by Lexi C. Foss
As the palace was overrun with vampires, we decided to hide until we could safely exit and hopefully find out what happened to our friend. There were secret passages all over the Romanov castle and someone had obviously discovered some of them and shared the information with the rebels. They had come in through many of them, but we fervently hoped they weren’t aware of them all.
Kseniya was more familiar with them than anyone—which I suspected she’d shared with her secret paramour. I was about to ask her when she looked at me with eyes so full of pain, guilt, and betrayal, I had my answer. I placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a small squeeze, conveying that she had my love and support. She’d answered with a brief smile before silently gesturing for us to follow her. Then she’d led us to a small passageway that opened into a tiny, windowless room. Which turned out to be the wrong choice when it began to fill with smoke.
We waited, terrified that someone would discover us. Or worse, that we’d be forced to leave our hiding place if the flames that were beginning to engulf the palace reached us. We could hear all of the commotion around us—the yelling, the screaming, the pleading for mercy. Beads of sweat trailed down from my temples and I wasn’t sure if it was from fear or the escalating heat. The flames were spreading much too fast. We were trapped.
As usual, when I was anxious or scared, my body settled into a calm state, but my mind raced at warp speed, running through every option I could possibly conjure up. I could probably have talked my way out of there, but Kseniya was Romanov, and Emerald was from another slayer bloodline. We were seriously fucked and I had no idea what to do. My amulet hung heavy around my neck and it felt warm against the skin in the valley between my breasts.
The amulets only gave slayers immortality provided they weren’t killed. Otherwise, they were simply a piece of fancy jewelry. However, I couldn’t help praying to the Goddess for some kind of help. As we huddled together, Emerald holding Kseniya’s hand, and Kseniya holding mine, I lifted the chain to extricate my amulet from my blouse and grasped it tightly in my hand. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breathe through the smoke that was slowly filling our little room while I mumbled my prayers. “Gorska Maika pozhaluysta.”
The next thing I knew, the wall we were leaning against seemed to dissolve and we stumbled backward. I barely had a chance to look around at the back walls of the chamber we’d fallen into when my loss of balance had me tripping through a glittery multi-colored curtain. We were afraid to let go of each other and we ended up landing in a pile of limbs on the other side. An electric current that felt as though it was strong enough to power St. Petersburg flew through my body. It hurt like hell.
“Kakóvo chyorta?” I muttered. What the fuck had just happened?
My whispered curse had as much to do with falling through the holes as it did with the fact that we were now staring at a solid brick wall. I scrambled to my feet and approached the wall, then laid my hand flat on the stone. It didn’t immediately go through it, so I pushed. When nothing happened, I put all of my weight into it; granted, that wasn’t exactly a whole lot of force. I remembered rumors and tall tales that I’d heard as a child about a labyrinth of portals that allowed you to travel from one place to another quickly and without being seen.
“What just happened?” Emerald asked in a bewildered tone as she shivered. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the shock.
“I think… “I pressed against the wall with two hands this time and it didn’t budge. “Do you remember the stories I told you about the portals in the city?”
I’d shared the stories with them and we’d spent our childhoods searching for them. We thought it would get us into places we weren’t allowed to go.
“Yes,” Kseniya answered, her voice thick with skepticism.
“I thought maybe…” I trailed off again, then bobbed my shoulders and pivoted around to face my friends. “But then it should still be open, right?”
Kseniya and Emerald were staring at me like I’d grown two heads. I sighed. “I know it’s more of a fable, but—“ My eyes had been bouncing around, taking everything in when they finally landed on Kseniya and I gasped.
My friends both pointed at me, seemingly speechless, and I glanced to Emerald wondering why she wasn’t just as shocked as I was that Kseniya now sported hair that was a deep shade of violet with eyes that matched. But she was staring at me with much the same expression I imagined was on my face. “Kseniya,” I croaked, “your hair.”
Emerald finally tore her practically bugged-out eyes from me and looked at Kseniya. “Holy shit.”
