Stay away, begged Toivo. Please leave. As the door swung open, he braced himself for the inevitable...
...And felt nothing there.
What was this? Certainly not the same group of thugs who had carried out the torture. Despite their deadened feelings, they still filled the room with emotion and memories--they were still human beings in spite of their savagery. Every mortal had a sense of vitality that Toivo could perceive, a warmth that they all shared just by virtue of being alive. Even the twisted man had shown something akin to a spirit.
This was different. This was like shining a torch down a mineshaft--unable to illuminate the bottom, the beam vanishing down a long tunnel of darkness. Nothing.
Toivo hoped for a moment that he was mistaken, and whoever it was had actually gone. The door slammed, and he heard someone give a small cough. Sure footsteps crossed the pitch-black room to stand invisible in front of him. He could hear faint breathing in the dark.
“It’s you, isn’t it,” said the Nothingness.
A shudder ran down Toivo’s spine at the voice: deep, soft, and terrifyingly calm. He suddenly realized that this was what he’d felt in the State Security building when he’d come for that first interview--the chilling shade that had touched him on his way out. What stood before him was nothing less than his death.
“Toivo Valonen, at last,” continued the darkness. “I know what you are.”
“...A journalist?” Toivo fought to keep his voice from breaking.
“But we both know you’re not really a journalist, are you? CIA operative?”
“No!”
“No, you’re right. Not CIA. Something much more interesting.”
The interrogation lamp clicked on and Toivo cringed in its glare. He heard the hiss of a breath drawn between teeth from the darkness beyond.
“The savage bastards!”
Toivo heard water being poured, and his body cried out for it in desperation. He whimpered as a cool glass was held to his split lips, the water tilted slowly into his mouth. He drained the glass dry and immediately felt the vigor return to his parched and aching form, new life flowing from his core to the tips of his fingers.
“I didn’t tell them to beat you,” said the voice in the darkness. “That wasn’t the plan.”
The trickle of water came again, and then the hands brought a damp handkerchief to Toivo’s face, gently rinsing away the blood caked to his nose and chin. Toivo shivered as fingers probed the places where wounds had been just hours before. He had never felt hands so cold.
“All healed,” said the owner of the voice, caressing a lingering bruise. “I knew it was you. I knew.”
“Who...are you?”
“You don’t remember me, Zophiel?”
“No,” Toivo breathed. “No, it can’t be...” He struggled against the handcuffs that bound him as the man who knew his true name stepped into the glare of the lamp.
The figure leaned uncomfortably close--Toivo could smell the mentholated lozenge on his breath--and the face resolved into sublime planes of light and shadow, young and fine. Bold, dark eyes stared down into Toivo’s own.
There were shadows inside those eyes--shadows as deep and ancient as the airless reaches of outer space. Toivo fell into them, reeling weightlessly as he was pulled down into the terrifying black hole of a memory.
He knew those eyes.
“Solas!”
Chapter 6
“Ah, it’s been too long since someone’s called me Solas,” said the man in the shadows. “I’ve been going by ‘Demyan’ lately.”
The name had come to Toivo on instinct, bubbling up from some hidden corner of his mind. He couldn’t articulate what it was about those eyes: they spoke to him across the vast reaches of forgotten lives, sending menacing flashes of danger he’d once known. He tried to remember more, but the details eluded him.
No matter, he thought. I don’t care. This was the enemy the angelic station agent had warned him about. Now that Toivo knew what he was, he could almost feel his rival’s emptiness like a magnetic field opposite his own, pulling him toward his inevitable downfall. Like a deer watching a tiger slinking through the grass, he didn’t need clear memories of this beast to know that it came to kill.
He twisted in his chair as Demyan vanished behind him.
“Hey, what are you--”
Toivo was surprised by the sensation of hands on his own, tinkering with the cuffs that bound his chafed, swollen wrists. A click, and he was free. Almost afraid to look at his hands, he raised them up slowly, flexing his fingers as he waited for full feeling to return.
“Can you stand?” Demyan asked.
Toivo wasn’t sure, but he tried. Halfway out of the chair, his knees buckled. Demyan’s hands shot out and Toivo sagged against him, his weight held up by the arms of his adversary.
A chill ran down Toivo's spine.
He’s toying with me before the end, he realized. What else could it be?
It’s not enough to crush an entire nation, he has to play his sick games with me, too?
“Stop it! Just...stop!” Toivo shook Demyan off and struggled to back away, his arms held out to ward off the taller man. He could feel his temper rising like a fevered gale. “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with!”
Demyan’s jaw tightened. “That’s not what I--”
“Then why else would you lock me up here, you son of a bitch? You’ve won! Enough with this cat-and-mouse act--just shoot me already!”
“I’m not going to kill you!” Demyan burst out, unexpected frustration in his voice. He growled and averted his eyes, clearly suppressing something. “Break from our standard protocol, I know, but for now you’re more useful to me alive.”
“Whatever you want me for,” Toivo shot back, “I won’t do it. Try your worst on me--I won’t sell them out.”
