“No trouble. I gave him some water before. I think he’s asleep.”
“Did you check the chimney at all?”
The chimney pipe, concealed in the base of a hollow tree, was shielded from the snow--but if they let snow accumulate over both the chimney and the vent, they all stood the risk of being poisoned by smoke from the stove.
“No. Haven’t been out yet.”
One the twins volunteered himself for the task.
“I’ll go up top, make sure it’s not covered up,” he said, pulling on his hat and gloves. “I’ve gotta piss, anyway.”
Klaus motioned to both brothers. “You two, go scout the area, see if the snow’s still falling, and report back.”
They threw him a lazy salute and disappeared up the hatch. The men began to slice rye bread for their breakfast ration and pour spirits into their mugs, communicating with single words and grunts, gradually transitioning out of their nocturnal stupor. One peered into the crawlspace to check on the sleeping Vesa, shrugged, and continued his morning routine.
It was not five minutes later that Tomi threw open the door and stumbled down the stairs in a shower of snow. His face was white with horror as he threw himself toward Klaus, waving his arms wildly as though he no longer knew what to do with them.
“He’s dead! They shot him!”
“What?”
“The army! They followed us here! He’s dead, my brother’s dead...!”
There was an outburst of disbelief and anger, the men rising to their feet.
“How could they follow us in this storm?”
“Maybe they didn’t,” said Taisto quietly, his scarred face somber in the lamplight. “I smell a rat.”
The implication of an informer in their midst sent a wave of unease through the bunker. Kaija’s heart leapt to her throat as the men grumbled and regarded each other with sudden suspicion.
“Enough!” Klaus roared. “It’s not the time!”
He grabbed a rifle from the wall and held it aloft in a gesture of defiant leadership. “We know these woods better than any Red soldier. If they came looking for trouble, it’s trouble they’ll get--when we fight, we fight as one! Now arm yourselves and go!”
The chastened men obeyed, and climbed up into the perilous world outside. Kaija reached for a rifle, but Klaus held out a hand to stop her.
“Kai, you stay down below. I’m giving you the most important job--guard the hostage.”
Kaija’s stomach churned as he reached for the table. He grabbed the pistol the American had given her and placed it in her hands. “If you’re surrounded, you know what to do.”
Kaija stared down at the weapon. I won’t, her heart cried out. I can’t.
“Secure the door!” shouted Klaus as he ran up the narrow stairs. “We’ll hold them off as long as we can!” He disappeared out into the fray.
Kaija dashed up to bolt the hatch. Men’s voices, muffled by the earth, cried out to each other above, followed by--to Kaija’s horror--the crack of rifle fire.
She ran down the stairs and wrenched the panel away from the crawlspace. Vesa crouched there, wide-eyed and alert.
“They’ve come for me,” he breathed, a sense of wonder in his voice at the scale of the conflict he had birthed. He fell into her arms, and she was taken aback at the fear in his eyes. His rescuers approached, and his captivity was nearly at an end; what was there to be afraid of?
“Don’t let them find you here,” Vesa whispered in terror, his face buried in her coat.
A strong blow struck the bunker door, shaking a rain of dirt onto the floor below. Kaija froze and looked up.
Surrounded, the one exit blocked, there was nowhere for Kaija to run. It was at that moment she remembered something she had been told when she’d first seen the bunker--a bit of vital information that might prove her only chance of escape.
“The vent!” She dashed to the back of the room pried a screen from the wall. It revealed a small tunnel in the earth, built to reduce the risk of asphyxiation from the stove and provide an alternate route to the ground above.
“Come on!” She reached her hand toward him. “Come with me!”
He shook his head. “No. I have to go back. It’s the only way to end this.”
Her heart broke as she looked at his earnest face. The romantic outlaw notion of escaping together was doomed to failure, but for a brief second, she still hoped for it. The whole world would be their enemy, but they could run together and see how far they could get before it destroyed them both--even that was better than never seeing him again.
