Dangerous Games

2

Dimitri gives a command for his men to retreat. Everyone starts to move slowly as one unit. The man holding me drags me back one step, then another. My bare feet kick helplessly as I fight him, desperate for air.

Dimitri snaps, “What did I say about fighting?”

When he points his gun at Naz, I fall still, a scream of terror trapped in my throat. “No! Please!”

Hearing me plead makes something ugly glitter in the depths of Dimitri’s cold blue serpentine eyes.

This is what he wants from me, what he’s always wanted. Begging. Weakness.

Fear.

He feeds on it the way a vampire feeds on blood.

I realize there’s only one way out of this. There was only ever going to be one way—I see that clearly. All the months I’ve been running and hiding and falling in love were only ever going to take me right back to this moment, facing down the darkest of my demons.

We can try to bury the past, but some corpses refuse to lie quietly in their graves.

In a way, it’s a relief. I don’t have to worry any longer about the worst happening, because now it has. Now all I have to do is focus and pray for strength.

I speak in Russian because I don’t want Naz to understand my words. “I promised you my soul in exchange for time with him. But if you pull the trigger, I won’t have a soul left to give. If you kill him, you kill me, too, and all this will have been for nothing.”

With a warning in his voice, Naz says, “Eva.”

He might not understand the words, but he hears my bargaining tone. My heart feels as if it’s dying.

Looking into Dimitri’s eyes, I say hoarsely, “I haven’t forgotten how to please you.”

Dimitri’s pupils dilate. He moistens his lips.

And oh, what a dangerous game I’m playing. What a dark, dangerous game. But I might have more than Naz’s life or my own to think of protecting now, and the sooner Dimitri believes I’ve submitted to him fully and without reservation, the sooner I can find a way to drive a stake through this devil’s heart and rid myself of him forever.

Dimitri fists a hand into my hair and kisses me, thrusting his tongue deep into my mouth.

I’m aware it’s a test, a test I must pass or Naz will die, but it still takes every ounce of willpower inside me not to wrench my head away and spit, to remain passive and still as if bile isn’t rising in my throat at the revolting taste of him.

When Naz makes an animal sound of fury, Dimitri breaks away from my mouth, laughing.

“Oh, the jealous lover. What fun! It’ll be torture for you, won’t it, imagining all the ways I’m going to f**k her? All the ways I’ll make her scream and beg?”

Naz’s nostrils flare. His chest expands, and his lips flatten. His fingers tighten around his gun.

Dimitri laughs again, delighted. “I’m sorry I won’t be here to see you suffer, but I’m afraid we have to be going now. Eva and I have some catching up to do. Remember what I said: if you follow us, she pays the price.”

Just to put an exclamation point on that threat, he smashes the butt of his weapon into the side of my face.

My head snaps sideways. I hear the crack of bone and feel something hot pour down my cheek, but I don’t make any noise because agony has stolen my voice. When I sag, the man holding me from behind wraps his other arm around my waist to keep me from falling.

Naz’s roar of helpless rage raises all the tiny hairs on my body.

Then I can’t hear anything else because the thunder of gunfire deafens me.

The man holding me jerks and staggers backward, releasing me abruptly from his grip. The acrid stench of gunpowder burns my nose. Brilliant flashes of light blind me. I fall to my hands and knees, gasping and disoriented. Blood rains onto the white carpet beneath me, but I don’t know if it’s mine or someone else’s. I can’t focus my right eye, and the light is starting to dim.

The shooting goes on forever. Reality takes on a dreamlike quality. Everything turns muted and fuzzy, as if I’m seeing it through a pair of dirty glasses. Someone grabs me by the scruff of my neck and drags me across the threshold onto the landing, then gives me a hard shove in my back.

I teeter at the top of the stairs for a moment, weightless, breathless. Then gravity takes over, and I tumble forward and down, my arms pinwheeling, my mouth open in a silent scream.

I hit the first step. With a sickening snap, a bone in my left arm breaks. The world spins topsy-turvy. I continue to roll, hitting what feels like every stair on the way down to the ground, where I land on my back.

My skull cracks against the unholy hardness of cement. The wind is knocked out of me, and for a moment my vision goes black.

When it clears, I’m looking up at the night sky, dotted with stars. My head lolls sideways. Through the iron bars of the fence that encloses the yard on the ground floor, I meet the glassy gaze of the big angry dog Naz and I thought would alert us to any danger.

He lies dead in a pool of his own blood, a perfect circle blown through the middle of his furry forehead.

A powerful wave of emotion overwhelms me. Sorrow for this poor creature that got caught up in Dimitri’s web and disgust at myself for being the fly Dimitri would chase to the ends of the earth. If it weren’t for me, the dog would still be alive, happily terrorizing passersby with his ferocious barking.

If it weren’t for me, Naz would be safe.

If it weren’t for me, a lot of things would be better.