***
Brielle had befriended Mary at the local library where Mary took Leo for storytime. The librarian who did the baby storytimes, Miss Diane, was wildly popular and her sessions were always packed full. Brielle volunteered along with another young woman, who helped manage the crowds.
Brielle hadn’t been fooled for a moment by Mary’s attempts to explain away her burns and bruises, but she hadn’t pushed. She’d played this role enough times to know how best to approach women in bad situations, and this time she’d had some unexpected help.
On one particular morning, the motanka doll had ridden along in the diaper bag to the library, faceless head poking out of the top of a purple Velcroed pocket. It had recognized Brielle at once, or rather, had recognized her as bearing Laelia’s mark. Brielle had been surprised to see one of the ancient ones from back home. It had only happened once before that she could recall in the last ninety or so years. Once she put everything together with Mary’s story, though, it all made sense.
You! Mavka! Come here now, the doll had hissed urgently from around the corner of the picture bookshelf.
Brielle went.
“Yes, mother?” she’d whispered, kneeling in front of the shelf, ostensibly straightening the books.
Is your mistress nearby? Can she help this girl?
“She can, but the girl must choose her own path. You know the rules, mother.”
Tak, tak. But this girl, she needs the help. This cholovik, this husband, the doll spat. He is no man. He is monster.
“Yes, mother. I will talk to her. There are things she needs to do, to prepare.”
Tell me these things.
“Yes, mother.”
Brielle did her best to explain green cards and ATMs and text messages to the centuries-old goddess spirit within the doll. It went about as well as one would expect.
***
The text response came back immediately, as though it wasn’t past midnight, and as if it was anticipated. It was coded as Mary had been told to expect, in case the wrong eyes were to see it.
“Your prescription will be ready for pickup in 45 minutes. Please come to the east door.”
An icy finger of fear touched Mary’s heart. An hour from now, she would either be free, or dead.
***
She dressed, slowly. She had to put in a pad. She wasn’t sure exactly what all was bleeding because everything hurt, but whatever it was wasn’t stopping. She couldn’t manage buttons or zippers, or even socks, she discovered. She frowned at that. It was cold outside.
Use these, the sun-bird said. Its voice didn’t seem muffled despite its being rolled up and stuck into a side pocket of the diaper bag.
Next to her feet appeared a pair of the shearling boots that had been popular for a while. They were slip-on; she could manage that. Sweat pants, a big t-shirt, and her coat. She stood shakily and looked around the room.
Don’t dawdle, child, the motanka doll whispered from her usual pocket of the diaper bag, her head sticking out, eyelessly watching. Go, child. Quietly. Get the baby. You need to go, now!
Listening closely to their instructions, she put the bag over her right shoulder. She wasn’t sure how she was going to carry both it and the baby, but it was important. She knew that. She crept silently across the thick carpet of the master bedroom suite and out into the hallway, then slipped through the double doors that led to the second floor landing.
Mary tiptoed down the carpeted hallway to the baby’s room. She gathered him in his blanket and strained to lift him from his crib. An explosion rocked her ribcage and she gasped for breath, then immediately wished she hadn’t.
Damn that rib, the sun-bird muttered. Mary, take shallow breaths. You just have to get to the door. Help is coming.
The new pain sent a shot of adrenaline through Mary’s system. She wobbled, hanging on to Leo’s crib for support. Every cell in her body screamed at her to just stop, just collapse. Sink down and die. She staggered, her vision fading in and out.
Then Leo opened his sleepy eyes and reached up his arms. Strength flooded her and she gathered him up again in his blanket. She boosted him up over her shoulder, trying to avoid touching her sore ribs and inhaled his baby sweetness. He nuzzled his little face into her neck and fell back asleep.
Mary took a shallow breath, turned, and walked out the door. She used the back stairway to the kitchen. It was farther from the master bedroom and closer to the east door. She navigated the stairs carefully, leaning against the wall and taking one careful step at a time. When she reached the kitchen she was seeing black spots again. She took a moment and gathered herself. The east door was off the kitchen, through the laundry room. From there it was just a few steps through the back gate out to the driveway. She desperately hoped she wouldn’t have to go much farther than that. She wasn’t sure she could.
The diaper bag thumped noisily against the dryer as she unlocked the door. She froze, listening, heart pounding.
Don’t stop. Keep going, child.
Mary slipped out the door, closing it softly behind her, and stepped out into the night. She got to the gate and it was opened from the other side. Strong arms took the heavy bag from her shoulder and led her to a waiting car without lights. There was an infant seat already strapped into the back.
Brielle opened the passenger door for Mary and took Leo. She secured him in the seat as if she did it every day. She slid the bag onto the floor of the back seat and swiftly came around to the driver’s side.
They backed out quickly. The car was new, a hybrid, so it made almost no sound. Even so, Brielle waited until they were well away before she turned on the headlights.
***
Royal awoke with a raging hard-on, as usual. He reached across the big bed in search of Mary and encountered empty space. He sighed and looked at the clock. It was early, before six. She’d be downstairs making coffee by now. Maybe she’d be wearing that little housedress he’d bought her. If he went downstairs now, he’d probably have time for a quickie in the kitchen before work. He knew she didn’t like it when he fucked her in front of the baby. She’d try not to resist him, but he knew she hated it and that made it all the sweeter.
