Chapter 34
GABE
Zohran’s wearing a bulletproof vest. I feel its resistance the second the blade hits the Kevlar.
I drive forward, tackling him as the Greek screams in rage and protest, his hands swatting and punching.
I land on top of him, driving the blade down, down, shoving it hard, harder, leaning all my weight and roaring my fury, the fucker, the bastard, how dare he think I’d hurt Nika, how dare he try to make me into more of a monster than I already am, how dare he, how dare he, and there’s yelling and chaos all around, the crack of gunfire, screams of pain, but there’s only me and the knife and a body as the Kevlar splits and gives way.
The metal plunges into soft tissue, through bone, and into his heart.
I roar with the effort, with the victory, with the hate and the joy of overcoming impossible odds.
Zohran arches. He gasps, like a lover, and groans.
Blood flecks his lips as he screams, spraying me in the face.
I twist, stabbing again, wrenching the knife around to rip his heart into shreds.
I feel it shuddering against the blade, working desperately, trying despite the mortal wound to keep the Greek fuck alive, but it’s too late.
I hold the knife as he punches me in the face, in the side, tries to twist my hands back, but I don’t let him go.
“Sacrifice,” I hiss in his face. “Sacrifice, you sick—“
Something very hard hits me in the side of the head and knocks me clear of Zohran. I slide on the slick dance floor, stunned for a brief moment, and only gather myself just in time for Artyom to advance, face glowing in rage. He kicks again and I twist, scrambling.
“You bastard! You fucking bastard!” He’s got a dinner knife in his hand and he tries to stab me with it. I stagger out of reach.
Men in suits spill into the room. Half are fighting each other.
It’s a brutal melee, a hand-to-hand battle of knives and truncheons.
Most likely, the Dragons agreed to no guns, as a sort of defensive measure, but now the ballroom’s devolving into a macabre slaughterhouse.
Blood’s slick all over, splashes on the floor, on the walls, men screaming and clutching at wounds, men with crumpled skulls, men wailing and spouting more blood, and Artyom comes on like a demon.
I kick at his knee and roll. He stumbles, weak from his wounds, and I snatch up a plate from the floor.
He’s slow to react when I smash it against his skull, sending him sprawling to the ground in a grunting, moaning heap.
I have half a second to survey the horror, desperately searching for Nika in the chaos, shoving past one half-stabbed soldier, hitting another with my elbow, slipping on blood, drenched in the stuff, blood staining my shoes, spotting Lorcan gleefully stabbing a man in full body armor, Prosper not far behind him cutting the throat of another soldier, panic hitting me at all the bodies stacking on the floor as screams and wails echo through the space—
Until I catch a glimpse of a bloody dress, a slim woman pulling herself up onto the table with a scream of effort, and there she is, glorious Nika, bloody like everyone else, soaked in it, clots of it dripping from her hair as she raises the gun she snuck past the guards and fires into the ceiling three times.
The shock of the sound breaks the fighting.
I stagger forward, the only movement in the charnel house. Corpses litter the floor. Lorcan tosses aside his victim casually. Prosper tries wiping his hands on his suit with a distasteful frown. I reach the table and I’m about to climb to her, when someone grabs me. I twist, ready to fight—
Massimo grips my arm tightly. “You have to claim it,” he says urgently. “Right now, no waiting. Claim what’s rightfully yours.”
I look away from him, up toward Nika, and she’s kneeling now. She reaches for me, and I meet her halfway. The gun slips from her fingers into my hand. I grip the handle and tug her down into a kiss, our bloody lips meeting, her terrified and panicked eyes pleading as she whispers.
“Do it, Gabe.”
I walk over to Zohran, where the Dragon’s still half alive despite the hole in his black heart, and shoot him in the skull.
His brains join the mess of blood on the sopping, ugly floor, and I turn to the room as Mass’s men join him, forming up in loose ranks, half of them cut and bleeding, and raise the gun into the air.
“Hail, Dragon Russo,” I shout into the quiet. “I killed the former Dragon, and his place is now mine. Hail the new Dragon.”
