by M. R. Noble
“It would make sense, but a person can invoke more than one element, Ro.”
“Guess we’ll never know.”
“No, Roman, I intend on finding out. This is why I’m here.”
“No, you’re here to meet your uncle Loukin. You said you wanted to go to the Russian address, and you are. We’re doing what you want. But tracking down someone who summoned a tsunami to kill you, is just plain stupid!”
“Easy, burger kid, we don’t need you jumping back into the fryer.” I couldn’t take him seriously with mustard and shreds of lettuce on his face.
He stared at me. “What?”
A throat cleared, and we turned to the door. Anton and Fedir stood on the cabin stairs.
“She’s got a point, you know,” Fedir said. “It would be hard to follow your direction when you’ve got food all over your face.” He had a deep, burly laugh.
Roman touched his cheek, smearing it more. He looked down at his hand and flushed red. “Point taken.”
“There’s a bucket full of water outside on the deck. You can use it to wash,” Anton said.
Roman stood up. “Thanks.”
Anton and Fedir descended the stairs and stood at the kitchenette to my right. The power of the setting sun was creeping over me. I could feel the tension of the pending night gathering. I imagined the sun would be completely gone in a matter of seconds. It reminded me there were two other vampires in the room with me. Though friendly, not folks I would consider trustworthy. My grip tightened on the broom handle.
Anton put random objects which lay astray back into place. Then fished a plastic water bottle of blood from a cooler.
Fedir busied himself at the kitchen. “So, does your friend always order you around?”
“He’s just protective,” I said.
“Mmm.”
“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” I said.
Fedir turned back to the fridge and started putting some sausage and peppers on a platter. “In Ukraine, there is the most beautiful flower, the zozulyntsi.” He spread his hands in front of his face as he said the name. “It grows in the strangest places. It amazes everyone at the places it chooses to grow, the mountain peaks, shallow riverbeds…it can even grow through concrete.”
I abandoned my broom and sat down on the bench.
“But!” He placed the platter on the table and sat down. “If you pick it, or you try to plant it in the place of your choosing, it dies.”
I stared back, waiting for his next words.
“There are two types of men, Karolina. The ones who can admire the greatness of the little flower.” He picked up a sausage in a bun and handed it to me. “Or the ones who try to control it.”
Roman wasn’t always dominated by the need to be in control. When we were six, he was like a puppy dog—rambunctious and driven by curiosity. We were walking home from the park when a man pulled over on the road. His dirty leather coat looked warm and sticky in the sun. It scrunched while he walked. We paused when he spoke to us, we knew we should have kept walking, but Roman was invincible, a master of soccer and climbing trees. When the man held out a sticky lollipop covered in car lint, the situation felt wrong.
I smacked it out of his hand as Roman reached to accept it. Roman went to scream at me, but I took his arm and dragged him into the ditch. I kept running, pulling him with me. Soon, Roman was so angry he chased after me. Later that week, another child went missing. Neighbors gathered in groups to search the woods for weeks, but she was never found.
Roman and I never truly spoke about what happened, except through innuendos and jokes. I would do him a mundane favor, and he would say, in earnest, he owed me his life.
A crunch made me look up, and I saw Anton had sat down beside Fedir. I was so immersed in thought, I had completely forgotten Anton was even here.
“Thank you,” I said, “for the sausage.”
Fedir smiled down at me. “Any time.”
The cabin door swung open. The light of a lantern on the deck patterned the doorway with amber shapes. Roman emerged from the darkness and stepped down the stairs. He sat down beside me and checked out the food.
“Looks good,” Roman said.
Anton left the table and lay down at the point of the U-shaped bench. “Help yourself,” he said and closed his eyes. He nuzzled further into the cushion.
“Thanks,” Roman said.
To my awe, he managed to put down five sausages before he finally leaned back.
Fedir looked amused.
“What? Almost dying in a shipwreck works up an appetite,” Roman said.
“Tell me about it,” I said and leaned back against the bench. I adjusted a pillow underneath my head and felt the draw of sleep on my eyelids. “At least you guys made it to the cabin. Holding my breath for such a long time was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Really?” Roman looked at me.
I shook my head. “You have no idea what it was like. Not being able to breathe, fighting the reflex to take a breath of water. It was torture.”
Roman looked down. “I thought you had already made it to the cabin when I ran to it.”
With the memory of the water, I felt breathless, like Roman sat on my chest. “I panicked and ran to the rail.”
Fedir nodded. “Andre tore past me after you while I was on my way to the cabin.”
“It was scary, but I could handle it,” I lied and shoved my shoulders back into the seat. It felt good to close my eyes. “Wake me when it’s my turn for watch.” The boat rocked back and forth in the waves, the motion slowly lulling me into the unconscious.
“Sure,” Roman said faintly in the distance.
I drifted toward sleep. My body started to relax—too much. It felt like I didn’t have enough strength to expand my rib cage. I struggled to breathe. I willed my arms to rise, but they lay at my sides. Panic pounded in my chest. I tried to roll over, but I remained limp. The faint sound of Roman and Anton’s voice echoed in the void. I called out to them, but my voice didn’t come. Tears welled under my closed eyelids.
