by T. F. Walsh
Axel’s grin pulled the corners of his mouth up. “Hear that? Keep your fingers off them.”
“Aha.” I stuffed both hands into the pockets of my pants. “Thanks for letting me know.”
Mrs. Joy, who was probably in her seventies, had wrinkled skin dotted in liver spots. She perched on the couch.
“Okay, I’ll get that chai.” Axel vanished into another room, leaving me with the fae hater. She stared without blinking, probably waiting for me to transform into a hideous beast. The older generation was less informed. Their information came from word of mouth, which changed over the years.
“So,” I began, studying the lace curtains that had turned yellow, the carpet littered with holes. “You collect matryoshka dolls?”
“I knew it!” she was shaking her head again. “There are two hundred fifty-seven pieces in my home that I collected from all over Russia, and if one goes missing, then… Well then, my dear, you won’t see the whipping coming your way.”
“Okay.” I licked my lips, tempted to steal a goddamn wooden doll. “I need to go check on Axel and make sure he doesn’t burn himself.”
I felt her gaze trail after me as I entered a dark corridor before swinging into the kitchen on my left. Two people could fit in there comfortably with a sink on one side and the counter on the other. Above it was a railing lined with a row of dried fish. The pungent, fermented smell was faint but ever-present. Axel plugged a small samovar filled with water into a battery-operated burner. A metal teapot sat on top of the pear-shaped bronze container used to boil water.
Axel glanced at me. His smile said it all.
“You’re enjoying yourself,” I whispered.
He broke into a quiet laughter, a hand against his stomach. “You bet.”
Three steps forward and I asked, “Why the hell are we making her chai? We need to get moving. Hunt down vulsines. Clear our names, not play tea parties with a doll-collecting babushka.”
“Listen. We do things differently in Vlaskikha. We care for each other, and if that means putting an old lady at ease, then I do what it takes. Besides, you want her creating a racket and drawing more attention? I plan to get sleep tonight before I pass out. Tomorrow, we put feelers out.” His hushed words got louder as his shoulders curled.
“I’m not sitting here, doing nothing while you grill people.” I lifted my chin to make myself appear taller. “Coming here was a terrible idea. We should have called my friend. Tell me you have a working phone at least?” I had to check in on Santasha and make sure she was okay.
Someone cleared their voice, and we both turned around.
“Mrs. Joy, we won’t be long.” Axel put on the biggest fake smile I’d ever seen and added a teaspoon of marmalade to a cup.
“You got the water boiling,” the elderly lady said. Her pursed lips thinned, and her glare never left me. “You are such a good boy, Axel.”
I almost gagged. So far, he’d led me astray and got us stuck in an Outland town in the middle of nowhere. The right decision was to speak to Santasha and gather intel, though she’d be watched by PPD. I had another option… except, I pushed that out of my head. Not going there because I’d rather cut off my hand before confronting my ex.
Axel stood behind me, bustling about making the brew, nudging me in the back to move out of his path in the small kitchen. Nope, I was standing there. I leaned against a pantry cupboard. “Nice place you have here.”
“You want to take that from me, too?”
What had I taken from her?
I released a long exhale and decided nothing I said would be accepted by the elderly lady, so I kept silent.
By the time Axel had set a teapot filled with chai next to the couch and got Mrs. Joyless settled down, I was ready to leave.
Axel gave his farewell to his friend, and I waved. Once in the dark corridor, I stared at his strong jawline, the way his eyes sparkled beneath the flashlight glow. I had pigeonholed him as I did humans—dangerous, self-centered, and greedy—looking out for themselves. But he’d just shown me how he cared for his neighbor. Sure, I regretted not stealing one of her stupid Russian dolls for her rudeness, but Axel had a huge heart.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re a decent guy.”
“Did you have any doubts?” The smugness in his voice made me laugh. Damn, he was handsome. Yeah, wrong place and all that, but no one said I couldn’t gawk. Who knew how much longer we had before vulsines took over Kutia Hollow.
