A long, soul-deep sigh came from the other side of the dome, and Rose made her careful way around the narrow walkway. The man who came into view, standing at the railing, looking out across the city—only the surreal setting of the dream cushioned her mind against the shock of him.
The starlight gathered around him, reflected in the liquid silver of his hair, glowed in the perfect sapphire of his eyes. Rose couldn’t focus, couldn’t make her eyes lock on any single part of him; her eyes slid by again and again, like with the vampires only more intense. Her mind formed the impression of beauty, of desire, of perfection. As with the rusalka in the river, Rose found herself approaching this man without having meant to.
“It’s all right.” He sighed again, interrupting the music of his voice. “The darkness, it won’t come here. Not for a while.”
Rose realized she had seen this man before, in another vision. Not her own—the memory the fairy woman had shared with her. This was the man who had kissed her, sucked her dry, broken her. “Who are you?”
“I’m not angry.” He waved his hand through the air with inhuman grace; starlight trailed from his fingers. “You invade my city; you cut off my subjects, but I’m not angry.” He pointed out over the rooftops. “Look, you see? What you have done, I have undone.”
Rose looked. She couldn’t have resisted his beckoning gesture if she’d wanted to. In the distance, she felt more than saw the pulsing, raw energy. Again, familiar. Another rip in the curtain. Another doorway through reality.
This time, when he sighed, she felt his breath stir her hair, smelled the warm, tingling scent of him. He stood behind her, pressed against her, leaned his face down to hers. Rose couldn’t pull away, couldn’t remember why she wanted to. “I can’t remember what it was like.” His lips brushed her jaw. “Warm blood beneath my fingers. Human breath. Human flesh. Human dreams.”
He buried his face in her hair, took a long, slow, breath. “So alive.”
Rose woke sweating, her heart pounding, instantly aware of the smell of smoke. She fumbled for the lamp beside her bed. Squinting in the sudden light, she saw the haze around her and looked down. A still-smoldering ring had burned its way through the carpet in perfect correspondence to the magical circle Ian had drawn around her bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thursday Day
That night wasn’t the first Rose had spent sleepless because of her gift, but it put all the rest in perspective. Haunting dreams of other people’s problems were one thing, but she had been herself in that dream, and the danger had been real. As sure as she knew the taste of happiness and fear, she knew that.
When the clock finally dragged its hands around to six am, Rose shut off the droning television that had kept her company all night and dressed for breakfast. The hotel restaurant would be open now and Rose could use some coffee.
She was surprised to see Nazeem sitting at a table, a newspaper open before him and a cup of coffee cooling beside him. He stood as Rose came over and held a chair for her. The only person who’d ever done that before had been her geeky junior year boyfriend, and he’d been so aware of what he was doing, it made the whole thing awkward. Nazeem acted with a nonchalance that made the gesture seem the most natural thing in the world.
All his agitation from the night before had faded. Nazeem’s interior and exterior both had regained their slippery tranquility. “Did you sleep well?” he asked as he sat back down, folding his paper in a neat rectangle and laying it on the table.
“Nope.” Nazeem’s insides flickered and his eyes widened for a moment. She’d teach him to make small-talk. “But I don’t want to talk about it, not till Ian and Mike are around.”
“As you like.” He held a hand over his coffee cup as the waiter came by to fill Rose’s. “In truth, there is another matter I would discuss with you.”
Rose took a careful sip of the steaming, black coffee. “Do you drink that?”
Nazeem shook his head. “But I enjoy the smell.”
Rose inhaled the rich, bitter scent of her own cup. The more she learned about vampires, the less fun their lives seemed to be. “So what was it you wanted to talk about?”
Nazeem leaned back in his chair, calm, comfortable. For whatever reason, last night’s confrontation with Wentworth and Anastasia seemed to have given Nazeem some measure of peace. “I want you to stop trying to mediate Father Mike and I. It’s not an argument that will be solved by anything you could say, and it only creates a rift between the two of you when you try to defend me.”
“There’s already plenty of rift between the padre and I.”
“Then perhaps that should be the focus of your concern.” Inside Nazeem, the first ember of annoyance flared. “Rose, there is nothing untrue in what he says about me or my kind. His view may be narrow, but I understand his reasons. He is not the first Templar I’ve ever met; nor is he the most hostile. When he calls us monsters, he speaks from experience.”
“What does he know? Is he the sensitive here? For that matter, what do you know?”
Nazeem raised an eyebrow, smiled his little smile. “I think I have some expertise on the subject.”
Rose was in no mood to be charmed. “Doesn’t it bother you when he says things like that?”
His insides twisted. Just a little, but Rose was growing more attuned to him every day. His strange, other-frequency feelings weren’t entirely alien anymore. More like a counterpoint dancing in and out of the symphony of human emotions around her.
