“Unless I get you first.”
She laughed again, as she pulled off her mink hat, shaking out her hair. “What are you going to do, throw a rock at me? Since I doubt you have a gun in your pocket. The only way you can get to Norilsk this time of year is by plane, and they have no problem with profiling here in Russia. Foreigners, especially Americans, are automatically suspect, and liable to be strip-searched at any time. Even a dumb vor like you wouldn’t risk getting caught with so much as a toothpick in his possession.”
“Yet somehow you managed just fine,” Zoe said, but it was all bravado. Her mother was right. No way could they have carried a gun onto the airplane, and Norilsk seemed to be the one city in the world where Ry didn’t “know a guy.”
“I am a pakhan in the Russian mafiya, darling. I could probably get my hands on a suitcase nuke, if I wanted one badly enough. It is not that hard when you own half the damn country.”
She made a little movement, as if she was going to step inside the chamber with them, and Zoe felt Ry tense. She knew what he was thinking: If her mother got close enough, there might be a chance for one of them to go for her Glock.
But although Anna Larina’s eyes were riveted on the altar again, she didn’t come any farther into the little chamber. The red ooze seemed to be pulsating now, brightening, dimming, brightening again, and Zoe saw the naked greed blaze to life on her mother’s face.
After a moment, no more, Anna Larina tore her gaze off the altar and focused all her attention back on them. “You, Sergei. Put the lantern on the ground, nice and slowly, and if I even think you might throw it at me, my daughter gets a bullet in the heart. That’s good…. Now, starting with you, Zoe, I want both of you to come out here and join me in this lovely cave. Baby steps, though, dear. Nice and slow.”
Zoe led the way through the hole and into the cave. Anna Larina backed up as they came toward her, careful to keep a safe distance between them and the pistol pointed steadily at her daughter’s chest.
“Very good, children. Now, get over there. On the other side of the pool.”
“You should have tried to break into the movies when you were in L.A., Mother,” Zoe said, wanting to get her talking, distracted, to buy them some time. Although time to do what, she didn’t know. “What with that little acting job you treated me to in your library, pretending you’d never heard of such a thing as an altar of bones in your life.”
A brittle smile stretched her mother’s lips. “You were not always the chosen one, Zoe dear. The morning before she dumped me off at the orphanage and left me forever, your dear, departed grandmother told me about this wonderment she called an altar of bones. She said it was hidden in a cave deep in Siberia, and if you drank from it, you couldn’t die, and that made it dangerous. She said the women of our family were called Keepers, and they kept the altar hidden from the world. A sacred duty passed down mother to daughter since the beginning of time. What drivel.”
Yet as Zoe watched, her mother’s face seemed to soften and she became lost in the memory of those last moments with a mother who was about to walk out of her life forever.
“But I was only nine,” Anna Larina went on, “and you know how kids are. All I was interested in was how an altar could be made out of bones. I think that’s what stopped her from telling me the rest of it—she was afraid I wouldn’t understand or that I’d forget. She did show me the icon, though, of a Virgin Mary holding a skull cup in her lap. She said a Keeper during Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s time had created the icon as a way to keep the altar’s secret.”
“No wonder you collected them all these years,” Zoe said. “I thought it was because they were beautiful and it made you happy just to look at them. Your icons seemed to be the only thing in this world you really cared about, and even that was lie.”
Her mother’s mouth curled into a sneer. “I swear, Zoe, you positively drip sentimentality at times. They were an investment, nothing more, while I searched the world over for the only one that really mattered to me. When Mother didn’t come back, I thought she’d died and the thing had been pawned or sold. I thought she’d died….”
She’s still that little girl, Zoe thought. That little girl waiting at the orphanage for a mother who never came back. And when Katya passed her over to make her granddaughter the Keeper, it must have felt as if she’d been abandoned all over again. Only she doesn’t know why. Katya told her about the altar and that she would be the Keeper one day, but then she took it all away and give it to me, and she can’t understand why her mother would do that to her. She doesn’t know why.
