Evgeni (Siberian Ambush Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright © 2016 by Lolita Lopez / Night Works Books, LLC

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About Lolita Lopez

  Also by Lolita Lopez

  EVGENI

  Siberian Ambush

  Book One

  By

  Lolita Lopez

  Night Works Books, LLC

  College Station, Texas

  Copyright © 2016 by Lolita Lopez / Night Works Books, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Night Works Books

  3515-B Longmire Drive #103

  College Station, Texas 77845

  www.lolitalopez.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Previously Published as Illicit Bargain. Revised and Expanded.

  Cover Art © 2016 Melody Simmons / EbookIndieCovers

  EVGENI (Siberian Ambush) / Lolita Lopez

  ISBN: 978-1-63042-062-8

  Chapter One

  Balancing two drinks on the palm of her right hand and clamping her mail and paper bags of medication beneath her chin, Celia tried to open her front door but it refused to budge. She nudged the stubborn door with her left shoulder and when it gave, the mushy mauve contents of one of the cups erupted from beneath its lid and spilled onto her wrist.

  Growling, she rolled her eyes and entered the cluttered living room, kicking the door closed behind her. The screeching vocals of an angst-ridden punk girl filled the tiny, two-bedroom apartment, and instantly Celia knew the culprit was the stereo in her younger sister’s room. Lifting her chin, Celia dropped the mail and medications onto the kitchen countertop and plunked the drinks next to them. Not one to waste, she licked the pomegranate slush from her wrist and the sides of the Styrofoam cup. Bianca’s cup of wheatgrass-infused green tea had fared much better, with only a single stray drop sliding down its side.

  “Bianca!” Celia sorted through the mail while she waited for her sister’s reply. It was all medical bills except for the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune and a notice that her concealed handgun license needed to be renewed. Tossing the mail aside, Celia ripped open the bags of medication. She placed the orange bottles in the plastic basket that held all of Bianca’s prescriptions. The empty bags went into the trash and the sickening four-hundred-dollar receipt would later be filed in Celia’s accounting folder.

  Celia glanced at the microwave and saw that it was almost ten a.m. Her fingers flicked through the orange bottles, withdrawing the required medications for her sister’s second round of meds. She lined them up on the counter and consulted Bianca’s laminated prescription chart. Shortly after waking, Bianca had taken her diuretic, beta-blocker, ulcer pill and antidepressant. It was two hours later and a Friday, so that meant that in addition to the six regular tablets—two for chelating the excess copper in Bianca’s system, a vitamin B6, a pill to minimize nausea, a steroid and an antihistamine to combat excessive itching—Bianca would also require her weekly injection to control her anemia.

  As Celia placed the pills in a paper cup and drew the injection, she shook her head with disgust. It didn’t matter how many times she had repeated this process in the last ten years, it always made her angry.

  Simply put, it was bullshit that Bianca had been robbed of a childhood and now her teenage years by a cowardly disease that was rapidly ravaging her liver. At seventeen, Bianca should have been worrying about juggling crushes with her homework, not about whether she would survive long enough to find a liver transplant match.

  Wilson’s Disease. It sounded so innocuous, but in reality it was ruthless and stealthy. Just weeks shy of her sixth birthday, Bianca had been diagnosed with the deadly disease that caused copper to accumulate in her body’s tissues—especially the liver, brain and eyes—at toxic levels. Unlike most victims who discover the disease after suffering tremors or jaundice, Bianca’s had been diagnosed after a rather typical afternoon of dress-up when Celia had first noticed the greenish-brown ring circling her younger sister’s blue iris. Eyeliner had literally saved Bianca’s life.

  Still, even all the ensuing years of treatment had done little to stay the progress of the disease. Other patients near Bianca’s age rarely experienced the same complications, but as Celia understood only too well, their somewhat eccentric lineage had contributed to the speedy advancement.

  “Bianca!” Celia called again as she placed the syringe, an alcohol swab, the pills, a bottle of water and the cup of green tea on a teak tray. “Bianca, I’m bringing in your meds and green tea. Do you need anything else?”

  Celia waited for an answer but only received the catlike shriek of the lead vocalist. Sighing, she lifted the tray and began the short trek down the hallway. Using the toe of her sneaker, Celia pushed open Bianca’s bedroom door. “Dude, when I call your name, the least you can do is answer me. And this music is way too—”

  Stopping mid-sentence, Celia felt her stomach somersault. Her fingers lost control and the tray crashed to the floor, splattering green liquid and pills everywhere.

  Bianca was gone!

  The room looked like a small tornado had ripped through it. A desk chair rested on its side, the mattress hung sideways off its box spring and random articles had been scattered in every direction. Even more alarming was the fact that Bianca’s homing amulet dangled from a bedpost. There was no easy way for Celia to track her down.

