Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [158]
“How evil you are,” Annika said. “You’re rotten with malevolence, nobody knows this better than I do.”
A peculiar light shone in Batchuk’s eyes. “You think you know the meaning of evil, but you don’t, Annika, because it’s your grandfather who’s truly evil.”
Gourdjiev took a step toward them. “Don’t believe a word he says, Annika.”
“Yes, not a word of it, but here is the truth of it: Nikki and I were in love, she was the only woman I cared about, to this day that’s the truth.”
“You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and bit you,” Gourdjiev said.
Batchuk kept his gaze firmly on Annika. “It was your grandfather who schemed to keep us apart. He never let me even meet your mother until it was too late, until she was already engaged to Alexsei.”
“No,” Annika said, “my mother and father were in love.”
“Alexsei loved her, of that there can be no doubt.” Batchuk shook his head. “But as for Nikki, no, she thought she loved Alexsei until we met, and then she knew the truth of it. Even though she was married neither of us could help ourselves, we became lost in each other—nothing, no one else existed.”
“What he’s saying is nonsense,” Gourdjiev said. “He’s simply trying to justify his actions.”
“Annika,” Batchuk said, “it was our love, your mother’s for me and mine for her, that caused Alexsei to feel so threatened. If we’d just had a quick tumble, if our connection was purely physical, do you think he would have become so maniacal with her? No, he knew, just as she knew that her love for me meant that their marriage was over.”
“You killed him,” Gourdjiev said. “You broke Alexsei’s neck.”
“He gave me no choice, he was out of control, nothing less would have stopped him from tearing me limb from limb.”
“So now you claim the murder was self-defense,” Annika said.
“Yes.” Batchuk nodded. “Absolutely.”
Gourdjiev took another step toward him and at last his antagonistic intent was unmistakable. “And that same night was it self-defense when you raped my daughter the moment she came home while her poor dead husband was bundled in a closet?”
Batchuk’s face filled with blood. “I did no such thing!”
Annika’s eyes were full of shock and rage. “Did you? Did you rape my mother the night you killed my father?”
“I never raped her,” Batchuk said. “There wasn’t a time I touched her when she didn’t want it, didn’t beg for the release only I could give her.”
Annika slapped his face, very hard, the energy rising in her from her lower belly through her arm into the tips of her fingers, the imprints of which could be seen on his cheek white on red, and then an instant afterward, red on pink.
Gourdjiev kept moving in, as if for the kill. “And what do you call it, also self-defense, when you stole Annika away from her mother?”
“You mean from you, Annika was never Nikki’s child, she was yours, you tried with all your power to make sure of that,” Batchuk said. “But yet it most certainly was self-defense. I took her from you, from your clutches, because she’s mine.” He turned to Annika. “You were conceived the night I killed Alexsei Dementiev in self-defense, you were conceived after he died, in the frenzy of passion your mother and I shared.”
TWENTY-NINE
“IS THIS true?” Annika said to Gourdjiev, breaking the stunned silence. “You knew?”
“Not right away, of course not.”
Jack could see that the old man was on the defensive now, which was just where Batchuk wanted him. He risked a glance at Alli, who had come off her chair and was standing very near Gourdjiev as if to stop him if he leapt to throttle Batchuk. He could tell that she was totally absorbed in the psychological fireworks.
“But gradually, as your mother’s mental condition began to decline, I got some inkling. At first I thought her depression was a result of Alexsei’s death, but then, as the months turned into years I grew convinced that something else was eating her alive. Finally, five years from the day of Alexsei’s murder, I got it out of her, how she had come home that night to find not Alexsei waiting for her, but him, Oriel Batchuk.
“I was out