The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume Two

by Lindsay Smith

  Would the Host be stupid enough, frightened enough, to run into the basement?

  Tanya descended. A sense of dread swarmed over her, and with each step it pulled tighter, choking the breath out of her.

  “Maksim,” she sang out, as if calling a reluctant cat. “Maksim, I only want to speak with you.”

  The lie rolled off her tongue and disappeared into the dark space surrounding the light bulb’s glow. Tanya stopped at the bottom step and peered around the basement. Was that a flicker of movement? She hoisted her gun. Something was wrong, not with the basement, but with her—

  And then, with a gasp, she pressed one hand against her coat, where Zerena’s charm should have been. But it was gone. The air rushed out of her. The charm had protected her from the gunfire upstairs; she was certain of that. She must have lost it in the fight. No matter. She just needed to find the Host, to complete her mission. His death was the easiest way out.

  “Maksim!” she called out again. She stepped off the stairs and onto the packed dirt floor. She swung her head around, then stepped past the line of light. She blinked twice, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

  “I only want to help you,” she said softly, and Andula’s face flickered in her head. Andula terrified on the street after the construct attacked; Andula frowning in her apartment, about to say yes; Andula lying cold and still and only half-alive on an Ice barge in the middle of the Vltava.

  “It’s the only thing that can help you,” she whispered, more to herself.

  Something clicked in the darkness.

  Tanya tensed. She recognized the sound of a gun barrel locking into place.

  “Drop your weapon.”

  She recognized that voice, too.

  “Gabe,” breathed Tanya.

  “Drop it, Miss Morozova.”

  “There’s no need to be so formal.” She was still looking into the darkness. She thought she could feel Gabe’s breath on the back of her neck.

  “Tanya.” A pause. “Please.”

  Maybe it was the please, that tiny hint of politeness. Tanya laid her gun on the ground and lifted her hands into the air. And then she turned around, slowly, her heart pounding in her throat. Had the Host ever been down here? Had it been Gabe all along?

  He stood with his feet planted apart, his gun pointed at her chest. The light from the bare bulb haloed around him, smudging his features into unreadable shadows. Tanya stared at him. Nadia and Alestair and the Ice be damned; she was ready to die. The moment Ilia kicked that door down, she had assured her humiliation and the humiliation of the KGB.

  And for all that, the Host was still alive. Still at risk from the Ice and the Flame.

  “What the hell does the KGB think it’s doing?” Gabe asked. The muzzle of his gun yawned at her.

  “Stopping a defection.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Like this?” Gabe said. “Really?”

  “Shoot me,” Tanya said. “I know you’re only doing your job.”

  Gabe frowned. Tanya watched his finger tap against the gun, her calm like an anesthetic. She felt nothing.

  But then he let out a long exhalation, and the gun dropped away, out of sight. He squeezed his eyes shut and ran his free hand over his face, mussing his hair. Tanya felt a lightness that she realized was relief.

  Maybe she hadn’t been so ready to die, after all.

  “He’s not here,” Gabe said. His hand fell to his side. “Sokolov. We had a plan in place, and we got him out of here before the gunfire started. Did the KGB brass seriously think this was worth it?” Gabe let out sharp, disbelieving laugh. “You kick our door down, start firing guns—it’s practically an act of war.”

  “It was an act of desperation,” Tanya said. But of course it was more than that. This wasn’t just about stopping a defection, and it wasn’t just about the KGB, either. That was merely a convenient side effect. At its core, this was the Flame sending an Ice sorcerer to her death.

  “You have to bring him back to me,” Tanya said in a low, dangerous voice. “This is bigger than you think—”

  “Why? Because he’s a Host?”

  Tanya gasped, took a step backward. Her heel knocked into her gun and sent it clattering away.

  “Yeah, I figured it out.”

  “How?” Tanya stared at Gabe, trying to work through this revelation. In the dim light his eyes were sunk into shadows, and he looked eerie, like he was capable of real magic, after all. “Was it Jordan? That woman, she doesn’t understand—”

  “No, it wasn’t Jordan.” Gabe stepped toward her. His gun glinted at his side. Tanya curled her fingers, wishing she hadn’t capitulated so easily. “My goddamn hitchhiker let me in on it. Went off like a warning bell.” His voice was tight with anger. “That’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t it? So you can lock him up in that nightmare barge?”