“Hail, Dragon Russo,” Mass calls out, followed by a chorus of his men.
Lorcan and Prosper exchange an amused look before joining in.
Mass’s soldiers move to secure the room. Prosper argues though, and eventually his staff is allowed inside to start cleaning up the mess. They drag corpses into the corner and start mopping up the illogical amount of blood seeping into the carpet.
“That’ll cost a fortune to get out,” Prosper says sadly, shaking his head. “I’ll have to replace it again.”
Lorcan claps me on the shoulder. “Well done, that,” he says, nodding. “Zohran deserved a good stabbing. And the hidden gun? Lovely bit of theater, I’ll admit it. I’m sure word’s already spreading about the new Dragon.”
“But there’s still a problem.” I turn to Mass and gesture with the gun. “I have Zohran’s seat. That still leaves my grandfather’s.”
Mass nods and his eyes slip over to where Artyom's sitting on the floor, dazed and bloody like everyone, watching with a grim hate. “We did choose him.”
“We did,” Prosper agrees.
I walk past the Dragons toward Artyom. I kneel down in front of him and study his face. He looks back, angry, confused, bewildered and hurting—but not afraid.
“It’s yours if you still want it, cousin.”
His nose scrunches. “Doesn’t feel right, taking it this way.”
“Zohran’s dead. You don’t owe anyone a damn thing.”
“Not even you?”
“Least of all me.” I stand, shove the gun into my waistband, and offer him a blood-slicked hand. “Come on, Dragon. Join your new brothers.”
He hesitates, but only for a moment. The lure of power is too strong, and besides, nobody likes sitting in a pool of blood on the floor. He takes my hand and I haul him to his feet.
“Hail, Dragon Kiselyov,” I say quietly.
“Fucking right you do,” he says back. He stops, gripping onto my arm tightly, eyes straying to the room. “Mass’s soldiers… they were hidden in the waitstaff, weren’t they?”
I shrug, trying not to smile. “Something like that.”
“And the game?”
“I wasn’t sure which way Zohran would go… but Mass planted the seed, made sure he had the knife, and we went from there.”
“Shit. Outplayed from the start.”
I clap him on the shoulder and leave him to speak with Lorcan and Prosper.
I stride across the room to where Mass is standing with Nika.
She looks at me, small and frail, her face wiped clear but the rest of her dripping with red, and I don’t hesitate.
I pull her into my arms and kiss her hard, kiss her long and deep, because I know how close that came, and I hate myself for riding so near to the edge of losing everything.
“I’m sorry, Nika,” I say, holding her against me, breathing her smell laced with the sharp copper tang of all that death. “God, I’m so sorry you were here for this.”
“What would you have done without me?”
“Pretended to kill Mass. Maybe even myself. That was the plan, anyway. I didn’t want you near it.”
“There was a moment—when you were coming at me—“
“Don’t think about that.”
“I knew you wouldn’t. But a part of me was ready anyway.”
“I know, baby.”
“I would’ve let you.”
“Don’t say that.” I kiss her again, harder this time, claiming her, marking her as mine. “Don’t even think it.”
We stay together at the edge of a pool of death until Mass gently guides us toward the door.
“There will be discussion, likely some spirited debate, but congratulations. We have two new Dragons.” He pauses in the foyer. The house staff bustles around us, dragging buckets filled with red water. His eyes stray back to the ballroom. “Artyom… are you sure about him?”
“Not at all.” I squeeze his arm in thanks. “But it’s better than leaving the seat empty. Besides…” I can’t stop the elated grin that spreads across my face. “He fucking owes me now.”
Mass laughs as I put an arm around Nika and lead her away from the house, out into the night, both of us bloodied, drenched and filthy, but alive.
“What happens now? Do you just… take over?”
“There are logistics.” She leans against me in the back seat of the car. “We’ll deal with that later. For tonight…”
I kiss her again, and figure, I can put off becoming a Dragon for a few hours. I won the gift of another day, and another after that, and even more if I’m lucky, and strong, and smart, which maybe I can be with Nika by my side. We’ll see.