A slimy voice whispered in my ear. “Karolina…”
I shivered and wanted to recoil, but it only worsened my inner struggle against my limp body.
“Karolina…” His voice sounded so close, like he was there beside me.
My stomach twisted. I screamed out in my head. Wake up! Wake up!
“Karolina!” the voice said.
The drum of his malevolent voice reverberated through my body. An image of a face slammed into my mind for a millisecond, but it stained my memory. He had dark wavy hair and dark beady eyes. The skin of his face was worn and stretched tight over his jaw and cheekbones. Then the thundering of the water played in my ears and grew to a murderous roar. Images flooded my mind from the horrific experience of the wave—of drowning. My eardrums pulsed and promised to explode. I fought for breath. Breathe! It’s not real. My lungs stayed stagnant, and the blackness I thought I escaped in the sea embraced me once more.
Chapter Thirteen
The Dawn of a New Era
I awoke with a gasp and shot up in the darkness. I breathed in and out as fast as I could, trying to fill my lungs. It took a moment to realize I sat in the dark cabin. I drew strands of hair from my sweaty face. It was just a dream.
What I’d just experienced was like sleep paralysis, but tenfold. It reminded me of my experience at Miruna’s house I’d forgotten. It felt like a dream gone wrong, like being trapped in my own body. At the house, I had felt the overwhelming drag of sleep, but I was safe. This time was different. It was torturous. I held my head between my hands. The wards. I was within Miruna’s wards, and I had my own fresh ward around me. He now knew I had survived the wave. He’d been so arrogant; he had even shown me his face.
I looked around the darkness of the cabin. It didn’t seem like I’d woken anyone up, and I hadn’t been summoned for my watch yet either. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and slipped off the bench. I
felt my way through the darkness and then fumbled with the knob of the door. I stepped onto the deck. The cool wind blew against my skin, blowing my hair back. I let out a sigh of relief.
“Can’t sleep?” Anton’s voice sounded out in the dark, making me jump. He stood at the wheel sipping from a tin cup.
I sniffed the air. It smelled like coffee. “Just needed a bit of fresh air.”
Anton let go of the wheel for a moment to fill another cup from his thermos. I took it from him, and while sipping it, let out a little moan. Black coffee wasn’t my first choice, but it was still coffee.
“Thanks,” I said and turned up the stairs onto the bow.
The sounds of the waves hitting the boat were calming. I looked out and saw the glitter of starlight painting streaks across the inky sea waves. The moon was nowhere to be found, which meant it would be dawn soon. My foot caught on a bollard. I twisted my leg and stubbed my toe on a mounting rod, making me drop my coffee.
“Easy, princess, we don’t need you breaking your neck before I get you to Kislovodsk.” Andre sat in the darkness near the rod.
“Just keeping you at attention, skipper. Lookout duty?”
“Yup.”
“You didn’t wake me up?” I asked.
“Thought you needed the sleep.” He passed me up my tin cup he’d managed to take from my hand before it fell.
“Impressive.”
“I must be dreaming. You actually gave me a compliment.”
I sat down and tightened the blanket around my shoulders. The sky started to lighten to a dusky blue. “I’m up here because I couldn’t sleep. So, I’m probably just disoriented.”
“Bad dream?”
“Yeah.” I looked down. “About that. Thanks for not telling everyone what happened underwater.”
“You did better than most would have. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“How’d you know about my dream?”
“I felt it.”
“It seems since our blood exchange, I’ve been at a disadvantage.”
“You noticed,” he said.
“Yeah.” I stuck out my chin. “I noticed.”
“When you drink another vampire’s blood, you not only taste their soul, it changes you. It becomes a part of you, allows you to feel the other person.”
Andre’s blood was now part of me. I should’ve been less calm. “So, when I feel for you, and hit a wall?”
“When you are more skilled at using your new power, you’ll learn how to keep a guard up.”
The sky was lightening to purple and mauve. Tips of the sun’s rays peeked up over the horizon. “So, the guard?” I looked over my shoulder and noticed I could now make out his face. “It fails when you get emotional?”
He laughed. “My guards never fail.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How come I could feel everything you felt after Miruna healed you?”
Andre turned quiet. He took my coffee from my hand. “You may have felt a bit, before I got my guard up.” He sipped the cup and passed it back.
“I thought about going to you, but I didn’t think you’d open your door even if I did.”
“I don’t think I could have seen anyone at that moment.”
“What did Miruna do to you anyway?”
“Well, I guess she healed my soul. If you believe in souls…”
“Oh.” I tried to keep the look of shock from my face.
The sun’s rays broke out over the water. As it rose, shades of pink and red formed in the sun’s wake. I turned to Andre, and saw the amber hues reflected on the smooth skin of his face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just…I think this may be the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen.” The light burned into my eyes, but I still stared forward, unable to look away. I could feel Andre’s gaze.
“Your eyes aren’t brown when you’re in the sun. They’re more of a hazel…” He cleared his throat. “The last time I saw a sunrise like this, I was here on the Black Sea.”
“When? Was it for underground business?”
