Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1)

by Barbara J. Webb

  “I thought you said they couldn’t be out during the day,” Mike said.

  “They can’t be in the sun. But believe me, they’re out. I did some looking around of my own before breakfast.”

  Ian led them up a block, to the canal that ran close to the Astoria. Rose let Ian worry about finding the folk and she concentrated on the people that flooded the sidewalks. She didn’t care for any of what she saw. The people here were worn down, empty, tired. Half a step from giving up on life.

  Rose had dealt plenty with the disadvantaged. She’d worked with the poor, the suicidal, the homicidal. She’d interned with the social work department as well as in the local psychiatric hospital. None of it compared to the bleakness that marched the streets of St. Petersburg.

  Rose noticed Mike watching her. He must have seen something on her face. “What is it?” he asked.

  “The people here. It’s like they’re being eaten away on the inside. The older they are, the more miserable they seem. No, not even miserable. Just…dead inside.”

  Mike’s lips pressed into a tight line. Rose wondered if he was aware of the determination forming on his face. He didn’t hide his disinterest in their real job well, but the more bad shit they stumbled across, the more Mike seemed to be involved. “There’s something bad in this city,” he said. “I’m starting to think St. Isaac’s is more a symptom than the heart of the problem.”

  “Makes me wonder all over again what our employers brought us here to find.”

  Mike didn’t respond, but his eyes narrowed and his mouth stayed tight.

  “Over here,” Ian called from the edge of one of the many bridges that arched over the canal. Rose and Mike darted through cars that had no interest in yielding for pedestrians to join him at the water’s edge.

  In the deep shadows beneath the bridge, three figures bobbed in the water. Long golden hair that didn’t quite cover their naked breasts clouded out around them. Sharp pointed teeth greeted Rose with a smile. Gentle laughter and salt-water blue eyes promised Rose unimaginable pleasures if she would only come down to see them.

  Ian’s hand came down hard on Rose’s shoulder and she realized she had taken a step towards the low railing that separated the walkway from the water half a dozen feet below. She’d forgotten he was even there. Like Anastasia, the strange allure of these creatures had drowned out everything else.

  Without the cloud of St. Isaac’s to dull her awareness, Rose had a very clear sense of these folk, of their otherworldly radiance, of their overwhelming attraction. Like Ian, they seemed more colorful, more real, more….

  Like Ian.

  Rose could have slapped herself. “Of course, you’re one of them, sort of. You feel like they do.”

  A cascade of silver laughter rolled over Rose, from the women in the water. “Like us, little one?”

  “Not like us.”

  “His blood is weak. Watered wine.”

  “Come dance with us, little one. Let us show you.”

  Ian’s hand on Rose’s shoulder restrained her, as did the heavy weight of the cross in her coat pocket. Without those things, she would have jumped eagerly into the canal, gone to dance, gone to die. “I’ve seen enough,” she whispered.

  They crossed the street again, Ian staying close to Rose and Mike only a few steps behind. When they had reached what Ian felt was a safe distance, he stopped. “I’m sorry. If I’d thought they’d try so hard to call you, I would have warned you better.”

  Rose shrugged away the apology. “I was right, though, wasn’t I? You’re like them? At least, a little?”

  “Sure. My family—other families like us—we can trace our lineage back to the Tuatha Dé, the gods of the folk, before they were driven from the Earth.”

  “Well, that makes things easier,” Rose said with forced cheer, trying to shake off her experience with the creepy mermaids. “I can use Ian as my guidepost. I just need to be looking for something that feels like him.”

  “How close do you need to be to this doorway to find it?” Mike asked, still grumpy, but trying not to show it.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.” Rose squinted up at the sky, where the sun was already noticeably higher than it had been at breakfast. “Maybe we should call the driver. Ride around the city. See what there is to find.”

  Neither Mike nor Ian had a better idea, so they turned back towards the hotel. It took several blocks of walking before Rose could no longer hear the alien laughter beckoning her into the darkness.

