Midnight in St. Petersburg: A Novel of the Invisible War

by Barbara J. Webb

  This wasn’t the first time Rose had dreamed her way into someone, but it had never been this intense, this immediate. The fear, the pain—it overwhelmed Rose’s sense of self, made it hard for her to do anything but sink into the nightmare.

  Her captors let go, and Rose couldn’t find her feet fast enough to keep her balance. Her head and shoulders hit the marble floor with a blinding crack. Fluttery panic held her awake, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Couldn’t find her…her what? Magic? Yes, magic. This man she was living through—he was a voider.

  Someone yanked the hood off her head and more pain sparked through her at the explosion of light. The man’s terror spiked, threatened to drag Rose along with him into gibbering madness.

  Enough was enough. Rose dove deep, searching for herself. She found her name, her body, and the anchoring knowledge that she was in a dream.

  A dream, yes, but real. This had happened. Or was happening. A shimmering echo of something so horrible it had burned its presence into the city’s bones.

  Now she’d pulled herself free from the panicking man, Rose had a clearer sense of her surroundings. Echoing space broken by towering marble columns. Malachite and murals. Gold and stained glass. Above her, a dome rising up into darkness with a ring of gilded angels staring down at her. A church? It had to be. But more grandiose than any church she’d ever set foot in.

  The only light came from an impossibility. Rose had ignored it this long, figuring it for the strange sort of symbolic nonsense that so often populated dreams. Except the man she inhabited also focused in on the creature, like he saw it too. Like it had been there when this happened for real.

  A being. Glowing. Floating. Hovering in the air above her. Was this really what the man had seen, or was it an emotional echo, warped and twisted by his near-insane fright?

  The figure spoke, but the words stretched and echoed in Rose’s mind, unrecognizable. She fought for clarity through the haze of sleep and fear and death. Pain dulled her senses, shredded her concentration, froze her limbs. Just a dream, Rose repeated in her mind as her clarity threatened to dissolve.

  Someone pulled her left arm out straight. The shining figure leaned down and drew a flaming sword. An honest-to-god flaming sword. Now, his words were clear. “For your crimes.”

  The sword came down and Rose screamed as burning agony shot through what was left of her arm. “Stop!” she yelled and the dream froze.

  Rose stood and pulled herself free of the dying man. The shadow of his pain stayed with her, would stay with her until she woke up. Maybe even after that. She was in deep.

  More than ready to wake up, to leave this horror behind, Rose focused her attention on the glowing man. Around her, the church, the goons, the victim faded to darkness. Only the strange figure was left as Rose tried to see through the blinding radiance that surrounded him, tried to pick apart the emotional illusion to find the core of reality.

  At that moment, the shining man turned to look at her.

  That’s not right, Rose thought as she stumbled back. Rose had taken charge of this vision. Nothing should be happening if she didn’t want it to.

  “Little girl,” the man said. He spoke in Russian, but Rose understood the words. “Who are you, little girl? What are you doing here?”

  Rose retained enough control to keep herself from answering, but she couldn’t break the contact. Wake up, dammit!

  His hand reached out, floating towards her, but Rose couldn’t move. Time slowed and she had barely drawn a breath when his bony fingers locked around her throat. “Tell me your name! Are you with him? Are you one of them?”

  Rose clutched at his wrist, but his grip was stone. Choking, she kicked at the figure, but despite the hand tight around her neck, the rest of him was too far away. “You cannot hide, little one. I see you. Yes…yes…come to me.”

  Rose struggled as a gray haze grew at the edge of her vision. She couldn’t breathe. It shouldn’t matter. This was a dream, dammit! She shouldn’t be able to suffocate, but no question that was happening.

  With a final, desperate burst of strength, Rose swung at him with a balled fist. Sudden, sharp pain radiated up her arm as her knuckles collided with something solid.

  Rose opened her eyes. She couldn’t feel her feet. She was freezing. She wore nothing but the nightgown in which she’d gone to sleep, but she wasn’t in her room, wasn’t in her bed. In front of her, a massive door. Her knuckles were scraped and bleeding—the door was what she’d struck. She spun around, trying to get her bearings. Across a wide open square, she spotted the warm, welcoming lights of the Astoria. Somehow, she’d sleepwalked over to the cathedral next door.