“This is about more than those backwoods rebels you think you can save, Zophiel. Killing you might have been the plan before I discovered important information about the future of this conflict--something far bigger than either of our two sides.”
Demyan held out his hand, almost entreating. Toivo recoiled from it, drawing himself back into a defensive stance.
“Listen to me,” Demyan said coldly. “Something terrible is going to happen, Zophiel. But if we work together...”
Toivo clenched his hands into fists. “Are you asking me to defect?”
“In so many words.”
Toivo drew in a deep breath, a new rage swelling up inside him.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been angry. He knew sadness and disappointment well--humans depressed him with their daily failures and cruelties--but he always bore that with grace, assuming they couldn’t help themselves. Demyan, however, wasn’t human, nor was he plagued by the human ignorance that Toivo had long ago learned to bear.
As Toivo stared at Demyan, his gaze locked on the somber face of his opposite who stole the precious hope he bestowed upon humanity, any remaining misery inside him melted into fury.
This dark angel was asking him to be a double agent?
Toivo’s fist snapped out with a vigor that surprised even him. It caught Demyan in the gut with a satisfying thud, and he doubled over with a groan.
“Go to hell!”
Demyan recovered fast and rushed for him, but Toivo was ready. Toivo was a different animal now--fighting for survival.
Adrenaline erasing the pain from his lingering injuries, he dodged and wove, his combat training flooding back to him. Toivo struck Demyan a blow to his cheek, hard enough to snap his head to the side, and received a punch to his newly healed ribs in return. Toivo swore to himself that he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He thought back to the barn full of partisans, lantern-lit in the Kalevian dawn, and knew it would be the same for them. If they were to die, they hoped they would die with honor, on their own terms.
As he threw a cross, Demyan managed to capture his arm, and they grappled, abandoning words for grunts and
gasps. For a moment Toivo found himself staring once more into those ancient eyes, before he was hurled back; Demyan flung himself full-force to pin him against the concrete wall. He struggled against Demyan’s weight, trying to free his wrists, hoping to land one more punch...
“Enough,” whispered Demyan, and dropped the barrier on his mind.
It was like the closing of a circuit, a current flowing between two polarities. Toivo felt a searching soul so like his own, and below it, a great darkness--a longing, sorrowful ache that compressed all of humanity’s need into a single, perfect force.
Fear.
This wasn’t the trickle of panic or the dull throb of worry that pricked at Toivo from the people around him. This was pure fear--a bottomless well down which hope vanished. Just as Toivo was drawn to human fear, longing to burn it away in his light, Demyan’s nature pulled at him, a siren call luring him into its inescapable depths.
Intense, unknown memories surged through Toivo’s brain--other lifetimes and far-off lands all mixed together, each carrying a taste or smell, a flood of supersaturated human emotion. Onion domes above Red Square, rolling plains, the smell of horses, the red glint of a glass of wine. Wartime, ruined streets, shells falling and falling like apocalyptic rain. A girl, her face familiar yet distant. A gunshot.
Toivo twisted in Demyan’s grasp. It was too much, too much. He felt compelled to watch the flutter of mental pictures, but was afraid of what he might see. Toivo’s body jerked; his temple rammed into Demyan’s jaw. With his face pressed up against Demyan’s neck, Toivo could smell the cloves and orange peel of the man’s aftershave.
He was confused for a moment; he couldn’t tell whether he wanted to pull Demyan closer or push him away. What was happening?
“Why do we have to keep doing this?” Demyan breathed in his ear.
Toivo closed his shaking hands into fists under Demyan’s grip.
I don’t know. I don’t know.
“Think about what I said.” Demyan suddenly released him and backed away, dragging the magnetic chaos from Toivo’s body. He turned abruptly toward the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”
The cell door slammed. Toivo slid down the wall and sat on the floor, trying to make sense of the world.
**
It was time. As Kaija leaned against the wall beside the rubbish bins, her heart refused to calm, and her limbs tingled with the strain of sustained anxiety.
It was the first day she’d been back to the city since the episode with The Boy--she’d abandoned work, and her apartment was off-limits, despite the key in her coat pocket--and now everything about the place seemed sinister and alarming. Portents of doom hung on every street sign, the judging eyes of every passerby offering fantasies of her imminent demise. As she prepared for a decision that would remove her last bastion of security in the entire world, she pondered how she’d come to such an act of betrayal.
Vesa.
Why was she doing this for him? By all rights she knew she should hate him for his deception, for the time she had wasted worrying about his imagined peril--for who and what he was. She couldn’t believe how drastically she’d misread the situation, but how could she have even begun to guess at his identity? Most of the high officials were notoriously private; it had been a great effort on the part of the Forest Clan to piece together any information about Vesa, save his parentage. The politburo elite understood that by keeping their families out of the limelight, they could keep them safe, anticipating plots against their loved ones. Pretty smart of them, she thought, considering the current situation.
What mysterious circumstances had led to the Chairman’s son running off into the arms of a rebel, anyway? Espionage? It was implausible that someone in his position would be called on to conduct an undercover operation himself--and on so minor a target. Maybe she was just one in a long line of experiments with the proletariat, tidily forgotten as he fell back into the normalcy of daily life.
