Cold Warriors

by Rebecca Levene

  "I never believed we can be better than we are, only that we can choose to behave better."

  "How very moral of you. No wonder Nicholson found you so tiresome."

  Tomas sagged with weariness, letting the ropes support him. "Well, he's certainly found an elaborate way to get me out of his hair."

  "I have bigger plans for you. But -" Raphael tilted his head, listening. After a moment Tomas heard it too, footsteps approaching down the long avenue.

  Raphael smiled. "There's someone who can help me with that."

  Tomas wasn't very surprised to see Kate. He could tell that she'd expected to find him here too, but her eyes still widened at the sight of him.

  "Oh god, Tomas." She barely acknowledged Raphael as she rushed to him, hands fluttering over his chest, and then his face and finally his bound hands, but never quite touching any of them. "What happened to you?"

  "I tried to stop you taking Belle."

  A part of him enjoyed the way she winced away from his bitter smile. "We had to, to get you here."

  "I gathered that."

  Her hand rested on his face this time. She stroked a finger over the ridge of his brow. "It was worth it. You'll see."

  "Worth what? I can understand you going over to the Russians. I don't know, maybe I would have done the same. But this, Kate?"

  "Just what is it you think we're doing?" Raphael asked. He'd retreated a few paces, watching Kate and Tomas intently.

  "I don't know," Tomas admitted. "But I know who... I know what it is you think you're doing it for."

  "Do you," Raphael said flatly.

  "Morgan told me what happened in your church inside the salt mine, Father Raphael."

  Raphael's whole body tensed, wasted muscles bunching underneath parchment skin.

  "I know about the bargain you made to save yourself," Tomas said.

  Raphael moved faster than Tomas would have imagined, until their faces were inches apart. He could smell the old man's sour breath.

  "How do you know that?" Raphael hissed.

  Kate looked shocked, and with a visible effort the old man reined himself in. "Who told you?" he asked more calmly.

  Tomas read the fear in Raphael's eyes. For the first time, Tomas had a measure of power. He could shake Raphael, and Kate's faith in him. But this was a secret Raphael would kill to keep. If Tomas said any more, it would doom Kate. He just shook his head. "It's funny. All the things I saw, but this I never believed."

  Raphael eased back on his heels, smiling knowingly. "You only ever saw the surface - Nicholson made sure of that. I serve what lies beneath."

  Tomas looked at Kate to see if she understood. Could she work for Raphael, knowing this? But she hardly seemed to be paying attention to the old man, her eyes still fixed on Tomas. "None of it matters," she said. "It's all just a... technique. You know that, you used them yourself."

  He felt a surge of relief followed by a spike of panic. If Kate wasn't following the same course as Raphael, then she was just another tool to be used and disposed of.

  Her hand hadn't left his face. He could feel her fingertips ghosting over his cheek, tracing the lines of the unhealed cuts. "He can save you," she said. "If you help him, he can reverse what they did to you. What you did for me."

  He smiled a little, because it meant that, despite everything, she still cared about him. But he'd already seen the gun in Raphael's hand, and a second later Kate saw it too.

  "You promised me," she choked, shielding Tomas with her body. "You said that you could bring him back to life."

  The old man smiled. "Did I? How dishonest of me."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took Anya far too long to realise she was being followed. The young, mousy-haired woman was walking on the other side of the road, a few paces behind. She looked like an office worker window-shopping in her lunch hour, and Anya couldn't spare her any attention. Her eyes were focused solely on Vadim.

  It was only when she registered the shivery feeling of hidden eyes on her that she knew something was wrong. The young woman wasn't looking through the windows. She was following Anya's reflection in the glass.

  Anya's footsteps faltered, sending her stumbling over the raised rim of the next paving stone. She righted herself a second later, resisting the impulse to turn and look directly at her shadow. She was safer while the woman following her didn't think she'd been spotted.

  Vadim had drawn ahead as her attention shifted. She almost missed the sudden sharp left turn he took into one of the side streets running off Nevsky Prospect. She had ten paces to decide whether to follow him. If she didn't, there was a chance she could make her own escape. They might lose interest in her if she ceased to be a threat.

