Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1)

by Barbara J. Webb

  Karchenko waved to the, so far, untouched plate of food. “Please, eat.”

  Rose and Ian both dutifully grabbed sandwiches and began munching. Mike took a sandwich, but only held it for now. It was enough to satisfy Karchenko and he finally started saying something useful.

  “There have been two—shall we say—classes of victim I believe can be traced to this killer.” Karchenko spoke quickly and his accent became looser. As though he’d rehearsed this. “The dead vampires we can discount as targets of opportunity.”

  “So he is killing vampires? How do you know? Why don’t they count?”

  “Let the man speak, Rose.”

  Karchenko glared at her, and his voice took on a condescending edge as he counted his reasons off on his fingers. “No pattern to their deaths. No ritual. No disposal of the body.”

  Ian held up his glass, waited for Karchenko to match his gesture, then drained it. That made his third. Karchenko did the same, which made—five?—for him since they’d come in the room. “Are you with the police?” Ian asked.

  The unspoken toast earned Ian a polite response, at least. “I am no longer anything, but, yes, I was a law enforcement official. Before. So trust I know what I am talking about when I say it was voiders—and very particular voiders—the killer was after.

  “All four of the dead voiders—do you know they were all missing their left hand? Cut off about here?” He pointed to a spot on his arm, about two inches above the cuff of his shirtsleeve. Mike gave the kids props for not responding to the question—not revealing any of their own information.

  Karchenko kept going. “This next part, I tell you, is information that would have been worth your lives—my life—not many years ago. But it is a brand new world, da?

  “You have all heard stories of the Soviet KGB, I am sure. As much romance as truth, I’m sure, but I can say for certain of a group that existed even in secret from the rest of the organization. A group with special gifts. Very special gifts.”

  That one didn’t take a big leap of logic. “Voiders.”

  Karchenko nodded. “And I can say this group bore a special mark—a tattoo—just above their left wrist.”

  “Tattoo of what?” Rose asked.

  “A black fist. And so they were called. The Chernaya Kulak.”

  Mike didn’t like where this was going. “All the victims were members of this group? This is some political issue?”

  “Former members,” Karchenko stressed. “When the Soviets fell from grace, the KGB had to…evolve. The Black Fist did not survive the transition.” He paused a moment, then added, “So far as I know.”

  “I don’t think this is political.” Rose lifted one of the pickles, sniffed it, then set it back on the platter. “At least, not just political. He’s not just cutting off a hand. He’s cutting off the tattoo—severing their connection with the Black Fist. That’s personal. Someone hates these people on a deep and intimate level.” Her dream of the victim—his fear, his pain. “The shining man wants these people to suffer. He wants them to pay for…something.”

  “What else do you know about them?” Mike asked. “What did they do? Who would want them dead?”

  Karchenko emptied his glass yet again, although he still looked and sounded as sober as ever. “Perhaps you should talk to the remaining Chernaya Kulak I know of in St. Petersburg.”

  “Anyone we know?” Ian asked.

  “Oh, yes, you have met him. He is the Abbot of the Nevsky monastery.”

  “Andrei?” Rose sounded surprised.

  “Andrei,” Karchenko confirmed. “It is not so strange a thing as you may think. There were many spies sent to infiltrate the churches. When the government could not stop people from worshipping, they did what they could to control it. There is a reason that monastery was the first in St. Petersburg to be returned to service.”

  Mike could just guess. “The government knew about Dmitri—knew he was training voiders.”

  “Of course. And they sent Andrei, not to disrupt this training, but to…what is the word…poach.”

  “Does Dmitri know?” Rose asked.

  Karchenko shook his head. “For that, you would have to ask him. I cannot guess at what drives the politics in that place.” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms. “Now you know as much about the victims as I do.”

  Mike doubted it, but it seemed rude to call Karchenko a liar after he’d given them at least some of his information.

  Ian was more graceful. “Thank you. This is really a big help.”

  Rose was blunt as ever. “You know the shining man will come after you.”

