“It’s like someone took a Russian log cabin and a pre-Shift contemporary house, stuck them into a blender, and dumped it over there.”
Curran frowned. “It’s his . . . What do you call it? Terem.”
“A terem is where Russian princesses lived.”
“Exactly.”
Between us and the house lay a field of black dirt. It looked soft and powdery, like potting soil or a freshly plowed field. A path of rickety old boards, half rotten and splitting, curved across the field to the front door. I didn’t have a good feeling about that dirt.
We’d tried to circle the house and ran into a thick, thorn-studded natural fence, formed by wild rosebushes, blackberry brambles, and trees. The fence was twelve feet tall and when Curran tried to jump high enough to see over it, the thorny vines snapped out like lassos and made a heroic effort to pull him in. After I helped him pick the needles out of his hands, we decided a frontal assault was the better option.
“No animal tracks on the dirt,” I said.
“No animal scents either,” Curran said. “There are scent trails all around us through the woods, but none here.”
“That’s why he has giant windows and no grates on them. Nothing can get close to the house.”
“It’s that, or he doesn’t care. Why the hell doesn’t he answer his phone?”
Who knew why the priest of the god of All Evil and Darkness did anything?
I picked up a small rock, tossed it into the dirt, and braced myself. Nothing. No toothy jaws exploded through the soil, no magic fire, no earth-shattering kaboom. The rock just sat there.
We could come back later, when the magic was down. That would be the sensible thing to do. However, we had driven ten miles through lousy traffic in the punishing heat of Georgia’s summer and then hiked another mile through the woods to get here, and our deadline was fast approaching. One way or another, I was getting into that house.
I put my foot onto the first board. It sank a little under my weight, but held. Step. Another step. Still holding.
I tiptoed across the boards, Curran right behind me. Think sneaky thoughts.
The dark soil shivered.
Two more steps.
A mound formed to the right of us, the dirt shifting like waves of some jet-black sea.
Uh-oh.
“To the right,” I murmured.
“I see it.”
Long serpentine bone spines pierced the mound and slid through the soil toward us, like fins of a sea serpent gliding under the surface of a midnight-black, powdery ocean.
We sprinted to the door.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cloud of loose soil burst to the left. A black scorpion the size of a pony shot out and scrambled after us.
If we killed his pet scorpion, we’d never hear the end of it.
I ran up the porch and pounded on the door. “Roman!”
Behind me the bone spines whipped out of the soil. What I’d thought were fins turned into a cluster of tentacles, each consisting of bone segments held together by remnants of cartilage and dried, ropy connective tissue. The tentacles snapped, grabbing Curran. He locked his hands on the bones and strained, pulling them apart. Bone crunched, connective tissue tore, and the left tentacle flailed, half of it on the ground.
“Roman!” Damn it all to hell.
A bone tentacle grabbed me and yanked me back and up, dangling me six feet off the ground. The scorpion dashed forward, its barb poised for the kill.
The door swung open, revealing Roman. He wore a T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, and his dark hair, shaved on the sides into a long horselike mane, stuck out on the left side of his head. He looked like he’d been sleeping.
“What’s all this?”
Everything stopped.
Roman squinted at me. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We had to come here because you don’t answer your damn phone.” Curran’s voice had that icy quality that said his patience was at an end.
“I didn’t answer it because I unplugged it.”
Roman waved his hand. The scorpion retreated. The tentacles gently set me down and slithered back into the ground.
“You would unplug yours too, if you were related to my family. My parents are fighting again and they’re trying to make me choose sides. I told them they could talk to me when they start acting like responsible adults.”
Fat chance of that. Roman’s father, Grigorii, was the head black volhv in the city. His mother, Evdokia, was one-third of the Witch Oracle. When they had fights, things didn’t boil over, they exploded. Literally.
“So far I’ve avoided both of them, so I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. Come in.”
He held the door open. I walked past him into a large living room. Golden wooden floors, huge fireplace, thirty-foot ceilings, and soft furniture. Bookshelves lined the far wall, crammed to the brink. The place looked downright cozy.
Curran walked in behind me and took in the living room. His thick eyebrows rose.
“What?” Roman asked.
“No altar?” Curran asked. “No bloody knives and frightened virgins?”
