Terzian’s mouth twitched into something he probably considered a smile. “Indeed it would.” He reached into his breast pocket. “I’ll need you to keep this relic on your person. Allow its energy to mingle with your own.” He held out a chain from which dangled a pendant, an abstract metalworking studded with crystals and gems. “Blood will help feed it, of course, but not too soon.”
Sasha blanched at that—then again at the faint spark that emanated from the charm as he closed his hand around it. But he forced himself to smile and let no sign of his discomfort show. He must be worthy of this great gift, after all. “Understood.” Only after he’d safely tucked the charm away did he ask, “And what of the… American man?”
Terzian closed his eyes, looking aggrieved, but by the time he opened them all emotion was gone from his face. “Cartwright is handling it on the CIA end of the matter. He will ensure the necessary paperwork is in place.” He gave Sasha a pointed look. “But once our ritual is concluded, it will be a moot point, will it not?”
Sasha smiled fully. “That is the hope.”
Terzian rapped the bottom of his cane on the crypt’s floor and stood. “Soon, all will burn. And from the ashes, we shall rise victorious.”
“So we shall.” Sasha tightened his grip on the pendant, and the spark turned into a soothing current, whispering promises of things he’d never dared dream could be his. “And soon.”
2.
Twilight settled down on the streets of Prague and opened a tab. As Tanya stood on the dusky street, she took a deep breath, and found some comfort in knowing this wasn’t the first time she’d broken into a CIA safe house.
This time it wasn’t entirely Gabe’s fault, though she was sure she could blame him for this, too, if she tried hard enough. Her conversation with Nadia had been brief and stuffed with their shared shibboleths, but based on what little Nadia had gleaned, it was enough to terrify her. Gabe was detained, and the Prague station chief was being held by the Flame as they prepared for magic unknown. If the Ice had any chance of preventing the ritual and possibly the death of a CIA station chief—which could cause plenty of trouble for the KGB, too—they needed Gabe. She needed him.
This time, she thought—bozhe moi, she hoped—she could count on Gabe to help. East and West—it seemed like such a child’s game, now, shuffling around bureaucracies and ministries and diplomats. It was a game of nicks and dents and scratches. But now, the world was burning around them, and by the time everyone else saw it, it would be too late.
Tanya shouldered her way into a bar, slammed down enough koruna and batted her eyes just enough to earn her a shot of vodka, tossed it back, and then made her way back to the street, where she staggered—or made a show of staggering—into an alley to regain her balance. She was gone as quick as she’d appeared, but it gave her the glimpse she needed: a door halfway down the alley, clear lines of sight, and two guards who had the meaty, well-scrubbed look of American military boys.
She reached into her jacket pockets and let her fingers skate across the various charms hidden there. Now was not a time for subtlety. For all the oaths she’d sworn to the Ice to conceal the magical world from the mundane, perhaps a little sunlight was exactly what their world needed right now. After all, if they failed to stop the Flame, there was no keeping that particular genie bottled up any longer.
Her fingers paused on the sharp edges of the charm Zerena had given her before the docks.
A sick feeling twisted in her stomach. She tasted oil and bile in the back of her throat just touching it. Tanya didn’t know exactly what kind of magic had forged such a device, but she had a few guesses, each of them less appealing than the last. It wasn’t the kind of thing she should have in her possession at all—she’d only kept it, she told herself, until she could find a way for it to be safely destroyed.
But something dangerous, something powerful—that might be just what was needed here.
All right. Focus, Tanya. Your plan can’t hinge on it. There were surely more than two guards inside, but they were easy enough to dispatch with a sleeping cloud to sap their energy, if she used enough charms. One sleeping charm generally only brought about feelings of drowsiness, but with enough twisted together, she could put the guards down for a few hours.
What worried her was what else might be waiting for her inside. Closed-circuit cameras? She could short those out manually, but she’d have to find the tape room and destroy the records there. Weapons? If they really thought Gabe was dangerous, they would have spared no expense.
