“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Roksana whispered, blinking several times when the back of her eyelids started to burn. “I don’t know why I couldn’t do it.”
That was the truth, wasn’t it? She should have had no problem driving a stake through the heart of the vampire who helped kill her friends. The vampire who’d turned them into nothing more than bloody corpses lying on cheap carpet on an occasion that should have been happy. A lasting memory of friendship and love.
Damn you, Elias.
She should have killed him as soon as her training was completed.
Not only had he ruined her life and stolen that of her friends, but he’d made her helpless in those horrifying moments.
That last part burned like a constant torch beneath her heart.
Briefly, she closed her eyes and heard her own screams, felt the door shaking beneath her pounding fists. Let me out.
“Look at me, daughter,” Inessa snapped, drawing Roksana out of her agonizing thoughts. “You could have been one of the best, if not the best. I saw what you could do in the field before I let you go to America, despite the potential consequences for sending a slayer into another jurisdiction without permission from their contingent. And your skill…” Inessa shrugged. “It rivaled my own.”
Roksana’s heart sprouted wings and they beat rapidly, a grateful sob building in her throat. Approval. It was so rare from her mother, from anyone, she latched onto it and held, savoring every syllable, memorizing them. “Thank you, Inessa.”
“I was not finished.” She tapped a jeweled finger against the center of her chest. “It is here where you fall painfully short. You have the heart of a pathetic, sniveling woman, instead of a warrior. You chose a man over loyalty. You will pay for that this night.”
There was no denying her mother’s accusation. Elias’s eyes glowed in the forefront of her mind. His hand on her thigh. His voice in her ear. His confusing presence in the darkness when she walked the street at night. If there was a scale inside of Roksana, there would be an equal balance of love and hate, always teetering in one direction or the other. But right now?
Right now, hate was winning.
How dare he make her a failure in the eyes of her mother?
You could have been one of the best.
You chose a man over loyalty.
If Elias was standing in front of her at that moment, she thought…no, she knew she could end his existence. One strike. And then, she’d have this woman’s full approval. Next time she visited, there would be no attack in the dark. There might even be an embrace.
A childlike moan stuck in her throat.
“Give me another chance. I can do it,” Roksana blurted, unplanned. “I can kill him.”
Inessa snorted at the request and rested the club on her shoulder. “It is a shame you must die tonight, daughter. There is a mission to be completed back in Coney Island. Unfortunately, it not only requires the disposition of a warrior, but entry into Enders—and I have it on good authority that last time you were there…” Her eyes flashed dangerously. “You fought alongside vampires.”
Hisses went up around the basement and a cold shiver traveled down Roksana’s spine. The accusation was true. She’d made the epic mistake of bringing Ginny to the slayer bar for a birthday drink, but her mortician friend wound up writhing in pain on the floor instead, imbued with Jonas’s then-suffering. Not knowing what else to do, Roksana called Elias and next thing she knew, there he stood with his friend Tucker, ready to take on a bar full of slayers.
Roksana chose the wrong side to fight on.
As confusing as it was, she’d been physically incapable of fighting Elias.
The prospect of him being hurt or killed made her nauseous. Made her dizzy.
No. No. Next time, she would fight through it.
“I make no excuses for what I’ve done,” Roksana managed. “What is the task in Coney Island? Send me and I will complete it. I know that neighborhood now like the back of my hand and…I will find a way to get into Enders.”
Her mother considered her with skepticism, but truthfully, Roksana had fully expected to be dead by now, so the delay was welcome. “Why should I allow you a second chance when I never give them to anyone else?”
Because I’m your daughter. “Because I’m a better slayer than every single one of them.”
Inessa remained silent for a moment, then threw her head full of blond spiral curls back and laughed. “If you fail, I suppose the slayers would kill you anyway, since you’re known as a traitor.” She turned to face the basement filled with the Russian contingent, her mouth in a pout. “Though my loyal comrades were so looking forward to the bloodshed of a traitor tonight, weren’t they?”