"Why are you moving the cars outside?"

I tried not to jump a mile high. Nathan down here in the basement car park was the last thing I needed today.

"Because it's Saturday. I wash the cars every Saturday. Galina doesn't like them being dirty or getting damaged by salt," I said calmly.

Both things were true. Galina had always been fastidious about her belongings even back when she was a Dhampir earning shitty Guardian wages. It's one of the traits we shared – we liked to take care of our things. I could remember back at St. Basil's we'd sometimes sit side-by-side polishing our shoes and chatting. Things had been so much simpler then. While she'd been my mentor, she'd also been my friend and the closer we got to graduation, the more we'd slipped into the role of trusted colleagues.

There'd been nothing sexual between us back then. Or if she'd wanted anything, I'd had no inkling of it. I certainly hadn't thought about her in that way. But I'd respected her greatly; she'd epitomized everything that was admirable and meritorious in a Guardian, and I'd wanted to be just like her. Which is why seeing what she'd become was so abhorrent. All her basest desires brought to the fore at the expense of the qualities that had been her greatest strengths. While she professed an amorous interest in me now, I wasn't fooling myself that it was anything beyond a mechanism to satiate her admittedly voracious appetites and to use as another mechanism of control. While the Guardian Galina had commanded allegiance by earning the respect of her team, now she enforced it through fear and favors.

The Guardian Galina had been would never have wanted to live like this. Sure she probably wouldn't have minded the fast cars and some of the luxuries her Strigoi self had amassed, but she'd valued her virtue more than a Ferrari. I had to wonder whether that's why she gave her involuntary recruits a choice. In any case, it made what I was going to do a little easier to bear. Thinking that in some way I was releasing her.

I walked past Nathan, hearing his warning snarl but trusting he didn't want to upset things just before his coup any more than I did just before mine. So I got the next set of keys and drove the car out into the large paved service area to the side of the manor. Usually, I'd wash the cars quite close to the house – but today I'd used the excuse I'd also clean the minivans some of the army had arrived in to park quite a bit further from the house. I parked Galina's Ferrari and walked back to the house to get the next car.

"How do I know you're not planning to try to escape?" Nathan growled.

"Because Galina has tripled the human security while everyone is here, so I'd not make it a hundred yards towards the gate. Besides - every bored immortal is probably sitting at the windows watching me and would raise the alarm in half a minute if I tried," I said sarcastically.

Nathan knew I had a point.

"Fine - but I'm going to stay here and watch you. Galina is not going to thank me if her little pet escapes…"

"Be my guest," I said, getting the keys to the final car and driving it out onto the forecourt lining it up along with the others. Walking back to the house, I gathered what I'd need to wash and check the cars. Sponges, buckets, chamois, detergent, anti-freeze for the radiators and the high-pressure spray unit. I'd gotten lucky with the day, the weather being unseasonably warm after a frigid night. It was still only a little above freezing out, but warm enough for me to do what I needed to.

I attached the hose to the taps beside the mains water outlet outside, running it to the pressure cleaning unit. I washed the first of the vehicles, whistling as I worked. Truth be told washing cars in this weather was a miserable business even rugged up as I was, but I needed to look casual and relaxed as I did this. I quickly washed each vehicle down, using the chamois to dry them one by one. After a while, Nathan disappeared, evidently bored watching another man labor. Still, I couldn't assume he wasn't somewhere looking at me from inside, so I kept about my preparations slowly and methodically.

One by one, I popped the bonnets, checking the radiators were filled with anti-freeze and topping up the windscreen wiper reservoirs at the same time. I also opened the gas tanks under the guise of adding an enricher to the mix. Once I'd completed my preparations, I closed up most of the cars, carefully returning the keys to the board inside.

"Very nice, Belikov," Nathan growled, appearing out of nowhere. "Why haven't you brought them inside?"

"I haven't shined the tires yet..."

I was clutching at straws, but I needed those cars outside. All of them.

"So do it now."

"I don't answer to you," I said pushing past him. Before I'd moved more than a foot, he'd pushed me up against the inner wall of the garage, the side of my face pressed painfully against the brick. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck as his mouth made its way to my ear.

"Yet," he whispered ever so quietly. "Don't get used to being awakened, Belikov. I have a feeling eternity is going to be short for you."

