However, the calf tied to the pommel of Felix’s saddle trailed behind gloomily as if it sensed it was marching toward doom. Hrot’s feelings were almost identical.
Whenever the path got wide enough, Anath and Felix rode abreast beside him to give him courage.
“Do not despair, my dear,” Anath told him, her mittened hand stroking his shoulder. “I’m sure everything will turn out well. If the Emissary fails to claim you as his servant on the date stipulated by the deal, he will lose power over you forever. All we need to do is to keep him at bay until midnight.”
“Imagine, my little snotnose,” Felix said as he squeezed Hrot’s biceps. “Tomorrow you’ll be a free man! Then we will gallop back to Prague to celebrate with booze and girls! Nothing bad can happen tonight, I’m sure.”
Felix tapped the three small pouches that dangled from his belt, each filled with the powder he’d brought from the laboratory. “Not a mouse will penetrate our protective circle. I can almost see the damned Emissary sneaking and snarling the whole night around the Ruins like a penniless man around a whorehouse, haha-haa!”
Felix had never told them he’d boiled the powder too late. He tried to sound as cheerful and buoyant as in his younger days, but Hrot could tell he was nervous. That did nothing to help dissipate the black clouds from Hrot’s forehead.
The closer they got to the ruined castle, the gloomier Hrot became. He hung his head and let it swing from side to side, just like the sacrificial calf behind his back. When they neared the riverside hills, he lifted his feverish eyes as if hoping to see his village. Were his parents and siblings alive and well in the world he had lost forever?
In spite of the cold, the horses sweated as they climbed the cliff massif toward the castle. Having passed the crumbling battlement, the riders dismounted and led the animals up the stone steps. As he followed his friends across the bridge into the bailey, the charred ruin of the keep greeted Hrot grimly, just as it had ten years ago.
They tied the animals to the pines near the vault. Anath said, “Let’s create the protective circle.”
They left the bailey and crossed the bridge again. Felix handed one of the pouches to Anath and one to Hrot, keeping one for himself.
“Now we will see whether magic and alchemy can coexist and draw from each other,” she said, giving Felix a meaningful look. “Walk a few steps behind me and scatter the powder, just as we’ve practiced it.”
Anath led the way along the outer edge of the moat, with Felix trailing on the left and Hrot on the right. Plowing through the white wilderness, she chanted in an unknown tongue. As she made a step, she cast a pinch of the powder in front of her; as she made a second step, Felix threw his powder over his left shoulder. On her third step, Hrot tossed his powder over his right shoulder. At times, steep slopes, deep snowdrifts, and thick undergrowth forced them far from the moat. The sun had already dipped behind the curtain wall when they finally completed the circle and returned to the bailey.
“That should keep the Emissary away from the Ruins,” said Anath. “But we must start the ritual to ask Krverah for further protection. The dusk will be here soon, and the Emissary is surely on his way to our world.”
They untied the calf and led it toward the vault’s staircase. Felix climbed down and grabbed it by the horns to pull it inside. The creature tossed his head and balked. “Come on, you devil,” Felix groaned as he struggled with the stubborn animal.
Anath and Hrot pushed at the calf’s haunches, and finally they made it stumble down the stairs. They kindled a large fire and donned crimson, conical masks to represent the three heads of Krverah.
“Hold the calf,” she said.
The men grabbed the bellowing animal by the horns. Anath put her hand on its shaggy forehead and pleaded to the goddess to accept the sacrifice. Hrot would have never thought cattle could be hypnotized. Yet the calf seemed to fall under Anath’s spell almost immediately. It quieted down, and swayed from side to side, staring stupidly through pupils that were dilated like two platters.
Anath produced a pouch of pungent, ground herbs. She poured some into the palm of her hand and blew it into the calf’s nostrils. The beast staggered and dropped to its front knees.
Anath said to Hrot, “It must be you who cuts its throat.” She handed him a dagger and made a few steps back. Recalling Hrot’s accidents, Felix leaped aside.
