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

by Barbara J. Webb

  The shining man held out both hands and a gout of flame shot towards Mike. A demon’s trick, and one Mike had been defending against since he was a teenager. Rosary held high, Mike deflected the flames over and around him. “Try again.”

  “Take them!” the shining man hollered.

  Distracted, tired, and slow, Mike had forgotten about the four voiders who’d brought in the vampire. “Nazeem! Ian! Keep them off me!”

  To his left, the glow of Ian’s sword sliced through the air. Mike didn’t dare look away from the shining man to hunt for Nazeem in the shadows. The shining man flicked a finger at him and Mike focused his own power to pierce and deflate the wave of force coming at him. Mike was ready with his retaliation—an invisible hand pushing at the shining man. Mike made no gesture, gave no warning, and the shining man slid backwards through the air.

  Mike risked a glance down at the captive vampire. No ropes or chains bound him, but he lay perfectly still with eyes wide open. Bound by magic—it had to be.

  Mike’s feet flew out from under him in his moment of distraction and he was flying at high speed towards a wall. Mike brought up a hand, pushed his own energy against the wall, stopped himself. “Rose! Break the circle. Get the vampire out!”

  Below him, one of the enemy voiders stood dazed while Nazeem darted in and out of shadows to evade another. A fresh gout of flame pulled Mike’s focus back to his own opponent.

  The shining man wasn’t subtle; Mike didn’t think he had a lot of experience in fights like these, but he seemed to have an unending supply of power. Mike, on the other hand, was starting to feel taxed. He pushed himself back down to the ground, not wanting to fall unexpectedly if the shining man released him, and looked around for Rose.

  She’d kicked over a couple of the candles and had her hands under the vampire’s arms, dragging him towards the edge of the circle. To distract the shining man, Mike focused on the chandeliers nearest to where he hovered, pulled electricity through them and shot it towards the shining man. It didn’t touch him—electricity was one of the easiest forces to work with magic and a poor weapon against any voider—but it kept him focused on Mike.

  As Rose yanked the vampire across the edge of the circle, his paralysis fell away. He thrashed in Rose’s grip. That, Mike couldn’t hide. The shining man swooped towards them. Mike used the remaining circle of candles to fuel a wall of fire between them and the shining man. “Go! Move!”

  Rose and the vampire ran just as a cry near the door drew Mike’s attention. One of the voiders clutched at his stomach where Ian’s sword had left a wound gushing blood.

  “No!” the shining man yelled.

  Mike called on every reserve of power he had to shove the shining man to the ground and stop him from going after Ian. So much work. Who was this guy? What was this guy? No voider should have—

  Mike’s concentration almost broke as he suddenly realized what was going on. “Nazeem, Ian, get out!”

  Mike’s head was going to explode but he kept pushing energy over the shining man, holding him pinned. Mike could feel the power building under his spell, threatening to burst out. Mike wouldn’t be able to hold him. He was a little surprised he’d kept his spell going this long. The last time he’d dealt with a creature like this it had taken four veteran Templars to bring him down. Only two of the Templars had survived.

  Rose and the vampire ran for the door, but two of the voider minions cut them off. “The chapel!” Mike yelled. Rose turned, pulling the dazed vampire with her. He stumbled, fell. Rose tried to pull him up as Mike felt his hold on the shining man fracture. Then Nazeem was next to her, helping her.

  Rose ran through the chapel door. Then Ian. Then Nazeem, dragging the other vampire. Just as Mike lost his hold. The shining man exploded upward, free of Mike’s binding spell. Mike latched on to some of the shining man’s released energy, used it to propel himself through the air, around the other voiders, through the doorway. With the last dregs of his own power, he slammed the gilded door shut behind him.

  “It’s a dead end!” Ian’s voice, behind him. Mike risked a glance, saw Ian holding his side and a spreading stain of blood on Ian’s clothes. Another injury on Mike’s watch.

  Mike pressed his hands against the door. He felt the wave of power coming from the other side and sent his own energy like a spear to split it. Except his spear wasn’t strong enough. The shining man’s power crashed against the door. “Windows,” Mike said through clenched teeth.