  Before Celia could gather her thoughts, the front pocket of her jeans began to vibrate and ring. Running on autopilot, Celia fished out the phone and answered. “Yes?”

  “I have your sister.”

  An icy shiver of dread coursed along Celia’s spine as the French accent registered, but she knew better than to betray her fear and summoned her most intimidating tone. “You’ve just made the biggest fucking mistake of your life, Didier.”

  With an aristocratic air, he tutted at her strong language. “You silly girl. Did you really think you could steal from me without consequence? You took something that I loved and cherished—and now I’ve taken something that you love and cherish.”

  “I can’t get the paintings back, Didier,” Celia said in frustration. “They’ve been returned to their rightful owners. You know, the people you stole them from sixty years ago.”

  “Forget about the paintings!” Didier’s raspy voice cut across the line, stinging her eardrum. “I think I’m entitled to something of a higher value. How much, exactly, is your sister worth to you?”

  “You can’t expect me to put a price on Bianca.”

  “Let me make it simple for you then. I want the Blade of Amrita.”

  Celia’s heart seized in her chest at the mention of the topaz blade rumored to grant immortalit
y to its owner. Of course he wanted it. Only Didier would kidnap someone’s relative and demand the impossible as a ransom.

  “I want to speak to Bianca. Now.” Celia refused to commit herself until she was sure of her sister’s continued existence.

  Didier barked orders in French and moments later, Bianca’s scared voice filtered through Celia’s cell phone.

  “Celia! Is that you?”

  “Yes,” she said, relieved. “Are you okay?”

  “Other than the fact I’ve been kidnapped, yeah, I’m okay,” she sniffled.

  “What happened? How long have you been gone?” Celia needed to gather as many facts as possible.

  “I don’t know. Thirty minutes maybe. I was just sitting there, goofing off on Snapchat and then—wham! The door flew open and these guys in black suits appeared.” Bianca was sobbing now. “One of them threw this thick, smelly brown potion on me and when I tried to teleport, I couldn’t. I was grounded.”

  “Dioscorea bulbifera,” Celia whispered angrily. Fuck, these guys were good! She used the same decoction to immobilize marks during her missions. Celia hated to think it, but even without the potion Bianca probably would have been too weak to employ her magical gifts. “Where are you now? Can you describe the place?”

  “It’s an old townhouse with—”

  “Enough!” Didier savagely interrupted. A scuffle could be heard as he took back the phone and sent her sister away with her guards. “Are you satisfied?”

  “You heartless son of a bitch,” Celia acidly hissed. “She’s sick, Didier. She requires regular administration of medications or she could die.”

  “If I don’t have the blade in my possession by tomorrow morning, I’ll slit her throat myself. Considering her sorry state, that might be a blessing,” he cruelly murmured.

  Gritting her teeth, Celia realized she had no other choice and sought the terms of delivery. “When and where?”

  “Seven a.m. at my townhouse in the Sixteenth District,” he said. “I think you’re familiar with this part of Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bonne chance!”

  The line went dead. Seething, Celia balled up her fists and stomped the floor. Stupid! How could she have been so stupid? Accepting the task of burglarizing Didier’s Berlin apartment had been a risky move, but the payoff had been too high to turn down. Every cent of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been deposited into the account that would pay for Bianca’s badly needed liver transplant.

  The first few weeks after completing the job, Celia had anxiously peered over her shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but when a month had passed she’d decided that Didier wasn’t interested in any sort of retaliation.

  How wrong she had been! He’d just waited for her to grow complacent, for her to provide an opportunity for him to gain leverage over her.

  For months before she lifted the paintings, Didier had hounded her with job offers, requesting that she steal one artifact after another rumored to grant immortality. She had declined all of them for one obvious reason: she had already stolen every single one of those artifacts in a desperate attempt to heal her sister.

  None of them had worked. Celia had been shot at, stabbed, punched, nearly impaled on a spike and poisoned in her ruthless and unceasing journey to save her sister. She would do it all again. All of it.

  But the Blade of Amrita? It was impossible to obtain. Celia was no match for a shapeshifter and definitely not the dark, dangerous and brooding Russian who liked to prowl around his vast estate in his Siberian tiger form.

  Wiping her hand down her face, Celia hastily considered her options. She could storm the townhouse, guns blazing, and hope to survive long enough to free Bianca. Or she could make her way to the Leshnikov estate outside St. Petersburg and attempt to steal the blade. Even if she delivered the blade on time, Didier would probably still try to screw her over, but as long as it was in her possession she would have a bargaining chip.

  Celia glanced at her watch and calculated the time difference. Ten o’clock in the morning Houston time meant that it was seven in the evening in St. Petersburg. She ran the numbers again, calculating the difference between Houston and Paris.

