The skull glared at me
with empty orbits. Odd runes
marked its forehead, carved into the yellowed bone and filled with black ink. Its thick bottom jaw supported a row
of conical fangs, long and sharp like the teeth of a crocodile. The skull sat on top of an old STOP
sign. Someone had painted the
surface of the hexagon white and wrote KEEP OUT in large jagged letters. A red spatter stained the bottom edge
of it, looking suspiciously like dry blood. I leaned closer. Yep, blood. Some hair, too. Human
hair.
Curran frowned at the
sign. “Do you think he’s trying
to tell us something?”
“I don’t know. He’s being so subtle about it.”
I looked past the sign. About a hundred yards back, a large
two story house waited. It was
clearly built post-Shift, with solid timber and brown stone stone laid by hand
to ensure it would survive the magic waves, yet instead of being a simple
square box, this house had all the pre-Shift bells and whistles of a modern
prairie home: rows of big windows, sweeping horizontal lines, and spacious
layout. Except prairie style
homes usually had long flat roofs and little ornamentation, while this place
sported pitched roofs with elaborate carved gables, beautiful barge boards, and
ornate wooden windows.
“It’s like someone took
a Russian log cabin and a pre-Shift contemporary house, stuck them into a
blender, and dumped it over there.”
Curran frowned. “It’s
his… what do you call it? Terem.”
“Terem is where Russian
princesses lived.”
“Exactly.”
Between us and the
house lay a field of black dirt. It
looked soft and powdery like potting soil or a freshly plowed field. A path of rickety old boards, half
rotten and splitting, curved through the dirt to the front door. I didn’t have a good feeling about
that dirt.
We’d tried to circle
the house and ran into a thick thorn-studded natural fence, formed by wild rose
bushes, blackberry, and trees. The
fence was twelve feet tall and when Curran tried to jump to see over it, the
thorny vines snapped out like lassos and made a heroic effort to pull him in. After I helped him pick the needles
out of his hands, we decided frontal assault was a better option.
“No animal tracks on
the dirt,” I said.
“No animal scents
either,” Curran said. “There are
scent trails all around us through the woods, but none here.”
“That’s why he has
giant windows and no grates on them. Nothing
can get close to the house.”
“It’s that, or he just
doesn’t care. Why the hell
doesn’t he answer his phone?”
Who knew why the
priests of the gods of All Evil and Darkness did anything?
I picked up a small
rock, tossed it into the dirt, and braced myself. Nothing. No toothy jaws exploding through the
soil, no magic fire, no earth-shattering explosion. The rock just sat there.
We could come back
later. That would be a
reasonable thing to do. However,
we drove ten miles through the lousy traffic in the punishing heat of Georgia’s
summer and then hiked another three through the woods to get here, and our
deadline to get this done was fast approaching. One way or another, I was getting
into that house.
I put my foot onto the
first board. It sank a little
under my weight, but held. Step. Another step. Still holding.
I tiptoed across the
boards, Curran right behind me. Think
sneaky thoughts.
The dirt shivered.
Two more steps.
A mound formed to the
left of us, the dirt shifting like waves of some jet-black sea.
Uh-oh.
“To the left,” I
murmured.
“I see it.”
Long serpentine bone
spines slid through the soil, the fins of a skeletal sea serpent gliding just
under the surface of a midnight-black ocean. We sprinted to the door. Out of
the corner of my eye, I saw loose dirt burst to the left. A scorpion the size of a pony shot
out and scrambled after us.
That’s all we needed. If we killed his pet scorpion, there
would be no end of complaining.
I ran up the porch and
pounded on the door. “Roman!”
Behind me bone
tentacles exploded from the soil and wound about Curran’s body. He snarled, straining. The left tentacle tore.
“Roman!” Damn it all to hell.
A bone tentacle grabbed
me and yanked me back and up, dangling me six feet off the ground. The scorpion dashed forward, its barb
poised for the kill.
The door swung open,
revealing Roman. He wore a T-shirt
and plaid pajamas and his dark hair, shaved on the sides into a long horse-like
mane, stuck out on the side of his head.
“What’s all this?”
Everything stopped.
Roman squinted at me. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We came to talk to
you,” Curran growled. “We called
you for last three days. Why don’t you answer your damn phone?”
