"It's incredible." Renata ran her hand over the cool leaves and delicate petals. "God, Nikolai, your ability is...I want to say amazing, but that doesn't even come close."
He shrugged. "I've never had much use for it. Give me a clip full of hollowpoints or a few blocks of C-4 any day. Then I'll show you amazing."
He was making light of it, but she sensed that his glibness shielded something darker. "What about your brother?"
"What about him?"
"You said he can do this too?"
"He could, yes," Nikolai said, the words sounding a bit hollow. "Dmitri was younger than me. He's dead. It happened a long time ago, back in Russia."
Renata winced. "I'm sorry."
He nodded, plucked a leaf from the mass of vegetation, and tore it into pieces. "He was just a kid - a good kid. He was a couple of decades younger than me. Used to follow me around like a goddamn puppy, wanting to do everything I was doing. I didn't have a lot of time for him. I liked to live on the edge - shit, I guess I still do. Anyway, Dmitri got it into his head that he needed to impress me." He exhaled a raw, strangled curse. "Stupid f**king kid. He would have done anything to make me notice him, you know? To hear me say that I approved, that I was proud of him."
Renata watched him in the dark, seeing in him the same guilt she felt when she thought about Mira. She saw the same dread in him, the same inward condemnation that a child was in grave peril - might even be dead already - all because someone they trusted had failed them.
Nikolai knew that torment. He had lived it himself.
"What happened to Dmitri?" Renata asked him gently. She didn't want to tear open old hurts, but she needed to know. And she could see from the weight that had settled over him that Nikolai had carried his pain for too long. "You can tell me, Nikolai. What happened to your brother?"
"He wasn't like me," he said, the words contemplative, as if bogged down by their history. "Dmitri was smart, a crack student. He loved his books and philosophy, loved peeling the layers off things, figuring out how everything around him worked so he could put them back together again. He was brilliant, truly gifted, but he wanted to be like me."
"And what were you like back then?"
"Wild," he said, saying it more like an epithet than a boast. "I'm the first to admit it. I've always been a little reckless, not really caring where I ended up tomorrow so long as I was having a good time today. Dmitri liked contemplation; I like adrenaline. He enjoyed putting things together; I like blowing them up."
"Is that why you joined the Order, for the adrenaline rush of fighting?"
"That's partly why, yeah." He rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the ground. "After Dmitri's murder, I had to get away. I blamed myself for what happened. My parents blamed me too. I left the country and came to the States. Hooked up with Lucan and the others in Boston not long after that."
She didn't miss the fact that he'd said his brother was killed, not merely dead. "What happened, Nikolai?"
He blew out a long sigh. "I had an ongoing mutual hatred with a Darkhaven ass**le out of the Ukraine. We got into pretty serious hand-to-hand with each other from time to time, out of boredom mostly. Except one night Dmitri hears this dickhead in a tavern talking shit about me and decides to call him on it. Dmitri drew a blade and cut the guy in front of his pals. It was a lucky hit - D sucked with weapons. Anyway, he pissed the bastard off and two minutes later, my brother is lying in a pool of his own blood, his head cleaved off his neck."
"Oh, my God." Renata sucked in a sharp breath, feeling sick in her heart. "I'm so sorry, Nikolai."
"Me too." He shrugged. "Afterward, I went out and tracked Dmitri's killer down. I took his head and brought it to my parents as an apology. They turned me away, said it should have been me who was dead, not D. Couldn't fault them for that. Hell, they were right, after all. So I split and never looked back."
"I'm sorry, Nikolai."
She didn't know what else to say. She had little experience offering comfort, and even if she did, she wasn't sure he would want it or need it. Like a man suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin, Nikolai grew quiet for a long moment.
He cleared his throat, then he ran a hand over his scalp and rose to his feet. "I should go out and have another look around the lodge. Will you be all right out here for a few minutes?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
He stared at her, searching her face. She didn't know what she wanted him to say to her, but the look in his eyes seemed shuttered. "How are you doing? No sign of reverb yet?"
Renata shrugged. "A little, but not too bad."
"And your shoulder?"
"Good," she said, flexing her left arm to show him she wasn't in any pain. "It feels a lot better now."
A longer, more awkward silence stretched between them, as if neither one knew whether to bridge it or do the easier thing and let it lengthen. It wasn't until Nikolai started to part some of the thick vines to leave that Renata reached out to touch him. "Nikolai...I, um...I've been meaning to thank you," she said, conscious of the fact that although he had paused, she kept her hand on his arm. "I need to thank you...for giving me your blood earlier today."
He turned toward her, gave a mild shake of his head. "Gratitude is nice, but I don't need it. If our situations were reversed, I know you would have done the same thing for me."
She would have; Renata could say that without the slightest doubt. This man who had been a stranger to her not quite a week ago - this warrior who also happened to be a vampire - was now her most trusted, intimate friend. If she was being honest with herself, she had to acknowledge that Nikolai was far more than that, and had been even before he shared his blood with her. Even before the sex that still made her toes curl just to think about it.