  But if she didn't, the diary would be lost - probably forever.

  When the turning came, she took it. The young man was hurrying, footsteps echoing audibly here, away from the crowds. His new route was taking him north, towards the river. Did he know he was being followed? Her own pursuer had dropped back, trailing her at a distance on this narrower street. The smell of exhaust fumes wafted down from the main road, but no cars followed it. No pedestrians either. The young man didn't turn around. He didn't pause, even though he must have heard her behind him.

  She had the phone pressed to her ear before she had time to fully process it. "I've walked into a trap," she said. "Sadovaya Street."

  The second she said it the young man was gone, ducked into an alley she'd barely noticed. Two other men appeared out of the shadows to take his place. Anya had never seen them before, but she was sure they were working for Raphael. The taller man on the right smiled, running a hand over his smooth scalp.

  Morgan was shouting something into the phone, words she didn't have time to listen to. She spun round. Behind her there was still only the mousey-haired woman. She wasn't carrying a weapon.

  Anya knew it was too good to be true. But it looked like a chance and she was desperate enough to take it. "Get the diary," she said into the phone, cutting off Morgan's protest by snapping it shut.

  The young woman paused, taking a step back as if she realised what Anya was planning. Then, as Anya sprinted towards her, she raised a whistle to her lips and blew.

  "Fuck!" Morgan flung the phone away. It skittered across the pavement to land in the gutter with an audible crack. After a moment, he stooped to pick it up. The screen was broken but it was still working and he supposed that was lucky. It was Anya's only way of getting in touch with him.

  Except he'd heard the whistle too. He knew what it meant and he didn't think she'd be calling again any time soon.

  The other Anya had gone pale beside him, clawing a hand into his bicep as the high-pitched whistle went on and on, audible even now the phone was off. "We have to get out of here," she said.

  He'd never seen that expression on her face before. It made her look vulnerable, far more like her alter ego.

  "She needs help," he said.

  "It's too late for her. Believe me - I know." Her hand on his arm was holding him back as he pulled against it in the direction of the whistle. But if he'd really wanted to, he could have broken her grip. He knew that. He knew that a big part of him wanted to do as Anya - as both Anyas - had told him.

  Tomas was lost, probably dead. Anya would soon be the same. His partners were dying, and he'd almost convinced himself that was over, but it was just like before. The people around him died, and he carried on. But if he had the diary, he might be able to discover why. Raphael knew all the secrets, Morgan was sure of it. He'd sell them for the book, and then Morgan could finally understand.

  He hesitated, caught by warring impulses more than by the grip of Anya's hand. Then he saw a figure emerge, blinking in the sudden light as he ran from a side street into the main road. It was Vadim - Raphael's man.

  Before Morgan realised he'd made the decision, he set off in pursuit. Anya followed, at first dragged by her grip on his arm and then propelling herself when she saw who his target was.


  The young man didn't realise they were following until they were within twenty paces. Morgan saw a brief flash of Vadim's face, sweaty and wide-eyed, and then he ran from the pavement into the centre of the road.

  Cars screeched to a halt around him. The drivers screamed at him, lush-sounding Russian swear-words. But one of the cars that had stopped was a taxi, chunky and yellow. Morgan grabbed empty air as he reached for the other man. Another step and Morgan thumped his fist against the closed taxi door. And then the taxi and Vadim were motoring away - and it was Anya and Morgan that everyone was screaming at as they stood impotently in the middle of the road.

  "Here!" Anya said. She ran to another of the stationary cars and pulled the door open. Morgan froze a moment, watching her squeeze into the back seat, before he realised that it, too, was a cab. Then he flung himself after, jeans sticky with sweat against the cheap plastic seats.

  The cab was moving before he'd shut the door. Anya leant forward, talking to the driver in urgent Russian. He frowned, then pressed down hard on the accelerator, flinging them back in their seats.

  "Let her go," Tomas said. "She's no more use to you."

