LITMIR.BIZ

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broad and solid, like the rest of the body I seemed to be trapped in, and even my mind didn’t feel entirely my own anymore. When I tried to scream, the voice that came out of my mouth wasn’t mine, and although I had no trouble understanding the words, they were in a language I’d never spoken.

      “Pridyl slishkom pozdno.” I have arrived too late. My—his—mutter was shot through with anguish. His—my?—feet stumbled on a rough path that led to a Hansel-and-Gretel cottage before carrying us up the stone steps to the cottage’s half-open door.

      As I saw the heavy gold ring on the middle finger of the left hand that pushed the door fully open, any last doubts I had vanished and pure terror sluiced through me.

      I was back in the nightmare that had haunted me as a child. But this time I was experiencing it as my grandfather had experienced it…

       He was too late.

      Bursting through the front door, Anton Dzarchertzyn almost fell over the body of the son-in-law he’d never met. He swept his travel-stained cloak aside and crouched quickly, his fingers seeking a wound he prayed not to find. He rose, relieved that his prayer had been answered, and pushed through the door at the end of the hall.

      From the still-smoking spots on the floor, it was evident the young blond woman had killed two of them already. As he moved to her side she smashed a wooden chair against the wall and was left grasping a splintered leg that still had a partial rung attached. Quickly he held out the object he’d taken from under his cloak in the hall.

      “Use this!”

      If his daughter felt any surprise at seeing the father she’d once angrily thrust from her life standing beside her now, she showed no sign. She spun toward him and snatched the stake from his grasp, turned again to confront the thing rushing at her, and plunged the sharpened yew-wood into its chest.

      The vampyr was a young woman with short black hair curving onto her cheekbones. Her paleness was an indication she hadn’t fed recently, Anton knew, and now she never would again. He turned away. A moment later he heard the rattle of wood striking wood and he turned back.

      The stake lay on the floor. A few ashes clung to it, but as he looked they sifted into nothingness, leaving a third charred spot. His daughter grabbed up the stake and faced him.

      “I told myself that if I was careful, my family would be safe,” she said, her voice ragged. “I let David convince me that even though you didn’t approve of our marriage, you had the right to meet your granddaughters at least once. If I hadn’t come back here, he’d still be alive, damn you!”

      Anton shook his head, understanding that her anger at him stemmed from intolerable grief. “Eventually the one who calls herself a queen would have found you and yours, my daughter. While you grieve for your husband, console yourself with the knowledge that you fulfilled your destiny when you sent her to hell.” Revulsion swept through him. “God grant that the fiery hair she was so proud of is now truly alight for all eternity.”

      His daughter’s face blanched. “I killed this one and two males. What do you mean, a queen vampyr with fiery red—” From a room upstairs came a faint mewling cry, swiftly cut off. Anton read the truth in her terror-flooded gaze a split second before her words confirmed it. “The triplets! She’s with my babies!”

      She pushed violently by him, racing through the hall to the flight of stairs he’d seen as he’d entered the house. He sped after her, his heart a stone in his chest.

      Red hair rippled down the back of the queen vampyr’s garnet velvet gown as she bent over one of the three cribs lined against the wall of the nursery. That much Anton glimpsed before his daughter pulled her from the crib and the stake in her hand sank into the vampyr’s breast. Blood, ancient and black, spilled over the velvet bodice, filling the air in the room with the stench of a charnel-house. Letting the stake fall from her hand, his daughter turned to the cribs.

      The Queen of Darkness fell upon her.

      “Nyet!” Anton grabbed up the stake. Even as his fingers closed around it his daughter fell backward into him, released from the vampyr’s grasp. Instinctively he caught her…and then instinctively he recoiled.

      “Yes, staryj vrag.” The mocking whisper sounded like burning bells on a hell-steed’s bridle. Lifting his stricken gaze from the twin trails of blood running down his daughter’s neck, Anton Dzarchertzyn saw a smile curve the red lips of the thing standing in the doorway. “I have tasted her, as you see. When the Daughter of Lilith is one of my creatures I will insist her attacks be more on target, but this time her rash aim was to my advantage. Before another night passes she will be hunting with me, not against me.” A pale finger touched the already congealing blood high on her breast and was raised to parted red lips. A pointed red tip of a tongue flicked out and the blood disappeared. “Unless, of course, you do what you must to prevent her from becoming mine. I will be waiting to see if she comes to me, old man.”

      A soft rustle of velvet and she was out of sight. A harsher rustle, like stiff wings unfolding, seemed to come from halfway down the stairs. Anton heard the front door slam shut.

      Slowly he lowered his daughter to the floor. As he cradled her to him her eyes, blue and unfocused, met his.

      “I missed her heart. I failed, Father!” The admission escaped her in a whisper. “I tried to forget who and what I was, and my skills grew rusty. I have shamed my heritage…but thank God I stopped her before she harmed my daughters.”

      The trembling of her hand was a sign that the poison was traveling through her and unconsciously his gaze moved to the stake on the floor. He looked back to see her watching him.

      “Now I ask you to keep me from further harm, too, Father, and protect me in the only way possible. But first give me your word that my daughters will be safe.”

      “It shall be done. A home will be found for the little ones here in their mother’s country—”

      “No!” Blue eyes blazed at him. “They will have the life I once thought I could have—an ordinary life far from the shadows and ancient blood-obligations of the old country! I want my daughters to have the opportunity to live without realizing such evil exists in this world…to live without ever knowing the burden of being Daughters of Lilith! Besides, the queen will anticipate you will keep them here. If you truly care for your granddaughters, deliver them to my husband’s parents and stay out of their lives!”

      In her agitation she gripped his arm, her clutch upon him weak. Suddenly Anton felt faint strength flowing into her fingers, and from the fear that crossed his daughter’s face he knew she understood as well as he did what that growing strength meant. She released him.

      “It is beginning,” she said flatly. “Do what you must, and do it quickly.”

      “Yes.” His voice sounded like dry leaves blowing across a November landscape, Anton thought. Once it had thundered at her, argued with her, tried to bend her to his will, all to no avail. From childhood she had taken risks that had stopped his heart in fear, shown defiance that had made it beat faster in anger; and throughout all her days she had been the skylark of his mornings, the dancing firefly of his dusks, the glowing star that warmed his world.

      Did she understand that? Was it too late to tell her?

      “I know, Father.” Her eyes holding his, she put the stake into his hand. “Even when the rift between us was as wide as an ocean, I knew you loved me as I love you. I have your vow that my daughters will come to no harm?”

      “You have my vow,” Anton said. He felt his heart break.

      “Then strike the blow and deliver my soul to God,” his daughter whispered.

      Anton Dzarchertzyn raised the stake. He saw the light begin to fade from the blue eyes fixed on his, saw the dark sickness start creeping across them, and he brought it down in a sudden sweeping plunge toward his daughter’s—

      “No!”

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