The Nightlife Moscow (Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Suspense) (The Nightlife Series Book 5) (9 page)

Aaron and Michelle huddled together on the cold steel bench inside
the helicopter across from Urvashi and the wolves. From the tenor of Michelle’s
thoughts, Aaron knew she thought the same as him:
This is so fucked up
.

Aaron noticed right away how Renault stayed aloof from the
rest of the wolves, squatted down on one knee to the side. They all eyed him
with none-too-friendly looks. There was bad blood somewhere in that deal.

The helicopter leaned slightly as it banked into a turn,
flying high above the city, staying above the ceiling of visibility. Aaron
worried they’d be a floating target once they descended on Dmitri’s place. The
guy would probably have some rooftop surveillance and security.
Damn wolves.
Going off half-cocked again.

Finally, his curiosity overcame the chattering of his teeth.
“How are we going in? Won’t they see us trying to land a helicopter on the
roof?”

Ivan snickered. “Who said we’re landing?”

Ivan’s perverse sense of humor had gotten old –
fast
.
“How the fuck are we getting in if we don’t land?”

Anatoly laughed aloud and reached down into a duffle bag
filled with gear. He pulled out several nylon harnesses and heavy black ropes.
“We go in quiet, deadly.” He ran a finger across his throat.

Ivan’s broad grin shone white in the darkness of the
helicopter interior. “Tonight, we are not wolves. We are assassins dropping
from the sky.”

Anatoly handed out the harnesses to each person and strapped
one around his waist and upper thighs. Aaron watched in utter disbelief. These
fools were planning to drop him and Michelle out of a helicopter without any
training whatsoever.

“I’ve never done this before!” He yelled over the top of the
heavy thrum of the helicopter.

Urvashi looked at the harnesses in Aaron’s hands and shook
her head. She leaned across and snatched the nylon away from him. Instead of
yelling over the top of the rotors, she spoke directly into his mind. {{I am
leading this, not them. Do not fear. Everything is in order.}}

A protest came to his lips, but he shut his yap. Though he’d
rather not admit it in front of the men, he found it very difficult to trust
the wolves. Their lack of organization and communication scared the shit out of
him. The wolves seemed to know what they were doing, but hadn’t bothered to let
Aaron and Michelle in on their plans. He hated following their enigmatic lead.
But he would follow Urvashi. She kept far too many secrets for his comfort, yet
he trusted her with his life.

Michelle squeezed his hand and her eyes bored into his with
the unspoken. She left her mind wide open, and he saw clearly what she had to
say. Ropes, helicopters,
whatever
. None of it mattered to her. She
wanted to kill everything in her path and gorge herself on the blood of her
victims.

The chopper flight path crossed the winding Moskva River
twice as they flew south and west, to the far reaches of Moscow where the city
thinned out into more residential areas. After circling around once, Aaron
realized their destination, the biggest building in the area, the only place
surrounded with a concrete fence. Aaron’s unnaturally clear night vision honed
in on the massive compound below. The place could have been a luxury palace fit
for kings, but the assault-proof fence topped with steel spikes and razor wire
ruined the effect. The setup had to be worth double digit millions, maybe even
triple digit.

Moscow harbored more billionaires than any other city in the
world. Looking at Dmitri’s fortress, the bastard was obviously one of the many
fat cats swelling the statistics. As they descended, he noticed finer details
of the statues, fountains, and shrub-lined pavement that encircled what was
actually two separate mansions. A massive portico with huge pillars framed the
doorways of both buildings. Each mansion could have been a modern replacement
for the Whitehouse. The layout was easily fifty plus acres. Though a heavy
blanket of snow covered everything, the walkways and driveways had been cleared,
just like major city streets. Dmitri must command an army of attendants and
security to keep a place like this in order.

“Impressive, no?” Ivan grinned like a madman. He had to be
batshit crazy to think their gang of misfits could actually take on someone
protected in this fortress. They’d probably have an easier time trying to
assassinate the President.

We’re gonna get lost in this fucking place.

