The Shaman of Kupa Piti

by A. Nybo

  Once they had organised transmission of Evgeni’s criminal record and fingerprints, Leon rang off. Coober Pedy police might be able to get a match from one of the sets they’d lifted from Miro’s vehicle, which would be a boon. Of course, they had to get Evgeni Volkov into custody for it to make any difference at all.

  As he showered, Leon wondered if Sergei wasn’t right about having to use him as bait. As much as he didn’t want to believe Evgeni was managing to walk in and out of places without being positively identified, the way Charlie had explained Rodney’s inability to describe his attacker raised some questions. But then how had Soda Bob come to be able to not only give a description, but identify a photograph?

  He wrote a message in his phone to ask Sergei if he knew the answer to the puzzle before slipping into his trunks and between the sheets.

  SERGEI WOKE with a start and grappled to hold the threads of his dream. This was no ordinary dream; there were memories here, memories from Miro’s mine. Meandash River. He recalled his inability earlier, when he was at Soda Bob’s, to pinpoint the thoughts just beyond his reach, and now here they were again, trying to break through to him.

  Once again, he tried not to bemoan his absent drum and instead whispered a yoik to himself, attempting to keep the dream thread viable. He gently coaxed the memories forwards, not by pushing or pursuing them, but by leaving the pathways open.

  The story of Meandash River slowly trickled into his mind, bringing knowledge of the river of blood, with stones of liver and waves of lungs. On one side was where the Sámi lived; on the other was where Meandash, the mythical reindeer, lived.

  Inside a tent made of reindeer bones, Meandash was a man who lived with his wife, but outside the tent, Meandash became a reindeer. Not the normal reindeer that ate lichen and grass, but one that hunted as the Sámi did.

  To Sergei it was the melding of man and animal, the world and the underworld, where the shadowlanders resided, life and death. He had seen the Meandash River when he’d looked into Miro’s body cavity.

  With a deep breath, Sergei let go, and the thoughts that had teased and frustrated him landed right in the centre of his knowing. Under the guidance of the Karelian, Evgeni had brought the river to him. Using human vessels, Evgeni was sending the bear across the Meandash River and bringing back the kangaroo—an animal so much easier for a lone wolf to slay.

  Not a hint of uncertainty whispered to Sergei. Evgeni had performed the ceremony and had begun the process of transforming the bear. He had to be stopped before he managed to complete the transformation.

  Leaping from bed, Sergei winced as the bruises he had momentarily forgotten announced their presence. They were healing quickly, and he suspected the spirits were assisting him with the ability to sleep so much and thus heal. He pulled tracksuit pants on over his trunks and threw a T-shirt on. After opening his bedroom door, he peered out in search of Doris before sneaking across the hall to Leon’s room, where he let himself in.

  “Leon! Leon, wake up,” he stage whispered.

  “Sergei?” Leon whispered back. “What’s wrong?”

  Leon turned the bedside lamp on, his eyes wincing against the light. He looked Sergei over before dropping his head back to the pillow. “What time is it?”

  “Still dark, morning.” Sergei sat on the side of the bed. “I know what Evgeni’s doing. He’s changing me into a kangaroo.”

  Leon’s face contorted in confusion. “He’s what?”

  “The bear is the dead man, the kangaroo is the replacement. He’s killing the bear and changing its spirit to a creature of prey.”

  “The bear is the dead man? I must be fucking dreaming.” Leon rolled over, turning away from Sergei. “Doesn’t he know a kangaroo can kill a dog?” he mumbled as he cuddled down into his pillow.

  Needing to wake Leon, Sergei gave him a hard flick to his ear.

  Leon’s eyes flew open, and he threw his hand over his ear protectively. “What the fuck?”

  Sergei couldn’t stop grinning, Leon was so endearing in his chagrin. “Shh, you’ll draw outside Doris inside.”

  “Did you come in here to assault me?” Leon whispered his accusation. Sergei struggled to keep his laugh quiet, and it only grew worse when Leon skimmed a slap over the top of Sergei’s head.

  “Quit it!” Leon kicked him from beneath the blankets.