“In a way. It was right after my parents were murdered, and I avenged them.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t want to at the time,” he said. “I was just so angry; I drained the next door neighbor. He was my teacher in grade school.” He stared out into the sun. “After I invoked the Dark Charm and did what I had to, they threw me on a boat like this one and sent me to Kislovodsk. I met the Second in Command, Loukin, and worked for him to earn my keep. Ever since then, I haven’t really been back on the water.”
I slid an arm underneath his and stared ahead with him. “Eight years old is too young to lose your parents. Plus, after what we experienced underwater, I don’t know if I’ll be back on a boat anytime soon either.”
The cabin door creaked on the deck below.
I slid away. “Thank you. For helping me.”
“No problem, princess.”
“See you down there.”
As I descended the stairs, I clutched the banister for balance. Andre had changed. Whatever Miruna had done, healed soul or not, had rekindled a part of him I only saw glimpses of. My stomach fluttered with a mix of hunger and longing to see more. A blood craving hit me full force. I missed a step. I closed my eyes and steadied myself. When I turned the corner, Roman stood on the deck. I put my hands in my pockets to hide their tremble.
The captain and Fedir emerged from the cabin. I followed their line of sight and noticed an earth-toned strand off in the distance. “Is that land?”
“Yes,” Anton said. “We’ll be to Sochi in an hour.”
“Perfect.” Getting off the water was a relief but stepping back onto land reintroduced the issue of tracking spells. The memory of a spell in Miruna’s magic book resurfaced. Using its principles, we could use any form of magic to rejig the incantation. I climbed down into the cabin and looked for my pack.
Roman called down to me from the stairs. “Karo, what are you doing?” He leaned in.
I had the book in hand. “We need a way to disarm any tracking spells.”
“Okay.”
I flipped through the book until I spotted the spell. “Tracking spells.” As I read on, I deflated. What I needed to do was switch our sense of identity. The idea was to learn the mechanism of how tracking spells work—to sabotage it. Tracking spells honed in on a person by using their sense of identity. Our self-awareness is what binds us all together. Crazy people were nearly impossible to track. Last time I checked; I still knew I was me.
“What?” Roman leaned closer.
“We’re screwed.”
“Not exactly,” Roman said.
Andre entered the cabin.
“You know how to put my concept of self in a foreign body?” I asked.
“No,” Roman said, “but I know how to put a foreign identity in yours.”
“How?”
“The spirit of the wolf.” Andre shook his head. “So, you’re a packmaster.”
I looked to Roman.
“As packmaster,” Roman said. “I have the ability to make new werewolves. If you start the ceremony, but don’t finish it, it will be enough to trick the spell.”
“Explain,” I said.
“When you take the essence of the wolf, your body and mind will be tricked into being the wolf. You’ll be a form of yourself, but not yourself at the same time. So long as you don’t complete the change, it will temporarily mask you. It’ll only last for eight, maybe ten hours tops.”
Andre snorted. “As long as we don’t kill anything, or we’ll be forever bound to your pack as your little wolf minions.”
“This is the most important part, Karo. If you kill anything, anything at all—person or animal—the change will be complete. You’ll lose all your powers. You won’t have your strength, the vampire inside you will die, and you’ll lose your fire and earth magic.”
“But I would have werewolf strength, righ
t?”
“Yeah,” Roman said, “but it takes years to learn how to control the shift.”
“Don’t want your breeding stock to lose all the magical abilities you’re hoping to pass down to your cubs?” Andre asked.
Roman ignored him and took his keys from his pocket. He untied the bronze and bone keychain—the one I always told him to throw away. He held it out in his palm, and it started to glow.
“Your family talisman is a bit small don’t you think?” Andre asked. “You know what they say about guys with small talismans.”
The dust around Roman’s feet stirred, spiraling upward around him. The glowing light projected outward and turned golden. As did Roman’s eyes. His canines lengthened, and a guttural sound emerged from his belly. His thumb bore down on the center bone piece, and a serrated blade jutted out from underneath the disk. Blood dripped from Roman’s palm. Then the light faded.
“There, it’s charged.” Roman said and held it out to Andre. “You go first.”
Andre looked at me. “I don’t like this.”
“I know,” I said, “but it’s the only option for now.”
Andre took the disk from Roman. “What now?”
“Press the button again and the blade will come out. Just make sure you wipe—”
Andre’s finger clicked the button before Roman finished speaking, and as a golden light burst from him, so did black smoke. It zigzagged back and forth between the men, until the smoke and light vacuumed inward. Andre slammed against the kitchen cupboards.
Except it wasn’t Andre, not his face at least. He slumped over stunned as the smoke and dust cleared.
Instead of a deep growl, Roman hissed.
“Why are you wearing my face, leech!”
It took me a second to register Roman’s face was indeed on Andre. More interesting still, Andre’s body had widened. His skin color darkened. He looked like a carbon copy of Roman.
“Stay calm,” I said and turned to Roman, then gasped.
His lips were peeled back revealing fangs. He crouched low to the ground. Looking out at us through dark strands of hair were Andre’s eyes. Roman’s voice remained the same, but within his now baggy clothes was Andre’s body.