Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1)

by Barbara J. Webb

  “And you knew about this?” Rose directed her question at Mike.

  “I’ve worked with Ian’s people before.”

  “I see I’m not the only one who isn’t sharing with the class.”

  Rose’s accusation struck a guilty chord in Mike. Which made him mad again. “Look, what I said in there—yeah, they were provoking us, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You can’t hold back. Not if you’re going to be useful to the team.”

  “Fine, but that goes both ways. If you want me to tell you stuff, you have to explain things to me. And not just treat my questions as an excuse to send me home because I don’t know everything already.”

  It was a fair point, much as Mike hated to admit it. The more Rose knew, the better she’d be at her job. And for whatever reason, she already seemed better at her job than any other sensitive he’d ever worked with. Not that she needed to hear that from him. “You just keep holding up your end and I’ll make sure you know what you need to know.”

  “Okay then, start with the fairies.” Rose looked to Ian. “I’m assuming they’re not like in stories.”

  “Depends on which ones you read,” he answered. His hand no longer bled, and he’d turned the towel to a clean edge to wipe off his sword. “At best, they see humans as toys. They want to play with you, and they play plenty rough. At worst, they want your body for their puppet, your mind for their pet, and your soul for their food.”

  Mike continued the lesson. “They come from the other side of the curtain, like demons. They have a lot of the same weaknesses. They don’t care for religious symbols, can’t walk on holy ground.”

  “But we were in a church,” Rose argued.

  Nazeem answered her. “A church that’s been the site of murders. It is most assuredly no longer holy ground.”

  “Cold iron,” Ian said, back on track. “It’s one of the best weapons to fight them. It’s tied to our world. Not only does it hurt them, but they have no power over it. Other things cut through their glamours. Now I know they’re here, I’ll make sure everyone has protection.”

  “What’s the curtain?” Rose asked, thoughtful.

  Mike fielded that question. “The curtain is what separates our real world from the other side. The side where the magic comes from. All the dangerous stuff is over there, and most of it wants to come here.”

  “And eat us,” Rose said.

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  Ian laid his sword across the desk and leaned back in his chair. He flashed a wry smile at Mike. “I guess now we know why I got invited.” His face sobered as he said, “I should have known to look in St. Isaac’s, after Rose told us about the killer. The folk can feel the bad places. They’re attracted to death and sadness and fear.”

  Mike went over to the window, stared out at the cathedral that was becoming a serious pain in his ass. “So our killer desecrates the church, creates the negative energies. That draws the folk, who potentially kill more people.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Rose said. When Mike turned to look at her, she shrugged. “At least, I think. I mean, you said I should tell you what I think, so I am, but I’m not sure.” Mike circled his hand in the air, gesturing for her to keep talking. “It’s just—if you guys could see what I see, you’d understand. There’s more going on here than a few people dead and some evil fairies. I don’t know what—I don’t have the first idea what—but I don’t think we’ve seen the whole picture yet.”

  “So how do we fight them?” Nazeem, to the point. Mike wished he understood the vampire’s game. Now Rose and Ian were sharing, but Nazeem was still noticeably quiet. What was going through his vampire brain?

  If Ian noticed the vampire’s reticence, he gave no sign. “Like I said, I can give you tokens to make you immune to the glamours. Cold iron is something everyone can carry. And I’ve got iron crosses for Rose and Mike. Daytime cripples their powers and they can’t go out in sunlight.” Mike glanced at Nazeem, who saw him looking and smiled, dipping his head, acknowledging the striking similarities.

  But Ian wasn’t finished. “The real issue is this—the fact that they’re here means there’s a doorway through the curtain somewhere nearby. They can’t exist in this world for long without that tie back to their own side to sustain them.”

  Holes in the curtain were always bad. “Can you find it? Can we close it?”

  “Maybe.” Ian tapped his fingers thoughtfully on his cheek. The cut on his palm had already pulled closed. Kid healed fast. “Normally it’s an ordeal in and of itself to find the doorways—the folk keep them pretty well hidden—but with Rose to help…”

  Rose grinned. “If you can tell me what I’m looking for, I’m pretty sure they can’t hide it from me.”