  “Stop, stop, stop. That hurts.”

  “I don’t care. Get lost!”

  “I am a sick and injured man, Leon. You shouldn’t attack me.”

  “You aren’t the one with the burning ear.” Leon flounced beneath the blankets. “Now say what you came here to say or fuck off.”

  “Is your soul on fire, Leon?” Sergei couldn’t help but tease him. His sleepy tantrum was adorable. And since he probably wasn’t awake enough to reason, he wouldn’t think to question which part of the ear the soul was housed in.

  Leon stopped so abruptly Sergei might have told him he’d won the lottery. “My soul?”

  “I already told you about that. Remember? The Sámi belief that the soul is housed in the ear. Really, Leon, you should pay more attention,” Sergei mocked. Leon’s sleepy blue eyes locked on him in an unblinking trance-like fashion. “Leon? Are you all right?”

  “F-fine,” he said. “I’m fine.” He blinked and looked away.

  Wishing he could know what was running through Leon’s mind, Sergei looked at him from the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t certain that whatever Leon might do next would necessarily be entirely rational. In fact he wished Leon would be entirely irrational and invite him into bed beside him. Not that it would do either of them much good in Sergei’s current condition. With his mouth the way it was and possible infections from the needles Evgeni had used to tattoo him, potential sexual activities were severely restricted. He bullied his thoughts to less pleasant things.

  “Are you awake now? Enough to listen?”

  Leon sat up in bed, pulling the blankets as high as they would go. “Yes.”

  “Evgeni is following a transformation process,” said Sergei. He tried to ignore the way Leon’s eyes slid down to look at his mouth, back to his eyes, and then to his lips again. Tracking Leon’s gaze wasn’t helping his libido, which was starting to spark. He slapped Leon’s shoulder and smirked when Leon jumped.

  “What?” Leon demanded defensively.

  “You’re not listening.”

  “I was. I just checked out for a second. I’m prone to doing that in the ‘still dark morning,’” Leon said derisively.

  “Leon, I’m serious. Listen.”

  “Okay, the transformation to a kangaroo. How is it happening?”

  “First, he buried a man with his soul sealed with the bones of a kangaroo, da?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The next murder, the man had been opened and his limbs had been replaced by those of a kangaroo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the next murder will likely be—”

  “The next murder?”

  Sergei nodded. “If I’m right, there will be three, possibly four, more murders if he manages to complete the process.”

  “Why?”

  “One to replace the man’s torso with the kangaroo’s torso, and one to replace the head and spine. The next would be where he captures the kangaroo’s soul and buries it with a man’s bones. That one could be me. If not, then he can safely kill my body afterwards anyway as my change of spirit will disconnect me from other vengeful things I might have set loose on Grigori Mishurin and his lineage.” Silence fell between them, until Sergei spoke. “There is a possibility that he could do the head, spine, and torso in one move, but that would be very difficult.”

  “In one move? You make it sound like a game of chess. People are dying. And you’re on the list!”

  “It is very much like a game of chess—a deadly one. And I’m aware I’m on the list, but so are others that have nothing to do with this.”

  “So how can we stop him?”

  “I ne
ed my drum. The spirits will help me regain my strength, and then we can call Evgeni.”

  Leon levelled an accusatory glare at him. “You’ve had his number all this time and you never said anything?”

  “His number? What are you talking about?”

  “You said we’d call him. How do you plan to do that without his phone number? Did you think you might call directory assistance to get it?”

  Sergei almost felt sorry for Leon always being on the earthly plane, but then he’d spent years battling against touching things outside the middle world himself. “We have a lot of work to do. Each of us needs to know what the other is talking about to accomplish this, and since Evgeni is working with spirits, that’s the plane we need to think on.” He couldn’t help but smile at the misunderstanding. “We will use the spirits to call him, not a phone.”

  “Oh.”

  Leon clapped his hand over Sergei’s mouth. “I think Doris is in the passage,” he whispered by Sergei’s ear.

  Leon’s usage of the nickname Doris caused Sergei to grin into Leon’s hand. Leon clamped down harder and waggled Sergei’s head in reprimand. Sergei felt the pull against his stitches, but it wasn’t too painful.