“I thought she’d died,” Anna Larina was saying, fury and pain in her eyes as she glared at her daughter. “But all this time she was saving it for you.”
“You’re wrong about her,” Zoe said. “What you’re thinking about her. She never hated you. She left you in that orphanage to keep you safe from the hunters, and she would have given you the icon later, she would have made you the Keeper, but …”
“But what, Zoe? I’m beyond giving a shit why the old bitch did what she did, but you seem to need the catharsis, so go on.”
“You were her little girl and you were dying, and she couldn’t bear it. So she gave you the altar to drink, even knowing what it would do to you. One drop and you would live. But one drop would also make you crazy.”
“I don’t … What are you saying?”
Zoe almost took a step toward her mother, wanting instinctively to comfort her, but the pond was between them now. And the gun still pointed at her, unwavering, deadly.
“She’s saying the altar of bones is a real fountain of youth,” Ry said. “But there’s one disastrous consequence to drinking it, and I think you already know, deep in your heart, what that is. All these years, while the face in your mirror barely changed, you’ve felt the crazy growing and twisting inside of you, consuming you. You might stay forever young and beautiful, pakhan, but the price you’re paying is your sanity. Without your knowledge, without your consent, you’re paying the price. And it will only get worse. Every year on this earth is going to cost you another piece of your mind.”
Anna Larina shook her head. “No, that’s a lie. Some kind of trick to get the altar away from me, and it’s not going to work.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered,” Zoe said, “why your mother gave you the altar because you were dying, but never drank from it herself? The reason why she didn’t make you the Keeper was because she saw what you’ve made of your life. You’re a pakhan in the Russian mafia. How much more depraved and crazy—”
“I am not crazy!” Anna Larina shouted, shocking even herself. But then she shrugged it right off, even gave a little laugh. “Well. That might’ve been just a little too telling. And you can stop your smirking, Sergei, because it doesn’t matter. You two can think what you want. I’m taking what is mine.”
And then what, Mother?
Zoe couldn’t see how her mother was going to let them leave the cave alive. Ry she would kill on principle alone, because she was the pakhan and he had betrayed her. But would Anna Larina really kill her own child? What lived inside her now? Was it a disease, or was it evil?
Whichever it was, it didn’t matter. Because as she looked from her mother’s soulless face to the barrel of the Glock, then back to that face, Zoe knew in her gut that this thing couldn’t be dealt with or rationalized with or bargained with or wished away.
Yet still she tried. “Mother, please. Why are you doing this?”
“Why?” Anna Larina’s laugh was wild now, out of control. “I should think it’s obvious. Why don’t you tell her, Sergei? You’re standing there, suddenly silent as a bloodsucking leech, probably plotting how you’re going to leap across the pond and wrest this gun from my hand. Explain to my naive daughter what I could possibly want with the altar of bones.”
“Besides the fact that you’re batshit crazy? Money and power. The usual suspects.”
“Bingo, and give that man a prize. Think of the billions of do
llars people spend every year in the vain attempt to fool their mirrors. Botox, face-lifts, liposuction, tummy tucks—all to look younger than they really are. To convince themselves, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that with every breath they take, with every minute that passes, they are not dying.”
Zoe realized that while her mother was talking, she was also backing toward the opening in the rock wall. The chamber beyond it was glowing red like a beacon now, pulsing, pulsing …
“Nobody wants to believe that the wonderfulness that is their wonderful, exceptional self will just end. Simply dissolve into nothingness,” Anna Larina said, and backed up another step, then another, her voice rising with excitement, anticipation. Passion. “Imagine what the rich would pay, what they would give up to me, in return for not having to face their nothingness. And I could choose who to bless and who to damn. I would be God.”
Zoe saw the white flash shoot out of the muzzle of the gun barrel, a split second before she heard the report of the shot.
Ry grunted and fell face forward, into the black, oily pool.
