The Lost Queen

by Jenn Stark

  “Death or mental destruction? You guys seriously don’t know which way it went? How bad is your record keeping, anyway? Because it seems like this is kind of an important prophecy to keep track of.”

  “As you might say, we’ve been a little bit busy,” Danae said. “The prophecy of Myanya seems quite important now, but there were many who felt it was permanently laid to rest with the resistance of Iskra Mikhailova in 1962, since Myanya didn’t fully inhabit her vessel but was rejected outright.”

  “Iskra? That’s the witch who resisted the crazy?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.” Danae paused. “Are you feeling yourself again? We can remove you from the pentagram if so. You’ve received the full blessing.”

  I let that little nugget of nuttery slide right by me, but I was more than ready to exit the pentagram of doom. I stood, only a little wobbly, and crossed over the chalk markings. I could feel the pressure try to slow me down, and then Kreios was there, his strong hands grasping my forearms, pulling me through.

  I blinked in the suddenly bright light.

  “That’s…kind of a lot of juju for you all to be throwing at me, no offense,” I groused, looking around. I recognized where we were now—the inner sanctum of Kreios’s office at the Flamingo. Not the interior oasis he favored so much, but a room resplendent with old-world art, thick wooden furniture, and deep plush carpet. And, of course, Kreios himself.

  The Devil of the Arcana Council assumed many forms, but his most usual glamour was the one he was effecting now—his hair long and loose, tawny against his tanned skin, his lean, elegant form draped in a white linen shirt and loose, ragged-hem trousers. His feet were shod with sandals that looked more at home on the beach than in a casino in Las Vegas, but the look always managed to work for him. And for once, his jade-green eyes weren’t fixed on me, assessing me with his coolly seductive gaze, but on the carpet.

  Carpet that was now stained a deep black from scorch marks in the shape of a pentagram.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Life is little more than an illusion,” Kreios countered, but he didn’t remove the evidence of the pentagram. If anything, he continued to study it with deep interest. “I remain curious for Mistress Danae to explain how it evolved from the design we initially created, however.”

  He pointed to the pentagram, and I saw what he meant. Two crescent moons that interlocked with each other, one open to the east, the other open to the south. “I assume that symbol is important?” he continued.

  Danae nodded, but she didn’t look happy. “It’s the symbol of Myanya,” she said. “During the very first incarnation of her prophecy.” She looked at me. “But there’s no reason for it to be appended here. Her energy was not drawn upon for this effort. To my knowledge, there is nothing in what you were doing to trigger her awareness.”

  “Nothing in what I was doing, perhaps,” I said. “But you pulled me out of Armaeus’s library. Could something there be relevant to her?”

  “It shouldn’t be. The only reason for those conjoined crescent moons to be drawn is if Armaeus or yourself were already locked in combat with Myanya. And neither of you were.”

  “Well, I wasn’t,” I corrected. “I have no idea what the heck Armaeus was up against. It didn’t feel like the incarnation of divine feminine rage, though. I mean, there was plenty of rage, but I got the sense it was pretty gender neutral.”

  “It wouldn’t have been Myanya unless Armaeus was directly seeking to draw her out,” Danae said. “That’s not it.”

  She paused, then fished about at her waist, and I realized she was wearing a thick leather belt hung with bags, along with a pentacle and a cup, that I could see. The tools of her trade, at least some of them. A moment later, she drew out a slender silver pendant on a chain and handed it to me. “I would be blessed if you would wear this, Justice Wilde. It’s meant to go under your clothes, next to your skin.”

  I squinted at it as I took it, noting her formal use of my name. The pendant was an ankh, hung from a chain long enough for it to hit my belly button. “What’s it do?”

  “Nothing,” she said, waving her hand. “A talisman for safety, nothing more.”

  I glanced at Kreios, and he gave me a barely perceptible nod, so I shrugged. Danae visibly relaxed as I slipped the long, thin chain over my neck, tucking the necklace beneath my shirt. Danae was right, I barely felt it, and she had just pulled my feet from the fire. I could wear her friendship bracelet for a while.

  “Is there anything else he told you about Myanya?” Danae asked as I turned back to her. “Where to find her, or what he’d learned?”

  “Not really,” I said. “He was intent on me taking Nikki and going to Moscow to interview Iskra, and he said that trip was something he couldn’t take with me. At the time, I thought he was simply playing coy, but now I think his reticence had more to do with the fact that he was getting the snot beaten out of him than any issue with his passport.

  “Iskra.” Danae nodded. “She was questioned heavily at the time of her trial, but it’s possible there is information she will share differently now, with the benefit of so many years to consider what transpired at St. Basil’s.”

  I perked up at that. “Armaeus mentioned that too. Aren’t there rules about that?”

  “The Eastern Orthodox church is an entity unto itself, and far more careful with the pagan wellspring from which it grew than its Western European counterparts,” Danae said. “Nevertheless, Iskra did what she could to protect herself from Myanya’s energy. She feared that she would be targeted. Her energy was very strong, very pure. She had to dig deep within herself to be able to find the strength to resist the primal rage of the scarred warrior witch.” Danae sighed. “And she was not left without her own scars, to be sure. Afterwards, the Muscovite coven faltered in strength significantly, which was quite a blow. It had been a power seat for magic up to that time. The energy of Myanya was held to blame.”

