by Jane Kindred
“We’ve talked to every gypsy who’ll talk to us, Vasya. We’ve interrogated every damned Nephil in Russia and beyond.”
Lev joined them at the table. “Has she answered her phone yet?”
“Ola?” Vasily asked incredulously.
“Anazakia.” Belphagor had to bite back a smile. It wasn’t funny, really. Vasily was so sick with worry that he was never more than half there at any given time. But the tension of the past weeks was threatening to come out of Belphagor in inappropriate ways. He answered Lev when Vasily said nothing. “No, she hasn’t.”
“Does she know to turn it on?”
Belphagor shrugged as he bit into his toast. “Maybe not.” He spoke with his mouth full, knowing it drove Vasily mad. “Who would she have ever called?”
“So it could be as simple as that. Maybe she just doesn’t know you’re trying to reach her.”
Vasily stared at his uneaten breakfast. “She had no business going off on her own.”
“We don’t know what she saw on Love’s computer.”
“That’s my fucking point, Belphagor!” He snatched a pack of cigarettes from the table and went out onto the fire escape, slamming the wooden shutters behind him.
Belphagor cringed at the sound and almost dropped his teacup as he set it down on the saucer. “I’ve never seen him like this.”
“I’ve never seen you like this.” Lev put his hand over Belphagor’s around the teacup. “Are you all right?”
Belphagor clutched Lev’s hand. Even this touch was more than he’d had from Vasily in months. “No. Not really. I’m responsible for all this. I lost his little girl.”
“Don’t do that. It could have been any one of you that bitch Vashti drugged.”
“But it wasn’t any one of us, Lev. It was me. I insisted on taking Ola on that stupid cruise.”
“It wasn’t stupid.” Lev squeezed his hand. “You had a nanny and two Nephilim with you who were supposed to keep the child safe.”
Belphagor tried to pull away, but Lev wouldn’t let him.
“I know how you are, Bel. That child may not be your own blood, but I can see in your eyes you’re as broken to pieces over this as Vasily is. You love her.”
“How could I not?” Belphagor whispered. “She’s like a little drop of him. A beautiful little drop. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful she is.”
“I wish I’d been there to see her with Dmitri. I wanted to come, but he thought it might complicate things.”
“I know.” Belphagor’s voice was rough as he composed himself. “I know you did, Lyova.” He looked up and realized Vasily had come back inside. Belphagor snatched his hand away from Lev’s with a guilty start, and Vasily gave him a cool look, devoid of any feeling.
The doorbell buzzed, dispelling the tense moment, and Dmitri came out of the front bedroom to answer it. With an intercom that worked as well as it had in Soviet times, there was no way to ascertain from their third-floor flat who was at the door, so Dmitri ran down the four flights, as one of them usually did.
When he came back, a face Belphagor hadn’t seen in nearly as long as it had been since he’d seen Lev—and had never expected to see again—appeared behind Dmitri in the doorway. The lanky blond, still wearing his hair in a rather un-Russian ponytail, grinned at Belphagor.
“Mikhail Lesovich.” Dmitri announced him somewhat dubiously. “He says he knows you?”
The visitor stepped inside without an invitation as Belphagor rose to greet him. “I heard you were in town,” he said.
“It’s all right,” Belphagor reassured Dmitri, whose hand hovered at the pocket where he kept his knife. “Misha.” He greeted him, baffled at the young man’s presence, as Misha clasped his hand warmly. “How is your mother?”
“Same as always. Trying to fix me up with a nice girl.”
Belphagor laughed and then cut it short as Vasily shot him a look of disbelief. This was truly bad timing. He’d never told Vasily about Misha.
“Actually, she’s the one who sent me.” Misha’s moss-green eyes were curious as he watched the silent exchange between them.
“Yulya Volfovna sent you?” Belphagor couldn’t imagine why his former landlady would be seeking him out.
“She said to give you this.” Misha handed him a folded note.
Belphagor opened it and stared in amazement. It was a note of introduction he’d written himself, intending to send Anazakia to Yulya if anything happened to him. He’d written it before Anazakia had even learned a word of Russian, repeating the address on the back in angelic script.