Reality boomed against the bunker door again, dashing the dream from her mind. She nodded, and it physically pained her.
“This is it, then,” she said. She threw her arms around him and pressed herself to his chest. She stared deep into his eyes the moment before he closed them in anticipation. “Goodbye.”
It was a ferocious, hungry kiss, open-mouthed and wild--as though to satisfy all the future passion they would never be able to express. Kaija felt his teeth graze her lip as her tongue darted into the soft sweetness of his mouth. Her mind was a fiery blank, filled only with the feelings that raced through her body, urging her on, telling her that if she were to die in this moment, she would die happy.
The dull thud at the door came again, along with the crack of splintering wood.
“I’ll be fine, just go!” Vesa pushed her away, hiding his breaking voice in gruff bravado, tears glinting at the corners of his eyes.
She dove into the hole, scrambling rabbit-like on all fours toward the surface. She concentrated on the tiny pinpoints of light barely visible ahead of her in the darkness. The passage narrowed and she fell into an army crawl, her belly bruised by rocks and hard-packed soil, until she finally felt the winter cold breathing through the branches that camouflaged the entrance.
She reached through the foliage--barely feeling the pain as pine needles pierced the skin of her fingers--and felt the freezing air nip her skin as she pushed it aside. She dragged her body forward and burst into the swirling white of the dawn blizzard.
Liberated from the subterranean bunker, she took her first gasp of fresh air in what seemed like forever. She turned her face up to the sky, letting the snowflakes fall upon her closed eyelids as she pulled herself the rest of the way out of the tunnel. She counted on the storm to hide her from the soldiers, hoping that she could flee to safety aided by the blinding snow.
Behind her, shots split the air, and she heard men calling to each other in battle. A shout of triumph accompanied by the crash of breaking wood signaled the final breach of the bunker’s door. Refusing to look back, she stumbled up from her knees and ran, bent double, zigzagging through the trees.
Just as she began to feel the heady rush of freedom, a figure leapt from the shadow of a tree into her peripheral vision.
“Freeze!”
Kaija had no time to react. In the next instant she was staring down the barrel of a rifle, waiting for the shot.
Chapter 9
It took a long time for Demyan to awaken. He stretched languidly on his back in the darkened room, the sheet twined around him like a shroud, as he wavered in and out of strange, bright dreams. A nagging sense of urgency persisted in the backwaters of his consciousness, but he clung to sleep, rejecting morning’s rationality in favor of the pleasurable warmth and light of the incoherent visions.
He felt drugged, pressed down into the mattress like an iron statue of a man, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad sensation. He wondered if this was what it was like to be ill, as he had yet to enjoy that particular human experience. He decided that he was feeling too little discomfort to qualify as sick. Every part of him felt relatively agreeable, except for the ghost of an ache in his chest.
That’s right, he thought, opening his eyes. That’s where a bullet went through my lung.
With great force of will, he lifted his hand, struggled to free it from the sheets, and brought it to his face. He ran his palm slowly down
his cheek and across his lips, feeling the skin smooth and whole once more, and then slid it down his neck, across his ribs. The wounds had vanished, a lingering tenderness the only evidence that they’d ever been there at all. As he massaged a spot below his clavicle where the newly knit bone was completing its repairs, he wondered if Toivo had already gone.
He thought of the previous night--the delicate threads of Zophiel’s spirit shooting through the pain and murk of him like a subterranean gold vein, twining around his mind, full of promise. His interactions with enemy angels typically played out along arrow shafts and rifle sights, limiting him to an occasional hint of their brilliance, but now he knew that it was everything he’d imagined it to be. Within them lay not the paltry candle flicker of humans, but a self-sustaining blaze that poured into the dark vessel of his soul, pulling him to the brink of rapture.
Demyan missed Toivo’s presence; rather than curing his hunger, this taste of power had just heightened it. He prepared to send his shadows out to seek the man, but then heard the whistling of the teakettle beyond the bedroom door.
