Verena's Whistle: Varangian Descendants Book I

by K. Panikian

  “What a useful person for us to run into, don’t you think, Theo?” I asked, grinning. “Useful and oh, so, cute. What are the odds?”

  “Must be fate,” was Theo’s response. “Good thinking, getting her number.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It was quite brilliant. And if you give me that last pancake, I will let you be the one to text her once we’re in Chelyabinsk.”

  “Deal.”

  THE remaining hours on the train passed slowly. We paced the cars, raided the dining car again, and read books. I took a deep dive into Theo’s book of Russian fairytales. There were some good ones.

  I especially like the story of Ilya, the knight, and his self-swinging sword. He found the kladenets sword hidden in a sacred tree. He learned how to use its self-swinging power and then beheaded the evil tsar with it.

  After he saved the kingdom, the sword disappeared. Presumably waiting to be found by the next hero.

  I snuggled onto my cot in the rocking train compartment and dozed off into an afternoon nap, dreaming about magic swords and fearless knights.

  Chapter 9

  When the train finally pulled into Chelyabinsk, I was ready for a hot tub, or a nightclub. I was achy and my feet felt swollen from the long days of sitting around, but I was also bored, restless, and ready to do something that got my heartrate going. We found our bags and a taxi and headed for our hotel near the university. It was late morning outside, but cloudy, and I could see a lot of gloomy industrial-looking buildings as our taxi zipped along, and then we passed a huge, open park.

  After we checked into the hotel, we hit the gym by mutual agreement. I stretched for a long time before using the treadmill and Theo did laps in the pool. By the time I was done, I felt renewed. I wasn’t in a hurry to sit again, but I was also ready to tackle a big Russian dinner and brainstorm our next steps.

  I showered in my room and then dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. I hadn’t wasted packing space on nice shoes, so my hiking boots would have to do. I dried and brushed out my long, straight hair and added a little light makeup. With my dark blue eyes and pale skin, I tended to just use mascara and lip-gloss, unless I was prepping for a serious night out, which this was not.

  I knocked on Theo’s door when I was done and he held up one finger for me to wait while he finished sending a text. “Just checking on Julian,” he said.

  We asked the hotel front desk for a restaurant recommendation within walking distance and then set off. It was in the upper teens and I was happy in my coat, hat, and mittens. The sidewalks were clear of snow, but it was mounded on the street corners in dirty, gray-brown piles. There were a lot of students outside with us, carrying backpacks and traveling in large groups, chattering loudly. Most of the buildings around us were concrete high-rises with shops and restaurants on the ground level. We saw many boarded-up windows, likely from the meteor blast just a few days previously.

  The two-story restaurant had blue icicle lights hanging outside and a neon palace on the roof, complete with neon orange onion domes. The inside décor didn’t disappoint either. There were floor-to-ceiling murals of farming villages and lakes; large carved, wooden posts; and at least 30 stuffed animals, including boars, eagles, and bears.

  I met Theo’s raised eyebrows with a big grin and we sat at a table for two directly under a huge, wooden chandelier in the shape of a wagon wheel. “I love it,” I whispered.

  “You would,” was Theo’s reply.

  We each stared blankly at the Russian menus and then Theo, in a brilliant move, flipped his over to find an English version. We ordered a bottle of wine, mushrooms baked in cream and some pelmeni, or dumplings, stuffed with ground beef and sour cream. I filled up on the pelmeni, they were so delicious. Then we split a dish of skewered boar meat and grilled vegetables and called ourselves full.

  While we ate, we made plans for the next day. It was an hour drive west to Lake Chebarkul, and another hour past that to Zlatoust. We needed to rent a car and then find a hotel much closer to the two sites.

  “I wish we knew which place to focus on first,” I said to Theo. “Have you gotten anywhere with trying to use your Sight?”

  “No,” Theo answered. “Whatever was blocking Uncle Alex is blocking me as well.” He looked frustrated. “I think we can assume, however, that the forest site is more dangerous, just because there are more places to hide in a forest if something did come through a portal. If something came through the lake, just based on the photos we’ve seen from that site, there would be obvious tracks in the snow leading to and from the hole in the ice.”