“Because I unplugged
it.” Roman waved his hand. The
scorpion retreated. The
tentacles gently set me down and slithered back into the ground. “You would
unplug yours too, if you were related to my family. My parents are fighting
again and they’re trying to make me choose sides. I told them they could talk to me
when they start acting like responsible adults.”
Fat chance of that. Roman’s father Girgorii was the head
black volhv in the city. His
mother Evdokia was one third of the Witch Oracle. When they had fights, things didn’t
boil over, they exploded. Literally.
“So far I’ve avoided
both of them, so I’m enjoying peace and quiet. Come in.”
He held the door open. I walked past him into a large living
room. Golden wooden floors, huge
fire place, thirty foot ceilings, and soft furniture. Book shelves lined the other wall,
crammed to the brink. The place
looked downright cozy.
Curran walked in behind
me and took in the living room. His
thick eyebrows rose.
“What?” Roman asked.
“Where is the
sacrificial pit ringed with skulls?” I asked.
“No altar?” Curran
asked. “No bloody knives and
frightened virgins?”
“Ha. Ha.” Roman rolled
his eyes. “Never heard that one
before. I keep the virgins in
the basement chained up. Do you
want some coffee?”
I shook my head.
“Yes,” Curran said.
“Black?”
“No, put cream in it.”
“Good man. Only two kind of people drink their
coffee black, cops and serial killers. Sit, sit.”
I sat on the sofa and
almost sank into it. I’d need
help getting up. Curran sprawled
next to me.
“This is nice,” he
said.
“Mhm.”
“We should get one for
the living room.”
“We’d get blood on it.”
Curran shrugged. “So?”
Roman appeared with two mugs, one pitch-black and the
other clearly half-filled with cream. He
gave the lighter mug to Curran.
“Drinking yours black,
I see,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Eh… Goes with the job. So what can I do for you?”
“We’re getting
married,” I said.
“I know. Congratulations. On Ivan Kupalo night. I don’t know if
it’s good or bad, but it’s brave.”
Ivan Kupalo’s night was
the night of wild magic in Slavic foklore.
The ancient Russians believed it was the time when the boundaries
between the worlds blurred. In
our case, it meant the night of a really strong magic wave. Odd things happened on Ivan Kupalo’s
night. Given a choice, I
would’ve picked a different day, but Curran had set the date. To him it was the last day of
werewolf summer, a shapeshifter holiday and a perfect day for the wedding.
Since I ducked this wedding for months already, I didn’t want to push him.
“So did you come to
invite me?” Roman asked.
“Yes,” Curran said. “We’d like you to officiate.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We’d like you to marry
us,” I said.
Roman’s eyes went wide. He pointed to himself. “Me?”
“Yes,” Curran said.
“Marry you?”
“Yes.”
“You do know what I do,
right?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re Chernobog’s priest.”
Chernobog literally
meant Black God, who was also known by other fun names like Black Serpent, Lord
of Darkness, God of freezing cold, destruction, evil, and death. Some ancient Slavs broke their
pantheon into light and dark, and according to that view, Chernobog was a necessary
evil. Somebody had to be his
priest and Roman somehow ended up with that job. It was a family business.
Roman leaned forward,
his dark eyes intense. “You sure
about this?”
“Yes,” Curran said.
“Not going to change
your mind?”
What was it with the twenty
questions. “Will you do it or
not?”
“Of course, I’ll do it.
Ha!” Roman jumped off the couch. “Ha! Nobody
ever asks me to marry them. They always go to Nikolai, my cousin, Vasiliy’s
oldest son.”
Roman had a vast family
tree, but I remembered Vasiliy, his uncle.
Vasiliy was priest of Belobog, Chernobog’s brother and exact opposite. He was also very proud of his
children and bragged about them every chance he got.
Roman ducked behind the
couch and emerged with a phone. “When some supernatural filth tries to carry
off the children, call Roman so he can wade through blood and sewage to rescue
them, but when it’s something nice like a wedding or a naming, oh no, we can’t
have Chernobog’s volhv involved. Get
Nikolai. When he finds out who I’m going to marry, he’ll have an aneurysm. His
head will explode. Good that
he’s a doctor, maybe he can treat himself.”
He plugged the phone into the outlet.
It rang.
Roman stared at it as
if it were a viper.
The phone rang again.
He picked it up and
held it to his ear. “Yes?”
His expression
stretched. He held the phone
toward me. “It’s for you.”
I took the phone. “This is Kate.”