  “So what you’re saying is, Myanya’s not very popular.”

  Danae curled her lip. “On the contrary. Every season has its dark side when the old ways seem far more successful than the new. Wherever that nostalgia for the power of the ancients lies, that’s where Myanya will target her next vessel witch.”

  “Well then, hopefully Iskra can shed some light on what to do once we find Myanya. And Danae?” I waited until she met my eyes, and gave her a smile. “Thanks. I’m not sure what I was up against in Armaeus’s library, but I appreciate you having my back.”

  “You’re welcome,” she sighed. “I only wish I’d been there earlier.”

  “Why?”

  “Mistress Danae worries.” Kreios turned us both easily toward the door he opened to the main part of the Flamingo Casino. He was a big fan of the truth, and given the smile on his face, he was deeply relishing the truth he was about to share with me, despite the stricken look on Danae’s face. “She believes that what you experienced in Armaeus’s library damaged you, but I disagree. There is nothing you encountered while working with the Magician that you can’t handle, now and evermore. By his careful design.”

  That sounded like a trap about to spring, barely hidden in the high grass of deliberately complex language. I narrowed my eyes at Kreios, but he merely gestured forward. “After you, Sara Wilde.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You’re kidding me. This is where Myanya attempted to get her grind on in 1962?”

  We stood in the middle of Red Square, looking toward the iconic St. Basil’s cathedral, its lofty towers topped with huge onion-shaped turrets even more breathtaking in person than they’d been in all the tourist guides and online travelogues I’d been able to read before Nikki and I had made our hasty trip to the Kremlin. That monstrosity of a government building sat behind us and to the right, looming like a malevolent god, and it was all I could do not to look over my shoulder to make sure it hadn’t advanced upon us while I wasn’t looking.

  We�
�d left Danae and Kreios in Vegas. Kreios to keep an eye on Armaeus, and Danae to track reports of Myanya’s global appearances, in hopes of narrowing down the possibilities of where she and her vessel witch were camping out. Meanwhile, Nikki and I needed to figure out what to do with Myanya when we caught her.

  I focused on St. Basil’s. The church—while undeniably beautiful—was simply that, a church. A very Catholic, orthodox church that was a rabbit warren of tiny chambers and intricate passageways on the inside, the only real space to breathe evident when you looked up. We’d been booked on an official tour on this chilly morning, but nothing about this place felt like the setting for a witch to have a throwdown with an ancient spirit facing the fated cycle of possession, oppression, then redemption. Especially a witch who beat the odds and the spirit and lived to tell the tale.

  “This is where Armaeus said Iskra Mikhailova would meet us,” I said, though I didn’t want to think too much about the Magician and his reasons for sending me off so abruptly…let alone the whole romper room setup in his library. Had I missed any sign in his penthouse office of something deeper going on? He’d been acting weird—the whole Council had been acting weird, but was it really my job to keep up with their internecine politics? I had a job to do here. I was busy.

  Still, I couldn’t help extend a thin thread of connection all the way to the other side of the world, where I suspected Armaeus was still holed up in his fortress. I wanted to feel him, sense him. Know he was there.

  I got nothing back.

  “If so, she’d better get a move on,” Nikki grumbled. “I didn’t douse this coat in borax for no reason.” She fluffed her coat, which didn’t need the help—a voluminous bright white faux-fur tent that ended well north of her knees, the better for her to show off her tights-clad gams that were also encased in fur-topped knee-high boots, complete with thick, chunky platform heels and faux-fur tassels. She also had a bright red faux-fur hand warmer and a matching cap that settled on her ice-blonde updo as if defying the wind to knock it askew. The wind, wisely, didn’t take that challenge.

  I drove my hands deeper into my wool-lined leather duster, my outerwear of choice for the brisk Russian morning. We’d made the journey to Moscow with my evolving skill of teleporting. While I was still unfortunately singed by each new experience—which explained Nikki’s garment treatments—I had to admit I appreciated the advantages of avoiding commercial air travel.

  First, there was the benefit of instant gratification. You needed a flight to Moscow? You simply braced yourself and went. Particularly when traveling to places like Moscow, there was an added benefit of no customs lines. I was becoming more and more of a fan.

  In fact, there was no official record of us even being in Moscow, now that I thought of it. I frowned. How many people in the world had this ability, besides myself and Armaeus? Because the temptation to use such a skill for personal gain could very well prove impossible to ignore. As one of the more avaricious artifact hunters back in my day, I felt a familiar itch along my spine…

  “Justice Wilde!” The voice was thickly accented, but the words were in English, and Nikki and I both turned to see a young woman bustling through the square, her stylish wool coat swinging along her calves above sleek leather boots. She was wearing a cap similar to Nikki’s, though also in wool, and her face was bright, blue eyed, and—undeniably young. This wasn’t Iskra Mikhailova. She could have been Iskra’s granddaughter, if Iskra had ever had children. Which, after her date with Myanya, she hadn’t.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the woman said, turning immediately. “I’m Svetlana Mater. Thank you for meeting me here. Dr. Mikhailova is not so happy with the cold in our beautiful city anymore, but she wanted you to go through the church before you met her. The church, it is everything to her and her story. Especially if the prophecy…” She shook her head, pursing her lips. “Well. There will be time for that. You have seen the cathedral?”

