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

by Barbara J. Webb

  Either Todor’s choice or the faelock’s trail kept them off the better-lit, busier roads. They cut through alleys and side-streets Rose never would have dared walk on her own. A part of her hoped for some perfectly mundane criminal to harass them, if only to interrupt this torturous purgatory.

  “Rose.”

  She hadn’t even noticed Nazeem walking beside her. “What?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped.

  “You’re limping.”

  Stupid freaking vampire in his lightweight jacket who didn’t feel the cold and probably didn’t get blisters either. “You’re not helping.”

  “My apologies.” Rose could hear the amusement in his voice, could feel the now-recognizable shimmer of it inside him. “But if you are in real distress, you might consider a return to the hotel.”

  Rose shook her head, pulled her arms tighter in. “It’s a silly suggestion anyway. Like the padre would approve of me wandering off by myself.”

  “You wouldn’t have to wander far.” Nazeem tapped her elbow to pull her downcast attention, then pointed ahead. “Look.”

  Rose looked, out ahead, clear as anything, the golden dome of St. Isaac’s loomed over the buildings. She’d been so absorbed with her misery, she hadn’t noticed its creeping, malevolent approach. “All this just to get back where we started? If the faelock is right next door, I’m going to be pissed.”

  “The cathedral is where you saw him in your dream, was it not?”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t mean anything. That place is such a howling vortex of suck, I’d be more surprised if I dreamed of anyplace else. Still,” she looked ahead at Todor, who did seem to be trundling in St. Isaac’s direction. Like Ian—like all the folk they had met so far—Todor’s emotions were powerful, radiant. She’d be able to find him from two blocks away, blindfolded. “I guess it’s possible he’s hiding there—in the sense that anything is possible—but I can’t imagine I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  Todor led them right up to the cathedral, crossed the narrow band of grass that circled the building, and began to scratch at the stone wall. “What’s he doing?” Rose asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Ian watched the twisted little creature scrabble for another minute, then carefully approached. “Todor! Listen to me. Take me to the man who opened that doorway.”

  Todor spun around, sniffed the air, clawed at the grass, then screamed and launched himself at Ian. Ian was prepared, and a quick command of “down” stopped Todor mid-charge. Todor huddled in the grass, shaking and rocking.

  “Is the faelock here or not?” Mike growled. Mike wasn’t tuned in to Ian’s confusion like Rose, but he still didn’t need to take that harsh tone.

  “I don’t know why he led us here. It’s not like he can’t go inside St. Isaac’s, if the faelock is in there.” Ian looked all around, as though they hadn’t seen this area plenty of times. “It’s like he’s confused, like he can’t do what I’m telling him to do.”

  None of them could feel St. Isaac’s, and no matter how many times Rose had described it, she still didn’t think they really understood what this place was like. “Hey, guys, I have a thought—but you’ll have to tell me if this is even possible. If what Todor’s following—if it’s anything like the kinds of things I can sense—could he lose the trail if something else were giving off enough energies of a different sort? If the faelock went through St. Isaac’s—could that throw Todor off the scent?”

  “Like cutting through a stream to lose the hounds,” Nazeem murmured.

  “It’s possible,” Mike said. “Not a bad thought.”

  “Except it would mean he’s prepared for us hunting him.” This close to St. Isaac’s, Ian’s insides were more muted, like he stood in a thick fog, but the frustration in his voice was clear. “It would mean he’s still a step ahead.”

  Mike held up his left hand and the tiny silver crucifix dangling off his rosary began to glow. “Come on. Even if you don’t think he’s here, let’s make sure we’re not overlooking the obvious. A lot of your brand of magic seems to be good at hiding things. Let’s search this place, bottom to top, and make sure this faelock isn’t lurking under our noses.”

  Ian pointed at Todor. “Stay,” he commanded. The domovoi continued to snarl, but settled into a seated position on the grass.

  “Can we just leave him like that?” Rose asked. “What if…I don’t know…couldn’t he hurt somebody?”

  “No one will come near him.” Ian’s confidence wasn’t as reassuring as Rose would have liked. “He’s bound. He won’t go anywhere until I tell him to.”

