Cauldron

by Gail Z. Martin

  That might be an understatement, considering that there were bodies of dead wolves—or naked men—strewn along a main street for the police to find. In the distance, I heard sirens and realized that the cops were probably swarming already.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do, Flint.” I folded my arms over my chest. The werewolf was solidly built, but I had him by several inches of height and a good thirty pounds. Hell, I even out-muscled West, which I knew he hated. But sometimes, the best way to avoid an all-out fight was to leverage a little intimidation.

  “You go back to Clyde and tell him he needs to leave the Countess and her guests alone. My friend and I are on it. Now, if you want to help, we might be able to use some muscle down the road—and any information you can get on the Russians. But this is our show, not Clyde’s. The wolves that got shot tonight—that didn’t have to happen. Clyde needs to understand that we’re handling it our way, and if he tries a stunt like this again, more wolves will die—and we’ll be pissed off enough to come after him.”

  The glimmer in Flint’s eyes told me he was thinking, You can try, but then he took another look at me, and I let a little of my magic slip, just enough for another supernatural creature to pick up on. Flint’s eyes widened.

  “What are you?”

  I smiled. “Nobody you want to cross. Neither’s he,” I added with a nod toward West. Grace cleared her throat loudly. “Or her. Got it?”

  Flint hesitated, then nodded. I exchanged a look with West. I’d had my fill of killing, and would just as soon not if I had a choice. And we did have a choice with Flint. In fact, sending him back to Clyde with our message might ultimately save a lot of trouble.

  “You’re going to leave here and go right to Clyde,” I said, adding a little magic to my order, although I wasn’t entirely sure it would work on a shifter. “Give him our message. We see you or your pack again anywhere near the Countess, and that’s it. Understand?”

  Flint nodded again, managing to look like a beat dog even in his human form.

  We stood back to give him a clear path to the door, not taking any chances. “Go,” I said. “And you’d better be out of sight by the time we get outside.”

  Flint glanced again between West and me, maybe wondering whether we’d shoot him in the back. I guess he figured he had nothing to lose because he took off faster than a mortal could run and disappeared into the night.

  “Sirens sound close, Mrs. Harringworth. It might be good to leave,” Steven said as we headed back to the car.

  I looked at the ruined Rolls and sighed. “I don’t think those scratches are going to buff out.” Deep gouges marred the doors and the roof, trailing down the back.

  “I’ll have Richards handle it in the morning,” Grace replied, referring to her long-suffering butler. Steven held the door for her, and she got back into the Rolls as if it were nothing more than a minor dent.

  “Go with them, in case Wolfie and his friends come back,” West said. “I’ll follow you, and once we see Mrs. Harringworth safely home, how about you and I get some coffee? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  5

  “I thought diner coffee was supposed to be good.” I glared at the sludge in the heavy ceramic cup.

  “Probably got the bottom of the pot again,” West replied with a shrug, and finished his, setting aside his cup for a refill.

  “I miss having these meetings in bars,” I grumbled. There was a lot that changed since Prohibition went into effect, but sometimes I missed the bars themselves more than the alcohol.

  “Didn’t think Ben’s was the place for this discussion.” West managed a distracted “thank you” to the waitress who refilled his cup, rather than his usual charm. “So…tell me what happened at the Countess’s big party.”

  West listened with unusual patience as I told him about the event. He didn’t interrupt once, which for West must have been a personal best. “So you’re sure the guy claiming he was Rasputin was a vamp. But was he really Rasputin?”

  I’d been asking myself that question all night. “Maybe. It’s possible. If not, they picked a perfect actor.” I frowned, remembering the way the man could sway a crowd. “But my gut says it’s really him. You should have seen how he had everyone eating out of his hand. I don’t know whether it was magic, or vamp glamour, or—”

  “Charisma,” West said. “Rasputin had it in spades. Every account says that he was an ugly man, looked like a vagrant, and didn’t smell good. But as soon as he started to talk, it was like everyone was mesmerized, like he’d cast a spell on them.”

