Moscow Mule: Phantom Queen Book 5 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries)

by Shayne Silvers

  “I will lead from here,” Natasha said, wearing a thin-lipped smile, as if she knew exactly what I’d been thinking. “Watch your step as we go up the mountain. It is not a steep climb, but it is treacherous.”

  Othello and I nodded. But, before Natasha could march off, Othello turned back towards the blizzard. She hurled something into it. “There, that’s done,” she said.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “What was that?”

  Othello patted my shoulder. “Insurance policy. Lead on, Natasha.”

  I muttered something about keeping secrets under my breath, but Othello simply smiled.

  Maybe the squall had changed me, I thought, if only a little.

  But I could say with certainty that it hadn’t changed Othello one bit.

  Chapter 29

  The Valley of the Living Dead—which I’d considered a fairly ridiculous title when Natasha first said it aloud—turned out to be exceptionally apropos.

  Sadly, it had taken us nearly half the morning to find the damn thing; the trek up the mountain had proved more arduous than Natasha had warned. It wasn’t so much that the slopes were steep as it was the fact that we had to stay crouched low to the ground in case a snowbank decided to give out on us and send us sliding back several dozen feet. Eventually, I’d drawn both assault rifles and used them as poles, thrusting the butt of the guns into the snow to keep my balance. Othello had actually pulled an ice axe out of thin air and used it to pull herself forward, as if she’d done this sort of thing before. Natasha, meanwhile, had cruised up the mountain as though she were strolling along a sidewalk, defying physics the entire time.

  By the time we hit the top of the mountain, which was more of a plateau than a peak, my breathing was a little ragged and I was almost too warm, with sweat beading down my face. It wasn’t that I wasn’t conditioned for it, simply that ascending a mountain with as much gear on as I had was bound to tucker anyone out. Or so I told myself, anyway. Of course, then there was Natasha, who looked remarkably unfazed by the whole affair. At least, she had when we’d finally finished our uphill climb. Watching her stare out at the wide valley that led to the mountain’s downslope, I realized she no longer seemed at ease.

  Of course, considering what lay down there, I wasn’t surprised.

  The valley itself lay between two vast walls of ice which rose up in the air like frozen waves, cresting hundreds of feet above our heads. Long pillars stretched between the two at various heights, joining at odd angles, their bases lined with icicles as thick as a human being, hanging like the frozen teeth of some primordial god. Honestly, it would have been a foreboding, creepy place to begin with, but the bodies made it so much worse.

  They littered the valley, spread out like statues in the snow, some only vaguely shaped like a person, others so clearly defined that I knew if I stepped up to them, I’d be able to make out the features of the person they’d once been. That’s the trouble with permafrosted bodies: if untouched, they lock the individual in time, encased in ice for all eternity. Of course, I wasn’t merely looking at people. Other creatures, some so strangely shaped that I could only hazard guesses at what they had been or when their kind had roamed the earth, loomed among the smaller figures. One, which I thought might be a werebear, guarded the valley’s entrance, standing on his hind legs, claws trying to bat the sky, maw open wide in rage and pain.

  “What’s down there?” I asked, repressing a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

  Othello, who was still recovering from the forced march, nodded as if she also wanted to know the answer to that question. Unlike Natasha and I, she didn’t have the stamina to charge up a mountain without a breather. In fact, considering that Othello was several inches shorter than us, and curvier besides, I found it remarkable that she’d been able to keep up at all.

  All that super spy conditioning, maybe.

  “Nothing but what you see,” Natasha said. “By the time we reached this place, there were only three of us left. Two of us survived. The third stands among the dead, frozen as you see the others.”

  “Ye mean that could happen to one of us?” I asked, eyes wide.

  “I do not know.” Natasha fidgeted with her jacket, the gesture oddly human. She seemed nervous. “We have survived much already that killed my people. Perhaps we will walk through this place unharmed. But I fear we will not.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Othello said, her voice breathy. She thrust her axe into the ground and used it to draw herself to her feet.

  “Maybe we should rest,” I suggested. We’d taken a few breaks on the way up to eat and relieve ourselves, but none for any serious stretch of time. It was as if we could all sense it—the alienness of this place. We didn’t belong here, and we knew it. Still, there was nothing we could do about it but hurry. Of course, if we ended up too exhausted to function when something awful came at us, it wouldn’t make much difference.

  “How far to the other side?” Othello asked.

  “Not long. A little over a kilometer,” Natasha responded.

  “We’ll rest after,” Othello said. She gave me a thumbs up and a brief smile, as if to reassure me that everything was alright. I didn’t bother telling her that it was her I was worried about; she’d probably have resented that. I sighed and slid one of the assault rifles back over my shoulder now that we weren’t marching uphill. I kept the AK-9 out and cradled it as we moved forward, just in case. The frozen dead, no matter what Natasha said about their lack of mobility, made me nervous, as if they might all wake up and attack us at once.

  They didn’t. I inspected each as we passed, running my eyes over their bodies, looking for any signs of life. The faintest twitch and I’d have begun shooting, but there was nothing. Eventually, I stared up rather than around, as worried about the possibility of man-sized icicles crashing down on us from overhead as I had been about the monsters coming for us when we had nowhere to run. Paranoid, who me?

