"RRAAAGH!" His face was a mask of concentration, pouring with sweat as we vied, will to will. The amulet hissed and spat as the energetic barrier between us seemed to buckle and war. He stepped back, and I felt his attention waver... and then my talisman exploded in a shower of blasted charcoal as Kovacs found the gap in the design and my concentration. There was a moment where my feet seemed to sweep forward along the ground before the cursed slammed into my chest with physical force: a blastwave that flooded my body and surrounded my heart before tearing the flesh of my pectoral with the kolovrat, the Sun wheel, which was to seal my fate.
Chapter 20
I could see why my father had screamed. The pain was excruciating, nerve pain that ripped through my torso and shoulder as the anchoring sigil manifested on my body. I reeled: my muscles cramped like I'd been shot. The air was suddenly too hot to breathe.
"Hah!" Kovacs, sweating and pale, gestured at me with his staff. His eyes were bright with gloating avarice. “I'll give you one chance to live. You said you want to deal? Get on your knee, and swear your money for your life."
“Go shove your staff up your ass.” A fresh wave of heat passed through my body. I struggled through it, palm throbbing against the grip of the Wardbreaker as I fought to bring it up and aim at the mage's chest.
"Suit yourself." He drew himself up. "You think this is an Indiana Jones movie, do you? That you're just going to be able to shoot me?"
I sighted down the barrel and fired off a round in reply. It hit an invisible barrier at the edge of the circle. The powdered chalk danced on the ground with the mage's effort to hold it intact, but it still held.
"Have it your way." Kovacs laughed. He raised his arms. "Adre, addron, galvah..."
I braced a second time, closed my eyes, and focused on the link he was expanding between the two of us. He wielded his magic like a harpoon, a spear on a chain linked back to his own body. As he continued the incantation, I felt my heart race as my muscles heated, but the river flowed both ways. My teeth began to chatter as I searched for the rhythm and pattern and found it in a flash of tactile inspiration. As soon as I understood his magic, I could direct it to my own magical circle: a hidden transmutation sigil carved into my skin over my heart, where I’d known the sigil would manifest.
"Galvarah, YOD!" He finished his chant, and enacted the curse.
"IAL!" I roared my command word at the same time.
The column of magic looped through my body and then slung back into the circle carved into my flesh, following the path of least resistance as I rejected Kovacs intent and subverted his force into my own. The charge flashed through the channel of crusted blood winding from left pectoral to right hand, and slammed into the weapon I was holding. The Commander became painfully hot as the glyphs etched into the barrel flooded with brilliant red light, and I had, had to shoot. "ALLAR VOD!"
The shot was nearly soundless: an anticlimactic 'blip', the sound that hitmen's guns make in Hollywood movies, but the blastwave that followed the little 9mm round ruffled my smoking hair and blew the dust up off the ground below, white-hot and propelled by the full weight of Kovacs' curse. I glimpsed his expression drop with shock as the round struck the circle and shattered it like a glass house around him. He shouted with mingled confusion and rage in the split second before the next round struck him in the center mass and blew out through his back. He dropped his staff and staggered away, falling to his knees on the dirt.
Shivering and sweating, I stalked through the damaged circle, stepping over the charred chalk line with the pistol extended. Kovacs' chest wound was smoking, cauterized all the way through. He tried to crawl backwards, his face a red so dark that I knew he was boiling from the inside out. "I curse you! I curse you with-"
His guttural snarl and his last flickers of power were lost as he coughed fire from nose and mouth. His eyes widened as the curse, unable to find a foothold on me, turned back and consumed the caster. Like Slava, Kovacs went strangely quiet and still as the fire roiled up out of his flesh. I watched in mystified, disgusted silence as his clothing ashed and his skin ruptured, belching gouts of flame so hot that they began to melt the ground underneath him. There was no screaming, because no one was trying to put him out. He died in roaring silence.
