Renata closed her door after she entered her room. She unfastened her weapon holsters and laid the guns and knives neatly on top of the old trunk at the foot of the bed. She ached all over, muscles and bones screaming from the earlier tax on her mind. Her neck was stiff, full of knots that made her wince as she tried to massage them away.
God, she needed some peace from the pain.
A gentle scratching noise started up on the other side of the wall. It grated in her ears like nails on a chalkboard, her head feeling as fragile as a glass bell.
"Rennie?" Mira's girlish voice was soft, just a meek little whisper coming through the gaps in the logs. "Rennie...is that you?" "Yes, mouse," Renata answered. She moved up to the head of the bed and rested her cheek against the rounded timber of the wall. "It's me. What are you doing still awake?"
"I don't know. Couldn't sleep."
"More nightmares?"
"Uh-huh. I keep...seeing him. That bad man."
Renata sighed, hearing the hesitation in the soft admission. She thought about the warm bath that was only a few minutes out of her reach. It was a welcome solitude she needed more than anything at times like this, when the aftermath of her psychic ability - the very thing that had spared her life two years ago on this plot of remote, wooded land - seemed determined to kick her ass.
"Rennie?" came Mira's quiet voice again. "Are you still there?"
"I'm here."
She pictured the innocent face through the knotted pine. She didn't have to see the child to know that Mira had probably been sitting there in the darkness all this time, waiting to hear Renata come back so she wouldn't feel so alone. She'd been pretty shaken up the past few days - understandably, given what she'd witnessed.
Oh, screw the damn bath, Renata thought harshly. Swallowing down the pain that ran over her skin as she stood up, she reached over and pulled a Harry Potter novel out of her nightstand drawer.
"Hey, mouse? I can't sleep right now either. How about if I come over and read to you for a little while?"
Mira's joyful shriek sounded muffled, as though she'd had to cover her mouth with her pillow to keep from alarming the entire household with her outburst.
Despite her pain and fatigue, Renata smiled. "I'll take that as a yes."
Sergei Yakut led Nikolai into a large, open room that might have been a banquet hall when the old hunting lodge was in its heyday. Now there were no rows of tables or benches, only a pair of big leather club chairs arranged in front of a towering stone fireplace at the far end of the room and a massive wooden desk crouched nearby.
The pelts of bears and wolves and other, more exotic predators lay spread out as rugs on the wood plank floor. Mounted to the stone above the fireplace was the head of a bull moose with a huge rack of broad bone-white antlers, his dark glass eyes fixed on some distant point across the wide expanse of the hall. His long-gone freedom? Niko thought wryly as he followed Yakut to the leather chairs at the hearth and sat down at the Gen One's gestured invitation.
Nikolai idly glanced around, guessing the lodge to be at least a century old, and built for human residents originally, although the sparse windows were currently rigged with crucial UV-blocking shutters. It wasn't the sort of place you might expect a vampire to settle in as his home. The Breed tended to prefer more modern, luxurious surroundings, living in family groups or communities called Darkhavens for the most part, many such places equipped with perimeter alarms and security fences.
As civilian Breed domiciles went, Yakut's rustic camp, while remote enough for a good amount of privacy from curious humans, was anything but typical. Then again, neither was Sergei Yakut himself.
"How long have you been in Montreal?" Nikolai asked.
"Not long." Yakut shrugged, his elbows braced on the arms of the chair he was slouched into. His posture may have been relaxed, but his eyes had not stopped studying Niko - assessing him - since the moment they sat down. "I find it to my benefit to keep on the move and not get too comfortable in any one place. Trouble has a way of catching up to you when you overstay your welcome."
Nikolai considered the comment, wondering if Yakut spoke from personal experience or if it was meant as some kind of warning to his unexpected guest.
"Tell me about the attack on you," he said, unfazed by either the flat stare or the obvious suspicious nature of the Gen One. "And I'll need to talk to that witness too."
"Of course." Yakut motioned over one of his Breed guards. "Fetch the child."
The tall male nodded in acknowledgment, then left to carry out the order. Yakut sat forward in his chair. "The attack occurred here in this room. I had been sitting in this very chair, reviewing a few of my accounts when the guard on watch heard a noise outside the lodge. He went to investigate, and returned to tell me that it was only raccoons that had gotten into one of the sheds out back." Yakut shrugged. "This was hardly unusual, so I sent him out to drive the pests away. When several minutes passed and he did not come back, I knew there was trouble. By then, no doubt, the guard was already dead."
Nikolai nodded. "And the intruder was already inside the lodge."
"Yes, he was."
"What about the girl - the witness?"
"She had taken her evening meal and was resting in here with me. She'd fallen asleep on the floor near the fire, but she awoke just in time to see that my assailant was standing directly behind me. I hadn't even heard the bastard move, he was so stealthy and quick."
"He was Breed," Niko suggested.
Yakut inclined his head in agreement. "No question, he was Breed. He was dressed like a thief, all in black, his head and face covered with a black nylon mask that left only his eyes visible, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was our kind. If I had to guess, I would say he might even have been Gen One himself based on his strength and speed. If not for the child opening her eyes and crying out a warning, I would have lost my head to him in that next instant. He brought a thin wire garrote down on me from behind the chair. Mira's scream drew his attention away for a crucial second, and I was able to bring up my hand to block the wire from slicing across my throat. I twisted out of his range, but before I could leap on him myself or call in my guards, he escaped." "Just like that, he turned tail and ran?" Nikolai asked.