Mother of Chaos Read online

When she rolled over, she found Kade’s eyes on her.

  “Good evening,” she said.

  Kade smiled. “You look remarkably beautiful for someone freshly awake. How do you manage that?”

  “Luck.” Ruxandra snuggled into the blankets. “Why didn’t you try to seduce me last night?”

  Kade pushed the hair out of her eyes. “You were in a dark place. Seducing you would have been taking advantage in the worst way possible.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kade propped his head on one arm. “But if you feel better this morning, well . . .”

  Ruxandra laughed. “Hopeful, are you?”

  “Always.” Kade lay back against his pillow and put his hands behind his head. “May I say something?”

  “Speak.”

  “I know you are angry with her.” Kade’s voice was serious and quiet. “I do not fathom it, though. I know you did not want to be a vampire but . . . immortality is the gift humanity has sought since the beginning. And the strength and power are aphrodisiacs. They arouse me in ways that nothing else does. Not even sorcery gave me this feeling.”

  “Oh.” Ruxandra’s eyes wandered over the canopy above her head, searching for a better answer. “You chose this. You wanted it.”

  “What did you want?”

  “To travel, to marry, to see my friends.” Ruxandra chuckled, though without humor. “To be what I was, a princess. I loved my father, you know, and my mother. I was dying to leave the convent, but I was not unhappy. I was young and excited about living. One thing I did not want was to have to kill other people to live.”

  “Maybe that is the problem,” Kade said. “You cannot think of yourself as a person.”

  “Then what? I should believe Elizabeth’s Blood Royal nonsense?”

  “No. But you must learn to accept that we are a different species. As different as lions are to cats. You must learn that, though you like them, you are not one of them.”

  “I do know that, which is why the Alchemist’s inspection amused me. It doesn’t mean I am grateful for it or think of it as other than a curse.”

  “I cannot see it as a curse.” Kade turned over and kissed her forehead. “I must find joy and meaning in my existence, or I will go mad. I do not have the strength you have.”

  “I didn’t say I refused joy,” she replied softly. “I find it where I can. As much as I can.”

  The look in his eyes made heat rise inside Ruxandra. She sensed the shape of his body beneath the blankets and his clothes. Her clothing stifled her. She wanted to tear off her dress and corset and sit naked before him.

  Kade saw the change in her expression. He leaned in and kissed her lips. She opened her mouth to his tongue and brought her hand up to pull him closer.

  After a time he asked, “Are you certain?”

  “I am certain I want to get out of these clothes.” Ruxandra sat up. “Help me?”

  Kade smiled. “Yes.”

  The hooks and eyes on the dress parted under his fingers. She squirmed out of it. He undid the stays on her corset, freeing her flesh.

  The corset was halfway over her head when the Alchemist barged in.

  “Oops!” The Alchemist stopped but didn’t leave. “Interrupting, am I?”

  “Yes,” Kade said, but without rancor. “I thought you weren’t allowed out of the library?”

  “Anna’s changed her mind now she has the adviser she never knew she needed.” The Alchemist sat at the foot of the bed. “Also, I wanted to see my princess. I worried after you left.”

  “You should be thankful,” Ruxandra growled, forcing the corset back into place. “I am still furious at all of you.”

  “Oh, I am,” the Alchemist said. “I’m also guessing that since summoning the angel is now a fait accompli, you don’t intend to kill us?”

  “Not at the moment.” The words came out spiteful. Ruxandra knew it and didn’t care.

  The Alchemist’s head fell to one side. She stood up and pulled off her shirt.

  Ruxandra rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You’re not joining us, if that’s what you—”

  She fell silent at the sight of the blue, purple, and black bruises that covered the Alchemist’s ribs and breasts. The Alchemist turned her back and displayed a fresh set of welts crisscrossing her flesh.

  “We tried to protest, you know.” The Alchemist sounded calm, as though she spoke of the weather and not her own bruised flesh. “Anna came after you left yesterday morning. She told us what we would do. When we told her of our concerns—because we did listen, Ruxandra, though you think we did not—she had her men teach us the error of our ways. And then we got to watch her men do the same to Sasha, Victor, and Dimitri. You remember them, right? Our colleagues she keeps to help us behave? She beat them twice as long as she did us.”

