“I take it that’s a no, then,” Chudo-Yudo said, closing the book with a broad canine sigh. “Didn’t the mechanic do a good job?”
Baba stomped over to sit next to him, flexing her toes in the soft fibers of the rug with relief. She hated wearing shoes. And never wore socks.
“Bah,” she said. “The bike is fine. At least as fine as it can be, until I can do something about the way it looks. But I ran into a problem.”
Chudo-Yudo cocked his head to one side. “How unusual for you,” he said in a sarcastic tone.
“This is serious,” Baba said, scrubbing her face with both hands, as if she could wash away the last couple of hours. After visiting three more people, and being variously yelled at, cried on, and threatened with a lawsuit, she felt like she was covered with some kind of viscous, malignant sludge. “Someone’s been tampering with my herbal remedies,” she told the dog.
That got his attention, and he sat up straight, the book sliding unnoticed to the floor, where tiny silk flowers helped to break its fall.
“The hell you say!” His brown eyes went wide. “All of them? How? Why?”
Baba shook her head. “All the ones I could track down anyway. Bob told me that people had been complaining, and his father—” she took a deep breath at the memory of the old man’s nasty accusations—“let’s just say that ‘witch’ is the nicest word being used to describe me. I had one woman whose arm swelled up when she used my cream on it, another who sneezed so hard she fell off a stool and broke her ankle, and a guy who came to me for a hair growth shampoo that made his hair fall out instead.” And hadn’t that been fun to try and fix subtly. Great goddess.
“Holy Mother Russia,” Chudo-Yudo said. “That’s awful.”
“Those aren’t the worst, though,” she said, heart heavy as she remembered the hysterical mother who swore Baba’s cough syrup had made her baby so sick, she’d had to take him to the emergency room.
The woman had been distraught, and wouldn’t let Baba into the house, slamming the door in her face when Baba asked to come in. She’d had to do what she could to help the infant from outside, standing in the insubstantial shadows by the bedroom window and praying that no one would drive by and ask what the hell she was up to.
“As to how, I have no earthly idea,” she added. Her head felt like it was reverberating with the accusing voices of all those she’d let down; she couldn’t think a clear thought past the murk and the misery of it all.
“All the medicines I’ve been able to get back look like my mixtures in my bottles, but every single one of them has been adulterated with something horribly wrong.”
She pulled the vials and jars out of her pockets, which as usual held as much as she wanted them to hold. Chudo-Yudo put his massive head down next to them and sniffed. Then he let out a huge snort, eyes watering and black nose twitching.
“Ugh. That’s nasty,” he said, rubbing a paw across his muzzle. “Feh.”
Baba looked for something else to throw, frustration making her fingers itch to break things. “Tell me about it. And all those people now think I’m responsible for making the dreadful concoctions. I hate this.”
She didn’t normally care what anyone thought about her, but this was different. For one thing, she’d found the town, and the people in it, unusually charming. Before this all happened, she’d actually been daydreaming about staying. Just an idle fancy of course, but still. For another, it touched on her honor; that made it matter. And anyone who dared to make a baby sick on purpose and blame it on her? That person was in for a world of pain.
Chudo-Yudo’s furry face rumpled in puzzlement. “But how could anyone tamper with all those treatments without someone noticing? It’s not like a person could go from house to house messing with the jars in every single place. Someone would have seen something suspicious, wouldn’t they?”
Baba sighed. “You’d think so. And if Maya was behind it for some reason, she’s not exactly a ‘blend in with the locals’ kind of gal.”
“Maybe she crawled in through their windows?”
Baba snorted at a vision of the neat and polished Maya slithering in past gingham curtains to land in someone’s bathroom sink. “Somehow I don’t think so, but I suppose anything is possible. For all we know, she’s really some creature the size of a cat.” She shook her head. “This is getting out of hand. I think it’s time to call in the Riders and see if they’ve learned anything useful. They’ve been out wandering around all this time, and the only messages I’ve gotten from them are variations on, “Sorry, nothing yet.” Maybe they saw something while they were searching for the missing kids.”
