The Dark Duet (24 page)

As though he senses my thoughts, he turns away from the door and walks toward me, the pain in his face ripping into me and breaking me down. “Are you all right, baby?” he asks, taking my head in between his hands and inspecting every inch of my face, and finally my body.

“Am I all right? You get the shit shocked out of you and you’re worried about me?”

“I love worrying about you,” he answers. I pull him back into my arms because I’m feeling a bit giddy from hearing him call me his baby, yet another point on the card for this new version of Nikolai. Thankfully, Gash and Sparky left my clothing in a pile on the floor in the corner underneath the television. Nikolai helps me get dressed in no time.

“Let’s finish this,” I suggest.

“Indeed.” Taking my hand, Nikolai picks up the keys lying beside Sparky’s body and leads me through the doorway we both entered, making sure the path is clear once we step out into the hallway. I’m surprised there aren’t any guards storming the area. Running through the hallways of the place where I was imprisoned and experimented on makes me even more determined to capture Burkenstein and burn this hell-hole of an experimental plant down to the ground.

“Do you know where he’s going?” I ask.

“I do,” Nikolai answers. We’ve arrived at an elevator in a small hallway, my heart thumping from all of the adrenaline rushing through my body. “When a man of influence and power faces extinction, he always does one thing.” The elevator beeps and the doors slide open.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“He returns to the source of that which he created.” He strolls into the elevator, his blond hair flowing gracefully around him as he does so, a man of secrets, shadows, and philosophy, my knight in black armor. “Come, little ghost. Time for our dark duet,” he says, holding out his hand.

I take it, and unsurprisingly, we ride the elevator up to the thirteenth floor. We head into a dark hallway leading up to a place I’ve been before. I can tell by the faint scent of water mixed with an antiseptic smell and something else I can’t identify.
The scent of fear and death.

“Is this what I think it is?” I ask as we stand outside of the doors leading into a place I’ll always think of as hell on earth.

Squeezing my hand, Nikolai glances at me. “You can do this,
we
can. Together. Remember?” I nod and inhale a shaky breath as the doors to Burkenstein’s mind-wipe lab slide open, allowing Nikolai and me to walk inside.

Almost as soon as we step through the doorway, something cuts through the air and slices me diagonally across the left side of my face, knocking me back on my ass. Hot, searing pain shoots through my cheeks. Someone must’ve branded me with a hot poker, because that’s exactly what this pain feels like. I cradle my face and scoot backward toward a corner, my screams filling the air.

“What the fuck?” Nikolai shouts, and a string of Russian curse words escape his lips. Too late, he swivels his head around, the sound of something cracking across his back and echoing through the empty lab, which is lit up by the same creepy bright lights I used to always dream about as I lay on the table in here. Two more cracks on Nikolai’s back knocks him to his knees and temporarily takes my mind off my pain as I try and focus on the figure standing over him, rearing back and preparing to strike again.

It’s Burkenstein. He’s using a whip large enough to bring down a horse. My God. What has it done to my face? Did it tear off some skin? That’s what this pain feels like.

“I made you both into superstars when you were nothing more than a couple of gutter rats,” Burkenstein hisses, his whip slamming down on Nikolai’s back, yet again. Each strike sends him thudding face down to the floor. “And this is how you repay me? Disloyalty.”
Whack!

“Murderous, unfaithful little shit!”
Whack! Whack!

“And the one I hate the most ... Betrayal!”

Whack! Whack! Whack!

Nikolai has now gone completely still, and I can only imagine what the whip has done to his back. Since he’s wearing black clothing, I can’t tell if he’s bleeding.

Through the tears clouding the one eye I can still use, I manage to pull out the gun I took from Sparky’s body just before we left the Red Room. I remove the safety and cock the switch, the sound echoing through the room as Burkenstein prepares to hit Nikolai again.

“Lift that fucking thing again, and I swear I’ll put your balls out of everybody’s misery,” I say through gritted teeth, the gun aimed at his cock. Like any man would do—any normal man that is—he appears to be prepared to obey. However, there’s not a damn thing normal or sane about Rudolph Burkenstein. A sadistic expression crosses his face.

