THE MEPHISTO COVENANT Read online

  “If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”

  He met her gaze, his small eyes hard with anger. “If I knew, I’d do everything in my power to bring that person down. I’d take away everything important to them.” His voice shook with passion and rage. “I’d make them wish they were dead.”

  Something crashed to the floor in the kitchen. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  Her answer was another string of Russian curses.

  Sasha stared at the television, trying hard not to fly into a million pieces. In the middle of her total freak-out, she saw Missy’s face on the screen, followed by Amy Lee, then David Hollister. Casey Mills. All the Ravens, one by one, with a line at the bottom that read: Fourteen local teens drown in sailing accident. She leaned forward, straining to hear the newscaster.

  “… aren’t sure why they were out so late, on a stolen sailboat, but a Coast Guard spokesman says they were involved with a secret club at St. Michael’s prep school known as the Ravens. None of the fourteen was wearing a life jacket when the Coast Guard answered the Mayday.”

  By the time Jax and his brothers were done with the Ravens, it was close to six in the morning in California, seven in Colorado. Along with his brothers, he transported back home to the Mephisto Mountain, to the grand hall of the house. The scent of food, particularly bacon, was heavy in the air.

  “I’m starving,” Phoenix said. Everyone but Jax echoed him and walked toward the dining room, shrugging out of their trench coats as they went. Halfway there, Phoenix stopped, turned, and looked at him expectantly. “You planning to eat, bro?”

  “Not yet. I want to call Mallick and see how it went with Sasha.”

  “You have to eat, Jax. You’ll run out of energy, and it’ll be that much longer before you can see her.”

  “I’ll eat as soon as I talk to him.”

  Phoenix turned away while Jax pulled out his iPhone. Mallick answered on the second ring. “How did it go?” he asked, without preamble. His impatience was killing him. He wanted to go right then, wanted to see Sasha again. He was still floating on a cloud of euphoria, still stunned that he’d found an Anabo, one meant for him, still fighting the overpowering instinct to snatch her up, bring her here, and never let her go.

  Yeah, he got the purpose of free will. It was what they lived for, what they fought for, but at the moment, he wished there was no such thing. They were forbidden to interfere with free will, so he’d have to win Sasha like any other guy, which wasn’t going to be easy. He knew as much about romance as he did about knitting, which was exactly zero.

  “She’s still asleep,” Mallick said.

  Jax frowned, his eyes on the portrait of Jane, the only other Anabo they’d found, hanging close to the front door of the mansion. He was concerned that Sasha had stayed asleep this long. “No movement?”

  “None. Seems strange. You put her under, right?”

  “Yes, at about midnight. Unless I’m close by to keep her under, she should have woken within a couple of hours.”

  “Maybe she’s just really tired,” Mallick said. “Or her body’s forcing her to rest because of what she went through.”

  “But I healed her. She shouldn’t have any need to recuperate.”

  “You healed her body, Jax, not her mind. It’s pretty horrible what those kids did to her. I think her brain is working to process it.”

  Mallick was a smart guy, one of the finest among the people who worked with the Mephisto. Since the beginning, they’d recruited humans to help, always on the lookout for the best of mankind. They had found Mallick in the mid-1700s, the only holdout on a ship full of Eryx’s followers. After Jax and his brothers took the lost souls and the Skia to Hell on Earth, they asked Mallick if he would accept immortality, become a Lumina, and join them in their never-ending war against Eryx. He agreed and turned out to be one of their best recruits. Jax trusted him completely, which made him the logical choice to watch over Sasha, then follow her home to find out where she lived. But he couldn’t do that if she didn’t wake up.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I knock back an energy drink,” Jax said. “I’m running on empty.”

  Mallick didn’t say anything.

  “Hello? Mallick? You still there?”

  “I think she’s about to wake up. Hang on.”

  “Are you cloaked so she can’t see or hear you?”

  “Of course. Hold on, Jax.”

  Jax paced the perimeter of the circular hall while he waited.

  “She’s blinking. Now she’s sitting up, looking around at the stones and candles. She sees the blood. She’s confused. It’s all coming back to her. Poor thing looks scared to death.”