  Ruxandra closed her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  “Sorry enough not to kill me for summoning Ishtar? Because that would make me quite happy.”

  Ruxandra sighed and collapsed on the bed. “Yes. Sorry enough for that.”

  “Good.” The Alchemist put her shirt back on. “And now that I’ve ruined the mood, I’m here to tell you that Anna summons you both to the palace. She wishes to meet at your earliest convenience.”

  “What a surprise,” Ruxandra muttered.

  “Did she say why?” Kade asked.

  “No. But she assured me that failure to deliver you would earn me another whipping.”

  Of course. Ruxandra threw off the blankets. I am now a servant of both queen and angel. This cannot last. “I’ll get dressed.”

  Half an hour later, she and Kade stood waiting in the Palace of Facets. Ruxandra smelled Alexi along with five others, but could not see or hear them.

  The doors opened, and Anna stepped through them. She wore a plain circlet on her head and a simple blue dress. Her hair lay once more in disarray, and her eyes were bright and hard as diamonds. She strode into the throne room, looking immensely pleased with herself.

  “My vampires return,” Anna said. “Have you overcome your emotions, girl?”

  Ruxandra suppressed the response that bubbled up in her throat and said, “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Good. You and Lady Ishtar shall have a pleasant discussion while Kade and I discuss the state of the empire. Kade, this way.”

  Anna strode out. Kade cast a bemused look at Ruxandra and followed. Four secret policemen went with them. Alexi stayed, and another man.

  As soon as Anna and the others left, Ishtar stepped through the door and closed it.

  “Hello, Daughter.”

  Ruxandra felt her talons come out. She retracted them a moment later. I can’t hurt her.

  Why not? She said she could only be here as a human, with only a human’s strength. I could tear her apart.

  So why can’t I? I don’t really love her, do I?

  She had no answer to that.

  Ishtar stood beside the throne, running her hand over the gilded wood. “You seem determined to avoid any chance at reconciliation.”

  “There is nothing to reconcile.”

  “Oh, Ruxandra, stop being childish.” She looked beyond Ruxandra. “You two. Leave. I wish to speak to my daughter alone.”

  Ruxandra tracked Alexi’s scent as he opened the exterior door and he and his companion slipped out.

  “You can see them?” Ruxandra asked.

  “I’m not a vampire.” She stepped down from the dais and crossed the floor to Ruxandra. “You turned out well, didn’t you? I worried you would not survive when you went into the woods, but you thrived.”

  “You saw that?”

  “We’re not prevented from seeing this world from hell, only from visiting. It’s God’s way of reminding us of what we’ve lost. And in the times I watched, I watched you. It was a great joy.”

  Ruxandra couldn’t think of what to say to that. It was odd to imagine that in her loneliest years she had been watched. It changed nothing, and yet . . .

  “So tell me, my daughter, w
hat do you love best?” Ishtar circled her, looking Ruxandra up and down. “What things make you happy?”

  “Clothes.” Ruxandra watched the woman move like a deer tracking a circling wolf. “Music. Art. Travel. Freedom.”

  “Which I gave you.”

  Ruxandra struggled to keep her anger contained. “You turned me into a monster and set me loose in the world.”

  Ishtar smiled. “Say instead I provided you the opportunity to see and do more than any human ever will.”

  “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “Ask for it?” Exasperation filled Ishtar’s voice. “I did not ask to go to hell. The child begging in the streets did not ask for its parents to die. Pretty girls do not ask the Tatars to take them as slaves. No one asks for poverty. Each must do their best with what they are given. Look at Elizabeth Bathory.”

  “I prefer not.”

  “She lost power when her husband died. She struggled and fought and did everything she could to hang on to what belonged to her, including summoning you.”

  “Elizabeth tortures girls for fun,” Ruxandra countered. “She bathes in their blood.”

  “You still made her a vampire.”

