The Midnight Court

by Jane Kindred

  As he pulled off the jeans, Vasily slipped his hand into his pocket and produced a small, square packet. “Protection.” He blushed slightly. “Knud gave them to me.” Knud had chastised him for our carelessness after Vasily had reacted badly to the news of my unplanned pregnancy. There was no birth control in Heaven, and though I hadn’t heard of this earthly innovation when Vasily first took me to his bed, he’d spent enough time in the world of Man to know better.

  He held the packet between his teeth as he crawled over me and undressed me, and I shivered beneath his touch and the dance of the violet light. It was like breathing pure oxygen after having been deprived of fresh air for months. I’d missed it so much, it almost made me weep.

  I closed my eyes, arching up to meet his hand as he pulled down my trousers, and then he stopped suddenly. I looked up and saw the packet fall from his teeth onto the carpet as he turned his head to the door. Behind him, Belphagor stood gripping the doorframe. Blood was running down the side of his face.

  “Vasya.” He stumbled and Vasily leapt up and caught him before he hit the floor.

  Jerking my trousers back on, I scrambled in the bedclothes for my bra and shirt. I held them awkwardly to my chest as Vasily led Belphagor to the bed.

  “What’s happened?” Vasily touched the blood on Belphagor’s face, completely oblivious to his own nakedness.

  “Where’s Ola?” I clutched my shirt. “Is she all right?” Terror gripped me when Belphagor looked up at me but didn’t answer.

  I jumped from the bed and ran downstairs, pulling my shirt on and buttoning it as I went. There was no one below, and the door still stood open on an empty twilight. Calling Ola’s name, I went out along the garden path, pushing past the overgrown branches of tea roses I’d meant to trim, to the little white gate on the walk. Before I opened the gate and hurried down the drive toward the road beyond, I stood and stared at the empty stones as if Ola and Love must surely be there and I was simply failing to see them. Vashti and Zeus would appear in a moment, with Love holding a sleepy Ola between them. They had to. There was no other acceptable possibility.

  When they didn’t come, I ran along the country road that led to the dacha, shouting for them frantically, ignoring the carpet of pine needles that pressed sharp and damp against my bare feet. I went as far as the end of the road where it met the paved highway, but fear wrapped around my heart and tightened like a garrote when I could see the open road. As always, there was no one for miles, just the empty, late summer dusk settling among the peaceful birch and poplar.

  It was all I could do not to fall screaming to my knees. I returned to the dacha, my feet slowing, as though delaying the moment Belphagor confirmed it could stop what I already knew.

  I let the gate swing loose behind me and hugged my elbows in the evening chill. Just this morning, Ola had picked a bouquet of awkward wildflower stems and weeds from this path as I’d walked it with her, holding her hand while she practiced her steps, not quite confident yet to walk on her own. Inside the dacha, the bouquet was still sitting on the table in a canning jar. Her building blocks were scattered on the floor in the sitting room, her little blue summer jacket just on the chair where she’d left it. Everything was where it should be. Everything but Ola.

  Upstairs, Vasily had closed the bedroom door. As I approached the landing, I could hear him speaking in low, earnest tones, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  And then I heard Belphagor’s voice quite clearly. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” There was a long silence crackling with tension, and then something spoken low and plaintively, followed by the sound of a fist hitting flesh.

  Vasily’s voice was perfectly clear. “You son of a whore!”

  I threw the door open to see Belphagor sprawled on the untidy bed with his hand against the side of his mouth where it dripped fresh blood. He glanced up, and then turned his head away, eyes heavy with guilt. Vasily faced the window, gripping the sill with barely controlled rage. He, too, seemed to be avoiding me.

  “Where is she?” I fell on my knees beside Belphagor. “Where’s my baby?”

  Chetvertoe: The Room in the Elephant

  Belphagor would have given anything not to have to answer that desperate plea. Vasily and Anazakia had been in bed together—or almost in bed together. It was what he’d expected to happen. It was what he’d hoped would happen, even though it stung just a bit to see that it had. Vasily had been denying himself any pleasure out of guilt, and Belphagor…he couldn’t seem to move past the shame to be what Vasily needed him to be. Vasily had seen him beaten, broken—pathetic. For a time, he’d been as dependent on Vasily as a child. Whenever he did make an effort, Vasily pulled away from him, as if he could sense Belphagor’s self-loathing.

