Page 1 of Sinner's Sacrifice

Prologue

Bazyli Breznik looked at the shiny yellow cab parked in front of him, not a dent in sight, and shook his head. “This is not my car.” A new car like this was attractive, pleasant, and worst of all...trackable.

His cousin, Yvgeny Breznik, frowned at him.

Yvgeny was the same height as he was, about six feet, same dark hair and eyes, but where Baz preferred shaggy hair and a beard, Yvgeny kept his hair short and was clean shaven. He also wore a suit that probably cost more than what Baz made in a month driving a yellow cab. Expensive watch and a fancy tie, too. He looked like the kind of mark any pickpocket would love to bump into. Except for one thing. The clean-cut businessman exterior was a thin veneer for what he was: a killer.

The same as Baz.

“Your old car is flat as a pancake.” Yvgeny glanced at the new vehicle and gestured at it. “What’s wrong with this one?”

“It’s too new.”

“It’s two years old.”

“It doesn’t even need a key.” Baz waved his hand at the car. “You just have to stand there with the black box thingy in your pocket, get in, and push the big stupid button to start it.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Baz crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t trust machines that are smarter than I am.”

“There are lamps smarter than you are,” Yvgeny said with a laugh. He shook his head and sighed. “Why do you always have to be so difficult?”

“Give me the oldest car you have. Something I can hot-wire if the occasion calls for it.”

“You are worse than a wife,” his cousin said as he pulled out his phone and texted something to someone. “Complain, complain, complain. Nag, nag, nag.”

“How would you know?”

“I’ve seen a lot of good men, independent, strong bastards reduced to whimpering fools by a woman.”

Baz snorted. “They hadn’t met the right woman then.”

Yvgeny didn’t reply.

Baz looked at him. Normally his cousin would continue to make wisecracks. Instead, he looked oddly serious. “What?”

Yvgeny put his phone away. “Still in the honeymoon stage?” he asked, as if concerned about the answer.

“You mean, me and Nika?” Baz frowned. Did Yvgeny think he and Nika were just playing house? “This isn’t a game or a short-term thing for either of us.”

It had been two weeks since he and Nika had decided to try to have an actual relationship. Two weeks since she’d been kidnapped by human traffickers. Two weeks since he’d nearly gotten her killed. Two weeks since she’d found out that he and a small group of others weren’t quite human anymore. Well, they were human, but they were suffering from an auto-immune disorder that had changed them.

They didn’t get sick or age and healed in seconds what would take weeks for a normal human. They had to drink blood to obtain sustenance.

Two weeks since she found out Baz was a vampire. She should have tried to kill him, should have tried to shoot as many bullets as possible into his brain.

Instead, she’d backed him up and put those bullets into other vampires’ brains. She’d kissed him, loved him, and was working to hide what he was from the rest of humanity.

Yvgeny’s gaze flicked between Baz and the house behind him. “Are you sure she won’t betray you? She’s a cop, they’re all about the rules, and we broke a lot of them.”

“If she were going to do that, she’d have done it already, while she still had some semblance of proof.”

Yvgeny’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “What happens when you two...part ways?”

Ah, that was the real question Yvgeny wanted answered.

“I can’t predict the future any more than you can, Yvgeny.”

---