by Tom Doyle
When we awoke for landing, I asked Grace where Roderick would be. “Do we go to Chernobyl?”
“I don’t think so. We’re not sure how he convinced the Russians he was living there, but we think he’s in Kiev. Maybe he’s in the city’s catacombs. He could be anywhere down there. The Ukrainians are known for their stealth.”
Remembering Roman, I agreed.
We arrived at the Kiev Boryspil Airport at an off hour. At passport control, the lines weren’t long, and the mundane world seemed quiet and normal. But the spiritual world was an ectoplasmic mess.
Only two ghosts manned this border, which even for a relatively new state seemed strange. From the cover of unoccupied passport control booths, the two spirits were shooting at each other. A babushka with the rifle and look of a Second World War partisan shot at a man dressed in Cossack garb. “Surrender!” she bellowed. “You’re serving a foreign devil.”
The Cossack shot back across the room. “He can bring us back!” he yelled. “In new bodies!”
“Can’t, and won’t!” yelled the babushka.
Grace said something in Latin about omnilingua, and only then did I realize the ghosts were speaking Ukrainian. I understood them, and I hadn’t consciously used panglossic.
No other spirits and no craftspeople that I could see, though if they were like Roman, that might not mean much. I spoke toward Grace, but my question was addressed to the ghosts. “Where are the other spiritual guards?”
“No foreign powers in this time of crisis,” chorused the ghosts. It seemed to be the only thing they could agree on.
I thought the babushka might share our interest. “We’re here to remove Roderick,” I said.
Another exchange of ectoplasmic rifle fire flashed. “They’ve gone to headquarters,” yelled the babushka. “Some summoned.” She spat. “Some not. But good luck finding that place before you’re old. This is Ukraine.”
The Cossack also had words for us. “I have alerted craft security. You will wait for their arrival.”
No, we wouldn’t. Two combat-fatigued ghosts couldn’t even give us a burn, and the babushka now seemed to be delivering covering fire for us. Our passport person seemed nervous—a mundane can generally sense a spiritual disturbance without actually seeing it. I suggested she let us through, and she did, as did customs.
“The Baba Yagas’ headquarters will be difficult to find,” said Grace.
“Unless some of them want to be found,” I said. If the ghosts were fighting, the living would be too. I pulled out a tourist map, and I saw—no, I felt—how the city lines converged on the rounded end of Independence Square. That would be like them: hiding in what should be the plainest sight in town.
With more money than time, we took an unofficial airport limo. The car smelled like old incontinent dog and sausage. The young driver seemed anxious to practice English with us and to point out the numerous horse-chestnut trees, though they were autumnally bare. As a capital city, Kiev had defensive, rainbow-hued beams that shot from Orthodox domes, Stalinist concrete blocks, and modern glass and steel. The beams were distracting, but they weren’t very many or very strong.
As we approached the city center, the traffic slowed, then halted, though it was the middle of the day and nowhere near rush hour. The driver got on his phone and relayed the news to us. “Is big bullshit. Maybe government shoot government. Good, but you not go there.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “We’ll get out here.”
Despite the driver’s protests, we exited the car with our limited belongings and walked in the direction of worsening gridlock and some ineffable wrongness. I felt the wrong before we saw it, tugging me like a river current flowing toward an abyss of darkness. Craft alarums rang like the many church bells, probably not heard since the Germans took the city. Ghosts were moving with us in the direction of the wrong; a group of three tried to interfere, shouting, “Two very powerful foreign mages are moving toward headquarters with bad intent.” But these ghosts were soon shouting at other spirits.
At the rounded far end of the open square was a modern, narrow, glass-box building, distinct from its stony and older neighbors. That, and the riot of ectoplasmic and craft forces shooting out from it, told us that we were at the right place.
