by S. M. Reine
“I’m sorry, Aunt,” Alsu said, grabbing Malcolm’s arm. “I didn’t realize—”
“That’s not what I mean. Leave us alone,” Babushka said.
Malcolm almost backed out of the room before he realized that she wanted her niece to leave, not him. Alsu shut the door on her way out, leaving him trapped.
There was nowhere to sit between the footboard and dresser, so Malcolm stood awkwardly by the door, eyeballing the contents of Babushka’s dresser. It was cluttered with brushes, combs, crystals, throwing knives, and a statuette with a woman’s face and a snake’s body.
He wrenched his gaze away from the serpent-woman.
“James Faulkner sent me,” Malcolm said.
She hocked and spat black saliva on the floor. It splattered at his feet. “Fuck him.”
Malcolm exploded with laughter, more from surprise than mirth. The sound didn’t suit the mournful air of the room. He quickly stopped and coughed into his hand. “Not that I disagree, but what did he do to make you mad?”
“He’s killing her,” Babushka said simply.
The last hints of Malcolm’s laughter cut off.
“Uh,” he said.
Babushka scraped her thumb on a matchstick. It flamed red, lighting the shiny peaks of her ancient face. “If you’re here to help James Faulkner, I’ll have my nieces slit your throat,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Whoa, hang on there,” Malcolm said, momentarily forgetting his Russian. “Don’t be hasty.”
She didn’t seem to have any problems understanding the English. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “It was a mistake letting him take her the first time. If she gets back again, she’s free. She’s earned it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sit down, Malcolm,” Babushka said, dipping the match into her pipe to light it.
His knees gave out on him. He sank to his knees beside her bed. “How do you…?”
She bit the stem of her pipe. “Thousands of years ago, a terrible mistake happened.” Smoke sputtered out of the side of her mouth as she spoke. “Things were fragmented that never should have been separated. Countless lives have been lost for it. Some people have sought to correct that error since, but nobody has succeeded. Do you understand?”
“Not even a little bit,” he said.
“James Faulkner was supposed to save her,” Babushka said, looking exasperated. “He told me that was why he came. Instead, he took her back.”
“To where? Who? I don’t—”
“The Godslayer,” she said in perfect English, with no accent, before reverting to Russian. “Do you know of her?”
Elise had told him once before that some demons called her “Godslayer.” She had confessed to it with no small amount of embarrassment, like it was a burden she was forced to carry, rather than the most badass nickname he had ever heard.
Did he “know of” her? Malcolm recalled getting drunk with Elise, fucking her senseless, and killing by her side. All equally delightful pastimes, as far as he was concerned. Weird to think that she was legendary in some crappy Russian village.
“I know her, but I don’t follow you on everything else. Are you saying that James…?”
“She should be able to correct the fragmentation,” Babushka said. “But he has only made it worse. If you are going to take her back to him, this James Faulkner, then I will have you killed.”
It was suddenly too hot and cramped in the room. Malcolm would bet on himself against a hundred old Russian ladies in scarves—he was a kopis, after all. But he wasn’t exactly eager to test his odds.
He moved to get up. “I sure could use a drink.”
Babushka caught his chin in her pincer grip. “Promise you won’t surrender her to James Faulkner.”
“You might be confused,” he said slowly. “The two of them, they love each other. She’ll probably run into his arms the second she sees him, and there will be fireworks, and sparkles, and—shit, I don’t know, it’s not like I could ‘surrender’ her anyway. She’s not an object.”
“Promise that you will save her.”
Did it matter what he said? Elise was going to do whatever the hell she wanted when she came back—if she ever came back. He had no control over that.
But he thought of all those old ladies in the kitchen with cooking knives—very long, very sharp cooking knives—and he said, “I promise. All right?”
She released him. “When she returns, it will be in the field to the north. My great-grandnephews can take you there,” Babushka said.
“Sounds like fun.”