Several people were half sticking out of doorways now, spying. This building had walls as thin as paper. But then again, Mrs. Joyless wasn’t quiet in her threats, either.
On the tenth-floor landing, we marched down a long corridor with no busybodies hanging out of their apartments. Sleep tugged on my mind, and for the first time tonight, I looked forward to spending time alone with Axel.
But when a dark figure shifted out of the shadows ahead of us in the hallway, I froze. The hairs on my arms bristled with an electric charge. In haste, I gripped Axel’s arm, stopping him.
“Someone’s there,” I whispered and slid out my knife.
Chapter 14
A young human girl, nine or ten years of age, emerged from the shadows. Her gaze darted between Axel and me, the corners of her mouth curling upward in that mischievous way kids smirk before they pull a prank. Except, the hairs on my arms were standing and everything about this scene screamed treachery.
“Stacy, does your mom know you’re out so late?” Axel’s fatherly voice deepened. Was that why he’d ditched me at the church, to protect those living in this building? I couldn’t help but admire the loyalty to his own people. Sure, it went against my earlier impression of him, but that was a good thing.
The girl shrugged. “She don’t worry ’bout me.”
And right then, her squeaky voice had my nerves buzzing. A vulsine. I buried the cry strangling my throat knowing the human child had been killed. I had found Nyx in the Kutia Park lying on the lawn, unmoving. One minute she was laughing; the next, she doubled over and never got up. My life had collapsed. I’d cried until I was raw and empty. Now, instead of grief, rage overcame me.
I reached for my blade. “Hey, Stacy.” I steadied my voice. “Wanna show me where you live? Introduce me to your parents?”
She stood there, shaking her head, the curls bouncing across her shoulders. “No.”
Axel glanced between Stacy and me, his brow pinched. “What are you doing?”
I nudged him, wiggling my eyebrows, and staring at the girl, then him. As if I’d punched him, his eyes widened.
Stacy screamed, her voice one of pure terror.
Axel charged toward her.
The girl swung a hand out from behind her back, grasping the biggest mother of a kitchen knife I’d ever seen. She slashed the blade through the air between them, biting Axel’s arm. He flinched away.
Stacy wailed louder.
I pounced to her side, a hand plastered across her mouth, the other clutching the weapon in her grip. Was she trying to call more of her kind?
Stacy reached my chest in height. She stomped down on my foot, wriggled in my hold. Every molecule in my body pleaded to recoil, to cause her no harm. But Stacy had already been killed. This wasn’t a human.
“Drop the knife.” I crushed her hand and inched my fingers downward to hers until I held the handle, then ripped the weapon away.
Axel stood frozen as if the life had been sucked out of him. My heart drenched with agony for the girl, her family, for Axel. This wasn’t the place to crumble or let grief paralyze us. We might both die in the process if we let that happen.
Voices echoed from several floors below. The danger of vulsines wasn’t just strength, but their numbers. One ant was squishable. But when a thousand attacked…
I looked up at Axel. “We’re trapped!”
Stacey bit into my thumb and wrenched free from my clutches.
She bolted right at Axel, but he spun and grabbed her by the hair. He pulled he
r deeper into the darkened corridor. Her cries were claws to my heart. He shouldered past a door and pulled a kicking and screaming Stacy inside. I locked us in and grabbed a chair, jamming it beneath the handle.
The silver hue from the moon cast shadows across Axel’s shoulders. He was staring down at a woman’s body, twisted in a pool of blood. Next to her lay the real Stacy, her face sunken and haunted. I prayed death had come to them in a swift and painless manner.
“We gotta leave the building,” I whispered. “If there are more vulsines coming, we have to go now.”
“Give me the knife.” Axel still held the girl but stared at the blade in my hand.
My feet refused to move.
Axel stepped closer, holding the vulsine pressed to his stomach, a hand across her body. He snatched the knife out of my grip and placed it across her neck.
“I’ll give you one chance to survive,” he growled. “What are vulsines doing in Moscow? What do you want?”
