by Jane Toombs
Vlad looked up at the clouds, wet his forefinger, then held the finger into the air. "The wind's from the northwest. A seagoing wind to blow ships through the bay mouth into the ocean. Come on, Serg, we'll find ourselves one of those ships."
They threaded their way downhill through birch groves. By the time they approached the outskirts of the town, darkness surrounded them. As they hurried along the narrow streets, Sergei swiveled his head from side to side, checking each alleyway.
"Not so fast," he warned. "Make sure the way is clear." "We've left them far behind," Vlad scoffed. "How could they get here ahead of us?"
"They couldn't. But Gray Seal could have sent some kind of message to the Kamchadals who live just south of town." "Not unless old Kut flew with magic wings to deliver his message for him. Gray Seal has you spooked, Serg. Do you actually believe he can send his spirit traveling through the air?" Vlad grinned and punched Sergei's shoulder with his fist.
"I don't know what I believe any more." He grabbed at Vlad's arm. "Slow down."
Vlad shook him off. "We're almost to the wharf." He quickened his pace to a trot.
The hair on the back of Sergei's neck bristled with unease even though he could find no reason. Lights from windows cast dim squares onto the mud of the road, enough light so he could tell the few men he passed were Russians, not natives, but he couldn't shake the feeling danger was close at hand.
He started to call a warning to Vlad when the moon broke through the clouds, flooding the street with its pale light. He drew in his breath as the rays touched him.
"Hurry!" Vlad shouted back at him.
Sergei began to run, seeing Vlad disappear around the corner of a warehouse. He could hear the lap of water against the dock pilings. The tall masts of a ship thrust above the roofs. They were in luck. He didn't care where the ship might be headed, any place was better than Kamchatka.
Sergei had almost reached the corner of the warehouse when he heard a man shout from somewhere ahead.
"Kitaii!"
The Kamchadal word for wolf.
Suddenly the night was hideous with noise. Over the snarls of dogs and the yells of angry and frightened men, Sergei heard Vlad's warning cry and flung himself around the corner of the building. Men and dogs surrounded Vlad. Shouting in rage, Sergei ran toward his brother.
A gut-wrenching twist in his middle staggered Sergei.
He gasped as he felt himself turning inside out. An indescribable tingling shot from the base of his spine up his back and into his skull.
What was happening to him?
A malemute broke loose from the pack and flew at him, fangs gleaming white in the moonlight. Sergei tried to crouch to meet the dog's attack but a desperate need to be naked overwhelmed him and he tore at his clothes, struggling to release the heaviness binding him around the middle.
The malemute stopped abruptly, turned tail and fled, whining. Sergei groaned with the wrenching agony, at the same time realizing his senses had never been so keen. He smelled the fear of the dog. The terror of the Kamchadals penetrated through the fishy odor of seal oil smeared on their bodies. His ears hurt from Vlad's screams.
Though his body still felt as though it was being torn apart, he raced toward the men attacking his twin. A Kamchadal lifted a huge silver cross above his head, a cross whose end was filed to dagger sharpness. Three other men held Vlad spread-eagled on the ground. The cross slammed down, piercing his brother's breast. Vlad cried out once and was silent. At the same time a terrible pain struck Sergei's chest. He howled in anguish and rage. Then all went dark.
Free! He heard men's shouts of triumph change to
terror as he launched himself at the throat of the man holding the cross. His teeth tore flesh and the taste of blood ran salty on his tongue. He spat, not liking human blood.
Turning on the others, he heard their cries of panic as he slashed right and left with his sharp fangs. Men and dogs ran from his murderous fury. Only one man stood his ground on the edge of the quay, an old man wearing the head of a bear atop his own. An eerie blue glow surrounded him.
He recognized Gray Seal.
"We meet, Wolf," the shaman said. "And you will die like your other half."
He growled deep in his throat. The red of blood-lust dimmed his vision, clouded his mind.
Gray Seal raised an ivory-handled dagger, the blade gleaming silver in the moonlight. "Come to me, Wolf," he crooned. "Come to your death."