“Tell my nieces to prepare a bed for you,” she said, tapping the pipe on the side of the bed. “And tell them that you’ll be here for just two more days.”
“Two days?” he asked.
But Babushka seemed to be done with the conversation. She jammed the pipe between her teeth and gazed out the window, humming under her breath.
Before Malcolm left, he couldn’t help but notice that her eyes were a very pale shade of blue.
“Do you have any guns, perchance?” Malcolm asked.
Alsu was with the other nieces in the kitchen, peeling potatoes with a knife. She narrowed her eyes as she dried the blade on her apron. “Why do you ask?”
“I’d like to borrow one. I’m going for a walk.” And hopefully, that walk would strangely, magically lead him to Elise, so they could make a prompt exit before Babushka killed him.
“What will you be shooting on this walk?” Alsu asked. “There’s nothing out there but cows and villagers enjoying the spring sunshine.”
He stepped back, just out of reach of her blade. She looked like she knew what she was doing with that thing, and Malcolm didn’t want to get peeled next.
His attempts at dodging didn’t go unnoticed. The other women in the kitchen shared belly laughs at his expense. Better laughter than throat slitting.
“Maybe I’ll shoot a villager for dinner,” he suggested with a broad grin that was meant to be charming. All of the laughing cut off. He quickly said, “I’m joking! For Christ’s sake, ask the old lady. She knows why I’d want a gun. It’s benevolent.”
Alsu still looked skeptical, but she stepped into the living room anyway, knife in one hand. The other fingers dipped into the pocket of her apron and emerged with a brass key.
She unlocked a cabinet. When Malcolm saw the shotguns and rifles inside—eight of them, at a quick count—his eyes widened. It was enough firepower to arm every little old lady cooking in the cramped kitchen.
Selecting one, she handed the gun to him with a box of shells. Almost as an afterthought, she also gave him the kitchen knife. It was heavier than it looked, and well balanced—hardly an ordinary cleaver.
“Bring it back when you’re done,” Alsu said.
“Right,” he agreed, sticking the blade in his belt.
Spring or not, Oymyakon was still too cold for Malcolm’s tastes. It was a bright, clear day, and couldn’t have been any warmer than ten degrees Celsius; the two teenage boys he had previously seen playing GameCube were kicking a ball around in short sleeves, like it was the middle of summer. Malcolm shivered.
“What are you doing with that?” asked one of the boys, spotting the gun.
“Not shooting villagers,” Malcolm said. “Just in case Alsu asks.”
“Are you hunting?” asked the other boy.
“Something like that.”
“Can we come?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Malcolm said. “I’d rather be alone.”
They kept following him anyway.
The boys kicked the ball back and forth, rolling it over the road in front of Malcolm. Some of the shots were so close that they almost tripped him up, but their aim was good; they mostly kept it out of the way as they jumped and danced around him, bouncing on the balls of their feet.
“I’m Timer. Hey, your accent is strange,” Timer said without missing a beat. “Where are you from?”
“Ireland,” Malcolm said. “Some
times.”
“Sometimes? What’s that mean?”
“I lived there longest, but I haven’t been back in a few years. I get around a lot.”
Timer kicked the ball up with his toes and caught it in his arms. “What happened to your face?”
“I tripped and fell on a tiger,” Malcolm said.
“Cool,” Timer said.
Malcolm finally stopped walking and turned to face them. “Look, if you’re going to come along, you can help me find a field—a place where cattle graze, somewhere north of here. It might seem kind of strange in some way. There might be a door, or some bright lights, or…”
The boys took a step back.
“You’re not going there, are you?” the second teenager asked, suddenly worried.
“Yes, I am. I’m told that you two know where it is.”
“That’s because we’re forbidden to go there. It’s a place of evil.”
Malcolm tried not to let his exasperation show. He had met more than his fair share of superstitious rural primitives while traveling, but it never got less irritating. “Tell you what. Show me where this field is, and I’ll shoot anything that attacks you. All right?”