ANNA LARINA HEARD the echo of her own voice, God … God … along with the gunshot, bouncing against the rocky walls, as she whirled and ducked through the opening in the wall and into the red, pulsating chamber.
But then almost against her will, as if she didn’t really want to know, she looked back, and she saw Zoe trying to haul Ry out of the pool by the back of his coat.
Yes, that’s my girl. I knew you’d try to save him because that’s what you do. So get him to a hospital, before he dies, only he’s probably going to die anyway because I aimed for his gut, to make him suffer, make him hurt. Take him away, though, Zoe, and leave the altar to me, and later on we’ll figure out just what we’re going to do with you.
The altar of bones … It looked like blood on the floor, shiny, viscous. She thought it even smelled like blood, and it seemed to be calling to her, drawing her into its beating, red heart.
She went toward it, her eyes on the prize, on the power. She didn’t see the wolves on the floor.
She stepped into the circle they made, and the world seemed to fall out from underneath her. Something was wrong with the floor, the stones were disintegrating like sand beneath her feet.
Anna Larina screamed and screamed as she fell back, falling down into blackness, falling forever, and above her, so very far away now, she saw the pulsing red light. It was very bright now, lighting the darkness in a strange swirl of color, as if reaching for her, and she wanted to scream for it to save her, but it didn’t even slow her down.
And then, in the instant before she hit bottom, she saw, silhouetted by the bright glowing red light, the tons of rocks and boulders coming down on top of her.
57
RY, PLEASE …
He was so heavy, so unmoving. Please, God. Ry, don’t you be dead on me, don’t you dare be dead.
Zoe dug her fingers deeper into the folds of his coat and pulled with every bit of strength she had. It was enough to keep him from sinking to the bottom; it wasn’t enough to get him up and out of the pool.
“Mother, damn you. Help me,” she shouted.
For a moment Zoe thought her mother might have paused and looked back, but then Anna Larina kept going, through the hole and into the glowing red chamber.
Zoe felt Ry thrash beneath her hands, heard him cough. She sat back on her heels and pulled again, sobbing his name, while he clawed at the rocky ledge of the pool, and then he was out, streaming black water, shuddering with every harsh breath. He rolled over and half sat up, bracing his back against a stalagmite, pressing his hand to his right shoulder, and Zoe saw blood seep out between his fingers.
Then she heard her mother scream.
Zoe’s head jerked around, and what she saw didn’t seem real. The ground beneath Anna Larina’s feet had disappeared. “Mother!” Zoe shouted, horrified, wanting to run to her, to save her, but she couldn’t let go of Ry. For an instant, her mother seemed to hang suspended over a gaping abyss, and then she plunged, and she was screaming, screaming.
Her mother’s screams seemed to turn into a high-pitched whine, and the whine got louder and louder as the ground began to vibrate and then to shake.
“Get out!” Ry shouted above the noise that was now like a train bearing down on them.
Zoe tried to grab him, to wrest him up onto his feet, but he pushed her away from him. “No. I’ll slow you down. Go.” And he shoved her again, harder.
“I’m not leaving you, you idiot!” Zoe screamed. She knocked his flailing hand aside and covered his body with hers, as dirt and bits of rock rained down on them.
She thought, I’m going to die, and she was engulfed by a terrible sadness. It was too soon.
GRADUALLY THE GROUND stopped shaking and the terrible shrieking noise became a low rumble and died.
Slowly, Zoe lifted her head off Ry’s chest. “Is it over?” she asked, more of the gods than of him.
But something in her already knew that it was over, that this was the final riddle. Rocks and boulders and debris now filled the hole where the chamber with the altar of bones had been. To protect the altar from the world, it had been taken from the world forever.
An image filled Zoe’s mind then, of her mother in that last instant before the ground opened up and swallowed her. She’d had her back to Zoe, her face riveted on the altar, and even as she was falling to her death, Zoe knew she hadn’t been able to look away.