“Roland has Saiman,”
Julie said into my ear.
My brain took a second
to digest it. Saiman used to be
my go-to expert for all things weird and magical, but the last time I tried to
hire him, he told me that sooner or later my father would murder me and he
wasn’t stupid enough to play for the losing team. I knew Saiman was the center of his
own Universe, but it still surprised me. I had saved him more than once. I didn’t expect friendship – that was
beyond him, but expected some loyalty. Whatever
loyalty he might have had must’ve evaporated at the first mention of my father.
Roland was a near immortal
wizard with a megalomaniac complex, who’d survived the first apocalypse and
thousands of years of technology that followed. My father and I didn’t exactly
see eye to eye. He tried to murder me once in the womb. He failed, because my
mother saved me, and then he managed to kill her when I was just a baby. We’ve met again about eight months
ago. For some reason, he decided
to play father and we existed in an uneasy peace. According to the terms of that peace,
Atlanta was my territory and Saiman, being a resident of Atlanta, was under my
protection. Roland built a small
base next to the city but too far from the border defined by my magic to
constitute a breach of our agreement. Now
he divided his time between that base and his main territory in Midwest.
I pushed the speaker
button. “How do you know?”
“Jim’s scouts saw him
being brought in.”
“Did he look like he
came voluntarily?” Curran asked.
“He was covered in
blood and couldn’t walk. Roland’s
people had to carry him.”
Saiman was a polymorph. He could take on any human shape, any
gender, any age. His
regeneration was off the charts. How hard did they have to beat him for him not
be able to walk?
“When did this happen?”
“Three hours ago.”
If Roland’s people
snatched Saiman out of his ultra-modern apartment, the peace was over. I would have to go see my father. I’d rather stab myself in the eye.
“Call Derek,” I told
Julie. “Tell him to wait for me
at the office.”
“Okay.” She hung up.
The look on Curran’s
face was pure murder.
“You’re not,” he said.
“He’s an Atlanta
resident,” I said.
“If you were dying of
thirst, and he was sitting by a lake three feet away, he wouldn’t walk those
three steps to bring you water. He
told you to go screw yourself and you are running off to save him.”
“It’s not about him. It’s about Roland. He can’t just come and take people
out of the city.”
Curran swore.
“Impressive,” I told
him, heading for the door. “That’s
why I’m marrying you.”
“No,” Roman grinned. ‘That’s why I’m marrying you. I’ll wear my best robe. It will be
glorious. I need the name of
your wedding planner.”
“Kate,” Curran growled. “You aren’t going.”
I swung the door open. A black raven flew past me and landed
on the back of the couch.
Roman slapped his hand
over his face.
“There you are,” the raven
said in Evdokia’s voice. “Ungrateful
son.”
“Here we go…” Roman
muttered.
“Eighteen hours in
labor and that’s what I get. He can’t even pick up the phone to talk to his own
mother.”
“Mother, don’t you see
I have people here?”
“I bet if their mother
called them, they would pick up.”
That would be a neat
trick for both of us. Sadly dead
mothers didn’t come back to life even in post-Shift Atlanta.
“Nice to see you,
Roman.” I grabbed Curran by the hand, ignoring his pissed-off stare.
The bird swiveled
toward me. “Katya!”
Oh no.
“Don’t you leave. I need to talk to you.”
“Got to go, bye!”
I jumped out of the
house. Curran was only half a
second behind me and he slapped the door closed. We started down the wooden path.
“You know I have to
go,” I said. “And you know you
can’t come with me.”
“I can,” he said, his
eyes dark. “But it would be
counter-productive.”
With me, Roland would
play the benevolent father because, for some odd reason, it appealed to him. If Curran came with me, it would turn
into subtle insults and intimidation as the two of them would bait each other. I had to go, because this was a slap
in the face and if we didn’t respond, Roland would see it as a win. Give my father an inch, and he would
bite off the whole arm. We had
to respond and that response had to be uncompromising. If something went wrong, Curran would
be the only person in Atlanta capable of holding the city and getting me out.
“Here is how we’re
going to play this,” Curran said. “I’ll
swing by the Guild and pick up my mercs. Then we’ll wait just inside the
boundary. If you aren’t back
within the two hours, I’ll come to get you.”
“I’ll be back,” I told
him.
Gold rolled over his
irises. “Yes,” he said. “You will. I promise you that.”
