They were foolish for longer than I’d counted on.
When the shooting had slowed down, I heard Veronika right behind me. She said, “Eli called down. Enemies coming in the back.”
“Thanks.” I heard another boom, this time from the rear. There’d been two more at the front. Getting up on the roof had been a very good idea.
I didn’t want to think about what the front yard would look like now.
So that our stair-blocking barrier would stay in place, I swung a leg over the banister and gripped it, letting myself down, guns in my pockets. I landed in a crouch and drew, surprised the grigori coming in the door. Didn’t kill him, what with the crouch and the hasty draw from a pocket, but he was down for a while, and I wasn’t going to spend another bullet on him. If Eli hadn’t told Veronika to warn me, I would have hesitated, thinking he was a friend. Where was Tom O’Day?
Now there was an opening running the length of the house, front door to back, the smell of guns and death washed in and out. I had my back to the front door, but I heard the shots slowing down. Either the men were being more careful with their shooting, or their ammo was about out. I was the only one watching the rear, but the hall wasn’t that wide, so I didn’t ask for help.
A man in a strange uniform appeared in the kitchen doorway next, and him I shot dead, but I felt his bullet go past me. It was that close. And shooters from this direction might hit my allies in the front. I shouted out to warn them.
I heard a scream from the roof, and I was sure the voice was Felicia’s. In that moment, a woman leaped into the house, a grigori, and my shot went over her head. She threw a spell at me, and it hit me full force. My body flew backward, and I landed on my rear on the polished floor, right next to the first intruder.
I did my best to look dead so she’d advance. She did. She didn’t know I had some resistance to magic because of my grigori father. I shot her as she stepped over me. She collapsed to the floor like her strings had been cut.
But I couldn’t manage to get up.
My head hurt pretty bad. I’d slammed it against the wood when I’d hit the floor. It was a huge effort to keep my hand up, my gun straight. It was so heavy. Maybe if I laid it down for a minute, I could recover some strength. I struggled with that feeling. I made myself keep looking at the opening through to the kitchen and the sky outside.
I could see Caroline and Veronika looking over the banister at me, and Caroline had something in her hands. “Now!” Veronika yelled, and just as a dark shape came between me and the sky, Caroline dropped something. The shape wavered and vanished, and then—to my surprise—I did, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My eyes were open, and I was looking up at Veronika’s face. “Lizbeth!” she said, and she sounded like she truly wanted my attention.
“Yes,” I said, but it didn’t come out very strong. More like I was croaking.
Veronika said a lot of stuff in Russian. She was crying a little bit. I couldn’t figure that out.
“Where is Felicia?” I said. Maybe she could explain.
“She is still on roof, keeping watch,” Veronika said, and for the first time her Russian accent was heavy. “She is very excited,” Veronika added.
“Her first big fight.” I could understand that. “Any word from your girls and Peter?”
“No. I’m worried.”
“I don’t hear gunfire,” I said.
“I think fighting here may be over,” she said. “Caroline and I have come down to see if we can help the wounded. But we’re ready to run back up and barricade the stairs behind us, if we need to.” She attempted a smile.
“You do that, if you hear a single shot,” I said. “Help me up. I got to reload.”
She slid her arm under my shoulders. I was sitting up after a few bad seconds. I patted my pockets. I had a few bullets left. Very slowly and carefully, I reloaded the cartridge and popped it back into one gun, then put the remaining bullets in the second. I was as ready as I could be.
“How are the rest?” I said. I didn’t know anyone’s name besides McMurtry and the tsar.
“The tsar has not been wounded, thanks be to God,” Veronika said. “The captain is in a grave situation.” Her face went all tight to contain her worry.
“Where is Eli?” I asked, which was the question I’d wanted to ask all along.
“He’s with a grigori named Tom O’Day. They’re trying to keep the captain from bleeding to death.”
The captain. Oh, McMurtry.
“He okay? Eli?” I said.
“He isn’t wounded.”
Finally, she’d told me what I wanted to know. “Okay, I need to stand now.” With a lot of help from Eli’s mom, I was on my own two feet in a minute or two. Everything stayed still. I didn’t throw up.
“All right,” I said, to encourage myself. “I’m going to go looking for Peter and the girls. Felicia!”
Felicia appeared above us on the landing. She looked like a different girl. Her hair was coming out of its braid, her school uniform was streaked with this and that—but not blood—and most of all, her face was alive with excitement. And she looked every minute of her true age. “Hey, did you hear my bombs?” she said, beaming.
“They saved us,” I said. “Give me a hand so Veronika can go to the captain.”
“Oh, sure! How are you?” Felicia’s face went concerned as she really looked at me, and then she ran down the stairs. Her skinny arm went around me. I nodded to Veronika, who gave Felicia a look I couldn’t interpret. Then she took herself off for the front parlor.
“No bullet holes, still alive and walking,” I told my sister, but it came out in a croak. “What’s the street like?”
“Quiet.”
After a tense moment, I got myself moving.
“Back door,” I said. Felicia steered me down the hall and into the kitchen. After a few steps, I managed on my own, more or less.
“Aren’t you going to find Eli?”
