Page 102 of Blood Mosaic

They had talked about logistics and business, but Oleg still hadn’t told Mika what had passed between him and the ancient vampire he’d met in Sevastopol.

Oleg poured the green glass back into the tray and turned. “I told Saba that Zara was already dead.”

Mika’s face went blank. “You lied to her.”

“We’ve lied to everyone.”

“I didn’t think you would lie to Saba.” A thread of fear in Mika’s voice. “If she finds out?—”

“She won’t find out if we take Zara quickly. Right now there are only rumors and whispers, but this needs to end.”

“Take Zara? Not kill her?”

Oleg wavered. “I haven’t decided yet.”

He kept going back and forth. Kill Zara? Keep her captive? After his first conversation with Tatyana about it, he’d been entertaining the idea of keeping Zara captive. But then he’d told the vampire world she was dead. He didn’t mind lying, but he also didn’t want to anger the ancients.

Mika’s face was even paler than usual. “I don’t like any of this. She needs to be dead, Oleg. I’ll call Roman. He’ll arrange a truck to bring Zara’s gold here.”

“Good. And tell Roman to include Luana’s jewelry too.”

Mika closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “When she hears about this, I cannot predict how she will react.”

“She’ll lose her mind—more than she already has—and when she does that, she’ll make a mistake.” Oleg turned back to the mosaic and tried to calm his mind. “Make it happen, Mika.”

“I can have an armored truck by tomorrow. The truck isn’t a problem.”

“Talk to Radu and arrange for it to go through Minsk. I don’t want that gold going anywhere near Ivan and the others in Moscow.” It would be just like his brothers to hijack his truck to fuck with him. Technically they were under his aegis, but they were already angry about Oleg killing Sokolov blood; he didn’t want to provoke them more.

“Understood. He owes us more than one favor.”

“Then once I have Zara’s gold in Odesa, it stays with me,” Oleg said. “Forget dangling the human in front of her—dangle the gold. We both know she wants that more.”

“I suspect she wants the humanandthe gold,” Mika said. “But she might be content with the gold.”

A week later,Oleg woke at dusk, lying in his day chamber and letting his mind drift. He kept his eyes closed and saw a picture in his mind, a floating, fuzzy image of doves flying over a field ofwheat, their pearl-grey wings casting shadows on the golden waves below them.

He could use polished marble for the birds’ bodies, mother-of-pearl around their necks. Amber glass to create the heads of wheat so in candlelight they would appear to move, catching the light as the flames flickered.

He saw her walking through the wheat field, her golden hair the same color as the nodding heads of grain. She turned and looked at him, her blue eyes easy and her smile wide in the afternoon sun.

Do you dance, little wolf? Do you still dance in your dreams?

Oleg opened his eyes and stared at the velvet darkness that wrapped around him.

Unlike most vampires, he preferred his day chamber to be void of all light.

Vampire sleep was one of the best and worst aspects of immortal life. Other than a few outliers, his kind was struck unconscious during daylight. Whether his mind was exhausted or frenzied, when the sun rose, Oleg slept. It was one of the reasons he preferred life in the Kievan South.

For an immortal, life in the north was a journey of extremes. In the winter, icy cold chilled his fire and slowed his already slow blood but allowed for plentiful darkness. When the summer hit and temperatures warmed, his blood quickened, but waking hours contracted to an impractical three or four hours a night, so it was impossible to get any work done.

The vampires who had remained in Oleg’s northern homeland were a different breed, and he’d never felt kinship with them. He preferred the milder temperatures and lower latitudes of the Black Sea and the surrounding regions.

He snapped his fingers and brought a flame to life, directing it toward the oil lamp by his bed. The soft gold glow illuminated his day chamber and animated the walls.

He hadn’t finished the mosaics in this room because he didn’t spend much waking time here, but he’d sketched out a river scene he remembered from his early years with his sire, when he followed Truvor’s command, conquering territory up and down the vast interior river systems of Eastern Europe.

“You want to move Zara’s treasure here?”

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