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

by Barbara J. Webb

  He raised a hand and St. Isaac’s faded; they floated in a void. “You are in danger as long as you stay in this city.”

  “Yeah, I know. By my count, you’ve tried to kill me twice now. Three times, if you count strangling me in our last dream together.”

  He floated towards her. Rose stood her ground—as much as she could with no ground to stand on—and didn’t flinch away when he laid a hand on her arm. “You can’t understand my obligations. The burdens I bear, the decisions I must face. I wish you no harm, but I cannot have you standing between me and justice.”

  He sounded genuinely concerned, genuinely kind. It made Rose shiver. She’d never met a grade-A psychopath before. “My friends and I—we’re going to stop you.”

  “Your friends.” He reached up, stroked her hair back. “My poor dear girl. How you’ve been led astray.” His grip on her arm tightened. “But where are your friends? Where have you all run to?”

  Rose tried to pull away but his grasping hand had the strength of steel. Around her, the void shifted. Shadows moved. Formed. Her room came into focus around them. “Oh my. You take sanctuary with the vampires.”

  Rose was pretty sure he’d seen too much. She struggled, clawed at him, but other than the fingers that held her, he had no substance. Her hands passed through him.

  “Do you know what they are? Do you know what they do?” His voice was a whisper in her ear.

  “Of course I do. And I’ll take their friendship over your justice any day.”

  “Little Rose.” His voice, the dream, was fading. “We shall see, my dear. We shall see. Come find me again in St. Isaac’s if you wish. Tonight.” Rose strained to hear the last words. “This ends tonight.”

  Rose jerked awake, her heart racing. She had no idea what time it was, but she didn’t dare try to go back to sleep. Not when the shining man could find her just like that. She’d already told him enough.

  She dressed and wandered out into the hall. She didn’t want to wake Ian or Mike; she wasn’t ready to face Nazeem again. She picked a random direction, wondering how much freedom the vampires would give her.

  As she wandered through the elegant rooms she was starting to accept as commonplace, she passed by other human inhabitants. Like Caroline, they all seemed content, happy. Happier than Rose had ever felt in any place she’d called home. What a crazy world.

  She felt Wentworth’s presence, over in a shadowy alcove, and thus didn’t jump when he spoke. “A restless night?”

  She considered ignoring him, just walking on by, but that wouldn’t do anything for future relations. Besides, it looked like she had a long night ahead of her. “It’s so hard to sleep well without my teddy bear and holy water.”

  He didn’t laugh—didn’t even smile—but Rose felt his amusement roll over her. The nook he sat in was just large enough for two chairs with a small round table between them. With nothing better to do, Rose took the empty chair.

  “You made an excellent impression on Anastasia tonight. I do believe she’s decided she likes you.”

  “Until we wear the wrong shade of blue or something and piss her off again.”

  Wentworth shrugged. “I won’t deny she can be unpredictable. All I can do is encourage you to take advantage of her good will while you have it.”

  So many questions Rose could have asked, if she only trusted Wentworth. So many things she wanted to know—about Anastasia, about Wentworth, about the vampires.

  About Nazeem.

  But even her questions would tell him things, give him power over her. Rose wasn’t ready to concede that to Wentworth. Instead, she waited for him to make the next conversational gambit.

  Which he did. “I’m curious to see what your next move will be. You and your friends have brought excitement to the city we haven’t seen in a while.”

  “So glad we could provide entertainment.”

  Wentworth studied her, his mouth a curving line around the pointed teeth her mind couldn’t quite focus on. She felt him reaching for that same stillness that made Nazeem so difficult to read. “There’s no need for hostility.”

  Rose shrugged. “Sorry. It’s just that I don’t like you very much.”

  Oddly, that summoned another wave of amusement. “It’s all right. You don’t have to like me.”

  He stood up and gave her a shallow bow. “You are a welcome guest of the palace tonight, Rose Daziani, but please be careful. While I am never offended by honesty, others in this house are not so tolerant.”