Ry groaned, and Zoe rolled off him fast, suddenly afraid that she’d made his gunshot wound worse, throwing herself on top of him the way she had. He looked bad. The hand he had pressed to his shoulder was now covered in blood. Already his eyes looked glazed, feverish.
He did still have the strength to get to his feet, though. And she could never have said how she did it, but somehow Zoe got both herself and him squeezed through that slit in the rock without her freaking out completely. She was more scared of the thought that her mother had brought some of her mafiya goons along with her as backup, and they were now hidden among the trees that bordered the lake, ready to open fire with their semiautomatics.
She had no choice, though. Ry’s wet clothes were freezing on him. She had to get him warm or he would die of hypothermia before she could even get him to a hospital.
RY WAS BARELY conscious by the time they staggered out from behind the frozen waterfall. The lake felt eerily still and was almost completely enshrouded by the creeping night, only a wisp of blue polar light still clinging to the snow-sodden clouds. She bore as much of his weight as she could as they slogged through the snow to where they’d left the Arctic Cat, her eyes scanning the ice-crusted pines and piles of boulders, her body braced for the flash of gunfire.
We made, we made it, her mind sang in a singsong as Ry fell into the Cat’s rear seat, grunting from the pain.
But then Zoe felt, more than saw, a flash a movement among the trees and she whirled. She stood frozen, her eyes straining against the encroaching darkness, but all was still.
A white hare darted out from behind a tumble of rocks. Zoe started to let out a breath, then she caught it again.
Eyes.
A pair of yellow eyes floating close to the ground, and then another, and another.
And then the wolves began to bay.
… this is the starving season. The wolves will be out.
Oh, God. Please, dear God …
“Key’s in the ignition,” Ry wheezed. “Start it up. Turn on lights. Should scare them off. Need the blankets, Zoe. Cold.”
Zoe leaped on the Cat, started it up, turned on its headlights, and the pack of wolves, which had already begun to slink onto the lake, turned tail and ran back into the trees.
Zoe got the vodka out first, and Ry’s teeth knocked against the bottle as he drank from it with his free hand. His other hand was still pressed against his shoulder, but the blood had now soaked his coat to the knees.
As Zoe tore open the space blankets and wrapped them arou
nd Ry, her frantic eyes searched the shoreline for the wolves. She couldn’t see them anymore, but she could feel them, moving through the darkness, getting close again.
Ry was having trouble catching his breath, she thought she could practically see the life draining out of him. But you’re gonna get him to a hospital, Zoe girl, and then he’ll be all right. They’ll take the bullet out and—
“Something’s wrong,” Ry said, his voice a bare rasp. “Bitch only shot me in the shoulder. Shouldn’t feel this bad.”
Zoe finished tucking the second blanket under his hip, then leaned closer into him to be sure he heard her. “You’re going to hang on for me, Ryland O’Malley, you hear me? I’m getting you to a hospital, so you’re going to hang on.”
“Bone juice,” he said, his breath wheezing in and out. “Don’t give it to me.”
“I’m not going to let you die. I’m not.”
“No altar of bones. No matter what. Want you to swear … sacred promise … you won’t.”
Zoe shook her head, feeling her tears freeze on her cheeks as soon as they hit the air. “Ry, you can’t expect me … I love you.”
“Then swear on that. Swear it.”
A sob tore out of her, so hard it wrenched her chest. “Okay, I swear it. On my love—”
A wolf lunged at them from out of the darkness. Zoe screamed and instinctively flung the vodka bottle at the beast’s head. He shied away at the last second, snapping and snarling, then the entire pack whirled and disappeared into the darkness again.
Zoe nearly fell in her panic to get into the Cat’s driver’s seat, and then the horrible thought hit her—she’d never driven a snowmobile in her life. What if … what if …
The wolves had regrouped already and were coming back. She jerked the front end of the Cat around, shining the light full on them, and they backed off again, but not so far this time, and she could see the hunger and the killing instinct in their yellow eyes.
Altar of Bones Page 44
