The Siren's Dance Read online

  Stas had straddled the back of a chair with his long, lean legs clad in tan corduroy trousers, his ropy forearms crossed over the top rung. He barked out instructions to her.

  “Straighter. Sharper. Now the adagio--more fluid, let the movements flow together. Now the arabesque--taller, longer.”

  “Almost, Anushka, you are so close to perfection.”

  He turned the music on and watched her in silence. When the record ended, he began it again wordlessly and immediately, until she’d repeated the same dance two dozen times without even a break, her muscles on fire, trembling with fatigue. His gaze burned into her, a heat that felt like desire.

  And then came the part of every night that she craved and feared, when he would weigh her, measure her with a dressmaker’s tape, clucking his disappointment at her waist, her thighs, even though she had grown impossibly thin. The diet he’d put her on had already begun to sap her strength.

  “You are pretty, Anya, but to be my Giselle, you must be ethereally beautiful, a sylph who is barely there, who floats on the music.”

  Then he touched her, his fingers firmly manipulating her limbs, moving possessively over her body to position her in une attitude derrière, one leg behind her, extended parallel to the floor, one arm raised and the other in second position. In the mirror, he snagged her gaze with his and squeezed her breast, slid his finger under the edge of her leotard from her hip down to her sex, always teasing.

  “Aren’t you ready for me, Anushka? Why do you make me wait?”

  “Me? You’re the one who is making me wait.”

  “If you were truly ready, we would not continue this tedious pas de deux. You would have achieved perfection, you would already be my prima, and I could claim you.”

  With her arm overhead, he kissed her there, in the soft flesh at the inner curve of her biceps. His mouth hot and firm, stinging at first as teeth met skin, then drawing on her there. He put his hand on her belly, and she swooned, bringing her raised leg à terre. Even lightheaded from the dizzying effects of his mouth on the sensitive spot, she wondered if his bruising kiss would leave a mark the other ballerinas would see tomorrow when she lifted her arm en haute.

  Then her knees gave out.

  “Yes. Just like that,” he said. “Give in to it, give in to me.” He caught her weight. She was putty. He could have laid her on the floor and done anything to her at that moment, her body a husk, hollow and aching to be filled.

  “Anything, Stas.” She stroked her thigh and lifted her knee in a pose she hoped would tempt him. That he would kiss her lips, take off his clothes, and pour some of his strength into her. “Anything to be the dancer, the woman you want me to be.”

  “You still do not understand.” He shook his head, his upper lip curled slightly in disgust as he turned to retrieve her coat.

  Later, in her bed, nightmares tormented her. All night, she danced with demons. They snapped their sharp teeth at her and tried to drag her out of the theater as all the other dancers looked on blandly, arms crossed, whispering to one another as she fought, as if they’d seen the coda rehearsed a thousand times and her performance was unimpressive.

  The next day in class, he announced another dancer would be Giselle…and his wife. Anya felt a strange force drag her slowly backward until she was a million miles away from the pair who stood across the room, as if she were watching an opera from the space beyond the highest balconies. Then Stas glanced at her before he bent to kiss the girl’s lips, and something snapped inside Anya’s overworked body. She ran to the bathroom and vomited up her meager breakfast.

  The future Mrs. Demyan was plump, with breasts too large to look truly graceful. But her technique was undoubtedly beautiful. It more than made up for her ungainly curves. Yes, she might well be a better dancer than Anya. Even worse, she looked at Stas like they’d shared something intimate, like he’d made love to her all night after rejecting Anya.

  Burning with shame, Anya ran out of the theater as if the demons chased her, and she never went back.

  Sergey held Anya’s hand and tucked the blankets up around her neck. Her lovely complexion had gone gray, lying there, her eyes closed and recounting her nightmare. And that--a nightmare, like in those old fairy tales--was precisely what they seemed to be dealing with. If she hadn’t been there, lost in her horrible recollection, he might have succumbed to the sickening feeling curdling his stomach.

  “Anya?”