Fortunately, Hrot managed to slash the calf’s jugular without hurting either of his friends. He was likewise unscathed, although he looked pale and sick as the crimson blood gushed out of the calf’s neck.
Just before the lifeless calf collapsed, Anath filled three goblets with its blood. She cut the calf’s heart out and dropped it into the fire. Flames erupted angrily as if oil rather than blood had been running through the animal’s veins.
“The goddess is listening,” Anath whispered, and Hrot feared he might never hear her speak in an earthly tongue again.
Anath’s voice echoed throughout the smoky vault the whole evening. However, she spoke in tongues that could be only understood by Krverah. Anath panted as though she were feverish, and her voice grew increasingly hollow. Her eyes were closed, and her eyelids shivered as if she were dreaming on her feet. At times she raised the goblet and took a sip of the sacrificial blood. Whenever she did, Felix and Hrot followed suit.
Hrot’s face sweated under the mask, and smoke crept into his throat and nostrils. The metallic taste of the calf’s blood tickled his tongue and teased his stomach. He fought hard not to cough or stir, though, as he feared that any disturbance could severe the tie between Anath and the goddess.
Hrot often felt that someone else was there besides the three of them. His teary eyes would dart around the vault, but supernatural fear prevented him from glancing over his shoulder. He noticed Felix was also unnerved. His hands shook so much he splashed the contents of his goblet all over his hands. The calf’s blood dripped over the stumps of his fingers, making them look as if they had just been amputated.
A dreadful squeal came from the bailey. Hrot screamed in terror. Felix whimpered and cowered. Anath fell quiet, and she staggered as if she’d just been hit by an invisible fist. The goblet fell out of her hand. Her eyes were wide open now, but her pupils were rolled up, and nothing but ghostly whiteness flashed through the slits in her mask. When they rolled back down, her pupils shone eerily in the firelight.
The decapitated calf bellowed mournfully as if it were still alive. Its legs twitched in spasms. The terrified Felix threw his goblet away and rushed out of the vault. The grunting of wild boars rolled around the bailey.
Hundreds of porcine hooves beat the ground above Hrot’s head. The horses screeched in fright. Somewhere around the top of the stairs, Felix screamed in agony. His moribund roar blended with furious squeals and with the sound of ripping flesh. And then, all went quiet. No more sounds came from outside. The calf was as still as any beheaded creature should be.
The goblet slid out of Hrot’s trembling hand. He felt as if the mask were about to suffocate him, and he yanked it off. The rite was obviously over. “What happened, Anath?” he wheezed into the darkness.
For long minutes, Anath said nothing. She only swayed from side to side just like the calf had when she’d hypnotized it. Her eyes shone madly as though the fever still held.
“The boars have done Felix in,” she finally said. Her voice was strangely hollow. “The powder he made is useless. The protective circle is ineffective. And Krverah has been too slow to heed the petitions. The Emissary has been faster—and stronger. In short, the whole rite has failed. The pact you made has come into force.”
To Hrot, each of her words was like a stab. How could she be so calm and emotionless while telling him that her brother had died and that they were now in the hands of the Emissary?
“What—what—what does all this mean?” he asked in a voice that rattled with fear.
She said, “It means you have lost your soul.” And then she laughed.
&nbs
p; Hrot’s knees shook so much he lost his balance and sat hard on the back of the motionless carcass. His guts knotted, and he groaned in pain. Night had fallen outside. The Emissary had to be near.
“What are you saying, Anath?” he asked when he finally managed to take a breath. “Why are you laughing? Can’t you help me?”
“You are beyond help now,” she said. With that, she closed her eyes and dropped to the floor with a terrible thump.
Hrot scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward her. When he knelt by her side, he realized she wasn’t breathing. He took off her mask. Her skin was cold and clammy as if she’d already been dead for some time. Suddenly, her hands flew upwards.
Hrot sprang up before she could wrap her fingers around his neck, but she did scratch his throat with her long nails. Hrot made a few steps back and stared. Fear screeched at him to flee. But it also paralyzed him.