  * * *

  Rose pulled her scarf up over her nose as a cloud of dust rolled out of the abandoned building, disturbed by the rotting boards Ian had just pushed out of the window. Inside, everything was dark, but Rose was sure this was the right place. It throbbed with the strange, alien energy.

  Mike stepped through the window and raised his hand to summon light like he had last night. Rose couldn’t help but feel a little jealous that her special gift didn’t provide her any helpful everyday skills like that.

  “Hold up,” Ian said, digging around in his backpack. He pulled out some of the iron spikes. “Take these.”

  Rose took one. It was heavy. “I have no idea what to do with this.”

  “They won’t want to get close to it, so it could buy you some time.” Ian also handed her one of the flasks. “Holy water. It hurts them.”

  With the holy water in one hand and the spike in the other, Rose still didn’t feel especially safe, but on the other hand, she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting outside.

  Mike closed his fist, and when he opened it again, the light remained in a tight little ball. He sent it floating forward, down a short hall and through a doorway. “You expect we’ll run into very many of them?”

  “Hard to say.” Ian had re-shouldered the backpack and drawn his sword in one fluid movement. “Usually, they don’t like to shelter too close to the doorways—too easy to get ambushed by something bigger and hungrier—but you never know.”

  Rose focused her senses around the pulsing, keening energy that was fairy magic. “The doorway is upstairs. And something else, too.”

  Mike had the big cross from Ian in one hand and his rosary in the other. “Let’s go see.”

  Ian went first up stairs Rose wasn’t confident would support them all. They creaked underfoot—so much for any chance of surprise. Rose found herself tempted to pray for the first time in years. Although the padre probably had that under control. As long as God was paying attention to one of them, they should be covered, right?

  Ian kicked in the door at the top of the stairs and Rose staggered back at the wave of despair that hit her like a physical force. Only Mike’s hand on her arm saved her from falling back down the stairs. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see through the darkness that surrounded her.

  “Rose!” Ian’s voice came from two different places as she heard through two sets of ears. She saw Ian, Mike, and herself as Ian rushed through the open door, trying to defend her from an attack that wasn’t.

  The moment hung forever, then Rose was yanked back into herself by the wrenching pain at her shoulder. She righted herself, so Mike could let go without her tumbling backwards. “Ian, wait!” she called out.

  In the corner, huddled in a lump of willowy limbs and gossamer hair was the unearthly beauty Rose would have imagined when they first started talking about fairies. The woman looked up at the three of them, liquid blue eyes wide with the fear Rose felt pulsing through her.

  This woman was nothing like the creatures in the water had been. Rose felt no hunger, no malevolence. “She’s hurt,” Rose said. “And scared. And sad.”

  Ian still had his sword up. “Don’t move.”

  Rose couldn’t tell if he was talking to her or to the fae woman. Either way, “Dammit. Listen to me. She’s not dangerous.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “No,” Rose whirled on Ian, “You don’t know. There’s something wrong with her.”

 
; Ian struggled. Rose could feel it inside him. But once again his bright emotions were the palest of watercolors next to the richness and strength of this woman. It was as though Rose had been staring into a mirror all her life and only now turned to see the real world.

  Mike looked around, his cross still pointed at the fairy woman. “Is that our doorway?”

  Rose risked a look back, saw mushrooms growing in a ragged ring out of the rotting wood floor. They surrounded the doorless closet. “Woah.”

  Ian looked too, and the sharp flutter of his startlement cut briefly through the presence of the fae. “Shit.”

  Mike now split his attention between the woman and the door, waving his cross back and forth. “What? Ian, talk to me.”

  “That’s not a natural breach. That spot was chosen; the doorway anchored.” Ian’s sword didn’t waver; it still pointed in a straight line towards the fae. “Rose, get two more of the iron spikes out. Cross them on the floor, right in front of the doorway. That will keep any more of the folk from coming through when it opens back up.”

  Rose did as she was told, but kept a close eye on Ian and the woman. Since that initial, overwhelming blast of sensation, the fae had huddled back into herself, both physically and psychically.