  Poulov laughed. “Let him try. There is no safer place in St. Petersburg than Revelations. He cannot touch me within these walls.” Karchenko waved his hand, shooing them away. “Now go. We are done here.”

  Mike kicked at Rose’s foot as she opened her mouth to argue or correct his manners or some other obnoxious thing. “Come on. He’s right. We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Thursday After Dark

  “Wait, so we don’t want to close the new fairy door?” Rose tried to pull her coat tighter, to dig her hands deeper in the pockets. Even in the middle of the afternoon, St. Petersburg was colder than right-thinking people should have to tolerate. It didn’t help that she still felt just a little floaty from the vodka Poulov had made her drink.

  “There’s no point.” Even with his duster hanging open and his scarf undone, Ian didn’t seem uncomfortable. Neither did he seem at all affected by the copious amounts of undiluted vodka he’d swallowed. If this was what fairy blood brought to the table, Rose wanted to know where she could sign up. “If the faelock could open this one, he can open another. But if we can find the doorway, it could give us a trail to follow back to him.”

  They waited outside the iron gates of the Nevsky Monastery. During the day, the grounds were open to tourists and visitors, but Mike had thought they’d be less conspicuous if he went in alone while Ian and Rose waited outside. “I dunno. That last door—it was pretty overwhelming. I can get us there no problem, but as far as tracking the power that opened it—my gifts don’t really work like that.”

  “Not you.” Ian reached back over his shoulder, touched the hilt of his sword. Even when her rational mind knew no one else could see it, Rose still felt strange about him just walking around with it on his back in broad daylight. “One of the folk. We’re going to use it like a bloodhound; it should be able to find the faelock for us.”

  “And it’s going to do that…as a favor to us?”

  The grim set of Ian’s mouth and the burst of nervous energy that rolled over her was not at all encouraging. Neither was the sight of Mike coming back out the side door Arkaday had snuck them through the other night. “Well?” Rose called out.

  Mike didn’t answer till he was close enough he didn’t have to raise his voice. “I found Arkaday, but he said Dmitri and Andrei were both in some group prayer thing. I left a note he promised he would get into Dmitri’s hands. Best I could do for now.” He sighed and closed his eyes a moment. Rose knew he was tired. They were all tired. “I guess that puts the faelock next on our agenda.”

  When was the last time Mike had gotten a full night’s sleep? At his age, how long could he keep going? For that matter, was Rose up for another potential all-nighter? “Maybe we could wait on this. None of us are at our best right now.”

  Absolute proof of Mike’s exhaustion: the fact he seemed to be considering Rose’s suggestion. “What do you think?” he asked Ian.

  “No.” Ian’s voice was soft, but adamant. “Rose’s dream last night proves the faelock knows we’re here. This guy may be breaking all the rules I understand, but to my mind, that makes him more dangerous, not less. There’s any number of ways he could come after us, and no reason why he wouldn’t.”

  The shudder that ran through Rose had nothing to do with the cold. A flash of inhuman blue eyes and a voice that knifed through her soul—more vivid than th
e memory of a dream had any right to be. “Okay then. Fine. But before we go staggering around in the freezing cold again, I want coffee.”

  “Coffee and supplies.” Ian eyed the sun that was already far closer to the horizon than it should have been in what Rose considered still early afternoon. “One more long night. Then we’ll have earned a chance to relax.”

  “Promise me,” Rose said. But of course neither man did.

  * * *

  Mike checked his watch—again—still disoriented by the time it displayed. It felt closer to midnight, not the barely six o’clock claimed by the numbers on the face. Chalk it up to lack of sleep, or the fact that it had already been dark for well over an hour, or the way the fairy door put everything out of whack. Whatever—Mike was ready to be done with the night’s work.

  The faelock hadn’t reopened the same doorway, but Rose had led them right to the new one. She was learning the taste of the folk. Mike had worked with sensitives before—the Church did what it could to recruit any it found. Their othersense got sharper with use. Nothing could hide from an experienced sensitive. Trouble was, there weren’t many of these around. Sensitives had short expiration dates.