  Tanya recoiled as if she’d been slapped. Had he seen in the darkness? She hoped not. “You don’t understand what’s at stake,” she hissed. “If the Flame got hold of him—” Or the Ice.

  “I’m not handing him over to you,” Gabe snapped. “He’ll be safer in America.”

  “You don’t know that. The Flame operates everywhere. Don’t be blind, Gabriel. Give him to me. I can keep him safe.” She stressed the I, a bit of desperation. Maybe he’d see he didn’t have to give the Host to the Ice, only to her, and that she might find some other way.

  “Give it up, Morozova.” Gabe jerked his chin toward the stairs. “Now get the hell out of here before you make the KGB look any worse.” A dark expression flared over his features. “Not that I give a shit.”

  “You don’t understand what you’re doing.”

  “I understand fine.” Gabe stepped away from her. She didn’t move, didn’t reach for her gun. His gun stayed hanging at his side.

  He hesitated at the base of the stairs, and for a moment Tanya thought he’d changed his mind, that he’d seen reason, that he couldn’t protect the Host from the Flame or the Ice.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  Tanya glared at him.

  He bounded up the stairs, disappearing into the light above. For a moment Tanya stood in the darkness, and then, as if a switch had been flipped, she followed him, just in time to see him sprint out the front door of the house. Tanya stood at the top of the basement stairs, her heart hammering. She knew she should tail him to the Host’s new location and continue with her mission. But he’d be watching for her. He certainly wouldn’t let her kill the Host; he would never see that was the only way. And that made her realize she was too tired to follow through with her plan. Too defeated. She was starting to hear things, too—she was certain someone was calling her name, a distant voice like a dream. Grandfather, she thought stupidly, and then she realized, no, it was a woman’s voice. Nadia. It was Nadia calling her.

  “Tanya! Are you clear?” A pause. “You better not be dead!”

  There it was again. Relief. Relief that Nadia wasn’t dead, either.

  “Clear!” she called back. “Where are you?”

  “In the kitchen!” Nadia shouted, and Tanya wove her way through the back of the house. The kitchen was small and bathed in yellow light, the floor tiles cracked and dirty. Nadia was slouched at a rickety kitchen table, her gun resting beside her. She smiled when she saw Tanya.

  “Not dead after all,” she said.

  “The defector’s gone.” Tanya almost said Host, but Ilia was in the kitchen too, leaning up against the far wall. “They knew we were coming somehow. They probably took him away before we even got here.” She didn’t say anything about Gabe. The thought of him sent anger seething inside of her. Didn’t he understand what he was doing, how he was putting the Host at risk? At least Tanya had found a way to serve both her country and the Ice. Gabe only cared about his country, about getting that brilliant mind to American science. All he’d seen and he still didn’t recognize the real threat.

  “I assumed as much.” Nadia gestured at Ilia, who straightened,
ready to do as a superior officer asked. “Go look for clues,” she told him. “See if you can find where the Americans took the defector.”

  Ilia nodded and ducked out of the kitchen. Tanya and Nadia stared at each other.

  “We got lucky,” Nadia murmured. “The Host not being here.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true.” Nadia swung her legs in an arc as she stood up. She grabbed her gun off the table. “I don’t think we should go after him, either, but we need to make it seem as if we tried. For Sasha’s sake.”

  Tanya whirled away and marched out of the kitchen. She had no right to be angry, not when she had let Gabe run off without following. But she also didn’t agree with Nadia. Not really.

  “I’m going to see what I can find,” she said, and she stalked into the hallway. If she couldn’t find the defector, then at the very least she could find Gabe, to try one more time to make him understand the urgency of this situation. That it wasn’t just about the KGB. And yet he was so blind in his patriotism that he couldn’t see it.

  Tanya ducked into one of the doorways halfway down the hallway and switched on the lamp. It was a living room, with a shabby, threadbare couch, a beat-up old table. Someone’s mug of coffee was still resting next to a chess game. Tanya sighed. Always the chess games.