  “Yeah. Only I’d know if he’d done magic, and he didn’t. At least, not any kind of magic I’m familiar with.”

  “Rasputin’s enemies said he’d made a pact with the devil,” West said off-handedly, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Could he be a demon?”

  “I’m usually pretty good at picking up on sulfur,” I replied. “And I didn’t notice any. Let’s not make this more complicated than it is already. Rasputin is back as a vampire, with some squirrelly conspiracy that requires raising a lot of money from moonstruck swells. And while the local vamps don’t like the Russians, they’re cooperating, probably because they figure they’ll get a piece of the action. So we’ve got Imperialist vampires—”

  “And Leninist werewolves,” West said in a tone that let me know he was wishing his coffee had a slug of whiskey. “I guess that makes sense, in a weird sort of way. The vamps and the shifters almost always end up on opposite sides—lucky for us.”

  “I still think there’s a piece we’re missing.” I toyed with the handle of my cup, unsure my stomach would survive much more of the bitter drink. “Something big. If Clyde’s wolves didn’t scare off the Countess and Rasputin, she hinted about another event and a big surprise.”

  “If it really is Rasputin, wolves won’t scare him. Rumor has it he controlled werewolves with his dark arts back in Russia.”

  “He was a witch?” That added a whole new angle.

  “Hard to say. He had plenty of enemies because of how connected he was to the Tsar and Tsarina. They weren’t above making shit up to discredit him. Then again, he spouted a lot of mystical bullshit, and for all his talk of being a priest, he often came across more like a fortune teller. He never said he was, but he didn’t outright say he wasn’t.”

  “So being a vamp isn’t bad enough?” I swore under my breath. “Wonderful.”

  “I’m more worried about his talk of putting a Romanov back on the throne,” West said, leaning back against the diner seat. “Conditions aren’t good in Russia, but at least they’re stable. If Rasputin returns from the dead with a pretender to the throne, it’ll cause a bloodbath. Stalin and his supporters won’t go easily. And to be honest, Nicholas II wasn’t too great of a king, though I imagine he still has his loyalists. The question is—what would it do to the rest of Europe?”

  I felt a sick twist in my gut. The Great War had been over for ten years, but the damage would last for a generation, maybe longer. The last time, one assassin’s bullet had triggered a cataclysm. What would happen if Russia tore itself apart with a civil war?

  “So if Russia goes up in flames, do we get another Great War?” I asked, bile rising.

  “Maybe. In fact, probably,” West replied, meeting my gaze. “Think about it. All the monarchs of Europe were related through Queen Victoria. There are still pacts and alliances between all the powers, which is what created the whole damn mess the last time. If other countries thought they could take some of Russia’s territory, we could be back to trench warfare in no time.”

  “Shit. How do we stop it?”

  West drummed his fingers against the coffee cup. “I don’t know,” he said, and I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw, an indication of how much he hated admitting that. “I asked for backup. But the SSS isn’t a big department—”

  “Did you mention the possibility of a second Great War?”

  West looked weary. “I strongly hinted at it. The exact reply wa
s ‘you and everyone else.’ Bottom line—everyone’s busy putting out fires that might or might not lead to the end of the world. Government bureaucracy being what it is, there is no backup coming.”

  I swore under my breath. We’d been left to twist in the wind.

  “Look—maybe it’s not all bad. If I bring my bosses in on this, frankly, they’ll make a hash of it. They’ll sweep in here with Black Mariahs and Tommy-guns, and it’ll be a bloodbath.”

  He was right; that’s exactly what would happen. The Feds didn’t do anything half-way, and sometimes that worked well. I didn’t have a reputation as a subtle guy myself, and West only had one setting—full throttle. But even I realized that rolling in like Elliott Ness and going gangbusters on the vamps and werewolves would be a very bad idea. I didn’t have a problem with the body count if it came to that. But the fight needed to happen out of sight, not splashed across the papers in big, bold headlines.

  “So it’s you and me, saving the world? Not sure about those odds.”