She looked down toward where her dragon tattoos curled around her arms and shoulder; as long as the Riders were on a mission for her, each one bore her link in his own symbol. That made the task easier, since while they carried the mark, she could summon them with a thought—albeit a concentrated and directed thought. After all, it wouldn’t do to have them show up every time one of them happened to cross her mind.
She closed her eyes, sat up straight, and centered herself, letting go of the anger and frustration, breathing them out with every exhalation until she was calm and focused. Then she drew a picture in her head of Mikhail Day: his almost too-handsome features that hid a childish love for puns and riddles, and a weakness for damsels in distress, sweet desserts, and showing off. She visualized the white clothes he always wore that never seemed to dare show a smudge, and the long fall of his blond hair when it hung loose in the evening as he carved a wooden figurine by the light of the fire in the old Baba’s hut. Come back, she sent out silently into the ether. I need you. Come back.
Next, she saw Gregori Sun: always serene, with a quiet glow that seemed to emanate from some deep well in his being that no amount of ugliness or violence could touch. His face appeared stern to those who did not know him, but she had seen him nurse a wounded fox back to health, tending it and taming it just enough to heal, and then sending it back into the wild where it belonged. His long slender fingers could snap a man’s neck or strum a balalaika with equal ease and skill, and she had never heard him utter a word in anger in all the years she’d known him. Behind her closed eyes, his dark hair and slim figure coalesced into a solid representation of his essence. Come back. I need you. Come back.
Last, but certainly not least, she summoned the image of Alexei Knight, so different from the other two, and yet equally valued. Unlike Mikhail’s suave bravado and Gregori’s calm assassin’s grace, Alexei was brute force and animal instincts. He fought at the drop of a hat with a berserker’s wild joy for the battle, whether the cause was a mission of mercy or a careless word from a drunk in a tavern. As a child, Baba had once seen him tear an evil man apart with his bare hands, crimson blood bathing the sandy ground at his feet as he roared with laughter.
But he was also the only one of the Riders who took the time to play with the little adopted Baba-in-training, telling her tall tales and tickling her with the ends of her own braids until she giggled helplessly, while the old Baba rolled her eyes as she tended her cauldron nearby. During their intermittent visits, when the Riders weren’t off assisting some other Baba, it was Alexei who took her for walks in the woods, pointing out the tiny mushrooms that grew in the hidden nooks of mossy gnarled tree roots, and teaching her to punch and kick, so she would have something to defend herself with until she grew into her magic.
There were not many Babas, but there were only the three Riders, and she knew them almost as well as she knew herself. Come back, Alexei. I need you. Come back.
When she was done, Baba sat back with a sigh. She’d sent them out with a vague hope that they would see or sense something helpful. But they were running out of time. And now that things were going from bad to worse, she needed them at her side. She’d called—they’d come as soon they could. Now there was nothing to do but wait.
THIRTEEN
FOUR HOURS LATER, she was still waiting. The long summer’s day was sliding slowly into night, a strange purple dusk erupting like a bruise on the horizon. The wind had picked up; it whistled a discordant tune through the trees surrounding the meadow and rattled the metal pieces on the outside of the Airstream until they sounded like a steel drum band.
Baba ran around for a few minutes, tying things down and generally battening down the hatches, and then sat down on the top step leading up into the trailer to peer fretfully into the darkening evening sky. Chudo-Yudo came to stand in the doorway behind her, resting his muzzle companionably on her shoulder.
“I don’t like it,” she said, finally. The breeze pulled maliciously at her hair, forcing her to put a hand up to hold it out of her face.
“Which don’t you like?” Chudo-Yudo asked. “The fact that none of the Riders has reported in yet, or this storm?”
