His Witch To Keep (Keepers of the Veil) Read Online Free Page B

bastard had just done to him…
    She shot the four men at the door while maintaining her invisibility.
    Alexi said, “Men dead. Nice forehead shots, wouldn’t you say? Name the other contract agent or I’ll shoot you.”
    Lebedev spun to glare into all the corners of the seemingly empty room. “How did you do that?”
    She quietly moved beside Alexi to have a better front sight on the Russian while remaining invisible. She put a hand against Alexi’s arm. Although his face remained stoic, his body trembled. That broke her heart and escalated her anger.
    Alexi demanded, “The names?”
    “Go to hell,” Lebedev replied.
    “Knee it is.” His gaze locked with hers.
    She shot Lebedev in the knee.
    He dropped.
    “Who is the other contract?” Alexi asked. “Or I will put a bullet in the other knee.”
    Lebedev held up a hand. “Stop. I don’t know how you’re doing this, but stop. It’s Nikolai. The other agent is Nikolai.”
    Alexi asked, “Who authorized this hit?”
    Lebedev shook his head.
    Alexi raised his eyebrows in threat. “Name.”
    Lebedev shook his head again. “I never got a name. Came from…they threatened my mother. They’re not the home office. All I had to do was initiate the hit. They didn’t care who I hired. Just that it got done.”
    “Kill the išdavikas .”
    She easily translated the Lithuanian word for traitor and pulled the trigger.
    Lebedev collapsed.
    “Is it safe for me to be seen?”
    Alexi’s gaze drifted to the wall directly across from him.
    She trotted to the wall and yanked wires to disconnect the camera.
    “We’ve probably got…” He swallowed. His sluggish gaze slid over her and lingered on her chest. “Twenty to thirty seconds before backup arrives.”
    She dropped her invisibility. “I need the key to get those cuffs off your wrists.”
    Alexi’s eyes darted around, unfocused. He shrugged a no idea .
    She brushed sweaty hair off his face, unconcerned about the blood coating her fingers. His cheek continued to hemorrhage. Blood dripped from his chin. She blinked against her eyes’ burn and focused on the goal of releasing him. “What kind of drug did they use?”
    “Darted me like an animal. Don’t know what. Potent. Maybe lethal. I probably only have…minutes before I pass out.”
    Lethal? Her mind shot right past oh, shit into full-blown panic. Her training kicked in, knocking adrenaline to the curb and replacing it with a rational step-by-step plan. Get the key. Get him out of here.
    She rushed to Lebedev and pawed through his clothes, scoring a key in his pants pocket. After she opened the cuffs, Alexi attempted to stand upright, but his legs caved. He slid toward her, catching himself on his knees. Now what? She’d been warned jumping another person to her alternate dimension could be dangerous, but if they stayed here, then they died.
    No option. She needed to transition them both to the other dimension. Risky, but she’d hope they arrived intact. She hugged him tight and focused on her ancestral house.
    The world dimmed and swirled. The familiar sensation of being compressed on all sides by intense pressure squeezed her body for several seconds. And then stopped, leaving her weak, dizzy and blind.
    Upon arrival, Alexi flailed. A body part connected with her nose. A few tears leaked from her still blind eyes. He twisted away from her, his elbows thrashing. “I’m blind. Whatever they gave me, now I’m blind.”
    “It’s okay. Chill,” she said, elated the jump worked. She had an awful headache, which she suspected wasn’t just from the nose hit. “It’s shift blindness. Give it a minute.” She dabbed at the tears gathering at the corner of her eye but kept her eyes firmly closed. With her opposite hand, she gripped his arm, hoping that might comfort him enough not to flail and hit her again.
    His muscles stiffened. “You didn’t. I can’t be in your other dimension. Take us back.”
    Twenty…twenty-one…twenty-two…twenty-three…