“No sacrificial pit ringed with skulls?” I asked. “Ha. Ha.” Roman rolled his eyes. “Never heard that one before. I keep the virgins chained up in the basement. Do you want some coffee?”
I shook my head.
“Yes,” Curran said.
“Black?”
“No, put cream in it.”
“Good man. Only two kinds of people drink their coffee black: cops and serial killers. Sit, sit.”
I sat on the sofa and almost sank into it. I’d need help getting up. Curran sprawled next to me.
“This is nice,” he said.
“Mm-hm.”
“We should get one for the living room.”
“We’d get blood on it.”
Curran shrugged. “So?”
Roman appeared with two mugs, one pitch-black and the other clearly half-filled with cream. He gave the lighter mug to Curran.
“Drinking yours black, I see,” I told him.
He shrugged and sat on the couch. “Eh . . . goes with the job. So what can I do for you?”
“We’re getting married,” I said.
“I know. Congratulations. On Ivan Kupala night. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s brave.”
Ivan Kupala’s night was the time of wild magic in Slavic folklore. The ancient Russians believed that on that date the boundaries between the worlds blurred. In our case, it meant a really strong magic wave. Odd things happened on Ivan Kupala’s night. Given a choice, I would’ve picked a different day, but Curran had set the date. To him it was the last day of werewolf summer, a shapeshifter holiday and a perfect day for our wedding. I told him I would marry him, and if he wanted to get married on Ivan Kupala night, then we’d get married on Ivan Kupala night. After moving the date a dozen times, that was the least I could do.
“So did you come to invite me?” Roman asked.
“Yes,” Curran said. “We’d like you to officiate.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We’d like you to marry us,” I said.
Roman’s eyes went wide. He pointed to himself. “Me?”
“Yes,” Curran said.
“Marry you?”
“Yes.”
“You do know what I do, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re Chernobog’s priest.”
“Chernobog” literally meant Black God, who was also known by other fun names like Black Serpent, Lord of Darkness, God of freezing cold, destruction, evil, and death. Some ancient Slavs divided their pantheon into opposing forces of light and dark. These forces existed in a balance, and according to that view, Chernobog was a necessary evil. Somebody had to be his priest, and Roman had ended up with
the job. According to him, it was the family business.
Roman leaned forward, his dark eyes intense. “You sure about this?”
“Yes,” Curran said.
“Not going to change your mind?”
What was it with the twenty questions? “Will you do it or not?”
“Of course I’ll do it.” Roman jumped off the couch. “Ha! Nobody ever asks me to marry them. They always go to Nikolai, my cousin—Vasiliy’s oldest son.”
Roman had a vast family tree, but I remembered Vasiliy, his uncle. Vasiliy was a priest of Belobog, Chernobog’s brother and exact opposite. He was also very proud of his children, especially Nikolai, and bragged about them every chance he got.
Roman ducked behind the couch and emerged with a phone.
“When some supernatural filth tries to carry off the children, call Roman so he can wade through blood and sewage to rescue them, but when it’s something nice like a wedding or a naming, oh no, we can’t have Chernobog’s volhv involved. It’s bad luck. Get Nikolai. When he finds out who I’m going to marry, he’ll have an aneurysm. His head will explode. It’s good that he’s a doctor, maybe he can treat himself.”
He plugged the phone into the outlet.
It rang.
Roman stared at it as if it were a viper.
The phone rang again.
He unplugged it. “There.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I told him.
“Oh, it’s bad.” Roman nodded. “My dad refused to help my second sister buy a house, because he doesn’t like her boyfriend. My mother called him and it went badly. She cursed him. Every time he urinates, the stream arches up and over.”
Oh.
Curran winced.
“You hungry? Do you want something to eat?” Roman wagged his eyebrows. “I have smoked brisket.”
My fiancé leaned forward, suddenly interested. “Moist or dry?”
“Moist. What am I, a heathen?”
Technically, he was a heathen.
“We can’t,” I told him. “We have to leave. We have Conclave tonight.”
“I didn’t know you still go to that,” Roman said.
“Ghastek outed her,” Curran said.
Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Together they are the coauthors of the #1 New York Times bestselling Kate Daniels urban-fantasy series and the romantic urban-fantasy novels of the Edge. They currently reside in Texas with their two children and numerous pets.
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