Chains of Ice (21 page)

Genny swallowed her gasp of dismay.

“We all know what that kind of disturbance means. He’s out of control. He’s targeting us. His presence is creating havoc, destruction!”

Genny had never heard Mariana sound like that—hard and cold, angry and vindictive.

“So I ask again,” Mariana said, “what are we going to do about John Powell?”

Grumbling rose into the stairway like oily smoke up a chimney.

Genny leaned against the wall and slid halfway down the stairs. There she could huddle and peer into the
traktir
. The village was there en masse—farmers, hunters, the baker, the grocer, the husbands and wives, the beggars and thieves. Genny’s team stood at the back of the room. Misha, Lubochka, Reggie, Thorsen, Avni, and Brandon. Every one of them stood with their arms crossed over their chests. All of them looked grim and concerned—except Brandon.

Brandon looked triumphant.

One of the farmers lifted his pitchfork. “John Powell blew over my haystack. He spread it everywhere. It’s ruined, no good to anyone!”

An elderly woman spoke, her voice quavering. “The window in my living room shattered, and the handles on my china cups popped off.”

An angry murmur rose, and Mariana said, “Of course he would target you, Tanja. John Powell was never grateful that you saved him from the orphanage and raised him.”

Tanja? Genny scooted farther down, far enough to view the front of the
traktir
.

There sat a woman who looked like Jabba the Hutt.

She was the one who had sold John to the circus, and these people of Rasputye believed—or pretended to believe—that she was the heroine of this incident. Because the handles on her china cups popped off.

Genny was sickened.

Tanja hefted herself to her feet. “I’m old enough to remember what it was like when John Powell’s mother thought she had been betrayed by her lover. She wreaked havoc in Rasputye before she went off and killed herself, and tried to kill her baby. Do we want those horrors to happen again?”

“No!” the villagers howled like a single hungry beast.

In this hamlet of tall, slender, hardworking people, Tanja was rolling with fat. She lived richly off the moneys she had made exploiting John and other people, other children.

These people of Rasputye gave their allegiance to her. They should be ashamed. They probably were ashamed. Yet they would go to hell for her rather than face a new day with John.

“My wife left me today.” The baker stood there, his ham-sized fists clenching and unclenching. “When Powell was . . . was rutting like an animal, she started wanting things. Lewd things. When I hit her like she deserved, she walked out. Took the train to Moscow.” He looked around at the other men and roared, “John Powell is ruining our women for work!”

Genny put her hand over her mouth.

Because of the energy pulses, everyone had known what they were doing. She wanted to die of embarrassment and horror and . . . fear.

Mariana stood up on a stool. Like some popular televangelist, she raised her hands over the
traktir
. “We all felt that horrible disturbance in the air. We all know what he was doing last night.”

An older women put one hand to her heart and with the other fanned herself.

“We know who he was doing it with. That girl. That Genesis Valente.” Mariana sounded coldly vindictive. “We saw her. We recognized her. We knew she was one of
them
. We knew she would bring trouble.”

Genny made herself as small as possible.

Lubochka left her team and pushed her way toward the front of the room. “
You’re
making trouble, Mariana. Why are you doing this? It’s not necessary. I can send Genesis away. You’ll have no further problems, and we can get back to business.”

“No!” Brandon bounded past her, took his place beside Mariana and faced the crowd. “Sending the Valente girl away won’t remove John Powell from your homes. He’ll stay in his cabin and if you make him angry, any time of the day or night, he will send those waves of destruction to Rasputye, and you’ll die.” He pointed his finger around the room. “Or maybe you won’t die. Instead, he’ll arouse all your women to a frenzy, then come and pick out the ones he wants—your wives or your daughters—and take them away to screw them. When they come back, they’ll be good for nothing. They’ll run away and you’ll be ashamed to call yourselves men.”

“That’s stupid,” Genny heard one of the women say, but she said it quietly, and the sound was quickly overwhelmed by the babble from the men.

Never in her life had Genny seen a mob, but she recognized one when she saw it.

Lubochka knew it, too. Genny saw her fighting her way back to Misha.

Thorsen sneaked out the door, calling on his cell phone as he went. He’d be meeting his helicopter nearby.

Avni had her hands over her face, and Reggie had his arm around her.

If Genny didn’t get out of here and warn John, he would be trapped, beaten, killed. Keeping low, she slipped down the rest of the way to the floor. With her head down and her back against the wall, she headed toward the door.

She was almost there . . . almost there . . .

A hand shot out of the crowd. It grabbed her arm, and pushed her against the wall.