Whatever power had kept the Baba Yagas’ headquarters hidden had now flagged or was otherwise occupied in the conflict, allowing mundanes to pin the building down in their view. From the streets and the square, curious people stared at the structure, seeing it clearly for the first time. After a minute or so of looking, most gawkers shuddered and made for distant ground. Security forces began forming a perimeter, but they were unhurried and for the moment more concerned with the people outside the building.
Ghosts from all over the country seemed to have gathered in the square. Some were fighting each other within the perimeter, others just stared up at the building in ghastly silence. No practitioners were working outside to contain this situation and reassure the crowd. Conventional gunshots from the building reverberated into the square. The physical aspects of the drama were all playing out in the open, in public view. As for the spiritual, anyone with any sensitivity would know that something strange was going on. If the global media took this seriously, it might have very bad implications for practitioners everywhere.
Dark clouds were gathering above the disorder, but they only complemented the mood. If Roderick was summoning weather against us, he’d need a bigger storm.
Perhaps noting that we were steadily studying the headquarters, two of the uniformed men in the perimeter were looking in our direction. Grace indicated a Ukrainian fast-food restaurant, so we ducked into it. Inside, it smelled like McDonald’s fries with a side of borscht. Customers were muttering about terrorists or cursing with the odd triple epithet of “Jewish Communist Masons.”
We stood at the restaurant window with a view of the Baba Yagas’ building across the hemicircle. Eyes forward, Grace said, “I can get us through the mundanes, but what then?”
First things first: would we go up, or down to some damned Left-Hand basement? Another look answered that question. A corner of the top story facing the square was glowing with the blood-red heartbeat craft that was Roderick’s signature. He wasn’t hiding his work.
Assaulting the wizard’s tower was a sport for gamers. “I don’t want to call on that much power.” I had the now familiar feeling that a foreign place was still good ground for me, and I could again lose myself all too easily in the power that I could summon.
“We can’t stay in here forever,” said Grace. “It’ll make me a vegetarian.”
As if in answer, the ectoplasmic fire dwindled, stopped, and the ghosts in the square all turned toward us. Then, a wail like the truly damned went up, echoing around the square.
The ghosts outside the building fled, their faces the full spectrum of fear and terror. No, they hadn’t been looking toward us, just in our direction.
Grace stood poised for imminent combat. “Something’s coming,” she said. “Something terrible. Is it Roderick?”
“I don’t think so.” I knew of only one power in the world that could cause so many dead so much fear. Not daring to hope or drop my guard, I said, “I think it’s my friend.” We stepped out of the restaurant.
A woman dressed like an American tourist from Hades was striding down one of the streets that curved like comet orbits into the square. She looked a little leaner, a little meaner, than even a few weeks ago. She stopped near the police line, chanting with Buddhist steadiness that stream of angry sailor’s profanity that powered her craft, adding a touch of panglossic so any spirits would be clear on what she wanted them to do with their ghostly parts. Some of the locals laughed nervously at the apparently insane Yankee, others were answering with epithets of their own.
I hadn’t been this glad to see a Morton since the Pentagon. But the police didn’t look happy about this foul-mouthed observer, probably taking her remarks personally. “Come on, we have to get h
er away from there.”
Then, the news got even better. Another familiar, dark-featured figure was running around the pond in the square toward the building. “Scherie!” he called.
Her mouth stopped, hanging open mid-invective as she turned. My two friends embraced with the fierceness of those who cross battlefields to meet. The security folks seemed to relax; some of the crowd applauded and hooted. “Yankee, get a room!”
Grace was watching with me. “Your friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Those are the Mortons?”
“Yeah. I’ll introduce you.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
I strode out to them ahead of Grace, hands and arms open. But they only had eyes for each other. As the ranking officer, I’d have to chew them out about that lack of situational awareness. Later.
“Sorry I’m late,” Dale was saying, “tough commute.” He looked Scherie over top to bottom, and he must’ve seen something in his craftsight that he didn’t like at all. “You’ve been wounded!”