Gray Seal shimmered in his sight and changed to a bear with a dagger in its throat, a bear thirsting for blood.
Then the bear shimmered and changed back to a man.
He longed to taste the shaman's blood, the urge to
kill ran molten in his veins but he held, watching warily. What challenged him was not merely a man.
The shaman chuckled, a cold and fearful sound. "You
are afraid, Wolf," he taunted. "You know who will win." Wrongness sent the hackles bristling on his back. Why didn't he smell seal oil? The rank odor of bear? The shaman sent off no scent at all.
His lips pulled back from his fangs in a threatening snarl. Gray Seal's dark eyes flashed blue flame as he sprang at the shaman. Gray Seal shimmered again, losing substance. When his fangs sought the shaman's throat they found not flesh but air. He attacked no man, he attacked nothing at all.
Blue sparks crackled along his fur, burning like fire. Too late he realized where his leap would take him and tried to twist sideways to avoid plunging over the edge of the wharf.
Down he plummeted, splashing into the icy waters of Avacha Bay. Just before he went under he thought he heard the shaman's triumphant laughter. The numbing chill of the water soaked through his fur until his bones were ice. As he rose to the surface he felt a wrench, he was shifting, changing, his mind whirling dizzily as he fought to keep from sinking beneath the water. A heaviness at his waist threatened to drag him under.
Sergei came to himself, naked, paddling weakly beside the hull of an anchored ship. The moon was gone, he swam in darkness. With fingers so cold they could scarcely feel, he scrabbled at the slippery wood of the ship but found no handholds. Water washed over his face, choking him.
Vlad was dead. He was drowning. Dying. The Kamchadals had won. He'd soon join Vlad.
No!
Sergei struggled to the surface, driven by a force rising from deep within him, a life force he was unable to resist. Again he desperately explored for a handhold, finally touching something that moved under his fingers. He clutched it.
A rope ladder.
Painfully he pulled his chilled body up the side of the ship. As he dragged himself over the rail, Sergei looked back at the lights of Petropavlovsk. His lips formed his brother's name.
He looked down at his own nakedness. "Oborot," he whispered. "Shapeshifter."
Not Vlad but Sergei.
He was the guilty one. The evil, vile one. No dreams, his nightmares of running in the night, of blood and torn flesh. Vlad had followed him and seen, had tried to watch over him, to keep him safe. Vlad had died in his place.
If he'd understood what he was before now he might have been able to save his brother. But he hadn't remembered the earlier changes any more than he remembered what had happened after this last one. Would he have believed even if Vlad had told him? He could hardly believe it now.
The moon slid from behind a cloud. Sergei watched with growing alarm while its silver light traced a path leading east across the bay. His body began to tingle as though the light was warm.
The moon! Somehow the moon triggered his changing. He dived for the darkness of the hold, hearing a sailor shout at him, fighting frantically against the moon's power. He had to remain a man. If he changed shape aboard the ship they'd discover what he was.
They'd kill him.
Sergei knew he deserved death but the darkness dwelling within him commanded him to live and he was powerless to resist.
Chapter 21
Six months later, in September, Sergei Volek reine
d in his Mongolian pony in a spruce grove on a low hill outside St. Petersburg, looking down at a country lodge--a frame building of two stories with a one-story ell on the south side. The dacha was badly in need of paint. Weeds and alder and birch saplings thrived in the once meticulously landscaped grounds. Holes marred the roof of one outbuilding and another leaned crazily.
Before their exile, he and Vlad had come every summer to this dacha. Then, everything from house to fields had been well-kept. His throat still tightened when he thought of his dead twin, the more so since he'd learned from the sailors on the Black Eagle during the crossing how many years had passed between that terrible night in Kamchatka and now.
He recalled the two years after leaving
Petropavlovsk, but he could remember nothing that had happened to him after his Spanish shipmates on Sea Maid had beaten him and flung him overboard off the California coast. How he'd survived, where he'd lived, what he'd done in those twenty-four missing years was a blank. He could hardly believe he was forty-two, not nineteen.