If they really thought Gabe was dangerous. Dammit, Gabe, what have you done now? Whatever he’d seen or done, it posed a danger to the CIA and the Flame both, and whether either organization realized it, that made for a potent and deadly combination. She had to find out what was happening. She had to… Tanya gritted her teeth.
She had to trust Gabe. And he’d have to trust her.
As Tanya made her way back toward the alleyway bar, the satchel hung heavy at her side. The Flame charm inside seemed extraordinarily heavy, even though she knew it wasn’t true. It hung like guilt from her shoulder, and she found herself carrying the red-faced nervousness she hadn’t felt since her very first days training as an operative. The fear that everyone on the street knew exactly what she was up to, knew precisely what she was. She’d shed that feeling long ago when it came to spycraft, and when it came to witchcraft—well, she’d been in that world so long she’d never known enough to feel strange about it. This was something else. This was a dangerous collision of everything, and she felt it crushing her down.
She passed the alley again and continued around the corner to the adjacent apartment building. The guards couldn’t see her from here unless they had someone posted across the street, checking all possible points of ingress, but she felt confident that the springy scarf tied around her hair and altered gait would help with that. It didn’t take long for a doddering babushka to head toward the door, arms laden with a grocery sack, and Tanya surged forward to help her, slipping past the locked door with one hand pressed to the old woman’s back. The woman thanked her in Czech, and Tanya merely gave her a brief nod before darting to the boiler room stairs.
Everything stank of stale sweat and condensation, and the hissing and cracking of pipes drowned out the frantic sound of Tanya’s pulse. She worked her way toward the far end of the chamber, a tendril of perspiration running down her spine, and reached for the charms stitched into the lining of her jacket. The tiles were glazed ceramic—newer than she’d hoped—and a quick rap of her knuckles deepened her suspicion of cinderblock beneath. Too much for any of the Ice charms she’d brought to handle.
Again she reached for the jagged edges of the charm in her pocket and ignored the nauseating taste in the back of her throat.
If this works, I promise I won’t ever turn to Flame magic again. I’ll make certain no Flame witch ever casts something like this again, either.
She squeezed her eyes shut, crouched down to get ready to run, and then folded the charm’s mica center until she heard it snap.
No time to second-guess her decision. Tanya dropped the charm and bounded for the stairs.
• • •
Gabe tried closing his eyes, but all he could see was Edith and the blood pooling around her, splattering her sensible strand of pearls. All he could smell was the gunpowder thick in the air and the blood still warm on his hands.
He’d heard of a few cases using ballistic forensics—the accused being exonerated because the bullets used to commit the murder didn’t match up. Something about the way they’d been fired, or grooves in the rifling of a given barrel. But when magic got tangled up in the process, all bets were off. Hell, he supposed he should be thankful this was all the Flame had managed to pin on him—one CI operative’s death. (As if that were all Edith was, her quick mind and unflappable nature in the face of magic and madness—but that’s what Langley would see, when they strung him up for treason. A CI operative who died for the very t
hing she was investigating.) For all he knew, some Flame asshole could have been walking around Prague wearing Gabe’s face, committing murders left and right.
Small comfort. He toed at the puddle of water gathering around the chair where he’d been shackled. He was fucked now, and there was no way to unfuck it without shepherding a whole new cluster of fucks into the world.
He’d considered it, earlier. When the CIA interrogators had chained him up and one of the bruisers had leaned against the concrete wall, watching him from the shadows, as if debating whether to go in for a round of beatings or not. Even knowing their (his!) intimidation tactics, Gabe found himself playing right into their game all the same. The fear of the unknown pressed like a gun barrel against the base of his skull, and he’d do anything, say anything, to push it away.
The only thing that had stopped him, really, was that he couldn’t even figure out how to start.