  And Anazakia tiptoed around him as if he were something delicate she was afraid to disturb, all the while secretly looking at Vasily with a naked longing she thought Belphagor didn’t notice. As Vasily always smelled to him of firewood and the comfort of a hearth, whenever Anazakia and Vasily touched, they seemed to give off a scent of the electrified air after a thunderstorm, making it impossible to ignore the powerful connection between them. Right now, the scent of that elemental fusion was heavy in this room. The sheets beneath his cheek were charged with it.

  These had all seemed very great worries until this afternoon.

  They had stopped for a picnic lunch along the coast after the short flight to the Solovki Airport, and Love and Zeus had gone to find driftwood for a fire. Vashti had unpacked the food they’d brought with them while Belphagor entertained Ola, and when Vashti handed him a bottle of soda, he downed it quickly, his mouth parched from the salty air. As the Nephil smiled at him and reached to take Ola from his lap, he realized something was wrong. His extremities were going numb and his vision was blurring, and his throat felt tight.

  “Don’t worry,” Vashti told him. “You’ll only sleep for an hour or two. Long enough for us to reach Kem.”

  Belphagor had tried to speak, but his mouth refused to cooperate, and he could only slur unintelligibly. Vashti slipped Ola’s diaper bag from his shoulder and put her hand behind his head, easing him to the ground. He watched, paralyzed, as she hoisted Ola and stood.

  “Say poka to Beli, Ola,” he’d heard her say as she held out Ola’s arm toward him. “Wave to Beli.” And then he could only hear the crunch of Vashti’s boots and the surge of the frigid waves of the White Sea against the rocky shore of the island as she walked away toward the dock and a boat to Kem.

  He’d tried to move, and for a moment, there was still some feeling in his upper arms, but he’d only managed to flop sideways and bash his head against the rocks. After that, he could only remember waking as the sun was moving low on the horizon. He was alone on the beach. Zeus and Love had never returned.

  Anazakia was waiting for an answer.

  “They took her.” His voice was barely a whisper. “The Nephilim and Love.” He didn’t try to sit up, still dizzy from whatever Vashti had given him and from the desperate flight he’d made on his own after dark, trying to stay out of view as he coasted on his wings to keep from falling into the sea.

  Vasily was pacing naked by the window as if trying to control the urge to beat the hell out of him. He deserved it. Belphagor had failed him utterly, had failed them both.

  “Why?” Tears poured down Anazakia’s cheeks. “Why would they do that? Where did they take her?”

  “I don’t know.” He examined the blood on his hand from his lip, trying to make sense of anything.

  “How could you let it happen?” Vasily whirled from the window and yanked him from the bed. Holding Belphagor by the collar with his feet nearly off the floor, Vasily roared his rebuke. “Did you suspect nothing? Did you do nothing? You just let Vashti walk away with my child?”

  “I told you. She put something in my drink.” Belphagor looked up at him hopelessly. “We’ll find her. We’ll bring her back.”

  Vasily flung him onto the bed. “We? She�
�s not your child, Belphagor. She’s mine. I’ll damn well find her. This no longer has anything to do with you.” He grabbed the jeans he must have stripped out of and tossed to the floor some minutes before Belphagor’s unwelcome arrival, and pulled them on with angry jerks. The words stung worse than anything he’d yet said.

  “You know I love Ola as if she were my own.”

  “Really?” Vasily’s eyes were cold instead of burning with celestial fire. “Well, I would have died before I’d let them take her from me, Belphagor. And you’re not dead, are you?” He buttoned his jeans almost violently. “Get out. Just get the fuck out.”

  “Don’t.” Anazakia’s voice broke in a sob. She put her hand on Vasily’s arm as Belphagor climbed from the bed and stumbled toward the door. “Please don’t. I can’t stand this.”

  Vasily jerked his arm away. “Then go with him.”

