Touch of Darkness (7 page)

"Yeah. Well." She put her camera around her neck and fussed with the settings.

Yep. She was guilty.

"I couldn't wait to see what's inside the tomb," she said.

"But you're not inside. You're concentrating on the wall carvings in the entrance. Why would that be?"

"I'm the National Antiquities photographer. I need
to record each piece of this tomb." Her black hair curled riotously, as if she'd done no more this morning than run her fingers through the strands.

Rurik reached out.

She tried to dodge, then consciously stood still.

Was she trying to convince him she didn't care if he touched her?
Good luck.

He tucked a curl behind one ear.

She chewed her lip.

Smart girl. She should be apprehensive.

Sliding his hand behind her neck, he pulled her toward him.

"No." She put up her fists.

"Try and stop me." He smiled a toothy smile. "I would really like it if you fought."

"Why? What are you going to do? Force me to kiss you?" She sounded scornful as only an independent woman could sound.

"I don't have to force you to do anything." He whispered in her ear, "I'm going to get you so hot, we'll melt together, and you'll never know where I end and you begin."

The way she caught her breath did wonders for his temperament.

Turning his head, he kissed her cheek. "But later." Later, when he had toyed with her, kept her off-balance, threatened hell, and promised heaven.

He couldn't make her love him, he couldn't make her stay with him, but by God, if she ran again, she would remember him.

Turning his attention to the wall, and in a tone guaranteed to annoy her, he said, "This shows Clo-vus getting a gift that looks very much like a ... wait, yes, it looks invaluable. ... It looks like the wrapping on a Hershey bar!"

Actually, it looked about the shape and size of an icon. But medieval artists didn't use realistic perspective, and stone carvers in the north of Scotland at times lacked the skills of the southern artisans. Until he'd studied the script, he couldn't be sure what gift Clovus had received, and even then, it would be tough; time had worn pieces and patches away.

"Don't be a jerk." Obviously, Tasya had never meant anything so sincerely. "It's too short and too wide to be a Hershey bar. Believe me. I know my Hershey bars." She looked in the camera's viewfinder again, and took photos from several angles.

Why Tasya was so interested he didn't know. But in the end, what did it matter? As long as he could read the writing and study the carvings, he would succeed in his part of the quest. "Did you take photos of everything?"

"I took an overview. Now I'm getting it from every angle using all kinds of light."

"Good. Still no woo-woo about the booby traps?"

"Nothing. We're safe."

"Well." He removed the flashlight from the pocket on his leg. "I'm safe. You're in deep trouble."

She stopped taking photos and turned on him in exasperation. "You don't have to be obnoxious every chance you get."

"I'm not being obnoxious. I'm being truthful." He picked his way through the rubble on the floor and around the edge of the wall, and shone the light into the antechamber of the tomb.

The walls were stone, dense and dark, and his head brushed the stone ceiling. Ancient tools and animal bones cluttered the floor, and before the far wall stood a stone altar. A half-opened stone sarcophagus leaned against it.

Tasya stepped inside with him. "What's in here?"

"A mixture of Bronze Age and early medieval artifacts. That confirms my suspicions—the tomb is probably four thousand years old, and Clovus removed the king buried here, and confiscated the burial ground for himself."

"That guy had no fear, did he?"

"No fear of the dead, and no respect for the past. I suspect that sarcophagus contains the first occupant of the tomb."

"I don't like this place." She shrugged uneasily. "Where's Clovus?"

"The burial chamber is in there." Rurik nodded toward a wall of smooth stones.

"Yes." She shivered. "I can feel him."

He knew nothing about her. Nothing. And here was his chance. "What do you feel? How do you know it's him? How long have you been able to tell if a man is evil?"

He didn't think she would answer, but she took his questions one at a time. "I feel as if I'm being smothered by darkness. I don't know for sure it's Clovus, but who else would it be? And I felt
them
when I was four, and I've never forgotten the sensation."

"Them?" She had his complete attention. "Who's them?"

She paid him no heed, but gradually turned her head toward the entrance and stared intently. She whispered, "Perhaps if s not Clovus I feel Because .. . they're here."

At the same time, he heard the voices, and it didn't take her warning for him to recognize their accent, their boastful tone, their menace.

Varinskis. Son of a bitch. Varinskis. His cousins from hell had found him.

Varinskis were trained to ferret out the unwary, to assassinate their enemies, to destroy whatever it suited them to destroy. Usually, they performed their
assassinations and sabotage only for their paying clients.

No one was paying them now. They hunted the Wilders for vengeance. They'd found his older brother, Jasha. Now they'd found him.

Rurik was caught here . . . between his fate and a woman who made his heart ache and his temper flare.

His death would put an end to his family's hopes, but he'd fight, and he'd get Tasya out. She didn't deserve to die because she was with him.

"Get back," he said. "Get behind the altar."

She looked at the camera in her hand. "My backpack. My backpack's there in the entrance!"

He hurried, grabbed her backpack and her flashlight, and hustled her to the back wall. Together they knelt behind the altar. He put her behind him—and with a gasp, she vanished into the wall. A short panel of solid rock had swiveled and swallowed her.

He reached into the pitch-darkness.

She caught his hand in hers, and her hand trembled. So did her voice. "I'm here. It's a passage."

Yes. The fresh air blew in right from the sea.

He leaned in. His vision was excellent—more than excellent—and he saw a small stone chamber and a tunnel twisting away into the earth. He shoved her backpack and flashlight toward her. "Go. I need to hear what they say."

Pulling himself back into the antechamber of the tomb, he closed the wall, crouched, and waited.