No wonder Dmitri’s men had found them so easily the other
night. He probably had paid informants on every street corner in Moscow. Ivan’s
assertions that Dmitri had affected the course of Russian history suddenly
sounded much more believable in light of the monstrous double mansions. A man
with this kind of wealth and power could do anything. Worse, he would kill
anything or anyone to keep that position.

Anatoly said something to the pilot, and pointed at the top
of the southern building. The chopper slipped through the night, humming its
stealth blades into position fifty feet above the roof. No sooner had they
stopped to hover over the mansion, than Nikolay slid open the side door and
slapped his rope clasp into an overhead steel rung. A second later he stepped
out into the arctic wind and slid down the rope.

One by one the wolves followed Nikolay’s example, sliding
off backwards as they rappelled down onto the roof. Renault, the smug bastard,
grinned at Aaron in challenge as he shoved off into the wind and slid down his
rope. Katya was the last of the wolves to go. The brat winked at him and blew a
kiss on her way out. Though frozen in the subzero wind chill, he felt his face
warm with embarrassment that he wasn’t bold enough to try rappelling.

Urvashi stood between Aaron and Michelle offering an arm to
each of them. “Hold on.” Her voice seemed to carry unnaturally over the hum of
wind and rotors.

She stepped up to the open door with the vampires in hand
and winked at Aaron. “Jump.”

And they did.

Though he knew he could survive the fall and live to fight
another day, if he landed wrong on the icy rooftop, he might be out of action for
the night. He struggled against the urge to close his eyes and pray. As the
ground flew up towards his feet he felt a hard jerk upward from Urvashi’s
painfully strong grip. A subtle flash of energy flared beneath them and all
momentum slowed to a crawl. Only her crushing hold on his arm kept him from
dropping out as she arrested their fall and touched down gently on the icy blacktop
roof. She had somehow cushioned their landing with her telekinetic power.

Aaron looked to his master in awe, and caught another
split-second flash of the thing hidden beneath the human mask. When she flexed
her power like this, she revealed her true form. Although grateful for her
abilities, the thing beneath the Kim Kardashian skinsuit gave him a bad case of
the creeps.

The ropes dropped from the chopper and it hummed away,
leaving them no option but to go forward with this ridiculous plan. The wolves
already made their way down the roof to the edge, assault rifles with night
vision scopes at the ready. They looked like a special ops team sneaking up on
Osama Bin Hiding.

He, Michelle and Urvashi trailed after the wolves, slipping
and sliding on the ice-encrusted slope of the roof. Squatted along the roof edge,
the wolves surveyed the grounds with their night-vision scopes, looking for any
sign they’d been detected.

Ivan waved Aaron and Urvashi over to his side. He pointed
down the wall towards a window with a small semicircular balcony. “We enter here.
Anatoly will go first.” Urvashi nodded and Aaron nodded right along with her,
glad they weren’t trying to send him in first.

Michelle crept up silent beside Aaron and tapped Ivan’s
shoulder. “I will follow him.” Ivan and Urvashi gave her identical looks of
alarmed suspicion. She growled low and snapped. “I have been hunting in the
darkness for decades. Do not deny me!”

Ivan held up his hand to silence her, but answered her
demand with a terse nod. Aaron didn’t like it any more than Ivan did. The woman
was wound tight as a bowstring, ready to snap.

Urvashi’s intense look came with another psychic bump. {{She
is your responsibility. Ensure that she doesn’t jeopardize our mission.}}

Fuck. Stuck babysitting the psycho vampire bullet magnet
on a killing spree. The fun never ends in Moscow.

Anatoly gripped the indentations in the brick fascia for
handholds and quickly climbed down onto the balcony. Using a lockpick gun, he
opened the door and worked his way inside. As soon as he slipped through,
Michelle flowed off the side of the building and landed on the balcony silent
as a cat burglar. She was in the door faster than Aaron could curse her name.

Urvashi’s intense eyes flashed with another warning {{Get
control of her!}}. Aaron scooted off the side of the building to follow his
errant lover. He plopped down onto the balcony in a not-so-graceful thud, and raced
past Anatoly after Michelle. Anatoly did a double take on Michelle as she lit
through the room, making a beeline for the nearest warm body. It was an oversized
bedroom suite, with a huge four poster bed, and a lone man who had begun to
wake up from the disturbance they were making at the balcony.