  “Once we’ve found it, we can close it. It’s dangerous, but with you guys along, it shouldn’t be too big a risk.”

  This was starting to sound like a plan. A solid step toward a useful goal. “And once we close this gap, that will solve the fairy problem?”

  Ian rocked his hand in the air. “It will stop any more from showing up, and any left on this side will have lost their link back to home. After a few days, they’ll just burn out and fade away.”

  “Okay.” Hunting up the curtain rift was a win from every side. They’d be working to drive off the dangerous supernaturals, which was still Mike’s job, dammit. They’d be clearing potential interference in their search for the man who had attacked Rose. And it served as a nice distraction from the making-nice that Mike didn’t really care about. “I say let’s focus on this, get it taken care of before we worry about anything else.”

  Ian ran his hand along the blade of his sword and it shimmered and faded, like a mirage up close. “Neat,” Rose said.

  “We can search for the breach tomorrow. If we can find it by sundown, we can go in and close it tomorrow night.”

  “Right. We’ll meet for breakfast then.” Mike glanced to the clock, saw it was well past midnight. “Better get some sleep.”

  That got Rose and Nazeem out, but Ian lingered. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking this seriously. For hunting them with me. The folk are bad news. Not just for us, but for every person in this city.”

  Mike understood. How could he not? “Kid, we’d be doing the exact same thing if some demon showed up hunting people for sport. Whatever Rutledge’s people want to pay us for, my first priority is always going to be making sure none of those predators from the other side are running around hunting people who can’t protect themselves.”

  Ian nodded. “Me too.”

  St. Petersburg seemed to get more twisted by the hour, Mike would sleep better knowing at least one of his teammates had his priorities in the right place. “Go on, get out. Big day tomorrow. Scoot.”

  Still, for all the excitement of the day, for all his relief at having a concrete short-term goal, Mike couldn’t get to sleep until he’d pulled all the curtains shut, blocking his view of St. Isaac’s.

  * * *

  As they came out of Mike’s room, Rose caught at Nazeem’s sleeve. “Hey, wait up a sec.”

  Nazeem stopped and turned to face her, his expression as inscrutable as ever. “Yes, Rose?”

  “What the hell was that you did—“ Once again, they were in the hall, discussing things that should be secret. This time, Rose’s room was closer. She unlocked her door, pulled Nazeem in with her, terribly aware she could only do that because he let her. “In the church,” she started again. “When Mike was yelling at me. You did something, didn’t you? So I couldn’t talk?”

  “I thought the argument had gone on long enough.” His tone held no apology.

  “So, what, you can control minds?”

  “In a limited sense. In limited circumstances. Yes.” Nazeem stood with his back to the door, not an inch further into her room than he had to be. But for all the discomfort of his posture, his gaze was unrelenting.

  Rose thought
of Anastasia, of how she’d been overwhelmed, subsumed by the Tsarina’s attention. “Can all vampires do that?”

  “No. We do not wake from death any more alike than we were going to it.”

  Rose dredged for every ounce of her will to stay focused on Nazeem’s face, to try to find a lie. She didn’t see one, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  Wake from death, he’d said. “So you’re really….” Rose trailed off as a thousand questions came into her head. About vampires. About death. About Nazeem.

  Nazeem must have recognized something on her face. His expression relaxed into an almost-smile. “Now is not the time for questions. It’s late. Mike was correct about you needing sleep. We can talk more later, if you like.”

  “Count on it.” Nazeem opened the door to leave, but Rose stopped him one more time with a hand on his arm. “Just…don’t do that again. The mind control.”