  Anazakia stepped out into the hallway after Belphagor and pulled the door shut, her white, drawn face streaked with tears. Inside, he could hear heavy things being thrown about the room, as if Vasily had picked up the furniture itself and hurled it. Belphagor turned unsteadily to the stairs, unable to face the misery in the angel’s eyes, but she grabbed him by the arm.

  “You’re hurt. What happened? Tell me everything.”

  Her kindness was unbearable. Belphagor preferred the bilious rage of Vasily. She helped him downstairs and made him tea, washing the blood from his face and tending the cut he’d gotten from the rocks as he told her how Vashti had left him and how he’d woken to the terrible certainty that Ola was gone.

  “How did you get back so quickly?”

  He winced at her ministrations. “I flew. Not by airplane, I mean. I took wing.”

  The hand holding the damp, bloody cloth dropped to her side. “You displayed your radiance? In plain view?”

  “My radiance isn’t much. Not like yours or Vasily’s.”

  Vasily’s fiery wings were a brilliant vermillion, and though Anazakia’s were like a clear fountain of water surging up from her shoulder blades, she could spark a blue flash so pale and pure it was almost white and light up the sky. Belphagor’s element merely produced a broad expanse of darkness, air that glittered if the light hit his wings right, like a black slick of oil on the surface of a lake, swirling with a spectrum of dark color.

  “I couldn’t just stay there and wait for the flight on Wednesday. And there was no one to see me anyway. Or hardly anyone, just the monks at the monastery. But it was dark. No one was about, and I kept to the ocean most of the way. I’d circled the islands and the coastland for a sign of Love or the Nephilim—a boat, anything—but it was too late by then. They were taking the ferry to Kem. If they had a car waiting there, they could be anywhere.” He cupped the warm drink between his hands and forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Nazkia. You haven’t said it, but this is my fault. I shouldn’t have taken Ola out. I’m to blame.”

  “And I’m to blame for taking my cousin riding on the day Aeval poisoned his blood. But we don’t talk about such things in polite conversation.” She went to the sink to rinse out the cloth. “Don’t tell me to be unkind to you, Belphagor. You don’t know what you’re asking. If I speak what I feel, I’ll say terrible things. Things I’ll regret. Vasily will regret it when his anger’s passed.” She turned off the water but remained where she stood, holding the dripping cloth. “Just find a way to get Ola back. Use your skill at the game.”

  The game. It was the only thing he was good at. The wingcasting table was the one place he excelled. But neither bluffing and card counting, nor sleight of hand, could possibly be of any use in this, whatever it was. He wasn’t even sure if the Nephilim had taken Ola for a reward from Heaven, or for ransom, or for some other purpose. He didn’t know the rules of this game.

  “Love,” he said suddenly. “What’s her part in this?” He set down his tea and grabbed the computer Love kept on the table, a small phone plugged into its side connecting it to the vast resources of a network of information far greater than the gypsy underground.

  He found her mail open and fumbled awkwardly with the navigation toggle on the keypad to see the last few messages she’d read.

  “The gypsy underground has been contacting her.” He scanned the contents in surprise. “There’s talk of the Malakim…talk of breaking the alliance with the Fallen in favor of a new alliance with Heaven.” He shook his head. “Those sons of bitches.”

  The Fallen and the Travelers had lived side by side for thousands of years, with the Night Travelers keeping the secrets of the Fallen and the Fallen keeping the secrets of the Night Travelers. Though as humans, the Roma had immunity from the powers of the Seraphim who pursued criminal elements of the Fallen community, there were other celestials to contend with. The Malakim took it upon themselves to whisper in the ears of Men and foster false hopes while simultaneously encouraging the prejudice that kept such marginal groups oppressed. It kept the world of Man from looking for the world of Heaven, but ever longing for it. And people like the Travelers who lived on the fringes were always the first to suffer under the mighty knut of manmade gods.

  “What is it?” Anazakia had seen him wince.

  “Nothing. Just an unpleasant memory.” He focused once more on the message in front of him and swore as he read it. “The Parliament of Night Travelers instructed her to turn Ola over to the Malakim for her own safety.” He looked up at Anazakia. “This was days ago. It looks like she finally took their advice.”