  Raphael's thin white hand looked too frail to be holding the semi-automatic, but it didn't shake as he pointed the gun at Kate's heart. "One more use," he said.

  The flick-knife must have been hidden in Raphael's back pocket. It was small enough to fit there, but the blade was wickedly sharp. It made a harsh, rasping sound as he slid it over the concrete to Kate's feet.

  She looked down at it, then back at Raphael. "I won't kill him."

  "He's already dead. He'd want you to save yourself - wouldn't you, Tomas?"

  Tomas had been feeling weak and drained, floating somewhere apart from his thoughts. It was the detachment he'd longed for when he'd chosen to die. Now he fought against it. "Do your own dirty work, Raphael. It's not like you have an aversion to killing."

  "And you do, I suppose?"

  "I never enjoyed it."

  "Does that make it better? The outcome is the same. I'm sure the people you murdered cared not a jot for your reasons."

  "It wasn't murder." But Tomas knew there was no conviction in his voice. Since he'd come out of the ground, all his certainties had been dissolving like salt in the rain.

  "Cut out his heart," Raphael said, turning back to Kate. "Give it to me, and you may go. Don't, you die and I'll do it anyway."

  "Why?" Kate's voice was thick with tears. "Why lure him all this way, just to kill him?"

  "Because this is what he was made for. This is what it's all about!" He was kneeling as he spoke, gun still trained on Kate with one hand while, with the other, he pulled out a chalk and began to draw a complicated pattern of runes and pentagrams on the concrete.

  "He needs me for a spell," Tomas said. "Or my heart, I suppose." He suddenly remembered the illustration in the abbot's book, the one he saw in Greenland all those years ago, which showed the ceremony the artefacts were intended for.

  Raphael nodded, still drawing. "The beating heart of a dead man. A dark seed crystal."

  "For what?" Kate said. She'd got herself under control, and Tomas could see her gaze sweeping Raphael, waiting for an opening. He didn't think the old man would give her one.

  "A crystal can only seed itself," Tomas told her. "I'm dead. All I can bring is more death."

  Raphael paused a moment in his drawing to smile at Tomas. The expression looked manic. He must have been preparing for this moment almost half his life. What a remarkable feeling, to see his long-gestating plan finally come to fruition. And none of it would have been possible without Tomas - without his fatal stupidity.

  "Just one more thing," Raphael said, and then, "Ah."

  Tomas heard them before he could see them, footsteps approaching on the concrete behind him. He wasn't very surprised when the young man appeared, holding Nicholson's diary in one hand and a snub-nosed semi-automatic in the other.

  Full circle, Tomas thought. I took it from him in Budapest, and now he has it back again.

  Raphael nodded when he saw the book, head wobbling on his fragile neck. "Bring it here, Vadim."

  Vadim stared at Tomas as he walked past. Tomas thought his expression wasn't quite fear. More a sort of sick fascination. It was the way you looked at an object or a wild creature, not a man.

  "You know what this is, don't you?" Raphael said.

  Kate nodded. "Nicholson's diary."

  "And the first Ragnarok artefact," Tomas said.

  Kate sucked in a startled breath. "That? No. Those things are ancient."

  "Tomas is right," Raphael said. "The... formula for the artefacts is old, but they're made anew in each age. This is the first: the total corruption of a soul, recorded in its own hand. And the second is -"

  "- is me." Tomas stared at Kate, willing her to understand. "Nicholson made me too. A dead man walking, of his own free will."

  "Yes," Raphael said. "The broken heart of a dead man. All around the city, at the points of a pentagram, Belle and His other servants are ready to perform the great ceremony. But this, this is the heart of it all." He knelt down, placing the diary in the very centre of the pattern he'd drawn, chalk swirls of red and white circling inward towards it, like water heading for the drain.

  Kate's gaze blinked between them, unsure.

  "The artefacts are reputed to bring about the end of the world," Tomas said. "That's what they're - what we're - for."