  Nazeem didn’t turn to look at her. His voice was cold and eerily calm. “This isn’t a game, Rose. Mike was correct about that as well. I will continue to do what I think is best for the mission and for the team.” He gently shook off her hand and closed the door between them with a firm click.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tuesday Day

  Rose lingered in bed longer than she should have, reluctant to leave the protection of Ian’s circle. In here she was safe and happy, protected from the bitter, hopeless, melancholy of the city.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t acclimate. And that scared her as much as it reassured her. Last night’s freak-out in St. Isaac’s, with the folk yanking on her and Mike’s emotional strings, that was extreme. But Rose’s suspicion was that the city was having that effect on everyone to some small degree. Wearing them down, blunting their minds and hearts. She reminded herself to be watchful, but that idea alone was a hard one to cling to once she was outside Ian’s circle.

  Rose dithered long enough she was last to breakfast again. Mike and Ian were already at the table with open menus before them, discussing the people they’d met so far in St. Petersburg as they perused breakfast options. The conversation was on Dmitri as Rose sat down. “The only man in this city so far who seemed happy to see us,” Ian said.

  “He was nice.” Rose poured herself some coffee from the carafe on the table. “I didn’t know priests were allowed to be that way.”

  Mike rolled his eyes. “Nice or not, I don’t trust him yet. I’m glad he was willing to tell us things, but we should keep our information to ourselves for now.”

  “I agree.” Ian didn’t look up from his menu. “Nice can be deceptive.”

  Now it was Rose’s turn to roll her eyes. “Oh, really? Gee, guys, I’m just the sensitive here. I had no idea sometimes people aren’t always what they seem on the outside.”

  Mike took a croissant from the bread basket and dropped it on her plate. “Fill your mouth with this.”

  Undaunted, Rose took a cheerful bite. “So what’s the plan?”

  Mike looked at Ian, expectant. “This is your show, Irish.”

  Ian caught their waiter’s eye, letting him know they were ready to order. “First, we eat. Hunting the folk, even by daylight, can be dangerous. Best to start with a full stomach.”

  Over eggs and bacon, Ian outlined his plan. “The folk can only get here through doorways—tunnels, really—formed between our world and theirs. There will be an opening on our side of reality, and then an opening to their side of reality, and in between, a maze of…well, it’s hard to describe. You’ll see it soon enough.”

  Mike nodded as he chewed, as though this were old hat for him. Rose hated being the person in the room who didn’t know anything. “How do these doorways happen?” she asked.

  “Most of them open naturally. I don’t really know how or why—Mike, you might have a better sense of the metaphysics behind it.”

  “Most?” Rose didn’t like the sound of that.

  Ian wasn’t concerned. In fact, he was as calm this morning as she’d ever seen him. “Trust me, if this doorway had been opened intentionally, we’d know. The sort of men who do that—they don’t sit around quietly, and neither do the folk they bring through.”

  “Oh, you mean like they kill people? Maybe cut off hands? Maybe attack people in their dreams?”

  Ian set down his fork and stared at her. His insides churned, thoughtful uncertainty as he considered her words, until his feelings smoothed back into the calm pool they’d been all breakfast. “First of all, your attacker was working with voiders. Faelocks, they don’t share. Second, if there were a faelock in St. Petersburg, the folk who attacked us last night wouldn’t have been playing. They would have been hungry, vicious, and deadly. We track faelocks through the trail of bodies they leave behind. If it were a faelock, we’d be talking a lot more murders than one every Saturday night.”

  Did Ian not see the hole in his logic? “If you only find these guys when they kill lots of people, doesn’t that mean there could be others around who haven’t left a trail of victims and so you don’t know about them?”

  Ian shook his head, making his hair flash ruby glints in the sunlight. Confidence echoed in every word. “Believe me, Rose. The sort of person who can make the deals these men have to make—who can sell his soul to the folk—he’s not going to be able to hide.”

  Again, Mike was nodding agreement. “I’ve never met a—what’d you call them, faelock?” Ian nodded. “But if they’re anything like the sort of men who make deals with demons, then Ian’s right. They’re not quiet little wallflowers, willing to hide away in the dark of night. Men like this, they’re arrogant, confident, and utterly convinced they know better than everyone else. They’re not afraid of getting caught. They want to broadcast their superiority to the world.”