  She walked over to the table. The game had been interrupted by their raid; one of the white pawns lay on its side, askew. She reached over and set it back up. Then she stopped, her hand hovering midair. Something about the arrangement of the board struck her as—familiar.

  But that was nonsensical. She did not have time to play chess these days. The only time she ever even saw chessboards was in Sasha’s office. All those boards set up like this one, games frozen in time as he waited for his opponent to write him with the next move.

  And then Tanya’s whole body went cold.

  “No,” she whispered. She pushed the chessboard around so she could get a better look at the positions of the pieces. “No.”

  She had seen this board before. She had looked at the pieces without looking at them, and yet now she saw them for the first time. In a different place, a different situation.

  Tanya’s throat was dry. She backed away from the board, one hand out to steady herself.

  Sasha and his correspondence chess. All this time, he had been playing with an American. The KGB Chief of Station did not socialize with Americans outside of the diplomatic circuit, even if it was just a game of chess. But if he was thinking as a Flame operative, perhaps he did not see his opponent as an enemy.

  Tanya had to find Gabe. Now.

  3.

  The phone jangled through the silent apartment. Gabe rolled over onto his side; he’d been lying in bed, but hadn’t been sleeping. He couldn’t sleep. He kept seeing goddamn Tanya, standing there in the yellow light of the safe house’s basement. He’d lured her down there during the firefight, after Dom had whisked Sokolov out to safety. Maybe he’d been trying to keep his word to Alestair, to keep her safe. Maybe not.

  Gabe kept thinking about how terrified Sokolov had looked when they told him they were moving him again, that there was a chance the Russians knew where he was. Terrified and betrayed, like it was their fault the Russians were acting like maniacs. The hitchhiker had throbbed in Gabe’s head, a slow, steady pulse, as Sokolov pulled on his coat and Dom whispered to Gabe, “Don’t you worry, I’m taking him to the most secure location I know.”

  The phone was still ringing. Gabe pushed off the bed and ambled toward it, his chest tight. He wondered what message waited for him on the other end. Something encoded, no doubt, an unknown voice asking a nonsense question. Maybe they’d be telling him Sokolov was secure. Or maybe they’d be telling him Sokolov was dead.

  Either way, Gabe knew he had to pick up the phone.

  “Hello?” he said. He leaned up against the wall and waited.

  “Gabe?”

  “Jordan?” The last person he had expected. But hearing her voice stirred up a whole new storm of fears—had Tanya gotten ahold of Sokolov somehow, dragged him off to the Ice? Had she followed him when he left the safe house? He’d taken the necessary precautions, was sure she hadn’t.

  “Oh good, you picked up.” Jordan’s voice was fuzzy through the phone lines. “Your little KaGeBeznik friend is here. She needs to talk to you. Says it’s urgent.”

  Gabe stiffened. “She just fucking attacked us. She’s not my friend.”

  At least she hadn’t followed him.

  A pause. Muffled voices on the other end. Then Jordan came back on the line: “She insists it’s not about that.”

  Gabe clenched phone and considered hanging up. “Bullshit.”

  Jordan dropped her voice to a low whisper. “She looks terrified, Gabe. Something’s not right. I think you need to talk to her. I’ll be here the whole time.”

  “It’s her job to look terrified,” Gabe snapped. “When she wants to.”

  “And it’s my job to know when people are lying. You want my advice? You need to come down here. See what’s going on. She won’t tell me anything.” And then Jordan hung up the phone. Had to make sure she got the last word in.

  Gabe stared down at the receiver, the dial tone whining in the distance. He sighed and set the phone down. He wouldn’t say he was convinced, exactly, but he also knew Jordan wouldn’t jerk him around. He could give a shit if Tanya looked terrified. But Jordan sounded scared, and that had him nervous.

  He pulled on a clean sweater, his boots, and a coat, and stepped out into the cold night.

  • • •

  A figure stepped out of Gabe’s apartment building, and Josh sat up in the seat of his car and peered through his binoculars to get a better look. Even in the gloomy light of the streetlamps, he’d recognize Gabe’s broad frame anywhere.