“So?” she said. “Don’t I get a special party, or club membership, or something?”
“Um, attention,” I said, from not more than five feet away.
Their heads whipped around together. Oh, yeah, I wouldn’t ever let them live down this moment of tactical surprise. “Did you miss me?”
My family was never big on emotional display, romantic or otherwise, so I was a little taken aback at their full double-armed hugs. “Mike,” said Dale, “you magnificent bastard, you’re alive.”
Scherie tried to look displeased. “What is it with you two and suicide missions?”
“And what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m here because I knew you’d be, and I mean you in particular,” she said, jabbing at me with her finger.
A small sound of polite throat clearing behind me, so I made introductions. “Scherie, Dale, this is Grace, one of our friends from the UK.”
Dale’s eyes went a little wider with appreciation and dangerous mirth. “Friends, eh?”
But Scherie cut him off. “Greetings from the American Families,” she said, in echo of my welcome to her in H-ring on that bad day. Sometimes karma worked out OK.
In the language of her people, Grace still seemed a little gobsmacked. “You’re the Mortons?”
“Yes,” said Scherie, putting a little New England drawl into it. “You seem surprised.”
“It’s nothing,” Grace said. “I was just expecting something more gothic.”
Scherie smiled. “That’s the House. We’re more American contemporary.”
“That was a truly impressive exorcism,” Grace noted. Scherie’s smile broadened with justified pride.
“In her spiritual area, she’s a nuke,” I agreed.
“You were going after Roderick without her?”
Shrugging had been drubbed out of me early, so I said, “Maybe.”
More gunfire echoed from the building. Somebody with a bullhorn was suggesting that the building’s occupants come out with their hands up so that they could be killed more conveniently.
“Anyone else feeling underdressed for this chilly environment?” asked Dale, cocking his finger toward the building like a gun.
“I could obtain some small arms quickly,” said Grace. “But whatever is happening in there will be long over before I could find heavy armament.”
Scherie had the thin smile of a cat trying to keep a large canary in her mouth. “I may be able to help.”
* * *
Minutes later, we were peering into the back of an SUV that Scherie had parked just down a narrow street from the square, in front of a house museum for a Ukrainian poet. We were staring at all the weapons: big honking cases of firearms and ammunition.
“I love you,” said Dale.
“Me too,” I said to Scherie.
“Special relationship forever,” said Grace.
“It’s all courtesy of the Oikumene,” said Scherie.
“The Oikumene?” I asked, neutrally. “They’re active again?”
Scherie nodded. “They want to help bring Roderick down.”
Dale and I gave each other a glance. Whatever our differences in perspective, we both apparently had reasons to be suspicious of these Pan-Hellenes bearing gifts. The Oikumene cared for nothing except their narrow vision of the global order, and their help against Roderick would have a price.
But Scherie said, “It’s a little scary that we all came here. We’re a bloody-minded bunch.”
“Moving toward the fire,” said Dale. “Though I wasn’t sure you paid attention during training,” he added, with a duck to avoid an anticipated smack. Then he nodded at me. “And I guess I should start expecting you to show up whenever needed too. So, how do we go in?”
“I can get us in,” said Grace.
Dale looked at me for confirmation. “She got us across Europe,” I said.
* * *
Grace, Dale, and I ditched our bags in Scherie’s car. Scherie was the only one of us who still had her phone, and I asked her to leave it in the glove compartment. Without the phone and with Grace’s stealth, perhaps a busy Roderick wouldn’t be able to track us so precisely. Grace spoke her Latin, and the world went fish-eyed. I had my sword and a .45. Dale and Scherie had a matching set of MP5 submachine guns and 9mm pistols—very domestic, those two. Grace had … well, Grace had somehow found an experimental needle handgun and a flechette rifle in Scherie’s stash. Not weapons that I would ever be caught dead with, but she looked good with them. Heck, she’d look good wielding a two-by-four with a nail in one end.