I looked at the gun in my hand. The Wardbreaker was still unnaturally warm, flickers of red flashing and glancing through the sigils. They were feeding greedily on the blood oozing from my palm, pulling it out of my body and channeling it up through the grooves that led to the first symbolic invocation to Mercury in Mars, the opener of locks and all things sealed and secret.
"Geburah to Gedula," I murmured. I reached with my mind and found the gateway between the weapon and my life's blood. It took a moment of intent to shut it down. The connection severed easily enough, and the weapon stopped feeding, and went still. The same small extension of will was enough to activate it again, and I smiled despite myself. The Wardbreaker now work on time, every time, but perhaps not for me alone. It hummed with hot, seething power, but the power itself felt... impersonal. It was not the distinct color-scent of my own magical energy, which was dark, cold, blue-black and smelled like fresh rain. That was why I had not been able to create it myself, perhaps. The pistol's only function was to harm, much like a curse, and its fundamental purpose was not energetically compatible with anything still living.
I holstered the Wardbreaker, and watched as Kovacs' body turned to scattered chunks of charcoal. Only his hands and shoes and staff were left. Fussy as ever, I used the gravel and rubble around us to cover up all physical traces of the circle, and then picked up the charcoal, still seamed with embers, and threw it in the burning barrels. I wasn’t sure what to do with the rest. The mage had a chunky gold and star sapphire ring on his middle finger that I hadn’t noticed before. The fire – which only consumed the core of the body and left peripheral limbs intact – had not destroyed it.
I broke the finger off, brittle from the heat, and after several moments of deliberation, stripped down to my undershirt and wrapped the rest of the waste in my vest. I could take it to Bozya Akra, the Organizatsiya’s unofficial graveyard, or even just throw them out to sea. I was so hot and so exhausted that rational planning was almost out of the question. Dried blood had crusted on my upper lip. I’d gotten a nosebleed from the effort of battling Kovacs’ impressive will, and I felt like my brain was leaking out my ears.
A deep bodied caw broke me out of my momentary fugue: a raven's cry. It was too resonant to have been a crow. Wearily, I squinted up at it.
The animal was perched up on the edge of one of the bales, looking down at me from high above. Its eyes glowed white in the light of the fire, as it cocked its head from side to side.
“What do you want?” I frowned, wiping my face with my shirt. My eyes throbbed and twitched whenever I accidentally looked into the light.
The bird wiped its beak against the edge of the compressed metal, and then resumed staring at me. A vague haunting sense of recognition caused my stomach, already weak, to lurch with nausea.
I frowned and pointed the gun at it. “Go on. I’m not dead yet, you stupid thing.”
“Roorck!” The raven bounded back, and launched itself into the air.
“Same to you. Asshole.” Now that I was recovering, the site of Kovacs’ death was beginning to creep along my skin. The site of a mage’s death - especially when the death was by magic - was weirded in a way that made it uncomfortable for the living. There would be a cold spot here tomorrow, and forever after that. Or maybe a hot spot, given the mage’s predilection for fire.
Slowly, I rose to my feet, and wended my way back toward the gate leading to the road. I usually felt something like satisfaction after a victory of this magnitude. Kovacs was easily the toughest spook I’d faced in a duel, but I felt like I had heatstroke; I was tired, and heavy with the knowledge that even though Mariya and Vassily were safe - for now – I was not. If my father was now free of the curse, I knew better than to expe
ct gratitude for saving his life.
Chapter 21
I called Sirens and then AEROMOR from a payphone, and learned that Nicolai and his team had taken Maslak to our Red Hook interrogation and execution room. There was a sub-basement underneath one of the old brownstone dockside warehouses, a floor practically level with the waterline. It was cold, industrial, and intimidating, and had everything you needed in a prison: small cells, discreet entry points, great insulation and soundproofing, and a drain that washed out into the ocean.
Unsurprisingly, Maslak was screaming and cursing up a storm when I got there. They had him locked in the hole, a blocked-off vertical sewer access drain with an iron grate, and he was in full freakout mode. The room that contained the hole had a door that faced a wide concrete corridor with a low ceiling and two small rooms. One of them was also used as a cell. The other was the interrogation room, which was white-tiled on all surfaces. A chair was bolted to the floor, and shower rails were bolted to the walls. A lot of people had died in that room.