  “I agree. I think we should check both tomorrow though, to make sure.”

  IN the morning, we repacked our bags. It would take a couple more days for the weapon crate to arrive at the hotel. In the meantime, I found the long knife with the nightingale motif from my suitcase and hung it on a cord around my neck, under my coat. It wouldn’t be a quick draw, but I was pretty sure the blade was an illegal length, so I needed to keep it hidden.

  We checked out of the hotel and took a cab to the car rental place. I’d booked us online last night after dinner and once there, it was a simple matter of signing some papers and then getting the keys. We ended up with a full-size SUV and hit the road.

  I put the address for Lake Chebarkul in the GPS first. The road signs were all in Cyrillic, so I shouted helpful things at Theo while he white-knuckled his way out of the city. It was a relief that “stop” signs at least, appeared to be universal.

  Once we were on the highway, Theo relaxed and I enjoyed the scenery, including some beautiful old farms and more snowy fields. We were at the lake a little more than an hour later and followed the hand-painted signs and crowds of people to the impact zone. We ended up parking more than a mile out and walking in, it was so packed.

  “All signs point to 100 percent normal situation,” I said to Theo as we walked.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “This site is a carnival, not a crime scene.”

  There were food trucks and bonfires on the edge of the frozen lake. We got in the line of people snaking their way out to the opening in the ice. The people around us were excited; they were dressed in warm winter gear, and a few appeared to be carrying flasks.

  When we got to the hole, the wooden barriers stopped us about ten yards out. Under the guise of taking pictures, we both strained our senses. My second sight was practically nonexistent, but I hoped that Theo, being this close to the site, would be able to bypass whatever had been blocking his visions.

  The sun was bright overhead. The snow on the lake surface was white and felt crusty under my feet. The circular opening in the ice exposed blue-black water surrounded by smooth walls; I let my awareness trail down the slick walls and sink into the frigid water. Down I went to bottom where the gluey mud was black and soft. The mud felt warmer than the water and I buried my limbs and my tail deeper into the viscous, dark sludge until only my eyes were visible, staring out into the inky water. I was confused and uneasy in this place. It was not my home. The shapes moving across the ice above were strange and too colorful. I did not see any fish nearby, but I would stay hidden in the mud, I decided, until I got hungry.

  I blinked my eyes, shook my head, and trembled. I was on the frozen surface of the lake again, standing next to Theo who was still staring blankly at the exposed water. I turned my face up to the sun and tried to think warm thoughts. After a moment, Theo blinked as well. He looked ill. He started to speak, but I shook my head. “Not here,” I said.

  We walked off the ice and headed back to our rental. Theo stumbled a couple of times but then seemed to recover and walk more smoothly. Theo started the SUV immediately when we climbed inside and I hit my button for the automatic seat warmer. I was full-body shivering.

  “I’ve never,” Theo started and then paused. “I’ve never Seen so clearly before. Or felt so involved in my vision. Did you see it?”

  “I didn’t look at it, no, but I felt it. I felt like I was it. I was hiding in
the mud, very confused. I had a tail.”

  “It was more than that for me,” Theo said. “I saw it, curled up in the mud. It’s a bukavac, for sure. I watched it in fast-forward. It’s going to hide in the mud and then, when it gets hungry enough, it’s going to surface. Three nights from now, it will climb out of that hole in the ice and slink and slither over to the parking lot. There will be one car still in the lot, with two people in it. It will slaughter them and eat them and then sneak into the forest to find a new hiding spot.” Theo shuddered. “There will be a lot of blood and screaming.”

  “Then in three nights, we’ll be back to stop it,” I said firmly.

  WE decided to drive straight through to Zlatoust without stopping for lunch. I still felt weird after my stint at the bottom of the lake as the bog monster, and Theo was obviously uncomfortable reliving the slaughter he’d witnessed.

