Илона Эндрюс - Emerald Blaze (Hidden Legacy)

He set his hand on the curve of my butt, cupping it to stretch the muscle. I almost purred. His face was a neutral mask. He fit the bandage over the wound and tore the medical tape. He placed it on my skin and ran his thumb up its length. If I closed my eyes, the journey of that thumb would’ve blazed through my mind.

Another strip of tape. He touched me again.

If I leaned forward, if he raised his head, I could kiss him. He would taste like wine, heady and crazy-making. I would kiss him and kiss him, melting against his powerful body, until neither of us could think anymore. Maybe I did have a concussion.

The last strip slid into place.

Alessandro looked up at me. His expression was almost cold, but his eyes were on fire. He looked at me the same way he’d looked at me in the opera house, just before he kissed me.

I wanted him. Not the Alessandro in my head who left, but this one, full of darkness. I wanted to throw my arms around him, pull him out of that deep dark hole he’d fallen into, and make him forget everything except me. I wanted him to grin at me.

He was still looking at me.

I raised my hand to stroke his hair.

He held completely still.

It wasn’t fair to him. It was selfish and mean of me, because I was about to promise him something I couldn’t deliver. Victoria would never let him have me. It took every shred of will I had to stop.

“Thank you, Prime Sagredo,” I said and pulled my underwear back up over my hip.

A shadow of pain flickered over his eyes. It lasted for a mere instant, but he couldn’t hide it from me. He had expected me to crush him and I did. When he spoke, his voice was perfectly cordial.

“You’re welcome, Catalina Beatrisa Baylor.”

Chapter 9

The headquarters of the PRP, the Pit Reclamation Project, occupied the smaller of the two southern islands in the Pit. It took us two more bridges and another small island to get to the final bridge leading there. This time, nobody tried to murder us along the way.

Alessandro drove. He was still laboring under the impression that I had a concussion or a cranial hemorrhage, and my brains could leak out of my ears at any second. He didn’t feel I was fit to drive, and I decided not to fight with him about it.

The cocktail of medication in the antivenom shot had cooled down the pain but didn’t banish it completely. My side hurt, the stabbing agony reduced to a low, dull ache that flared up every time I shifted in my seat. My head hurt too, but not bad enough to slow me down. It stopped bleeding and my hair was rapidly drying. I’d rolled it into a bun to hide the gash. My shoulder throbbed, a consequence of landing on hard concrete after being batted aside by a construct, and my right arm felt ready to fall off. The swords I usually swung were considerably lighter than Linus’ monster.

At least my clothes were dried. I’d changed into the spare outfit I always carried in the car.

The memory of Alessandro looking up at me cycled in my head. I had to sort myself out.

My cell rang. I glanced at the number, and a cold spike of anxiety shot through me. “Yes?”

“She will see you tomorrow at five,” the polite male voice said.

“Of course.”

“Have a nice day, Ms. Tremaine.”

The screen went dark.

“Who was that?” Alessandro asked.

“My grandmother.” Technically, it was Trevor, one of her assistants, a pit bull in human skin with a Harvard education and special forces training.

“I’m guessing it was your other grandmother, because you’re staring at the phone as if it’s a snake about to bite.”

We passed by a copse of trees growing straight out of the water. It ended and two islands swung into view, the first, larger on our right, and the PRP island, smaller and more distant, straight ahead.

On the larger island to our right, construction crews bulldozed remnants of the flooded buildings under the watchful eye of guards armed with tactical shotguns and . . .

“A flamethrower?”

Alessandro smiled. “They can be fun, under the right circumstances.”

“I remember.” He’d sprayed fire on a swarm of arcane creatures once. It happened at night, and he’d grinned like a lunatic while doing it. It’d made him look demonic.

Alessandro glanced at the island again. “Shotguns, flamethrowers, and at least four Mark V DGRs.”

Dangerous game rifles, designed to bring down magically created creatures, a catch-all term that covered any animal augmented by magic or summoned through it.

“I wonder if Marat is guarding against giant plant monsters,” I murmured.

A summoner would be the most likely candidate to be interested in a biomechanical device that controlled arcane beasts. And Marat was the only Prime summoner involved as far as we knew. But then again, we also had constructs, which normally would mean an animator. Yet, as far as I knew, constructs didn’t require a magical core. Could Marat and Cheryl be working together?

“What’s your opinion of Marat?” I asked.

“Marat is opportunistic and vicious when cornered. He tries charm first, but even he knows he’s bad at it, so he defaults to violence. In the fifteen minutes we spent together, he attempted to bribe me by promising kickbacks if the project moved forward and followed up with citing the many dangers surrounding the Pit and the city of Houston.”

“He didn’t.”

“He most certainly did. I think I was supposed to be scared.”

That’s rich. “Were you?”

He spared me a look. “I managed to not faint.”

“Would you like to know what Leon dug up on him?”

“Yes.”

I opened a file on my phone. I had already read it before leaving the office.

“Marat Bared Kazarian, House Kazarian, Prime, Summoner. Forty years old, married, two sons, fifteen and thirteen. Second son of Taniel Kazarian, so he isn’t the heir, he’s the spare.”

Alessandro started his life as the spare too. His older brother died when he was just a few months old, but his name had been written into the family records, and Alessandro would forever be known as the second son.

I kept going. “Marat has no criminal record, no bankruptcies. On paper he’s squeaky clean.”

“But?” Alessandro asked.

“The family has ties to Prince Lebedev, a prominent metallofactor House in the Russian Imperium.”

Metallofactors dealt with ore, metal alloys, and all things that had to do with smelting and working metal. Most of them tended to specialize in steel or aluminum, but some chose precious metals.

“House Lebedev focuses on industrial and military metallurgy. The family is powerful but considered provincial by St. Petersburg. According to Leon, they’ve been linked with illegal arms sales and questionable magical research.”

“How did Marat get involved?” Alessandro asked.

“The Lebedevs have holdings in Armenia near Lake Sevan. House Kazarian still has relatives living there. Any connection to Arkan?”

He shook his head. “The name Lebedev never came up, which doesn’t mean they’re not connected, just that I don’t know about it.”

“Leon couldn’t figure out if House Kazarian actually got any benefits from this friendship. Also, their visits to the Imperium have tapered off in the past decade. Marat’s brother has political ambitions and a close association with the Russians doesn’t look good.”

“Politics costs money,” Alessandro said.

“And that’s where Marat comes in. He’s the family’s workhorse and their fixer. He killed two Significants and a Prime during a feud with another House eight years ago, so his brother’s hands would stay clean. Currently, House Kazarian is strapped for cash, because Marat’s sister went through an ugly divorce, and Marat shelled out a lump payment to his ex-brother-in-law. The former husband got four million dollars and House Kazarian got sole custody of the three children.”