Anath opened her eyes and said in a terrible voice, “This whore’s body sure is soft and cozy, fluffy chin. She’s getting cold, though, so I’ll be leaving shortly. Now, hear your punishment.”
The Emissary spoke through the mouth of Anath for a long time. What he said sent Hrot to his knees.
“No, please, no!” Hrot screamed. “Can’t you simply kill me? Please, let me die!”
Only a gruesome laughter rang through the vault as an answer. An antlered shadow sprang out of Anath’s body and skulked toward the staircase. Outside, the wild boars squealed and grunted anew.
As the Emissary left, Anath closed her eyes again, this time for good and all. The dark world of the winter solstice quieted down. Hrot dropped to his knees, pressed his face into Anath’s cold bosom, and screamed in despair.
PART TWO
JASMIN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Target: Jasmin Bierce, journalist. Reward for her killer: $15,000.
Graham Renard dropped the marker and shuffled from the whiteboard back to his desk. The few steps across his office winded him, and he groaned under his breath as he sat down. He looked frail and inoffensive—but rusty, bent blades are often the deadliest.
A former Hells Angel, Renard had once sowed terror all over Alaska, and he’d scribbled seven or eight similar messages on the board of his former clubhouse. Soon afterward, all the names from the messages appeared in local obits. When he’d suddenly disappeared some twenty years ago, everyone had thought he’d met with a bullet of justice. But he’d risen from the dead to form the Machetes.
“Come on in,” Renard called when a knock came on the bulletproof door. He smirked when he saw his henchman enter the office and gawk at the whiteboard. Fifteen grand was a pittance for the mighty Graham Renard, especially if it were to guarantee his peace of mind. But it was a fortune for a poor, petty scumbag like Razor.
“You’re drooling like a kid in a strip joint, ol’dude,” Renard said and chuckled. He called everyone ol’dude, even though he could easily be the oldest outlawed biker in Alaska. “I guess you’re in?”
“Sure am!” Razor nearly shouted, his mean, cunning eyes shining as if he were running a fever.
Renard opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a sawed-off shotgun and a set of keys. “Here, take these. And come outside to talk in private.” Nobody else was around, but Renard feared the police might’ve had the office bugged. The fifty or so years he’d spent on the wrong side of the law had made him paranoid.
Renard got up and shuffled to the whiteboard. With his last strands of white hair tied into a limp ponytail, he looked like a semi-retired art teacher as he slowly erased the message. Nobody would ever suspect him of being a former Angel. Nobody would—except Jasmin Bierce.
The nosy Alaska State Gazette crime reporter had knocked on his door earlier that week. And the questions she’d asked just before Renard slammed the door shut in her face suggested she knew who he really was. But that wasn’t the worst.
She also seemed to have learned that he’d spent nearly two decades selling out his “brothers” in the informants’ wing of the Anchorage Police Department. If the truth ever came out, Renard’s name would be scrawled on the whiteboard of every Hells Angels clubhouse in the country. And if the Angels didn’t do him in, his own bikers would.
The Machetes believed he was a fugitive Quebecois mafioso. They’d fly into a rage if they found out he was a snitch and a former president of a rival gang on top of that. And if he survived the bikers’ wrath, he would go straight back to prison for violating his probation by socializing with criminals. In any case, Jasmin Bierce had to die before she could publish whatever she’d dug up on him.
Renard locked his office, and they went downstairs. He frowned when Razor took the lead with a firm, energetic stride. Razor was forty years younger and had a shock of wild, tawny hair. Renard wished he were young again. Even if it meant being just a poor, petty scumbag.
They passed the main room of the clubhouse where about thirty men guzzled beer and shouted over a blaring hard rock track. Most of them were formerly disenfranchised outlaw bikers; others were local pimps and drug traffickers. Same as Razor and Renard, they sported new leather vests with a black and red Machetes logo on the back.
When they walked outside, the sun was already sinking into the woods behind the highway. The last sunrays turned the snow on the front yard into a pink morass. A black pickup truck dashed past the club’s manned gate on its way to nearby Anchorage.