  Her lids flew open. “He’s a…” But the word didn’t come, as if her mouth refused to expel it.

  “He’s a zmora.” Just like Sergey’s mother had always said. A monster, an incubus, who visited women in their dreams and sucked the life out of them, or impregnated them with his demon spawn--

  Oh, fuck. Fuck.

  Pity creased Anya’s brow, and the same horror he felt widened her eyes.

  The dark hunger to possess her lapped at him again. That insane need to get inside her without a condom. Not merely extraordinary attraction, but some evil appetite. It had awakened as they’d drawn closer to the Académie de Ballet and the mouth of those tunnels that had lured his young self like a lover. It all made sense. His father was an incubus.

  “And I’m one too.”

  She would hate him. How could she not? He hated himself, hated to think he was like this man who’d hurt Anya and Oksana and God knew how many others. And he was a demon? Not only were ghosts real, and his mother’s delusions--but he was part of the crazy, supernatural world that tormented her.

  “You’re nothing like him.” She sat up and wrapped one small hand around each of his shoulders. “He crushed me, Sergey. He built up my hopes to crush them, to wring everything he could out of me.”

  “Maybe I would--”

  “No.” She shook him with a powerful show of her dancer’s strength. “Every time you look at me, smile at me, I feel like I’m enough. His every glance assured me I could never be. If you have that cruelty in you, you’ve proven yourself stronger than it.”

  He bit his lip, taking hold of her hand and flinging himself back on the pillow. He wanted to believe her. But still he reeled. Could he really be a demon? His heart galloped in his chest and he shook his head, a part of him still needing to deny this world his mother embraced. “Believing in ghosts is one thing, but demons--”

  “I’m not just a ghost. I’m a vila. And if one old story is true, then maybe they all are.”

  Sergey grimaced. “I hope not.”

  “Tell me, what do you know about zmoras?” she asked.

  He knew a lot, as it happened, because of his mother’s hallucinations. “They torment you in sleep, but by day they can be very seductive, sucking away a victim’s energy and stealing her life force through sex.”

  He almost choked on his own words. Was that really so different from his love life up until now? He wanted desperately to trust he could avoid becoming like Demyan. But what if the desperate way he’d fallen for Anya was only the beginning? What if he would become a parasite, sucking the life out of her, then moving on to others?

  His whole life, he’d feared succumbing to his mother’s mental illness. Turns out he’d been trying to outrun the wrong fate.

  He fisted the bed sheets. “I’m a monster.”

  “No. Think about your outrage over what Demyan did--not just on my behalf, but for all the other victims he must have had. That’s not the sentiment of a man likely to follow the same path.”

  He considered all the abuses she’d suffered, then imagined his mother belittled and dominated in the same way. Rage clenched his free hand into a fist. He wanted to pummel Demyan’s jaw, and he would do the same on behalf of any of the female officers he knew, the woman who worked at the juice stand. Anybody.

  Anya was right. He found Demyan’s behavior despicable through and through.

  “Maybe there’s a way to be a nice zmora?” she suggested.

  “A friendly nightmare? Pretty sure that’s an oxymoron.” Fro
m good cop to evil demon, all in one day. His brain was having trouble keeping up.

  “Okay. But if it’s any consolation, I think you just zmorad me very nicely.” She flung her leg over him and sat astride his hips, her lean form, her upturned breasts, the gentle muscles of her abdomen--so beautiful. “You can impregnate me with your demon seed whenever you want, and then I’ll go ghost. Foolproof birth control.”

  He grimaced again, and she pulled a mirroring expression. “Wrong time for a joke?”

  “Your timing’s just a little off.” He raised himself up to kiss the corner of her mouth, and she followed him back down, nestling her whole little body against him. Amazing, considering they’d just deduced he was the life-force-stealing demonic offspring of the man who had tried to break her and whom she intended to destroy.

  “Speaking of timing”--she stroked absently along his arm, still seeking sensation even after she’d had by his count two and a half or three explosions of the most intense sensations a body could endure--“this does explain some things. Demyan was thirty-three when I died. He would have been a lot older than your mother when they conceived you.”