  There was a gentle knock on the door, and Leon drew breath to speak, but the door opened.

  The cop poked his head in. “Oh! I… I…,” the cop began.

  Leon took his hand from Sergei’s mouth. “Jeez,” he said, as if he’d just had a scare—which Sergei guessed he had, only not the kind Doris might think. “Mr. Menshikov, Sergei, came to wake me as he heard someone outside and couldn’t see anyone in the house.”

  Sergei hoped the cop hadn’t been watching TV or something, or Leon’s spontaneous excuse wouldn’t stand up and they’d be caught out—talking. He was becoming as jumpy as Leon.

  “Oh, that would have been me checking things,” said the cop. He seemingly swallowed the explanation whole. “I was just coming to tell you Mr. Menshikov was gone.”

  Leon gave Sergei a surreptitious prod. “Well, now that I’m wide awake, I might as well have coffee,” he said. “If you’ll both excuse me, I’d like to put some clothes on.”

  Sergei wondered if the prod was for him to go back to bed or to stay up and have coffee in the hope they might get the chance to discuss Evgeni’s process.

  By the time Leon was up and dressed, Sergei had settled in the lounge with a glass of water. The cop sat at the kitchen table and seemed surprised when Leon took a coffee into the lounge to sit with Sergei instead of at the table with him.

  They sat quietly for a while, ostensibly watching TV until Sergei finally broke the silence. “I need to go back.”

  “Can you give it a few more days? At least until those stitches are removed.”

  “Why? What difference would that make?”

  “It would confuse Evgeni, if nothing else. He doesn’t know where in Adelaide you are. If he takes time looking, it might buy you a few more days healing.”

  All of it was debatable as far as Sergei was concerned. Evgeni knew he lived in Coober Pedy, so when he couldn’t find him here, he would return there—if he’d even left. But it was only a few days until the stitches were out, so he agreed.

  Leon’s eyes flicked over to look at the cop before they came to rest on Sergei. “Were you serious, what you said about the transformation and more murders?”

  “Of course. I don’t kid about things like that.” Sergei had a rethink. “Well, maybe I do.” He smiled. “But yes, I was very serious.”

  “I have to warn Charlie, but what can I tell him?” Leon’s searching gaze was like a stake to Sergei’s heart. If he was reading him right, Leon was asking his permission to divulge his shamanism.

  Sergei sighed. “I can’t stop you. But even if you told him, what could he do? He would have no more idea how to find, or stop, Evgeni.” He gestured to Leon. “Unless you can think of one from the Doris angle.”

  The silence that fell between them was loaded and tense. Frustration roiled inside Sergei like a near-boiling kettle. He was irritated with his still weakened physical state, his inability to push aside thoughts of Leon’s close proximity, Evgeni’s disruption to a life he’d finally settled into, his and Leon’s differing beliefs, which threatened to expose him for what he really was, and Leon’s professionalism, which was keeping them apart.

  Needing relief from the torment of Leon’s presence, Sergei stood. If he was to be stuck here, he might as well sleep and heal as much as was possible.

  “How come Soda Bob was able to identify Evgeni, but no one else was—not even Rodney, who was attacked by him?” asked Leon.

  “I don’t really know. Evgeni put himself in a position to be identified when he spoke with Soda Bob. He put himself in a position to be feared when he attacked Rodney, and Evgeni is as easy to fear as Rodney is to frighten. Fear can do strange things to the memory.”

  “Does it mean anything that Evgeni’s ears are pierced when the Sámi believe the soul resides in the ears?”

  Was Leon trying to keep him from leaving the room with this sudden rash of questions? The idea was so flattering, Sergei had to warn himself against such thoughts. “Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think the Sámi meant the soul resided in the outer ear. And just because something is tradition doesn’t make it true.”

  “Then why all this”—Leon waved his hand around—“ritualistic stuff if it’s just bullshit?”

