Brimstone Bride

Victoria resumed her walk because she didn’t want to reveal her fear. She acted unconcerned. She tried to move at the same speed. She didn’t look over her shoulder. But she did pause suddenly when she came through the hedge to the cottage’s clearing. Once again, she heard what might be the shuffle of a follower who hurriedly matched her movements, pause for pause.

She slowly fished the cottage key from her pocket to excuse her stop, then she proceeded to the dimly lit stoop. If she hurried, if she didn’t fumble with the old skeleton key, if the antique latch didn’t drag, maybe she could get inside and lock the door back against whoever was behind her.

But that plan evaporated when she reached the stone stoop of the cottage. Someone had left something there in a scattered pile. She pulled her phone from her pocket and illuminated the stoop to find a profusion of pale, dried flower petals that a breeze disturbed just enough for her to recognize because she’d seen ones like them in the park in Louisiana. Someone had left a pile of crinkled cherry blossoms for her to find. These had gone to a darker pink as they’d withered and dried.

She didn’t look over her shoulder. She could feel a malicious presence there. Perhaps a presence brazen enough to have come out of the cover of the hedges to stand boldly in the clearing. If she turned, she might see another monk from the Order of Samuel sent to deliver this threatening message of flower petals.

“I haven’t forgotten why I’m here. I don’t need the reminder,” she said.

Still she didn’t turn, but she did kneel and gather up the petals because she had lied—she did need the reminder. She’d been too easily swept up in the dramatic story of Turov’s past, his family, the obsession he had for his vines—a thousand acres of roots when she’d never managed to put down a single one.

Sybil and Grim hid and protected Michael, but for how long? She could blame the affinity for the distraction from her mission, but she wouldn’t. Turov would be seductive to her, affinity or not. Now that she understood this, she could fight temptation.

Once she’d gathered the dried petals in the hem of her shirt, the step on the path resumed without subterfuge. This time her stalker moved away from her with loud crunches of gravel on the path. The loud movement seemed a mockery of her fear. She used her key, and if her life had depended on using it quickly she would have died on the stoop. Her fingers were clumsy. She clutched the flower petals in her shirt and unlocked the door at the same time so neither move went well. Dried bits of blossoms fell all around and the latch protested as she clanked and clanked the key, trying to find the sweet spot for the tricky tumblers. Finally, she made it into the cottage and closed the door. She slid the bolt home and leaned against it. But her tension didn’t ease. Because now she knew what she had to do while Turov was away for the evening.

* * *

She placed the dried cherry blossoms in a jar on the vanity in her room. She needed the constant reminder. She wasn’t on a luxurious Sonoma vacation where she was free to sympathize with her dark and dangerous host. She had a job to do. She had a son to save. Turov had beheaded the monk who had followed her from Louisiana, but there were more where he came from. The Order had an endless supply of zealots.

She might never be free, but she had to try.

For Michael.

Turov had said he had plans for the evening. Before he kissed her. And the kiss was irrelevant. She had to focus on her mission. He had left the estate. She’d picked over a dinner tray sent from the kitchen while she’d waited and watched. Finally, she saw his low, lean luxury sedan—a vintage one—pull away to be swallowed by the night highway that led to Santa Rosa.

She wasn’t here to play.

She’d already changed into black jeans and a dark gray long-sleeve T-shirt to better blend with shadows. She intended to make her way to the sitting room that held the box full of firebird keys and then get back to her cottage before anyone, especially her host, was the wiser.

The garden was ghostly, lit by a sliver of moon and ambient lanterns turned low at midnight. She tried not to wonder if her stalker still lurked behind bushes that had taken on eerie animal-like shapes in the night. There a hunched antelope leaped and beneath its belly was a man-size black hollow. Here a grotesque ape with arms raised high could easily hide a man behind its enormous back.

Straight to the sitting room. Straight back.

The door opened at her touch and her first fear—that of being locked out—faded. The only activity she discerned as she entered the back passage was in the distant kitchen where the cook cleaned and prepped for the next day.

She held thoughts of Michael close as she hurried to the stairs at the front of the house. She crept up them, unable to prevent the occasional creak. A few lamps had been left on. Their Tiffany shades disbursed the glow in jewel tones that matched the walls and the firebird tea set no one had touched for decades—green, gold, amber, burnt red.

Victoria tried not the think of love and loss when she made it to the room again. Only then did she risk her cell phone light to penetrate the gloom.

The book had been moved.

Somehow she’d known. Maybe it was a daily habit for Turov to come here and flip through its pages. Had he noticed anything amiss? Was it foolish to stage a repeat visit so soon?

It was too late to back out now. She hurriedly scanned the room to make sure an angry Russian didn’t lie in wait to capture her. Then she bent to open the box and grab the keys. She was too quick. The keys rolled together, making a noise that seemed thunderous in the quiet house. She closed the box and shoved the keys into her pocket.

A mother would understand.

She had to pass Mrs. Turov’s photograph on the way out. She was sure the woman who had watched her son burn would have understood why Victoria had to tiptoe into her memorial to take the keys. It was wrong to take them, but to save her son she would do worse before the month was over.

