Renata stared, unseeing, into the gunpowder-choked chasm of the barn. "We have to go back to the city and start searching for her. Door to door, if we have to."
"I know what you're feeling," Nikolai said. He touched her nape and she forced herself to step away from his tenderness. "Goddamn it, Renata, don't you think that if I thought kicking down doors from here to Old Port was going to get us closer to Fabien, I'd be right on board with you? But that's not gonna buy us a thing. Especially not with daybreak just a few hours away and riding hard on our heels."
She shook her head. "I don't need to worry about daylight. I can go back into the city by myself - "
"Like hell you will." His hands were gruff as he turned her around to face him. His eyes glittered with sparks of amber, and an emotion that looked remarkably like fear, even in the darkness. "You're not going anywhere near Fabien without me." He stroked her brow, his fierce eyes burning into her. "We're in this together, Renata. You know that, right? You know that you can trust me?" She stared into Nikolai's face and felt a well of emotion begin to rise up within her, felt it rise over her like a swamping wave she couldn't hold back if she tried. Tears stung her eyes, then filled them. Before she could stop the flood, she was weeping as though a dam had burst inside her and all the hurts she'd ever felt - all the pain and emptiness of her entire existence - came rushing out of her in great, heaving sobs.
Nikolai wrapped his strong arms around her and held her close. He didn't try to make her tears stop. He didn't feed her soft lies to make her feel better, or give her false promises to cushion her despair. He just held her.
Held her, and let her feel that she was understood. That she was not alone, and that maybe, in some small way, she might be worthy of being loved.
He picked her up, lifting her into his arms, and began to carry her away from the bullet -riddled barn. "Let's find you someplace to rest for a while," he said, his soothing voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating against her as she clung to him. "I can't go back into the lodge, Nikolai. I won't stay in there."
"I know," he murmured, bringing her deeper into the woods. "I have another idea."
He set her down in a leaf-strewn alcove between two towering pines. Renata didn't know what to expect, but she never would have imagined what she witnessed in those next moments.
Nikolai knelt down near her and spread his arms wide, his chin lowered, his immense, muscled body held in a study of quiet concentration. Renata felt the energy around them crackle. She smelled rich, fertile earth, like the forest after a rainstorm. A warm breeze tickled her nape as Nikolai touched his fingertips to the ground on either side of him.
There was a quiet rustle of movement in the grass nearby - a whisper of life. Renata saw something snake up from beneath Nikolai's hands and couldn't keep from gasping in awestruck wonder when she realized what she was seeing.
Tiny vines, shooting through the soil, running toward the twin pines on either side of her.
"Oh, my God," she murmured, rapt with amazement. "Nikolai...what's happening here?"
"It's all right," he said, watching the vines - commanding them, hard as it was to believe.
The tendrils spiraled around the tree trunks and climbed higher, filling in with leaves that multiplied exponentially as she watched. Well over her head some eight feet, the vines leapt across the space between the pines. They twisted together, then sent off shooting lengths of vegetation, creating a living canopy that stretched all the way to the ground where Renata and Nikolai sat. "You're doing this?" she asked, incredulous.
He gave her a nod but kept his focus on his creation, more and more leaves unfolding on the vines. Thick walls of fragrant shelter formed a haven around them, the lush greenery interspersed with the same tiny white flowers that Renata had found in Mira's room.
"Okay...how are you doing this?"
The rustle of growing plant life slowed and Nikolai turned a nonchalant look on her. "My mother's gift, passed down to her two sons."
"Who's your mom, Mother Nature?" Renata said, laughing, delighted in spite of the knowledge that the beautiful flowers and vines were just a temporary veil. Outside, all of the ugliness and violence remained.
Nikolai smiled and shook his head. "My mother was a Breedmate, like you. Your talent is the power of your mind. This was her talent."
"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 fucking 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.