Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (6 page)

He knew what he
was doing. He was well practiced, and she didn’t do a thing against
him, simply kept quiet and waited for him to finish. And poor Dita
had been struck by her own father, and probably because I had tried
to convince her she could be a hero. Every time I interfered, I
just made everything worse.

Mrs. Yaga
turned up as the man began to stir. He mumbled something incoherent
and just rolled over. She stepped out of the car carefully. I
didn’t see who was driving, but they pulled away immediately.

“You
interrupted my date.”

I couldn’t tell
if she was joking or serious.

She nudged the
man with her walking stick. “This is him, I suppose.”

“Yeah. I’m not
sure what to do with him.”

Her eyes
narrowed. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Someone is on their way.
Where is the child?” She sounded very protective of Dita.

“In my house. I
didn’t want to get her until he was gone.”

“Understandable. Why don’t you keep Dita company until he’s
removed? I need to speak with Anka alone.”

Shrugging, I
headed back to my house. I rapped on the front door and called out
to Dita, telling her it was okay.

“Is he gone?”
she asked when she opened the door. “Did you hurt him?”

“I didn’t hurt
him.” I stood there feeling awkward. “Your mother is just cleaning
up, so hang out with me for a few minutes, okay?”

She nodded and
let me lead her back into the living room. She had managed to find
some late night/early morning cartoons. She sat on the sofa, her
hands on her lap, more still than any child I had ever seen. The
bruise on her cheek seemed to darken before my eyes.

“Can I get you
anything?”

She shook her
head. “I just want to go home.”

“It’s going to
be okay, Dita.”

Her eyes filled
with tears that didn’t drop. “No. It won’t.”

The flat tone
of her voice scared me a little, but a soft rap on the door
interrupted us. I opened the door to Mrs. Yaga and Anka.

“Come on home,
Dita,” Anka said, acting as though nothing had happened. Nodding,
Dita clung to her mother’s hand.

Mrs. Yaga
watched them leave. “He’s gone. Thank you for helping them.”

“You care about
them.”

“The same could
be said for you. After all, you stepped in.” She sighed. “I knew
her mother once. A shame it came to this for her.”

“Where is
he?”

“Taken away,”
she said firmly. “He shouldn’t be back, but if you hear anything
again, please call me.”

“Police?
Guardians? Who took him?”

Her thin lips
curved upward. “No matter who. Get some sleep. You look exhausted.”
She left without a word, and I realised her walking stick was
missing, yet she walked easily without it.

I tossed and
turned the rest of the night, unable to relax. When I heard Dita
playing in the back garden the next morning as though nothing in
her life had changed, I couldn’t resist knocking on her front
door.

When Anka saw
it was me, she let out a weary sigh before beckoning me in. “Thank
you for last night,” she said as she laid out cups and a teapot.
“Dita has never gone through that, so it was a shock, I suppose.
I’m sorry she disturbed you.”

“Are you
kidding me? I’m just sorry I didn’t hear anything earlier.”

She glanced up
at the clock and twisted her dirty blond hair up into a loose bun.
“There was no need for your interference.”

I stared at
her. “He was beating the crap out of you. He could have killed
you.”

A humourless
smile curved her lips. “I’m sturdier than I look.” But her eyes
narrowed. “Don’t give me that look.”

I was taken
aback. “I’m not giving you any look.”

“I see your
judgement, how you think I’m weak, but I’m doing what’s best for my
daughter. She needs her father, even if he didn’t make a good
husband. I bring out the worst in him. When it’s just the two of
them, they’re happy. They love each other. That’s completely
separate to how it is for him and me.”

“How could it
be best for her to see her father hurt her mother? She was
terrified last night. And he hit
her
.”

She glanced at
the window. “And now she’s fine. Children are resilient. As long as
the good times outweigh the bad. I’ll make sure she never sees him
hit me again if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m worried I
won’t get here in time. Next time. There
will
be a next
time. Surely you see that.”