  Fortunately, it turned out a kilometer wasn’t particularly far; we saw the other side of the valley in what felt like only a few minutes and were only a couple hundred feet from it when something went wrong. I watched as Natasha, who’d been trailing behind Othello, stumbled.

  “Are ye alright?” I asked.

  My question drew Othello around, and whatever she saw on Natasha’s face had her rushing to the vampire’s side. “What’s wrong?”

  “No, stay away,” Natasha said, holding out a hand. It was already turning blue, encased in white ice that hung from her fingers like slobber from a dog’s mouth. Her eyes were shocky and unfocused, as if something were starting to take away her lifeforce. “If you touch me, you will catch it. That is what happened to the one who survived with me, only it took him slower. He died screaming my name.” She shook her head, but so slowly it seemed like something was wrapped around her throat, keeping her from moving.

  Othello was already fishing through her bag. She thrust the other ushanka over Natasha’s head, careful not to touch her directly, but the ice continued its spread up her arm as if nothing had happened. Othello cursed. “There has to be something that will stop it,” she muttered, glaring into her bag as if the answer were somewhere inside.

  “Why?” I asked. “What makes ye t’ink there’s a way to reverse it?”

  “Because it’s magic,” Othello said, as if it were obvious. When she caught my incredulous expression, she elaborated. “Magic always comes with balance, haven’t you noticed? A curse that can be lifted by a specific act. A spell that can be countered. Magic has rules. You simply need to know what they are, and you can win.”

  “Leave me,” Natasha said, her voice remarkably calm. She’d stripped off the duffel bag and had fallen to her knees in the snow, leaning almost impossibly far back. “I was meant to die in this place. I will join my people, as I should have done so very long ago. Tell Dimitri…” But whatever she was about to say died on her lips as the ice spread over her chest, stopping her lungs from taking in the air she needed to speak.


  “Vot eto pizdets!” Othello cursed. “I can’t let this happen.”

  “And if ye knew how to reverse it, would ye?” I asked, softly, searching her face.

  Othello glanced at me. “I would try, at least. We owe her that. We’re the ones who brought her here. We can’t let her die.”

  “Aye, you’re right.” I took a deep breath, pulled back my sweater, and removed my glove. The sundial sat on my wrist looking odd and out of place next to all the modern clothes and weaponry. I flicked open the secret compartment and withdrew Eve’s leaf. The cut burned worse this time, as if the cold were trying to find a way in, but it worked. The veins filled with my blood, glimmering despite the shadows that had swallowed us the moment we stepped into the valley.

  “Eve,” I said, “it’s me.”

  “Three times in as many days,” Eve replied. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “There’s no time,” I replied. “I am in The Road of Bones, in the Valley of the Living Dead.”

  “My, you do get around,” Eve said.

  Othello, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, watched the exchange with wide eyes.

  “I have someone here who is bein’ taken over by ice. I t’ink it’s a curse, or maybe some magic tied to this place. D’ye know how to reverse it?” I asked, trying my best to sound calm.

  Eve was silent for a moment. “It will be painful for whoever tries to lift the curse.”

  “Will it kill me?” I asked. Othello grabbed my arm, but I shook her off. “Dammit, Othello, it has to be me,” I said. “Between the two of us, I’m more likely to survive.”

  “That’s not true,” Othello hissed.

  “It won’t kill either of you,” Eve said, quieting us both. “But you will want to die before it’s over. Your will to live must be strong. Quinn...I have been with you these last few weeks. I think it might be wise to let someone else do this.”

  I shook my head. “I have plenty to live for, now, don’t ye worry.” And I realized that was true. Ever since I’d met with my mother’s ghost, it was like I’d stumbled upon some ridiculous well of hope. She’d intimated that I would find out who my father was, and that I had a chance to reunite with Dez, in some fashion. I’d heard my mother’s voice, my father’s laugh.

  Dying here was so not on the table.

  “We need to hurry,” Othello said, drawing me back to the moment at hand. The ice had begun to creep down Natasha’s legs, and I realized with a start that her eyes were already glazed over, a thin film of frozen liquid laying over each orb, tucked beneath the folds of her eyelids like lake water after the first freeze.

  “Tell me what to do, Eve. Please,” I begged.

  Maybe it was the please that sealed the deal, but she finally replied, “The Tree of Knowledge, at your command.” That got Othello’s attention, but I was too busy listening to Eve’s instructions to care about the stricken look on her face.

  One problem at a time.

  Chapter 30

  Together, Othello and I laid Natasha down in the dense snow on the other side of the valley. We’d been unable to come to a consensus about who was going to save Natasha from the curse, until eventually Eve had proposed we both do it; did you know two birds are better than one? I decided right then and there that if I survived this shit, she and I were going to have a talk about her smart-ass mouth.

