Page 79 of Tin God

Tenzin closed the door and lowered her voice. “Why didn’t you tell Oleg that Zasha had offered to end this if you killed me and delivered my head?”

Brigid kept her voice barely over a murmur. “Because he might have believed Zasha and tried to kill you.”

“He wouldn’t have succeeded.”

“Yes, but then we wouldn’t be gettin’ a quick plane ride to Juneau, would we?” Brigid shrugged. “Besides, Zasha wasn’t serious. If they were, they would have told me where to deliver your head.”

“I do like that you considered it.” Tenzin nodded. “I respect you more because of it.”

“Cheers.”

“You’re welcome.”

Oleg’s planewasn’t nearly as luxurious as Giovanni’s, but it did do the job. Tenzin flew herself to the airport outside Seward where she met a frosty and windchilled Brigid before they were loaded into the cargo compartment of the plane that would fly them to Juneau. After that, Brigid would be limited to boats since fire vampires and small planes didn’t mix.

Tenzin, of course, could fly.

Benjamin, I am coming to you.

She could feel him in her blood as they moved southeast. He would be sensing her too. The wind whispered that her mate was closer. His amnis was tied to her, woven through her blood as inextricably as a thread through a tapestry.

I am coming to you.

Tenzin endured the few hours in Oleg’s airplane and tried to remember how cold and wet the wind was outside. When they landed, she shot out of the plane and into the air, flying over a deep ocean of forest green. On one side there were trees as far as her eyes could see, and on the other side was the intense deep green of the winter sea threading through the archipelago that covered the northwestern edge of North America.

She took deep breaths of the cold air, filling her lungs and surveying the land below her. There were a few sparks of light, but most of the landscape was a combination of velvet green and endless water chopped with whitecaps from the cold northern wind.

Somewhere in the vast landscape of the Inside Passage, Zasha Sokholov was waiting for her, waiting to take their revenge. Waiting for Tenzin to break her vow.

In the back of her mind, she felt the memory of a delicate bird’s wing brush across her cheek. The warm press of humidity in a garden springing to life within a concrete forest.

She heard the whisper of a song overtaken by the bursting crash of glass shattering in flames.

Something delicate and beautiful destroyed for no reason.

Another flower crushed in the grip of careless power.

Zasha, I am coming for you.

ChapterEighteen

Brigid stepped off the plane in Juneau and saw Tenzin shoot out of the plane behind her, disappearing into the blackness as Brigid followed Lev onto the small private runway cloaked in darkness.

“I don’t like leaving you here,” Lev said. “But I’m not technically supposed to be in Alaska at all.”

Brigid narrowed her eyes. “And how long have you been here?”

The big man shrugged. “About fifty or sixty years.”

“Yeah, you don’t wanna push that.” She stuck out her hand. “Nice to work with you, Lev. Cheers to you.”

“Oh, I have a name for you.” He pulled a wadded paper from his pocket. “The name is Pam. She’s a vampire and she knows people.”

Brigid took the paper. “Knows people?”

“If you have to move around. Take a boat maybe.” He gave her a broad wink. “Call Pam if you need a boat.”

“And she works with Oleg?”

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