“Like I said.
I’m resilient. He’s human. A bruise is nothing to me. Believe me,
there are worse things.” A shadow crossed her face, and I saw true
fear in her eyes. She might be calm and sedate, but she had known
what it was like to see her death coming.

I could relate,
and I softened. “What’s your story then, if this is of such little
consequence? What’s happened to you?”

She shook her
head. "If I ask your story, will you tell it?”

I couldn’t
control my smile. “Try to stop me.”

She lit a
cigarette and took one long drag. “You are nosy. I couldn’t tell
before. Dita likes you. She talks about you as if you are a friend.
You don’t judge her for what she is, do you?”

“I have no idea
what she is. Hell, I’ve no idea what I am.”

“Funny you say
hell.” She inhaled deeply, apparently savouring the taste of
nicotine on her tongue. “My mother is a
boginka
. Do you know
this word?”

I shook my
head, leaning forward eagerly.

“At one time,
back home, the boginki were held in great esteem. Humans would
perform rituals and sacrifices to honour them. Faith and devotion
are power for these beings. The greater the faith, the greater the
power, and the more harm their symbols can do to their enemies.
It’s how gods are displaced, how some sleep while others rule. You
look surprised, but surely you know this.”

“About why gods
sleep? Not for sure, but I’ve wondered. Someone once told me his
gods slept and left him as a… a keeper. Does that make sense?”

She nodded
vehemently. “
Tak
! Keeper! Some ride the wave and wait for
their time to come again. Others grow too weak, so they sleep and
leave their power with a keeper, someone who will keep their
memories alive and ensure the faith grows again. If the people lose
faith, then the symbols have no power.”

“What do you
mean,
symbols
?”

She thought for
a second. “Like vampires. The religious symbols hurt them, but only
those of the modern religions, not the true, ancient ones. At
least, not anymore. The ones with the power work. It’s how it goes,
but the battles for devotion are the longest, the most dangerous.
The boginki weren’t gods, not really, but they also lived on the
faith and offerings the people brought. As time passed, devotion
lessened, so they took sacrifices themselves. They swapped the
human children for
odmieńce
. Changelings.”

She poured some
tea, but her hands shook so much that she spilled a little. “They
wanted to influence the human children, force their devotion, and
have the odmieńce spread their word amongst humans. The human
children usually became sacrifices, although some of them remained
as servants in the end.”

“And they got
away with it? Replacing the children? Murdering them?” I asked,
aghast.

She smiled. “Of
course they did. Why would anyone imagine their child is the spawn
of a monster? Who would know? They might suspect, but speak on it,
and what would happen in this day and age? There are so few now
that it makes little difference. The boginki take what they need to
survive.”

She exhaled,
her face relaxing in a cloud of smoke. “My mother haunted the lake
by a small village in Poland. She saw my father almost every day
and decided she was in love with him. She showed herself, but he
was devoted to his wife and paid her no mind. She made herself look
like his wife, became pregnant with me, and when I was born, left
me at his home. I am, in effect, a changeling.”

I stared at
her, unable to decide what I thought of that. “So his child was
taken?”

She shook her
head. “He had no child, but my mother revealed all to him, and he
took me from her. She was so deluded with ideas of love that she
let him. He raised me, loved me, but his wife was unhappy. She
didn’t believe, and she thought me the result of an affair. They
couldn’t fix their marriage, and she left. But he never went to my
mother, and, eventually, she saw her mistake, found a new
infatuation, and decided my father should have no happiness. These
beings are fickle things.”

She smiled
wryly, and I found myself nodding in agreement.

She stubbed out
her cigarette. “She came for me. She made a dramatic entrance, but
he had been expecting her. He knew of boginki, and he knew if she
took me I would die or be sold as a half-breed. He couldn’t stop
her then, though. I suffered for a year, but he found me. He saved
me and made me flee to Ireland along with all of the other
emigrants at the time. I’ve been hiding here ever since, but I
haven’t heard from him. Knowing him, he went after my mother. I met
Dita’s father, and I was happy to find a strong man to protect me,
but we both know how that went. I took Dita and ended up in a
women’s shelter, and it was there that Mrs. Yaga found me. She
brought me here two years ago, and I’ve been safe, mostly.”