“Both,” Baba said, raising her voice a little to be heard above the bellow and shriek of the rising wind. “It never takes the boys this long to come in once I’ve summoned them, and they shouldn’t be that far away.” She shook her head, spitting a strand of hair out of her mouth. “And this storm is all wrong. There was no sign of it earlier, and I should have felt it coming; a storm this strong would have been echoing in my bones like a rock slide in a cavern.”
A crash of thunder punctuated her words, followed a moment later by a ragged flash of lightning through the clouds overhead. The sky opened up and dropped buckets of rain, coming down in sheets of water too thick to see through. Baba and Chudo-Yudo scrambled back into the Airstream and slammed the door behind them.
Baba uttered a rude word, fists clenched. “This is no natural storm,” she said to Chudo-Yudo. “It feels . . . malevolent, somehow.” She shivered, disconcerted and unsettled without knowing quite why.
“Do you think Maya—or someone working with her—is trying to keep the Riders from getting back to you?” Chudo-Yudo leaned up against her leg, his warm bulk solid and reassuring.
“Maybe,” Baba said, her brow furrowed as she thought it through. “But that would mean Maya, or whoever it is, knows who the Riders are, and could feel me summon them. Back in Russia, that wouldn’t have been unheard of, but here? Who would be familiar with the Riders here?”
“Huh,” the dog snorted. “And have the power to create a storm of this magnitude. That’s even worse.”
She nodded in grim agreement. “It could just be a coincidence, I suppose. Maya calling up a magical storm to torment the poor locals—this is going to wreak havoc on their crops—just as I happen to be calling in the Riders.”
Chudo-Yudo looked up at her, brown eyes wary. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“No,” Baba said softly. “Me neither.”
Hail pelted down on the metal roof, sounding like weapon fire. Baba ducked involuntarily, although the Airstream had so much magical protection built into it, it could probably drive through a volcano without incurring any damage greater than a slightly charred aroma. The Riders, out on their motorcycles, would be much more vulnerable.
Another crash of thunder directly overhead made the ground shake, and Baba marched over to the door and flung it open.
“That’s it,” she said. “I’m putting a stop to this. The elements are my sphere of influence; I’ll be damned if I let some other witch or magic user mess with the folks under my protection.”
Chudo-Yudo cocked his head to one side quizzically, as if asking if she meant simply the Riders (who normally didn’t need protecting) or the missing children or everyone in the entire area. Then he gave a shrug and came to stand in the doorway behind her again.
“Go ahead, then. I’ll just watch from here. If I get soaked, you’ll be complaining about the wet dog smell for a week.” He gave her a look of exasperated concern. “Just try not to get struck by lightning, okay? You still haven’t gotten around to training your replacement, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it.”
Baba rolled her eyes at him and strode out into the storm, bare feet squelching in the viscous brown mud and wet grass catching at her ankles as if to hold her back. She was instantly soaked to the skin, the cotton shirt and long skirt she wore clinging to her chilled body. Above her, the night was rocked by simultaneous explosions of lightning and the feral roar of thunder, until it seemed like the entire meadow must soon disappear in a flare of smoke and fury, never to be seen again.
Baba ignored it all—churning noise and electric crackle and shuddering ground, the slash of the pelting rain and the biting fingers of the wind. She planted her feet firmly on the dirt, digging her toes in until the rich soil oozed up around her arches. Her arms flew up into the air as she flung her power against the raging energy of the storm.
“By the earth that is my body,” she shouted, the words reverberating up from her core, “by the air that is my breath, by the water that is my blood, and by the fire that is my spirit, I command you, elementals of nature, to return to your natural balance. This is my will and my desire, and so mote it be!”
A bolt of lightning struck the ground so close to her, she could feel her hair crackle with static. But then the rain began to ease, dropping back to a drizzle that was soon barely more than a mist in the suddenly quiet evening. Water dripped from the Airstream’s roof in musical pitter-pats, and a sliver of moon poked its head out from behind a web-thin cloud. It was over.