The estate was massive. Finding where Turov held the monks would be a needle-in-the-haystack task, but the keys were a start. Seeing Turov’s set and finding the cherry blossom warning had showed her the course she had to follow.

Though she’d only been in the house fifteen minutes, it seemed to take far longer to make her way out than it had to make her way in. A whistle down one hallway caused her to hold her breath and crouch for long moments on the first landing. A maid passed, carrying a basket of folded laundry. Victoria moved again when the woman turned the corner away from her. The stairs seem to protest her downward path even more loudly than they’d protested her upward one.

But she made it outside without running into a soul.

Unfortunately, before she could even take a relieved breath of night air, she ran into a man who had sold his soul long ago.

* * *

Turov wasn’t wearing a tuxedo or a suit. His casual work clothes were gone as well. He wore black as she did, and she suspected for the same reason. Only a glimmer of eyes and teeth showed well in the garden light. Unlike the dark clothes she’d found from an ordinary wardrobe, his outfit looked made for the night. His black uniform was strategically fortified with leather quilting in vital areas such as chest, abdomen and thighs. It hugged his muscular form like a second skin.

She’d suspected he was athletically built and she’d been right, although she couldn’t have guessed how lean and hard because she’d never seen this kind of body in real life. Not even her sister’s husband, John Severne, who was obsessively fit from two hundred years of daemon hunting could possibly be this lethally made.

Victoria took in his appearance in seconds. The broad shoulders and hard arms above a trim waist and equally sculpted legs. He took in her appearance just as fast, just as well. Did her outfit scream cat burglar? Did the bulge of keys in her pocket show in the shadows?

“I thought you were going out for the night,” Victoria said. Her voice was too breathless. Adrenaline robbed her lungs of their usual power.

“I did. I finished sooner than I expected. I didn’t have to travel as far as I intended,” he said.

She risked a glance at his face, but he didn’t meet her eyes. Was that blood in his hair?

They’d been moving quickly enough that he put up his hands to catch her arms when they almost collided. Through the light material she could feel each of his fingers scorch. She looked down, surprised they didn’t glow with Brimstone embers. Then she looked up. His eyes were closed, almost as if he was in pain.

“You should be inside. It’s safer,” Turov said.

“Safer than here? In the garden? With you?” Victoria asked.

He held her, but not close enough. The wide expanse of his chest was a foot away. She wanted to press against it, to feel his Brimstone heart beat against her cheek. Only with effort did she swallow the hum rising in her throat like a morning dove that sensed the dawn.

“Yes. Definitely safer. You should keep a locked door between us,” Turov murmured, almost to himself. He relaxed his elbows. Her body immediately swayed toward him of its own volition. He allowed it. She allowed it. Long, heated seconds of her body leaning lightly against his. In forbidden time, it was an eternity. In real time, it was less than a minute. But it felt like the most intimate thing she’d ever done because he wasn’t a man that allowed any intimacy at all.

She tried to soak in his Brimstone heat, his hardness, his smoky masculine scent that was somehow also green and earthy and fresh. A song rose within her, but it was a song she couldn’t allow herself to sing.

Victoria stepped back and he let her go.

“Good night, Adam,” she said.

She retreated several steps and then she turned to the warmly lit cottage. She assumed Turov moved away as well. She didn’t look back to watch him go. She concentrated on placing one foot after another. She walked away. It was a triumph of willpower. She made it into the cottage and shut the door behind her. It was a testament to Turov’s heat that the cozy fire that greeted her seemed cold.

* * *

Adam strode to his spiral staircase and climbed to his rooms. Every step felt like a lie. Victoria beckoned. She called to him, a siren in a storm-tossed sea, and it would be just as disastrous for him as an unwary sailor if he heeded her song.

Damnation.

Adam braced himself as unbidden memories assailed him.

He’d had a taste of spring that morning so many years ago. He could recall the crisp bite of it still. It had expanded his lungs with a chill that shivered happily along his spine. Outside the Order of Samuel’s compound, the mountain had been coming alive with tender green grasses and wildflowers. He’d walked around the struggling patches of color, inspired, but also frightened by their precarious hold on new life. A killing frost or a late snow at this elevation would end their struggle.

He had identified.

How many times had he tried to run away from the Order, getting a taste of life and freedom only to have it cut short when they dragged him back to the enclave?

Malachi said he’d been taken in too late. Most novitiates were stolen from the cradle or gathered in before they could barely walk and talk. But Adam had been nine when he’d been “adopted.” He’d been stolen on a market day by a monk who’d taken advantage of the chaos and crowd to snag a healthy youth. Adam had been old enough to remember his mother and father and the lessons they had taught that had been so very different from the lessons that the Order tried to supplant them with.

He remembered one failed escape more vividly than all the rest. That morning so long ago he’d breathed the fresh air deeply into lungs that were weakened from a long, damp winter. He’d known he might fail again, but at sixteen he’d been ready to try rather than be buried alive beneath evil zealotry. Malachi hadn’t been able to beat away the memory of his mother’s face or his father’s strict but fair hand. Malachi’s lash was cruel rather than strict. And there was nothing fair about being pressed into an Order of merciless killers.

The mother’s milk of this mountain orphanage was blood.

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