  “Dude, you’re killing me.”

  “She has to work it out, Jax. I think now she’s wondering why they left her here, why they didn’t finish her off. Okay, she’s realizing someone might come back. I gotta go. She’s running now, into the main warehouse, toward the exit.”

  “Call me as soon as she gets home.”

  “Done.” The call ended.

  Jax slipped the iPhone into his pocket and strode toward the dining room, where he wolfed down a plate of food in record time. The oldest of them, Key, the de facto leader, was eyeing him with that big brother look on his face.

  “May I suggest you take your time with this, Ajax? A plan seems in order, instead of your running off half cocked.”

  Around a huge bite of biscuit, Jax said, “When you find your Anabo, tell me how patient you feel, how interested you are in waiting for a plan.”

  “If it meant the difference between keeping her forever and losing her because I rushed in without a clue what I was doing, I’d wait.”

  “Of course you would, Kyros. If only the rest of us were as perfect as you.”

  Key frowned and returned to eating his eggs. “Fine. Go now. But don’t come crying to me when it all goes south.”

  Jax wiped his mouth, tossed his napkin to the table, and stood. “I’m outta here.” He wanted to take a shower and put on some clean clothes before Mallick called. He didn’t plan to talk to her today. Just follow her around to see where she went to school, what she did, who she hung out with. He needed to decide how best to approach her, so a little reconnaissance was in order.

  As he walked toward the hall, his brothers yelled out random advice. Zee said, “You should give her a present. A piano would be nice.”

  Ty said, “Bring her a puppy. Or a kitten! Girls love little animals.”

  “No way,” Denys, the youngest, said. “You should give her a pair of shoes. Colin Firth did that in a movie and the chick loved it.”

  “I suggest a tree,” Key said. “You can take one of my dogwood saplings, if you like.”

  Jax wasn’t absolutely sure, but he suspected Sasha would be underwhelmed by all of their suggestions. From what he saw in movies and on TV, girls seemed to enjoy getting jewelry, not pianos and trees. Maybe Phoenix had some ideas, since he’d had Jane for a little while, but as usual when it came to females, he said nothing.

  Just as Jax reached the dining room door, the emergency alarm began to blare, its wailing siren resounding through the great hall, all through the mansion, all across the mountain. Jax froze in the doorway. Didn’t it just figure? He was minutes from leaving, and now this. No telling what the alarm was for, but it was never sounded except in serious crisis. He had no choice but to stay until he knew if he was needed. Sucking in a deep breath in a vain attempt to corral his frustration, he popped down to the basement, to the war room, where he found Brody, the newest Lumina, looking very freaked out.

  As soon as all the brothers were there, Brody said, “On my way to Denver, I stopped in Ridgway for gas, and while I was filling up, I saw Boggs climb out of the back of the Land Rover and take off.”

  Denys was still eating a biscuit. “Who’s Boggs?”

  Key, ever the calm leader, said patiently, “Frank Boggs, from Boston. He’s the Purgatory that came to us a few days ago. His son murdered him and is now spe
nding all of Boggs’s money. He must have hidden beneath the blankets in the back when Brody left the mountain.”

  Jax’s frustration boiled over. “Why the hell did we get another Purgatory? We all decided not to take on any more! Babysitting pissed-off ghosts is not what we’re about, not what we’re here for.”

  “We didn’t all decide,” Key said, scowling at him. “You got mad, just like you are right now, and you decided there’d be no more Purgatories. As usual, you failed to notice nobody agreed with you.”

  “How about if I skip the search?”

  Key immediately shook his head. “You know the rules, Ajax. We all go, or no one goes. That’s not an option, because the guy’s headed for Boston to get his revenge and kill his son. Then he for sure won’t make it to Heaven. Our father will immediately take him to Hell.”

  “This is exactly why we need to stop accepting Purgs. If Boggs had been sent to Purgatory, instead of here, he’d never have had the chance to escape and be in the real world again. I don’t remember the last Purgatory who didn’t manage to escape. They all do it, and we spend way too much time hunting them.”

