Creation and destruction. In the heady moment of release, she saw the stars burst in her mind, raining around her without fading. They scattered and reorganized, chasing each other across her mind’s eye.
“Kyra,” he whispered.
Leo held her on the edge again; he didn’t push her over. When she came, it was because she reached for it, reached for the scattered, pulsing light. She grabbed it and tugged it to her lips.
She climaxed on a sigh.
Do you see it yet?
When Leo made love to her before dawn, it was in the glow of a single candle. Every other light had sputtered out.
Kyra pressed her palms to his hips and felt the steady rhythm as he moved in her. She looked up, watching his eyes devour her face, her breasts, her belly. Watched him as he watched himself move in her, awe and hunger parting his lips. He wet his bottom lip and clenched it between his teeth. She felt his muscles harden beneath her fingers as the tension built. Sweat dripped down his chest and abdomen. Kyra felt it drop on her belly as he moved faster and faster.
He was so beautiful.
At the last minute, he looked up and met her eyes.
Awe. Pleasure. Pain.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He gasped out her name and came, his marks lighting the dark room as the candle flickered out. In the darkness, he kissed her mouth, running his hands up and down her body as he stole her breath.
She slept with his arm and leg draped over her, his palm a pillow for her head. Kyra slept more deeply than she ever remembered before. In his touch was complete and utter silence except for a single voice.
His voice.
And it was whispering reshon.
Chapter Twenty
Leo slammed the Grigori’s head into the wall and watched him crumple unconscious to the ground as Niran held another up by his neck.
“Tell us where our sister is,” he said calmly, “or I’ll let him do that to you too.”
The young man was dressed as a monk, but Sura said it was only an insidious cover for the Grigori in this village. They dressed as monks to gain the trust of pilgrims, then took advantage of them. Many young women had disappeared in this secluded river valley. And though Niran, Sura, and Leo had searched the temple complex, they’d found no survivors.
“We haven’t seen your sister,” the Grigori said.
Niran tightened his hold on the man’s neck.
“But we’ve heard rumors!” he choked out.
Niran relaxed his hand.
“There was a woman. One of the untouchables. Two of our kind brought her to our brothers in the north. She was to be a gift for our father. They were only there for two days when they moved on. The brothers there said she killed one of them. He was bleeding from his ears. They said his mind exploded.”
“Where did they take her?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know.”
Niran’s hand clenched again.
“I don’t! She… she’s dangerous. We don’t want her here. We have a good relationship with the village.”
“Your ‘relationship’ is nothing more than a front,” Niran spat out. “You fool them into trusting you, then take their energy without their knowledge. You disgust me. You are a demon and an offense to heaven.”
“Most of them come willingly,” the Grigori said. “The girls like our attentions.”
A movement from the corner made Leo turn. It was Sura. He wore an expression that Leo had never seen before. It was utterly cold and looked alien on the gentle man’s face. They’d left Sura, Rith, and Alyah to explore the temple complex, searching for any women or children found there. As far as Leo knew, they’d found nothing.
“Sura?” Leo asked. “Did you find something?”
Silently, Sura walked to the Grigori Niran held, yanked his head forward, and pierced his spine with the silver knife he carried. Then he bent and plunged his knife into the back of the Grigori at Leo’s feet.
The Grigori began to dissolve, but Sura turned without a word, shaking the gold dust from the edges of his trousers as he left them.
Leo watched silently, his eyes wide. Sura was usually the last to resort to violence, but he’d executed Arindam’s sons without a flinch.
Niran dusted off his hands and stepped back. “We weren’t going to get anything more from him anyway.”
“What was that?” Leo said.
“Sura?” Niran sheathed his silver knives. “They were using the appearance of holiness to seduce the vulnerable. Women. Children. The elderly. Sura will not tolerate it.”
“I’ve never seen him…”
“What? Violent?” Niran shook his head. “He’s the most dangerous of all of us precisely because he is the last one who will ever lose control.”
