“It isn’t as if I hear the talk between a shifter and his leopard. I see images the leopard is projecting to theshifter. I connect mainly to the leopard. That’s one of the ways I track the man I’m hunting. Once I lock onto his leopard, he can’t escape me. His leopard never gives me away. I can go right into his house and stand over him.”
“I can enter a shifter’s home without detection by his leopard or him. Fortunately, we have the same gifts.”
“Technically, once I’m there, it isn’t that the leopard ignores me; it’s because he’s unaware of me,” Maya explained. “I blend. Like an apparition. A wraith.” She flashed him a small smile.
“I’m capable of the same thing,” Gorya said. He found that strange. What were the odds that both of them would be able to go into the house of a shifter undetected? Had they exchanged a chemical of some kind when he had rescued her all those years ago that allowed her to do the kinds of things he had done? Or was it the other way around? There was no doubt in his mind that she had gifts few leopards had. Gedeon and Meiling had them. He did. He’d never met any others. Some came close, but there were no others with those telling traits that he knew of.
“These men you hunt, these are the ones that you were turned over to when you first arrived from Russia?” he asked, grateful to return to the subject. He’d been trying to find a way to naturally turn the conversation back ever since he’d blown it, but hadn’t known how.
“Some of them.”
“Tell me what happened, Maya. Please. I won’t go berserker on you.”
She looked at him warily. He could tell Wraith was close by the rings of green surrounding the blue of her eyes, but she only nodded and continued her story. “When the freighter got to the harbor, someone told us we were in Houston and we had to get off very fast before anyone saw us. We were taken to a large container and had to stay there for a long time. I had to use the bathroom. It was awful and smelled like onions. I dislike onions to this day.”
“You were locked in a storage container?” He forced himself to repeat her words in a calm, neutral tone. “Who did they send to meet you?”
“There was a man by the name of Blum. He said in order to work we needed papers, and they had to be paid for and were expensive. He would get them for everyone, and a place to stay and work, but it wouldn’t come cheap. I didn’t like him. He was really mean. He snorted like a pig all the time and his eyes were close together and beady. The women hid the money you gave us, but his men found it and took it.”
Gorya sighed. That was the oldest scam in the book. They kept the women working like slaves, owing them money, withholding their rightful earnings on the pretense that they never paid their debt.
“We lived in a small house together and eventually could go to the market and shop. It wasn’t too bad at first until some of the women wanted more of the money they earned. Blum beat them. His men beat them. The women would hide me from them when they came to have sex with them. We were there about two years when Blum brought two other men to the house.”
Something in her voice warned him he wasn’t going to like what she was about to tell him.
“The men said they wanted women to work at a very exclusive party for them. Blum laughed. It was a nasty laugh. I knew it was not a good thing. They acted as if the women would make extra money and maybe even be able to leave, but I knew they would never come back. I tried to tell the women, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They wanted out from under Blum.”
Gorya studied her face. “You were about seven.”
She nodded. “I looked much younger and was able to merge with the shadows. Wraith and I practiced her coming out every chance we got. We didn’t allow anyone to see her, even the other women. I saw too many of themtrading favors with men to trust anyone. But I remembered names. I made certain I listened to conversations and gathered as much information as possible. If anyone touched me, I never forgot his name and I promised myself I would track him down someday. If they hurt any of my friends, I did the same. If they made the women disappear—and I always knew the truth, even when they lied and said the women were allowed to leave—I put them into my memory banks.”
Maya’s tone hadn’t changed and neither had her expression, but deep inside, he felt her resolve. Her determination was every bit as strong as his. Her killer instincts had been developed at a young age. She didn’t forget those who had shaped her into a vengeful, relentless hunter.
“I learned so much very fast in those early days. I studied my enemies, following them through the streets. At first, with the cars driving so fast and the maze of freeways and alleys and neighborhoods, it was daunting, but I have an excellent memory, and after the first couple of times, I could follow them to their bosses’ offices and businesses and then to their homes. It wasn’t that difficult to familiarize myself with their residences and the surrounding landscape as well as their guards and their schedules.”
She’d had the natural instincts of a hunter even at such a young age. She’d taken her time, developing her skills, not striking too fast and giving herself away.
“There was one woman, Polina, who always looked after me.”
There was an ache in Maya’s heart that tore at Gorya. Her features were composed and her tone serene, but he felt her sorrow. Polina meant a great deal to Maya.
“She made sure I had clothes and food. She protected me as best she could from the men coming in and from Blum.” A small note of humor crept into her voice. “She insisted on tutoring me with books she’d get from stores.Sometimes I’d steal books so she wouldn’t spend what little money Blum would give her as her share of the wages she’d earned. She never asked me how I got them, but she suspected.”
“She sounds wonderful.” He’d had his cousins growing up. At least she’d had Polina.
“She was. The others were very nice too, but she went out of her way to treat me like family. She knew I could slip out under the guards’ noses and kept urging me to leave, but I didn’t want to leave her. And it seemed like I was acquiring knowledge at a faster rate.”
She fell silent again, and with her silence came the heavy pressure of sorrow weighing down her heart. Again, sorrow didn’t show on her face.
“Keep going, Maya,” he encouraged gently. “What happened to Polina?”
Maya’s hand dropped to her thigh, and her fingers slid up and down over her muscle in a small self-soothing motion. “The men came looking for women to take to their party. By this time, everyone knew that whoever went wasn’t coming back, and it wasn’t because they were set free. Polina would pretend to be sick. She would make herself vomit, and Blum’s men wouldn’t choose her to go with the two men who came for them. One was Carl Bortsov, the other Davyd Chugunov; both had insisted they wanted Polina on more than one occasion. I think everyone knew she wasn’t really ill.”
Gorya followed the graceful movement of her hand as it came up to stroke her throat. He could almost feel the lump there.
“When she wouldn’t go with them, Blum’s men dragged me out of the shadows, tore my clothes off, beat me with a wire hanger and raped me in front of her. They told her they would keep it up until she went with Bortsov and Chugunov of her own free will. Bortsov and Chugunov thought it was great sport and joined in.”
Gorya’s gut tightened into hard knots. Fists formed. He locked down the demon in him, roaring to be released. This was about Maya and how extraordinary she was. How she built herself up from a child ripped apart by monsters and made herself into pure steel.