He headed for the bathroom. Something seemed off. Mary usually showered first thing in the morning, but there were no damp towels. In fact, her towel was missing altogether. Royal frowned and turned, the feeling of wrongness mounting. He walked to her closet, where she had her makeup table.
He stood in the doorway and stared. Her towel lay on the floor, tacky with blood. He puzzled for a moment before he saw what was off. The picture he’d gotten for her, that weird blue bird – the frame lay on the bench, face down. He stepped inside, avoiding the towel, and turned the frame over. The picture was gone.
He spun and sprinted out of the master suite to the baby’s room. Empty crib. His son. The fucking whore had gone and taken his son.
His howl of rage rattled the windows in their frames.
***
It hadn’t taken Brielle long to figure out that Mary needed a doctor, fast. Fortunately, the organization she worked for was well connected. By the time they got a safe distance outside the city, she’d been able get an emergency clinic opened and had a doctor waiting. Between her and the motanka, they’d been able to keep Mary conscious, despite her continued blood loss. The doctor later said that had probably saved her life.
As anxious as Brielle was to get Mary and Leo to their destination, the doctor refused to let them go for at least twenty-four hours.
“You were incredibly lucky getting her this far, but she’s still at risk of hemorrhaging. She could have bled out in a matter of minutes.”
Brielle sighed her acceptance and handed baby Leo off to the nurse to be checked over and cuddled. Before turning over his diaper bag, she carefully removed the picture of the bird and the motanka doll from their pockets. She gave Leo a kiss on the nose and his nurse a smile and a nod before she turned to the hall table where she’d set the picture.
Brielle gasped. The doll she had laid on its back was now standing near the edge of the table, allowing plenty of room for what transpired next. The print of the bird had been rolled up and fitted as carefully as possible into the bag. It was unrolling now, under its own power. As Brielle watched, fascinated, a blue wing stretched from the roll and shook its feathers out. As the wing took shape and form, the paper shrank back with a crinkling sound and unrolled further. The sun-bird’s head emerged, its painted crown falling back and down, becoming a design on the feathers of its neck and back. It shook one final time as the last of the paper fell away, leaving the brilliant blue sun-bird perched on the table next to the motanka doll.
Greetings, sister, the bird said, nodding to Brielle. You’ve done well and we thank you, but mother must speak to Laelia before any further plans can be made. We are in possession of information she will need for the battle at hand.
“Yes, of course. I’ll call her now.” Brielle dialed, deciding that speaker-phone was probably the best way to facilitate communication between the two ancient spirits, particularly given the one on her end didn’t appear to have working arms, or, for that matter, a mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut and ran with it.
“Laelia, we’re at the clinic now. I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything from the doctor. Yes. With your permission, I’m going to put you on speaker now so you can speak to Mary’s friends.” She set the phone down on the table between the bird and the doll and stepped aside, courteously listening to the ensuing conversation.
The news was not good. The spirit residing inside the Luger was every bit the old, powerful demon Laelia suspected, and from the stories the old mother and the sun-bird shared, it seemed to have fashioned the consummate disciple out of Royal. That kind of power was going to be exceedingly difficult to combat, let alone defeat. It was decided there was no choice but to allow them to discover the shelter, but a plan must be laid to not only protect Mary and Leo, but all the other women who had sought refuge there as well.
Once the elders had decided their strategy, she disconnected the call and found the two on her end a suitable place to monitor the baby and wait for Mary. Brielle had her instructions. She retrieved her valise from the car and laid out her tools: salt, candles, sage, and one or two other ingredients. It was a simple spell, but cast in a complicated pattern. Once constructed, she would need to monitor the spell to be sure it stayed intact. That said, it was going to be a long night… and day.
Brielle sighed and began creating the circles.
***
“ROYAL!” the voice roared loud enough to be heard over his fury.
Royal looked up. He knew the voice as well as he knew his own. He’d heard it nearly every day since his father had died.
“ROYAL! Schluss, damit! Enough! Mizerable weichei, komm heir, NOW!”
Royal scrubbed his fists across his eyes and looked around. The room he stood in was demolished. Curtains were ripped down, lamps smashed, furniture in pieces. The door looked like it had been kicked in. For a moment, he didn’t even register on what room he was in. Nothing looked familiar. It finally clicked, and his fragmented mind wondered, Why am I in the guest room?
Royal staggered to his feet and lurched out onto the open second floor hallway and looked around. More disaster. In his rage, he had gone from room to room, searching for Mary and Leo, even knowing they were gone. There was a path of destruction throughout the second floor. He caught sight of broken glass on the stairs and glanced down at his hands. They were cut and bleeding.
He felt nothing. No pain. Just an agonizing emptiness where the rage had been.
“ROYAL!”
The voice came from his room. Head bowed, he shuffled that way. Zigging and zagging between torn bedding and shards of broken wood and glass that littered the floor, he made for his closet. It was his sanctuary. His den.