  In the darkness, the square had turned sinister. A larger-than-life statue of a man on horseback stared down at her from its shadowy pedestal, tricks of the shaded streetlights turning the eyes of both the man and his horse angular and evil. A dreadful stillness surrounded her so that she could hear the water of the nearby canal lapping against its concrete sides. The hotel looked very far away across a sea of dark concrete.

  And the nightmare wasn’t over. As Rose stood there, trying to make sense of her situation, three men in black came around the far corner of St. Isaac’s. One of them pointed, yelled. The words were Russian, but his meaning was clear. They were after Rose.

  Even worse, while she could see the men, hear the men, she couldn’t feel them with her othersense. Just as with Mike and Alec, the space in which they stood might as well have been empty. Which meant they were voiders.

  “Fuck.” Rose tried to run, but her numb feet stumbled and twisted and for the second time that night she fell hard against the stone ground. Only this time, it was real.

  Rough hands grabbed her. Rose screamed. Fingers covered her mouth. Rose bit. They dragged her to her feet, the largest of them holding her just above the ground so she couldn’t get any leverage. Rose kicked wildly and a second man grabbed her legs. The third still had his hand over her mouth, despite her teeth clamped on his pinky.

  Everything was happening so fast, Rose didn’t notice the new presence behind the men. Until her jaw yanked sideways as the man covering her mouth pulled suddenly away. A shadow moved behind him and Rose heard a sickening crack as the man’s head twisted to an unnatural angle. He collapsed.

  For the third time that night, Rose’s head struck the ground as her other two captors dropped her to deal with the new threat. A threat that jangled and twisted unmistakably against her addled senses. “Nazeem,” Rose rasped.

  “Miss Daziani.” His voice was calm, as though they had simply passed each other on the street. “You seemed in some distress.”

  The voiders in black circled the vampire. In the darkness, they were no more than shadows.

  Until the hands of the larger man burst into flame. Rose gasped, then coughed as the freezing air struck her throat, still raw from the dream. This was magic—real magic. Her first taste, and she only wanted it to go away.

  Nazeem moved faster than Rose’s eyes could track and suddenly he was behind the large man, knocking him forward. The other attacker had to dodge aside to keep from getting burned.

  This seemed more resistance than the men were prepared to face. They turned and ran. The fire died out and the shadows of St. Isaac’s reached out to cover them. Nazeem took a couple steps after them, then turned back to Rose.

  With the men gone, the darkness lifted and light touched the square. In the reflected glow of the street lamps, Rose saw Nazeem’s nostrils flare. “You’re hurt,” he said.

  The ground wobbled as Rose sat up. She reached up to feel hair matted with blood. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Come.” He knelt down beside her and removed his jacket, wrapping it around her shoulders. He scooped her up as though she weighed nothing. “You should not be outside.”

  The leather of Nazeem’s jacket was buttery soft and through it, Rose could feel the solid muscles of his chest as he carried her across the square and back to their hotel.
And warmth—she wouldn’t have expected vampires to be warm. Probably the concussion talking, but Rose found herself much more comfortable than she should be in the arms of a vampire.

  “I don’t know what happened. I was asleep—dreaming—then I woke up out here and those men attacked me.”

  “Does this happen to you frequently?”

  “Not as such, no.” Rose touched the sticky mess of her hair again; it didn’t feel like her head. Everything had happened so fast, and made no more sense than the dream had.

  The dream. “Nazeem, I think I saw a man die.”

  Nazeem tilted his head quizzically and Rose blushed, remembering the body they’d left lying in the square. His hands—the hands that carried her—Nazeem had just killed a man with the same ease she drew breath. “Wait, put me down.”

  “Not until we are inside, I think.” He glanced at her bare feet. “I wouldn’t see you injure yourself further.”