Renard watched the truck with a frown as if he feared that a sniper might be lying in the back, taking aim at his heart. Then he turned to Razor. “I’ll be honest with you, ol’dude,” he said, trying to add depth and gravity to the shrill voice that had come with his old age. “I’ve got my misgivings about offering this hit to you, a debt collector who scrapes a living with his fists and a baseball bat. Unfortunately, you’re still more reliable than those bozos over there,” he added, jerking his head toward the clubhouse.
“You can count on me, boss!” said Razor, but he sounded nervous.
Renard grunted and frowned. At last, he reached into his pocket and produced a piece of paper on which he’d typed the name of a roadside motel. “The bitch is from Juneau, but she was stupid enough to let slip where she’s staying here in Anchorage. It’s an ideal place for the hit, ol’dude, so you’d better not fuck it up. She’s staying there alone, which will make everything even easier. Now listen carefully.”
Strolling around the shoveled driveway, Renard revealed the plan: Razor was to use a stolen car to reconnoiter and do the hit and then drive to a nearby forest where a snowmobile waited in a secret shed. He was to ditch the car and drive the snowmobile through the woods to Palmer, a town about forty miles northeast.
“Here’s where you can stay until things settle down.” Renard handed him another piece of paper with an address. “I’m going away on business tonight. But my treasurer will send you the reward as soon as he hears the official news.”
JASMIN RETURNED TO the motel long after sunset on the following day. But she wasn’t alone.
Lonely and worried, her husband, Sid, had come on the first flight from Juneau that morning. Having spent most of the day in her room, they’d driven downtown in the evening to take a walk around the white streets and have dinner at their favorite restaurant. The frigid night had gnawed deep into their bones. They were looking forward to a hot shower and a warm bed.
Sid pulled the old Ford Escort into the parking lot and killed the engine. He frowned as he looked at the square building in front of them. The motel was nearly deserted, and its hallways were black as a forest. Leafless and wrapped in hard frost, a real forest sprawled just a few yards behind it. The nearby strip mall was also in the dark. Lit by strong street lights, the motel’s snowy parking lot was the only cheery place around.
“You shouldn’t stay alone in this hellhole, honey,” he said. “Especially since you’re on such a dangerous assignment.”
Jasmin showed him her white teeth in an expectant smile that seemed to brighten not only her face but als
o the whole car. She had grown into a beautiful young woman. The glow of her fern-green eyes was nearly mesmerizing. “What’s on your mind, darling?”
He thought for a second, and a mischievous grin suddenly replaced the frown on his handsome, square face. “I guess I’ll have to stay with you until you’re done. I’ll call the dean and ask her for a few days off.”
“Oh, Sid, what a great idea!” Jasmin leaned over to him and gave him such a crushing hug she nearly made his lungs switch sides. Sid would probably distract her from writing, and the nature of her project could potentially expose him to danger. But she’d missed him so much she quickly pushed all worries aside. “You think she’ll agree, though?” Jasmin asked when she finally unclenched him.
“Sure! She was pretty mad when she found out I dated you while you went to my lectures. But she likes me again now that you graduated and we got married. I’ll just tell her I can’t work because a moose chewed up my lecture notes or something.”
“I bet the moose is hiding upstairs under the duvet. Let’s go find him!”
Sid grinned happily as he opened the driver’s door and stepped out into the strangely quiet night. Jasmin shivered when the frosty breeze invaded the car. Snowdrifts lolled among the five or six parked cars like the tongues of sickly giants. Large icicles overlooked the white stillness from the motel’s side porch.
Before she reached for the handle of the passenger door, Jasmin gave Sid an affectionate, nearly maternal look. She’d been in Anchorage for only two weeks, getting material for her feature article on the Machetes, but she could tell he’d lost a lot of weight while fretting about her back at home. His fur-lined parka hung limply from his shoulders. Although she was only five feet four, Sid wasn’t much taller. And as he’d drawn the hood over his head, someone could easily take him for a young boy. Or a woman.
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