  It would have to do. Rose didn’t have any better suggestions. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  They searched the cathedral, utilized every technique, every trick, every supernatural sense at their disposal, but they found no trace of the faelock.

  After a thorough investigation of the main floors, Rose led them to the staircase from her dream, the one that led up to the roof. In reality, it became a very different climb. The empty shadows didn’t give chase, which was a relief, but in the dream she hadn’t had to push so hard to get the exterior door to open against the wind, hadn’t felt the biting cold of it as she’d stepped out onto the narrow tourist walkway. In the dream, she hadn’t been so aware of just how high above the ground she was.

  Ian—the bastard—slid past her and leaned out over the metal rail to survey the city. His excitement radiated, as overwhelming to her othersense as the cold was to her body. “This view is amazing!” He turned, looked back at Rose. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  Rose hadn’t thought she was—she loved glass elevators in tall hotels and had once gone up in the CN tower in Toronto with her parents—but this felt different. Open, exposed, threatening. Not that she was about to admit that to Ian. “I’m fine.” She pushed away from the solid wall of the dome behind her, took the three steps necessary to stand next to Ian, next to the edge. “It’s just cold out here, in the wind.”

  Ian walked slowly around the circle and Rose followed, taking in the view, trying not to look down. Even the 50-foot-or-so distance down the the flat roof of the cathedral disoriented her. She felt dizzy, unstable. They weren’t that far up—what the hell was wrong with her?

  “Ian, wait, stop a minute.” Rose grabbed onto the metal railing to steady herself and closed her eyes. She tried to block out the cold, the roar of the wind, everything that wasn’t her othersense. Ian shone like a beacon in front of her. Nazeem’s alien swirls stood behind her, with an empty gap between them where Mike stood. Rose recognized, acknowledged, then pressed out beyond them.

  And yes, there it was. The strange vertigo. Not because of being up high—not because of anything she saw or felt with her physical body. This was something else. This was….

  “Magic,” she said. “Fairy magic. All around us.” She opened her eyes. “I didn’t notice it down below—I think St. Isaac’s drowned it out—but there’s something going on here.”

  Ian pulled his sword back out and Nazeem took a step back from Mike, who was two-fisting crosses again. Mike asked, “What’s it doing?”

  “How should I know?”

  Ian turned a slow circle; his insides were all business now. “What does it feel like? Describe it to me.”

  “It feels like being afraid of heights, I guess. Making me dizzy. Like the world is tilting.”

  “A glamor. A strong one, if it’s affecting all of us.”

  “Like an illusion?” Rose asked.

  Mike didn’t wait for Ian’s answer. “Where is it? What’s it hiding?” Rose noticed his rosary had started to glow. Like Ian, Mike rotated, trying to watch all directions at once.

  The answer came to them in the form of cascading, liquid laughter. From both sides of the walkway—between their group and the door back into St. Issac’s. Rose took a startled step back; her heel knocked against the railing.

  The darkness shimmered an
d slid away to reveal two inhumanly beautiful men in armor of frozen starlight. Each clung to the leashes of two snarling, red-eyed hounds so big they could have given nightmares to a buffalo. They shouldn’t even have fit on the walkway, and Rose’s head started to pound when her eyes tried to resolve them. The men and their fiendish dogs blocked any escape.

  One of the fairy soldiers—and what else could these be?—spoke. “Lord Pyotr sends his greeting.” He didn’t wait for a response. Neither of them did. The fairies opened their hands and the leashes snapped free as the hounds bounded forward, growling and snapping.

  Ian swung his sword and sparks erupted as the blade struck stone, but the hounds jumped away faster than anything that big should be able to move. One of them leaped up, landing on the curved dome roof at least fifteen feet above. Rose dragged her cross free of her pocket, but it seemed a puny defense against these monsters.

  “Be careful!” Ian shouted, swinging wildly to keep the hound in front of him back. A useless tip, as far as Rose was concerned. “The cu sith—they’re hunters. As bad as they look now, if they smell blood—like sharks, they frenzy.”