That was my other problem. If I were turned, as Galina's second I'd have a huge target on my back for every immortal who wanted to get close to her, or for those like Nathan who'd been displaced by my appointment to that position. So failure wasn't an option. Nathan left me then, but all it did was strengthen my resolve. It was time to do this.

I grabbed two sets of car keys from the pegboard and then closed the garage door, walking through the basement corridors towards the kitchen. Along the way, I grabbed the laundry cart I'd stashed in one of the corridors. Empty, other than a jerrycan of petrol covered by some random washing and dirty bed linens, I wheeled it towards the laundry room beside the kitchen. Walking casually down the hallway past the dormitories where some of the army were being temporarily accommodated, I couldn't believe my luck that there was a moment where the corridor was empty. Without breaking stride, I grabbed the leather journal of names from the desk. I'd sworn to myself if I could, I'd do it. Those Guardians, Moroi, and humans deserved a record of their death, and their families deserved peace of mind knowing what had happened to their loved ones. I threw the book into the laundry cart and kept walking and only just in time – two immortal came around the corner only seconds later.

In the safety of the laundry room, I fished the book out and wrapped it in a makeshift knapsack I made from one of the sheets along with the only other souvenir I was taking from this place. All my clothes and belongings I'd left in my room in my duffel bag. It was replaceable, and moving any clothing or items from my chamber would have raised immediate suspicion, so I'd abandoned them and would leave in what I was wearing. Since I always wore my duster, no one thought anything of me wearing that.

I exited the laundry, the knapsack hidden back in the cart. It was a risk; I was relying on the indolence of Strigoi. However, experience had shown me not much would tempt them into a service area unless they had to be there, so it should be ok. I moved slowly into the kitchen. I'd run through this in my mind hundreds of times – now all I had to do is hope it actually worked.

I opened the old coal shoot, carefully climbing inside through the half-height door. It was all but empty, but there were years of coal dust in the nooks and crannies. I was hoping it would be enough. Carefully lifting an electric fan inside, I positioned it and switched it on to oscillate and blow at maximum speed, although it was still switched off at the wall so for the time being, it was stationary. Once I was satisfied with the position of the fan, I exited the small room, leaving the door very slightly ajar. Back in the kitchen, I carefully dusted myself down. The last thing I needed was to be covered in coal dust at this juncture.

The kitchen was still mercifully vacant, so I had to act while I could. I grabbed the aerosol tins I'd put aside for this purpose and put one inside each industrial microwave, setting their timers to start in ten minutes time. I was hoping that would give me enough time to vacate the building. With a final look around the kitchen, I said a prayer. If this didn't work, one way or another my soul would be meeting its maker today. With a deep breath, I switched on the fan in the coal shoot, turned every gas knob on the three industrial cookers to flood the area with gas and then left the room, shutting the door behind me.

Walking as quickly as I could to the laundry, I opened the jerry can of fuel, making sure a small amount dribbled out through the fabric base of the cart as I wheeled it down the hallways towards the main stairs to the ground level. While five or six different stairwells led to the basement, this was the only one that was carpeted. It also had the advantage that the camera which observed the staircase was placed directly above the archway I had to pass under – so I was able to jump up and rip it from the wall before it recorded what I was doing. Had someone been following me on the cameras they would have seen me walk through other basement areas and have a good idea that when one went offline, it was due to me. But I was hoping that, as usual, no one was looking too closely. In any case, I had to move and quickly now.

Pulling the knapsack out of the laundry cart, I put it to one side, grabbing the jerry can and dousing the carpeted stairs with as much petrol as I could before dumping the jerry can back into the fabric cart where it would soak into the remaining linens. I wheeled it close to the timber fretwork. It was an old house and a timber staircase, so with any luck flames would spread quickly.

I knew I stank of petrol now, but it was only minutes before everything would happen, so I grabbed the knapsack and walked as fast as I could to the garages. Luck was again on my side – other than a couple of immortals in the distance walking away from me, I saw no one. I'd made it! I walked through the door to the garage and had started to bar it from the inside when I heard a noise behind me. I whipped around, dropping the knapsack, just in time to feel Nathan's fist collide with my shoulder. If I'd been half a second later, it would have been my head, and I would have been out cold.