  The curse took our fingers first, burning its way up in a numb wave that throbbed so viciously we gritted our teeth to avoid crying out. Our hands went next. They sat at the ends of our wrists, useless, too cold to feel or to move. In a matter of minutes, the sensation had worked its way up our arms, as if our blood were beating against the frozen flesh of our bodies, slamming into a wall that would never give ground. Our warmth was being stolen an inch at a time.

  But, of course, that was the plan.

  I cradled Natasha against me, while Othello held her from the other side, leaning across her stomach. Locked in our own pain, all we could do was watch as the unrelenting cold spread through us, darkening our exposed skin, all while leeching away the icy film that covered Natasha’s body. According to Eve, this was the test. If the squall had been designed to dissuade those who wandered throughout life without purpose or clarity, then the valley’s function was to test one’s compassion. The only way to save everyone, it seemed, was to be willing risk oneself. Personally, I wasn’t so sure about the logic, but Eve had insisted, so here we were.

  The curse burrowed further, siphoning off heat as it went until I could feel it making a grab for my heart. The longer it lasted, the more it felt like it burned, somehow, as if my nerves couldn’t decide what was happening. It became hard to draw breath, and, for an instant, I wondered if Eve had been wrong. Maybe this wasn’t a test of our compassion, but of our intelligence; would you touch a diseased thing to save it, knowing you might die in the process? As I gazed upon the rigid mask of pain that was Othello’s face, I knew we’d already made our choice. I simply wasn’t sure if it had been the right one.

  The curse wrapped around my heart.

  And then it was gone.

  Warmth flooded back into my body with enough force that it drew a hiss from my mouth. The pain was excruciating, far worse even than taking on the curse had been. The three of us writhed in the snow, Natasha blinking away tears that might have been melted ice. Othello was cursing in Russian, slamming her heels violently into the snow, her back bowed. I watched this all on my side, the pain slamming into my body in waves, as if it were the tide and I the shore. But I didn’t cry, or cry out. Not because I was tougher than they were, but because I was too stubborn to bitch about the fact that I wasn’t dying.

  Natasha spoke first. “I thought,” she gasped, “I was dead.”

  I didn’t bother mentioning that, as a vampire, she technically still was. Instead, I went with the truth. “We found a way to save ye, and did it.”

  “Quinn found a way to save you,” Othello corrected. Now that we were all functioning, I could hear the anger in her voice, read the betrayal in her eyes. She rose to her feet, wiping the snow from her clothes, letting it fall to the ground in wet chunks, then began marching off towards the mountain’s downslope.

  “Where is she going?” Natasha asked.

  “Far away from me, I expect,” I said, though it came out sadder than I’d meant it.

  “What did you do?”

  “I lied to her about something.”

  Natasha cocked an eyebrow as she sat up. “About what?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell ye. I wasn’t supposed to tell her. But I had no choice if we wanted to save ye.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “I told ye, I can’t—”

  “No, I do not understand why you two saved me,” Natasha interrupted. “I am nothing to you.”

  “You’re our guide,” I replied, shrugging as I got to my feet. I felt a little lightheaded, but otherwise fine. The pain had receded almost as quickly as it had come, though it had lasted long enough to make me wonder how Othello had shrugged it off as quickly as she had. Pure anger, maybe? I wouldn’t put it past her.

  “You did not need me as your guide any longer,” Natasha said. “You know the castle is close, and how to return home. So why?” She asked like it was important, as if the answer held more significance for her than it did for me.

  “Because no one deserves to die like that,” I said, absentmindedly. “And because we brought ye here. Neither of us are cruel, but to leave ye to that fate would have broken somethin’ in Othello, I t’ink. Somethin’ she still values.”

  “But not you?”

  I shook my head and met Natasha’s questioning gaze, letting her see precisely who and what I was—the woman, the Faeling, who would not have risked herself to save one vampire when so many other people depended on her. I let her see the side of me that made it possible to pull a trigger without flinching, to dive through a doorway knowing I might die. The side of me that was selfish and selfless all
at once. Natasha looked away first. “I gave up pieces of me humanity long before I found out I wasn’t entirely human,” I said, finally. “Pieces I don’t miss.”

  “Not entirely human? I thought you were one of the Fae?” Natasha asked, latching onto that tidbit as if it were the more important truth. Or maybe she simply wanted to change the subject.

  I shrugged. “That remains to be seen.” I might have told Natasha the truth, but something held me back. The same something that would have stopped me from risking my life to save hers: I simply had no reason to trust her. That didn’t mean I distrusted her, but it did mean my secrets were mine to keep. Of course, secrets, once revealed, could spell disaster. “I’m goin’ to talk to Othello,” I said, with that in mind. “Hang back for a wee bit, would ye?”

  Natasha nodded, hugging herself a little. Her brush with true death seemed to have shaken her a bit, and I could tell she wanted away from the valley, but there was no helping it; I needed to clear things up between Othello and I before they escalated. Hot-tempered Russians hold grudges like you wouldn’t believe.

  I found her sitting on a rock nearly a hundred feet down, knees curled up, staring down the mountain. She spoke before I could join her. “Stay back,” she said.

  “Othello, I—”

  “No, Quinn. I don’t want to hear your excuses right now.”

  For some reason, that pissed me off. “Excuse me?”