Once at the summit, we were finally able to see what we’d been hearing for the past few minutes. It was awful, reminding me more of a warzone than anything I’d experienced since my trip to New York City when I’d watched a horde of low-level demons take on a host of angelic beings. Except, for all its chaos, that fight had been—at its core—a battle between two opposing forces. This...this was nowhere near as straightforward.
I noticed the blood first; swaths of the stuff littered the snow, splashed throughout the valley. I took in more details as we ran towards the fray, processing as much as I could while trying to make out a viable path that would get us through the carnage. Everywhere I looked, monsters and men warred, fighting with such viciousness that it was as if they’d lost all reason.
I angled us left, trying to avoid the savage exchange between a hulking werebear and a troll. The werebear swiped a paw, catching the troll’s thigh, but the troll hardly seemed to notice as its own blood was flung out into the snow. Instead, the troll swung a meaty left hook that sent the bear skidding across the snow.
“Quinn!” Othello urged.
I realized I’d gotten distracted, watching the fight, and gritted my teeth. Taking it all in for a moment, I realized we only had one sure path that wouldn’t put us in the middle of an ugly fight. I angled us left, pointing. “This way!”
Unfortunately, going left meant we were on the fringes of a skirmish between a pack of wolves and another werebear. I cursed as several of the wolves raised their snouts in the air, clearly catching our scent. Several branched off from the pack, loping towards us as though hoping to pick off the easier prey, dodging corpses. That was when I realized several more victims lay in the snow already—primarily humans from different time periods, some dressed in furs, others in uniforms, all mangled with their throats torn out.
They’d been weaponless, defenseless against those claws and teeth.
But I sure as shit was not.
I raised the AK-9, adopted a shooting stance, and fired, prepared for a vicious recoil that never happened. I adjusted my aim, inwardly praising Russian engineering. The subsonic rifle practically purred as I pulled the trigger, taking out the lead wolf in a spray of blood and bone.
I swept the gun left and right, taking out the legs of the frontrunners. Several squealed and fell into the snow, bleeding or dead. In a matter of seconds, the remaining wolves turned tail and ran as fast as they could back to their pack, which was far too busy bringing down the werebear to bother with us; two wolves rode the bear’s back, burrowing their faces into the fur of its neck, jaws snapping, while three others tore at the bear’s arms, dragging it down into the snow.
We left them to it.
I think Othello might have stopped to help if it had been just her, perhaps hoping to save the werebear; if you looked closely, you could see it sported bits and pieces of a tattered Soviet uniform. One of Rasputin’s men, if I had to guess.
But it wasn’t just her, and it turned out we had much bigger problems.
Once we’d left the wolves behind, I took cover using the corpse of a THING, cursing. “How the fuck did we miss that when we came through?” I asked, once the others joined me. I pointed at the dragon poised between us and the exit. As we watched, it spewed rancid orange fire along the ground, turning the snow into mush. Its scales were copper-colored, so metallic they reflected light, and matched its flaming yellow eyes. As I studied the creature, I realized its wings were tattered and shredded, its body covered in slight wounds, the scales chipped and abraded.
It was also clearly insane.
There’s a scent to madness, I think. An odor so pervasive it clings to the nostrils. Some people think insanity is something you can see—a wildness that can be found in the eyes. Frankly, after meeting Rasputin, I couldn’t disagree. But there was something alien and otherworldly about the eyes of a dragon; I couldn’t read them. But the smell the dragon gave off, the feverish, nostril-cauterizing aroma, that I could sense.
“Really could have used those grenades about now,” I muttered under my breath.
“Quinn, look out!” Othello said, pushing me to the side.
Unfortunately, before I could respond, something fell on me from one of the pillars above our heads. Whatever it was landed on my back and began tearing at me, jerking my remaining assault rifle left and right, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. It was disorienting, but I finally managed to get one leg underneath me and reach over my shoulder. I found fur beneath my ungloved hand—must have lost it when I fell, I realized—and got a firm grip. Then I yanked, hard, drawing the thing off me, flipping it over my shoulder so it landed in the snow at my feet. I drew a pistol and fired a round into its face. The man, if man he had ever been, lay there with his brains spilling out into the snow.