  Those men had grabbed her, been trying to take her somewhere. Probably to the shining man, whoever or whatever he was. Nazeem had killed one of them, yes, but he’d done it to protect her. If Rose couldn’t accept that, she could at least put it to the back of her mind for now. “In my dream. That’s what I meant. I dreamed I saw a man die, only the killer, he looked at me and then he sent those men to find me.”

  Her voice was creeping higher, her words tumbling over each other. As a social work student, Rose had sat with victims of assault, had watched as the shock wore off and their emotions thawed to terror and panic and their thinking minds shut down. Rose focused on keeping her breathing steady as her fingers dug into the leather of Nazeem’s jacket, determined to stay calm.

  Nazeem was a solid presence. Even if she couldn’t decipher his strange, buzzing insides, she could at least feel him there. After the voiders, that was a relief that far outweighed the frustration of her inability to read the look on his face or guess at what he might be thinking.

  As they reached the Astoria’s doors, he said, “We should wake Ian and Michael.”

  “Hell no. Are you kidding? I’m frozen, bleeding, and barely dressed. Why would I want to talk to them?”

  “Keeping secrets is no way to begin this endeavor. We’re to be a team, are we not?”

  That wasn’t the impression Rose had left dinner with. “Nobody seemed very enthused about us all working together.”

  “Nonetheless.” Nazeem set her down on the soft lobby carpet. “I must insist.”

  The lobby was empty except for the one curious desk clerk who was pretending not to watch. His reaction left Rose torn between anger and amusement. Either one was better than the fear. “Fine. You do whatever. Just let me get some clothes on before we start in with Kumbaya, okay?”

  “As you like.” His face stayed blank and his feelings twisted outside her comprehension, but Rose was pretty sure Nazeem was laughing at her.

  * * *

  Rose refused to rush her shower. Her head pounded; her body ached; her numerous scrapes stung. The hot water sluiced away the blood, but it took her adrenaline with it and left her exhausted.

  She rubbed a towel across the steamy mirror, frowned at her streaky reflection. Already she could see a dark circle spreading under her hair; it sent lavender tendrils reaching towards her cheek. Half her face was going to be black and blue by morning. She’d never in her life been beaten up, although she’d been around plenty of those who had. The pain she’d felt from those people had been nothing like this. Filtered through second-hand senses, it wasn’t the same. She’d been able to escape it, put distance between herself and the reality of it. When the pain was her own, it sucked.

  Nazeem had said he’d gather the others in Mike’s room. He’d said it just like that. If she couldn’t read his face or decipher his emotions, at least she could listen to the way he talked. Pick up hints from the words he used and the way he used them. His speech was as elegant as the rest of him. His accent betrayed his foreign roots, but English wasn’t a new language to him.

  Rose pulled on the skirt and sweater she’d worn to dinner, but they weren’t enough. Even after her hot shower, she was cold. She added another layer of skirt and her one pair of heavy socks. And for good measure, she wrapped the fluffy, hotel-provided bathrobe over everything.

  Mike answered her knock on his door. He frowned. “What is this?”

  Rose rolled her eyes and pushed past him into the room. Nazeem stood against the near wall; he’d also cleaned up and changed. Ian wasn’t around. Mike closed the door behind her and then took Rose’s chin in his hand, tilting her head so he could look at the bruise.

  “If we were back home, I’d send you to the emergency room,” he said, frowning.

  Rose jerked her head away. “I’m fine.”

  Another knock, with Ian’s intensity radiating through the door. “I got your message,” he said when Mike let him in. “What’s going on?” Care and worry swirled in her head as Ian got a good look at her face. “Are you all right?”

  “Tell them what happened,” Nazeem bid in his soft, even voice.

  Rose sat down on a velvet-cushioned chair and recounted the dream with as much detail as she could remember, from the victim’s fear to the shining man’s assault. She talked about waking up in the cold, of the voiders who had attacked her. Of Nazeem’s rescue. Mike listened, his face impassive. Ian wore a similar—albeit prettier—poker-face, but Rose could feel the mix of excitement and fury that pounded through him.

  “Bastards,” Ian muttered when she had finished.

  “Has this happened to you before?” Nazeem asked.