Demyan extricated himself from his tangled bedclothes, giddy with dehydration and relief, and stood weak-kneed in his shorts on the chilly floor. Feeling mildly ashamed at his state of undress, he tried wrapping the sheet around himself, but tossed it away in disgust when he realized that it was stiff with patches of dried blood. He reasoned that it was preferable to be seen in his undergarments than walking about the place in the guise of a vengeful wraith.
He opened the door, squinting as his pupils contracted in the brightness. He walked to the doorway of the kitchen, where Toivo, dressed in a borrowed bathrobe, was busying himself with the preparation of breakfast. As Toivo spooned the instant granules that passed for Kalevian coffee into a pair of mugs, Demyan watched him with a kind of wonder, charmed by the surreal domesticity of the scene.
In his centuries on Earth, this was not the first time he had woken up to another person in his home. To live among the humans was to imitate them, and Demyan was no stranger to seeking companionship in his lonelier moments. This, however, was so far removed from those instances as to make him question reality. This was the agent he had so mercilessly pursued--who had the very day before attacked Demyan with every ounce of his strength in a dingy interrogation cell, who had weighed his life with a pistol in his hands. Demyan’s immortal enemy of a thousand lifetimes stood in front of his kitchen range, stirring something that smelled like oatmeal.
Demyan smirked. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.
Toivo started, nearly spilling scalding water across the Formica countertop.
“Y-you’re up?” Toivo stuttered, trying to cover his alarm. “Are you all right?”
Demyan saw Toivo’s eyes flit up and down his scarless body, scanning him for signs of trauma. He spread his arms and grinned.
“More or less.”
“I wasn’t sure how long... I’m just surprised it only took one night.”
“You and me both. Last time I got shot, I coughed up a bullet a month later.” Seeing the horrified look on Toivo’s face, Demyan clapped him on the back. “Calm down--I’m kidding.”
Toivo reddened. After a moment’s hesitation, he pressed a steaming mug into Demyan’s hands.
“Coffee?”
Demyan felt a poignant reversal of the day before, when he’d pushed a cold gun into Toivo’s hands. He wrapped his fingers around the harmless porcelain handle.
“Thank you.” Demyan took a sip and shuddered at the familiar burnt bitterness of the local instant blend. “For...yesterday.”
They drank in silence for a bit, choking down the acrid brew.
“You wouldn’t have died,” Toivo burst out. “Not unless I was the one who shot you. Unless I’m...forgetting something, and humans can kill us?”
“They can’t. It’s just extremely unpleasant.” Demyan shifted his feet on the linoleum floor, suddenly uncomfortable. “Listen--you helped me out back there. I kinda owe you for that.”
“I still can’t quite wrap my head around this...”
“Well, as they say, ‘War makes strange bedfellows.’” Demyan regretted the flippant remark as soon as it left his mouth.
He returned to his coffee, and no more was said on the matter. Toivo started to dish out the oatmeal.
As they ate quietly at the counter, Demyan couldn’t help but steal a surreptitious glance at Toivo’s profile. Of all the manifestations of hope he had ever played nemesis to, Zophiel had something about him that made him hurt to look at--something that caused a pang in Demyan’s chest distinct from the remnants of his injuries. He had chalked up his regrets about his past with Zophiel to a series of particularly unfortunate deaths, but war was always messy, even when this particular foe was not involved. No, it was more than that; every time he found himself paired with a new incarnation of Zophiel, he was faced with a being that never seemed to lose his innocent altruism--a pure thing struggling in a blood-soiled world. Every time, it hurt to kill him.
While Demyan digested this revelation, he realized that Toivo was peering back at him with a wary look. Lost in thought, he had neglected to control his stare; it had been fixed on Toivo for at least a minute.
“What?” Toivo asked.
“Nothing.” The answer did nothing to ease the suspicion in Toivo’s face, so Demyan continued. “I’m just surprised you’re still here.”
Toivo rolled his eyes and made a show of straightening the bathrobe collar. “I’m not really dressed for the weather.”