So there are these ley lines of magical energy criss-crossing the globe, you see, and if you tap into them, you can charge all kinds of magical devices… It helps if you know Aramaic, or Sumerian, maybe some medieval Czech… No, really, I’m getting to the part where I didn’t kill Edith, promise…
But eventually the bruiser had huffed, given Gabe a poor-son-of-a-bitch shake of the head, and left him alone in his concrete basement cell; hoped, maybe, that Frank would come back to soften him up. All his dreams of retiring to a rocky shore in Maine, a cabin ripe with the sea-salt air, had been replaced by Lompoc Federal Penitentiary. And that was if he was lucky enough to avoid Old Sparky.
All right. He could do this. If he could convince a Communist Party loyalist to start coughing up classified intel, surely he could persuade a CIA-trained interrogator or two to believe in magic. He needed to ease them into it gently, knowing full well that they’d be on guard for any hint of a pitch or game. Ease them into it, then offer up a few compelling examples. Convince them to try it for themselves, somewhere far away from him, if they liked. He just had to keep them listening, find a compelling enough hook—
I know why Edith died—
But the exhaustion was wrapping its tendrils around him and tugging him down. How long had he been awake? Thirty hours? Forty? He couldn’t have dozed off for more than an hour or so here and there. And still he could feel the blood tacky on his fingers and smell the damning smoke.
Smell the…
Gabe raised his head from where it had sagged against his chest and sniffed at the air.
Smoke. Acrid and poisonous. Holy shit, they were gassing him. He wrenched forward, and the metal cuffs sliced into his wrists. Twisted from side to side. Jesus Christ, he was going to die with lungs full of mustard gas and the truth about what was happening still locked up in his head. He coughed, and felt the hitchhiker shifting, recoiling from the unnatural stench.
And then the earth rumbled, deep and displeased, so hard Gabe bit his tongue.
Briefly, Gabe entertained thoughts of the Golem of Prague clawing its way up from some dark and moldy tunnel. It’d certainly help with the whole “prove magic is real” angle. But then he heard the shouts and the peppering of gunfire until two thuds struck the metal door to his makeshift cell.
The Flame—it had to be the Flame. They’d come for him again, to reclaim the elemental from their botched ritual. He wriggled his bare toes, missing the charm he’d tucked into his boots, now locked up in some CIA diplomatic pouch as evidence. Aside from the hitchhiker, which was currently throbbing a hasty military tattoo inside his brain, he had no way to defend himself. Maybe, if he could persuade the hitchhiker, make use of the water and the concrete—
The door to his cell flew open, and dark smoke poured in, wreathing a short, slender figure.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tanya Morozova asked.
Gabe paused, midway through reciting the chant. The pitiful sliver of energy he’d managed to cling to dissipated around him.
And then his brain finally registered that Tanya, goddamned KGB officer Tanya, was standing here—that she was inside a CIA safe house—when Gabe was already suspected of shooting a CIA officer—
“Oh, fuck, no.” Gabe tried to scoot away from her, though he knew damned well his chair was bolted to the ground. “You can’t be here—”
“Shut up!” Tanya hissed, then rushed toward him. “We have ten minutes—we need to go.”
“Are you fucking nuts?!”
Tanya moved behind him and seized hold of his wrists. Something clanked against handcuffs, then there was a sparking sound like a flint striking, and the cuffs grew searing against Gabe’s skin.
“Shit!”
Tanya jabbed her boot against the molten cuffs, and they fell to the floor with a clatter. “There.” Tanya moved back toward his front. “Better?”
“No, it’s not better! You’re out of your goddamned skull. I can’t be busted out of a black site by a fucking officer of the KGB—”
Tanya rolled her eyes and crouched down to perform the same working on the cuffs around his ankles. When she stood back up, though, Gabe drew himself straight and planted his feet, stubbornly willing the wobble from his knees.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay right here until the guards come for me. The last thing I need is to make this even worse—oh, fuck.” Gabe groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t kill the guards.”