“Are you alright?” Othello asked, helping me to my feet. “I couldn’t fire without hitting you.”
I nodded. “Guess I ended up goin’ down first, after all,” I joked, still staring down at the thing beneath my feet, wondering why he’d tried to attack me.
Othello rested a hand on my shoulder. “They’re all mad here, Quinn.”
“Including the dragon,” Natasha reminded, pointing.
“Right,” I said. “The dragon. T’ink ye can hit it without killin’ us?” I asked Othello.
“Da,” Othello replied, squinting. “Though I truly wish I didn’t have to. I have friends who are dragons, you know.”
Natasha looked somehow more surprised than she had when I’d first pointed out the dragon, as if Othello had just admitted to having a second head we couldn’t see. Ironically, we both had friends who were dragons, these days. Well, acquaintances, anyway; I wasn’t sure a twenty-first birthday party gone horribly wrong was the right environment to make pure and lasting friendships. Then again, maybe it was precisely the right environment. Guess time would tell.
“Remember what ye said, they’re all mad here. And, in case ye haven’t noticed, it’s blockin’ our exit,” I added.
“I noticed. Alright, stand back, both of you. And shield your eyes. I’m going to use the heavier ammunition.” Othello gathered herself and widened her stance to an almost comical degree, as if the blast itself might send her flying. But then, I’d never shot a lightning bolt from a crossbow. Maybe it would. I put a hand over my eyes, then nudged Natasha, who seemed too shell-shocked to follow Othello’s advice.
“I’d do what she said,” I urged. “It gets awful bright.”
Natasha turned to me, which is all that saved her eyes. The blast ripped through the air, the stench of burnt ozone immediate and acrid. Othello didn’t go flying as far as I could tell, but the intensity of the strike did drive me to one knee. Once I figured it was safe, I lowered my arm, rose, and sidled up next to Othello. The dragon—once so very powerful and frightening—leaned against one of the icy walls, half its chest missing, long neck coiled limp over one of the sturdier pillars of ice, as if without that the creature would have fallen forward into the snow, eyes wide and staring. Blood ran down its body, turning the copper scales a brighter, fiercer shade.
“Let’s go,” Othello said, dabbing at her eyes, her voice hoarse.
“Aye.” And so we ran, working our way around the blood pooling at the dragon’s feet, which was fast becoming more of a lake. Howls chased us as the wolf pack, apparently finished with their most recent prey, caught wind of us. “Shit,” I said, breath coming fast.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Othello muttered. She waved us past just as we cleared the valley and turned, tossing a ball into the clearing. “Quinn, shoot it!”
I drew the rifle to my shoulder, sighted, and fired before I could even think to question the command. The ball exploded and a Gateway the size of a warehouse appeared. From it, a blizzard emerged. No, not a blizzard, I realized. The blizzard. The squall. I glanced over at the Russian woman, wondering if Othello had planned this all along. Or planned for this contingency, anyway. The snowstorm blew forward, flooding the valley wi
th its furious gusts, and soon there was nothing to see but the dimmest outline of the dragon’s body, little more than a shadow within the whirling snow.
“You’re a genius,” I told Othello as I stepped up alongside her.
“A genius would have figured out how to save all those creatures,” Othello replied, matter-of-factly.
“Good t’ing there’s always room for improvement.”
She rolled her eyes but flashed me a sardonic smile. “Good thing.”
“Let’s go the fuck home,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.