She giggled. “You’re so stupid. We’ve been waiting so long. And you two are the key.”
“To what?” I asked. Priest had explained that vulsines didn’t retain their victims’ memories, just their appearance.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” She broke into a piercing scream.
I lunged to stop her, but Axel sliced the blade across her neck. The child gurgled as blood gushed out of the wound. She hit the ground, morphing into a pale vulsine, growing in size. Long hair turning white.
I ran to the window. Fuck, we were so high. “What did it mean, we were the keys?”
“Fuck knows what’s going on.”
Someone banged on the front door, and we both slipped into a bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows. Axel threw the curtains aside, flicked a lock, and opened the entry to a terrace.
The answer wasn’t running, but fighting. We could set up traps, take them down one by one as they entered the apartment. Capture more vulsines and grill them.
“Hurry,” Axel whispered, his words abrasive. “Now!” He disappeared onto the balcony.
Okay, we were apparently escaping instead. Outside, all the nearby apartments remained cloaked in blackness, fog crowning the tops. Axel climbed over the side railing and jumped onto an adjacent veranda.
A loud splintering erupted from within the apartment behind me, so I pushed after Axel. By the time I’d leaped to the first balcony, he was three terraces away. No one had turned on lights, meaning they still slept. Or were dead…
Axel fiddled with a key on a glass opening.
“Whose place is this?”
“Mine.”
Muffled voices came from behind me. I twisted around. Someone appeared on the balcony where we’d left. Axel snagged my elbow, hauling me into his home.
“Shh.” He closed us inside. I passed a bed with one pillow and a brown blanket. Nothing else. Axel lived a simple life, and I doubted he entertained often. In the main room, he had a table and chairs only, along with two potted plants flowing with lavish green leaves.
“Where’s the fire escape?” I asked.
“Across the hallway.” Axel glanced at me, his brow arching. “Good thinking.”
A dark shadow flitted across the window to the veranda. Then another.
“Fuck. Move.” I shoved against Axel.
He pried the front door open, listened for a moment, then hurried out. An old man stood in the corridor to our right, his back to us.
I exchanged glances with Axel, who stood stiff as a statue. Was it a human or vulsine?
The old man stormed into an apartment.
Together with Axel, I burst in the opposite direction, targeting the red door to the escape stairwell. Darkness swallowed us. I shut the door behind us. Axel’s hand slid into mine. His fingers banded around my hand… grounding, comforting. He flicked on his flashlight, and we darted down the stairs. My pulse beat at a fast rate in my ears as I kept picturing the young girl on the floor.
I stomped on something squishy. A bug hissed from near my feet, and on my next step, I squashed another cockroach. “I hate bugs.” Seven flights to go.
Halfway down, a door overhead smacked open, and Axel switched off the light. The clap of footfalls echoed. “We’ve got you now,” a male’s voice shouted.
How the hell had they found us?
I held onto Axel for balance, our sides plastered together as we moved in unison. I couldn’t even see my hands. Would tonight ever end?
Behind us, footsteps closed in, and I’d lost count of how many flights we’d descended.
Axel stopped, but I kept moving from the momentum, whacking into a cement wall. The sharp impact had my head spinning. “Crap.” I stumbled, rubbing my brow.
A loud click resonated. When Axel opened the door, a flurry of wind bit into me, almost freezing my perspiration.
We sprinted into a barren yard, bolting toward the street where we’d left the car… except the curb stood empty.
“Screw this.” I gasped for air, my nerves were tightening by the second. “We need to leave this place. There’s a car farther down the street.”
“We won’t make it. This way.” Axel darted across the road, pulling me behind.
Hell! While part of me played with taking off to see if he followed, I didn’t have the luxury of time and wasn’t familiar with this area. When I looked behind, at least a dozen pursuers poured out of the building. I yanked my hand away from his. Whose smart idea was it to come here again?
Axel vanished into a shadowy passage between two buildings. I followed after him, cobwebs catching on my face and in my hair. I batted them away and chased after Axel’s dark figure. He rounded a corner to more apartments. We zigzagged between them.