Kseniya gaped at me. “Roskana, your hair is…lavender. Your eyes too…what the fuck just happened?”
“Mine is purple?” I gasped incredulously as I yanked the long strands forward. “Bozhye moi,” I whispered. She was right. My hair was now a pale silvery lavender color.
“Kseniya,” Emerald piped up. “You might want to check out your own appearance.”
I glanced up to see Kseniya’s brow creased with worry. Then she pulled out the ribbon holding her hair in a chignon. When the silky mass spilled onto her shoulders, she blinked a few times before raising her now purple eyes to meet my own.
Then they swung over to study Emerald and my brow furrowed when I saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Why do you look the same?”
She shrugged and chewed on her lip as she thought about it. “Maybe because my hair and eyes are already a dark green? Kseniya’s was blonde and yours was red. Perhaps those colors weren’t strong enough to withstand whatever the fuck just happened?”
It was as good of an explanation as I could come up with and Kseniya just tossed her hands out to the side and shrugged as well.
“Maybe we need to go back, through,” I suggested. Both girls were amenable to the idea. We tried everything we could think of to reopen the portal, though we still weren’t sure if that’s what it was. Eventually, we gave up and determined that the best course of action was to figure out where we were. From a quick glance around, it still appeared that we were right where we’d been before we’d fallen through a wall. What was the point of that? I mentally grumbled to Gorska Maika, the Forest Mother.
“Listen,” Emerald suddenly hissed. “Something is different out there.”
We fell silent and strained our ears. As slayers, Kseniya and Emerald had heightened senses when it came to vampires. I just used my magic. There was only a slight hum of voices and footsteps and there was no heat from flames licking up the walls and burning the palace to ash. Seriously. What the fuck had just happened?
We glanced at each other with matching expressions of confusion. “Did we travel through time?” Kseniya guessed.
That was the most reasonable explanation. Not that any of this made sense, so reasonable was a pretty loose term. I opened the door to the passageway and stuck my head out, listening.
“That has to be it,” I agreed as I drew back inside and blew my hair out of my eyes before tucking it behind my ears. Seeing Kseniya’s hair once again reminded me of my own and had my mind off and running. I quickly snapped myself out of it because that was a problem for another time.
“We have to go out there,” I said reluctantly. “We can’t stay here forever, and what about Anastasia?”
Both girls bent their heads in concurrence and we stood in silence for a moment, trying to derive strength from each other. Finally, I swallowed hard and voiced a question I knew we were all thinking. “Can we prevent it?”
Emerald and Kseniya had matching expressions of doubt and resignation. “Even if we ran to warn the Tsar right now, they still wouldn’t have the numbers to fight off the rebels.
Finally, Kseniya took the lead and walked us back through the winding passage until we reached the portion of the wall that slid open underneath the grand staircase. With a deep breath, she grasped the handle and slowly inched it open. Her head turned to the left, then right, as she scanned the area. After a few sweeps to make sure the coast was clear, she tw
isted around and made a “come” motion with her hand. One by one, we stepped out into the open.
My heart was practically in my throat, but again, there only seemed to be a mild hum of activity. Then footsteps came pounding down the corridor to our left and our heads whipped in that direction as one. A woman in a black dress with a white apron boasting a red cross and a white habit was speed walking toward us. I froze, wondering if we were about to be caught and turned over to the rebel vampires. Her outfit suggested we hadn’t traveled too far into the future, but for all we knew, the vampires had won and had every human and slayer locked away for dead. If she exposed us, we were just as fucked as before we toppled through the glittery hole in the fabric of time.
When the nurse spotted our trio, her gaze dropped to our pants, and her expression turned disapproving.
“Are you the new volunteers?” she called out as she neared us.
Emerald had the good sense to dip her head. The woman’s frown, which looked like it was probably the permanent state of her lips, curled down even deeper. “Go get into proper uniforms and find another nurse to give you orders,” she said as she walked right past us, clearly intent on getting somewhere else fast.