  He started to leave, but hesitated in the doorway. “Who knows,” he said, without turning to look at her, “you may grow to appreciate me for that fact alone.”

  Rose watched him go. Vampires and their mind games. She’d only known these people a week and already they were making her tired. Or maybe that was the sleep deprivation. Either way, she’d be happy to see the sun rise.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday Day

  Mike didn’t want to open his eyes.

  Why bother, when all he’d see was the room in the vampire palace where he’d been forced to beg for shelter? Why bother, when his first job upon waking, would be to figure out how to marshal two green kids and a vampire against two invincible enemies? Why bother when the only palatable theory he could force through his brain was that the last week had been a nightmarish delusion, because even Mike couldn’t believe God hated him this much?

  They’d sent him here alone, his holy masters. Thrown him in with the vampires and the heretics, hung him out to dry. What he’d suspected before was now painfully clear. His late-night call to Stan after everyone else was in bed had made that clear.

  “I can’t help you, Mike.” Stan had sounded awake, not utterly exhausted. And why not? What had he been doing all week?

  Mike had no patience for it. “That’s bullshit. Call Rome. This is the real thing, a demon-sworn. Tell them that.”

  “You don’t understand. I was given instructions…” The line hissed as the silence stretched out across the ocean. “I’m sorry, old friend. You’re on your own.” And Stan had hung up.

  On his own.

  When a hesitant knock came from his door, Mike considered ignoring it. Even as he pushed himself out of the bed and went to answer. Of course it was Rose standing there. Intruding. Interrupting. Her special gift. “What?”

  “Can I come in?”

  Mike could have shut the door in her face—since she wasn’t bleeding or on fire, she could wait until he’d at least had a cigarette—except there had been a strange note in her voice. Chalk it up to exhaustion or fear—hers or his, didn’t matter—but something in her tone, in her posture, caught his attention. “What is it?”

  “He knows where we are. The shining man, I mean. I had a dream—”

  “Get in here.” Mike pulled her into the room.

  The clock on the wall said it was almost ten o’clock already. “When did you have this dream?”

  “Last night.” Rose sat, her baggy, borrowed clothes and shadowed eyes a bleak contrast to the gold and velvet settee. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Mike sighed, but gestured for her to continue.

  “He found me in my dreams. Again. I didn’t think to have Ian do…whatever he did back in the hotel. He knew where I was, Mike. Where we are.”

  And with that, Mike realized what was different. Rose was scared, and for once, wasn’t trying to pretend otherwise. “Did he say anything else?”

  “He said it ends tonight.” She looked up, a flash of the more familiar Rose in her eyes. “Which is great, because I could use a couple vacation days.”

  Mike sat down on the edge of his rumpled bed. “It’s not going to be that easy.”

  “I kind of figured.”

  She fell silent, watching him, and Mike realized she was waiting for him to say what came next. For the first time since he’d met her, Rose didn’t have any ideas of her own what they should do. It would have made Mike laugh, if he wasn’t feeling exactly the same.

&
nbsp; Fine for Rose—a valuable teaching moment, even, but Mike was supposed to know what he was doing. “Look, kid….” Mike searched for something reassuring to say. But what could he honestly offer her right now?

  “Wait. Ian and Nazeem are coming.”

  A moment later, the knock on his door. Ian and Nazeem, as advertised.

  “We made an impression,” Nazeem said as he came in and took the other half of the settee. “Nikolai has been talking about his rescue to anyone who will listen.”

  “Isn’t that good?” Rose asked, challenging. Even considering the grimness of their situation, Mike couldn’t deny his amusement at hearing that tone directed at the vampire rather than him.

  Nazeem was as calm and cool as ever. “Good for us politically. Problematic if we’re trying to hide.”

  “Hiding isn’t going to get us anywhere.” Mike went back to sitting on the bed as Ian claimed the last chair in the room. Fancy as they might be, these rooms were not well appointed for strategy meetings.