  Sergei’s lips thinned and he raised an eyebrow. “Bullshit? Is that what this is?” His brain was firing with accusations and acerbic comments he tried not to voice. He needed to be calm, rational, but what came out sounded like a clap of thunder. “What are we even doing here, Leon?”

  Leon jumped up and got in Sergei’s space. “I don’t know! What the fuck are we doing here?”

  The policeman leapt to his feet and hurried to their side, his hands out, gesturing for calm. “Hey, hey, hey. Guys! Calm down.”

  They kept their eyes trained on each other in silent battle, ignoring the policeman. Leon’s breathing, rapid with anger, could have just as easily been from sexual arousal, and Sergei’s nostrils flared as he tried to catch the slightest scent of him. Leon’s pupils were huge, and Sergei wanted nothing more than to throw him up against a wall and reduce all that fierceness to post-orgasmic bliss.

  The stirring in his groin was about to propel him to movement, and with the policeman as witness, there was only one movement he could make. He stalked from the room.

  Behind the closed bedroom door, Sergei leant with his butt against it and his hands on his knees, trying to regulate his breathing, the desire to make Leon come burning inside him like acid in his blood. He struggled to understand what was driving that desire. Did he want to control Leon, punish him, love him, pleasure him? Just thinking about it was making him harder, and images of doing all those things encouraged precome to smear uncomfortably against the soft cotton fabric of his trunks.

  He did want to control Leon. He wanted him spread beneath him, panting with ecstatic pleasure.

  Chapter 10

  LEON SPENT the morning in solitude. After storming to his room, Sergei hadn’t reappeared, and the support policeman seemed happy keeping his distance after Leon had snapped at him.

  Unable to guess what Evgeni was doing, Leon had to trust in Sergei, but he didn’t know if he was capable of doing that without surrendering to his emotions. Fuck, he had almost kissed Sergei in front of Simon, and if Sergei hadn’t left the room, he probably would have. It frightened him how close to losing control he’d been.

  On the edge of his chair, elbows on knees, he splayed his hands over his face and rubbed until it extended to his entire head, as if he could erase the desire from his mind. Sergei was right—they had to go back—not because of Evgeni, but because Leon couldn’t trust himself with Sergei any longer. And that right there was his problem; he had lost his objectivity on this case. A professional would have themselves removed from the investigation, but was that really the corre
ct thing to do? His emotions had tinged everything until he no longer knew what was right.

  If he resigned from the case, he left Sergei open to more danger and ridicule. He wouldn’t get the support from the police that he needed—he simply wouldn’t be believed. At least with Leon on the case, he could help and sometimes offer the assistance of the police. But was that of any value to Sergei?

  Leon might have his moments of arrogance, but the way things had gone with this case so far, it was clear Sergei was knee-deep with Evgeni, but the police? They were no closer to catching Evgeni than they had been when they didn’t know his real ID. The international warrant meant they could arrest him on sight, and if his prints showed up on Miro’s vehicle, his DNA from the faeces on the drum, along with Sergei as a witness, gave them enough to convict him. But what good was that if they couldn’t find him?

  Sergei indicated he had more of an action plan than the police had, so did he really need the police, or were they simply impeding Sergei’s ability to deal with it? Then again, would Sergei manage to do things such as get his drum back without Leon’s assistance? It’s not like the police could abandon the case.

  What a mess.

  Maybe instead of going around in circles posing a thousand questions to himself, he should ask Sergei. Jesus, wouldn’t that go down well with the superintendent? Oh, and by the way, Sybil, I decided to step back and allow the latest victim to deal with the madman, because, well, he knows what he’s doing, and I’m clueless. And if that’s not enough to convince you, I’ve also got a hard-on for him like you wouldn’t believe. But I promise nothing has happened between us, besides a kiss. Once. Oh, and some hand-to-erection combat. But that’s all.

  Wasn’t this just fucking dandy? At least if he knew what Sergei had planned and whether he could be of any use, he could decide the best course of action from there.

  With a casualness he didn’t feel, Leon ignored the weight of the support policeman’s gaze as he went and knocked on Sergei’s door. The seconds he spent waiting seemed like minutes, and he was about to knock again when the door opened.