  “Okay.” Rose let it drop. Ian and Mike had leaned in towards each other and pulled back from Rose. The assurance she could feel from Ian she could see on Mike. They were the experts here. They knew best. No point arguing any further. “So back to this doorway. How do we close it?”

  “The doors only open at night. The sun destroys them. But they can’t close if something from our world is inside them, and if they can’t close when the sun rises, they collapse. So once we find it, we go in, leave tokens at each side of the tunnel, and get out.”

  Mike tapped his fingers on the tablecloth, thoughtful. “What’s to stop the folk on the inside from getting rid of whatever you put in there?”

  “That’s why we use cold iron.”

  Rose was also thinking. “What if a person were in the tunnel when the sun came up. Would that be a tie to the world?”

  “Yes,” Ian answered. “And I’ve heard of it happening. But no one who ever was in a tunnel when it collapsed has been heard from again.”

  Rose went for another croissant. Endless refills on bread was one of civilization’s greatest achievements. “So you go in at night, leave the iron, get out. Doesn’t sound so tough.”

  “Well, of course the folk object. If you’re good—or lucky—you’re in and out before they notice you’re there. If not, it can be a rough fight.”

  “Only until dawn,” Rose said. “Good old sun. Protects us from the fairies. Protects us from the vampires.”

  “Yes.” Mike looked over at the wall of windows, where the late-morning sun streamed in. “And the days are getting shorter.”

  Trust the padre to try to kill the mood. “So I guess we better get started.”

  Ian drained the last of his coffee and stood up. “Meet me in my room once you’re done eating. We’ll need to gear up.”

  * * *

  Rose needed nothing but her coat. As she came back out of her rooms, she glanced down the hall at Nazeem’s closed door. How sad that he couldn’t come with them.

  Ian already had quite an array of weirdness spread across his bed when he let Rose into his suite. A city map, a pile of dark metal spikes, glass vials of some clearish liquid, tree branches, legal pads, chalk, rope, and glowsticks. And forearm-sized metal cr
osses.

  Mike was a couple steps behind Rose. After letting him in, Ian went to a dresser drawer and pulled out three necklaces. Rose stared at the shriveled, grey, leathery things that hung from them. “What’s that?”

  “Dried mushroom on a silver chain. The mushroom was harvested at midnight under a full moon, while the doorway was open. It’ll let you see through their glamours.”

  Mike took his and tucked it under his collar. Ian handed two to Rose. “One for Nazeem,” he said. “When he’s able to join us.”

  Mike’s frown was so obvious even Ian saw it. “Trust me on this, if we get caught in there, we’ll want him along.”

  Rose donned her necklace and instantly saw the now-visible sword hanging across Ian’s back. “Wow. I guess it works.”

  Ian went to the closet to get his own coat. Leaning against the wall inside, Rose noticed a couple spears, longer than she was tall, of that same dark metal. “How did you get all this stuff through airport security?”

  “Most of this, I have to ship.”

  Mike had moved to the bed, to run his hand along the metal spikes. “Cold iron?”

  “Yes. Take one of the crosses. You too, Rose.”

  Mike held up his rosary. The tiny silver cross dangling from the end looked puny next to the ones on the bed, but Nazeem had flinched back from it fast enough. “I’ve got one.”

  Ian shook his head. “Take two. Not just for the holy symbol, but for the iron. It’ll keep you anchored. Make it harder for them to summon you.”

  Ian loaded the rest of the equipment into a backpack. “Let’s go.”

  Once outside, Ian looked to Rose, but Rose still had no real idea what she should be doing. “What is it exactly I’m looking for?”

  “The taint of fairy,” Ian said, as though that explained everything. “You should have gotten a taste of it last night.”

  Sometimes, Rose felt like no one really listened to anything she said. “Yeah, remember St. Isaac’s? If there was fairy flavor mixed in there, no way am I sorting it out from that mess.”

  “Okay.” Ian’s confidence didn’t waver. “We’ll just have to find another of the folk for you to get a feel for. Shouldn’t be too hard.”