  Ian didn’t miss Rose’s looks. “Listen to me. She’s dangerous. Have you already forgotten the rusalka under the bridge? If this one weren’t wounded somehow, she’d be trying to kill us.”

  “If. Maybe. All I know is what I feel from her. This isn’t like the women at the bridge. She’s different.”

  “Listen to Ian, Rose. Remember he’s the expert here.”

  They were both determined to be frustrating. “So am I, remember? This is what I do, and I’m telling you, there’s something different.” They didn’t understand, and wouldn’t understand until Rose proved her point. She darted around Ian and reached out to touch the fairy woman’s cheek.

  With Anastasia, Rose had been assaulted with the vampire’s power. It had pushed against her, forceful, irresistible. With the fairy, it was completely different. She didn’t push against Rose. She opened herself to Rose and Rose slipped inside.

  Rose ran through the night, a hunter, free. Weak, ponderous mortals surrounded her, but couldn’t see through the mists in which she cloaked herself. Any of them could be hers, but none she saw were fit to be her prey. Tonight, the game mattered more than the death that would mark its end.

  But before she found suitable sport, a voice called to her. Irresistible, powerful, hungry. Here, the vision fractured, lost its clarity. Rose caught glimpses, fleeting images. A man so beautiful Rose could barely stand to look at him. A hunger, dark and terrible. His breath against her cheek. His teeth against her skin. The ecstasy. The pain—

  Rose gasped and jerked back, breaking the contact. “Oh god!”

  “Rose!” Mike and Ian exclaimed in unison.

  “No, I’m all right. It’s not—she didn’t do anything to me. It’s just, I felt what happened to her. Someone—something—he kissed her, or bit her, and there was this horrible wrenching feeling, like having your guts sucked out. Only more important.”

  Finally Ian lowered his sword. Rose felt his confusion, but this close to the fae woman it was like listening for one trickle of water in the middle of a storm. “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s there to understand?” Mike asked. “So what if she’s wounded? That should make it easier to get rid of her.”

  Rose turned back to the fairy. “We have to help her.”

  “No.” Ian’s voice was flat. “I don’t know what you’re feeling from her, Rose, but you have to trust me.”

  Rose reached back out to touch the woman again, let herself be pulled back into the fairy woman’s thoughts. “Why are you in here?” she asked, trying to lock the question tight enough in her head to guide the vision.

  She saw the room, this room, at night. She’d dragged herself here, desperate to reach the doorway. She had to get home, back to fairy. Only then could she heal. If she stayed much longer here, she would dissolve into nothing.

  Too much of her had been taken. The door wouldn’t open. She collapsed in the corner, exhausted, waiting to die.

  “She wants to go home,” Rose said, pulling away more slowly this time. “That’s all. Isn’t that good enough?”

  “As soon as the sun sets, this doorway is going to open. When that happens, if she goes through, she’ll warn others we’re coming. If they know—if they’re ready for us, we’ll be killed.”

  Mike, of course, backed up Ian. “Creatures from the other side, Rose—even when they look harmless, they’re not.”

  “But she can’t get through. That’s her problem. I saw it. She can’t cross the doorway. Something’s been taken from her and she couldn’t make it work.”

  “Then better we put her out of her misery.” Ian took a step forward, but Rose moved between him and the fae woman. “Rose,” he pleaded. “Be reasonable.”

  “She’s scared and hurt. You made the folk sound inhuman, monstrous, but she’s not like that. So either you were lying, you were wrong, or there’s something strange happening here that maybe we should try to understand.”

  That time it sank in. Even Mike lowered his weapon. “Tell us what you saw.”

  Rose described the vision as well as she could. Both Ian and Mike listened attentively. “Could it have been a vampire?” Rose asked when she had finished. The feel of teeth on her neck had been vivid. As well as—“It felt—“ Rose’s cheeks flushed at the memory. “She felt, I mean, it was—“ Rose couldn’t find words to describe it.