Leaving the topic of Sura alone, Leo asked about the fractured information they’d gathered. “Brothers in the north, he said. Do you think he means Mandalay?”
“Possibly.”
They’d been slowly working their way west, following the voices Kyra heard to the hidden outposts and enclaves of Grigori in Arindam’s territory.
“Grigori are everywhere in Mandalay,” Niran said. “It’s a stronghold for Arindam’s people, but it’s too crowded for the angel.”
“Most don’t like that much company.”
“No. Arindam himself will likely be somewhere more secluded, if he’s at all the way Sura remembers him.”
“So do we go to Mandalay or not?”
Niran paused. “How far is Kyra’s range now?”
“With the infusion she received from Ginny and my help, nearly two hundred kilometers if she’s rested and focused.”
“We don’t have to push her. We’re two hundred fifty kilometers from Mandalay now?”
“Yes, but the Grigori here said she was only at this place ‘in the north’ for two days.”
“Then we keep going west,” Niran said. “West and north for now.”
“Fine.” Leo felt like they were on a wild-goose chase, but he didn’t know what other options they had. There was little to no Irin presence in Myanmar, and the Irin scribes in northern India had no interest in the place. They didn’t have intelligence on the region other than what they could glean from the Grigori they encountered.
When Leo and Niran walked out of the temple and into the courtyard, Leo saw Sura sitting in a lotus position, eyes closed, his back to the stone Buddha who greeted worshippers upon entry. The tall statue appeared to watch the silent man at his feet, observing with a raised palm and a serene expression.
“We found bones,” Sura said after several minutes of silence.
“What?”
“You asked if I’d found something when I walked into the temple,” Sura said, his eyes still closed. “We found bones. Bodies buried behind the vegetable garden on the edge of the forest. Adult bones. Children too.”
No wonder the quiet man had executed the Grigori without a word.
“What did you do with the others?” Leo knew Kyra had sensed at least a dozen Grigori in the temple posing as priests.
Sura unfolded himself and rose. “They don’t exist anymore.” He walked down the steps and toward the van where the others waited.
Turning to the newly empty temple, Leo walked back inside, closing the shutters and latching them. He blew out the candles and smothered the incense. Then he walked out the front doors and propped a stone planter in front of them to keep the weather out.
It was a holy place that had been perverted by predators. Leo hoped true monks or nuns might find it someday.
Perhaps they might pray for the lost.
Leo knocked quietly on the door to the cottage he and Kyra were sharing in the villa high in the mountains. They’d spent the previous two nights in small country inns that were little more than campsites. But that night Niran had demanded plumbing. Rith and Alyah had searched online and found the luxury villa with cottages high on a ridge overlooking a river valley. It was an unexpected treat that also played into their cover as traveling exhibition fighters.
“Come in,” Kyra called.
Leo poked his head in, and Kyra smiled.
“Why are you knocking?”
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted privacy.”
She put the book she’d been reading to the side. “Not from you.”
Leo slid off his shoes and climbed next to her on the bed. He put his arms around her waist and his head on her breast, lowering them to the pillows as he let out a deep sigh.
“Long day?” Kyra asked.
“We didn’t find anything. Nothing detailed, anyway. Niran thinks she was in Mandalay, but she’d be gone by now.”
“We’ll keep looking. I can do a reading in the morning and see what I hear. I’ll focus to the north.”
“Only if you’re rested enough.”
“The one this morning took hardly anything out of me. I’m fine.”
Leo closed his eyes and inhaled her scent. She was soft touch and tenderness. She was rest.
“Sura found bones.” It slipped out without his thinking. He hadn’t meant to tell her.
Kyra tensed. “Children?”
“Yes. They didn’t have any women there. I think they were human bones, not kareshta.”
“We don’t leave bones,” Kyra said. “We’re like the Irina. We turn to dust.”
He clutched her tighter. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”