“So...does this mean you’re in?” Demyan asked with the hint of a smile.
Toivo sighed. “I thought a lot about what you said last night,” he murmured. “About what happened to the boy. I don’t know the details of this prediction of yours, but I was never keen on the idea of the kidnapping. I’m not sure I’m capable of cleaning up this mess on my own, at this point.” Toivo nodded. “So. Yes. I’m in.”
“Finally!”
“Don’t get me wrong--this doesn’t mean that I trust you. I just don’t have many options right now.” Toivo spun to face Demyan, suddenly all business. “What do we need?”
“You were in contact with members of the Forest Clan, enough to know about this whole operation. I need to know where they’re hiding Vesa.”
Toivo hesitated. “And what would you do with that information if I told you?”
“Go get him back.” He held up his hand at the icy glare that descended over Toivo’s face. “Easy there. You don’t really think I’m going to call this one in to headquarters, do you? We don’t have to shoot anybody to get our way. I want to handle this as quietly as possible--no troops, no security forces. Just you and me, in our element.”
Toivo studied him with narrowed eyes, then looked away, his face falling. He shrugged his shoulders. “Honestly, I’d tell you if I knew.”
“Come on!”
“No, really, I have no idea. I only met them once, and I couldn’t be sure of the route; I rode there shut up in the back of a farm truck.”
“We need a lead! Look, we don’t have time to spare--the army’s probably already been mobilized, and if we want to--” Demyan paused and looked around, vexed by an intermittent tapping noise. “What is that?
“Oh!” Toivo reached up to the window over the sink, where Demyan finally noticed a dove, sharpening its beak against the pane. The little white bird hopped in from the cold and nestled itself against Toivo’s shoulder.
“One of yours?”
Toivo nodded. “I sent it out yesterday afternoon, after you were asleep. They come when I call them.”
“Indeed. Useful to have friends like that.”
Demyan caught what he could of their conversation, since he only heard ordinary bird noises in reply to Toivo’s whispered questions. It was a strange experience for him; after centuries of using his own informants, it irked him to be the one locked out of the cipher.
“So?” Demyan asked as the two seemed to wrap up their confer
ence.
“We have something.”
“A tip?”
“Better. It says that when it flew north, the wood pigeons told it there were humans in the forest, living in a hole in the ground. Following their lead, it saw a group of men walking single file through the brush, carrying someone...”
Demyan clapped his hands. “Brilliant! That’s it! Zophiel, you and...bird...over there, you’ve aced it.”
The dove on Toivo’s shoulder puffed up and snuggled down, obviously proud of its role in the Very Important Happening.
“Yes, you did great.” Toivo scratched the bird’s chin before reaching into the oatmeal canister on the counter. “Here, want some?”
“And it can lead us there?”
Toivo conferred with the bird again. “Should be able to.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow at Demyan. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“Never better. Come on, get dressed and let’s go!”
“I...can’t.” Toivo held up a hand to halt the imminent argument. “I don’t have any reasonable clothes. They’re in a disgusting bundle, covered in blood...”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes...no... I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to do any of this.” Toivo sighed and rubbed his forehead as though pained by the thought. “They’ve seen my face before; they’ll recognize me as soon as I let my guard down.”
A flash of inspiration lit up Demyan’s mind.
“Wait a minute--I have something.”
He went to his closet and rummaged through his suits, finally pulling out a coat and trousers colored the familiar dark gray of a winter evening sky.
“Here. My State Security uniform.” He thrust the hanger at Toivo, holding the suit up against Toivo’s chest. “I’m usually a plainclothes man, but when I need something with a bit more authority... May be a little big on you, but it’ll work.”
“How is a government uniform going to help?” Toivo argued. “They’ll think I betrayed them!”
“No, see, you’ll play it like you’re a double agent--like you’ve infiltrated the ranks of Kalevian intelligence. You’re still on their side, coming to warn them of an approaching threat...and if we run into any of my friends, it will save us a lot of explaining.”
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