Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

Alexsei, enraged at both his rival and himself, came at Batchuk, roaring like a bear. Indolently, almost carelessly, Batchuk swiped the barrel of the Makarov across Alexsei’s face.

“That’s right, she was going to leave you, leave your poor, pathetic life behind to be with me.”

Alexsei would not stop, he continued to grapple with Batchuk until Batchuk had no choice but to take Alexsei’s head in one hand, his neck in the other, and twist in one powerful motion that broke the vertebrae.

DYADYA GOURDJIEV, glancing briefly down at the handguns he, Annika, and Jack had placed on the carpet of the drawing room, heard Batchuk say, “Now sit down, all of you, and I’ll outline the situation.”

As they sat, Batchuk continued, “The two guards are dead, the others are away with the dogs, so that leaves just us, not that I have much time, but then killing doesn’t take much time.”

“Whatever you do, leave the girl out of it,” Jack said, indicating Alli. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“She’s here, isn’t she, she’s seen my face.” Batchuk shook his head. “No one is exempt.”

“Oriel, your battle is with me, let the others go,” Gourdjiev said sharply.

“I told you I was coming after Annika, I told you she had overstepped even your protection, did you think I didn’t mean it?”

_____

“HE’LL COME after me, I know it,” Nikki said as she lay in the hospital room.

“Have no fears on that score,” Gourdjiev said soothingly, “I’ll protect you come what may.”

“And the child.”

Gourdjiev took her hand. “Of course the child, she’s the product of your and Alexsei’s love.”

Nikki closed her eyes. “He’s coming soon, Papa, when I’ll be weak and helpless.” Her eyes flew open. “Oriel has an instinct for knowing when people are most vulnerable. Promise me you’ll keep her safe.”

“I swear, Nikki, calm yourself.”

“Her name is Annika, I want to call her Annika.”

She was a perfect baby. Gourdjiev remembered holding her in his arms, so tiny, so pink, so Annika, and the world seemed all right again. But then five years later everything came undone, Nikki had killed herself, Annika was gone, and Gourdjiev knew that he had failed daughter and granddaughter both.

“I HAVE an instinct for knowing when people are most vulnerable,” Batchuk said, “and now that I’ve caught up with you both it’s time to end our decades-long game of charades.”

“I prefer to call it a game of cat and mouse,” Gourdjiev said.

“Call it whatever you want,” Batchuk leveled the machine pistol, “it’s over.”

At that moment, Alli moved.

“Keep still, girl!” Batchuk shouted so loudly that Alli jumped and he almost shot her.

Jack took a step forward, Batchuk swung his machine pistol around, and Annika rushed him. She buried her fist in Batchuk’s belly while Jack wrested the Pernach away from him.

“His left arm!” Gourdjiev shouted, leaping to his feet. “He’s got a dart launcher!”

Indeed Batchuk, through eyes streaming with tears, struggled to level his left arm at Gourdjiev. Jack knocked it sideways an instant before the dart was launched, causing it to embed itself harmlessly in the crown molding that joined wall to ceiling.

“Let me go,” Batchuk said. Though he was being restrained by Jack, he addressed Annika, as if they were alone in the room.

“Why would I do that?” she said. “You’re a monster.”

“It’s your grandfather who is the monster. I swore never to talk about it, never to tell you, but what are oaths now, in the end the promises we make all fail, they’re meant to be broken.”

“How evil you are,” Annika said. “You’re rotten with malevolence, nobody knows this better than I do.”

A peculiar light shone in Batchuk’s eyes. “You think you know the meaning of evil, but you don’t, Annika, because it’s your grandfather who’s truly evil.”

Gourdjiev took a step toward them. “Don’t believe a word he says, Annika.”

“Yes, not a word of it, but here is the truth of it: Nikki and I were in love, she was the only woman I cared about, to this day that’s the truth.”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and bit you,” Gourdjiev said.

Batchuk kept his gaze firmly on Annika. “It was your grandfather who schemed to keep us apart. He never let me even meet your mother until it was too late, until she was already engaged to Alexsei.”

“No,” Annika said, “my mother and father were in love.”

“Alexsei loved her, of that there can be no doubt.” Batchuk shook his head. “But as for Nikki, no, she thought she loved Alexsei until we met, and then she knew the truth of it. Even though she was married neither of us could help ourselves, we became lost in each other—nothing, no one else existed.”

“What he’s saying is nonsense,” Gourdjiev said. “He’s simply trying to justify his actions.”

“Annika,” Batchuk said, “it was our love, your mother’s for me and mine for her, that caused Alexsei to feel so threatened. If we’d just had a quick tumble, if our connection was purely physical, do you think he would have become so maniacal with her? No, he knew, just as she knew that her love for me meant that their marriage was over.”

“You killed him,” Gourdjiev said. “You broke Alexsei’s neck.”

“He gave me no choice, he was out of control, nothing less would have stopped him from tearing me limb from limb.”

“So now you claim the murder was self-defense,” Annika said.

“Yes.” Batchuk nodded. “Absolutely.”

Gourdjiev took another step toward him and at last his antagonistic intent was unmistakable. “And that same night was it self-defense when you raped my daughter the moment she came home while her poor dead husband was bundled in a closet?”

Batchuk’s face filled with blood. “I did no such thing!”

Annika’s eyes were full of shock and rage. “Did you? Did you rape my mother the night you killed my father?”

“I never raped her,” Batchuk said. “There wasn’t a time I touched her when she didn’t want it, didn’t beg for the release only I could give her.”

Annika slapped his face, very hard, the energy rising in her from her lower belly through her arm into the tips of her fingers, the imprints of which could be seen on his cheek white on red, and then an instant afterward, red on pink.

Gourdjiev kept moving in, as if for the kill. “And what do you call it, also self-defense, when you stole Annika away from her mother?”

“You mean from you, Annika was never Nikki’s child, she was yours, you tried with all your power to make sure of that,” Batchuk said. “But yet it most certainly was self-defense. I took her from you, from your clutches, because she’s mine.” He turned to Annika. “You were conceived the night I killed Alexsei Dementiev in self-defense, you were conceived after he died, in the frenzy of passion your mother and I shared.”

TWENTY-NINE

“IS THIS true?” Annika said to Gourdjiev, breaking the stunned silence. “You knew?”

“Not right away, of course not.”

Jack could see that the old man was on the defensive now, which was just where Batchuk wanted him. He risked a glance at Alli, who had come off her chair and was standing very near Gourdjiev as if to stop him if he leapt to throttle Batchuk. He could tell that she was totally absorbed in the psychological fireworks.

“But gradually, as your mother’s mental condition began to decline, I got some inkling. At first I thought her depression was a result of Alexsei’s death, but then, as the months turned into years I grew convinced that something else was eating her alive. Finally, five years from the day of Alexsei’s murder, I got it out of her, how she had come home that night to find not Alexsei waiting for her, but him, Oriel Batchuk.