  With his hands clenched into fists, Key was close to losing his temper, which was rare. They all walked a thin line between the dark side they inherited from Mephistopheles, and the purity of their mother’s Anabo soul. Dealing with M was difficult at times, impossible at others. A long time ago, Lucifer intervened and told M to stay out of what they did, to provide doppelgängers and let his sons take care of hunting the lost souls. But he was their father, and even if he was a dark angel, he was compelled to give advice, offer help, tell Key what to do.

  Key was still glaring at him, visibly trying to get a handle on his anger. Before he could say anything to Jax—before they could get into a fight—Ty said, “Whether we take on any more Purgatories is a moot point right now. We need to get going.”

  Key nodded, even as he gave a hard look to Jax. “Let’s head out front.” As one, they transported outside, to the steps that led down to the drive. The Luminas, all 122 of them, stood in knee-high snow, waiting to hear what the emergency was. Key told them quickly, and Phoenix gave instructions and directions for the search. Within five minutes, everyone except the remaining Purgatories were gone from the Mephisto Mountain.

  Jax hoped they’d find Boggs soon. He wasn’t sure how long he could last before his frustration caused him to do something really stupid, like abandon the search. Key would kick his ass, then call a council, and his brothers might give him six months of solitary on Kyanos, the tiny island in the north Atlantic where they grew up. Still, it might be worth the risk, just to see Sasha again. He had a sense of urgency that began as soon as he heard the alarm, almost a premonition. He needed to get to Sasha as soon as possible.

  Time passed in fast-forward, every second bringing Sasha closer to the moment when she’d have to say good-bye to Mom. She had to pack anything she wanted to take to Colorado and box up what wouldn’t fit in her suitcase; the boxes would be shipped to her later by a friend of Mom’s.

  Numb, her mind strangely blank, Sasha jacked up the volume on her iPod and packed as fast as possible. When she was done, she went to her mom’s room and helped her, listening to her sing songs she’d learned as a child in the small village in the Urals where she grew up. She’d been singing those songs to Sasha since she could remember. They usually made her happy, but today they made her angry. “Was it all a lie, Mom? Did you really grow up on a sheep farm?”

  “Yes, Sasha. My family owned several properties, but I spent most of my childhood there, with the housekeeper, Marta.”

  “How did you meet Dad?”

  “I applied for a visa to the United States and was denied. He knew about it, and contacted me, to see if I’d be willing to help him in exchange for him seeing that I got the visa.”

  “Did you love him, or did you only marry him so you could become a citizen?”

  Mom dropped the sweater she was folding and turned to her, looking hurt. “How can you ask? Of course I loved him! Would I have stayed married to him if I didn’t? It’s not as if our marriage made any difference to me becoming a citizen.”

  Sasha picked up another sweater and folded it, trying hard not to cry, wishing none of this were happening. She waffled between anger at her mother for not telling her about Dad, and feeling sad and afraid for her. If Mom had told her, she wouldn’t have gone to that stupid meeting last night. She wouldn’t have been nearly killed. But listening to her mother cry softly, she felt horrible for her. “Maybe you should have gotten rid of the lockbox. Taken all the letters and memos and pictures and destroyed them.”

  “I know that now, but I never dreamed anyone even knew about it. Until Alex showed up, I hadn’t thought about that lockbox in several years. Now, it’s too late. If I were to go to Geneva, I’d be followed and the papers and photographs would be taken from me before I could destroy them. All I can do is refuse to hand over the box number and code.” She looked up from the trunk she was packing. “Someone may come to you and ask to have the box number, but you’ll know nothing, and this is how it should be.”

  “I just don’t get what could be so bad about what’s in the box.”

  Mom sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t remember a lot of what’s there, but to give you an example, I recall a taped phone conversation between a man in Afghanistan and a man in Britain who gave him the name of an arms dealer in exchange for fifty thousand pounds. When the tape was made, the British man was a low-level staffer for a member of parliament.” Mom turned to look at her. “Now, years later, he’s planning to run for prime minister. Can you imagine if that tape fell into the wrong hands?”

