Chapter 22
Tatyana
Sometimes Tatyana felt that she could only breathe easy within her mother’s house.
She was an immortal vampire of far greater physical strength than the middle-aged woman puttering in the kitchen and stirring beef stew.
She was a water vampire who could manipulate a river.
She could cut off necks with an axe and punch her fist through a wall if she wanted.
But there was nothing quite as safe as sitting in your mother’s kitchen while she cooked dinner for you. Even if it was a dinner you could barely eat.
“Why are you making so much food?” She craned her head to look at the pot. It smelled like beef stroganoff. “I can’t eat that much.”
There were already roasted potatoes warming in the oven and fresh-baked bread on the counter. The scent was delightful, but Tatyana would barely be able to eat three bites before her stomach was full.
“You’ll eat this.” Anna looked at her over her shoulder. “You look pale. I think you’re not getting enough iron.”
“I drink blood every night. I think I’m getting enough iron. I’m pale because I’m a vampire.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“It actually is though.”
Anna clearly did not care what kind of medical advice Tatyana was getting about her immortal health. She was probably adding beef liver to the stroganoff.
“Where is your husband?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why isn’t he with you?”
“He’s off… doing things. With Mika. Secret things that he won’t tell me about.”
Anna humphed. “Do you tell him everything?”
Like how she was planning to murder his brother as soon as she could figure out a way to make it not look bad for Oleg?
“No,” Tatyana said. “We have our own lives. We can’t tell each other everything. That was an agreement before we got married. The first time.”
“So why are you pouting?”
“I’m not pouting.”
“You are,” Anna muttered.
“It’s not… pouting, Mama. I just don’t understand why he insisted on this massive affair, then acted like it was all being forced on him.”
Anna looked up from the pot she was stirring. “You’re asking me? There’s a reason I never married.”
“It’s like he forgot that we are already married and this is all for show. And it’s a show that he wanted. He wanted this. Not me. Him.”
“He still wants it,” Anna lifted the spoon to her hand and touched the sauce to her skin before she tasted it. “Trust me. Oleg was here two nights ago, asking me how to make things right with you. This needs more salt.”
She blinked. “He what?”
Anna added a pinch of salt before Tatyana could stop her. “Yes, he said he was supposed to be at some fancy party but he was avoiding his responsibilities. I think you hurt his feelings.”
And her mother was just now telling her this? “I don’t think it’s possible for me to hurt Oleg Sokolov’s feelings.”
“Are you blind?” Anna turned to her, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder if being a vampire made you stupider. Or are you just more selfish?”
“Thank you, Mama. I’m so glad I’m such a disappointment.”
“You’re not a disappointment, but you can be obtuse sometimes.” She turned back to the stove. “He said you didn’t like that he made a scene with his brother. Is this brother someone you like?”
“No. I hate him.”
“So why do you care?” Anna glanced at her. “I know why you care. Because you care too much about what other people think. You do not want to offend anyone—you care about being respectable—and your husband does not care about such things.”
“It’s not about offending people or being—”
“You care too much about what other people think.”
“I have to care about what other people think!” Tatyana leaned forward. “Some nights every eye in every room is on me—”
“They’re not.” Anna waved a careless hand.
“They often are,” Tatyana countered. “Unfortunately they are. I am a terrin of the Poshani people, and now I’m going to be some kind of Russian vampire empress. Every eye is often on me, Mama.”
Anna shook her head and rolled her eyes to the sky. “Your grandmother will be rolling in her grave.”
“I know,” Tatyana said. “Trust me, I know.”
Never mind. Why had she come to her mother’s house? What was this maternal comfort she’d been idealizing? Maybe she needed a Poshani mother.
No, she had Poshani sisters, and they were just as brutal as her mother.
“I love him.” Tatyana closed her eyes. “But sometimes I hate him too. Why does he have to be so…”
“So?”
“So…” Overbearing. Proud. Stubborn. Egotistical. Domineering.
Exactly who he needed to be.
Tatyana put a hand over her eyes and took a deep breath. What had she taken on? She felt like an idiot.
It was already too much to be the leader of a large group of people who trusted her to make their lives bearable, and then she went and attached herself to a vampire king because she foolishly fell in love.
That was her, wasn’t it? Making promises she was completely incapable of fulfilling.
Find millions of dollars your daughter stole from you? No problem.
Become the leader of a huge, roaming vampire clan? Of course.
