Nadia narrowed her eyes. “But I will best you.” She reached out to strike, but Van dipped away and was out the door.
Now it came down to the ring.
3.
Gabe’s head wasn’t pounding yet, but it would be soon, he was sure. The warehouse basement was packed with a chattering crowd. The organizer, Kazimir, looked delighted, the crowd on excitement’s edge. Two young bartenders, a boy and a girl, seemed overwhelmed already.
Even before the first fighters took the ring, the room had warmed to uncomfortable levels and the small windows set high in the wall steamed over. Gabe watched as Edith tried to shake the cigarette’s stink from her hands, to find somewhere comfortable to stand. She failed at both. He scanned the crowd for Flame operatives. For Ice too.
Alestair had said there’d be a ward here, somewhere, and that Gabe could use it if he needed. That it was in Kazimir’s possession. All Gabe had to do if he needed it was to ask the man if he’d been to the National Technical Museum, and Kazimir would know. Just that, Gabe figured, and risk Edith seeing too much. Thanks for nothing, Alestair.
But the basement was too crowded to keep track of Kazimir for long, even as big as he was. And the noise of the crowd, a constant ebb and flow that ranged between annoying and deafening, made it difficult to hear Edith.
“You said the drinks are safe here?” she finally shouted, after trying several times.
Gabe shrugged. “As much as they are anywhere, I expect.” He grinned at his own joke. Edith shot him a lashes-lowered glare.
After a moment of this, he turned to the bar, digging a fistful of high-note korunas out of his pocket. He realized too late he’d forgotten to ask what Edith wanted. His head was pounding now, from the noise, and he couldn’t remember what she’d ordered last time they’d been out. Some great fake date he was.
He turned to ask, but Kazimir had pulled up a seat next to Edith and was pointing out the finer points of the ring. Gabe would get two bourbons, then. At least those wouldn’t go to waste like the cigarette. He waved a bartender over.
“Gin gimlet,” a voice said over the tumult. Tanya smiled at the young bartender, never looking at Gabe as she handed over several bills. “And that bottle of beer there.”
“Get out of here,” Gabe hissed, even as he wondered at the drink. Gin didn’t seem like Tanya’s style. But Tanya left the gimlet on the bar and walked away, carrying the beer with her. “Bourbon, neat,” he said when the barmaid returned.
Gabe waited a moment, then picked up the cloudy glass of juice and gin, valiantly garnished with a cherry. The napkin beneath it was carefully folded, left corner down twice. It was one of their signals: “Need to talk immediately.”
Gabe groaned. Here? In front of Edith? Impossible. He carried the drinks back to the table Edith had commandeered and breathed a sigh of relief when Kazimir wandered off. He saw Josh take a seat at a different table, ignoring them.
Edith sipped at the gimlet and eyed Gabe suspiciously. “Perfect.”
How did you know, Tanya? Gabe wondered. He winked at Edith as winningly as he dared.
Edith patted Gabe’s hand, keeping up the farce. “You know, this place might be all right after all. You too.”
Gabe looked at her perfectly manicured fingers and the dainty ring on Edith’s right hand he hadn’t noticed before, or she hadn’t worn before. A pearl. Of course. Matched the earrings and the necklace. He moved his hand away. Sipped his bourbon. Coughed into his napkin. “Something down the wrong pipe, back in a minute,” he managed to choke passably.
As Gabe headed to the hallway, Kazimir levered himself into the ring, skipping the wooden steps below the south corner’s post. The big man scanned the room, his eyes bouncing from head to head, searching faces. He rubbed a pendant between two fingers, then held his hands up for quiet and bellowed the first match. Two men, both built like dock equipment. Kazimir’s guys? They were huge, stevedore-sized bricks of flesh. Heavyweights. They shook hands and began circling each other with lumbering steps, piston arms and anvil fists swinging at their sides.
Gabe kept moving. Edith, he saw in a glance, was watching the ring intently. At least she was distracted.