“Where did she get this?”
“From the girl you gave it to, I expect. Although it says ’take care of the boy.’ That was a bit confusing. Maybe she took it from someone else? She says her name is Anazakia.”
Belphagor shook his head, smiling with relief. “No. No, I gave it to her.” There was no point in explaining to Misha that Anazakia had been disguised as a boy to hide her from the firehounds of Heaven. “So she’s there? Anazakia’s with your mother?”
Misha nodded. “She fell ill on the train from Murmansk and someone found the note in her pocket and brought her to Mother’s. She was delirious with fever for a couple of days, but she’s all right now.”
“Murmansk?” Belphagor shook his head, baffled. “Well, thank Heaven she’s all right. We were worried. She hasn’t answered her phone.”
“She told Mother about your nanny taking off with your kid. I hope you find her soon.” His eyes were curious. “I have to say, I was a little surprised to hear you’re a father.”
“No—” Belphagor began, but Vasily interrupted him.
“She’s mine.” His eyes were stony, as if Misha had challenged him. “It’s my daughter we’re looking for.”
“Oh. Well, that makes more sense. You must be Kae.”
Vasily looked as if he might lunge at Misha, the red heat in his eyes dangerously close to the surface, enough that it might fall within the visible range of a human. “What did you say?”
Misha stepped back in alarm and threw a look at Belphagor.
“This is Vasily.” Belphagor put a hand on Vasily’s arm and was violently shaken off.
Misha’s eyes registered understanding. It was after Vasily left him that Belphagor had fallen to the world of Man and ended up sleeping off an ugly night of drinking in an alleyway beside Yulya’s Pushkin flat. He’d told Misha about Vasily when they’d first slept together, able to think of nothing else.
“Sorry. I just thought… She was repeating that name in her fever.”
Fists clenched white at his sides, Vasily left the room.
Misha shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I said.”
“Don’t worry about it. Kae’s her cousin, and Vasily doesn’t like him much.” Belphagor realized they were all still standing awkwardly in the foyer. “Why don’t you come in and have some tea?”
Misha slipped his feet out of his shoes and into a pair of guest tapochki, then followed them back into the kitchen, where Lev heated the electric teapot. When Belphagor introduced Misha, Lev gave Belphagor a knowing look. He was well acquainted with Belphagor’s taste.
Vasily confronted him later as they were packing up in the guestroom to head for Pushkin. “Just who on Earth haven’t you slept with?”
Belphagor took comfort in the fact that Vasily still cared enough to be jealous. “I’ve fallen many times.” He was aware of the unintentional double-entendre. “You know that. It was a long time ago.”
Vasily tossed a duffel bag at him, hitting Belphagor in the chest. “Can’t have been that long, Belphagor. He’s barely got hair on his lip. How old was he, twelve?”
Belphagor set the bag down on the bed. “Don’t be crude. He’s older than he looks. He was older than you were when I met you.”
Vasily scowled. “You really are an old letch. I had no idea just how old until Dmitri mentioned something about the Stalin era.”
Belphagor’s face flushed with embarrassmen
t and anger. “You never asked how old I was when you got down on your knees.”
It was Vasily’s turn to blaze red, which he did to his pupils, the flames of his element a warning behind his glare.
“Do you really want to know, Vasya? I’ll tell you how old I am. As near as I can remember, I’m one hundred and ten.”
The fire went out of Vasily’s eyes as if Belphagor had thrown water on them. “One hundred and ten?”
“One hundred and ten. The Bolsheviks had just taken power the first time I fell.” Belphagor folded his arms, meeting Vasily’s dumbstruck look with a challenge, daring him to show his revulsion. “So you’ll pardon me if there are a few men in my past. If I wasn’t exactly an angelic virgin when you came to me.”
Vasily began packing the bag with deliberate movements, back to avoiding his eyes. “Not all of them came before me, Bel. Certainly not that…Misha.”
“Since I met you, there’ve been fewer than you think. Misha was after you left. He reminded me of you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” The gravelly murmur said he was done being angry.