  Josh tensed his fingers against the binoculars. “Don’t do this to me,” he murmured, and he told himself that this wasn’t what it looked like, that Gabe probably just needed to walk off the extra adrenaline from the firefight at the safe house earlier. Except—

  Except Josh had seen him. Seen him in the basement. After helping Dom escort Sokolov outside to safety, he’d come back inside through the basement entrance, hoping to get the jump on the KGB upstairs. But instead he saw Tatiana Morozova. And he saw Gabe, lowering his weapon and telling this known KGB officer that the defector was gone.

  Josh had felt the world tightening around him, when he saw that.

  Gabe made his way quickly down the street, hands tucked in his pockets, head tilted down. Josh almost considered turning on the car’s engine and driving away. Gabe was his partner. He had to trust that his partner was doing the right thing.

  But the doubt still lingered in his chest like the last vestiges of a bad flu.

  Josh slid out of the car, careful to avoid making noise. Gabe was far enough ahead of him that it probably didn’t matter. Still, he was a seasoned professional—he knew the same tailing techniques Josh did. But Josh wasn’t about to let himself get caught.

  He followed several paces behind Gabe, keeping his steps soft and quick. Gabe, for his part, didn’t hesitate, didn’t make any sudden turns and disappear down some convoluted path. In fact, it didn’t take long for Josh to realize where Gabe was headed: Bar Vodnář. He recognized the buildings around here, even in the dark, and sure enough, the bar materialized up ahead, the windows glowing golden in the darkness.

  Was this it? Just Gabe going out for a late drink after a nightmare of an exfiltration op?

  Gabe banged on the door, and Jordan answered like she was expecting him. Gabe disappeared inside. Josh slipped forward. He just wanted to confirm that his suspicion was only paranoia, absurd and unfounded. He sidled up alongside the bar, breezed past the windows without stopping. It was easy to peek inside, with the lights turned on, and the night so dark.

  But what Josh saw inside turned him as hard and cold as stone. Gabe wasn’t the only one looking for a late night drink.

>   Tatiana Morozova was waiting for him.

  • • •

  Bar Vodnář’s windows were lit up like Jordan had kept the place open late. The door was locked, though, and Gabe banged on it, then tucked his hands into his coat to keep them warm. A few seconds later, the door swung open, and Jordan sighed when she saw him.

  “She’s waiting for you.”

  She stepped aside and Gabe went in. The floor gleamed; the chairs were all sitting on top of the tables, legs up. Tanya waited in a booth at the far end of the room, sipping from a glass of beer. She peered up at him, her eyes huge and haunted in the golden light.

  “What the hell do you want?” he asked.

  “You’re Flame.”

  This was the last thing Gabe had expected. He looked over his shoulder to find Jordan, ready to see what she thought about this madness. But Jordan had vanished. I’ll be here the whole time, his ass.

  “She promised she’d let us talk alone.”

  Gabe turned back to Tanya, who was peering at him over the top of her beer.

  “I’m not doing this with you,” Gabe snapped, and for a moment he was back in the basement of the safe house, ready to shoot through Tanya’s heart. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not after the conversation with Alestair, and not with her watching him the way she had. Christ. He’d never been one to let sentimentality get in the way of his work.

  “You lied.” Tanya’s voice pitched into a mocking singsong. “Oh, my headaches; oh, let’s call up a golem.” She paused. “You knew all along.”

  “I have no goddamn idea what you’re talking about.” Gabe stomped across the room. Tanya didn’t take her eyes off him. He slid into the booth across from her. “I hate this magic shit. Why the hell would I be Flame?”

  Tanya’s frightened expression wavered. “Then you’re stupid,” she told him, “and can’t see the Flame man under your own nose.”

  Gabe rolled his eyes and slouched back against the seat. “My men are loyal,” he said. “I don’t have any spies on my team. Sorry you don’t have that kind of assurance in the KGB.” He paused. “And sorry you didn’t get your man,” he added sarcastically. “Sokolov is safe, and this magic nonsense isn’t going to get me to give him up.”