  The knife still sat at Kate's feet, the sunlight sparking slivers of light from its blade. Raphael stood beside the diary at the centre of the runes, shoulders hunched with age. His semi-automatic still pointed at Kate, and now Tomas could see his finger squeezing the trigger, bringing it to that fine point of balance where only the slightest extra pressure would release the waiting bullet.

  "The book," Raphael said. "And your heart. Give it to me, Kate. There's no more time."

  "No," she said. "I'm not letting you use me any more."

  Her face was full of fear and guilt and Tomas could see the tremors shivering through her body. She wouldn't do it. She couldn't.

  He remembered, suddenly, how he'd felt, the third time he'd asked her to marry him, and the third time she'd said, "not yet". The insecurity had eaten away at his confidence in himself, in their feelings for each other, and he'd begun to ask himself if she really did love him. He'd wondered whether all this time he'd been going to bed with a future wife, and she'd been lying beside an over-extended one night stand. He'd made up his mind to ask her for the truth, the day she came back from Russia.

  Twenty years later than he'd expected, he didn't need to ask the question, because he could see the answer in her eyes. She did love him. She always had. It was why she would never take that knife and cut out his heart.

  But Tomas knew her refusal wouldn't stop anything. Raphael probably expected it. He could see the old man watching her with a gleam of cruel amusement in his eyes. He wanted her to say no, so he could kill her in front of Tomas. He wanted Tomas to be broken-hearted - the ritual required it.

  Tomas had died once already. He'd thought it was for something, some big romantic ideal of love. But it had been for nothing. And when he climbed out of his own grave, it had seemed as though he had a second chance at life, but that was never true. Just a part of him had come back, and not the part that could be in the world and change it - or if he could, it was only for the worse.

  The second chance he had wasn't at life, it was at death. He had to die again, only this time it could mean something. This time he really could die for Kate, in a way that wasn't just a pitiful self-indulgence. And he'd be leaving this job half-finished, but that was what the dead did - they left the world and its problems to the living.

  He thought he understood about Morgan now, and why they'd been paired together. The rest of this would be his responsibility, and Tomas didn't know how he'd handle it, but that was Morgan's choice. Tomas only had one more he could make.

  "Tell me," he said to Kate.
"If you'd come back from Russia. If - if none of this had happened. Would you have married me one day?"

  She didn't want to answer, he could tell. She knew he was saying goodbye. But after a second she nodded. "I don't know what I was waiting for. I spent the last twenty years wondering."

  He hadn't realised how good it would feel to hear it. He didn't want to let go of the moment, and he held her eyes as he tensed his muscles, pulling against the ropes. They were strong. The people who'd bound him knew what he was, and they'd assumed he'd be at full strength, not weakened after two days of starving himself.

  The knife was on the ground in front of him, almost touching his left foot.

  He pulled a little harder, dragging the ropes taut across his arms and chest.

  "Don't," Kate said. Her fingertips reached out to brush his jaw, and then his cheek.

  He shook them off. Everything that was left in him was focused on those ropes. They were digging into his skin as he strained, cutting through it. He was just flesh and blood, but there was magic in him too.

  He smiled at Kate. "Had we but world enough, and time..."

  He saw the instant Raphael realised what he was doing. The old man's gun swung from Kate to him at the precise moment the first rope snapped.

  "I'll shoot her," Raphael said, and turned the gun back round to Kate.

  Tomas knew he had seconds before Raphael carried out the threat. He didn't let himself believe that he might fail. The ropes would break, they would - and with one last fierce heave they did, tumbling him to the ground beside the knife.

  For a second the gun wavered between him and Kate, and a second was all Tomas needed. The knife felt far too small in his big hands. They shook with weakness now, but it didn't matter. There was only one more thing he needed to do.

  The pain as he stabbed the knife into his own chest was almost a relief. He wanted to feel something in his last moments. He tore the knife upward, shouting in agony. But it was almost finished. Almost finished. He could see Raphael staring at him, only now understanding what he'd intended. And Kate, looking furious rather than sad, which was so like her he almost laughed. And then he jerked the knife sideways and down, and he felt something fall out of his chest on to the ground. And then there was only silence.