  Ian shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never known vampires to hunt the folk but then,” he smiled and his honest amusement fed energy into Rose, “I’ve never known vampires.”

  “More questions,” Mike muttered. “I’d be really happy if we started to get some answers.”

  Ian sheathed his sword, a good sign as far as Rose was concerned. “Okay, I might know how to help her. I’ll need to bring back something from the other side, when we go in to close the doorway. But,” he added quickly when Rose smiled, “I’m not putting Mike and Nazeem and I at any more risk than is necessary. If it looks too dangerous, if we come back without the means to heal her, then we’ll have to kill her.”

  Rose nodded, recognizing the best deal she was going to get when she heard it. And she trusted Ian to do what he said he would. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me till it’s over.” That situation resolved, at least for the moment, Ian crossed to the closet doorway, ran his hand along the rotting wood. “Well, one thing I can say for sure, this doorway’s been here quite a while. Years, I would say.”

  “And that’s good?” Rose asked.

  “Yeah. It means whoever opened it is long gone. Faelocks—they burn out fast. If we hunters don’t find them, the folk they deal with get bored. Or angry. Or forgetful. Whichever, it ends badly.”

  Ian stepped back, careful not to disturb the crossed spikes on the floor. “Not long till sundown. You should send the car back for Nazeem. I’ll keep an eye on things in here.”

  Rose felt his sincerity, sensed no deception, no intention of hostility towards the fairy woman once they were out of the room. No, it was Mike who was, again, starting trouble. “Rose, you should go back with the car. This is going to be dangerous, and a sensitive won’t help us any.”

  “No,” Ian said, before Rose worked up her objections. “We’ll want someone on the outside. Trust me.”

  Mike disapproved—that was clear enough on his face—but he held his peace. Score one for Rose. Before he could think up an argument, she slid past him and pelted down the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tuesday After Dark

  Mike waited outside with Rose for the vampire to arrive. Independent of the threat of vampires and fairies roaming the streets, this part of St. Petersburg was seedy enough for the regular human population to present a threat to a twenty-something girl standing on he
r own outside an abandoned building. Even if Rose kept assuring him she’d recognize anyone dangerous long before they got close to her. The bruise still visible under the hair she let hang loose attested to her vulnerability.

  Bad enough St. Petersburg had vampires, evil fairies, hostile voiders, and shadowy unknown killers. Rose might be the worst danger of all, if she gave him a heart attack with her constant insistence on rushing into danger. She was not only the most powerful sensitive he’d ever met, but also the most stubborn. He might have respected that if it didn’t put them all at risk.

  Well past dark, the car returned bearing Nazeem. Rose dutifully held out the extra necklace and explained its purpose while Mike kept an eye out around them. The vampire, at least, seemed to recognize the potential dangers of their location and hurried Rose through her rundown of their afternoon. “Ian is inside?” he asked when she paused for breath.

  “Yes. And we’ve left him alone too long.”

  Thankfully, Rose took the hint. “Okay, back inside then.”

  Nazeem stopped outside the broken window, took a breath. “What is it?” Mike asked, trusting the vampire’s senses more than he did the vampire.

  “I’m not sure. It smells strange. And do you hear the buzzing?” Mike shook his head. Rose did the same. “If madness had a sound, this would be it.”

  On that encouraging note, Mike stepped in through the window. “Ian?” he called out.

  “I’m here,” came Ian’s response from upstairs. “The doorway’s open.”

  They hurried up to join him.

  Ian sat in one corner, his sword naked across his lap. In the opposite corner, the fae woman crouched, staring at the door, naked hunger on her face. The iron cross was still in place. “Don’t go near the mushrooms,” Ian warned.

  Now Mike could feel the buzz Nazeem had mentioned, like a swarm of mosquitoes at his neck. His instinct was to try to swat them away, even as he knew nothing was there. The closet still looked empty and dark except for…just out of reach…movement. If he could get a little closer, he could see it….