  A growl above her head was all the warning Rose got as the second hound came down from the roof. She got her cross up. It turned its head away, snapping at her sleeve instead of closing its jaws around her shoulder.

  It fell to the walkway between her and Ian. Rose tried to back away, bumped into Mike, whose glowing rosary drove the thing back further. But that trapped Ian between two of the beasts. Rose risked a glance for Nazeem, saw him sparring at the third hound with an iron spike. The fourth was on the far side of the walkway, hidden by the dome, but she could feel it—rage and fury and insane hunger—circling around the walkway. The fairy men had disappeared.

  “We can’t fight up here!” Ian backed against the railing, sliced uselessly at the beast that was more agile on the narrow walkway than any of them could manage.

  Mike had his hand out; Rose saw his eyes narrow. The cu sith between her and Ian slammed into the rail, its head pressed against the metal bars. It struggled and squirmed; Mike held it there, but Rose could see the strain of it in the lines of his forehead, the way his hand shook.

  “They chase blood?” Nazeem, of all of them, could match the creatures’ speed, but in the narrow space, he couldn’t maneuver around the hound’s snarling jaws.

  “Yes, so don’t—”

  At the word yes, Nazeem stabbed his own leg with the iron spike. The effect on the cu sith was instant. All of the visible three wheeled—or tried to wheel—towards him, and Rose heard a howl from the fourth.

  Mike dropped his hand. Rose yelled, “No!” as the released hound leaped over both of them to get at Nazeem. The one on Ian snapped and turned, and the fourth hound came running over the dome. All four dogs converged on Nazeem.

  Rose raised her cross, tried to run to help, but Mike grabbed her by the shoulders. The cu sith leaped, jaws wide, teeth flashing. As one, they landed on the vampire. The force of it drove him backwards, into the rotunda, against one of the windows. The glass shattered and Rose screamed as Nazeem and the dogs all fell through together, two-hundred feet to the floor below.

  * * *

  Mike dragged Rose back from the broken window. “Come on!” He shoved her along the walkway, rougher than he liked, but they needed to get away from this vulnerable position.

  Ian, bless him, was already running for the stairs back down. Rose finally clued in and started moving in the correct direction. Mike jogged behind her. He expected it was too much to ask that the fall would have killed those hell-hounds. Nazeem on the other hand—vampires were tough, and vampires were cautious about risking their unlives, but battlefield miscalculations were easy. Mike had caused enough of them to know that for a fact.

  Mike stopped at the door back into the cathedral nave, grabbed Rose by the collar of her coat. “Wait.”

  “But Nazeem—”

  “We can’t help him if we’re dead. Shut up a minute.” Mike closed his eyes, found his focus, the center of his power. Lord, our father, protect us from these unholy abominations. His rosary flared as he filled it with energy. A quick and dirty bit of magic, but hopefully it would do the job. “Here.” He wrapped the rosary around Rose’s wrist. “Don’t lose that.”

  He pushed through the door with a hand locked on Rose’s shoulder to keep her from running off. He heard snarling, snapping, a whine of pain, and the clang of metal striking stone, but could see nothing in the oppressive darkness. Mike summoned the energy for light, bright enough to illuminate the expansive room.

  Mike was surprised—and oddly pleased—to see Nazeem on his feet. The vampire had his back to one of the columns and wielded his iron poker like a flaming brand to keep the four hell-hounds at bay. In addition to the self-inflicted wound on his leg, patches of blood spread across his shoulder and at his side, but Mike couldn’t see how bad his injuries were.

  Shadows sparring on the wall drew Mike’s eye to the other side of the cavernous room, just as another clash rang out. Ian fought, sword against sword, with one of the fairy assholes that had set the dogs on them to begin with. One, but not both. Which meant the other could be lurking about, ready to pounce at any moment.

  “Where’s the other fairy?” he asked Rose.

  Rose stared, wide-eyed at the cu sith leaping at Nazeem. One of the dogs managed to catch Nazeem’s forearm—or maybe the vampire had left himself open, since he used the dog’s grip to drag it close enough he could drive the iron spike deep into its neck. The dog howled in expressive pain and terror, and Mike shook Rose to get her attention.