  “If it comes down to it, we’ve got Ben on our side,” West said. “I dare say Grace could come up with enough money for a private little war, so we won’t run out of ammo. And…desperate times make strange bedfellows. Vincent Lavecchia might have a stake in this as well.”

  My eyebrows rose. Had West just suggested an alliance with the Mob? “How do you figure?”

  He fell silent as the waitress refilled our cups. This time, the java actually tasted like coffee instead of acid. “The Mob here is tied in tightly with the Old Country. What affects Italy affects New York and Chicago—and Cleveland. And another world war would definitely have an impact on Italy. Plus this wouldn’t be like the last time, with the U.S. coming in to save the day in the final year. If American money put a Romanov back on the throne and it all explodes, we’d be pulled in early. That’s bad for business—legit and Mob-run.”

  I nodded. “What about the werewolves?”

  West pinched the bridge of his nose like he was staving off a headache. “I heard that there was a dust-up between the Mob and the wolves last night—unofficially.”

  “Of course,” I replied with a smirk. “What happened?”

  “Ben was bitching to me before I headed over to stake out your fancy dress party,” West said. “The wolves picketed the wrong mill. Turns out Lavecchia had a finger or two in that pie, and he didn’t much like seeing operations shut down. It didn’t go quite as badly as Homestead, because the Mob used its own bullyboys, but there was quite a fight. In the end, the wolves backed down. For now. I wouldn’t consider the matter to be settled.”

  “So the wolves are a wild card,” I summed up. “They hate the vamps and the Tsar, but they’re also not buddy-buddy with the Mob.” I frowned. “But if war came, wouldn’t they benefit, working in a steel mill?”

  “Getting conscripted would make for a lot of complications. A werewolf can’t explain why he can’t go, but he’d also stick out more for not going. And don’t forget, the Mob has its own werewolves—Italian ones. The anarchist wolves are from Poland, Hungary, Romania. So you’ve got the Old World bullshit on top of the vamp-were stuff.”

  “The local vampires aren’t happy with the Russians,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe not right now. But vampires are opportunists,” West said. “If they had one of their own on the throne of a major country? That could upset the balance between vampires and wolves across Europe, and here, too.”

  “So is there a way to have the Mob and the wolves on our side? Because if this Rasputin is as wily as the stories make him out to be, he’s not going to stop at anything until he gets what he wants.”

  West shrugged. “Once we know what the Russians are planning, maybe we’ll have a better idea of how to pull together a defense. Stick close to Grace, and let me know what you find out at that next meeting.”

  Fortunately, I didn’t need my tux for the reception at the Russian tea room, because my jacket had gone home wrapped around Flint’s privates and Grace’s tailor hadn’t finished the replacement. Grace handed me an expensive black suit to wear in the meantime. Of course, her outfit looked like it had come from Paris or at least New York, which it probably had.

  Cleveland’s tea room wasn’t as famous as the fancy one in Manhattan, but it was swanky by this city’s standards. The salon looked like an expensive parlor with large mirrors on the walls, comfortable upholstered chairs, and shelves filled with photographs and knick-knacks from Russia. In the middle of a large table that dominated the center of the room sat a silver samovar, the ultimate in tea-making. China plates around the table’s edge were filled with delicate white pryaniki cookies, zefir meringue, and pastila confections. I didn’t need to eat them here to remember their taste from my mortal days when the men at the mill would bring in trays of cookies their wives had baked for special occasions.

  The restaurant was closed to anyone except the hand-picked group chosen by Countess Demidov. Once again, uniformed waiters carried trays of hors d’oeurves and glasses of wine for the ladies. I suspected that the men’s drinks were vodka. I hung back, observing the room, keeping a protective eye on Grace as she worked the crowd. None of these waiters looked familiar, so if they were werewolves, they were ones I hadn’t met. Rasputin hadn’t made an appearance, and I wondered what his big surprise was.