The boy with the football tossed it to Timer. “Have fun.”
“Govnosos!” shouted Timer as his friend jogged back in the direction of the farms. “I’m not scared. I’ll show you the field.”
Timer led Malcolm off of the road, heading northeast through the grass. What started out as too cool of a day quickly became too hot. Malcolm shucked his jacket, dropping it on a rock.
“A new farmer moved out here last year,” Timer said. He spun the football on one finger. It wobbled, and he caught it. “He bought the land that the field is on and said that he was going to plant crops. Grandmother told him that it was a bad idea, but he didn’t listen.”
“So is it private property, then?”
“No. He died in the field.”
“Peachy,” Malcolm said. “Do you talk to your grandmother much? What’s her deal?”
“She’s the guardian,” Timer said, tossing the football in the air.
“Eh?”
“The guardian of the gate.” He said it like it was a formal title. At Malcolm’s look of confusion, he said, “Our town guards the gates of Heaven. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Having a teenager talking so nonchalantly about Heaven and gateways and guardians threw Malcolm for a loop. “I’m just…looking for a friend,” he said.
“A friend,” Timer echoed, giving Malcolm’s gun a sideways look.
Malcolm felt weirdly defensive in response to this boy’s scrutiny. He shrugged. “Yeah. A friend.”
“The field’s through that part of the forest,” Timer said, pointing at a line of trees winding along a stream. “It’s a straight line if you keep going north. There’s probably still farming equipment there. Nobody wanted to move it after the owner died.”
“Are you going to show me the way?”
“No,” Timer said. He dropkicked the football in the direction that they had come from.
“I thought you weren’t afraid,” Malcolm said.
“I’m not afraid, but I’m also not stupid.”
Timer followed his football into the long grasses farther down the hill. Malcolm watched him retreating until he was no more than a dark spot weaving toward the distant buildings.
The hair on his arms was standing on end, as if he had been shocked with static. He rubbed it down.
“Superstition,” he muttered to himself, checking the knife on his belt again.
The clearing couldn’t be an evil place. Places weren’t good or bad. It might have had a gateway, but those were all over the world, and most people didn’t even know they existed—nothing to be afraid of, really.
He stopped on the edge of the tree line. It seemed so dark underneath the branches.
How terrible could the creatures coming through the gates of Heaven be, anyway?
Right. Nothing to fear, he reminded himself.
Malcolm shouldered the shotgun and stepped into the trees.
The grass grew thinner as he headed into the forest. Malcolm held the shotgun at the ready with his ears perked for any sounds of movement. His skin crawled, as if the trees in this part of the forest were electrified, and he wasn’t sure if his urge to go back was due to his usual urges of self-preservation or something more sinister.
There were no birds singing in the trees. He didn’t see a single rabbit, mouse, or bumblebee.
And then Malcolm tripped on a corpse.
“Jesus!” he cried, leaping away from it. His back hit the trunk of a tree. His heart thundered in his throat.
It was a large body, with exposed ribs and four legs that were covered in gray fur. He couldn’t see a head—there was no head anymore—but he thought that the heavy paws looked like they belonged to a wolf. Whatever had killed it had removed all of its internal organs. There was no blood, no heart, no intestines. Just hollow ribs, four legs, and a neck stump.
Malcolm felt ants crawling up his spine into his hair now, but when he slapped at the back of his neck, he didn’t find anything. There were no ants.
It was energy, not quite ethereal or infernal.
James hadn’t mentioned that there would be any wolf-eating creatures in that clearing. Just cows.
A cow definitely did not eat that wolf.
He loaded shells into the shotgun, watching the forest. His fingers shook so hard that he dropped the first two rounds. The others went in smoothly.
Malcolm almost wished that he only had to worry about the Union.
“No,” he said, staring at the gun in his hands. “No. I’m not doing this. I’m really, really not doing this. Fuck James, fuck Elise, fuck all of this.”