  “Hey! Focus! If the other one’s out there—if it’s under a glamor—I need you to find it.”

  “Nazeem needs help.” Rose’s hand locked in a knuckle-whitening clench around Mike’s rosary. “They’re tearing him apart.”

  To Mike’s practiced eye, Nazeem had the situation well in hand. Wounds that would have crippled a mortal man were nothing to a vampire, and his blood kept the cu sith’s focus away from more vulnerable members of the team. “He’s fine. Would you—”

  A blinding flash of light came from Mike’s rosary as the air before Rose shimmered. The second fairy knight—tall and cold and radiant—hissed and jumped back, attack aborted. The creature lifted its sword, and Mike met its glittering amethyst eyes over Rose’s head. In its face, he saw the blend of arrogance and cruelty Mike had believed unique to demonkind. The familiarity brought a grim smile to Mike’s face.

  Mike pulled Rose behind him with one hand as he raised the other to meet the fae sword. As shining steel fell towards vulnerable flesh, Mike sent a lance of power through his palm that drove the creature back. It staggered and snarled, all semblance of regal beauty abandoned to feral rage.

  It drove its sword into the marble floor, and the shadows in the doorway grew. Tentacles of darkness, smoking and dripping, reached out for Mike and Rose. One brushed against Mike’s face before he could get his iron cross up and the touch of it burned his skin like acid.

  “It’s not real!” Rose’s back pressed against Mike’s as more pseudopods of shadow grew behind. “It’s another glamor. It feels the same.”

  Which meant, if Rose was correct, there was no point trying to fight the swarming shadows directly. As they wrapped searing agony around his leg, his gut, Mike hurled fire at the knight—an apprentice’s trick that wouldn’t have made a demon or voider flinch, but the shadows lost their substance as the knight had to draw his own power to douse the flames. Mike tried lightning next, but it split around the fairy’s sword and dissipated.

  Risking a glance around the room, Mike realized he was on his own. Nazeem had put down one of the hell hounds, but he’d lost his iron spike in the process and now wrestled with the second of the monstrous beasts while the third tore at his leg. Ian was pressed into a corner, the hilt of his sword smeared crimson with his own blood, but Mike couldn’t tell if Ian was badly wounded or simply working his own kind of magic against the
knight whose furious blows he could barely counter. This was the greatest truth of the invisible war—no matter how you prepared, no matter how much experience against the supernatural you had, nine times out of ten you were still in over your head.

  The tenth time you were usually just fucked.

  * * *

  With her back turned, Rose couldn’t see anything of what was happening, but her othersense gave her all the information she needed. Nazeem’s pain—the first unmistakable feeling she’d gotten from the vampire. Ian’s pounding waves of excitement. The hunger and rage of the cu sith. The murderous joy of the fairy men.

  The padre would have been invisible, if not for his physical presence at her back. Rose wanted to ask him what he was doing, why he wasn’t blasting these guys, how she could help, but the words were an immovable weight in her mouth. All she seemed able to do was stand there and feebly swing the rosary at the writhing shadows around them, watch its light fade a little more each time one of the tentacles struck at her.

  Rose realized she was terrified.

  Even more, she knew she was helpless, that the only thing protecting her was Mike’s own weapon in her hand. Mike should have been over helping Nazeem or Ian with their own fights, but instead he was forced to stand here and protect her because she was just a sensitive, not some magically empowered warrior like the rest of them. The one thing she could do—the one thing that made her presence here worthwhile—she’d failed at. The fairies had snuck up on them. Twice, if you counted the knight coming out of nowhere just now and almost chopping her head off.

  Sudden heat surrounded her again as Mike sent another wave of fire at the fairy man who threatened them. Rose could have told him the fire was only an annoyance—the creature felt no real fear of it—but she had noticed the shadows faded while the fire blazed. Mike yanked her forward, dragging her along like so much dead weight—like the useless baggage she seemed to be. He pulled her through the doorway and out into the light of the room. He threw himself back against a wall and pulled her close in front of him. He grabbed her hand—the one that held his rosary—and the fading light flared bright again.