  “Why? Why would she? She doesn’t believe in the Malakim, or Heaven, or even Aeval!”

  “Maybe she believes in the Parliament of Night Travelers. What I don’t understand is why the Nephilim would help her. They stand to lose if the Travelers ally themselves with the Host.” A search of the mailbox revealed nothing relating to Nephilim.

  Belphagor closed the laptop. “This is good news, Nazkia. I know it doesn’t seem like it. But if the Malakim are behind this, all we need is some muscle. We’ll get Ola back before they have a chance to take her to Aeval. They can’t just will themselves to Heaven like the Seraphim; they’ll be taking the train to the celestial portals at Irkutsk. We’ll put the Grigori on every stop of the Trans-Siberian rail. We’ll have them before they get to Yekaterinburg. We’ll find her.”

  Doubt and hope played across the angel’s features.

  “And when I find Love,” Belphagor added darkly, “I’ll whip her ass until she believes in the devil.”

  …

  Love moaned, meeting resistance when she tried to reach up to find out why the back of her head hurt so badly. She discovered her hands were bound behind her to the frame of a wooden chair, and some kind of hood had been pulled over her head. A musky-sweet scent surrounded her, a smell of ancient confinement and the dampness of the earth beneath it. Wherever she was, it was cold.

  “Awake now, Lyubov?” It was the Englishman, Zeus.

  “What are you doing? What’s going on?”

  “I want to talk to you.” His breath was warm at her ear. “Vashti and I need your help with a little project. We didn’t expect Belphagor to bring you along, but since you’re here, I think I can make use of you.”

  Love jumped at the stroke of his hand against her bare arm. “What do you mean? Take this off me so I can see you.”

  “Not just yet, Lyubov.”

  She yanked against the rope in irritation. “Why do you keep calling me that? My name is Love.”

  “You’re not English.” He turned her covered head about by the chin, as if he were examining her face. “Love is an English word. You’re a Russian girl. A gypsy girl, humani.”

  “What is that? Umani? I’m Romani.”

  “Humani.” He nearly spat the word at her. “It’s ancient angelic. It means human.”

  Love sighed. “Is that the game we’re playing? The angel game? Fine. You’re an angel. You’ve got big wings. Now take this off!” She yelped in surprise as Zeus cuffed her through the hood.

  “I�
�m not an angel.” He said the word with disdain. “I’m Nephili. The superior seed of human and celestial. I’m evolution.” He dragged another chair across the wooden floor in front of her. “Vashti told me you didn’t believe in the unseen world. She didn’t tell me just how ignorant you were, but no matter. I figured I’d have to show you one way or the other to get your cooperation. Now. I’ll take off the hood”—she felt his hands on the bottom of the cloth—“if you’ll stop being such a little bitch. Are we clear?”

  “Yes,” said Love, subdued.

  Zeus pulled the hood over her head, and she blinked in the glare of a bare bulb behind him hanging from the curved, whitewashed ceiling. Only a single wooden door, its ornate iron fixtures rusted with age, broke the monotony within the windowless stone walls of the small room. When Love looked back at Zeus, his eyes were a gleaming, solid black. There were no whites.

  He smiled at her reaction. “Just one of the unseen things.”

  “Black contact lenses,” she scoffed. “You can get those anywhere.”

  “You are really quite determined to live in the boring world of the humani.” He pushed back his chair and stood, and with a graceful shrug, a pair of bat-like, netted wings rolled out from behind his shoulders. The tips curled into multiple points terminating in protrusions that looked like glossy black claws as they unfurled. The wings spanned at least eight feet.

  Love looked up at the tall, pale giant of a man, his dark eyes unblinking and his sinewy wings moving slowly with the rhythm of his breath. “You must have drugged me. Made me hallucinate.”

  “Lyubov. You’re trying my patience. Vashti and I need someone who can be relied upon to do as we say without questions. I can’t even rely upon you to believe your own eyes.” He circled her slowly, strong muscles visible at the base of the wings at his shoulder blades where they forced his shirt down beneath them. Whatever he’d given her, whatever prosthetics he was using, the illusion was very realistic. “What have you been hearing on your little underground network? What do the gypsies say is happening in the unseen world?”