“You know after this there’s no turning back,” Anastas said grimly, staring across the street from the shadows.
“I know,” Tanya replied, and opened her cell phone, then punched in the numbers that would detonate the charges they’d rigged in the tunnels beneath the building. “Call 911 to minimize the blaze and to keep it from spreading to other buildings right after I push SEND .”
Anastas nodded and Tanya watched a slow smile creep across his face. She depressed the SEND button with a French-manicured nail.
The building exploded in an orange inferno. Windows shattered beneath glass-melting heat. Almost knocked off their feet from the force of the blast, they hunkered down against the adjacent building that protected them. Heat and flames licked at broken bricks and twisted metal. Shrapnel from the rubble whizzed by them, but Tanya wrapped them both in a dark energy shield as Anastas hugged her against him tightly. After a moment they both looked up to stare at their handiwork. Humans snapped out of their daze and rushed back and forth outside screaming, but no vampires had exited the building.
“You have sent a large message, I believe.”
“They are gonna be so pissed.”
“Yes … and now that we have visited the Russians, I know of this nice little Polish blood bar in Queens where we can also get a drink with no troubles. Shall we?”
Tanya just shook her head and laughed.
MIST
Susan Krinard
—an ax age, a sword age —shields are riven— a wind age, a wolf age— before the world goes headlong. No man will have mercy on another.
SAN FRANCISCO, PRESENT DAY
The sword sliced the air inches in front of Mist’s face. She swung Kettlingr to intercept the blow, bracing herself and catching the blade in midstroke. Metal clanged on metal with glorious, discordant music. Her opponent bore down hard for several seconds, his furious gaze fixed on hers, and abruptly disengaged.
“One of these days,” Eric said, his face breaking out in a grin, “I’m going to beat you.”
Mist lowered her own sword and caught her breath. Perspiration trickled from her hairline over her forehead, soaking the fine blond hairs that had come loose from her braid, and her body ached pleasantly from the hard workout. She grinned back at Eric, who sheathed his sword and reached for the towel lying across the bench against the wall.
“You’re good,” she said. “Almost as good as I am.”
He grimaced and scrubbed the towel across his face. “I outweigh you by eighty pounds,” he said. “I don’t want to think about what you could do to me if you were my size.”
Size had nothing to do with it, though Mist hadn’t yet found a way to tell Eric why he’d never be able to beat her. She’d even thought once or twice of letting him win, male pride being such a fragile thing, but instinct was too strong.
There had been a time when her kind had been no more than choosers of the battle-slain, bearing the trappings of war themselves, but never baring their swords. Ragnar?k had changed Odhinn’s handmaidens, as it had changed so much else.
Mist sheathed her own sword and stroked the runes engraved on the hilt. She had no right to pride of any kind. She had but one purpose in Midgard, and it had been her only reason for living after everything she had known was gone. The fact that she had permitted herself a relationship with a man after so many centuries was an aberration, a reckless act of defiance against her fate.