50. Cassie
CASSIE
I followed Hawk into the house, the gun heavy in my hand. My vision was narrowed by my mask, but I thought I understood now why the men wore them, in the Hunt and elsewhere.
Behind the mask I could be someone else, my true identity distanced from the person who stalked Dimitri Kaprolov’s house.
The person who wanted him dead.
Bram hadn’t liked it, but I’d seen the understanding in his eyes. He hadn’t wanted this for me, but in some ways the course of our lives had been determined the day our parents had been driven off the mountain.
Everything that was happening now led back to that day, and even though it was all kinds of fucked up, it felt right too.
Like it was always supposed to be this way.
War and magic.
That had been my life’s trajectory from the start.
We moved through a large, dark kitchen and down a hall, past a paneled library where a fire roared in a fireplace big enough to stand in.
Eventually we came to a wide staircase with a thick, carved banister, a series of bags dropped haphazardly at the foot of the stairs: Dior, Versace, Maison Valmont.
Alina was definitely home, and I hoped again that we wouldn’t see her. That she was texting with her rich friends or taking a bath or applying $500 eye cream.
Anything to keep her out of the way.
We crept slowly up the stairs to the second-floor landing where two halls diverged.
Hawk froze, obviously listening for something.
I heard it a moment later: music.
Something classical.
It took me a minute to place it: Swan Lake.
It brought me back to a time before my parents had been killed, and I was hit with a visceral wave of memory: the smell of a gymnasium, pink leotards and tights, ballet shoes, the music playing from speakers at one end of the room while Madame Duvall, my ballet teacher counted out the steps as she tapped a stick on the floor.
Hawk started down one of the halls toward the music.
I glanced back at Jagger, Vigo, and Bram. They looked like great beasts in their masks and I knew I looked like one too.
I followed Hawk down the hall, past several closed doors, the music getting louder, building to a crescendo as we approached the source.
We were just a few feet from the room when someone stepped into the hall.
One of the guards, wearing cold-weather camouflage.
He moved with purpose, like he was on a mission, then froze to raise his weapon when he saw us.
I heard the muffled discharge of one of the guns and saw the man fall, blood seeping across his gray and white clothing.
At the front of the line, Hawk hadn’t had time to raise his weapon, and when I looked back, I saw that it was Bram who had fired, his gun still raised.
Hawk met his gaze, then turned to enter the room, the music sweeping down the hall and through the house, carrying an energy all its own.
I entered behind Hawk into a giant bedroom, the furniture elaborately carved.
Heavy draperies framed picture windows, the night black beyond the glass.
A fire roared in a marble fireplace, smaller than the one in the library, the walls adorned with oil paintings that had probably cost millions at auction.
And there, at the center of the room, Dimitri Markov, sat on the edge of a giant bed in a velvet robe, the kind I’d seen men wear in old movies.
He didn’t even look surprised to see us.
He coughed. “There you are.”
He spoke in heavily accented English, like he knew exactly who we were despite the masks.
Jagger, Vigo, and Bram had filed in behind Hawk and me. Now we faced Dimitri Markov like a firing squad.
He studied me, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that he was facing down five masked intruders with guns.
“You have your mother’s eyes.”
Bram raised his gun and took a step toward Dimitri, but I put up an arm to stop him.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him.
I just wanted to know.
“Your parents were warned,” he said. “As were you. Fortunately for you, I’m an old man now, and while I have my… resources, I’ve found no one does a job quite like you will do it yourself.”
“I know why you killed my parents,” I said. “Why you tried to kill me. I want to know why you hurt those girls. Why you still hurt them.”
He made a sound like tsk. “You care. How very provincial. How very… kind.”
“It’s not kind to treat people like human beings. It’s just… decent.”
“This world is a dark one, my dear. You know this better than anyone.”
I hated that he was speaking warmly to me, like someone I could trust.
Someone I could like.
“He’s stalling,” Vigo said. “Waiting for one of his guards.”
Dimitri turned his palms to the ceiling. “My men think I’m going to bed. No one is coming.”
“So? Why did you do it?” I couldn’t help it. I’d come so far.
I had to know.
“You have no idea how boring it is to have everything you want, do you?”
“No. You took everything I wanted when I was ten years old.”
“Yes well, it is boring. Quite so, in fact. Nothing out of reach, nothing to want.”
Hawk looked at hi with cold eyes. “You sold those girls, used those girls because you were bored?”
Dimitri picked a piece of lint off his robe. “Does it need to be any more complicated than that?”
“It doesn’t need to be anything,” Bram said, raising his weapon. “It’s over. That’s what matters.”
Dimitri looked up.
Not at Bram.
At me.
And for a split second it almost bought me to my knees: how normal he looked.
Like any old man you might seen the street.
“Do you think this is over, Cassandra? Do you think killing me is the end?”
“Maybe not, but it’s enough for me,” Bram said.
I saw the hole form in Dimitri’s forehead before I registered that Bram had fired.
Dimitri slumped sideways on the bed.
“Damn,” Vigo said. “I didn’t even get to use my bat.”
Jagger walked over to the phone on the nightstand and turned off the music.
The room was plunged into silence.
But only for a second.
Because then, all at once, we heard banging from the other side of the paneled wall.
And not just banging but the faintest of voices.
“Hello! Help!! I’m in here!!”