  “No.” Rose said. “Everyone, stop a minute. Be quiet. There’s something here.”

  * * *

  The door shook beneath Mike’s hand as the shining man’s power struck again. “Rose, we don’t have time for this!”

  Eyes closed, hands held out before her, Rose turned in an unhurried circle. “Shush.” Her voice was low, relaxed. “Let me listen.”

  Another strike against the door and Mike refocused his power to hold it. Much more of this, and the door was going to shatter. “Nazeem, get the window!”

  “Nikolai, stay,” Nazeem commanded the rescued vampire. He let go Nikolai’s collar and grabbed one of the golden candelabras near the window. One swing and the stained glass shattered. Nazeem knocked the candles around the window’s edge, clearing away the shards, then stuck his head through at a listening angle. “They’re coming around the building.”

  “Over there.” Rose pointed at the wall behind the altar. Decorated in gilded tiles and precious stones, it drew the eye well enough, but Mike couldn’t see anything that would help them fight the shining man.

  They’d run out of time, anyway. “Ian, you go through first—”

  “Listen to me!” Rose grabbed Ian’s arm. “It’s our way out. Can’t you see it?”

  “Rose, I don’t—”

  “It’s a doorway. One of your doorways.”

  Ian wasted only a moment on disbelief. He ran over to the wall, ran his hand along it, then laughed out loud. “She’s right! It’s here! It’s hidden—I’ve never seen a glamor this strong. I never would have found it if Rose hadn’t pointed it out. The question is, is it safe?”

  Another blow and the door cracked beneath Mike’s hands. No more time. “Decide, Irish.”

  A gout of fire through the window made the decision for them. Nazeem jumped back, his shirt smoldering at the shoulder.

  “Go!” Mike yelled. “I’m right behind.”

  Nazeem dragged Nikolai towards the hidden doorway. Nikolai moaned and struggled as they got close to the altar, but even wounded, Nazeem was stronger. Or at least, more determined.

  Ian grabbed Rose’s hand and Rose screeched as Ian ran it along the edge of his sword. Ian rubbed the cut against his own sliced palm then slapped his hand against her forehead, her cheeks, and her other hand. “Come on!”

  Mike watched all this in slow motion as he drove all his power into bracing the door and planned the next few seconds. The moment he stepped away, the shining man would be through. If that happened—if he saw Mike running for the doorway—they’d never escape.

  Mike planted his feet, flattened his palms against the gilded door. He closed his eyes, reached for his center, for that point at the core of him where Mike no longer existed. The place where his body connected to the other side of the curtain. He reached down, reached through, opened the conduit as wide as it would go, then let the raw power flow through and tear it wider.

  The magic burned through him and Mike focused the pain, the heat, into the smooth metal beneath his hands. He pushed it through to the wood beneath. A molten core of power, surging, shaping, forging.

  When the next blow came from the other side, Mike reached out with his own power to grab it, to take it. The shining man wasn’t prepared. His energy snapped free, exploding into Mike’s own spell. The trick wouldn’t work twice, but it gave Mike the edge he needed.

  Voiders at the window, but a simple wave of force drove sent them flying back. Mike ran for the doorway. Behind him, more pounding and an angry yell as the sh
ining man tried to break through the gilded door that was no longer a door. Charred and warped, it was now secured to the wall in a seamless mass of metal.

  Mike felt the lurch, the flare of power as he crossed through the curtain and the gilded wall dissolved to reveal the strange tunnels through reality. He took a quick nose-count. Ian and the vampires looked much more awake and alert than they had on the outside. Rose’s bloodstained face was pale and her wide-eyed gaze darted about while the rest of her held frozen.

  Ian pointed up the tunnel. Mike nodded. They should move away from this doorway, just in case their pursuers could sense their proximity.

  Ian led them…Mike had no idea how far. He’d forgotten how disorienting this place could be. And dark. Ian’s drawn sword glowed with just enough light they could stay together, but Mike could hear he wasn’t the only one stumbling over the uneven “ground.” When Ian stopped, Mike dared to summon a light. Even that small magic burned, after the stunt he’d pulled back in the chapel.