“As it turns out, it didn’t make me feel any better, either.” Belphagor reached to touch the row of spiked piercings at Vasily’s neck, but he ducked away. “You don’t know how sorry I am. If I could take back that day, that stupid trip to Solovetsky—”
“Don’t.” Vasily’s voice was a brusque warning that Belphagor wouldn’t like his response if he continued.
Before they left for the train to Pushkin, Dmitri pulled Belphagor aside in the kitchen. “You’re sure about this Misha? I’m getting a weird vibe from him.”
“I’m sure. He’s just weird because of Vasily. I trust him.”
Dmitri looked toward the foyer. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Vasily and get his hopes up, but we may have a lead on Ola.” He held up his hand at Belphagor’s expression. “Don’t get excited. I don’t know anything yet. But I just might have a defector from Zeus’s clan. He says he’s willing to meet with me if I’ll guarantee him asylum. Which I haven’t done yet.”
Belphagor answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Do it.”
“He might be someone who collaborated in the kidnapping. We won’t be able to punish him if he’s given asylum.”
“I don’t care. I want her back. Whatever it takes.”
Dmitri nodded and squeezed his shoulder. “Call us when you get to Pushkin and let us know what Anazakia’s found. I won’t make a final determination until I hear from you.” He let his hand linger for a moment. “I can’t tell you how awful I feel about sending Vashti and Zeus. If I’d had any idea—”
“Of course you didn’t.” Belphagor covered his hand.
“I didn’t know much about Zeus,” Dmitri admitted. “But Vashti vouched for him and I would have trusted her with my life. It’s just crazy. I’ve known her forever. If you hadn’t told me she’d drugged you and taken the baby herself, I never would have believed she was part of it. I just can’t understand how she could have gone along with this.”
“They were sleeping together.” Belphagor had an eye for that sort of thing.
“Oh.” Dmitri grimaced. “Well. Shit.”
The train ride to Pushkin took less than an hour, but between Vasily’s stony silence and Misha’s self-conscious chatter, it seemed interminable. Yulya greeted Belphagor warmly when they arrived at her flat, teary-eyed and hugging him as if he were her own flesh and blood. She plied him with vafli and tea, insisting he and Vasily sit and eat before they could get a word in edgewise. Anazakia, she said, had gone to the park.
“She wanted to see the palaces.” Yulya pulled out more boxes of wafers in different flavors. “You boys have your tea, and then we’ll walk over and meet her there.”
“The park?” Vasily frowned, though even he couldn’t resist Yulya’s insistence and was eating his wafers obediently. “Why is she at a park? She didn’t come to Tsarskoe Selo for sightseeing. She’s supposed to be looking for Ola.”
“She’s been very ill. She’s made herself sick with worry. I told her she needed the air, and I think a little time at the park will do her good, give her a fresh perspective. It will do you all some good.” She pushed a box of cookies at Belphagor. “Eat them. I’ll get fat.”
“So you want me to get fat.”
Yulya gave him a reproachful slap on his upper abs. “As if you could. Skinny as a rail.”
When they’d satisfied her by making a serious dent in the sweets and finishing their tea, they headed out. Yulya took Belphagor’s arm as they walked along the leaf-strewn sidewalks in the crisp autumn air, and Vasily followed, visibly unhappy to be paired with Misha.
“You’ve been very naughty not to visit.” She gave Belphagor’s arm a squeeze.
“I’ve been out of town.”
“Yes, your Anyushka mentioned. Whatever were you thinking, living in Arkhangel’sk?”
Belphagor shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
“Misha’s missed your company.”
Belphagor thought he detected a note of disapproval, and he glanced at her, worried. He’d be mortified if she knew about the relationship; she was certain to view it as a betrayal of her trust—or something worse.
Yulya was smiling her sweet, motherly smile. “But you’ve been busy with your new baby.”
“Oh, not me,” he said quickly. “Vasily’s the father. I’m just the…uncle.”
Yulya raised an eyebrow but said nothing more.