No. That wasn’t Vesa--it couldn’t be. Years of detecting the warning signs of the vicious and insincere had made Kaija canny to false displays of good will. She was angry that he’d hidden his despicable origins from her, but she couldn’t discount the sincerity she’d seen in his eyes. Vesa--whoever he was, wherever he came from--believed he was her friend. She trusted her instincts, and they were leading her to the biggest gamble of her short life.
Her allies had tracked the car’s daily route, analyzed Vesa’s routine. They had built the plan in anticipation for this moment, and now she was going to ruin it all. If she dashed in front of Vesa’s driver and flagged him down before he turned the next corner, he would avoid passing the spot where a stolen car was waiting to tail him, and the whole thing would be off.
She would probably get arrested. Even if she didn’t, if the others saw her, her life was forfeit. All she could hope for now was that she was right about Vesa, and that as she protected him, he would shield her in return.
She drew a breath; a sedan was approaching, too sleek and elegant to be one of the squat Soviet lemons that roamed the streets of Kalevia. A little diplomatic flag mounted on the fender rippled as the car slowed for a stop sign. She knew from Klaus’ description that this was the car that contained their victim.
Here goes, she thought. She took a few steps out into the light.
A hand yanked her back. She nearly fainted.
“Kai!” a male voice hissed.
She was spun around to face Tomi, one of the twin brothers. Panic strained his face at her sudden divergence from the plan. “What are you doing, idiot?!”
She forced a defense up her throat. “Keeping watch--”
His grip dug painfully into her shoulders. “You’re not even supposed to be here,” he said, and then looked up, clicked his tongue in disgust. “Just stay back, eh? Perkele.”
As the car drove by, she could barely make out Vesa’s face in profile, leaning close against the tinted glass, oblivious to her existence. When the car stopped at the next light, she saw the stolen blue Zaporozhets pull out behind it, and her heart fell like a stone.
The light turned green and Tomi nodded with satisfaction as the cars drove away. He turned to Kaija with a look of triumph on his face.
“They’re set. Come on, Kai.”
Not knowing what else to do, she followed him to the delivery truck parked around the corner. It was the second vehicle into which they would swap their hard-won prisoner if all went according to plan. She fell into the passenger seat, trying to hide the fact that her hands were shaking.
It was all over. The fire was lit, and now it would keep burning until it consumed them all.
**
In a dark pantomime of a chauffeur, Demyan opened the car door for Vesa. He knew that the men at State Security would balk if they saw their infamous minder, the very soul of the KGB Sword and Shield, adopting such servile behavior--but Demyan was determined to curry favor with the Chairman’s wayward son.
His act was for naught. Refusing to even look at his new handler, Vesa brushed past him and sat stiffly in the backseat, a statue in a freshly pressed school uniform.
Sneaking a glance at his charge in the rearview mirror, Demyan mulled over the teenager’s variable moods--they seemed to shift as quickly as spring winds on the Baltic Sea. Today the kid brought his own personal storm with him, nurturing a tempest of dark melancholia. Without saying a word, he adopted a combination of the dignified mourning of a martyr and the hauteur of a prince, staring soulfully into space while ignoring any effort on the part of those around him to engage.
It was infuriating.
Carry on with your little huff, Demyan thought, sorely tempted to unleash his powers. If I wanted, I could destroy you without lifting a finger.
The fantasy of bringing Vesa to heel relieved some of his irritation, and he calmed himself, maintaining a firm grip on the shadows that roiled inside him.
Guarding the boy was not going to be an easy job if he remained in such low spiri
ts, especially since Demyan was prone to provoking fits of depression in those around him. He was not here to manipulate Vesa--to torment, terrify, or otherwise infringe upon his wellbeing. On the contrary, he had sworn to himself that no harm would befall the boy--especially not before Demyan was able to tease out the puzzle foretold in the stars--and to that effect he was willing to tamp down his inner monster and endure adolescent petulance. Demyan leaned back into the leather upholstery of the driver’s seat, briefly wondering if the window glass was bulletproof.
As they drove through the winding streets, the fog of angst made it difficult for Demyan to concentrate. He wondered what exactly had compelled Vesa to run off in the first place, and what had happened during his brief adventure. With disaster waiting in the wings, Demyan needed information and he needed it fast.
No one needed to know. The way she had overpowered him, the muscles tensing beneath the skin of her arms; her voice, soft and low, carrying him off to sleep. They were his secrets, meant for him and him alone. He had to carry the memory of that night, taking it out like a precious talisman to gaze at in the long, gloomy years ahead, because he would never see her again.
Demyan raised his eyebrows. So it was a girl, then, who had shaken Vesa so thoroughly. Was she one of the star-crossed lovers, the symbol of the bear from the prophecy? He needed to prompt the boy into revealing more.
“So, back to school.”
Vesa looked up sharply from the window, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.
Demyan pressed on. “Looking forward to seeing your friends again?”
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