When the desire first came to him to find a bride, to actually cohabitate with someone, he’d panicked, thinking he might have to share his most intimate space. The house he’d been in back then had only had one walk-in closet. That simply wouldn’t do. The first thing he’d designed with the architect when he’d commissioned this house was the master suite.
He’d designed his room meticulously. It housed his most precious belongings. He had always been terribly vain about his appearance, even during his brief Army service. There was space for his suits, ties, and shoes, of course. There was a full length mirror and a garment steamer. There were shelves, cubbies, and drawers everywhere, and he knew the contents of each one like the back of his hand. Teaching Mary where everything belonged had been a long and sometimes painful process.
Royal pushed down a flare of anger and grabbed the handle of the drawer he needed. He pulled it all the way out and tossed it aside, pristinely ironed handkerchiefs tumbling to the floor. He was after the biometric safe concealed behind it. He carefully positioned his fingertip on the scanner and pressed the button. Seconds later he was rewarded with a beep and the door opened.
He reached in and removed the Luger. His great grandfather had taken the gun as a trophy from an SS officer he’d killed during an attack on an Austrian castle near the end of World War II.
Royal felt the mix of relief and nervous excitement he felt any time he handled the Luger. It was a family treasure, handed down from father to son for four generations, but it was far more than that.
The Luger was alive.
“Yes, sir?” Royal addressed the old weapon respectfully.
“Dat whore you insisted on keeping has betrayed us,” the Luger snarled at Royal, its Old High German warring with its more recently acquired English. “I warned you, too much spirit, that one, but you must have die extrawurst – the… special favors.”
His head fell. Royal cradled the weapon. “Yes, sir. You were right, sir.”
The Luger made a harumphing sound. “What is important now is the boy. We must get him back.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You listen now!”
“Yes, sir.”
Royal paid strict attention as the Luger spelled out its plan. Within a few minutes, he had a bag stuffed with supplies and was headed for his car. Preoccupied as he was, listening to the archaic German creature’s instructions, he failed to notice that in his rampage, curtains from the kitchen window had been torn down and had landed dangerously close to the gas stove.
The slight breeze he caused pulling the garage door open was enough to ignite a corner of one curtain. By the time he reached his car, they were blazing merrily and inviting some tea towels to join the party. Royal was passing the golf course for which the neighborhood had been named when he felt a WOOMPF and heard a deep boom. He ignored it and drove on, golden lights flickering in his rearview mirror.
The neighbors called 911. By the time they arrived, the house was a complete loss.
***
Royal had been driving with the Luger stowed next to him on the passenger seat for several hours. He was following orders and had little recall of where they had been, but he felt in some dim way that they’d been circling a specific point.
The Luger, which had seemed so sure of itself, was beginning to get edgy. Royal pulled off the main road. They were at the eastern boundary of whatever parish they’d just driven through. There were hotels and restaurants here and there amid the tangle of frontage roads and parking lots. Royal waited and listened.
The Luger muttered and swore in German. Royal had learned some of the language in school. His father and great grandfather had encouraged it, although he hadn’t known why at the time. When his father died and the Luger came to him, it had made sense. Granted, the Luger often spoke a much older form of the language, but it helped.
Now it was spitting out words Royal thought he remembered reading in some fairy tale his senior year. Der zauber, hexe…magic? Witches? He waited patiently to be told what to do.
Royal didn’t try to defy the Luger any more. He had once, when he’d first started
feeling that he was losing himself. That night had nearly ended badly. He wondered, and not for the first time, if his father had tried something similar. His father had died from a bullet to the brain. It hadn’t been the Luger – it had been another handgun, the one his father kept handy in his office drawer – but the circumstances made Royal wonder.
The last time Royal had seen his father alive was when he and his mother had come to see him graduate from basic training. Royal was, if not liked, at least admired, and his intelligence and physical prowess were a promising combination in the view of his superiors. Offers for special schools were forthcoming; he was being eyed for officer potential. Then he’d gotten the call about his father’s suicide. It was scandalous, and his mother was preoccupied with the attorneys, keeping the truth of the matter out of the papers and away from the boardroom. The family business didn’t need that kind of publicity.
He’d gotten a two-day leave to go to the funeral and help his mother settle the paperwork. After the services, he’d been summoned to the law offices. His mother’s presence wasn’t required, Mr. Hofmann had told him quietly in the lobby of the funeral parlor. So he’d gone alone.
Mr. Hofmann had handed him the box, along with an envelope. He had seemed focused and determined, but also loathe to touch the box containing the old gun. “Our offices have been with your family for many generations, Royal,” he began, seriously. “We began our relationship with your great grandfather in 1946, shortly after he returned from Europe and opened his first business. He always held this artifact in great regard and one of his first instructions to our firm was with regard to its protection and to make sure it was passed down each generation to the eldest son.”
Royal had touched the box without opening it. He’d seen the Luger before; his father had shown it to him on a couple of notable occasions, carefully unlocking it from the gun safe in his office, lecturing him on its irreplaceable value. Royal had always hated being called in there. It had been the setting for many a beating he’d received at the hand of his father, and many a hand-job as well.
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