"Naughty naughty – what have you been up to, Belikov?!" he asked. And with those nine words, everything started to unravel.

I sat at my desk sipping Rémy Martin Louis XIII Cognac thinking about my mother. I hadn't thought of her in a long time. Probably years. At first, after she'd died when I was ten, it was too painful. Then time passed, I got busy, and she'd become part of a past I so desperately wanted to forget. And I'd done so very successfully, up until that unexpected phone call last week.

I had a child. A daughter. Since Guardian Petrov called, I'd had everything about the child, and her background investigated, and it was looking very much like Janine had told the truth. I was a father. And something about finding out I was a parent made me think about my own childhood. Well. My mother, at least.

Being a parent was not what I'd intended. After my upbringing, I'd decided never to be beholden to anyone emotionally in that way, particularly a wife or a child. With my own damaged upbringing, how could I hope to be any sort of a father? Yet it seemed fate had had other ideas, because unless this were an elaborate ruse close to twenty years in the making, I had a child.

I had a stack of photos of the girl. Rose. Looking at her, I could certainly see the resemblance. She had my hair and eyes, and something about her lips was mine, too. But I could also see Janine. The nose was certainly hers, as was the overall shape of her face. Her skin was a pleasant mix of Janine's pale milky skin and my own golden tones. She was beautiful, I was pleased to see. Breathtaking. In the earlier photos from school yearbooks, I could see a wild and mischievous gleam in her eyes. The ones taken this week were different. As well as looking older, she looked downcast. Defeated, Petrov had said. It was the right word for it.

For not the first time I pondered how to handle the situation. I'd certainly not let my only child end up selling her body, compromising her integrity or endangering my grandchild for want of a few dollars. I had more than enough money and could provide for her and the child very comfortably for the rest of their lives, and I'd not even notice a difference financially. But I was curious.

I'd never expected to be a father, but now I knew I was I couldn't just send money. I wanted to meet her. Maybe not tell her I was her father – but just meet her and get a sense of who she was. What made her tick.

"Pavel?" I called out to my Chief Guardian, faithful manservant and also my closest friend of over twenty years – probably the man who'd been standing guard outside my door when the child was conceived, I thought with amusement.

"Yes, Mr. Mazur?"

"Get someone to organize a flight plan to America. St. Vladimir's Academy in Montana," I said, grabbing a second tumbler and pouring him a glass.

Pavel raised his eyebrows. He very rarely drank, and certainly never on duty. I gestured to the seat in front of my desk.

"Have a drink with me, Pavel. Isn't that what you do to congratulate a man when he becomes a father?" I dropped the photos on the desk for him to look at. "Rosemarie Hathaway. My daughter and eighteen in a week."

Pavel looked at each of the photos carefully, looking up several times to scrutinize me before looking back to the images in his hand.

"She's lucky she got Janine's nose," he laughed, clinking his crystal glass against mine and raising the cognac to his lips.

I'd been starting to think the call wouldn't come, but finally, it did. And I could breathe again! As I'd hoped, Abe indicated he wanted to help Rose. It came with conditions, but I hadn't been stupid enough to believe it wouldn't. However what he suggested seemed reasonable enough.

It turned out, amongst many other things Abe Mazur was a qualified lawyer. It made sense to know the law if you continually skirted so close to the edge of it, I suppose. He proposed a visit to Rose to coincide with her eighteenth birthday. He was going to pose as a lawyer representing her father. He hadn't decided precisely how to play it, yet, but he mentioned it would likely be some type of 'coming of age trust fund' with an initial large payment then an annuity to provide for her and the child for the rest of their lives. His only condition was my silence. I was never to tell anyone I'd called him or let on I knew that Rose was his daughter.

I agreed in an instant. It was a small price to pay to buy Rose and her child a safe, comfortable life. Rose would be able to buy the two of them a home, and there'd be no hurry for her to find a job to support them.

Nathan had me caught between him and the wall. If I let him pin me, he'd rip my neck open with his fangs before I could fend him off. It was exactly what I'd hoped to avoid – a fight with a Strigoi while I was weaponless, but what choice did I have? I was also aware of something he wasn't – any second now the basement of this manor was going to explode.