She reached up to squeeze my hand with her own. “Da, home. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 36
Othello held out her gloved hands, feeling the air as she had before, fingers splayed. For the first time since I’d seen them, I was able to get a really good look at the things. The gloves ran up her forearms and were made of a mesh of some kind, covered in hexagonal patterns that struck me as more practical than fashionable. I wondered how they worked, but figured it’d be a lot like asking a molecular biologist to explain DNA sequencing; I’d end up nodding off within the first couple minutes. I watched as she ran those hands up and down over the beacon she’d stashed in the snow while Natasha and I hugged ourselves, shifting our weight from one foot to the other to keep ourselves occupied. It also helped to distract me from the tension riding the air. It was like I could feel a sense of pressure building behind us—an immense weight at our backs just waiting to crush us all.
“Havin’ performance issues?” I asked, finally. Don’t get me wrong, watching Othello play mime for the better part of five minutes was amusing in its own right, but I wasn’t eager to stick around any longer than we had to.
“I can’t find the seam,” Othello muttered, clearly too frustrated to appreciate the joke.
“Can you not simply open it?” Natasha asked. “Force it, I mean?”
“It’s not safe. It’d end up tearing too large a Gateway, and we’d walk right into a camp full of armed soldiers who might see us. We could escape, but I would rather sneak out the way we snuck in, or we risk being chased all the way back to Moscow.”
“We could kill them all?” Natasha suggested.
But, before either of us could tackle responding to that, the pressure broke. A rumble, distant, though not distant enough, spilled out from behind us. We turned as one, shoulders hunched as if none of us expected to like what we’d see. It took a moment for it to register, but then—out on the horizon—something moved. I knew almost immediately it was Skadi—despite the fact she was so far away that all I could make out was her impressive, hulking silhouette.
“I thought you said that thing was going to wait,” Natasha said, voice breathy with fear.
“She,” I replied, “has been waitin’ a very long time to stand the fuck up. Can’t say I blame her for bein’ a little eager. Put yourself in her position, and I t’ink she’s been downright accommodatin’.”
“That might be the most charitable thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Othello said, after a moment’s silence.
I grunted. “Shouldn’t ye be makin’ us a way out of here?”
Othello pursed her lips but went back to feeling for the seam without further comment. Natasha, meanwhile, looked a bit unsteady on her feet. Or maybe that was simply the tremors; they’d begun the moment Skadi stood and were steadily getting worse. Soon, they were bad enough that I had to widen my feet, arms splayed to help balance me out.
“Othello, maybe we should—” I began.
But I never got to finish, because that’s when the snow began to melt, and I finally learned why this realm was called The Road of Bones. Although, in hindsight, melt wasn’t exactly the right word; the snow turned to slush in a matter of seconds, then to mush, and then to water before evaporating in a cloud of hissing mist. It happened so fast, in fact, that we all ended up falling onto all fours. Which, unfortunately, meant we all ended up perched over a jumble of bones. I stared down in horror at my right hand, which had ended up on the skull of a small child. My left clutched at a long bone that might have sat beneath the flesh of a tall man’s thigh, once. A shard of some other ossified remnant I didn’t want to see poked up through my pant leg, jabbing into the skin, and I rose cringing. Another tremor shook the earth, large enough that I found myself wobbling, trying to find secure footing even as the bones around me jangled and clacked. But it was difficult; where once there had been a sea of snow, now there was a sea of brittle, yellow bones extending as far as the eye could see.
Not exactly the most stable floor imaginable.
I rubbed my palms along my pants, creeped out to learn we’d been walking over the bones of the dead this whole time. Some, I assumed, must have belonged to those who’d wandered into this realm by accident, like Natasha and her people, or by design, such as those sent by Rasputin and other treasure seekers. Most, however, likely belonged to the victims of the Maker war my mother’s ghost had mentioned. There were simply too many bones, enough to cover the entire landscape.
“It’s official. I hate this place,” I said, once I’d made sure I could withstand the tremors.
“Da, I’m done,” Othello said, raising her hand. A Gateway exploded in front of us, large enough for us to stroll through, the edges sparking. “I’ll take our chances with the soldiers. Men with guns I can handle, but a field of bones that goes on forever...not so much.”
“Ladies first?” I said, indicating the Gateway.