  “Is everyone all right?” Mike asked.

  “Still breathing,” Rose said, “But that’s about all I can swear to.”

  “We shouldn’t linger.” With his eyes half-closed, Nazeem might have looked relaxed if not for the way his nostrils flared and his fist clenched. His other hand was tight on Nikolai’s arm. Mike remembered the way Nazeem had reacted the last time they’d been in the tunnels. Mike wondered if Nikolai was experiencing the same thing.

  The trouble was, “We can’t go back to the hotel. It wouldn’t be safe.”

  “We can’t stay in here.” Ian’s attention was also on the vampires, and even though he sounded calm and steady, Mike didn’t miss Rose’s appraising look at him, and then at Nikolai.

  “Where does this go?” Nazeem asked. “Where are we?”

  Ian still held his sword in one hand. The other, he laid against the tunnel wall. “The tunnels could lead anywhere. We don’t want the path to fairy tonight—”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Mike muttered.

  “But in theory, we could go anywhere we want. All I have to do is open a door in the right place from this side.” He stroked the wall, seemed to be listening. “If we always turn away from fairy, stay close to the edge of our world, we could aim for anything.”

  “The Winter Palace.” Rose didn’t hesitate.

  Neither did Mike. “No.”

  “Think it through, Padre. We need to get Nikolai back or Anastasia’s going to hold us personally responsible. And Nazeem is hurt.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, you won’t.” Rose’s tone had turned fierce. “You’re turning gray and your arms are blistered to the elbow and you’re still limping from the fight last night.” Rose pointed at Mike. “He doesn’t care, and he,” her finger moved to Ian, “isn’t going to argue against anyone playing the stoic hero, but someone here has to be concerned with your health, even if you aren’t.”

  It didn’t take a sensitive to recognize the guilt that flashed across Ian’s face. “I’m sorry, Nazeem. I didn’t realize.” Nazeem waved the apology away. Ian took a slow breath, then continued. “Rose is right. We should aim for the palace. If for no other reason than it’s close enough in the real world, we’ve got the best chance of finding it.”

  Mike knew what Ian didn’t say. Getting lost in here—Mike didn’t want to think about it. And what option did they have? The monastery had Andrei. They couldn’t take Nikolai to Revelations. And the potential for civilian casualties was too high if they fled to a hospital and the shining man found them.

  If the shining man came after them while they took shelter with the vampires…well now, that had a certain appeal. “So which way do we go?”

  “There,” Ian pointed down a tunnel that looked the same as all the rest. “I think.”

  Nazeem released Nikolai, stepped away from him, took a long slow breath through his open mouth. “It definitely leads away from—” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “They’re calling me,” Nikolai whispered, eyes wide. “I can hear them calling my name.”

  Nazeem took his arm again. “Best not to listen.” He nudged his head at Ian, a silent entreaty to lead on.

  Time was meaningless in the tunnels. Mike counted his steps to try to force his mind around some concept of space, even after they’d long passed the distance it should take to walk between St. Isaac’s and the Winter Palace. Rose and the vampires were more twitchy than Mike liked. Ian looked calm, focused, but Mike had to wonder how he appeared to Rose’s othersense.

  They reached a branch where Ian hesitated. He moved back and forth between each path, frowning. “Nazeem, which way goes closer to fairy?”

  Nazeem again let go of Nikolai to sniff at the two corridors. The Russian vampire made a sudden break for it, was past Ian before he could react.

  Nazeem jumped after him in a blur of motion. Mike held up his hand towards the tunnel and magic burned through him. Mike winced, closing his eyes. He heard the rumbling quake, felt the ground shudder as the roof collapsed ahead of Nikolai. Nikolai stopped, shielding his head. Nazeem tackled him, rolled them both through the dust, managed to restrain flailing arms and pushed Nikolai down to the ground.

  Rose and Ian ran up to help. Nikolai started screaming. Ian looked up and down the tunnels and Mike knew what he was thinking. Time was ticking away. “Make him stop, before they hear us.”