  Ian, Mike noted, hadn’t bothered to put on shoes yet, but he still carried his sword. “I checked the doorway I opened last night. This side closed just fine, which is great. But I have to say, the one in St. Isaac’s, that’s been bothering me all night. For a doorway to be hidden like that, it’s magic I’ve never seen or even heard of.”

  “Aren’t they all hidden?” Rose asked.

  “Not from me. If that was a glamor of the folk hiding it, it was one even I couldn’t see through. And I’ve never even heard of that.”

  If Mike had wanted a sign none of the others knew what they had faced last night, this was it. Nazeem was thinking about vampires; Ian was thinking about the folk. Which was fine—that was what they’d been hired to do, after all. But it meant Mike was the only one who understood how much the stakes had been raised. “We’ve got bigger problems, Irish.”

  “Our villain has revealed himself,” Nazeem said with soft gravity. So maybe the vampire had some clue.

  “Not really,” Ian countered. “It’s not like we could see him. We still have no idea who he is.”

  Rose said, “We know he’s a voider. That much he can’t hide from me, no matter how many flashy light shows he does.”

  “We know more than that.” Mike had never tried to explain this to someone who wasn’t already a Templar. Frame of reference was important, and none of these people were voiders. “Ian, your faelocks, they get the way they are because the make a deal with something from the other side—they gain a connection to power that isn’t theirs, right?”

  “Well, sure, but this guy wasn’t a faelock. Even if Rose hadn’t known, I could tell you that.”

  “No he wasn’t, but your folk aren’t the only things that live on the other side of the curtain. And faelocks aren’t the only men who make bargains.

  “Imagine, if you will, someone who isn’t a regular, everyday Joe. Imagine someone who has already crossed over partway, who already has access to power.”

  “A voider,” Rose said quietly.

  Mike nodded. “We voiders don’t cross over in the same way, in the same places as Ian’s magic takes him. We have our own monsters to fight.”

  “Demons,” Ian supplied. They’d talked about those on the very first night.

  “So he’s, what, possessed?” Rose asked.

  “No.” As much to have something to do with his hands as anything, Mike pulled a cigarette out of his jacket, which hung close by on the bed post. “If it were just a matter of possession, we wouldn’t be having this talk. That’s kids’ stuff.”

  He lit up, took a long, slow drag. “Exorcisms are about little demons. Disconcerting the first few times—takes a while to get used to things that hate you so completely you can feel it in the air.” Rose smirked at that, but said nothing. “Still, it’s all sound and fury. When they’re bound in a body like that, they can twist the possessee’s head up and down six ways from Tuesday, but they can’t do much to anyone else.

  “When demons are walking around free, it’s a different matter, but with the little ones, you still don’t have much to worry about. The ones that were born in Hell, they radiate it. People shy away from them on instinct.” Mike closed his eyes and sucked so much air through his cigarette a good half of it burned away. He held it in, fighting the urge to cough, then blew a long stream of smoke. “It’s the first ones—the fallen ones—that’s where we run into trouble.”

  “You mean like fallen angels?” Rose asked with wonder.

  “Yeah. Exactly. Those are the demons you’re not going to know walking down the street. Even you, Rose. They look and sound human. Or not. They can pass for whatever they want. Even to a sensitive. They lie and they hate and they want nothing more than to watch humanity tear itself apart. They’re the ones that make deals with voiders who are too greedy or too dumb to know any better. After that, all they have to do is sit back and watch.”

  “Watch what? Or is this a power corrupts kind of thing?”

  Nazeem answered Rose before Mike could. “I wouldn’t imagine the sort of men who make deals with demons need much corrupting.”

  “Sometimes, yes. Although the just-plain-greedy ones are easier to deal with. They’re dangerous, but not necessarily focused.”

  Rose took a sharp breath. “The shining man—his grudge against the Black Fist. He’s on a crusade. He said I couldn’t understand his burdens. He said we stood between him and justice.”

  The ones who’d sold their souls for a cause—in all Mike’s experience, they were the worst.

  “We could always just give him Andrei and Poulov,” Ian said, not quite joking.