Oh shit. He’s going to test me.

“Why should I spare your lover the same fate your mother suffered?” he begins, his oily grin tempting me.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I hiss.

“She didn’t die when the SUV turned over. In fact, she was far from death.”

Dread and despair combine with the pain searing through my face. “Shut up. You’re a liar! Worse than a serpent.”

Burkenstein creeps toward me now, the whip dragging the floor behind him. He’s caught up in retelling his horrid tale of what he obviously did to my parents, yet another lie coming out on this night. “She was calling for you after you passed out. We yanked her out of the vehicle and pulled her body up on the shore.”

“We?” I ask, refusing to let the tears fall.

“Gash and me. My fine soldier.” His face takes on a sad look, a glimpse of sanity in him just before the expression turns in on itself and the madman returns. “The man you took away from me. Callous bitch! No matter. We beat the information we needed out of your mother. With this very whip.” He lifts it high for me to see.

“Shut up,” I whisper, my hand shaking, aching to pull the trigger.

“We beat it out of her and had our way with her, too
. And she enjoyed it.
Screaming until she took her last breath.” An evil laugh escapes his lips.

I’m ripped back in time, my mind soaring into the dream of the bloody shower, the vision I thought my ex-husband had caused. Someone carries me toward the shower, and I see the image of a nine-year-old little girl flash in the mirror as we pass by the bathroom sink. I’m screaming and crying, out of control as a strange man shoves me fully dressed into the shower and cleans me up before removing my dress.

“Be still, you little bitch,” a very young version of Gash hisses at me. I claw at his face and he wrenches my wrists back behind me so hard, I feel as though he’s broken my arms. “Keep that shit up and I’ll break your skinny little wrists. I don’t care what the boss says.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” a heavily German accented voice orders from behind him. Rudolph Burkenstein steps into the room, glaring at his partner.

“I don’t see what the big deal is with keeping her alive,” he says, turning away from me and standing up to his boss. “She knows who we are. This shit will come back to haunt us both.”

“Leave the girl’s mind to me. The boss has plans for her. Think of her as an insurance policy. Nothing more,” Burkenstein explains.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Gash responds, turning back to me. And then, I think back to an earlier time that night, recalling the way I woke up and witnessed these two men slashing away at my mother’s body with something loud. I start screaming until my throat goes raw. Seizures wrack through me next.

“Fuck! What the hell’s happening to her?” I hear Gash shout.

“Get her out of there,” Burkenstein’s fading voice orders.

Somewhere in the back of mind and through the screams that have now gone silent because I’ve lost my voice, I hear the tune from my mother’s favorite music box, a gift from my father, the one with the little ballerina dancing to the theme of Romeo and Juliet, playing inside of my head, lulling me into a blanket of darkness.

“Alese! Alese! Snap the fuck out of it!” a man’s voice yells at me, ripping my mind back to the current situation.

It’s Nikolai. Relief washes over me as I take in the sight of the man I love, standing tall, unbroken, and beautiful ... but deadly. He now holds the man who has been responsible for the pain and suffering of many innocent people in a head lock. From the blood caked on both men’s faces, I can tell Burkenstein wasn’t easy to defeat.

Glancing at the gun in my hand, I think of my mother and how shooting a sadistic creature like this man would never be enough. Standing and ignoring the pain on my face, I let the gun fall and lock gazes with Nikolai. I know what he’s about to do. He’s going to snap the bastard’s neck. That’s also too easy.

“Wait, Nikolai,” I call out. He obeys. “Turn him this way. I want him to see me when I say this.” Nikolai forces the man’s body toward me and Burkenstein’s eyes lock with mine.

“Rudolph Burkenstein, for not complying with the terms of our negotiation, you have sentenced you to die.”

I run, flip through the air and come down across his chest, his neck snapping from the impact. The life of one of the most notorious crime lords in history comes to an end. Nikolai releases him, the body thudding to the ground. Cold, dead eyes stare at the machine he used to torture and turn Nikolai and me into killers.