  Nazeem didn’t ask who Ian meant. He ripped a strip of cloth from his already ruined shirt and balled it up, shoved it in Nikolai’s mouth. “Mike,” Nazeem said, “can you bind him? Magically?”

  “Not reliably.” Not in the shape he was in. Not in this place.

  “Wait! Everybody be quiet.” Rose had her hand against the wall. Her eyes squeezed shut; her forehead wrinkled with effort.

  Mike waited, counting every heartbeat. Only a matter of time now before something found them. The smell of blood, Nikolai’s screams—something was going to notice. “Rose…,” he prodded.

  “Shh.” She felt along the wall, moving first in the direction they’d come from, then in the direction Nikolai had run. Ten feet, then twenty, climbing over the rubble Mike had created. She moved to the other wall. “Here,” she said. “I can feel the vampires on the other side.”

  That was enough for Ian. He stabbed his sword into the wall where Rose had indicated and the wall parted, opening to madness.

  * * *

  Rose pushed past Ian, desperate to get back into the world where she could breathe and think and feel. Nothing on this side was real and her othersense knew it, rebelling against all the evidence her eyes, her feet, her hands wanted to give. This wasn’t air that filled her lungs, wasn’t light that filled her eyes, wasn’t sound that came to her ears. Nothingness, a void, and the shadows of her friends. Too much longer and it would drive her mad, the duality of what she sensed and what she sensed.

  She ran out through the gap and stumbled as weight and sound and shape became real again. She so relished the regained connection between her ears and her insides, she didn’t immediately recognize the sounds of screams all around.

  The room was, of all things, a recreation room. A pool table, ping pong, several chess boards, and a big screen TV in the corner with what looked like a Wii plugged in. Hard to say what had been going on before Ian’s sword had come from nowhere and opened a hole in reality, but by the number of men and women running for the exits, it seemed to be quite the popular hangout for…someone.

  Rose’s gaze fell on a clock on the wall. Was it really so late? Had they been outside reality for so many hours? Or was time just different on the other side?

  Ian came through right behind her and grabbed a chess piece off a nearby board, tossing it back in among the rubble where it would be tough to see. Mike came next, clutching at the back of a chair for support as he stepped over the mushroom ring that looked really strange growing out of the marble floor. Nazeem dragged a still-struggling Nikolai through, pushing the half-crazed vampire down to th
e floor as he took in their new surroundings.

  “My, but you do know how to make an entrance,” came a dry voice from the door most of the room’s occupants had fled through. Wentworth.

  “Nikolai!” a woman screeched behind him. Wentworth stepped aside to let another vampire—Tatiana?—run into the room. Nazeem relinquished a now dazed Nikolai to her care.

  “I’m assuming there’s a story here,” Wentworth said, “but you all look like you’re about to collapse. Perhaps I could offer rest and some refreshment? And,” he eyed Ian and Nazeem, “some medical attention?”

  At this point, even the hospitality of vampires was welcome, as far as Rose was concerned. “You have a doctor on call?”

  “We keep a doctor on staff. It wouldn’t do to have any of our…guests…fall to illness.”

  And with that, Rose knew exactly who the people were they had frightened away. “Sorry if we upset your blood bank.”

  Wentworth waved the thought away. “It’s no matter. They’re easily startled. Too many ghost stories, I suppose.”

  Ian stepped forward. “Thank you. For the hospitality.”

  Wentworth smiled and looked over at Mike. Rose could tell he was waiting for confirmation from the padre. Mike knew it too, gritted his teeth, grumbled something. “I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t quite hear—”

  “Yes! Blast it, yes. We need your help.”

  Rose didn’t care for the enjoyment she felt from the vampire, but his words were polite enough. “We are most pleased to offer it. If you can keep your feet for a little longer, we should go inform her majesty that you have returned Nikolai to us.”

  “Let’s get it over with,” Mike said. Rose did note he put his crosses away. Ian, likewise, sheathed his sword.

  Wentworth led them through rooms that looked more lived-in than the parts of the palace they had seen before. The furniture was still elegant, the walls still painted and gilded, but there was more a sense of comfort than display to the arrangements. Rose suspected they were in the real living area of the palace, well off the tourist paths.