  Rose’s gift put her in a league all by herself, and Mike wasn’t sure she had any clue how different she was. Rutledge said the four of them had been recruited because they were exceptional, and no question that was true of Rose. Mike wished he knew if that would end up working in her favor or send her screaming towards the inevitable madness all the faster.

  Rose led them into an abandoned apartment building—a crumbling concrete skeleton, covered in graffiti that was no prettier in cyrillic letters than in English.

  Abandoned, but not empty. Despite the fact the building looked ready to collapse at any moment, a number of squatters leveled icy glares on Mike and his team. Several called out in Russian, and Mike hated that he couldn’t tell if the words were threatening, mocking, or something else. Whatever they said made Ian tense and Nazeem shifted so he was walking between Rose and the homeless men. Mike reached for his magic, kept it warm and pulsing just below the surface of his thoughts, ready for anything.

  Two floors up, the halls emptied. They saw no more people. “The doorway makes them uncomfortable,” Ian supplied. “Even if they don’t know it’s there.”

  Three floors higher, they found the door in a corner of one of the apartments. What had been a closet in the tiny efficiency now shimmered and hummed. Strange as it was to see mushrooms growing out of the bare cement floor, Mike was grateful for the physical marker of the boundary between reality and the other, between here and there. Especially when a part of him wanted so badly to step across, to taste that power again.

  “How long is this going to take, Irish?”

  “As long as it has to.”

  Nazeem frowned as he looked around the small concrete box that didn’t seem large enough for living space, even to Mike’s modest sensibilities. “We should keep watch in the hall. Too easy to be trapped in here.”

  It was a good suggestion. “Rose, you go with him. I’ll stay here with Ian.”

  Ian dropped his bag on the floor and moved to the center of the room, a few feet from the door. He stood with eyes closed, sword balanced point-down. “Mike,” he said softly, “Take a couple of the iron spikes out of my bag. Be ready with them.”

  “For what?”

  “In case more than one comes through.”

  Ian hadn’t mentioned that possibility. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “No idea.” Ian’s voice was growing fainter, as though he were moving away. “I’ve never done this before.”

  Not at all what Mike wanted to hear. “Look, Irish, maybe we should talk about—“

  “There it is,” Ian whispered. His body blurred; Mike rubbed his eyes, tried to focus as Ian overlapped himself, a shimmering dual image that merged and twisted and pulled itself inside out. That was the best Mike’s mind could do to define what he was seeing. While Ian’s outside stayed put, his inside crumpled and warped until it reformed into its own shadow.

  The real Ian raised his sword and drew it across his palm. Blood flowed, dripped onto the pavement before his real feet. The shadow-Ian twisted. Blood dripped onto the mirror pavement beneath his shadow feet. As the drops fell, the concrete rippled like water. On each side, the ripples spread, met each other, created interference waves. The waves spread across the floor, to the walls, out into the night, and back into the fairy door.

  “Be ready,” Mike called to Nazeem and Rose in the hall.

  Ian spoke and his voice echoed along the waves. “By your blood I know you. By your blood I call you. By your blood I bind you.”

  A screech came from the other side of the door, stretched and twisted by echoes into something horrid. Twice more, Ian repeated the ritual words. Twice more, Mike heard the scream. Each time, it sounded closer.

  Ian pulled himself back fully into the real world. “It’s coming.”

  Ian gripped his sword. Mike two-fisted his iron spikes. Nazeem moved into the apartment doorway, where he could block any escape attempt.

  Gibbering like a mad thing, a twisted, leathery creature scampered into the room, swinging along on its knuckles like a gorilla. It went straight for Ian. Ian held up his sword, point facing down. His blood dripped down the blade. “Down!” he yelled and drove the sword straight down. As its point struck the concrete floor, the fairy tripped and slid to lie prone. It tried to push itself up, but its head was locked against the floor.

  “Surround him,” Ian ordered through gritted teeth.

  Mike, Rose, and Nazeem circled the struggling and spitting fairy. Ian lifted his sword and it sprang to its feet, but Mike blocked it from going anywhere. “Tell me your name,” Ian said.

