Touch of Darkness by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online Page B

old, and Clovus removed the king buried here, and confiscated the burial ground for himself."
    "That guy had no fear, did he?"
    "No fear of the dead, and no respect for the past. I suspect that sarcophagus contains the first occupant of the tomb."
    "I don't like this place." She shrugged uneasily. "Where's Clovus?"
    "The burial chamber is in there." Rurik nodded toward a wall of smooth stones.
    "Yes." She shivered. "I can feel him."
    He knew nothing about her. Nothing. And here was his chance. "What do you feel? How do you know it's him? How long have you been able to tell if a man is evil?"
    He didn't think she would answer, but she took his questions one at a time. "I feel as if I'm being smothered by darkness. I don't know for sure it's Clovus, but who else would it be? And I felt them when I was four, and I've never forgotten the sensation."
    "Them?" She had his complete attention. "Who's them?"
    She paid him no heed, but gradually turned her head toward the entrance and stared intently. She whispered, "Perhaps if s not Clovus I feel Because .. . they're here."
    At the same time, he heard the voices, and it didn't take her warning for him to recognize their accent, their boastful tone, their menace.
    Varinskis. Son of a bitch. Varinskis. His cousins from hell had found him.
    Varinskis were trained to ferret out the unwary, to assassinate their enemies, to destroy whatever it suited them to destroy. Usually, they performed their assassinations and sabotage only for their paying clients.
    No one was paying them now. They hunted the Wilders for vengeance. They'd found his older brother, Jasha. Now they'd found him.
    Rurik was caught here . . . between his fate and a woman who made his heart ache and his temper flare.
    His death would put an end to his family's hopes, but he'd fight, and he'd get Tasya out. She didn't deserve to die because she was with him.
    "Get back," he said. "Get behind the altar."
    She looked at the camera in her hand. "My backpack. My backpack's there in the entrance!"
    He hurried, grabbed her backpack and her flashlight, and hustled her to the back wall. Together they knelt behind the altar. He put her behind him—and with a gasp, she vanished into the wall. A short panel of solid rock had swiveled and swallowed her.
    He reached into the pitch-darkness.
    She caught his hand in hers, and her hand trembled. So did her voice. "I'm here. It's a passage."
    Yes. The fresh air blew in right from the sea.
    He leaned in. His vision was excellent—more than excellent—and he saw a small stone chamber and a tunnel twisting away into the earth. He shoved her backpack and flashlight toward her. "Go. I need to hear what they say."
    Pulling himself back into the antechamber of the tomb, he closed the wall, crouched, and waited.
    There were four of them, men, of course—the Var-inskis produced only sons—and Rurik realized at once they didn't suspect he was here.
    He also realized that Boris, the head of the Varinskis, hadn't sent his top men on this mission. Or if he had, the Varinskis were sadly overrated. Because these guys were loud, irtept, unworried about what, or who, might be hiding in the tomb. They walked right in, boys without a care in the world.
    One of them, a husky thirty-year-old, carried a good-sized leather bag. "So, what's the big deal here?" he asked in Russian.
    "Yeah, why did we have to come to a crap little island in Scotland?" Another guy examined the stone pillar and the wall that blocked the entrance. He wore a cowboy hat and boots, and looked like a Cossack imitating a Texan.
    Rurik slid around, staying behind the altar, watching.
    The leader was maybe forty, and he stood in the middle of the tomb with his hands on his hips. "Apparently one of the old boys had a vision. I don't know what it was, but man, did it scare Boris."
    "I was there when it happened," the youngest boy said.
    The other three turned on him.
    "You were not." The leader plainly didn't believe him.
    "Yes, I was," the