  It took an hour to get to Zlatoust and as Theo drove, I searched for news articles on my phone mentioning the location of the third meteor impact. I finally found the coordinates, but it was a few miles inside of Taganay National Park and not near any road. We would need to rent snow machines, or maybe horses? It seemed like the authorities were doing a better job keeping tourists away from this site. We would probably have to sneak our way to it.

  I told Theo what I’d found and he voted we text Zasha to see if she’d heard from her missing doctor yet. If not, she might be at loose ends and be willing to guide us.

  I texted her and got an immediate, excited reply. She was in Zlatoust with other members of her team searching for meteorite fragments near the impact site. She was resting and would meet us in an hour for coffee.

  Zlatoust was a small city on the banks of the Ay River. It was much smaller than Chelyabinsk and at a much higher elevation. The snow-covered southern Urals surrounded us as we drove up into the city.

  We met Zasha at a coffee shop near a tramway stop. Theo and I just sat down when she bustled in, wrapped in a thick coat, her pink cheeks glowing from the cold. I heard Theo mutter something beside me. She hurried to our table and shook off her gloves.

  “I am so happy to see you,” she said. “I have been busy, busy all morning digging in the snow for meteorite pieces and my hands are still frozen!” She laughed and showed us her red fingers.

  “That’s so cool,” I answered. “Have you found a lot? Is the site hard to get to?”

  “It is a little far, yes. It takes about an hour to get there on a snowmobile. But soon we will be done at the site and will take the meteorite fragments to the lab. Then I will not be so cold all day.”

  “What about your boss?” Theo asked. “Did you find him?”

  Zasha’s face fell. “No. The last he was seen, he rented a snowmobile and was searching for the crater. That was four days ago. He is a missing person.” Zasha looked very somber. “The police think he got lost in the woods. If that is so, we may never find his body. The snow is deep in these mountains and it is many months until it melts.”

  “Where did he rent the snowmobile? Have the police tried following his trail?” Theo suggested.

  “Alas, we have had a big snow two days ago. The trail is gone, if he made one. He left from the Taganay Hotel a little bit outside of town and the hotel clerk thinks he went straight into the park following the cross-country ski trail. The police and park rangers found the snowmobile on the trail, but there is no sign of the doctor.” Zasha shook her head sadly. “His poor wife,” she added. “She has been calling and calling us but we have no answers.”

  We finished our coffees and talked a little about Zasha’s meteorite fragments. Apparently, they were very heavy and full of iron. It was a race to collect them before they vanished under the snow, or were picked up by treasure hunters hoping to sell them online

  Zasha’s team would stay in Zlatoust until the weekend, studying the crater, taking radiation readings, and picking up fragments. Then they would use the astronomy lab at the university in Chelyabinsk to run some tests on the fragments and the soil in the crater. The scientists would be able to tell where in space the meteors arrived from based on the elements and mineral compositions in the meteorite fragments.

  When Zasha got up from the table to head back to work, Theo hopped up too and walked with her out the door. I lost sight of them so while I waited for Theo to return, I called the Taganay Hotel and booked us rooms for the night. I asked the clerk if he had any snow machines still available for the day and then reserved one for the afternoon.

  When Theo came back inside to get me, I teased him about Zasha the whole way to the hotel.

  AN hour later, we were on our way into the national park. We followed the same cross-country trail that Dr. Kuznetsov took just days earlier, with me driving the snow machine and Theo holding on loosely. I had the compass direction and coordinates for the crater but for now, we would follow the ski trail and look for any signs of the missing doctor.

  The snow blanketed the forest around us. The trees were tall and bowed over the ski trail in places, forming tunnels. The trail steadily climbed and we caught occasional glimpses of the sweeping valley below, dotted with frozen lakes. We planned to follow the trail for about an hour and then turn the sled toward the crater and try and cut across the forest, hopefully bypassing any authorities guarding the site access.

  I saw a small herd of elk picking its way through the trees and pointed them out to Theo. Their hooves moved daintily through the snow and left a winding trail behind them.