  “But if he’s a zmora, he hasn’t aged any more than you have in all these years.” Clues fitted themselves together in Sergey’s mind. Alexei? Was that strutting prick his father? “Did you get a good look at the man at the ballet studio?”

  “Good enough. I saw him hold the door for you. Not Demyan. But…” She squeezed her eyes shut as if she were picturing the man. “He does resemble him somewhat. About as much as you do.”

  Great. A demonic and jealous half-brother. Good thing he’d already given up his hopes for a happy family reunion.

  “For all those years I was trapped at the river, I feared he would die before I found him. It seems that worry was wasted.” The wind kicked up around them, but wrapped in her arms, Sergey was in the safest of places--the eye of the storm.

  “I think the vila still wants her vengeance in a hurry.”

  “Yes. But how do you kill an immortal zmora?”

  Sergey thought back to Oksana’s arsenal. Knives, a pistol, a crucifix, herbs. “I think we need to ask my mother.”

  “Yes. I’d like to meet her. But first…” She bent to kiss him, and no trace of shyness or hesitation lingered. She parted her lips, slid her tongue between his, and explored his mouth. The muscles around his heart loosened, the soft mattress cradled him, and he had a new appreciation for why she liked gravity so much.

  She reached behind her to where his cock lay flaccid against his thigh. “Oh. Is it too soon to do it again?”

  Under normal circumstances, probably not, but finding out he was an incubus was the biggest turn off in the history of sex. He wasn’t sure he wanted his dick to work ever again.

  She slid off him and sat at his side, stroking the soft organ, her gaze volleying between his face and his groin. “It’s so different now,” she said, like she’d never seen one before.

  An out-of-character ring of innocence sounded in her voice. What had she said about not having had a hundred lovers? He studied her face. In profile, her nose and chin were a little sharp, not an ideal of beauty, but somehow that made her even more appealing.

  She tugged on his scrotum, rolled his balls between her fingers, slid his foreskin up and down the soft length of him. His cock did not respond, but she didn’t seem to take offense, as if she had no expectation the thing should be standing straight up under her sweet scrutiny.

  He glanced at the bed and those white sheets, which had brought her so much pleasure. A medallion of blood stained the linen where she’d laid.

  Hell. She’d been a virgin, had given herself to him for her very first time. And he was a goddamn zmora. He shuddered, ashamed he had taken such a precious gift, no matter how perfect it had been in the moment. He was a monster, and he had no right to a woman like her.

  Chapter 22

  Anya wore another of the outfits Sonya had sent. A smart gray wool pencil skirt, ivory blouse, and blazer. This time, she chose the most beautiful alligator-skin black pumps, exactly like a pair Anya had once admired in one of Sonya’s contraband Vogue magazines. Clearly, her sister had not forgotten them.

  Anya had never been able to wear shoes like these when she danced--they were torture on her arches. But Sergey wasn’t going to make her run the Potemkin stairs, so she risked them. When she slid her feet into the supple leather, the kindness of her sister’s gift wrapped her in a feeling almost as pleasant as Sergey’s arms.

  With him to hold, and her sister alive, a second chance at life held more than a little appeal. Yet Jerisavlja had been clear. Life among the vilas or a peaceful afterlife was the best she could hope for. Saying good-bye to Sergey and Sonya would be like dying all over again, and it was inevitable.

  Resigned, she slung her purse with the slipper onto her shoulder. When Sergey opened the door to the room, a bellhop stood just outside carrying an enormous flower arrangement. Fern leaves spilled out of a bronze urn, and at the center, an almost luminous golden blossom turning red at the edges of its petals.

  “A delivery for Miss Truss,” said the bellhop.

  Foreboding slithered over her skin, stirring up a memory.

  It was midsummer when they arrived in Odessa, Kupula Night. While the citizens of the city celebrated by lighting festive bonfires, Anya practiced diligently in the studio. She fell short on a jump and bruised her knee badly, and afterward he was so full of praise for her.