  If anyone else from the prior event had been menaced by wolves, they weren’t talking about it and looked none the worse for wear. Though now that I thought about it, some of the women appeared to be drinking a bit more than usual, and the men stood in tight clusters, casting glances over their shoulders or peering out the windows at the darkened street.

  Grace drifted back my way, with a new “friend” in tow. The woman looked to be a decade or so older than Grace, finely boned and delicate. Everything from her hair to her shoes reeked of old money. She was also, clearly, tipsy. Grace and I exchanged a glance. She’d obviously brought her “catch” to where I could overhear the conversation. That meant paying close attention while making it look like I wasn’t.

  “It’s not just the travel,” the woman gushed in response to Grace’s careful questions. “Though it’s beastly expensive to get to America from Russia, so of course, it would be the same going the other way.” She giggled at her own wording, and Grace snagged the woman another flute of champagne to replace her empty one. “We’ll have to raise at least a little army, won’t we? I mean, Stalin won’t just throw his hands in the air and surrender!”

  The socialite tittered again, and from Grace’s frozen smile, I knew she was doing her best to be patient and not smack the woman. “Just think—a real Romanov!” Her hand went to her heart as if she might swoon. Then she leaned in confidentially. “But it’s not just getting to Russia that’s expensive,” she whispered. “It’s ransoming the Chalice of St. Theodore the Black so the ritual can be done right.”

  The tipsy woman’s fingers went to cover her lips, and her eyes went wide. “Oopsie! I wasn’t supposed to say anything about that.” She laid a hand on Grace’s arm, going a little off balance and sloshing some of her champagne. “You won’t tell, will you? We girls have to stick together.”

  I missed the next bit of chit-chat, as my mind spun. What the hell was the Chalice of St. Theodore the Black, and what ritual required it? I certainly wasn’t an expert on Russian royalty, but the tingle that went down my spine told me that the ritual was likely to be much darker than a simple coronation.

  The chatty socialite meandered off, teetering on her heels, greeting everyone like a long-lost friend. Grace, of course, said nothing, but I knew from the way her eyes narrowed that she had caught the slip and was puzzling it out.

  The crowd mingled for another half hour. Under the pretense of sticking close to Grace—no one seemed to question the need for a bodyguard after what happened at the last meeting, and several other guests had brought their own security—I moved among the guests. Many spoke to each other in Russian, but I could pick up the gist of their conversations
. They were abuzz about the possibility of restoring the Romanovs, punishing the usurpers, and most of all, returning home. Many—men and women—teared up at the possibility of going back, rebuilding, and picking up the pieces of their shattered lives.

  I felt anger flare. If this was, indeed, a con, it was particularly cruel. My circumstances differed, but I knew an immigrant’s longing for home, and while I’d been in America for longer than a mortal lifespan, my heart would always be Hungarian. Building up these people’s hope to take advantage of them was unforgivable.

  I felt fidgety, and I knew Grace well enough to guess that she did, too, just from her posture and the way her perfectly manicured nails tapped against her wine glass. Just when I thought nothing more would come of the gathering, the Countess tapped her crystal flute with a spoon to call us all to attention. The older woman seemed to be vibrating with excitement.

  “My dear friends. Please gather in the next room—we have a truly unforgettable secret to share with you!”

  The group buzzed with conversation as we entered the private dining room. As before, Rasputin was already there, standing next to a small dais with a curtain across the back, likely used for musicians. The holy man’s serene expression couldn’t entirely hide the smug satisfaction I saw in his eyes.

  “At this point, I must tell you that we can only share this with those who are committed to our cause,” the Countess said. “The stakes are too high for us to have this secret shared with those who are not ready to do all within their power to free Mother Russia from the grip of its looters and restore it to its rightful rulers.”

  I’d known Rasputin was a con man, but I started to have second thoughts about the Countess, too. At the first meeting, I thought she might have been a well-intentioned shill so besotted with the idea of going home that she bought what Rasputin was selling. Now as I watched her work her so-called “friends,” I decided she was as much of a flim-flam artist as he was.