Nicolai, Ovar, Yuri and Rodion were gathered in the corridor, loitering around the entrance to the cellroom, and they turned as a unit as I came clumping slowly down the metal stairs. Nic’s eyebrows nearly reached his hairline when he saw me.
“You got fried,” he said.
“Kovacs is dead.” I limped to join them, reeking of burned hair, and held out the ring to Rodion. It was still attached to the mage’s finger. “I took this from him. Happy birthday.”
“Aww, you shouldn’t have.” My Avtoritet grinned wolfishly, taking the finger and yanking the ring off it. “He give you much trouble?”
“He gave me thirty thousand dollars’ worth of trouble,” I said sourly. “Not twenty-one.”
“Fair enough. Call it a nine-thousand-dollar tip for a hard night’s work.” Rodion chuckled, turning the ring over to look at the inside of the band. “Huh, not bad. Real gold, real… wait a second.”
“Ey?” Ovar leaned in, as if he could possibly see whatever it was that Rodion had noted.
Rodion’s jaw dropped. “Lexi… oh man. Do you… you can’t have…”
“What?” I was curious now, as were the others.
“This ring,” Rodion said. “It belonged to Elvis fucking Presley.”
Yuri scoffed. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“The maker’s mark. And I’ve seen photos of him with it on, I’m sure of it.” Awestruck, Rodion tested his fingers until he found one that fit. It went on perfectly over his left ring finger, and his delight was palpable. “Holy shit, Alexi.”
“Guess you’re married to the King now.” Nicolai smiled a thin, papery smile around his cigarette, clapping Rodion on the back.
“Haha! Holy freakin’ shit!” Rodion grinned from ear to ear.
Yuri snorted and shook his head, and then rolled his eyes to look at me. “Hey kid. The bitch down in the hole has some kinda protection on him… something that stops bullets. We tested it out just to make sure, you know? Think you got the stomach to take care of it?”
I regarded him levelly. “Of course. Do we need him for the operation?”
Rodion sobered a little, rubbing the new ring to settle it on his hand. “We need some details extracted before we make an example of him, if you think you’re up for it.”
Interrogation was an art as subtle and ritualistic as magic, and I was definitely up for it… but not tonight. “The bulletproofing is not a problem, Avtoritet, but I don’t have it in me after the fight with Kovacs. Vassily’s going to court tomorrow during the day time, and I need what sleep I can get. Can Maslak stew for twelve hours?”
“Nothing seasons a man up for interrogation like solitary,” Nic grunted.
“Yeah, what Nic said. We’ll post someone down here to keep an eye out, but I don’t think Scappeti’s going to be too keen on retrieving him.” Rodion airily waved a hand. “Go rest, Lexi. You did good work.”
The momentary praise was gratifying, but the glow only lasted for a moment as I cleared my throat. “What happened to Grigori?”
Nic shrugged. “The burn mark disappeared around nine thirty. I figured you’d killed the spook.”
My face settled into pleasant nothingness. “I see. Well, I am sincerely glad that no one else perished. It feels like success.”
“Yeah, it does.” Rodion gave me a curious, expectant look.
I inclined my head and left without saying anything else. I didn’t want them to see how disappointed I was.
* * *
I arrived home to find that I had no front door. Or, more accurately, that I had a pile of splintered green-painted wood in place of a door, and the concrete hallway smelled of male urine, old blood, and vomit.
“Marco?” I drew my gun and stepped over the wreckage with a grimace.
“Polo.” Vassily called back from the living room.
I looked into my bedroom with a sinking heart. It was untouched, thank goodness, so I continued on to the den. Vassily was sitting on the sofa in his bathrobe. He was pale, and smoking with nervous, shaking hands. His gun was laid out on the coffee table by his ash tray.