Tanya huffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I merely put them to sleep for a bit.”
Gabe rotated his wrists, trying to work the blood back into his hands. “They have cameras,” he muttered.
“So we erase the tapes before we go.”
“You think they won’t notice?” Gabe snapped.
Tanya snorted with laughter, her dark eyes sparkling. “Dorogoy. If you are worried about them noticing things, then I think the massive hole in the wall and the missing Gabriel Pritchard might be first on their list.”
Gabe lowered his hands with a groan. “Why?” he asked. “Why do you care what happens to me?”
“Because we both know you did not kill that woman. The CI officer.”
Gabe opened his mouth, then closed it. Well, of course Tanya knew about the CI investigation. “And what’s it to you?”
“Because it isn’t right, for you to be imprisoned for a thing you didn’t do.” Tanya chewed at her bottom lip, flushing it a warm pink. Not that Gabe was paying any attention to the color of her lips. “Also, because the Flame is preparing a horrible new ritual and we need your help to stop it.”
And there it was. The hook beneath the bait. “God damn it,” Gabe muttered. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”
Tanya smiled sadly. “When it comes to holding back the forces of misused magic and power-hungry witches?” she asked. “Yes.”
Gabe’s knees went watery, the cold concrete radiating through his soles as he steadied himself again. “All right. Lay it on me.”
Tanya raised one eyebrow. “Lay what on you?”
“The situation. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “The Hosts that the Flame took from the barge—they’re taking them somewhere. The Flame is up to something, and whatever it is, they must be stopped.”
Gabe swore with every bit as much color as he had in the service. He generally tried not to do so in front of a lady, but if Tanya understood it, he supposed that was her own damn fault. Judging by the deep grooves under her eyes, she was probably feeling similarly anyhow.
“They have—Andula. The girl I saved from them earlier this year.” Her voice wavered. “What the Ice did to her, it wasn’t right, I know that. But what the Flame will do is so much worse.”
At that, Gabe saw the scene he’d encountered in Cairo all too clearly. She wasn’t wrong. “Jesus. And you think I can help stop this how?”
Tanya forced her shoulders back in a show of bravery. “Because you’ve seen this before. You know how it works. And if there’s a chance, any chance at all, that you could h
elp us stop this…”
Three months ago, Gabe would have been completely certain the water rimming her eyes and the taut fierceness in her limbs was another act, another calculated game in the recruitment cycle. But he’d been through too much with her now—too much that ought to have rattled even the coldest operative, and she always met it headlong, if not without a faint tremor in her spine. Whatever she felt about East and West—and he had no doubt there was plenty they disagreed on there—she cared about the world. She cared about right and wrong, and when it came to psychotic blood-magic murderous witches, she knew which camp they fell into.
But Gabe—Gabe wasn’t quite so brave.
“If I step out of here,” he said, with far less conviction than he wanted, “my career is over. You realize that, right?”
Tanya swallowed whatever she’d been about to say and stepped toward him. “If we don’t stop the Flame, there may be no careers left. For any of us.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re quite there,” Gabe said with a wry grin. “But hey”—he hated that he was going to joke about it, but how else was he supposed to cope?—“thanks for letting me know just how to get my foot in the door. You know, in case I ever wanna pitch you.”
She barked a laugh. “You’re a mess, Gabriel.”
And then she curled her hands around his head and pulled his mouth to hers.
All of Gabe’s exhaustion and suspicion melted away at the touch of her lips. This was the thaw he’d been waiting for, the blooms and silky skin. Tanya’s mouth was so warm—he wanted to wrap himself up in it and never come out. And the way her fingers kneaded at the back of his neck, the delicate shift of her jaw under his thumb as he brought one hand up to cup her face—
She broke away with a gasp and rested her forehead on his. Her eyes glimmered with something—wistful, almost, though maybe it was just in Gabe’s head. But he felt it, too.
“We’re even,” Tanya said. “Equals. No pitches.”
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 44