  “Only the outside,” I hedged. “But we could take the tour. We’re signed up.”

  “Ah! You have not done so already. I was hoping that was the case. I will show you a bit of a secret, if you would allow me.” She flashed us both a winning smile and started moving briskly across the square towards the church. “I have credentials for us all, given Dr. Mikhailova’s position with St. Basil’s.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” I asked. “I thought she worked with the university.”

  “She did, for many years. But what most do not know is that, though St. Basil’s no longer had any religious function at the time of her trial, Dr. Mikhailova secretly converted to Russian Orthodoxy Catholicism immediately after her tribulation and became a nun. She remained in service to the Father for eight years before exiting again, and has made volunteering at the cathedral her life’s work thereafter.”

  We’d entered the cathedral’s main doors by now, bypassing the ticket booth with a flash of our credentials, and Svetlana pitched her voice higher, talking about the nine chapels housed within the building as she ushered us past two other groups. “The original church was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible to honor his victory over Mongol forces in 1552, and in the very beginning, it was as white as snow, the domes painted gold. But very little is known about how the church evolved over time. Some believe the structure was intended to mimic the churches of Jerusalem. Some say the idea of building eight churches around a ninth chapel in the center was intended to evoke the symbol of the eight-pointed star. Regardless, the result has the effect of being buried under several layers of mysticism, cloaked and framed in it, if you will. It’s a labyrinth in all directions but up, which is very much intended.”

  “Up,” Nikki echoed, peering skyward. “Not so useful if you don’t have wings.”

  “And yet we are all angels sent here to learn, are we not?” Svetlana said cryptically. “So in the end, an exit up is all we truly need.”

  She let us chew on that as we meandered through several more corridors, taking in the crowded red-hued splendor of two of the chapels. Finally, when we were alone in a narrow hallway lined floor to ceiling with heavily framed paintings, she turned and gave us a smile. “You are not allowed to touch anything or take any flash photography, you understand? It is vitally important.”

  I frowned at her. That sort of warning was typically given at the start of any proper tour. “Of course—”

  I lurched back as Svetlana’s hand swept forward, cracking against the wall. Instantly, the panel clicked and swung inward, and she urged us forward rapidly. “It becomes harder and harder to open this door, but there is no way for us to get in to fix the hinges now that Dr. Mikhailova is no longer on the restoration committee. So we do not use it so much, but you had to see what is above to understand what is below.”

  “I—sure.” I had no idea what Svetlana was talking about, but I was willing to go along with it if it got us to Iskra more quickly.

  We descended into a stairway that had none of its own lighting. Svetlana used her phone as a makeshift lantern to guide the way. The stairway curved down thirteen steps, clearly cut inside a column of stone given its tight spiral, as if it were some sort of refurbished well. After a short landing, it continued down another thirteen steps. “You won’t have to exit this way, of course,” Svetlana murmured. “But you understand the sense of this space now, I think.”

  “When was this built?”

  “We believe this underground chamber was created at the same time as the primary cathedral, the mechanism to its entry cleverly concealed. Ivan the Terrible had no real need to hide here from his enemies, but he was nothing if not a practical ruler. The rumors that circulate regarding the blinding of the original builder to keep him from ever building a similar church stem in part from the creation of this underground escape route. While it is a historical fact that no such blinding occurred, the threat was leveled not to keep the builder from erecting a more beautiful church later on, but from revealing the location of this hideaway. It proved an effec
tive deterrent.”

  “But if Ivan didn’t really need it, what was it used for?” Nikki asked. “Because it’s definitely been used.”

  I squinted in the confined space as Svetlana flipped switches, flooding the subterranean space with light. This chamber resembled a drawing room from a bygone era—large wingback chairs, shelves lined with books, couches draped with heavy blankets. I glanced around, trying to get a sense of how the place was heated and lit, if, in fact, it was intended to remain hidden. “The custodians have to be aware of this place.”

  “The custodians, no. Certain agents in the government, of course. But the information about what lies beneath St. Basil’s is a question of national security, and it always has been. As a result, very few people know the truth. Dr. Mikhailova was part of the Muscovite coven, which was active at the time St. Basil’s was built and provided workers for the project. The information about not only the location of this shelter but also the secret passages that link to it is a coven secret.” She smiled. “And now your secret.”

  A dry, rattling laugh sounded from deep in the room, and the voice that followed it was as soft and murmuring as the air around us. “There are no secrets that can be held forever from Justice.”

  I turned to see one of the piles of blankets shift. As Svetlana hurried to the center of the room, a petite woman with white hair stood, wobbling only slightly. Out of habit, my third eye flicked open, and both women lit up like Christmas trees. Not every witch was a high-powered Connected, or even Connected at all, but both Iskra and her young assistant qualified. Interesting.

  “Justice Wilde.” Iskra inclined her head.