Scherie said the Oikumene weapons were all Stonewall safety chipped with the latest patch against Roderick, but I personally thought if Roderick could command that much against ourselves, we’d be lost whether the weapons fired or not.
For maneuvering in stealth mode, the street was narrow, and the crowded square was worse. We would have had a tight squeeze through the perimeter to get inside the Baba Yaga’s headquarters, but just then, a file of people emerged from a doorway in one of the pair of stairwell shafts running up the sides of the glass-enclosed ground floor, and, hands held high, walked out of the building.
They were as pale as a sunless dawn, and they stumbled repeatedly as they moved toward the perimeter, as if even the cloud-dimmed light of day was more than they were used to. They avoided the solicitous touches of EMTs and flinched at the less friendly hands of the police. One of them tried to protect her laptop, which caused much shouting and rough handling. But no one made good on the bullhorn’s earlier ironic threats.
As they were escorted through the perimeter, we slipped in the other way. At a safe distance, I whispered, “Those guys have some craft.”
“Their sins are all computer-related,” said Dale. “I had trouble reading them. Online fraud, hacking, denial-of-service attacks, that sort of thing.”
“They were helping Roderick with his Internet stunts,” I said.
The first floor was empty except for the bodies of the killed and the too wounded to move. The escalators trembled, and rust-red rivulets of something craft-infused that wasn’t quite blood ran down them. We wouldn’t take the escalators.
The elevators had a death-trap vibe too, so we found an emergency stairway that the computer staff had used, and we went up. Dale took point, and I didn’t argue, as he was better at finding traps. Rather than exhaust herself, Grace let her stealth screen slip. Too many here would be as good at hide-and-seek as she was.
We passed the doors for the second and third floors. At the fourth-floor door, Dale held up his hand for us to halt. “There’s a craft tripwire on the next flight of stairs.”
A message with an enter arrow was tacked to the door. I read the Ukrainian: “This way please for the competition.” So it is a game, I thought.
“You can read that?” asked Scherie.
“I’ll report later,” I said. Dale pushed the door, but there was no handle on this side. He aim
ed his rifle at the bolt area. “Get ready,” he said, then started uttering some craft to help bullets penetrate without ricocheting.
“Wait,” said Grace. Dale lowered his weapon, and Grace touched the lock and whispered something. A soft click of the bolt. The door would push inward. “I’ll go point here. I’ll be able to obscure us as targets in the first rush.”
I felt the door. Nothing more wrong behind it than the rest of this place. Grace called for her stealth again, and held her flechette rifle at ready as we lined up on either side of the door. We all dropped into the slowed-down world of combat time sense. Grace kicked open the door.
Entry itself was the standard, deadly drill. The door area was clear, but the rest of the room was a forest of cubicles, with a central corridor that ran to the elevator shafts. Getting through would be like an urban street fight in miniature. Though we were obscured, that didn’t stop some Ukrainian practitioner from taking a couple of blind shots at the stairway when he saw the fire door move.
We all scrambled for dubious cover behind cubicle walls. More shooting followed, but not directed our way. Living people in the same spiritual service were shooting each other. It was one thing for ghosts to fight (they didn’t have much to lose), but this was craft civil war. It also meant the practitioners had guns with no Stonewall devices. Given Ukrainian history, that wasn’t a big surprise—who was on what side could change pretty quickly.
The shots seemed to be moving away from us, so we went after them. We worked in quick relays down the cubicle corridor. At the end of the corridor, a freshly and mortally wounded man lay propped up against the elevator bank. With no time for chitchat, I went right to compulsion. “In God’s name, what’s happening here?”
“The phone.” With weak, faltering hands, he clawed up at me. “Get me to the phone.”
“What phone?”
“First one to the phone wins.”
“Wins what?”
“Life,” he said. And with a long, rattling breath, he was dead. Lord, please have mercy on his soul.