“If I do, I might… give in.” I didn’t need to explain, not to Felicia. “It would be more use if I found his brother and sisters.”
I shivered. Cool air was streaming through the door, which was hanging by a hinge. Something would have to be done about that.
But not by me. I felt like my bones were tired.
Felicia and I surveyed the former gravel drive leading to the garage, and what had been a nice plot of grass back when this area had been the backyard.
It was scattered with craters and dead men.
When I felt Felicia stiffen beside me, I knew that she understood she had done this. This understanding was part of fighting, too.
I remembered walking around the big truck with my first crew when I was sixteen. I had counted the dead who had attacked us to steal our cargo. I had shot them. I had seen them fall. But after all that was over, I’d had to know they’d never get up… and that was because of me.
When Felicia made a snuffly sound, I asked her to get a jacket for me, and she hurried back into the house. I took a slow, unsteady stroll among the dead. There were more grigoris back here than there had been in the front. I recognized the girl who’d followed Felicia and me back from our first excursion together, the girl Felicia had said such bad things about. She was missing her left leg. She’d bled out. Felicia didn’t need to see that.
I pulled the vest off the closest grigori and put it over her face. Just in time. Felicia had brought me a jacket I didn’t recognize, but it was warm and about the right size. I buttoned it up while she held my pistols. One of the dead men had dropped a rifle, and I picked it up.
“What is it?” Felicia was looking at the rifle with some doubt.
“It’s an old-country Russian rifle,” I said, turning it from side to side. “A veteran at home came back with one of these. I think it’s a Mosin-Nagant.” I worked the bolt. “It’s loaded. I’d get five shots with this. Can you see… No, never mind.”
A Russian rifle was better than no rifle. It had been lying by
the hand of a fellow with a salt-and-pepper beard. He, too, had been badly damaged in the legs by one of Eli’s and Felicia’s magic bombs. But if he had more bullets, I wanted them.
I went down on a knee, not a good moment. But at least I discovered Old Man had brought along a box of bullets. “Put these in a pocket,” I said, handing them to Felicia.
My sister didn’t say anything, which was a nice change.
She helped me stand, and I looked through the sights. “This rifle is not good, but any rifle is better than no rifle,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Look,” Felicia said. She pointed.
I followed her finger. There was a woman sticking her head out of the second-story window of the house next door, the one with the fountain.
“Is everyone all right in the house?” she called.
“Does it look like everyone’s all right?” Felicia called back, with some justice.
“Well… no. Is Veronika unhurt?”
I figured I better answer this time. “Veronika is well, but others are wounded, and some help would be appreciated,” I said.
Felicia opened her mouth, and I just knew she was going to tell the woman the tsar was in the Savarovs’ house. “No,” I said quietly. “Don’t tell.”
“I’ll be over in a few minutes,” the woman called. Her blond hair was carefully pulled into a roll on the back of her head, and her makeup was flawless. Considering the chaos in the house next door, I wondered how she’d managed this. She pulled her head in and shut her window. I wondered if she would really come.
“I’m going with you to the grocery,” Felicia said.
“Go back inside and watch from the roof.”
“No, I’m going with you. I don’t want you to collapse halfway there.”
I couldn’t summon the strength to argue.
Felicia and I cut through the yard of the house behind the Savarovs’ and moved carefully toward the grocery on a street parallel to Hickory. It was about three o’clock, I figured. There was a lot of activity in the neighborhood, which wasn’t surprising. Friends were running from house to house now that the bullets had stopped flying. No one spoke to us, and they circled wide to avoid us.
“What I don’t see is traffic,” I said. “That worries me.”
“What do you mean?”
A couple of kids started to come toward us, probably wanting to find out what we knew, but when they saw the Colts and the rifle, they backed off. Smart.
“Where is aid? The tsar is in a private home, with very little protection. Where is the army? The guard? Tom O’Day came, and he was bringing grigoris from the school, last I heard.”
“I saw a few of them,” Felicia said. “They’re good, but there aren’t a lot of them. I think… I think some of them were with the attackers.”
Felicia had recognized some of the grigoris, then.
After a moment to get her mental balance back, Felicia said, “If some of the guilds had responded… that would have been better. More grigoris, more experienced.” We reached the corner of the third block, and we turned right.
There was a traffic jam around the corner store. Vehicles were parked crazy, completely blocking Hickory Street.
Felicia said something in Spanish that just about blistered my ears.
We ducked into the alley behind the store. The smell of garbage was strong. I had to tell my stomach to behave. It didn’t seem to bother my sister.
“What do you think?” she whispered.
“Put on this jacket to cover your uniform,” I said, struggling out of it. “Go into the store by this back door. See if you can find out what’s happening inside.” Not for the first time, I wondered where Felix was. What had he done after he’d failed to get the kids out the first time?
Felicia smoothed her hair, pulled on my borrowed jacket, and started crying as if someone had just shot her favorite cat. She opened the store’s back door, fumbling as if she could barely see, and stumbled into the store. There was a bell attached to the door, and I heard it tinkle. She wasn’t going to enter unnoticed.
She was a piece of work, my sister.