“What on Earth happened?” I checked and then holstered the Wardbreaker, searching him for injuries. He looked fine, though the room had taken a beating. A number of my books had been pulled down and torn apart.
“Sir Purrs-a-Lot,” he said dully.
I blinked, realizing what was missing from the scene. Vassily’s cat was gone.
“Grigori brought the sledgehammer here and killed the cat,” I said.
“He killed my cat, Alexi.” Vassily’s voice was steady, save for the quiver of furious orange I could taste under the usual rich blue. “I came back and found blood all over the kitchen and laundry. He threw him off the balcony. The head was still up here on the kitchen floor.”
As Vassily talked, the dissociation started up. I felt like I was a million miles away from my own body. My head and heart pounded, my hands itched. I took a heavy seat on the sofa beside him.
“I’m going to kill him for this,” I said. My voice sounded far away. “One day. Not too far off.”
“It’s… Purrs was just a cat, Alexi. A cat’s not worth a human life.”
I ground my teeth, sharpening the cusps. “I beg to differ.”
“Just stop, okay?” Vassily ground his cigarette into the tray and sat back. “I can’t listen to it right now. Do whatever you want to do, but I don’t want to hear about it.”
This was the one thing that Vassily would never understand about me. Vassily saw death as cruel and arbitrary, and my job as being necessary, but fundamentally horrific. I saw death as the entry to the true underworld, Reality in all its scalding honesty and mystery. My job was to enact fate. With this action of violation and needless cruelty, my father had sealed his. He was a rabid dog, and he always would be. No matter what Lev said, it was time for him to move on.
“I’ve already called someone about the door.” Vassily sniffed, breaking the thick, tense silence that had clotted the air of the room. “So don’t worry about it. They’ll be here at eleven.”
I swallowed my rage and my intent, and bowed my head in acknowledgment. “Alright… thank you. I’m sorry about Sir Purrs-a-Lot.”
“Me too. I’m going to tell Rodion about this, believe me. Grisha’s out of control.” Vassily’s mobile face twisted through a flickering parade of emotions. Anger, hesitancy, fatigue. He looked as tired as I felt. “So now you know all about that, uh, I was wondering-”
Already most of the way to the door, I turned to look back at him. “I’ll set up the chessboard in the kitchen. I doubt either of us are actually going to get to sleep now.”
He grinned, and some of the energy finally returned to his eyes. “You read my mind. You really are a wizard, huh?”
“Fortunes told, charms and benedictions,” I said, flatly, as I turned and walked out toward the bathroom.
“Hey, you know what? In between choking people with their own underwear and throwing
them into the bay, you should totally set up a fortune telling stand. ‘Alexi’s Psychic Readings, five bucks a pop.”
“Five? My readings are worth at least twenty.”
“Only if they have a happy ending,” Vassily trailed after me. “If you know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes, collecting a clean towel and throwing it over my shoulder. “People don’t come to have their fortune told because they’re happy, Vassily.”
He stuck his head out the door as I began to pull off my outerwear. “So you make them happy. Tell them they’ll get their perfect job, their true love, all that bullshit. You could get into celebrity consulting like that.”
“Tell them fantasy stories, in other words.”
He grinned, face as sly and handsome as a cartoon fox. “What? You don’t believe in twu wuv?”
“I believe that love is illusory and unattainable.”
He cocked his head, leaning a little further into the bathroom. “What? What’s illusory about it?”
The robe had slipped. He was shirtless underneath, and I glanced across the stars emblazoned on his shoulders, the diamond back python tattoo that wound up his long arm. Vassily was a leanly muscled man, long-limbed, with striking hands made more so by the rings of blue and black ink he wore. The question I’d wanted ask him lingered on my tongue, but it couldn’t move past the wall of my own hesitation.
“Love is always a narcissistic fantasy. We project what it is we really want in ourselves onto other people.” I smiled a small, bitter smile, turning away into the bathroom. “We have to be at the courthouse by eleven, don’t we?”
“Yeah.” Vassily replied. He scratched his head.
“How you feeling?”
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