Genny looked up into her captor’s face. Into Lubochka’s face. The Russian woman looked both furious and anxious. “I can’t save you.”

“I know.”

Lubochka kept her body between Genny and the mob, pushed her the rest of the way to the door, and followed her up the stairs into the sunshine. “Run the straightest way you can and don’t look back. Then disappear and never come back here—or you will die.”

Genny ran.

Lubochka watched her go, shaking her head.

Misha joined her. “I’ll bring the van. You get the computer.”

Lubochka glanced at the team gathering around. “Yes. We’ve got to get out of here.”

In a panic, John came out of a dead sleep and sat straight up.

Why had she left him? The night before he had done everything in his not-inconsiderable power to serve her the kind of bliss she deserved.

Then his gaze fell on the little table she’d dragged to the side of the bed.

A note. She’d left a note. Not good.

But there was also a bowl of soup . . .

He relaxed back onto the pillows. When a woman leaves a man forever, she doesn’t leave him nourishment.

Picking up the note, he read it—and sat up again.

Rasputye?
She’d gone into Rasputye? Alone?

Leaping out of bed, he flung on his jeans, a T-shirt, a long-sleeved khaki fatigue shirt. He pulled on his wool socks, laced his boots.

He was under no misapprehensions about the village where he had grown up. During his boyhood, he had seen how its proximity to the crossroads brought the gifted, while at the same time, jealousy turned the villagers sour. Rasputye had risen before, taken up arms, chased the gifted and sometimes killed them. When he had left as a boy, he’d sworn never to come back . . . and then, when his life had been destroyed, he’d been drawn back, as so many had before him.

Although delirious when he released his energy, he knew very well where his mind had directed it.

The people in Rasputye would be angry—and afraid.

He strode to the door . . . and staggered.

The energy he’d expended during his illness—and during their lovemaking—had left him weak. He cursed the delay, but he wasn’t going to make it to Rasputye without fuel; feared that, once there, he would need power.

So he gobbled the soup—it was dreadful and clear proof Genny was no cook—and prepared to follow her.

His gaze fell on her backpack, open and propped against the table.

Should he take it in case they had to flee? Was there anything in it she desperately needed? He did a quick search of the interior, found her camera, unzipped the side pocket, pulled out a photo . . . of him.

He recognized it. Sun Hee had taken it in happier times, between one mission and the next. He stood laughing at the silly antics of Amina and Bataar as they chased each other through the woods, and after he’d heard the camera click, he had turned and chased Sun Hee, too.

Right away, he knew what this photo meant, held as it was in Genny’s possession.

Genny knew who he was. She had always known who he was. She was working for someone who wanted him and his power.

But more than that . . . he’d been a fool. Again. He’d believed Genny’s sweet, open facade. He’d thought she was genuinely caring. He had begun to imagine he would be able to return to civilization, to live a normal life, to control his power. . . . with her help.

Instead, she was a fake.

“John, thank God.” She leaned against the doorframe, glad because he looked so healthy and vital—and that meant he could run. More glad because, in her eyes, he was the most handsome man in the world. “We’ve got trouble. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. Instead, he stared at the photo he held between his fingers. “What is this?” His voice sounded curiously neutral.

“I don’t know. But really, it doesn’t matter. The people of Rasputye . . .” It occurred to her that his complexion looked a little gray. “Are you sick? John, you can’t be sick. The people of Rasputye have gone nuts!”

John looked up at her, and his eyes were that pale, ice blue of anger.

“John? What is it?” Troubled, she started toward him.

Then it hit her.

Her backpack was open beside him.

He held the photo her father had given her.

John was looking at the picture of himself.

She forgot about the mob. She forgot about the danger. She lunged toward him, knowing she was being stupid, was admitting guilt. She was too late.

He stepped back and held the photo out of reach. Still in that cool, neutral tone, he said, “You knew who I was when you got here. They sent you. You came here to talk me into going back.”

“No. That’s not true. I came here to observe the lynx. But they asked me . . . that is, my father gave me this trip, but in return he promised them that I would do a favor. I didn’t want to, but I . . . I didn’t want to go into business so when he gave me the ticket, I just . . .” She knew how she sounded. She was trying to justify what she’d done, how she’d behaved, to whitewash her own role in a nasty plot.

She needed to take responsibility for what she had done. “John, I’m sorry.”

He stared at her, breathing hard, still with that gray cast to his complexion. “So you admit it.” His lips barely moved.

“Yes.” She reached out to him. “But let me explain how it came about.”

“You could have merely asked me to go back with you.”

“I meant to. I tried!”