Our pursuers fanned out.
Night seemed to press in around me, not helping the anxiety of our situation. “Where are we going?” I demanded.
“Getting us a ride out of here.” He raced into completely unfamiliar territory, no back up, and only my blades.
The closest vulsine was at least fifteen feet away.
Axel swung a hard right, and I skidded after him. He bolted past a line of motorbikes and seemed targeted on an old-fashioned electrical box. The metal container was attached to the building at waist height. He kicked his heel into the lock. Several hits later, the latch opened. He reached inside, brushed off the dust and grabbed something.
I had so many questions, but they’d have to come later. First, survival. Behind us, more vulsines appeared. How would we escape now?
Axel nudged past me, his fists curled, but I knew we’d never fight all of them.
“Get the bike,” I said and pushed ahead of him.
Yeah, not the best idea. I concentrated on drawing on my inner strength. Anything I had left in the energy tank I’d use in this now-or-never situation.
Behind me, the rattle of an engine coughed awake.
More people joined us in the yard, and the buzzing beneath my skin had never been so intense. All vulsines.
I called on an innate power. A pinpricking sensation coated my arms in a flash.
Someone slammed into my side with such force, I flew backward and hit the ground with a thud. I scrambled backward from his advance.
I raised my hand and unleashed the charge. A blue streak of electricity crackled and shot from my fingertips… thin and spluttering… striking the attacker in the solar plexus. He convulsed, dropping to the ground, foaming at the mouth.
More of the vulsines in human guises charged.
Staggering to my feet, I swore the world would turn upside down with me in it. Every inch of my body ached, demanding I sleep for a week straight. But that meant not dying tonight.
The rip-roaring grunt of a motor called me again, and I stumbled toward Axel, my hero, who sat on a black motorbike. My legs wobbled with each step.
And because there wasn’t already enough shit in my life, several feet behind Axel, a couple of bearded guys, tattooed to high hell, emerged, both brandishing machetes. “Ty che, suka,
o'khuel blya?”
Yep, I agreed with them. We were fucking dead.
Chapter 15
A window pane-shattering crash pierced my ears and glass flew down on the sidewalk a few feet away. People in every direction, all coming to kill me. My head spun from exhaustion. With each step I took, I seemed to move nowhere. A sinking sensation rattled in my brain as more vulsines closed in. The bearded guys with machetes sure didn’t make the situation better.
“Luna, get on the bike now!” Axel yelled from behind me, his words a point of focus over the revving engine.
I staggered toward him, forcing one foot in front of the other. Depleting myself of energy was a risky move but had paid off in keeping me alive this long. Holding onto Axel’s strong shoulder, I swung a leg over the pillion. The powerful bike glided forward. I lurched backward and grappled for Axel’s waist.
Someone reached for my arm, nails digging into flesh.
I tightened my hold on Axel, heart pounding, and ripped my arm free.
“Go!” I called out.
We shot away from the yelling, the vulsines, the death. I chanced a quick glance behind and saw the vulsines running after us faster than was humanly possible.
The engulfing horror chasing us made me sick in my stomach. I held onto Axel; my muscles were frozen in place. Fleeing was the smartest move even if my brain screamed to warn everyone else in the town. But at what cost? Axel and I would never defeat the storm of vulsines. I’d seen darkness before, the kind where chopped body parts from crime scenes stayed with me for weeks, infiltrated my dreams. But this wasn’t like that. Now, we were escaping from vulsines that robbed me of my sense of duty and replaced it with trepidation.
Once we reached the road, Axel hit the throttle and we sped away. Night was a cloak, suffocating the landscape. I didn’t want to think about the bike’s engine noise attracting vlkos, or me becoming a flat pancake on the asphalt if I lost my balance from falling asleep.
For once, I didn’t care where Axel went as long as it was away from Vlasikha. I hadn’t even thought about how this affected him. His friends had died; his home had been infected. Instead of staying there to help others, he ran away with me.