  We were approaching the turn off point when Theo patted my shoulder and I stopped the snow machine.

  “My intuition is telling me to turn off the trail here,” he said.

  I nodded and turned the sled in the direction he pointed. Our progress was slow, weaving in and around downed trees as we tried to avoid tangling ourselves in the snowy underbrush. Finally, Theo tapped my shoulder again and I shut off the machine.

  We snagged our backpacks and snowshoes, also rented from the hotel, and started tramping east. I didn’t see any other tracks in the new snow. After about half a mile, we did see tracks. They looked like horse hoofprints, at least three sets of them.

  For some reason, I lowered my voice to a whisper and asked Theo, “Did Zasha say anything about using horses to reach the crater?”

  “No,” Theo answered. “But these could be from park rangers, or some kind of mounted police force.”

  “Yeah, but they’re unshod, see?”

  We followed the hoofprints for a little while, but didn’t see any horses. The prints veered off to the north eventually, and we stayed on our eastern track until I started to hear voices and machine noises through the trees. I poked Theo and he waved his hand low to the ground. We crept closer until we could see the edge of a clearing.

  The clearing was full of people, sifting snow and carrying metal detectors. The very center of the crater was clear of debris and then spreading outward were broken branches, fallen trees, and mounded snow. The snow was brown and churned up and walled around the center of the clearing like a bowl.

  I closed my eyes and tried to find my second sight, however, unlike the lake, I couldn’t sense anything magical nearby. We were too far from the crater, maybe. I looked at Theo and his face looked pinched in concentration. He turned around in a circle a few times and then focused back the way we came for a few moments. He opened his eyes finally and whispered, “There is too much activity happening at the crater. I can’t tell for sure, but I’m pretty sure that I’m getting the imprint of a group of besy. They were at the crater, then walked into the woods. I don’t know where they are now. I don’t know what they look like.”

  “The hoofprints?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he answered.

  We watched the work in the crater for a few more minutes and then suddenly, a voice spoke behind us.

  We turned a saw a man in a police uniform. He spoke again and Theo answered in English, “Sorry, we don’t speak Russian.”

  The officer switched to En
glish and said, “No unauthorized visitors at this time. Please return to your vehicle and leave the area.”

  “Sure,” I answered easily and we got to our feet. The officer watched us suspiciously as we tramped back the way we came. Once he was out of sight, we stopped. We had maybe another hour of daylight in the day. The crew at the crater would likely stop when it got dark, but the hotel expected us to return the snow machine when the sun went down, so we couldn’t linger and try to sneak back.

  “I think our best bet is to wait until the scientists leave the site,” I told Theo. “I don’t think we can get up here in the dark tonight without a snow machine.” Theo nodded.

  “Tomorrow maybe,” I thought out loud, “we can find some kind of rental house that comes with snow machines, like a vacation rental.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” said Theo. “The scientists will be here at least a few more days and I’d really like to get a better idea of the number and kind of besy that came through. If we could get up here tomorrow night, I could do a circle in the center of the crater. I might be able to See the magical echo of the impact.”

  We started walking again back to the snow machine. When we reached the part of our trail where it intersected the hoofprints, we paused again. I dug carefully down around one print and pointed out its depth to Theo. These were very heavy horses. I pulled out my phone and took a picture.

  Back at the snow machine, we stowed our snowshoes and headed down the mountain. I was feeling cold now under my winter gear and I was anxious to get back to the hotel. It had a beautiful, old wooden bar with local brews and spirits, plus a large open hearth fireplace and unlimited Wi-Fi. Heaven.

  Chapter 10

  Julian paced back and forth in his hotel room, rehashing what he learned from the priest the day before. There was no way around it, Irene had kept secrets from the rest of the family. The question was, why? Or maybe that wasn’t even the question. Maybe the question was, what information did this grandson have that Julian’s family didn’t? And was that hypothetical information relevant to the crisis at hand? Julian ran his hands through his hair and then decided he’d waited long enough to call Alaska.