  “True dreams, yes, although I’ve never lost control of one. The sleep-walking—never.”

  Mike turned to Nazeem. “And how did you get involved?” He didn’t hide his suspicion well.

  “I was…out. I heard her scream.”

  Curiosity from Ian. “The man in your dreams—he really glowed?”

  Rose shrugged. “It’s probably symbolic. Dream logic and all that crap.” Which would have been easier to believe if the victim whose head she’d been inside hadn’t also seen the same burning light. “Either way, he’s a guy with power. No question about that.”

  Everyone fell silent, lost in their own suspicions. Mike went to sit at the window, his gaze locked on the looming cathedral across the square. Ian fidgeted in his chair, fiddling with the cross around his neck, his face resolute and his insides volatile. Nazeem’s head angled up towards the ceiling, his eyes focused inward, his energy a jangling, impenetrable mess.

  Father Mike broke the quiet. “What do you think, Irish?” he asked, looking over at Ian.

  Ian’s insides rippled with pleasure that Mike had asked him. “I think we don’t know enough. If the victim was a voider, like Rose said, that makes me think the killer would be one as well. On the other hand, if the killer was shining for real, that’s the kind of flash that makes me think faelock.”

  “Or demon,” Mike countered. “Although a faelock in the city would certainly answer the question of what you’re doing here.”

  Rose raised a hand. “Time out. You’re going to have to slow down and explain things to the new girl.”

  “No.” Mike shook his head. “I’m sorry, Rose, but I think you should turn down Rutledge’s offer.”

  “What?” Rose hadn’t been expecting that.

  “Michael is correct.” Rose’s head whipped around and she glared at Nazeem. “This is no place for children.”

  “Screw you,” Rose said. “I’m not a child.”

  Mike pressed his forehead against the window glass, muttering in Latin under his breath. “This isn’t about you being a child,” he said in English. “It’s about you being a civilian. We don’t put sensitives on the front lines, and there’s a reason for that. Your little psychic powers are very cute, but after only one night, your brain’s been hijacked and those men who grabbed you—I’m pretty sure they weren’t dragging you off to a slumber party.”

  He looked up, glaring at Ro
se. “You have no idea how dangerous things can get. You have no idea what’s going on in this city.”

  Rose’s anger, for the moment, dulled her body’s aches. “Do you?”

  Mike’s tone held no room for compromise. “I’ve been fighting this war for over thirty years. I know a bad situation when I see one. This business is way beyond tarot cards and seances. I can’t afford to look after you.”

  Rose’s cheeks flushed at the implication her gift was useless. “Then you go home. I’m not afraid.” A lie. Of course she was afraid. Terrified, but not just of the men who had assaulted her. Rose feared the future that started with her returning to Arizona, locked away from the people who knew about and understood her gift. A future that ended, more likely than not, with her huddled in the psychiatric ward with the rest of the people like her.

  “Oh so brave.” Mike’s tone was mocking. He raised his hand and from across the room, Rose felt a push of invisible energy, painful against her bruised head. “It’s not about afraid, kiddo. At this level of the game, it’s pretty much a matter of alive or dead.”

  “Fucking priests.” Rose stood up, planted her hands on her hips. “You think you know what’s best for me.”

  “Rose—” Nazeem’s voice was level, reasonable, but Rose spun on him.

  “What? If I leave, is one of you guys going to give me a million dollars? Because I don’t know about you, but I do need the money.” She needed more than that, but she wasn’t about to admit it in front of Mike.

  Ian chimed in, surprisingly, on Rose’s side. “You’re not in charge here,” he said to Mike. “You can’t make any of us leave. And you can’t assume we don’t understand the danger.”

  “It’s for your own good,” Mike argued.

  “No,” Ian countered. “You don’t know that. You don’t know Rose. You don’t know any of us.”

  The dulcet tones of Ian’s sincerity bolstered Rose’s own confidence. “You tell him.”

  Mike looked back and forth between them, then glanced imploringly up to heaven and reached into his pocket for another cigarette. “Fine. Just don’t come crying to me when this blows up in your face.”