Form an eternal blood bond with the leader of the Kievan Rus? How hard could that be?
Her mother was right. Becoming a vampire had made her more stupid.
“At some point I am going to make a mistake so big,” she whispered, “that I won’t be able to fix it. And then what do I do?”
“You’ll ask for help,” Anna said. “Which you hate to do, but you’ll ask him for help. And he will move heaven and earth for you. And you will accept it.”
Tatyana lifted her chin. “Then I will become just another vampire who wants something from him.”
“No, then you will be his wife—a woman who trusts him,” Anna said. “You will be the woman who chooses to be vulnerable. And there is nothing weak about that.”
“When did my mother get a donkey?” Tatyana was bundled up, feeding carrots to a tousle-headed animal in the barn who had woken up the moment she sensed an easy mark.
“Oh, just a while back.” Marko was one half of the couple that helped Anna run the house and the property. “You’re lucky she doesn’t mind vampires. Some of them do.”
He and his wife Marie had been connected to immortals back in Kyiv before they had to move, so happily Tatyana didn’t have to hide her true nature around him.
“She never had any big animals on the farm except for Dymka.”
Her mother’s massive farm dog had taken to Marko and Marie immediately, moving into their house. Probably as a protest to the diet that Anna had started Dymka on.
Marko reached over and patted the donkey’s back. “Betty’s a sweet little thing, and she loves it when I take her in the forest.”
“The forest?” She looked at him. “Why?” Weren’t there even larger animals in the forest?
“Donkeys need a job,” Mark said. “Just like old men.” He winked at her. “We gather firewood. She has a little frame I made for her.” He pointed to the barn wall where a triangular wooden contraption was hanging. “We’ll maybe breed her in the spring so she can have a foal.”
“Because my mother needs more animals.”
“Ha! I wonder if Marie is still awake. She was asking after you yesterday.” Marko walked over to adjust the space heater, then went to the window, swinging the small wooden door open to look at his house in the distance. “Marie’s the one who suggested breeding her. She grew up with—”
The man let out a soft grunt.
Tatyana turned, and the world seemed to move in slow motion.
Marko turned, blinking wide eyes in confusion.
An arrow speared the human’s chest.
“Sándor!” Tatyana screamed her Hazar’s name and ran over to Marko, catching him before he fell to the ground. “No!”
The donkey started braying when she saw Marko fall.
The human looked down at the arrow in his chest, his face already pale but stoically calm. “Not my heart. Not my heart. Leave it and go. Marie—”
“I’m going for help!” She ran to the opposite wall of the barn—slamming the window shut as she ran—and grabbed the axe that Marko used to chop wood.
There was a thunk on the roof of the barn.
She looked up. “Sándor?”
“Ten men on the perimeter. I’ve already called to the city.”
Even flying, it would take them half an hour at least.
“Marko has an arrow in his chest.”
“Is he talking?”
She looked over, and Marko gave a weak nod. “He’s okay for now.”
“Don’t touch the arrow.”
“He’s lying on his left side.” And Betty was braying up a storm, kicking at the wooden side of the stall.
“Betty, calm down!” Tatyana shouted even though it didn’t seem to make a difference. “Sándor, are there Hazar in the houses?”
“I see two over each house right now.”
That meant that whoever was shooting at them would have to get through two Poshani to get to either Marie or Anna.
“What do we do?”
“Right now we—” Sándor was cut off, and there was a scuffing sound on the roof overhead.
She glanced at Marko, put a finger to her lips, and pointed to the door before she reached over and shut off the lights.
The barn was engulfed in darkness a second before she bolted for the door.
Tatyana ducked down as she slipped out the barn door, grateful for the cloudy sky that cast the house and barn in deep shadows.
She could smell them.
Some kind of roasted meat she didn’t recognize. Sour milk. Something distinctly human, but vampires too.
She heard the arrow before she felt it, the tip just grazing her shoulder before she ducked to the right and into the trees that surrounded the barn.
There was another thunk coming from the roof, then a dark shadow moving in the periphery of her vision.
The world slowed again as she lifted a hand and brought up a wall of powdery snow to surround her.
The faint light from an exterior light cast a moving shadow across that grey wall, and Tatyana saw the figure moving toward her, growing larger.
She smelled nothing familiar.
Within seconds, she yanked down the curtain of white and swung out with her axe, burying the head into the shoulder of the vampire running toward her.
He was dressed entirely in grey, from boots to balaclava, and he carried a curved sword.