Nazeem shook his head. “It isn’t worth an argument.”
“But it does upset you.”
“I’m not upset.”
“Pro tip: don’t lie to the sensitive.”
Nazeem fell into his eerie stillness. Rose could see his struggle, his failed attempt to clamp his feelings down, hide them away. “You know, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t keep me from seeing inside you.”
“I’m only trying to keep you safe.”
Frustration boiled inside Rose. “I swear, you and Mike both—you think I’m just some idiot kid. But seriously, I know what I’m doing. And I’m getting sick and tired of both of you trying so hard to protect me you won’t let me out of the shallow end of the pool.”
“I might never have figured that out.” Nazeem’s delivery was as soft and deadpan as ever. It took Rose a moment to recognize the sarcasm.
It was too much. After the dream, after her sleepless night, Rose simply wasn’t in the mood. “Whatever.” She pushed back from the table. “I’m going back to my room.”
Nazeem caught her hand. “Wait.” His dark eyes held hers. “Now I’ve upset you.”
“No.” Rose’s skin tingled at the warmth of Nazeem’s touch. “I mean, yeah, but…I’m not really mad. Not at you.”
“At Mike.” He sighed. “I wish—“
“Look, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say I shouldn’t step in the middle of this fight between you and the padre, and then turn around and try to tell me how to manage my relationship with him.”
He smiled at her then, a soft, wistful expression. “Of course, you’re right. I’m not being fair. I apologize.” His thumb brushed across her wrist, a brief caress before he released her hand. “I’ll see you upstairs, once the others are awake?”
“Definitely.” Before Rose could think better of it, she leaned in and dropped a quick kiss onto his cheek. She fled the room before he said anything in response, but the warm wave of his pleasure followed her to the elevator.
* * *
Ian and Mike were already awake. Mike looked as rough as Rose felt when he answered her knock on his door. Ian’s eyes had the hint of dark circles forming, a tinge of purple that made his face elegantly soulful rather than the baggy mess it would have done to Rose. Seeing him rumpled and uncombed and still magnetically gorgeous cemented Rose’s certainty of what exactly she’d seen last night. Or at least, whose expertise was going to matter.
“Come on, we’re meeting in my room.”
&nb
sp; She showed them the charred circle of carpet first, then recounted her dream in careful detail as Ian and Nazeem moved the bed and carpet aside. The runes he had drawn with chalk were now black scores against the hardwood floor.
“Make any sense of it, Irish?” Mike stood just behind Ian, watching over Ian’s shoulder as Ian examined the ruined writing.
Rose spoke up with her theory. “It’s one of those people you told us about before—the faelocks—isn’t it?”
Ian traced a graceful finger along one of the burned-in lines; it came away sooty. On the outside, he looked calm enough, but Rose could see the truth of his unease. If anything so intense and radiant as Ian’s emotions could be described as mere unease. “I think it must be.”
“Faelock?” Nazeem perched on the edge of Rose’s bed, where he was out of Mike and Ian’s way, but still close enough to study the circle.
“Men and women who sell their souls to the folk for power.” Ian stood up, brushed his hands on his jeans, heedless of the dark streaks they made. He kept scuffing at the circle with his foot. “They take the fae magic into themselves, become more like them—beautiful, powerful, and bugfuck crazy.”
“You’ve fought these guys before, right?” Rose asked.
“Oh sure.” Rose had to be impressed with Ian’s outer demeanor—neither Mike nor Nazeem had clued in to the fact something about this wasn’t business as usual. “Several with Andy and Mal. Two on my own since I earned my sword.”
Rose gave up beating around the bush. “Then what is it? What’s got you so freaked out?”
“I’m not—” Ian looked at Rose and like he’d flipped a switch, vibrant amusement washed through him and drove back the hammering nerves. “I guess you can tell something’s wrong.”
“Half the sensitives in Europe can tell something’s wrong. Come on—what’s up?”
And just like that, Ian’s good humor vanished and his frustration pounded against her once more. It made Rose dizzy. “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s got to be something I’m not seeing.”
Ian was still holding back, and Rose couldn’t tell what or why. Annoyingly, Mike got to the answer before she did. “It’s okay, kid. If there’s anything experience prepares us for, it’s that there are always going to be more things outside our experience. No one expects you to know everything. Tell us what you’ve got and we can figure out the rest.”
Ian took a deep breath through a cloud of relief. “Okay, well, on the one hand, it has to be a faelock. The man you describe, Rose, that’s someone filled with the magic of the folk. More magic than I or any other people like me have. Faelocks go all the way. And even if you hadn’t told us about him opening another door,” Ian waved his hand towards Mike, “the dreams I had last night, the fact none of us slept well—I would have figured that out. And that would be absolute proof of a faelock in town.