Kazimir jumped from the ring to the floor and a path opened between him and the bar. “Is a good fight, well balanced,” he observed jovially as Gabe passed him on the way to the toilets. Gabe nodded and kept moving. He didn’t see Tanya, but he did see Zerena, thankfully sans ambassador, sitting with a young blonde woman whose back was to him. Nearer the ring, a figure stood and watched the room intently. Sasha.
New alignments, indeed, Frank. How had his boss guessed?
Gabe could feel the power in the room now. The hitchhiker was alert, but even without it, the air practically crackled. If he could sense them, could others sense him?
He looked down the hallway, past the washroom. Empty. Where was Tanya?
After waiting a moment, he stepped inside the small, foul-smelling latrine. Not there either. He got out as fast as he could. He heard a voice at the other end of the hallway, a woman, certainly, but not Tanya. Another woman’s voice drove him back down the hallway. He’d heard that voice before. Where? He couldn’t quite place it.
He couldn’t stay here all night. Gabe turned back toward the ring. That’s when he saw Tanya, trapped in conversation with Sasha, Zerena bearing down on both of them.
There were a lot of players here. That should never happen.
Something about Zerena’s look made the hair on Gabe’s neck stand on end.
And he couldn’t do anything to help.
Unless …
He began to move toward the fight.
The two men in the ring were folded into a tight clutch. The referee yelled at them in Czech to split up. Gabe watched them lean on each other hard. One fighter’s glove pressed the other’s ear unceasingly. The other’s hand was much lower, reaching to mash his opponent somewhere delicate without the referee seeing. The crowd began to boo.
Tanya’s eyes passed him, scanning the room. They widened when they settled on Zerena, approaching.
Gabe reached in his pocket and pulled out Jordan’s talisman. He pitched it across the floor so that it spun out between several fight-fans’ legs, coming to rest beside Sasha, where it would be invisible to Zerena until she was right on top of it. The gold wire on the talisman glinted.
Gabe was sorry to lose it, even if it did manage to create a distraction. He was right up against the ring now, and five feet above him, the referee got in close and screamed at both fighters until they came apart.
The boxer in the gray shorts got off a quick, resounding left hook to his opponent’s right rib cage.
Rocked to the side, the second man’s left knee buckled with the pain of the powerful liver shot. He sank to the mat and sat down, stunned. The crowd shouted. The referee began his count. The crowd yelled furiously at the felled boxer to get up. The man sat, one leg splayed in front of him, the other twisted back, using both hands to brace himself hard against the gravitational pull toward the mat. Finally, he slumped back on the canvas. “Mistr!” the referee shouted, holding up the winner’s hand. Cheers rippled through the basement and echoed off the walls.
At the same time, Zerena stepped on the talisman. There was a loud crack. Much louder than the small object should have made. For a split second, the far wall glowed—a circle, loops.
The winner grinned, his bloodied ear already turning a fine purple color. In the crowd, money and some glitter exchanged hands: jewelry. The volume rose another several decibels.
Zerena Pulnoc’s hands were glowing. Tanya had managed to back away, clearing the space between her boss and the Soviet ambassador’s wife. Zerena’s eyes were locked on her shoe, trying to kick the broken piece of the talisman away. Proximity to the warehouse wall somehow amplified its power. Zerena wobbled, off-balance on her heels, and knocked into her neighbors.
As both boxers were helped from the ring, the downed boxer hanging on to the other’s shoul
der for balance, the crowd’s attention turned temporarily toward the bar. In the crush, few noticed the disturbance near the Russians, nor that it was still building. By the time Gabe returned to the table where Edith sat, Sasha had turned a deep shade of crimson.
Kazimir clapped his hands together once as he approached the table. It sounded like thunder. “There’s nothing like a fight to bring friends together, and brothers.” His shirt was soggy with sweat. He’d reddened his collarbone dragging the pendant back and forth on its chain. His eyes looked mischievous, as if he’d assembled a toy and set it running.
“Those two are brothers?” Edith asked. Gabe could see her mind working. “Your brothers?”
Kazimir smiled broadly. “They’ve been fighting for years. Best thing I did, putting them in the ring. They get it out of their system.”
Edith grinned back. “My brothers too. Always.”
