The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

James lost his appetite.

PART TWO BROTHERS AND SISTERS

I never believed in love at first sight. Why should I? My so-called parents might have loved each other, but they never showed it.

At school, the kids called it love, but it was really about sex. Every dude I knew just wanted to find a quick way under the covers. They shared stories every time they conquered somebody. And if they didn’t finish the job, they’d make up whatever came to mind.

Mostly, they just wanted a trophy at their side. It’s not like they were going to marry these girls.

Sometimes, they’d make a baby.

Most girls thought I was a freak. Or dangerous. They talked to me, but only so they could twist my words when they texted about me.

Turns out, I was the most dangerous freak they’d ever know. Did I kill any of them before I crossed the fold? The ones who lived will tell stories about me.

You see, I know the truth: Love at first sight is real. It’s the most powerful obsession a man can have. Once it grabs hold, you got no choice but to play.

I knew it the second I saw her.

I knew I’d kill for her.

There’s so much blood, but she leads me on.

These things I hunger to do…

20

10 kilometers east of the Dnieper River, Ukraine

April 4, 1885

One standard day earlier

R AYNA TSUKANOVA REMOVED HER PAPAKHA HAT and bent over the railroad track. She ran her hand along the steel rail, laid less than a year ago — the final connector on the route from Kiev to Donetsk. The slightest vibration predicted the approach of the train. She calculated time and distance with the help of her Mentor.

“He is almost here,” Rayna told Mentor in poetic Russian. “Father will be proud to see me.”

“Assuming they do not kill him first,” the Mentor replied, his accent patterned off the British Chancellor who cared for Rayna the first year after the observers crossed the IDF.

“If they do, I will slay them all.” She grabbed the hilt of her shashka but did not remove it from the pouch on her knee-length kaftan. “An honest weapon for dishonest men.”

The Mentor stood in the middle of the tracks: a tall man in white, goateed and sporting a silver pocket watch.

“I have little doubt you would make quite the mess of them, my dearest. However, it seems dreadfully inefficient. If we do not reach the fold in four hours, its relative position will shift, and your mission will be sorely compromised. This rescue attempt unnerves me.”

She boiled inside. They had this conversation before.

“And you prefer I leave Father to this mad world?”

“No one asked him to align with Prince Alexei. If you had passed along my warning seven years ago, as I politely asked, Pyotr never would have entangled himself with the Romanovs. You could have been simple farmers, lived a quiet life. But Pyotr could not live without the trappings of a Chancellor. What is fifteen years of suffering in exchange for saving his entire race?”

“Silence, Mentor.” Rayna grabbed her rifle and rushed toward the forest. “If you continue speaking this way, I will cancel our deal. I have the power.”

Rayna smiled when he disappeared. Mentor knew she could cancel him in an instant. The deal they spent more than a year negotiating — his survival after her conversion in exchange for him restoring her pre-Jewel memories — gave her great leverage. Rayna had no intention of taking orders from her Chancellor masters.

She reached the edge of the forest, where her comrades — two Chancellors and six proper Cossacks — waited on horseback. She mounted her own steed.

“Remember,” she told them, “They will hold Father in the rear car. Kill any who resist but leave Vasily Shkuro for me. He is a traitor, and he will die a traitor’s death.”

Kamily Doroshenko, a graybeard Hetman of the Right-bank Ukraine and the man who rescued the Tsukanovs at their darkest hour, raised his blade.

“For the honor of Pyotr Tsukanov, we follow your lead, Rayna Tsukanova. May God grant us good fortune.”

Together, they raised their blades. Rayna knew that come what may, these Cossacks would fight to the death for her. Only in the past year had such fortune come to her household.

The very idea of following a girl into battle repulsed the fighters under Kamily’s command. Though she was taller than any Doroshenko, with broad shoulders and steeled eyes, her choice to wear the traditional garb of the Don Cossacks disturbed their sense of order. Where was the blouse? The oversized skirt? The lace? And her hair—how dare she shave all but a left forelock. Is she man or woman? Does she mock our traditions?

“A Cossack is not a Cossack without a forelock,” she reminded them when they questioned her motives.

Yet she rode a horse with more courage or discipline than any of them. She fired a rifle with precision, capable of killing the enemy at one hundred meters. But of greatest worth, she stood between Kamily’s wife and daughters when vengeful assassins tried to waylay them on the road to Lubny. She killed one with her blade, leaving the other able to provide intelligence before she slashed the man’s throat. Her actions tied the family houses Doroshenko and Tsukanov.

The train came into view on schedule. Two cars, as expected, trailed the engine. If reports were accurate, her father would be guarded by six men on Vasily Shkuro’s payroll. Rifles, certainly. Blades, she doubted. These men have no honor.

As expected, the train slowed as it passed the Cossacks’ hidden position. Even a half-blind engineer could see the logs stacked three layers high on the track.

Rayna, her observers, and the Cossacks shared a knowing smile and grabbed