  The hunched little creature shook its entire body in denial. Ian drove the sword down again, driving it back to the ground. Mike wondered if the folk felt pain. “Tell me your name,” Ian repeated.

  “Todor,” it said through teeth like knives. Ian raised his sword again and the creature leapt at him, claws and teeth bared. Mike stepped forward, spikes in hand, and Todor scrabbled back, growling.

  “What is it?” Rose in the doorway, holding her own cross straight out between her and the fairy.

  “Boggart,” Ian said. “I guess here they call them domovoi. We lucked out. As the folk go, these are pretty harmless.”

  Rose took a step back as Todor snapped at her. “This is what you call harmless?”

  Mike grinned despite himself. “Welcome to the invisible war.”

  Ian pushed his sword—and Todor—into the ground once more. “Nazeem, hold him.”

  Nazeem took a firm grip on Todor’s arms from behind, nodded to Ian, and lifted the domovoi into the air as Ian lifted his sword. Todor struggled, but couldn’t break free of the vampire’s grip. While they were doing that, Mike crossed his iron spikes on the ground in front of the doorway the way Ian had done the other night. He didn’t want anything else coming through.

  From his pack, Ian pulled a branch covered in pointy green leaves. Holly, if Mike didn’t miss his guess. Ian rubbed the thorny leaf on his hand, smearing it with blood. Careful of Todor’s snapping teeth, Ian approached him and stabbed him in the arm with the prickly leaf. It penetrated Todor’s flesh with ease and the domovoi’s blood welled up to mix with Ian’s.

  Todor screeched and struggled harder. Ian let him have his way for another minute. Then, “Quiet.”

  Instantly, Todor fell silent, but his mouth continued to twist in a snarl. “Be still,” Ian said. Todor stopped struggling. “It’s okay, you can drop him now.”

  “Wow,” Rose said. “That’s pretty cool.”

  “What did you do?” Mike asked.

  “Until the leaves of the holly turn brown, Todor will do what I tell him.” Ian tucked the holly into a pocket. “I wouldn’t do this normally, but we don’t have time to convince him to cooperate.”

  Nazeem studied the near-docile fairy. “It seems
a useful approach.”

  Ian wiped off his sword then sheathed it. “Yes and no. It works, no question of that. But it pisses them off. They hate to be bound.” Todor’s glare, full of ire, supported Ian’s claim. “He’s going to have a grudge against me pretty much forever. If you get a reputation for doing this sort of thing all the time, it’s harder to get any folk to cooperate with you ever.”

  Ian shouldered his pack. “Todor, lead me to the man who opened this door.”

  Todor snarled and snapped at Ian, but then he sniffed the air and clawed at the ground. “Follow Todor.”

  They fell in line behind the domovoi. Rose stepped in between Mike and Ian. “He’s not just angry. He really hates you right now.”

  Ian nodded. “I’m sure.”

  Mike noticed Todor’s wrinkled ears had swiveled back in their direction, listening. “Should we be worried?”

  “Always,” Ian answered. After that, there was nothing to do but follow Todor out into the night.

  * * *

  If Rose had been thinking, she would have worn different shoes. Her brand new boots were pretty, and certainly warm, but they hadn’t been designed for hours of hiking. She tried not to limp, despite pinched toes, raw heels, and bruised ankles, hating Todor more with every step as he showed no signs of slowing.

  Leaving the decaying apartment complex had been a strange affair. On Rose’s way into the building, the homeless squatters had been an uncomfortable mix of hostile, lewd, and curious. On the way out, they’d been nervous, agitated, muttering to each other, but not calling out to Rose or the team. They couldn’t see Todor—at least, no one had looked directly at him—but they scrambled away as he came near.

  Mike and Ian followed close behind the domovoi, crosses still in hand, although Ian had put away his sword. Rose had carried her cross a while, but her hands had gotten cold—the metal’s chill radiating through her mittens like they were tissue. Now it was back in her coat pocket and her hands were tucked under crossed arms.