I waited what seemed like a long time, leaning against the wall. Finally, I heard the bell again. I straightened and aimed. The first one out was Alice, who was scared out of her wits. She shrieked when she saw me, and then clapped a hand over her mouth as if she could recall the noise. Behind her was Lucy, who was angry. Then Peter, even angrier, and with the beginnings of a black eye. Maybe a broken nose. They clustered around me, asking a million questions at one time.
“Shut up and listen,” I said.
They did.
“We held ’em off at the house,” I said. “The tsar is there. He’s okay. Your mom and Eli are not hurt. Where is Felicia?”
“Felicia told them Felix is her brother, and that she’d been looking everywhere for him,” Lucy said. She seemed peeved about that. “So they let her stay with him.”
“Why does Felix need someone to stay with him?” This was too slow.
“Because he’s unconscious.”
“Why is he unconscious?”
I must have sounded a little shirty, because all three of the kids stood straight and talked faster.
“He came into the store with his hands out,” Peter said. “We’d seen him pass by before, but he didn’t come in, because there were so many people inside, I think…”
But of course Felix had returned to try again, because this was something he was doing for Eli. And perhaps Lucy, too.
“But there was a grigori in there who recognized him…” Alice began.
“And that bitch knocked him down before he could say anything,” Lucy ended. No mistaking how she felt about that. Steam was just about coming out of her ears.
“Lucy!” Alice said, shocked.
“So we pretended not to know him,” Peter said, sounding ashamed. “Because we didn’t know what would happen if we said he was our friend.”
“That was the smart thing to do. But what did Felicia…?” I’d figured I could rely on Little Miss Survivor to read the situation correctly.
“The same woman spotted the school uniform,” Peter said. “Though Felicia was wearing a jacket over it,” he added, as if he had to be fair.
Clearly, this clever grigori was the cause of a lot of trouble.
“Felicia. Is she tied up?” I said.
“No!” Peter smiled. “She began wailing and carrying on and told the grigoris and the followers of Alexander that Felix was her brother, and she hadn’t seen him in two years, and what could she do to help him?”
“So?” I wanted the summary.
“So, Alexander’s people—I guess now they’re his son’s people—are using this grocery as their rendezvous point,” Lucy said.
God bless her. “And what is their plan?”
“They are waiting for reinforcements. The store is getting so crowded that they let us leave, when we said we wanted to get home to our mother and our sick old grandfather,” Peter said proudly.
I took a deep breath. “Here’s what you must do. You need to find a telephone. I’m not sure if the telephone at your mom’s is still working. Peter, do you have the phone number of the dormitory for the Air Guild?”
“Yes, all the guilds share the dormitory,” he said.
“Good, then call ’em and tell ’em we need ’em, or else. There aren’t enough of us to hold off another attack. I don’t think there’s many of Alexander’s folks… but there are fewer of us on the scene. We need magic and guns.”
“What will you do?” Alice said. “Won’t you be with us?”
Alice was clearly about to lose her head, but I had other things that were higher priority. “I need to get Felicia and Felix out of the store before the counterattack comes. You may get to the house first.” They would, for sure. We might not make it out. “What’s it like in front of the store?”
Peter said, “There are about twenty people standing on the sidewalk out front, waiting for their ow
n reinforcements to arrive. More milling about in the street.”
“How many inside?”
“Maybe four of them, plus Mother Heedles, who owns the grocery, and her brother, Dexter.”
“Where are the Heedleses standing?”
Peter was fidgety and clearly ready to get going, but Alice and Lucy told me what to expect. I nodded.
“What’s the grigori wearing, the one who took out Felix?”
“She’s wearing a red dress and a black jacket,” Lucy said. “She’s about thirty, with short brown hair. Last time I saw her, she was standing at the left front window.”
“Okay, scoot,” I said. “Go as fast as you can.”
Peter nodded and led the girls away, talking all the time. At least they were out of the way. Peter had left the door just a little open, and I swung it wide enough to step in. I was in a storeroom stacked high with cartons of this and that. There were some hams hanging, too, and the smell of them made my stomach jump around a little. I got to the next door, the door to the store proper, and found Peter had left it a bit open, too.
There weren’t too many ways to handle this. The girls had told me Felix was lying on the floor close to the front door, and Felicia was with him. So there was a strong likelihood my sister was kneeling on the floor. I had to fire high.
I also didn’t want to kill Mother Heedles or her brother, if I could help it. Definitely wanted to kill the grigori in the red dress, because she sounded most dangerous.
I pushed the door a little wider. My Colts would have been better, maybe, but I had the rifle up and ready. It was unreliable, strange. I would rather use it for far shooting. I pushed the door a little wider with the barrel.
The movement of the door only caught the eye of the store owner, Mother Heedles, easy to mark because she was wearing an apron and had silver hair. I feared she’d call out, but she didn’t. Her brother was a strapping man, and she took hold of his arm, her whole face telling him to shut up.
I took another step into the store, which was dim because of all the people outside the windows and the gray skies. The grigori in her red dress, the biggest threat, had moved to the front door and was reaching toward it.
The Russian Cage Page 20