Page 5 of Crimson Oath
He wasn’t going to tell Anna that.
“She’s young,” he said quietly. “Zara bragged to the immortal world about her clever human bookkeeper, and now that bookkeeper is a vampire and she’s a vampire with connections so good that she was able to make her mother disappear.”
“Why is that anyone’s business but hers?”
“More than one of my kind is worried that if Tatyana could steal money from Zara and get away with it, she could steal money from them too.”
Another exaggeration, but it worked, because Anna’s eyes went wide.
“She wouldn’t,” Anna snapped. “Tatyana is anhonestperson.”
“Do you think so? She stole from me.”
“I don’t believe you.” Anna’s cheeks were red with indignation. “My daughter is not a thief.”
Oleg shrugged. “I didn’t want to believe it about my own daughter either.” But he had always known Zara was a thief. “Sometimes our children make unwise choices.”
The wheels were turning in Anna’s head. That was all heneeded. He just needed Anna Asanova to reach out to her daughter so he could track Tatyana down.
Oleg finished his tea and stood. “I am trying to help your daughter. I’m trying to keep her from making more mistakes. Drawing more attention to herself.”
Anna stood, but she said nothing.
Oleg walked toward the door, patting Dymka’s head as he walked out. “The next time you speak to her, tell her that I’m looking for her and so are others. Tell her that whatever mountain cave she’s hiding in, she’s going to have to leave eventually.”
Anna lifted her chin. “And you’ll be waiting?”
“Yes.” Oleg nodded. “I’m immortal, Miss Asanova. I can wait a very long time.”
Chapter 2
Tatyana
“No one is trying to kill me, Mama.” Tatyana kept her eyes on the screen, which was hidden behind a heavy silicone case. “He’s trying to get information from you. Do you remember everything?”
“He didn’t touch me.”
“Not once?”
“No.” Her mother narrowed her eyes. “But he did touch Dymka. Can he use his special mind powers on dogs? Is that why Dymka liked him?”
Oleg’s “special powers” were the same as Tatyana’s, an electrical current called amnis that ran under her skin like an extra sense. It let her manipulate humans, like the ones working at this very quiet bar in Kutaisi where she was using the Wi-Fi.
With a handshake, Tatyana could alter the humans’ cerebral cortexes to wipe their short-term memories. It was also the reason she had to use the homemade silicone case for her laptop.
Computers and vampire amnis? They didn’t get along.
It was her third laptop this year. She’d shorted out the others.
“He’s trying to scare you.” She glanced at Samson, the silentwind vampire who had flown with her to the city at the base of the mountains. “This is why I didn’t want you to go back to the farm.”
Kutaisi was the unofficial borderland between the territory under Arosh’s control, which stretched northeast into Central Asia, and that under Alina Machabeli, the vampire ruler of coastal Georgia and some of northern Turkey.
“And what was I going to do? Stay in Kherson with strangers?”
Her mother had been in a safe house in Kherson for over a year before she broke.
Tatyana had known it was going to happen. She could tell her mother was miserable. The fact that she was safe wasn’t as important as who was watching her birds.