  They’d taken Ian’s father. Mike shook his head. “Even if I thought that might stop him—”

  “It wouldn’t,” Rose interrupted, sounding very sure of herself. “Last night proved he’s already branching out. Even after he’s killed Andrei and Poulov, he’s not going to quietly retire. He’s just going to find new crimes that need avenging. And my guess is, we’ll be right up at the top of his list. Nazeem killed one of his men that first night.”

  Ian reached out to touch his sword where it leaned against the wall beside his chair. “And last night, I killed another.”

  Rose nodded. “If I’m understanding this guy correctly, he’s going to want blood for blood.”

  Which put them back around to the question Mike had been wrestling with all morning. Ian was the one who said it out loud. “So what do we do?”

  “Padre, you’ve dealt with guys like this before,” Rose said. “How did you do it?”

  “Well, first off, I always had a team.”

  “You’ve got a team,” Ian said with a sincerity that made Mike cringe.

  “A team of voiders.”

  That shut everyone up. Briefly. Until Rose said, “He’s going to be in St. Isaacs again tonight. And I got the feeling, if we don’t go to him, he’ll come after us.”

  “And the shining man isn’t our only problem,” Ian said.

  Because a demon-sworn voider wasn’t enough. “Tell me we’re not going to have an issue with the folk.”

  Rose groaned. Ian shrugged. “All that magic that got thrown around last night, plus the fact we went through the doorway—I expect they’ll be sniffing around, looking for prey.”

  “Is it too much to ask that they’d go after the shining man?” Rose asked.

  “I can’t say what they’d do in the same room together, but it would be suicidal to hope it would work out in our favor.”

  Mike ground his cigarette in an ash tray that looked like it might be made of gold. “Okay, so we’ve got two big problems staring us in the face. The shining man—we know what he is and where he’s going to be. We just need the firepower to bring him down. The folk may or may not show up, but if they do, there’s no way we can fight two battles at the same time.”

  “We know that St. Isaac’s door is there,” Rose said. “Can we close it before tonight?”

  Ian shook his head. “Sun’s up. We’r
e stuck…” he trailed off, a thoughtful look in his bright eyes.

  “What?” Mike pressed.

  “It’s possible…” Ian tapped his fingers on his knee, thinking. “A circle—a huge circle around St. Isaac’s. One that includes the doorway. It’s possible I could block them off so they couldn’t get in.” He looked up at the clock. “I’d have to get supplies from the hotel. And even with help, it’ll take a while.”

  Sunset came not long after four—less than six hours away. “Then let’s get moving.”

  * * *

  The golden dome of St. Isaacs shone bright in the morning sun, but still it sent a shiver through Rose. “Guys, hold up.” The morning air was crisp with frost. It served as a slap against Rose’s mind, waking her up on the short walk from the Winter Palace back to the hotel. The sleepy, fearful malaise she’d felt since her dream of the shining man finally burned away.

  St. Isaacs had changed. Its dark malevolence was awake, hungry.

  “What is it?” Mike asked, scanning the street.

  Rose said nothing. She turned away from the hotel entrance, walked around the building to the open square on the other side to get an unobstructed view of the cathedral. Mike and Ian followed.

  St. Isaac’s loomed like a monster. No cars or buses were parked in the streets around it. Rose, Mike, and Ian were alone in the square. Last night had been the second night in a row they’d fought in the cathedral, the second night in a row they’d broken windows and left both glass and blood strewn about. Rose would have expected locked doors and police tape—or whatever the Russian equivalent was—but there was no sign anyone had noticed.

  “It’s empty,” she said.

  Ian’s forehead wrinkled, like he was fighting a headache. “It wants to be. Even I can feel that.”

  “Yeah,” Rose said. “Someone turned the evil church up to eleven.”

  Mike dropped a hand onto each of their shoulders. “All the more reason to get done what we’re here to do. C’mon kids; stay focused.”

  Rose let herself be directed back to the Astoria, where Ian could gather the tools he needed.

  In the lobby, the desk clerk waved urgently at them. “Miss Daziani, you have message.”