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I open the door a bit and listen. It’s quiet, almost silent. There’s the gentle trickle of an indoor water feature, and there, in the distance, the barest thud of bass. Aha, just what I thought. He’s in the theater.
“Basement,” I whisper to Kharon and take off down the stairs in that direction. The villa is huge, and the stairs open to the large expanse of a living area. To my left is a huge stone wall with water running from the second floor to the first that drops onto rocks and a little indoor pond.
I shake my head. Such excess, when my father spent his life hiding out in dives, barely scratching out an existence. And this is only one of my uncle’s homes.
I race down the stairs, hating feeling so exposed. Kharon simply leaps down from the open loft, landing in a crouch near the pond. Soon I’m by his side. Just as we’re heading toward the door to the basement, a voice calls out in Russian, “You! Stop!”
Shit. I freeze and hold up my arms, turning towards the door just in time to see Artyom, one of my father’s most trusted soldiers, standing just inside the door to the courtyard with a high-powered assault rifle pointed at my chest.
His eyes widen when he sees my face. “He said you would come, but I told him you would not be so foolish.”
Behind him, several more soldiers appear, several calling on their radios, and below, I hear the thumping bass cut off as my uncle is informed of my presence.
Double shit.
“Artyom, listen,” I start to say, but he just shakes his head, lifting the rifle sights to his eyes.
“I have my orders.”
I wish I could say we move to Plan C at that point, but the truth is, all hell breaks loose as I yank out my weapon, and Artyom pushes the trigger, letting loose a blast of firepower.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
KHARON
I rush the bastard, jerking the fool’s gun toward the ceiling as he releases his blast of bullets. Humans have become far more destructive in the last two hundred years. These rifles are much more powerful than the last time I was at war.
It still takes little effort to pluck it out of the man’s hands and smash him back into his comrades with another fist. I might have sworn long ago not to take any more humans to the other realm, but he just demonstrated that he’s more than happy to harm the one I love. I have no qualms about protecting her.
So as I push him back, I send him to the other realm and stamp toward the other men flooding in the double doors with their weapons of death raised. I don’t bother being quiet now but let out a roar as I raise all six of my arms to reach as many of them as possible and leap.
Down we go, their souls sent to the nether-realm before their bodies hit the floor. I see confusion in the eyes of the men still outside, watching their comrades be felled by an unseen force. Only one is wise enough to drop his weapon and turn and flee. The rest come bursting through the door, already shooting.
“Get down,” I shout over my shoulder to Ksenia. In my fury that they would hurt her, I thirst for their deaths. That darkness so long dormant inside me flares back to life with vengeance. I flare all six of my arms wide to make myself the biggest shield and take the next group to the nether-realm as quickly as the others before them.
Satisfaction yawns wide inside me. I spin when there’s a pile of unmoving men at my feet to see where my beloved is.
Only to find her nowhere. “Ksenia?” I roar, turning and springing toward where I last saw her.
“Dammit,” I hear her voice call from down a set of stairs. Relief hits like a tide. She escaped the bullets here, but more fear strikes at the thought of her going alone into unknown dangers below. I pounce down the stairs only to find her pounding on a door with a fist.
She turns to me, her face red. “The blueprints had it wrong. The saferoom is down here, not in the center of the house. The paranoid bastard must have had alternate blueprints filed. Give me the backpack.”
“We should leave,” I say, chest heaving with adrenaline. “This did not go according to plan.”
She jogs over and unzips my backpack, quickly yanking out several explosive blocks. “That’s why there’s Plan C. Was there more trouble upstairs?”
I want to growl at her. This is not safe. I cannot stand her being where bullets fly. “One ran away.”
“And you didn’t chase him?” she snaps.
“I was more concerned with finding you.”
She breathes out as she places the charges she pulled from the backpack against the door. “That only means he’s going to run for help and bring back reinforcements.”
