling drugs into Moscow, but the fact that Ivan was celebrating this and clearly intended to take the drugs for himself to distribute made Oleg’s shoulders start to smoke again.
“Give me the word,” Ludmila whispered, “and it is done.”
Oleg’s face was impassive as he called to his brother. “Ivan, get your people out.”
Ivan frowned. “Why?”
“I’m going to burn all this.” He gestured to the humans still alive. “Leave them. Let them go back to their clan and tell them that no one steals from the Kievan Rus.”
“But…” Ivan wanted to protest. In fact, he nearly started toward Oleg, but then he looked around, saw his men on their knees, surrounding their knyaz. “Good. Excellent. A warning to the entire immortal world.”
The tall vampire Ivan had called Yury nodded sharply.
“A wise statement, my Lord Oleg.” He whistled, pointed toward the door, and the kneeling men started to move.
Then he walked over to the corner and took control of the two shaking humans.
He grabbed them and pointed them toward the door with the tip of his sword.
“Out, all of you!” Oleg shouted, his eyes flashing at Ivan, then at the few lingering vampires who looked tempted by the drug-laden crates. “It’s all going to burn.”
He stood alone in a field of black, his hand sticky with dried blood as he clutched his axe in one hand and held a ball of blue fire in the other.
He turned in the ward of Truvor’s largest kremlin, the massive wooden fort his sire had constructed at the junction of two rivers where his immortal sons struck out, gathering riches and wealth from the Black Sea to the Baltic to offer as tribute to their sire.
Oleg lifted his legs as he turned, the blood-soaked mud sucking at his feet and pulling him down into the rotting gore of seven nights of brutal fighting.
“Send the next!” he roared to the vampires watching from the towers.
He had spent a week killing his challengers, burning and slashing and gutting the vampires who wanted to take Truvor’s place, then hiding in the forest during daylight, terrified that one of his sire’s thralls might take their own revenge.
The blood of Oleg’s brothers whispered from the ground, cursing him and shaming him for spilling it. Their screams and their laughter echoed in his mind.
Dozens were dead at his hand, and every death was a cut to his own body. Ash, blood, and earth mixed with the cold grey water falling from the sky.
“Send the next!” he roared again.
Lazlo—his oldest brother—emerged from behind the high wooden keep and took three steps forward with his axe raised.
Oleg’s chest felt like it would break open, but he gripped his weapon even harder.
No, Lazlo. Not you, Lazlo.
Oleg looked up at the faces that were left.
Scheming Ivan.
Suspicious Pavel.
Stoic Rudov.
Soft Lev, staring back at him with wounded, hollow eyes.
Brother after brother, all waiting for him to die.
Oleg felt the fire gather on his back, creep over his shoulders, and ignite down his arms. “You will challenge me, Lazlo? Even you will challenge me?”
Not Lazlo. Not the closest thing Oleg had to a true brother in the dark pit that was Truvor’s court.
He felt his throat go raw when he yelled, “You will challenge me?”
Lazlo shook his head, then held his arm out, dropping his axe into the mud. “Brother, there is no one left.”
Oleg felt a red mist fall over his vision. “You will challenge me?”
“There is no one left, Knyaz.”
Oleg roared in rage and pain and the fire swallowed him, burning his long braid of hair, his beard, his clothing, all of it. The fire burned around him, swaddling him like a child, wrapping him in heat and scorching the dirt and the blood and the gore from his body.
There was a red crown melting in his hands, and he shoved it onto his head, his body drinking in the pain as he smelled his own burning flesh.
“There is no one left,” she whispered. “Oleg, there is no one left.”
He turned and she was there. “No, not you.”
She was on fire, her golden hair dancing in the inferno. “There is no one left.” The blue flames began to lick along her skin and crawl up her slender neck. “Don’t you see? There is nothing left.”
“No!” he screamed. “No!”
Oleg woke to alarms blaring, smoke and ashes filling the air, and pounding on his outer door as the day chamber within his palace in Saint Petersburg burned around him.