Aaron hoped to god it was Dmitri as Michelle landed on the
unsuspecting man. Her teeth settled into his throat with a wet crunch, and she
sucked his blood down so hard and fast that the man went into coronary in a
matter of seconds. His body was dead by the time she sat up for air, a wondrous
look of satisfaction on her red-smeared lips.

Anatoly stared at her sideways, as if she’d grown a beard. His
eyebrows raised, obvious fear in his face, he pointed at her. “She was hungry,
dah?”

Aaron nodded.

The rest of the wolves gathered inside the room and quietly closed
the balcony door while Ivan checked the corpse in bed. His eyes scrunched up
and he looked to the wolves.

“Who was it?” Nikolay asked in a hushed whisper. Both Ivan
and Michelle shrugged their shoulders at the same time. She had killed a man,
probably a servant, and no one had a clue who he was. The guy never even had a
chance to wake up properly before she sucked him dry.

This was not the Michelle Aaron had lived with the past four
months. Hunger and anxiety had stripped away her usually rigid self-control. He
wondered where his lover had disappeared to, and when she might come back to
him … if ever. She was up off the bed and headed for the doorway without
another word.

Urvashi’s command slapped his mind. {{Follow her! She is
your responsibility.}}

Michelle slipped out the door, and Aaron jetted after her.
The hallway was wide and long, stretching over a hundred feet in both
directions. Michelle stood poised, her nose wrinkled once to the left, and she
flitted off so fast she blurred out of focus.

“Fuck.”

It was all Aaron could do to follow her without sounding
like a freight train running down the hallway. Doing his best to maintain
stealth, he slid up on her as she stood overlooking a three foot high railing
that led to a grand staircase curving down to the lower level. She tested the
scents on the air and peered through the darkness into a huge open area, a
great room with vaulted ceilings that reached high above. A slight whisper of
sound caught her attention.

Aaron’s senses honed to a sharp point as he watched Michelle
gauge the stairs and the distance to her prey walking through the darkness of
the lower level. He read the decision in her mind as she figured the stairs
would give her prey too much warning. In the space of a breath she was up atop
the heavy stone railing, poised for action. With one glance back at Aaron, a look
of sheer anticipation and excitement, his lover launched into the air on a
trajectory for her meal.

Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Aaron considered the
insane idea of following his unhinged lover. Then a second guard walked into
the room twenty feet behind the first. Both men were armed with rifles hanging
from shoulder straps, not your run-o-the-mill rent-a-cops.

With a silent curse on his lips, Aaron did the unthinkable.
He leaped onto the railing and pushed off hard, flying out into the open air,
thirty feet above his target, the second guard. He prayed there wasn’t a third
man trailing them.

Michelle hit her dinner head on and the two of them tumbled
across the million dollar marble floors. Aaron reached behind him for the hilt
of his sword and slid the katana from its scabbard as the second guard shouted
and brought his firearm to bear on Michelle and her victim.

The man beneath Michelle fought a pointless battle. She tore
through him without mercy, cutting off his scream with her teeth in his throat.
The second guard finally sensed something coming and looked right at Aaron –
too late. Aaron slashed through his left arm and bowled the man over. They
ended in a tangle of limbs with the katana buried in the man’s ribs.

A quick twist and shove, and Aaron cut straight through his
heart. He stood up and pulled his blade free of the gurgling man then licked
the blood off the sword. He wanted to curse Michelle as she guzzled down her
victim’s life. The words caught in his throat. It had taken this moment to
remind Aaron of his inherent nature,
a predator
. He slid the sword home
in the inverted sheath under his coat and kneeled to catch a solid meal from
the dying man at his feet.

This is what vampires were made for.

He’d been fooling himself to think he could function within
the rules and conventions of the human world. After filling his gut, he stood
to find Urvashi and the wolves watching him and Michelle from atop the landing.
He sensed his master measuring him carefully.