  “She told me she would stop.” Ruxandra remembered the day, and how desperately she wanted to take Elizabeth away from the ones threatening her. “She said we would leave everything behind and travel together. She lied.”

  “I know. So now she is doing the best she can with the gifts you gave her. So is Kade. But Ruxandra, have you nothing in your life more than pretty dresses and opera?”

  “It is enough.”

  “No, it is not.” Ishtar’s voice turned stern. “I created you for so much more, Ruxandra.”

  “I send you out instead, my child,” the fallen angel said as her blood dripped into Ruxandra’s mouth, “to sow chaos and fear, to make humans kneel in terror, and to ravage the world where I cannot.”

  “I remember what you created me for,” Ruxandra said. “I remember it all.”

  “You exist to end mankind’s evil.”

  “By sowing chaos and fear? I don’t think so.” Ruxandra’s desire to get away from Ishtar grew overwhelming. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes.” Ishtar stepped close and kissed her. Ruxandra felt a shock of lust run through her. Ishtar parted Ruxandra’s lips with her tongue. Ruxandra’s body had responded before her mind regained control. Her arms wrapped around Ishtar’s waist, caressing the other woman’s backside. Ishtar’s hands rose, cupping Ruxandra’s breasts. Her breath in Ruxandra’s mouth tasted sweet and drove Ruxandra to higher levels of passion. Her knee pushed against Ruxandra’s legs, forcing them apart.

  NO!

  Ruxandra tore her mouth from Ishtar’s. She raised her hands to shove her, and then stopped. I shouldn’t push her. It might hurt her.

  Ishtar looked like a cat whose whiskers still dripped cream. She reached up a hand to Ruxandra’s face. Ruxandra moved halfway across the room in a single second.

  “Did you feel our connection?” Ishtar asked. “Can you not sense how your body longs for me?”

  Oh yes. And I don’t trust it at all.

  “Don’t touch me again, Mother.” Ruxandra put all her disgust in the last word.

  “The way you don’t touch Kade?” Ishtar countered. “If I am your mother, than you are his grandmother. And yet you lust for him.”

  “Yes,” Ruxandra said. “I lust for him. I don’t lust for you.”

  “Nonsense.” Ishtar turned away and walked up to the throne. She ran a hand over the arm, and then sat. With her straight back and bright, piercing stare, she looked far more an empress than Anna. “Blood calls to blood.”

  “Yours doesn’t call me. It disgusts me.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Ishtar’s self-assured tone set Ruxandra’s teeth on edge. “I wish to meet with you every evening, Ruxandra. I wish you to grow past your revulsion and embrace what you are.”

  “I already have, remember? Kill the predators and those wishing to die. That was your desire.” It was so hard to resist her. What if she is telling the truth? Yes, she is cruel, but perhaps also . . .

  Ishtar laughed, low and gently. “Oh, child, that is only the beginning. Now, I must attend Her Majesty, and you no doubt want to think on what I said. Good night, Ruxandra.”

  Ruxandra turned away and walked out into the cold late-September night. She breathed deep, pulling frigid air into her lungs. The sky looked ready to drop snow upon the city.

  Her body trembled with unspent passion, yearning, and rage.

  “Ruxandra.”

  Kade stood at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the wall. The angle of his jaw set her quivering, and the strength radiating from him drove straight into her pelvis.

  God damn her back to hell.

  “Was your meeting with Lady Ishtar satisfactory?” Kade asked.

  “No.” Ruxandra took the steps two at a time. “Anna finished with you fast enough.”

  “Apparently there are some in the peasant quarter who are stirring up dissent against her. She wishes me to deal with it.” Kade frowned. “You sound . . .”

  Ruxandra didn’t wait for him to finish. She grabbed his hand, vanished from human notice and ran, dragging him after. They raced across the Kremlin and out the gates. Ruxandra skidded on the stones as she dashed through the enclave. She reached Kade’s house, bounced off the wall, and stood there, not in the slightest winded or relaxed.

  “Ruxandra?”

  Ruxandra kissed him on the mouth. He caught her arms and held her away.

  “Ruxandra?”

  “I need her out of my head.” Ruxandra panted the words. “Now.”