  Sasha sank to the bed. “Maybe it’d be good if people know he’s a scumbag. Or maybe the British police would arrest him.”

  “I doubt there’s anything else that would provide enough solid evidence to arrest him, but if it hit the news, of course he’d be ruined. If he’s elected prime minister, Alex’s boss would threaten him with the tape to force him into policies favorable to Russia, even if they were bad for Great Britain. And that’s just one example.”

  “If you can’t go to Geneva, maybe I could. No one will be following me.”

  Mom shook her head vehemently while she got to her feet. “Out of the question, Sasha. It’s far too dangerous.”

  “If it meant keeping you from getting hassled by Alex’s boss, or anyone else in Russia, wouldn’t it be worth it?”

  “I can handle them. What I could never handle is something happening to you. It’s not a solution I’ll consider, ever, so let it be.” She bent to the floor and opened the air return for the heater, pulled out the filter, then reached into the wall to withdraw a white plastic tube, maybe two feet long. Standing, she turned to Sasha and handed it to her. “This is the painting I found in Vladivostok. Keep it safe and don’t ever show it to anyone, especially not to Tim. He’ll sell it, or give it to a museum, and that cannot happen. Do you understand?”

  Sasha nodded, grasping the tube in both hands.

  “When I showed it to Alex, I noticed it was beginning to flake, so I had it sealed in this tube to protect it. It’s best if you don’t take it out. Find somewhere safe to hide it.”

  “If it’s valuable, why don’t we sell it? We could go somewhere and be together, like South America.”

  “We can never sell it. The value of it to us isn’t the art.” Mom drew her close, shaking with emotion. “I love you very much, Alexandra.”

  With the tube in one hand, she clung to her mother, her heart breaking into a billion pieces. She was so afraid—for herself, for Mom. What would happen to her in Russia? “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Mom hugged her more tightly before she dropped her arms and turned away. “It’s only for a little while that you’ll be with Tim and Melanie. After you graduate next May, I’ll have something worked out and we can spend the summer together … somewhere. Then you’ll be at university.” She reached into
her purse and withdrew an envelope. “This is cash I keep in case the bank goes from business. It’s almost two thousand dollars, all I have to give you on this short notice, so keep it safe and spend wisely. If you need something, Tim will get it for you, and I will pay him back as soon as I’m able.”

  Sasha folded the bills in half and shoved them into her pocket. “Why was there bad blood? Why did Dad and his sister hate each other?”

  Her mother looked down at the white tube in Sasha’s hand. “Your papa never hated her, because he couldn’t hate. He was born that way, a good soul.” She raised her gaze to Sasha’s. “But some are born with darkness they can’t escape. Mikhael tried to be a brother to her, but she was jealous and angry of anything he did, always looking for some way to hurt him. It’s why she seduced his best friend to marry her, to drive a wedge. Tim was once a handsome man, but marriage to her and his lost friendship with Mikhael made him what he is now.”

  “She’ll hate me.”

  Mom flinched and turned away, toward the bedroom door. “She may resent you, Sasha, but no one could hate you.”

  Remembering the Ravens’ rage against her, Sasha knew that wasn’t true. They hated her so much, they had wanted her to die.

  In the living room, Tim was watching TV. As they came in, Sasha saw another familiar face on the screen and heard her mother gasp. Alex Kasamov’s car had been found idling on the Golden Gate Bridge, his cell phone, laptop, and briefcase still in the seat. Alex had vanished.

  The police assumed he was a jumper.

  By the time they found the spirit of Frank Boggs, it was past three o’clock in California. With anxiety practically choking him, Jax hurriedly showered and put on clean clothes, then popped himself to Oakland.

  In the lobby of her building, he looked at the mailboxes and ground his teeth in frustration. No names. Mallick hadn’t come inside, just followed and watched Sasha. While Jax stood there debating whether he’d have to pop into every apartment in the building to find her, the elevator doors opened and a guy with a load of furniture on a dolly wheeled out. His uniform was marked with a thrift store logo. Jax didn’t pay him much attention, until he noticed one of the boxes had the name Annenkova written across it.