  Then he vanished into the basement before returning to bring her the bloom, its stem surrounded by leaves and tied with ribbon. “A fern flower for you.”

  Everyone knew the tradition of couples traipsing into the forest on Kupula night to find the fern flower. The girls wore garlands on their heads and if, when they came out, their men wore the flower wreath, the couple had become engaged in the woods. Not that anyone ever actually found the magical blossom said to bestow luck and fertility on the one who could see it, but plenty of couples used the excuse to seek out a dark, isolated spot in the woods.

  “There’s no such thing as a fern flower,” she said.

  “Oh, but there is, fortunate Anya. And I have chosen you to receive it.”

  It was as good as a marriage proposal, and she took it as one.

  “Let me see the card,” Sergey demanded.

  Her name was printed on the envelope in a familiar and menacing looping script. Sergey frowned at it, then handed it to her. The ivory card slid out easily.

  Darling Anya,

  Is it really you wandering the streets of Odessa with the dashing young Yuchenko? I thought you dead, but I should have known you were too stubborn to give up so easily. You remain so youthful and beautiful. I thrill to think of what this means for our future.

  Come to me. You know the place.

  S.D.

  She shivered, Sergey’s voice hauling her from the memory.

  “Let me see.”

  She passed him the card.

  Sergey’s eyes widened. “Damn it. He knows our every move.”

  “And he’s making plans.” The thought chilled her.

  Sergey kneaded the back of his neck. “I don’t want to lead him to my mom. Guess I’ll have to do some sneaky driving.”

  Getting in the car made skin-to-skin contact tricky. Anya had to climb through the driver’s side. Once in, they couldn’t exactly hold hands as he put a key in the ignition and lowered the parking brake. He rolled up his sleeve, and she rested her hand on his forearm, tracing the ridges of muscle and playing her fingers in the fine straight hairs there. Stas had never let her touch him like this, another reminder of how different they were.

  As Sergey drove, she tried to listen to the torrent of anecdotes and random associations that he made. Now that he knew about Demyan, he could find endless evidence from his upbringing to support the hypothesis that he was some sort of demon. But her thoughts repeated Stas’s words on the note. I thrill to t
hink of what this means for our future.

  He’d rejected her. Why would he pretend to want her now? What could he be planning?

  “I should have known,” Sergey ground out. “I’m a cop. I’m paid to figure shit out.”

  Self-criticism was a web Anya had been caught in many times, and it pained her to hear it in her golden boy’s mouth. “Come on. You didn’t even believe in ghosts until you met me. How could you have possibly assembled those random bits of data into this scenario?”

  “I should have trusted my mother.”

  She gave his arm a squeeze. “You were a kid with a mom too sick to take care of you, bearing all the burdens of your family. You needed the support of the adults around you, and they told you she was crazy, so you believed them.”

  “Yeah, but she’s my mom. She loved me, raised me in spite of…”

  Anya cringed to think how he might be completing that sentence in his mind.

  He cleared his throat. “She protected me from the truth.”

  “She also raised you to be a fine man, even though Demyan rattled her brain.” If Anya hadn’t died and become a vila, she might never have found the strength to go on after what he’d done to her. “She must be incredibly courageous.”

  He glanced at Anya and then back at the road, the veins and tendons of his hands straining against his skin as he gripped the wheel. “I always thought she was weak.”

  She held his arm more firmly. “But now you know otherwise, and you can tell her.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled into the parking lot of a picturesque building of ivory stucco roofed with terra cotta tile.

  “Wow. This looks like a beach resort. No wonder you’re willing to kiss up to Lisko.”

  “I don’t--” He glanced at her, saw her smile, and laughed. When the moment passed, he kept looking at her, an odd expression on his face.

  Her heart got all fluttery, and she grinned back. Whatever that feeling was, she was almost certain no one had ever felt it while gazing at her before. It was enough to make a girl feel all tingly--better than how she’d felt after those orgasms, plus the buzz from receiving a standing ovation.