“Um, what day is it?” I managed to choke out in a somewhat normal tone.
The woman’s eyes practically crossed in annoyance when she huffed, “July 18th.”
It was the same day. So why was everything completely different? I almost asked what year, but figured that would be going too far if we wanted to remain inconspicuous. After the nurse stalked away, we didn’t wait around and worked our way to a palace exit as stealthily as we could. As we passed by various rooms, my head turned to take in everything I could see as we hurried past. From what I could tell, the palace had been turned into a hospital of sorts. So where were Anastasia and her family?
It was dark when we tumbled out into the night and I took a deep breath, dropping my head back to stare up at the starry sky. I scanned the palace gardens for any signs of vampires or their minions. There was a trickle of relief when I didn’t spy anything amiss, though it didn’t take away all of the anxiety. This was our home and we knew it inside and out, but I had a sense that we were flying blind.
“Where should we go?” I asked.
“Something is wrong,” Kseniya mumbled as she studied the landscape all around us.
“What?” Emerald inquired, following her line of sight. “I don’t sense any vamps.”
“Exactly.”
We’d escaped the palace without incident just as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon. When we reached St. Petersburg, we ran into a vampire and my heart stuttered to a stop, terrified that we’d been caught and would be taken back to face the king. But Vi took him out a second later and then groused about how it had been too easy, especially since he’d practically cowered in the dark corner we’d trapped him in. It took us a few days to realize that all the vampires around us were different than what we were used to.
The first time we saw one burst into flames before falling into a pile of ash, right after he ran into the sun…that was the moment I began to wonder about realities and dimensions. We ferreted out the information on the Romanov family, their imprisonment months earlier, which was more proof of a different reality. History seemed to prove that they were just…humans. Rumors swirled about the execution of the family, but we didn’t get true confirmation for years. In fact, there was no conclusive proof of our friend’s death until nearly ninety years later.
Russia was no longer the one of our memories and the only conclusion was that we had somehow traversed realms. We spent weeks trying to find a way back, but it was a fruitless endeavor. With our lack of identification and appearances that didn’t aid our attempt to stay incognito—not to mention the vampires we kept staking through the heart—word of us eventually reached the head of the E.V.I.E. European cell. They’d politely, but firmly, escorted us to their headquarters, taking us there through a portal that looked similar to the one we’d fallen through. Our first reaction was relief, thinking we’d found our way home.
Not so much. The portal network only led to others throughout the city and spit us out near the E.V.I.E. building.
We had to do a bit of fancy double-speak, some omission, and a fair bit of lying to convince the director that we were not a threat. It was obvious we weren’t normal, but none of us were about to reveal our true heritage. I kept the knowledge that I was a witch to myself and had begun constructing the cage I kept my magic in unless forced to unlock it. On instinct, Vi had thrown out the information that we were vampire slayers. Then it was all unicorns and rainbow shit. Not really, but honestly, it went from suspicion to recruitment in the blink of an eye.
We had no interest in being told when and how to slay the bloodsuckers, so we turned them down. When we found ourselves in New York City, Vi and I felt at home, so we decided to stay. That was when Emerald ran off to join the human race. Not that we blamed her. And Vi ultimately decided to move to Chicago and work as a slayer there.
Though Vi and I kept trying, we never figured out how to get home. So when the head of E.V.I.E. sought us out again a couple of decades ago, we figured why the hell not? Besides, it gave us better access to the maze of portals under the city. We spent a lot of our extra time learning and committing the map to memory. We discovered that from inside, you could see out, but no one could see in. Then one day, I’d been holding my amulet and thinking about the portals when I accidentally created one in my living room wall. This opened up a world of interesting possibilities.
In time, Jude became the new head of the organization. It didn’t take long before I realized he knew I was a witch, though he didn’t come right out and admit it for several years. We deliberately kept the amulets a secret in fear that Jude would discover I re-spelled them and force me to make more.