  She kissed him again, hands running over his body. He pushed her against the wall, his arousal hard against her belly.

  Blood calls to blood.

  Shut up. Ruxandra fumbled with the buttons on his trousers, freed him, and stroked him. She turned her back and hiked up her skirts.

  “Here,” Ruxandra gasped. “Now!”

  He thrust his flesh into hers, his hips pounding harder than any other man’s ever had. She bit her lips to keep from crying out as her legs buckled in pleasure. Kade held her until he groaned and shuddered and spurted inside her.

  He stayed erect.

  “Inside,” Kade said.

  He took her on the stairs and in the hallway. In the bedroom Ruxandra went to her knees and brought him to climax again. For most the rest of the night they savaged one another’s bodies until both fell back on the bed, satiated.

  Maybe this is what I need, another vampire, someone who understands and can keep up with me. To not be lonely. That would be something.

  In the dim twilight before dawn, as she drifted in and out of sleep, Ruxandra heard the sounds of battle.

  Ruxandra stood up and opened the window. The sounds came clear: screams and cries of pain, the hooves of horses and the clash of steel on steel. She put on her dress, not bothering with underclothes or shoes. When she went back to the window, she saw Alexi leaning against the house across the street. Dark circles surrounded his eyes, and he wore the same clothes as the previous night. Ruxandra jumped, landing in silence despite the twenty-foot drop.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Is the city attacked?”

  Alexi shook his head.

  “A pogrom,” he said. “A message to the city’s Jews that their welcome has ended.”

  Chapter 16

  “The Jews?”

  “The Metropolitan believes that Moscow should be Christian, free from other influences,” Alexi said. “Less than two hundred Jews live here, and yet he still considers them a threat.”

  “Why?”

  “Why does not matter.” Alexi’s words came out flat, and his eyes flashed bright with anger. “What matters is that the Metropolitan is happy and will give his support to the one who arranged for this to occur.”

  “Then those sounds . . .”

  “Are some houses being ransacked, some men ki
lled, some girls abused. It sends a message to the Jewish leadership that they have no place here. Not that they have anywhere else to go, of course.”

  Rage, burning as fast and hot as black powder, filled Ruxandra’s chest. “I’m stopping them.”

  “No, you are not.”

  “What do you mean . . . ?” Ruxandra looked down. “I can’t move my feet.”

  “I know.” Alexi leaned back against the wall. He looked ready to fall down at any moment. “I am so very sorry.”

  “What did you do?” Ruxandra sniffed the air. Four other men stood nearby.

  “This is how the vampire king’s minions were defeated. The magicians lured them into traps like this and kept them there until the sun rose and burned them to nothingness.”

  He sighed, a long, deep, weary sound, and rubbed his face.

  “You’re exhausted,” Ruxandra said. “You can barely stand up.”

  The smile Alexi put on looked almost ghastly against his pale skin. “I have not slept since the banquet.”

  “And Anna still told you to trap me? Isn’t she worried?”

  Alexi shook his head. “She sent me to talk to you. The others trapped you, and they are all quite awake.”

  In the distance the sounds of swords clashing stopped amid shouts from old women and the cries of terrified children. Young women and girls protested and fought, and then screamed. Men laughed.

  “They are raping the girls,” Ruxandra said through gritted teeth. Why can I not stop this?

  Alexi closed his eyes and let his head fall back.

  The screams turned to sobs. Only one kept screaming, the sound desperate and despairing, rising and falling. Ruxandra’s entire body tensed. She pulled against the forces holding her until she felt her muscles starting to tear apart. Still she could not move.

  She kept listening. If cannot stop them, I will at least bear witness.

  The last girl fell into sobs. The soldiers mounted horses and rode. Children wailed and men cursed and old women spoke soft words to the girls.

  “They are leaving,” Ruxandra said. “Let me go.”

  “Do not kill them, and please, do not try to kill Anna.”

  “Why not?” All the bile and anger built up inside Ruxandra spilled out with the words. She wanted to chase after the soldiers, to rip their throats out, but she could not take a single step. “Why should I let her live?”