“I figured you for an only child,” Gabe said quietly.
Edith laughed, a high-pitched room-splitter. “Hardly.” She looked wistful for a moment. “One’s working in the Far East, the other’s sailing, south of Florida.”
Stationed in Japan, Gabe guessed. And on patrol near Cuba. As dedicated as Edith was to public service, her brothers would be too.
“A sailor! Family, then.” Kazimir went to hug Edith, who looked at him doubtfully until he ceased, and then gestured to the bar. After a moment, a slim young man brought out a round of drinks. Edith waved him off. “No more for me, I want to see the morning. And the next fight.”
Kazimir laughed and clapped her on the shoulder, then passed the drink to Gabe. “Someday my friend over there,” he pointed at Josh, “will be boxing here too.”
Edith smiled vaguely, Gabe affected a nod. He pretended not to notice that Josh almost spilled his drink at the distant table. The crowd noise dipped, just as Zerena drew close to Sasha, her face fierce. Edith watched them with enough interest that Gabe began to worry she knew more than she should.
Tanya squeezed past their table, eyes on the bar.
Then the room went completely dark.
There were shouts and screams. “Caution. Remain still!” Kazimir yelled in nearly fluid Czech, Russian, French, and English.
• • •
Tanya found the bar in the dark, stepping over a fallen chair. Gabe slid up a moment later, the hitchhiker giving him a sense of where her wards were, once he got close enough. They didn’t have much time at all.
“Do you know that the woman who followed you on the rooftop is here?” she whispered.
Gabe stayed silent for a moment. Then said, “I wondered if she might be.” So, he’d thrown caution entirely to the wind.
“And Sasha?” Her temper was rising.
“I have to do my job, Tanya.” Gabe whispered. “Boss says check out new hotbed of off-hours operatives, I do that.”
She grabbed his arm and squeezed. “No one in Prague is ever off-hours, Gabe. And this? Could get you killed. Did you know who else would be here?” Tanya whispered. Zerena. Sasha.
“No,” Gabe murmured. “That wasn’t in my briefing.”
“They would all love to have what you carry. To know what you know. The woman from the roof? She’s clearly a rogue Host, and she knows about your elemental, for sure. You are taking too many risks.”
“Her? Sure. The others, maybe.” It was too dark to see, but Tanya could hear the frown in his voice. “You take risks all the time. You and Nadia.”
The lights weren’t coming back up. Kazimir shouted, “Just another moment for the power. Stay calm. It’s not like you can just snap your fingers and go poof.”
Tanya gripped Gabe’s arm more tightly and leaned in. “You aren’t listening to me. You came here with a woman who wouldn’t think twice about arresting you if she got a chance, or exposing you if she knew about everything else.”
“It’s my job.”
“Which job? The one that could get us both killed or the one that could start a war?” Tanya slid away from the bar. Kazimir would have the power on soon. Plus, she was growing increasingly angry. “We know more about her than you do.”
Despite himself, Gabe narrowed his eyes, remembering the drink. Hearing now the implied threat.
With a whir of fans spinning into life, the lights in the basement came back up. Couples were caught mid-kiss in corners, others were gathered in groups by tables. Zerena was by the ring, bending over the young blonde woman, who was curled on the ground. And Sasha was hightailing it up the stairs. “Just a power cut, happens all the time,” Kazimir shouted over the murmurs. “Drinks all around!”
Kazimir rang the fight bell and two new fighters stepped out of the hallway. Nadia first, wearing all black. Her gloves had the well-worn sheen of many hours at the bag.
Then the other fighter emerged from the hallway. Coiled energy, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She smacked her gloves together and jumped through the ropes into the ring while Nadia was still climbing over. Even Tanya could sense the charge between the two.
Both fighters’ skin shone in the lights, greased with petroleum. “Oh, Nadia,” Tanya whispered. Who was taking risks now?