Obviously he'd learned to control his shapeshifting--but who had taught him the charm to prevent it, the strange words he found himself chanting when the moon neared full? What enemy had attacked him and left him to drown in San Francisco Bay?
Sergei shook his head. He might never learn what had happened during the missing years but he was determined to discover why he and his twin had been exiled to Kamchatka so ruthlessly, why they'd never been told of their dreadful heritage. Vlad had died because neither of them knew about the shapeshifting. The man who could answer his questions, the man responsible for Vlad's death, lived in the dacha. Taking a deep breath, he urged the pony through the trees and down the hill.
At the front door, he stared a long moment at the knocker. Then he lifted the black iron wolf's head and slammed it hard onto the metal plate, once, twice, three times.
"I'm here, damn you," he muttered. "I've come home."
A pretty young woman with brown hair opened the door and, before he thought, Sergei cried, "Sonya!"
She smiled wistfully. "I'm Natasha Gorski," she
said. "You must have known my mother."
Sonya was her mother! His sister, Sonya. Must have known, Natasha had said, instead of must know. Was his sister dead? True, she'd been twenty when he and Vlad were born--but dead?
Pulling himself together, he said. "I'm sorry if I distressed you. I've come to call on Alexis Volek."
Natasha frowned, her eyes flicking over him. At last her brow cleared and she stepped aside, her gesture inviting him in. "May I ask your name?" she said.
"Sergei Volek. He'll know who I am."
"A relative!" Nastasha's voice rose excitedly. "How wonderful! I thought you looked quite a bit like grandfather. He and I believed no one in the family was left alive except the two of us. Please come this way."
Sergei followed her, puzzled. Wouldn't Sonya's daughter have heard his name? Or had he and Vlad been expunged from all family records? Alexis Volek had a great deal to answer for.
Natasha led him into the small book-lined room he remembered from his summers here as a study. A white-haired man sat in a cracked leather chair, reading, an oil lamp on a table to his right, a pipe on an ash-stand to his left. The man looked up from his book and Sergei stopped, his throat closing over as his eyes met the sad, dark eyes of Alexis. Where was the vigorous black-haired man he remembered so well? His father was old beyond belief.
"Grandfather, this is Sergei Volek," Natasha said into the silence. "Do you know, he mistook me for my mother?"
The book dropped from Alexis' hands, sliding onto the floor. "No," he whispered. "No, impossible."
Sergei swallowed. "My brother is dead but I'm very much alive."
Alexis rose. Spreading his arms wide, he strode across the room. Before Sergei could move he found himself gripped in a bear hug.
"My son, my son," Alexis murmured, his voice cracking. "My dear, lost son, Sergei. God has not forgotten me, after all."
Without warning, tears filled Sergei's eyes. His arms rose to hold his father close. At this moment there were no questions he needed answered.
Half an hour later Alexis and Sergei sat at a small pine table in the kitchen while Natasha served bread, butter, berry jam and cheese. Tea bubbled in the samovar.
"We have little enough these days, my son," Alexis said. "Not so much as a cook nor a maid. Do you recall the house in St. Petersburg?"
Sergei nodded. "I tried to find you there at first." Alexis sighed. "Because I had been a guest lecturer at the University, my enemies found ways to link my name with the student Communists. After that young and crazy Communist fool Karakozov tried to assassinate Czar Alexander last April, I was lucky to escape with my life." He smiled wryly. "I'm fortunate they left me this dacha in addition to my life. Poor Natasha's father didn't fare as well; she's now an orphan." He glanced at his granddaughter. "Luckily, Natasha and I have each other."
"Communists?" Sergei asked, confused. What were they? "I forget you've been sailing on ships all this time and missed the changes. But this is no time to talk of politics, this is a time of celebration. I'll just say that after the serfs were set free in '61, Russia went crazy. Voleks have always been loyal to their czars, I'm no exception. Alas, a man makes enemies who seek to undermine him. And often succeed."
After they ate, Alexis brought Sergei back into the study, shutting the door and waving him to a chair.
