Bone Deep(5)

They could hide her. It was a way for them to protect her since God had failed in his duty. “Then we’ll have to say a death prayer, but the God of my fathers doesn’t listen to my prayers anymore, so someone else will have to,” Bone replied.

Her bleeding heart stopped for single beat. When it began again she acknowledged He wasn’t there. She would struggle in the land of death for eternity because He had abandoned her. Beloved hate replaced her rage and in it was a coolness she welcomed.

Better to kill with the ice of hate than with the fires of rage. She fisted her hands, really looking at them, seeing the broken nails and short digits and she knew she’d kill many before she revisited this place where Ninka had left them.

She raised her head and stared at her sisters. Bullet rubbed her chest, Blade stroked Bullet’s hair, and Arrow stroked Ninka’s. Bullet grabbed Ninka’s hands, flattening them between her own, praying.

Bone wanted to shout at her He wasn’t listening but decided against it. The black-eyed man would return soon. The warning was on the wind. They needed to get back to camp.

Arrow whispered in her native Japanese and chills danced across Bone’s skin. Bone stared at the ground but her hand was on Ninka’s arm, squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go.

They were all there but Ninka was gone from them. Five had become four. Bone finally looked at Ninka so she could remember.

Bullet leaned over the girl’s head which still rested on Blade’s lap, placed a kiss on her brow and whispered, “I’ll kill them Ninka. I’ll kill them all.”

Arrow leaned over and whispered something in her native tongue and then it was Bone’s turn. Righteousness poured through her, floating on a wind she imagined came from the plains of Jericho.

“Baruch dayan emet, aval n’kamah hayah mokesh,” Bone whispered. “Shalom, achot.”

A single tear dropped onto Ninka’s pale cheek. Bone wiped it off, smudging dirt and blood on her sister’s pale cheeks. She stood then, raised her arms to the wind and silently promised that no matter what happened she would live to kill.

She would lust for death and hate would hold her hand but she would survive it all for the ones who remained—her sisters. And in the end they would stand over the black-eyed man and watch the life drain from his eyes.





Chapter One


St. Petersburg, Russia, Present Day

The woman was a killer. If you drank from the cup of wrath she carried inside her soul she would go down like milk mixed with honey, sweet and smooth, putting you to bed with a smile on her face and death in her eyes.

Taut, slim muscles rolled beneath the silky sand of her skin. Everything in his body squeezed tight as the colors of the strobe lights above them danced over her body, slicking over supple skin and sexy hollows. She walked with a grace not many women could match—fluid, even, nothing spared in the stride. Her back was straight, but the generous curve of her hips swayed just enough to definitively belie her intentions.

Dmitry didn’t understand the pull he felt toward her but realized there was no way to control it. It was what it was, no matter how bitter the taste in his mouth.

Her attire consisted of a bra-like contraption and a thong. Attached to the bra and thong were long silken skeins of light pink and blue material that fell to the floor in a halo of sorts. There were swift, tantalizing glimpses of her skin which only served to frustrate. His fisted a hand around his snifter of vodka, cursing softly.

Her only other adornment was the glitter covering her from head to toe. The frail material parted as she walked offering glimpses of the firm, round globes of her ass. The light danced off her body and returned before shying away once again as though fearful of what it would reveal.

Dmitry knew that fear. He’d been luckier than most, he surmised. After their few meetings he’d been left alive, though she never failed to leave a wide aching chasm inside him.

Her steps were swift but unhurried, her face blank but her eyes always moving. Bone was definitely hunting.

Nothing good would come of this. He tracked her movements, unable to tear his gaze away. He wanted to head her off, find out what the hell she was doing there. Instead he watched, transfixed by an assassin.

She was a highlighted shadow, holding your eye even as she hid from you. She was a velvet promise that you reached for with eager hands, the stroke of her presence in your life soft but brutal. And tonight she was so much more—a sultan’s wet dream; a genie’s creation—and everyone, man and woman, stopped what they were doing to watch her glide across the floor.

She wasn’t there to dance or f*ck. The woman with hammered gold eyes splintered by jade had come to kill.

Her target was anyone’s guess, hell it could be Dmitry though he speculated it was Anatoly Yesipov. He was the youngest son of Boris Yesipov, who was the underboss and favored brother to the leader of the Russian Mafia. Boris was known as the killer of innocents and twister of souls. Anatoly hadn’t fallen far from the tree, though was an easy mark. The son was one Dmitry thought beneath her. Apparently her lust for killing knew no bounds.

She’d been taking the Yesipov criminal organization down one man at a time for nearly a year, picking them apart like the layers of an onion. Dmitry had not attributed the increasing death toll to her at first. The Russian Mafia was self-limiting. Hell, they killed their own so often it was hard to keep track of the hierarchy. But his reticence to lay the deaths at her door had been his mistake. He’d have been able to catch up to her earlier had the killings been more her style. Yet wasn’t her style a mixture of everything?