I'd disabled the gravity fed water tanks on the roof that serviced the comprehensive fire system by turning off the gas that was heating the water and preventing it from freezing. Instead of life-saving water, the tanks were now filled with frozen solid ice. Similarly, before I'd come inside earlier, I'd shut off the primary and secondary water supply pipes to the building. There should be enough residual in the pipes that no one had yet noticed the lack of water, but it would severely hamper any fire-fighting operations.

Old buildings like these were notoriously difficult to defend against fire, and I was relying on the fact Strigoi wouldn't be able to make it out as far as the protection of the cars because of the sunlight. Hopefully, the whole lot of them would be incinerated. But unless I got away from Nathan, there's a good chance I'd be included as one of those killed.

I lashed out with my first, punching him in the side of the face. He was strong, but I was fighting for my life. He staggered a little, giving me the chance to follow up my punch with a kick to his abdomen. He staggered backward for a moment, but it was enough for me to pivot and smack the automatic door opener with my fist. Instantly the doors started to open, giving me a way to escape and more importantly letting in life-saving light. Nathan growled in frustration as I quickly stepped towards the sunlight, knowing he was unable to follow me.

"You won't get far," he snarled at me as I picked up the knapsack and ran as fast as I could towards the cars. I didn't look back, but I was halfway to the closest one when I heard a small explosion. My heart sunk – it was something but nowhere near enough to distract the Strigoi and the humans they'd employed to guard their gates. A moment later I was knocked down as the shockwave from an enormous explosion pushed me to the ground. Bits of debris were raining down on me. I looked back, and the entire far side of the building was obliterated. I'm not sure if it was the coal or the gas, but there was already a serious fire.

I picked myself up and made it to the second car from the end. The van. I threw down my knapsack and quickly started the engine, releasing the brake. I used a block of wood I'd put aside earlier to jam the accelerator down, and using a second block of wood I pushed the gear selector into drive. I leaped back as I sent the car hurtling towards the garage. If it didn't cause a second fire, at the very least, it would cause more structural damage.

Picking up my knapsack, I reached into my duster and grabbed my zippo. The one Ivan had given me for my eighteenth birthday and that I'd treasured ever since. I hated to be without it, but I knew Ivan would be the first one telling me to use it if it helped buy my freedom.

"Thanks, Ivan," I said before I lit it and threw it into the back of the car I'd left open. I'd positioned a rag soaked in petrol on the back seat. Hopefully, it would ignite and incinerate the other vehicles, too.

Then I jumped into the furthest most car – a dark SUV. Wasting no time, I started the engine, threw it into reverse and got as far from the manor house as I could, taking off over the forecourt and across the manicured grass to a secluded thicket of trees. I stopped there with the engine running, finally looking back. The building was well alight, and a couple of the cars were on fire, too. The western end, above the kitchens, had almost entirely collapsed and the eastern end, where the garages were, was also damaged and on fire.

As I watched, I saw one of the security vehicles drive up from the front gates. They parked at a distance in the middle of the driveway, a couple of humans getting out to look at the blaze in the distance. They stood for a moment and then got into the car, driving back towards the front gates. I let them go hoping they were abandoning their posts. It would make my escape that much easier. I watched the manor burn for the next half an hour. The fire was spreading fast, and the destruction was growing, part of the roof falling in. I couldn't be sure I'd got them all – but I was sure I'd killed a good many Strigoi this day. Now all I had to do was make it out alive myself!

I drove across the lawns towards the gatehouse at the end of the long driveway, stopping some three hundred yards away and obscuring the car behind some trees. I crept the rest of the way to the gatehouse on foot. When I got there, the place was all but deserted. I watched the last three humans pile anything that wasn't nailed down into the back of a car and take off. It looks like whatever Galina had paid these guys it hadn't been enough.

Running back to the car, I checked it before climbing in. It was clear, and I started the engine, getting onto the driveway and driving to the front gates. They were open and unguarded, but I was still speeding as I pulled out onto the main road and away from the manor as quickly as I could. Moving in the general direction I needed to go, watching for signs the whole way, within half an hour I was on the P-254; the main highway that led from Novosibirsk to Omsk. The same highway that ran past my hometown of Baia. Looking at the signs, I calculated that within six hours I would be home. Tonight I planned to see my family and sleep in my own bed for the first time in three years.