LITMIR.BIZ

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“I should not blame you,” he said heavily. “You know nothing of duties that have been yours throughout all unlit—”

      “‘Throughout all the unlit centuries of night.’” Kat’s face paled. “‘Without my presence the circle is dangerously open. I close it and form the three.’ Oh, God, it’s what I said just before everything went crazy, isn’t it? How could I have blanked something like that out so completely? And how you could you know those words unless—” she swallowed “—unless you really are our grandfather. What happened here tonight was connected in some way to our mother, wasn’t it?”

      “Our mother the vampire killer. Yeah, right,” Tash said, her tone dripping sarcasm. “Don’t tell me you believe him, Kat. You’re probably still on edge from…” Her words trailed off. “From vamp-slaying,” she said hollowly. “Omigod…we’re hereditary slayers?”

      “We’re hereditary normal American girls, is what we are,” I said tightly. “You said it yourself, Kat—Boris here’s a con man, using a few scraps of information he somehow gathered about our grandfather to pull a scam on us. We’re vamp slayers? Mom was a slayer?” The illogical dread I hadn’t acknowledged a moment earlier was suddenly as impossible to ignore as a grenade with its pin pulled. Desperately I tried to defuse it. “I’ll admit Dean and Lance and Todd behaved like total pigs when they showed up here tonight, and even that we had to fight them off. The rest just couldn’t have happened the way we remember.” In my mind I saw Dean crumbling to dust, but I thrust the vision aside and grabbed at the only acceptable explanation. “It’s more likely that the appletinis we knocked back are making us recall things a little foggily.”

      “That you try to deny is no surprise to me.” The Russian shook his head, watching me closely. “But in your heart you know the truth, granddaughter. You must face it.”

      “Megan’s the Queen of Denial, Grandpa Darkheart,” Tash broke in impatiently. She turned to me. “There’s a big ol’ pile of greasy dust upstairs that used to be my boyfriend, another in front of the sofa over there, and I’m betting there’s a third dust pile in the kitchen. I know it sounds crazy, sis, but since we now have proof that vamps exist, isn’t it kind of reassuring to find out we’re genetically equipped to handle them?” She frowned thoughtfully. “When I snapped off that bedpost and staked Todd, I was like Yes! You go, Tash! And I totally didn’t understand where that was coming from because I’m so against violence usually, but now that I know I’ve got slaying in my blood, it makes sense.”

      “No, it doesn’t,” Kat contradicted. “But given that nothing else that’s happened in the past hour does, either, I agree with Tash, Megan. If Grandfather Darkheart’s correct and some kind of battle’s already begun, you’d better start believing in this triplet slayer business pretty fast, sweetie.”

      The old Russian’s steel-gray eyebrows pulled together. “Nyet. Only one of you is true Daughter of Lilith—a slayer, as they say in your American televideniye shows. The other two may kill vampyrs, but through luck and determination, not because they inherit title from mother.”

      Something inside me snapped. “Nyet to all of it, Boris! Our mom wasn’t a slayer, she was a part-time translator at the New York firm where our father worked after graduating from Harvard Law. Two weeks after she and Dad met, they got married,” I said, my voice shaking, “and Grammie’s told me a million times how happy Mom was in the role of a wife and mother—so happy that it was only at the urging of my father that she agreed to a trip back to her home country. Not as imaginative as your scenario of her being a cut-rate Buffy, perhaps, but that’s the way it was.”

      “She did not want to make journey home?” I had to admit it, the old fraud was good. The rawness in his voice seemed almost real. “She still had not forgiven me,” he said in an undertone. “If she had never forgiven, tragedy might not have come so soon.”

      His fake pain was the last straw. “My parents’ deaths are none of your business,” I said tightly. “It was a tragedy that their car went off a cliff during their visit home, but if you think you can use that tragedy to bolster whatever false claim you’re—”

      “They did not die from car going over cliff.” He gave a firm shake of his head. “That is what everyone was supposed to believe, but—”

      “But nothing!” I yelled. “She was killed in an accident, not by a vampire, and she was an ordinary woman, not a Daughter of Lilith or whatever you want to call it!” I rounded on Kat and Tashya, but they were a blur, because sometime in the last second my eyes had flooded with tears. “Don’t you understand, we have to keep believing that! In his version our nightmares were real!”

      The words were out there and there was no way to call them back. My gaze sought Kat’s, hoping for her particular brand of languid reassurance, but it was Tash who broke the silence.

      “But in my nightmares Mom died trying to save—” Her eyes widened and a shutter fell behind her gaze. “You’re right, Megan, they just can’t be real,” she said huskily. “They were just nightmares that I can blame on cheese or my imagination or watching a scary movie before bed. That’s the only way I can handle them.”

      “Same here.” Kat’s fingers went to her neck, as if she expected to feel the familiar silver chain and cross around it and her other hand tightened on the revolver. “I think I’ll go with my sister’s version, Grandfath—” She caught herself and her voice hardened. “I dumped too much vodka into the mix tonight. You’re a fake. There’s no such thing as vampires, we’re not Daughters of Lilith, and the nightmares we used to have when we were kids were just that—nightmares. Now get out of our house before I’m forced to use this gun.”

      The three of us were standing shoulder to shoulder. The old man’s hooded gaze swept from Tashya to Kat before coming to rest on me, but when he spoke it was obvious his words were directed more at himself.

      “There is no strength in blindness, and without strength they will not live through another night. I must do what I had hoped not to do.” Before he finished speaking I took a step toward him, but as I took a second step I froze. “It is time, Mikhail.” The Russian didn’t look down at the wolf that had silently materialized from the darkness outside. “Show them!”

      Like its master, the beast stared straight at me, but unlike the man’s gaze, the animal’s glowed with hatred. “Kat, get ready to shoot,” I said tensely, not looking away from the wolf. “I think Cujo’s about to—”

       Watch!

      The one-word command exploded in my head. I looked at the Russian, but his eyes were closed and his mouth was set in an anguished line. My glance darted from Kat on one side of me to Tash on the other, and the chill in me intensified. They were both staring straight ahead, and as I watched I saw tears glaze the china-blue of Tash’s gaze. From her parted lips came a low moan of terror. I broke through the paralysis gripping me.

      “Stop it!” I tugged the revolver from Kat’s limp fingers. Turning back to the wolf, I jammed the barrel between his eyes, my hands shaking so badly that the gun knocked against his skull. His glare on me didn’t waver. I thumbed back the revolver’s hammer. “Whatever you’re doing to my sisters, stop it right now or I’ll blast you to—”

      My throat slammed shut in midsentence. A giant hand seemed to squeeze painfully around my heart. As if I were in a speeding train rushing toward a tunnel, blackness suddenly blotted out everything but the hypnotically glowing gaze in front of me. From a long distance away I heard the gun hitting the floor, and at the sound I made a last attempt to struggle free from whatever was about to envelop me.

      But I was already enveloped, not by darkness, because my vision was slowly returning, but by a thick, homespun…cape?

      Instinctively I began to pull the heavy fabric from my shoulders. Then the same moan of terror I’d heard Tash make rose in my own throat. I thrust my hand out in disbelief.

      It

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