Mrs. Yaga had
told me she had known Anka’s mother. Interesting. But there were
more interesting things about her story. “Your own mother would
have sold you? To who?”

She waved away
a fly in irritation. “They hate the half-breeds, but they all want
to own one. They can’t take just any changeling, though; it
wouldn’t be worth upsetting a boginka. Boginkas thrive on spite and
would never forget the slight.”

“But they
wanted you?”

“I have no
gifts. I was old enough to know for sure, so she couldn’t sell me,
and she made me her plaything instead. I would have been safer with
another, but then again, my father would never have found me that
way. It worked out. In the end.”

She gazed at me
steadily. “I know you’re looking for those who sell the children.
You won’t find them, but you might die trying. Are you sure that’s
what you really want?”

“How would you
feel if someone came into your house in the night and took Dita
because she has your blood in her veins?”

She rubbed her
eyes. “Trust me, it’s something I’ve worried about since her birth.
But I’ve stayed in the shadows, and there are no others like me
here. The boginki are forgotten, and that works in my favour.
Besides, if I have no gifts, what chance does she have?”

“Would you ever
go back? Find out what happened to your father?”

She shook her
head. “I couldn’t risk it. I hope he lives and that he’s still
protecting me. It’s because of him that I allow Dita’s father to
see her. He’s a bad husband, but he loves his daughter, and I
believe children need their fathers. If mine had rejected me, I
would have died suffering. I can’t take that away from her, no
matter how badly he treats me.”

My insides
ached with her pain. She thought she was doing right by her child,
and who was I to blame her? I hadn’t known my parents; I couldn’t
see what she saw when she looked at her daughter. But still, I
wasn’t sure how a bad parent was any better than no parent at
all.

I couldn’t get
Dita and Anka off my mind, but I had work to do. I only had a
couple of months off from vampire business while Daimhín was away,
and it had to be enough time to, amongst other things, track down
information on the beings who had taken Peter’s son, because it was
beginning to look as though they were the same people I was already
looking for.

I spent hours
online searching for information on any survivors of the attacks
Illeana had collected data on. I wasn’t sure how she could even
tell which attacks were the right ones, and I sometimes felt as
though we were on a wild goose chase. Did she have information we
couldn’t access? Was it guesswork? Had she been wasting her own
time? I had no answers and began to feel disheartened until Carl
called me.

He whispered
into the phone, and I figured he had to be at work still. “Get
this. The book is clearly marked in the inventory, but it isn’t on
the shop floor. It hasn’t been sold, but it’s gone.”

“So, what? Did
she steal it? Did Eddie give it to her?”

“Hard to say.
But if he did give it away, why wouldn’t he clear it from the
inventory? I’m guessing it was stolen, but I can’t remember Illeana
ever being in here.”

“And it had to
be pretty recent if you knew of the book.” I chewed the inside of
my cheek, using the pain to help me focus. Carl hadn’t been working
in the shop for long before Illeana’s death, so the theft had to be
fairly recent. But Carl wasn’t in the shop twenty-four hours a day,
so anyone could have taken it without him knowing.

“Should I say
something to Eddie?” he asked.

“Maybe not. It
might make him suspicious of you, too. Stay quiet for now, just in
case.”

“All right.
I’ll go online after work and try to track down someone. I’ve been
looking up similar incidents, and there are some that Illeana
didn’t have with her stuff. What if she had another hiding place? A
lot of the documentation we have doesn’t make sense, and I’m not
even talking about the coded stuff. What if the codebreaker and
other files are elsewhere?”

“It’s possible.
Maybe we could talk to her sister again.”

Carl made a
weirdly strangled laugh. “At the bar? Maybe while you’re there, you
can persuade Peter to go home.”

I realised I
hadn’t heard from Peter in two days and groaned. “Has he been there
since the other night?”