Nikolai eases toward me and pulls me into his arms, the action causing pain to shoot through my cheek and right eye.

“I am sorry. I hurt you,” he says, holding his hand near my wound. “We have to go. The next round of security guards are on their way, I’m sure.” I nod.

We head back to the study, remove the mother computer and run before we can be caught again, leaving through the lobby where all of this began. Once we’re safely outside and headed toward the van, Nikolai motions for Crow to do something. An explosion roars through the building behind us, causing me to stumble a bit.

“We did it!” With Nikolai’s help, I step up into the van where Crow waits, satisfaction moving my feet forward and giving me energy even after all we’ve done and suffered here tonight. The next step will be to help Nikolai defeat the man who started all of this. Vladimir. And now that I’ve gotten a hint of what he looks like, I can imagine the day we find and take him down.

“Vladimir’s going to be pissed now. I have to warn my grandparents,” I tell Nikolai as we sit in the back of the van while Crow rushes through the city and away from Burkenstein Laboratories.

“I know. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of them,” he says, applying ointment and a bandage to my right eye and the left side of my face. “The wound isn’t deep, but there will be a faint scar. I could kill that bastard a thousand more times for doing this to you.” He pulls me into his arms, flinching when I squeeze him tightly around the waist, reminding me of the wounds he suffered as well.

“Let me see them,” I demand, attempting to move out of his arms. Nikolai tightens his grip.

“No. You will not move. I won’t let you go, ever again.” He glances down into my face, his grayish-blue eyes boring into my hazel ones, making me feel slightly self-conscious considering I’m wearing a bandage over half my face. “You are mine, Alese Ballentine. Forever and always. My beautiful little dove.”

I manage a smile through my numb face. “Is that your way of saying you love me, Belikov?”

He gives me a crooked smile and says, “
Ya vas libliu
.”

I don’t need a translator to know he just told me he loves me in Russian.

CHAPTER 27

~Alese~

“You’ll have to trust me, Grandma. You can come home as soon as I send word,” I explain, cursing the crappy cell phone signal between us. Nikolai and I have decided to stay in our Geneva cottage for a bit longer, while my grandparents have been moved to an undisclosed location.

Katerina Dostovsky has made well on her promise. She made arrangements for my grandparents to be taken into a witness protection program for the time being, and even though this conversation sets me on edge a bit, I feel confident they’ll be safe. Nikolai walks up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, his presence making this conversation so much easier to handle.

“No, Grandma, I’m not going to forget about you again. I promise,” I assure her. Finally, after about a half hour of going back and forth on why Grandpa’s hunting rifle won’t be a better thug deterrent than a safe house, my grandparents both agree, though somewhat reluctantly, to remain in the program until Vladimir gets detained. I’m just as worried about my safety as I am for theirs, yet taking down the madman who has made all of our lives unbearable is what I’m meant to do. Both Nikolai’s and my loved ones have suffered enough.

Ending the call with my grandparents, I turn around and wrap my arms around Nikolai’s neck.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

I lift up on my tiptoes and kiss him. “Now I am.”

“I could taste those lips all day,” he says, a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“Not while they’re swollen, you won’t.” It has been a little over a week since my face was injured by Burkenstein’s whip. Most of my facial injury has gotten better thanks to the plastic surgeon Nikolai took me to. Luckily, thanks to the leather jacket Nikolai was wearing the day we escaped, his injuries didn’t turn out half as bad, either. Yet, we’ll both still have light scars, both physical and emotional ones, reminders of the day we toppled Vladimir’s throne by taking down his top informant.

“They don’t look so bad anymore.” He studies my lips.

“Trust me. They’re still tender.” I’m teasing him, though. There’s nothing in this world I’d love to do more right now than kiss Nikolai all day long.

He leans down closer to my ear and whispers, “Then, I guess the other set of lips will have to do.”

I gasp, bracing my chest as though I’m shocked. “You dirty-minded Russian. What will I ever do with you?”

“I can think of several things,” he replies, moving his lips down to my neck and nibbling the sensitive skin.

“Punishment is in order, I think.”