There were four of them, men, of course—the Var-inskis produced only sons—and Rurik realized at once they didn't suspect he was here.

He also realized that Boris, the head of the Varinskis, hadn't sent his top men on this mission. Or if he had, the Varinskis were sadly overrated. Because these guys were loud, irtept, unworried about what, or who, might be hiding in the tomb. They walked right in, boys without a care in the world.

One of them, a husky thirty-year-old, carried a good-sized leather bag. "So, what's the big deal here?" he asked in Russian.

"Yeah, why did we have to come to a crap little island in Scotland?" Another guy examined the stone pillar and the wall that blocked the entrance. He wore a cowboy hat and boots, and looked like a Cossack imitating a Texan.

Rurik slid around, staying behind the altar, watching.

The leader was maybe forty, and he stood in the middle of the tomb with his hands on his hips. "Apparently one of the old boys had a vision. I don't know what it was, but man, did it scare Boris."

"I was there when it happened," the youngest boy said.

The other three turned on him.

"You were not." The leader plainly didn't believe him.

"Yes, I was," the kid insisted. "Freaky Uncle Ivan, the blind guy with the white film over his eyes, called Boris over like he could see him, grabbed him by the throat, and in this voice that sounded like . . . like . . ." The kid shivered. "It sounded deep and strong and spooky."

"Uncle Ivan never has liked Boris," the leader said. "He's baiting him."

The kid shrugged uneasily. "Yeah. I wish I believed that."

"So what did he say?" one of the other guys asked.

"Uncle Ivan told Boris the deal with the devil is breaking apart, that unless the Varinskis get their shit together and kill that guy who married the Gypsy—"

"Konstantine," the leader said.

"Yeah, Konstantine. If the Varinskis didn't kill Konstantine and his whelps and the bitch he married, the Varinskis would become a laughingstock and the pact would be broken. The whole thing gave me the creeps."

The story gave Rurik the creeps, too. He'd assumed his mother's vision was an isolated incident, and without considering it, he'd figured some benevolent force had worked through her. The vision had warned his family of trouble, instructed them about how to break the pact with the devil.

Now it sounded as if one of the Varinskis had had a similar vision telling Boris to destroy Konstantine and his family—or else.

Shit

"So what has this place got to do with it?" The guy with the bag pulled it open. He tossed a round metal disk to each of the others.

"Uncle Ivan said there was an icon, some kind of holy thing, that we had to find." The kid caught a disk and attached it to a pillar. "I guess the icon's here, and we're going to blast it to smithereens."

Rurik, who'd been concentrating on eavesdropping, realized that his killer cousins . . . were the demolition team.

No wonder they didn't care if someone hid in here. They were going to blow the tomb, and possibly destroy the icon, his father's chance for salvation and ... oh, God, would Tasya survive?

"You knew Konstantine, didn't you, Kaspar?" the kid asked.

"I knew him," the leader said.

"Is it true he was the biggest, best boss we ever had, and Boris was afraid of him?" The three subordinates turned to Kaspar and waited for the answer.

"He wasn't the biggest, but he was smart. Wily. When he fought, he always won. He had great strategies, and when he was in charge, the Varinskis were
the greatest power in the world." Kaspar spit on the ground. "Not like now." The team was quiet, setting the charges. Rurik didn't dare move. The icon . . . and Tasya. Would he lose them both?

The kid said, "Boris better do something soon, or he's going down."

"Did you overhear that, too?" Kaspar mocked. "Boris is my father, but Vadim is my brother. Vadim has my loyalty, and I promise, he's the next boss." The kid smiled, and turned his head toward the sunlight. Rurik jumped.

His lips were colored red; his cheeks were equally bright; his eyes were slanted. Maybe he wore makeup so he could look like that, but Rurik didn't think so. That kid was a natural freak.

"Don't be a fool," Kaspar said sharply. "Vadim's too young."

The kid hissed at Kaspar. He swayed, and Rurik had a sudden vision of what the kid could become. . . . The pupils in his eyes were pointed from top to bottom, his smooth skin gleamed as if covered by nail polish, and the teeth in that red mouth were pointed like a vampire's ... or a rattlesnake's.

Kaspar snapped his fingers at the kid. "Stop it! Alek, we don't have time for that shit. We've got to
get this done before someone comes to check the tomb."

Alek stopped swaying.

"If anybody catches us, it'll be a damned mess," Kaspar added.

"Okay. But don't jeer at my brother, or he'll get you." Alek took his charge and leaned down to set it.

When Kaspar was sure Alek paid him no heed, he turned his back and used his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

Rurik felt like doing the same thing. Varinskis were birds of prey or wolves or panthers. Never snakes. Never something that slithered on the ground and killed by poison. What had happened? When had this change occurred?

When Alek straightened up, Kaspar asked, "Charges in place? Timers set?" When everybody nodded, he said, "Then let's get the hell out of here."

The Varinskis hustled out at a speed that expressed only too clearly the power of the blast. Rurik dived through the wall and into the tunnel—and ran into Tasya.

"What did you find out?" she whispered.

"What the hell are you doing here? Run. Run!" He shoved her forward.

Smart girl. She didn't ask for details. She responded to his agitation and sprinted into the darkness.

He raced with her, his hand on her back.

The light faded behind them. The tunnel got narrower and shorter. They ran through dirt now, with a few rocks . . . but the scent of the sea lured Rurik on.

Darkness surrounded them. Tasya stumbled on the rubble on the floor.

He kept her on her feet. "Bend down. The ceiling is dropping. We're going to have to crawl—now." He shoved her to her knees and pushed her ahead of him- The tunnel narrowed more, but ahead and around a corner, he could see light. "We're almost there."