Page 18 of Kazimir

There are old stories that say vampires do not feel. If only it were true.

I locked my office door behind me and exhaled, slow and even. The air here always held a note of sandalwood and secrets, the two things I permitted to linger. I crossed to the window—a single slab of glass, bulletproof and enchanted, twenty feet long by ten high. Below, the main floor of Obsidian pulsed and shifted with its purple-lit flesh-market energy, a maze of black leather and bodies, all engaged in transactions of lust or leverage. The glass let me watch without being seen, though I’d learned centuries ago that true power lay in observation, not surveillance.

I tried to slow my heartbeat, though it had no biological reason to quicken.

Devon Wade. The syllables still vibrated along my spine, unwelcome as fever dreams. She was, by every measure, an impossibility—a woman whose presence ignited in me not only hunger but a fractured recognition I couldn’t place. For years, I’d survived on the disciplined severing of desire from appetite, the neat partitioning of what I needed from what I wanted. Now, after a single night, I found myself in pieces.

I paced. Three steps from the desk to the liquor cabinet, pause, finger the bottle. Glenfarclas, 1972, a gift from Bohdan the day he wrested control of his first club from the demon cartels. I didn’t drink, but I liked the way the light fractured through the amber, splintering patterns onto the black veneer of my desk. The furniture here was overkill—imported Bulgarian rosewood, hand-planed to a mirrored shine. Behind it, my father’s chair, the one piece from my childhood home I’d allowed to survive the passage of centuries. I ran my hands over its arms; the old carving nearly worn smooth.

She’d sat one floor down in the conference room barely twenty minutes ago, and I could still sense her everywhere, the way you smell rain after a lightning strike.

The pull was more than mate recognition; I was certain. The stories about true mates were legion in the supernatural community, and every one of them glossed over the blood and agony that actually accompanied it. Nobody ever described the rage—the kind that stripped centuries of composure down to bare wire. For me, it arrived as a needle jab at first, an itch beneath the breastbone. Now it was a steel spike hammered directly into the sternum.

I stared at my reflection: blue eyes gone matte, hair disheveled in a way I would never permit if anyone else were present. I’d spent centuries learning that control was the only true currency—now I looked as if I’d been in a bar fight. Perhaps I had.

A soft knock at the door. I straightened my cuffs and buttoned my jacket. “Enter.”

Yuri slipped inside, as silent as the ghost he was. He brought a chill with him, as if he’d been standing outside for hours rather than seconds.

I didn’t speak. He knew I disliked questions without value.

“She is home,” he said, voice barely more than a vibration. “Apartment is above a coin laundry, Frankford Ave. Three locks on a flimsy door, no security system, window opens to fire escape.”

Yuri had once tracked a traitor through four cities and seven safe houses without being spotted. If he said the security was shit, it was shit.

“Condition?” I asked.

He recited his findings—clinically and without emotion. “Efficiency unit. Spotless. I doubt there is food in the refrigerator. Water heater unreliable. No signs of drug use or visits from others. She sleeps on a discount store futon.”

I pressed thumb and forefinger to my eyes. “Any signs she is watched?”

He shook his head, expression unmoving. “Nobody cares about her there. It is a bad neighborhood, but she is invisible.”

Invisible. I’d thought the word an advantage, once.

“Station men outside?” I said.

“Two. They will rotate every eight hours. I told them not to be seen, but—” His gaze flicked up, for once meeting mine. “If you wish, I can stay there myself.”

The offer was unprecedented. Yuri thrived on the periphery of my world, never at its heart.

“That will not be necessary.” I said it too quickly, and Yuri’s eyebrow ticked upward a fraction. “She must be protected, but not suffocated. Make sure the men understand. Any approach to her window or door, and I want to know before they finish the step.”

He nodded, the movement barely perceptible.

I returned to the glass, this time letting myself look for her ghost among the crowd. Already gone, of course, and yet her presence hung in the air, a gossamer thing that somehow weighted the entire room.

Yuri shifted his weight—another anomaly. “I will see to the men now, sir.”

He paused at the door. “You are…concerned for her,” he said, and if he’d punched me in the chest, it would have been less jarring. I almost told him to get out.

“Her existence creates new variables. That is all.” I let each syllable settle like cooled lead.

He nodded, but the pause was there, longer than etiquette required. “I will not fail you,” he said, softer now, and left.

I stood in silence, listening to the muted throb of music through the glass. For a moment, I remembered Maksym and Taras’s mother—the one who believed, for a brief and blinding season, that she could redeem my soul with her stubborn love. She had died with the illusion intact, never knowing how little of me she’d actually reached. Then there was Nikolay’s mother, a study in cunning—she’d seduced me as a power play, and when it failed, she disappeared into the underworld and never looked back. Bohdan’s mother, a mistake born of lust and fury; she’d left me with the only child who, despite her bitter manipulation, had brought a needed degree of joy and lightness to my life.

But Lucia’s mother—that wound left a lasting scar. I’d loved her with a deep and abiding love. Losing her taught me that even the oldest monsters could break in places that never quite healed. Even so, she was not my mate. Not the one chosen exclusively for me as the other half of my soul. I had given up on the idea that a monster such as myself deserved a love such as that.