He turned to head out of the forest again…and walked straight into the clearing.
The line of trees was so tidy that someone must have deliberately cut back the forest. The meadow itself was large, perhaps a kilometer in radius, and framed by mountains beyond the trees. The low grass was dotted with blossoms that struggled to bloom in the fleeting warmth of spring.
It was lovely to look at, but Malcolm was certain that he had just been walking back the way he came.
Somehow, the clearing had found him.
Like Timer had said, a yellow harvester waited at the opposite end of the field, as if standing watch. It looked much more than a year old—the paint was peeling and the windshield was cracked. The harsh Siberian winter was surely responsible. But it reminded Malcolm of the wolf’s body in the forest, with its exposed ribs and neck stump, and he got the wild urge to run.
He backed slowly into the trees again, aiming the shotgun at everything and nothing. Malcolm swung the muzzle wide, from left to right. His finger was tense on the trigger.
A twig cracked behind him.
He turned.
Something ruddy-skinned and towering stood behind him. It was twice his height, with wings like an angel’s. Its strong features were reminiscent of ancient statues. It made his kopis senses scream.
What was it that Gregory had said about hybrids at this apocalyptic Event? He couldn’t have possibly meant hybrids with both demon and angel blood, could he?
Yeah. He could have.
“Shit,” Malcolm muttered.
The creature rushed. He fired.
The pellets seemed to vanish in midair, and the hybrid didn’t even stumble.
It bowled him over, sending both of them rolling into the field. His entire body throbbed the second he hit. It wasn’t even that he had landed hard—the ground was infused with ethereal energy, and it made his teeth want to leap out of his head and take cover.
He fired blindly, but the hybrid was still unimpressed. It took flight again.
Tossing the gun aside, Malcolm bolted.
It swooped over the trees, spiraling wide to come in for another attack. There was no way that Malcolm could get into the cover of trees fast enough to es
cape—and, judging by the wolf in the forest, that wouldn’t have done him much good anyway.
He clambered onto one of the harvester’s massive tires. The door was unlocked.
Malcolm jumped inside. The hybrid slammed into the other side just as he hit the lock on the door, beating its fist against the window, as if frustrated to have missed him. There was clear intelligence in those black eyes. This thing wasn’t just Frankenstein’s angel. It was smart.
It punched a fist through the glass.
With a shout, Malcolm threw himself back on the seat, kicking at the groping hand. His boot connected with its wrist. It withdrew and reached for the inner lock.
Hard metal pressing against his hip reminded him of the knife that Alsu had given him. He wrenched it out of his belt and stabbed. Blood gushed out of the back of the hybrid’s hand.
Its mouth opened in a cry, and Malcolm saw human-like teeth that had been filed to points. Its slimy, black tongue lashed like a snake’s.
Malcolm stabbed again, forcing the creature to pull out of the window.
It circled around the harvester, as if considering a better way to attack. He felt like a mouse in a trap being toyed with by a cat.
There was no fucking way for him to get out of there without getting eaten.
The hybrid ducked below the windshield.
Malcolm braced his hands on the dashboard and pressed his forehead to the glass, craning around to see where it had gone. He didn’t see so much as a hint of a black feather.
Then the harvester tilted.
“Oh, fuck!” Malcolm swore, grabbing the controls as the seat tipped underneath him. The hybrid was lifting the harvester with superhuman strength.
His hand accidentally slammed into a lever.
An engine groaned, and the blades at the front of the harvester whirred to life. Each one of them was as tall as Malcolm. They accelerated until they were nothing but metallic blurs in front of the machine.
The creature dropped him. The harvester slammed to the ground again, and the windshield was pulverized by the impact.
It leaped. Malcolm raised the knife.
But the hybrid never reached him. It jerked to a halt inches away, eyes widened with shock.
Something yanked it off of the hood of the harvester. Malcolm could only watch in horror as its wing was pulled into the workings of the machine.