Wilder Read Free Page B

femininity, the Wilder women supported and protected her . . . for Aleksandr was her son, her firstborn, and every day she cried. Every day she prayed for his safe return.
    In silence, Jasha and Rurik, Adrik and Douglas dragged the Varinski from the root cellar and brought him to face the family tribunal.
    The Varinski was tall, but bulky, with broad shoulders and too much weight around his middle. Konstantine judged him to be about forty, at that age when men realized they were no longer the strongest, the youngest, the best. That meant he remembered the days when the Varinskis were at the top of the food chain, when a male lived for that moment he reached puberty and became a predator that would hunt and kill and earn a fortune for his cruelty.
    Karen and Anne placed logs on the coals, and eager flames licked them to life.
    Konstantine could have turned on the outdoor electric lights, but some scenes played better with the proper atmosphere.
    Adrik and Douglas shoved the man into a sitting position on a log set close to the fire. Rurik and Jasha removed his gag and the ropes that bound him.
    “You know,” Konstantine said kindly, “I recognize you.”
    “You do not!” The Varinski half rose.
    Rurik and Douglas slammed him back down.
    “I do,” Konstantine assured him. “You’re a brother. A cousin. A Varinski.”
    “Yes,” the Varinski muttered. “I’m—”
    Konstantine held up his hand. “Don’t tell me your name. It’s not important.
You’re
not important. If I were guessing, that’s why you tried to shoot me.”
    The Varinski snarled.
    “Fearsome.” Rurik’s Tasya stood in the shadows, but her tone mocked and taunted.
    The Varinski snarled again, then let his defiance fade to silence.
    Konstantine let that silence drag on, until the Varinski shifted uncomfortably, as if ants had invaded both the log and his hefty butt. “Compared to me and my sons, you are young. I think . . . yes, I definitely think my boys and I broke our pact with the devil before you reached puberty.”
    The Varinski looked aside. “Yes.”
    “So what you’ve been all your life is a pathetic loser who talked about the good old days without experiencing them,” Jasha said.
    The Varinski swung to face him, lips curled back, dark eyes cruel with resentment.
    Jasha leaned toward him, hypnotizing him with his gaze. “I was a wolf, running free in the forest.”
    Rurik fed more logs onto the coals, and when the flames lit the night sky, he said, “I was a hawk, alive on the wind.”
    Adrik stood just out of sight of the fire’s light. “I was a panther, black as the night.”
    Douglas watched his wife, their Firebird, slim and still, her eyes fixed on the Varinski. “I was a cougar, gleaming golden as I hunted my prey.”
    “Well . . . aren’t you just lucky,” the Varinski sneered. “You ruined it for the rest of us.”
    “Yes. We did,” Konstantine said.
    The Varinski turned on him like a snake about to strike. “The apocalypse is coming, and because of
you
, Konstantine, we Varinskis are nothing. We are no one. Of no more use to the devil than the man on the street. In this battle, we should be commanding Satan’s forces, and we are mere . . . men.” The Varinski choked up, showing his grief like a little girl. “I want to see with the eyes of an eagle and hunt with the cruel intent of a panther. I want to serve at the master’s right hand, and foul the world with vice. Instead, I am reduced to shooting my enemies rather than ripping out their throats with my teeth.”
    “You cannot rip out your enemies’ throats with your teeth?” Firebird said flatly. “That is a shame.”
    The Varinski turned from the scorn of the men to the supposed weakness of the women.
    Obviously he knew nothing of the Wilder women.
    In a tone of command, he said, “I know who you are, Firebird Wilder, so don’t make fun of me. It is
your
son who most betrayed our loyalty to the devil. It is
your
son who tried to be