He looked at the photo again, and looked at her.

“I did try,” she mumbled.

In that cool, neutral voice, he continued. “You didn’t have to sleep with me for leverage.”

She felt as if he’d body-slammed her. When she caught her breath, that frantic feeling had evaporated, replaced by the chill recognition of a hurt that would not easily be healed. “I didn’t sleep with you for any reason other than I wanted to.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I was a curiosity.
I wonder what it’s like to sleep with a Chosen.
You’re one of the groupies.”

“One of the . . .” She wasn’t one of anything. So she blurted out the stupidest thing she’d ever said in her life. “How can you say that to me? I love you!”

“What a convenient time to tell me.”

With those precise, carefully chosen words, he ripped her heart out and tossed it away as if it were garbage.

In all of her life, she had been so prudent, so meticulous, so fastidious about men. And now, the one man she’d trusted, the one to whom she’d given herself, called her a liar and a fraud. He cheapened the gift she had given him: the gift of herself.

He walked over to the cabinet, picked up the envelopes, the ones from the Gypsy Travel Agency and from Irving Shea, ruffled them like a deck of cards. “You saw these, I think.”

“Yes, I saw them.”

“Did you write any of them?”

“No. I’ve never lied to you.”

He looked at her and lifted his eyebrows.

She said, “I just didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

“You slept with me with the intent of influencing me to return.”

In the face of his studied disbelief, her guilt and despair began to change. “No. I. didn’t.”

“Perhaps that wasn’t the only reason. You slept with me because you knew I could give you pleasure, too.”

What was she supposed to say to that?

Still using that remote tone, he continued. “In fact, I promise I will give you ever more pleasure.”

She flushed at his casual assumption. “If you think I’m going to sleep with you again when you think so badly of me—”

Moving so swiftly she never suspected his intention, he wrapped his arms around her and with his hand on the back of her head, kissed her. He took her mouth, controlling her; his glorious savagery tearing aside her defenses.

She found herself clinging to him, not caring about his abysmal opinion of her, not caring about her doubts. All she knew was the taste of his passion, the thrum of his power, the way her heartbeat matched his, the way her skin heated as he melded her to his body.

When he let her go, she stood blurry eyed and swaying, needy and lustful.

Until he said, “You’ll sleep with me. It’s inevitable. Just as inevitable as your betrayal.”

She turned her back to him, put a shaking hand to her lips.

He still wanted her, wanted her enough to use his power to overcome her reservations.

But he didn’t respect her. She knew it, yet she had given in to him without a struggle. Shame and desire thundered through her veins, reverberated in her ears. . . . “You cheated.”

“You should recognize a cheat when you see one.” She swung on him. “You listen to me.
I
am not a cheat.
I
am not a liar. If you would think back, you’ll know I tried to tell you the truth—”

“You didn’t try very hard.”

“No. You’re right. I didn’t. I liked you and I didn’t want to mess that up.”

He wasn’t listening to her. No—he wasn’t
believing
her. “Did you tell them that you’d talked to me?”

“I told my father I had met you. But I didn’t betray you! I never said we’d discussed your return to New York City.
I didn’t betray you.
”

He crossed his arms and stared at her, those pale blue eyes so hard she felt as if she were beating herself against an iceberg.

“Look, you have to believe me. Basing all your relationships on lousy foster parents is the road paved with self-destruction. Yes, they were awful. Yes, they deserve to burn in hell. But—”

“My wife slept with my boss.”

The abrupt change of subject stopped Genny in midtirade.

Then she realized he hadn’t changed the subject. Not really. “Your wife? You had a wife?”

“Her name was Sun Hee, a beautiful, smart, gifted woman . . .” He stared at Genny, but he wasn’t seeing her. “Gary was her boss, too. He was the kind of guy who had to make it with every woman he met. But she was different. She never slept with him. He could have let things slide if she had. Instead, she chose me, not him. And I thought she chose me forever.”

Genny wanted to plug her ears, turn away, not witness his pain and humiliation. But she couldn’t turn away because this explained so much. . . .

“Gary never could resist a challenge and I guess he . . . he was irresistible so finally she . . . gave in.” His focus returned to Genny. “The funny thing was, I never saw it coming.”

“Oh, John.” She put her hand on his arm.

His biceps clenched beneath her touch, rejecting her.

She tried to think of the right thing to say when words were inadequate. “Lots of people are betrayed in that way. Lots of people have to divorce.”

“Divorce?” He gave a harsh laugh.

“You didn’t divorce her?” Genny knew she was afraid, but she had to ask. “What did you do?”

“I let her burn to death.”