Tanya walked past Gabe one last time, thinking about Nadia’s order not to push him. Thinking about his blundering. She whispered, “I know what I’m dealing with. You do not.” Tanya paused. Once she said these words, there was no way back. She thought for a moment about what she didn’t know, and what she knew now. She watched Andula sway on her feet, drained by Zerena. She whispered a quick, powerful spell and crushed a handful of herbs in her pocket as she walked away from Gabe, then kept talking to him, even as the distance separated them both. She was drawing the power from his elemental. Something she wasn’t exactly sure she could or should do. If it worked, it would exhaust him, possibly hurt him, but she needed to make him hear. “Gabe? You feel how much power is here? We aren’t even on a ley line and Zerena and Sasha can shut down the electricity just to mess with each other. Messing with you would be more than easy to the Flame. And the woman from the rooftop? A worse problem than you know. You need to leave now. You should take that agency flunky and get out while you have time. You’re endangering the Ice, all of us, by not being more careful.”
All other eyes in the room were on the fight. Kazimir let the two women touch gloves, then stepped back and rang the bell. They circled each other.
Nadia crouched, taking prowling steps. Her opponent bounced from foot to foot. She looked like she was laughing. Talking trash too.
Tanya looked back at Gabe. His head was cocked at an angle. He’d heard Tanya’s whispers, close to his ear. The spell had worked. Gabe was frozen momentarily, there by the bar. Her voice in his head must be terrifying. She’d never attempted it before. But she’d lost Andula by not trying hard enough. By wanting to take it easy on her. The spell scared her a little, but what the Flame could do to Gabe scared her even more.
Gabe put a hand to his temple. Stop, she told herself. Leave him alone. But she didn’t. He needed to know how power could work. He’d been treating it, and the danger of it, with too little respect. “You need to listen to me when I say something, and come when I tell you.” she whispered at last, and released him.
A crack of fist on jaw interrupted Tanya’s whispers. A loud thud from the mat shook Gabe out of his reverie. Tanya turned from him to the canvas, to the sound of booing. To a referee bending over a splayed form on the mat.
The fight hadn’t lasted long at all.
The air inside the basement was cooling quickly. There was a sudden smell …
“Gas!” a voice shouted. Zerena’s voice. The whole room rushed for the stairs at once, leaving Gabe turning in circles by the bar, looking for Edith, for Josh, or maybe Kazimir or Tanya.
“Be careful of each other,” Kazimir shouted in four languages.
Tanya didn’t know whether being careful was enough anymore, and didn’t want to care. But not caring took too much energy.
She ran toward the boxing ring.
• • •
Nadia Ostrokhina hit the canvas hard, her vision blurring. She heard bells, a whistle, like a lock opening, though none opened at midnight anywhere. She saw the air shimmer before her, and Van’s black trainers, and heard the crackle of ice against the hopper windows high on the basement walls. Something about that ice, the way the air shimmered, the smell, which someone said was gas, but it wasn’t, it was elemental salt … had the death of one of the barge Hosts released it? It shouldn’t be free like that, it was dangerous—
The sharp tang of the hard mineral filled Nadia’s nose and mouth as her eyes closed.
• • •
With the basement emptied, Kazimir swept up the spilled drinks and broken glass. Zerena and her driver helped a young blonde woman up the stairs and to the waiting car. Kazimir kept an eye on the trio.
“Exciting place, comrade,” Zerena called from the top of the stairs. Too exciting.
Kazimir shivered, but waved as if he didn’t mind. He kept sweeping the floor, which was now very clean. Van had not come to collect her winnings. Nadia had disappeared. And Joshua. The Russians had left. Only this young man, Gabe, remained, sitting at a table, holding his head. His date had left with the crowd after the gas scare. And there was worse. Kazimir felt a tension in the room. Something he’d felt before, in different places around Prague. The big man could not quite put his finger on what created and wound that tension, what powers drove it. That made him more nervous than all the posturing of all the countries wrestling for advantage in his beloved city.
He knew how to make a profit in a contested zone. He was good at it. But he had no idea how to profit from this dark energy that felt much older.
During the night’s final fight, something had shifted, irrevocably. Even the air tasted different to Kazimir: salty, like sweat. Or tears.
The Witch Who Came In From the Cold
Season 2, Episode 7
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 23