  It was currently five p.m. in Paris… Fourteen hours. She had fourteen hours to complete the task by seven a.m., plenty of time if she budgeted wisely. Granted, that was fourteen hours that Bianca would be without medication—but it was the best she could do. Celia found some comfort in the fact that she wouldn’t lose time securing a seat on an international flight or waiting for a layover. Her ability to teleport meant that she could will herself to appear anywhere in the world within the same millisecond that she formed the thought. It was definitely a handy gift to possess.

  Mentally running through her pre-mission checklist, Celia identified a rather large problem. While her jeans, T-shirt and hoodie were appropriate for the cool Texas weather of late November, they definitely would not do in the subzero temperatures she would certainly encounter when she reached Russia. She thought of all the tactical gear hanging in the closet of the office she rented in downtown Houston, the front for her illicit company. None of it would work.

  Celia punched the speed dial key on her cell phone assigned to Perry, her black market munitions and supplies contact. As always, he answered on the first ring.

  “You’ve reached the international headquarters of Perry Acquisitions, how may I help you?”

  She fought the urge to roll her eyes. The so-called international headquarters of Perry Acquisitions was the orange and white vinyl banquette of his beloved vintage Airstream, parked in a trailer court on the outskirts of Houston. Why he chose such a nomadic existence was beyond her. As an arms dealer, he made quite a comfortable living.

  “Perry, it’s Celia. I’m going to need some cold-weather gear.”

  “How cold are we talking?”

  “Extremely cold.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, like right now.”

  “Christ, Celia!” Perry exhaled in annoyance. “You do love testing me, don’t you?”

  “Does that mean you can help me?”

  “I might have something in mind…”

  Chapter Two

  Frigid blasts of arctic air bit at the crests of Celia’s cheeks and the bridge of her nose, the only patches of skin left bare by her heavy black face mask and ballistic glasses. Tightly hugging her face, the glasses kept the snow flurries out of her eyes. Others in her position might have chosen a sturdier, more advanced set of night vision goggles, but Celia didn’t need them.

  Not only did she possess accurate night vision, but she also had the ability to sense body heat. Those were only two of the benefits of her lineage, specifically those genes donated by her half-vampire great-grandmother, a Brazilian dhampiresa, and her maternal grandfather, the alpha from a long line of Danish werewolves.

  Leaning against the nearest cedar tree, Celia pulled down the edge of her gloves and checked her watch. It was almost eleven, still too early to break into the mansion she’d been surveying for the past twenty minutes. Normally she preferred to launch her burglaries between two and five in the morning, a time span that she considered the safest, but tonight was different. She had to weigh the risks of waiting against those of Bianca’s odds of survival.

  But first she had to deal with the jittery sensation spreading through her body. She recognized it as one of her warning signs of hypoglycemia and quickly sought to diffuse a potentially problematic situation. Reaching into one of the pockets of her vest, she withdrew two small plastic tubes of glucose gel. She twisted off the tops and squirted both into her mouth before swallowing.

  Grimacing, she tucked the empty tubes back into the pocket. New and improved cherry flavor, my ass.

  Teleporting from Houston to Russia had utilized an incredible amount of energy. One of the side effects was a dramatic drop in her blood sugar levels. Knowing her body, Celia was always prepared to combat hypoglycemia and always attempted t
o absorb as much excess energy as possible prior to a continent jump. She made a habit of practicing intense meditation before long-distance transfers to calm her mind and prevent the mishaps that could occur when using such a dangerous travel technique.

  To make up for the energy she would lose during this particular trip, Celia had taken a long walk through Houston’s Galleria mall, soaking up every ounce of available energy from the passersby. Some might consider it psychic vampirism, but she unapologetically considered it a smart move.

  While the glucose gel worked its wonders, she performed recon. Maintaining her cover, Celia closed her eyes and extended her infrared field, searching and scanning the property for any thermographic imprints. Every heartbeat or blip of heat transferred an imprint to the mental map she was creating. With extreme ease, she separated the outlines of nocturnal and hibernating beasts scattered throughout the woodlands surrounding the estate from the eleven human heartbeats congregated in the lower right corner of the house.

  Servants, she surmised. There wasn’t much she could do about them, but at least they weren’t in the area of the house she needed to infiltrate. Besides, it wasn’t likely that anyone would even hear her entrance or exit in the cavernous estate that was Leshnikov Palace. Located thirty kilometers south of St. Petersburg, the neoclassical mansion painstakingly built by eighteenth-century peasants contained hundreds of intricately designed and fabulously decorated rooms, very few of which were inhabited.

  “But where’s Evgeni?” she whispered anxiously, already rescanning the house and surrounding territory for the owner’s thermographic imprint. When she didn’t find it, she warily assumed that her old acquaintance was out of town and decided to proceed with extreme caution.

  Celia usually teleported into and out of the places she burglarized, but with Evi’s home it wasn’t that simple. Because Evi was descended from an extremely archaic and powerful magical line, Celia knew that his property was protected from overtly magical infiltration attempts.