My alarm went off and startled me from my walk down memory lane. It was a welcome interruption. I tried not to sink into the pain of our past, but sometimes, circumstances would bring it on and all I could do was ride out the storm or drown. I’d been pacing in my bedroom, unable to simply sit, so I dashed over to my closet and changed into jeans and a t-shirt. I pulled on a pair of black boots and slipped into a dark hoodie.
I was volunteering at a Russian shelter that evening—something no one knew about because I rarely did anything that involved my heritage. Even my martial arts classes were booked solely as Judo, though I taught the Russian techniques which were very closely tied to it. But I couldn’t leave it all behind and the shelter had trouble finding interpreters. Although, I suspected that my twice weekly stints of speaking constant Russian had contributed to the fact that I still sported a hint of an accent. Or maybe I just couldn’t let it go.
6
Rowan
When I reached the E.V.I.E. HQ that night, I lingered outside the sleek, black skyscraper for a few minutes, staring up at the plethora of windows that covered it. I was apprehensive over my appointment with Jude. Especially after Violet’s warning.
“Good grief, Ro. What’s he going to do? Fire you?” I chuckled at the ridiculous idea. I’d never failed when given an assignment.
Somewhere in the back of my mind was a reminder that everyone was expendable. It didn’t matter how amazing I was at my job; if the best course of action for E.V.I.E. was to shut me out—or make me disappear—I had no doubt Jude would make the order. I’d floundered for nearly five decades in this realm, never feeling truly at home or like I belonged. Vi and Emerald were my only family and, one by one, they’d left me as well. At least Vi hadn’t gone until I allowed E.V.I.E. to bring me into the fold. I’d found a purpose, a place where I knew who I was and what I was supposed to do. And it had the added benefit of taking my mind off of my past.
I’d never been one to cower or back away from a challenge, and I wanted to bitch-slap myself right at that moment for being a coward. I took a deep breath and told myself to get my shit together before stepping into the m
arble lobby. It reminded me of the courthouses in New York and, not for the first time, I wondered whether the building contained cells for imprisonment or interrogation. It certainly wouldn’t have shocked me.
Waving at the security desk, I received a perfunctory nod in return. With all of the weapons on me, I couldn’t exactly go through the normal security lines, so I swiftly walked through my own line, coming to a stop in front of a bank of elevators where one shiny black door silently slid open. With as much swagger as I could muster—I was constantly on camera, after all—I glided into the glass box that reminded me of a fishbowl because it looked out over the city through floor to ceiling windows on three of the four sides. It ascended the many floors to the top in less than a minute before coming to a slow, easy stop. Without even a whoosh or whirr of sound—did they stockpile WD40 around here?—the front panel disappeared into the wall, giving me entrance to Jude’s suite of offices.
Miranda came around the corner precisely as I set both feet on the plush carpet that covered the floor. I’d often been tempted to remove my shoes and see if it was as soft as it looked. I never did.
Jude’s dog, Hades—whom I often thought was the only thing in the world Jude really loved—was lounging in a dog bed with Luci outside Jude’s office and they perked up when I arrived, traipsing over to get some belly scratches. Hades was scary as hell if you didn’t know that he was just a big, cuddly, teddy bear. He was a huge, black German Shepard with reddish eyes and pointy ears. Although…sometimes little puffs of smoke came from his mouth, particularly when he was sleeping, which made a lot of us wonder whether he was really just a dog. My money was on hellhound, like Luci.
“Jude’s waiting,” Miranda announced as she strode right past me with a polite, but sincere smile. She turned another corner and I shoved off any remaining thoughts or feelings that could hinder my image as a badass slayer with a quick fuse and a “never-say-die” attitude. Then I padded across the floor to open one of the large doors to the boss’s office. It was a good thing I was strong because next to those doors, I looked like a fragile toothpick. Hades and Luci both trailed after me and Hades brushed along my leg before finding a toy and taking it to his bed where he and Luci began to playfully fight over it.