"I know you have questions," Alexis said when he'd seated himself, "but they must be asked in private and you must save them until you hear my story. What I have to tell you, son, is for your ears alone. You must never speak of this to anyone except your eldest son, should you have one." Sergei shook his head. "No children. I'll never have children." He hoped he spoke the truth. God knows he wouldn't inflict shapeshifting on an innocent child. He could only pray he'd felt the same during those missing years.
Alexis took his pipe and turned it over in his hands without filling it with tobacco. "I'll begin," he said at length, "with a night in 1830, when you were but four months old."
At midnight Alexis Volek stood next to the nursery door in the upstairs hall of his city house. Outside, St. Petersburg was quiet after the week of festivities celebrating the completion of the paved highway to Moscow.
In a few years there'd be a railroad. Times were changing in Russia and for the better.
Unfortunately, there were some things that never changed. His jaw clenched as he fingered the hilt of the silver dagger he wore at his belt. His appointment to court meant he could delay no longer. What use would he be to Czar Nicholas if anyone found out?
He eased open the nursery door, hearing the snores of the fat peasant girl that Varda had imported from Finland as a nursemaid. Embers glowed in the fireplace like the red eyes of wolves. There was no sound at all from the wide double cradle that stood before the hearth. On its burnished hood the gold inlay of the Volek family crest shone dully in the gleam of the dying fire--two men standing, each with an arm about the shoulders of the other.
It was three generations since the double cradle had been in use. Why, after so many years of peace, were the Voleks again cursed with twin boys?
Alexis slipped silently across the room to the cradle and looked down at the sleeping babies. Which was Sergei, which Vladimir? Identical curls of dark hair lay on the forehead of each as they snuggled together. A father had a right to be proud of such healthy and handsome sons.
If he and they weren't Voleks.
His fingers traced the golden crest on the cradle's hood as he watched the babies. He felt the head of the figure on the right, round, a man's head. His fingers moved to the left, felt an identical head. There was no irregularity to show it had been altered by his great-grandfather, the pointed ears lopped off, the pointed muzzle removed. The original Volek crest with its fearful history no longer existed.
But his twins did.
Alexis sighed and crossed himself. He eased the slim dagge
r from its sheath. Slowly he raised the dagger above the cradle.
One of the babies opened his eyes, golden eyes. Outside the house a carriage clattered past. Alexis and his son stared at one another while the clop of hoofbeats and the rattle of wheels faded into silence. He wondered if the child somehow knew what he intended to do and his fingers trembled on the knife hilt.
The other boy opened his identical golden eyes and looked up at his father. His lips parted in a wide smile, whereupon his twin began to smile, too.
Alexis closed his eyes. His hand fell to his side. How could he be expected to plunge a knife into the hearts of these smiling innocents?
One of the boys was completely innocent. Why must he die because his brother bore a curse? If only there was a way to tell which was afflicted? There wasn't, Alexis knew. Not for many years to come, not until manhood when the taint of the cursed one would burst into evil flower when the moon rose full.
I should have drowned them at birth like unwanted puppies, he told himself. Should have have dropped them into a sack weighted with stones and tossed them into the Neva when they were still squalling red newborns fresh from Varda's womb.
Now it was too late. He'd grown fond of them, his two darling sons. Yet he couldn't let them live.
The evil was ancient, stretching back so far into family history it was hard to believe his ancestors had ever lived free of the sign of the volka, the wolf.
He remembered his father telling him the story when he was thirteen, saying he was entering into manhood and must bear the burden of bitter knowledge to pass on to future generations.
Hundreds of years before there had lived a girl named Samara who'd been one of his forebears. Samara was beautiful but strange, given to wandering in the forest despite the danger of wolves. And of worse. The local Wise Woman warned Samara that the lieshui, the spirits of the forest sooner or later would ensorcel her but Samara refused to listen.
Though she paid no attention to the village youths who came to court her, one day Samara brought a stranger home with her, a man dressed in silver-gray who wore a cloak of wolfskins. Samara smiled at him and would look at no one else. She said his name was Volek.