Othello’s responding smirk immediately faded as another tremor—this one violent enough it could have actually been called a quake—hit. The whole world tilted, and Othello wobbled forward through the Gateway. Natasha followed, hot on her heels. I did the same as best I could, stumbling like a baby deer towards the rent between worlds. I cast one glance back the way we’d come, searching for Skadi’s silhouette, wondering if we’d done the right thing in freeing her from this place. But then I was through, and the Gateway closed behind me, The Road of Bones nothing now but fodder for nightmares, and Skadi’s gigantic face—her obscenely large, pale blue eyes—little more than a fever dream.
I ended up landing on my knees in the dirt, feeling woozy, almost seasick. Had the earthquakes made me nauseous, I wondered? After taking a few deep breaths, I realized that it was likely the sudden shift in temperature, not the earthquakes, which had gotten to me; the Siberian summer air felt almost oppressively hot after the frigid climate we’d stepped out of. I ripped off the ushanka, took a deep, soothing breath, and looked up, expecting to find a dozen gun barrels pointed at my face.
Instead, I found a battleground.
Chapter 37
The floodlights had been turned inward, obliterating the shadows cast by the gentle moonlight within the confines of the encampment. Beneath that brilliant fluorescence, I watched in utter shock as the camp soldiers fought to protect themselves, firing at what seemed to be specters—creatures moving so fast they were practically invisible until they struck. The assailants wore black suits and black ties, their pale faces and hands hovering above the dark cloth as if floating in midair.
Vampires.
The bloodsuckers were attacking en masse from our right, launching themselves at the soldiers with wild abandon, ripping out throats even as the poor mortals emptied their clips, shouting instructions and screaming for help. I watched a body go flying as a surprisingly buff vampire charged a soldier, sending the man cartwheeling into one of the tents with a mere shove. The tent fell like a deflated balloon, the canvas billowing as it collapsed to the ground in a sad pile.
Basically, it was utter chaos, and we’d stepped right into the middle of it. I shook off my surprise and turned to look for my companions, hoping they’d managed to stay out of the thick of things; it would have been a real shame to survive the frozen hellhole we’d just left to die in the often frozen hellhole that was the Siberian wilderness.
And that’s when I noticed Natasha holding Othello by the throat, only a few feet away.
Natasha had the raskovnik in her other hand, still encased in the glass canister. Othello’s face was blotchy and red, the veins in her throat trying and failing to push past Natasha’s grip. As I watched, Othello reached up, clawing at that pale white hand, her nails digging into Natasha’s flesh to no avail. She’d lost her gloves, it seemed. Or they’d been taken from her.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” I asked, rising to my feet.
“Do not move,” Natasha said. She shook Othello by the throat like you might a deceased chicken, letting the Russian woman’s legs dangle for emphasis.
I stopped moving. “Put her down,” I growled.
Natasha sighed. “It was not supposed to come to this,” she said. “You should have let me die in the valley.”
“What the hell are ye on about?”
“Dimitri did not believe this one worked alone,” Natasha said, shaking Othello once more. “He made me promise to bring the flower to him. He wants to use it to draw in Rasputin. But I thought, if I died on the journey, you might have a chance to deny Dimitri what he wanted. But it seems he didn’t trust me, either, or he wouldn’t have sent his men here.”
Othello made a strangled sound, as if she were trying to say something, but nothing came out. I made to close the distance between us without Natasha noticing; if I was careful and could get close enough, I could break her hold on Othello’s throat. Hell, if I was lucky, maybe I’d break Natasha’s neck in the process. Granted, I wasn’t sure how durable vampires were, but after seeing what I’d done to Skadi’s ring, I thought I might be able to wrench that pretty face off that thin neck with my bare hands. You know what they say: you’ll never know unless you try. “We can’t let ye take the flower,” I said, pretending to reason with her even as I inched forward. “Ye know we can’t. Put Othello down, and we’ll make a deal. We want the same t’ing.”
Moscow Mule: Phantom Queen Book 5 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 16