She padded soggily back to the doorway, where her faithful dragon-dog sat.
“Nice,” he said. “Can I have a cookie? Storms always make me hungry.”
* * *
ALEXEI WAS THE first to arrive, pounding on the front door and growling like the great black bear he resembled. “Baba, I’m drenched to my skivvies out here, let me in, will you?”
Her heart warmed with relief at the sound of his familiar gruff bellow, and she ran to open the door. In the dim mahogany light outside, his dark bulk blended with the night so he seemed only a shadow of black on black, ominous and foreboding. Forward movement brought his features into focus, a black-and-white photo morphing into color.
Once inside he shook himself, sending droplets of dank water scattering across the room, and making Baba and Chudo-Yudo cry out in protest.
“Alexei! Are you trying to drown us?” Baba snapped her fingers and the moisture disappeared, leaving a dry but still-grumpy man-mountain standing in the middle of her kitchen.
“Came close enough to drowning, myself,” he said, scowling down at her. “Might as well share the joy.” He stomped off to sit down on the sofa at the near end of the Airstream as another, less forceful, knock came on the door.
“Mikhail!” Baba said, letting him inside and drying him off too. “I was starting to worry about the three of you. Are you okay?”
His bright blue eyes flashed like the lightning. “I am now. I assume you’re the one who stopped that benighted storm?” He shook his head, his gorgeous face uncharacteristically dour, and his long hair lank from his drenching. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it back at all.”
“Me neither,” a voice said from behind him, and Baba gasped as Gregori Sun made his way into the trailer, a limp marring his customarily graceful walk. A large gash made a livid path across his forehead, and he held his body as if it hurt to move. “Hello, Baba. Mind if I sit down?”
Baba closed her mouth and led the two Riders to the lounge area at the right of the door. Alexei slid over on the couch to make room for the other men, and Baba grabbed a stool for herself. Chudo-Yudo sat at her feet, black tongue lolling as he stared in fascination at the three battered-looking Riders.
Before she sat down, Baba said, “Can I get you some tea? It will warm you up.”
Alexei grimaced. “Tea? We all come in half dead and battered and the best you can do is offer us tea? I don’t know about these guys, but I could use a stiff drink. Vodka, preferably.” The
other two nodded in agreement, even Gregori, who rarely drank.
“Oh, sure,” Baba said, and pulled a bottle of Stolichnaya out of the freezer. She poured four large shots, although she didn’t touch the one in front of her. Something told her she was going to need to keep her head.
“Confusion to the enemy,” Mikhail said, raising his glass.
“Surviving to fight another day,” added Gregori, lifting his.
Alexei rolled his eyes. “Na Zdorovie!” And muttered under his breath, “Philosophical idiots.”
They all drank, and Baba filled their glasses again, fetched a plate of pickles to go with the vodka in traditional Russian fashion, then sat down and looked them over carefully. The Riders looked better already, a combination of their fast healing powers and the anesthetic qualities of the alcohol.
“I was starting to think you hadn’t gotten my messages,” she said, sipping more circumspectly at her own vodka. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”
Mikhail snorted. “I got it, all right. But as soon as I headed back in this direction, all kinds of freaky stuff started happening. And then that storm came up and everything really went to hell.” He upended his second shot and slammed the glass down on the table for emphasis.
“What kind of freaky stuff?” Baba asked, pouring him another and putting the bottle down where they could all get at it.
The Riders all looked at each other.
“I ran into a bank of unnatural fog,” Gregori said, fingering his empty glass but not refilling it. “It was endless, and the bike’s headlights just got swallowed up in it. I felt like I was riding forever and getting nowhere. Creepy as hell. And there were creatures in that fog that didn’t belong here; things with fangs and claws and a foul stench that saturated the mist until I could barely breathe. It was almost a relief when the storm blew up and dropped that damned oak tree on me.” He shuddered, and refilled his glass, throwing the contents back with a compulsive swallow.
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