Crossing under a stone arch beneath the golden spires of the tsars’ chapel, they arrived at the grounds of the palace parks. Yulya led them past statues posed like Greek nymphs in the classical gardens, and then into a grove of fiery-painted trees, the orange and gold fallen leaves forming a thick carpet at their feet. The trail, off the beaten path, ended in a small glade where branches stretched overhead across the steely autumn sky.
“Where is she?” Vasily glanced around. “What are we doing here?”
Yulya let go of Belphagor’s arm with a smile and stepped back from the center of the glade where she’d led them. Belphagor looked down at his feet and realized they were surrounded by a profusion of mushrooms that made a circular mound in the heart of the clearing. Misha grabbed his hand, and then grabbed Vasily’s before the other demon could protest, murmuring something in a language Belphagor didn’t recognize. The trees around them shimmered with light as though the sun had broken through the clouds. He felt suddenly faint, and stumbled onto one knee with his free hand to the ground. He pulled his other hand from Misha’s and looked up to rebuke him, only to see they weren’t in the glade at all. They were surrounded by sparkling walls of amber.
Vasily jerked away from Misha and stared at the glittering golden hall. “What the hell is going on? Where are we?”
Misha’s eyes were fairly glowing with merriment. In fact, they were glowing, a fluorescent, brilliant green. His blond hair now had a greenish cast to it as well, twining down his back in a ponytail of vine-like ropes that gave him an even greater resemblance to Vasily. Though it was hard to be certain in the golden light of the luminescent amber, his skin appeared to have a tinge of greenish blue like a piece of pale, striated jade.
“Welcome to the Unseen World. But then, you’re familiar with your own unseen world, aren’t you?”
Belphagor straightened. “You knew.”
“And you didn’t.” Misha shook his head. “I thought you might have guessed.”
“What are you?” Vasily demanded.
“Leshi.”
Belphagor stared at him, astonished. “You’re a wood spirit?”
“Half, rather,” Misha amended. “Mother’s human.”
Vasily was scowling at them both. “Why did you bring us here?”
Misha gave him a dismissive glance that suggested he was much more comfortable in his own element than he’d been in the world of Man. “You wanted to be taken to Anazakia. This is where she is.” He turned and walked toward th
e arcade along the far wall, his lithe body sensual and relaxed. Belphagor and Vasily had no choice but to follow.
…
Vasily was startled by Anazakia’s appearance when Misha brought them to her. The leshi had led them through countless halls, each more opulent and empty than the last. The hall in which they found Anazakia seemed to be in the open air, except the sky above was the pale, watery blue of a spring morning. Its arcade columns were the trunks of living trees decorated with moss and vines, and its floor a carpet of grass of the deepest velvet green. A mass of wild roses grew in a carefully directed chaos about a sapphire pool, and Anazakia was reclining on the ground beside it, staring into the water.
Draped in a long, silk dress in the color of flame against the honey gold of the soft curls about her shoulders, she seemed thinner and paler than she’d been a week ago. She didn’t look up until they were standing over her, and when she lifted her eyes, they reflected the deep blue of the water beside her.
“Vasily?” She blinked at him as if in the grip of a dream.
His knees went weak like a schoolboy’s and he forgot why he’d come here. He dropped to the grass beside her and took her hand, hardly aware that Misha had kept walking and Belphagor had followed him. “Nazkia.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came looking for you. I was worried about you.”
“You were?” Her eyes glistened with tears as if this were the last thing she’d expected him to say. “I thought you were angry with me.”
Vasily pulled her close and breathed in the sun-warmed scent of her. “Why would I be angry with you?”
“I don’t remember. I lost something…”
An anxious feeling tugged at the back of Vasily’s mind. There was something he needed to find, too, but the scent of flowers was making his head thick and he couldn’t recall what ought to be bothering him. It felt so good just to let go. He sank onto the grass and pulled Anazakia down with him, and she rested her head against his chest as he put one arm behind his head for a pillow.
“Never mind.” He twirled one of her curls about his finger. “Whatever it was, we’ll think of it later.”