“But then I think about the folk we’ve seen so far in St. Petersburg. They’re settled, comfortable. St. Petersburg is their home and they don’t act at all like anything recent has riled them up.”
Rose still didn’t see the problem. “So maybe the faelock has been here a while.”
“That’s just it—becoming a faelock, it’s not exactly a long term investment. Our brains don’t handle that kind of power well, and the folk know it. When a faelock is around, the local folk go into a frenzy—you ever hear stories of the wild hunt? That’s the sort of thing the folk get up to when a faelock is around.” Ian dug a piece of chalk out of his jeans and started tracing new, crisp lines over the old.
Nazeem watched him work; Rose tried to memorize the shimmery rippling of his insides, map it to curiosity. “Could the faelock have been away?” Nazeem asked. “Perhaps he only just returned to St. Petersburg because we closed the other door.”
“Or in hiding?” Rose added. “Flying under fairy radar?”
Ian didn’t look up. “The thing is, none of those answers are good answers. Because a faelock thinking and planning like that—I’ve never heard of it. I didn’t think it was possible. If any of those things are true, this guy is beyond dangerous.”
“Is that going to work?” Rose had to ask. “Just redrawing the circle?”
“The surge of power from the doorway opening last night is probably what burned it out like this. I figured you’d want it back working again. Especially now that you’re dreaming about the faelock in addition to the killer.”
Mike had to step back as Ian moved around to reach the runes right in front of him. He, too, seemed very interested in what Ian was doing. “Before, you didn’t think our killer could be a faelock. You still sure about that?”
Ian shook his head. “At this point—after what Rose saw—I’d say all bets are off.”
Rose wished she could have believed they were the same. More comforting to think there was only one powerful, crazy killer in the city. “Sorry guys, but this faelock, he felt nothing like the shining man. I can’t believe it’s the same person.”
That led to a dour silence as Ian finished the circle. He and Nazeem moved the carpet back into place, and then the bed, but the bed did nothing to hide the ugly black ring charred into the carpet’s surface. “That’s going to be kind of obvious,” Rose pointed out.
That earned her another of Ian’s radiant smiles. “I’ll just drop a glamor on it. No one will ever notice.”
Handy thing, magic. “So what now?”
“We keep running into new questions,” Mike said. “I’m ready to get some answers.”
“The meeting with Karchenko,” Nazeem said.
“Yeah. I want to hear what he knows.”
Rose, herself, was ready for something to start making sense. “Off to Revelations, then.”
* * *
Even during the day, Revelations had a bouncer at the door. Mike wondered if this was standard procedure, or if Svetlana had upped her security because of the murders. Like the other bouncers, this one recognized Mike’s group and opened the door to them, speaking in Russian. Mike picked out Karchenko’s name from the otherwise incomprehensible syllables.
“He’s waiting for us on the top floor,” Ian translated.
The bar was empty except for a scrawny teenager mopping the floor. The kid stopped working to gawk at Mike, Ian and Rose. Mike ignored him and went straight for the stairs.
Poulov Karchenko looked utterly out of place in the frilly white room. Grizzled and scowling, with a half-empty bottle of vodka the focus of his attention, he belonged at a bar-stool in some seedy dive, rather than at the polished white table in the corner of this elegant space. “So,” he said without looking up, “You came.”
“What do you know about the killer?” Rose blurted out.
A smile teased at Karchenko’s lips as he refilled his glass. “Come, sit.”
Mike wished Karchenko had been more talkative in their last meeting, or that Justin had had time to tell them more about the internal politics of the Revelations voiders. The information in their dossier had been maddeningly sparse.
Mike could guess a few things, just from the looks of the man. Karchenko was Mike’s age, at least, and looked every bit as worn. His clothes were well-tailored, but shabby. His suit hadn’t been new in years. Here was a man who had known better days.
Ian and Rose took chairs across from Poulov. Mike pulled his around to the end of the table so he could keep an eye on everyone. “If we’re going to talk, let’s get to it.”
“First, refreshments. What kind of host would I be to invite you here at lunchtime and not offer you a drink?”
Mike didn’t need Rose to tell him Karchenko was stalling, but he couldn’t think of anything to do but play along. “Sure. Coffee would be great.”
“I’ll take a coke,” Rose chimed in.
“Me too,” Ian said.
Karchenko went to the intercom on the wall, buzzed it on. “Felix, vodka.” He returned to the table, unapologetic. Mike didn’t miss Rose’s glance at the clock on the wall. Only barely past noon.<
br />
The scrawny kid came up the steps bearing a tray with another bottle, four glasses, and a plate of sandwiches and what looked like mushrooms and pickles. They smelled of salt and garlic. He put the tray on the table, gave them all a quick smile, and pulled the curtains closed around the table.
Karchenko filled all four glasses and handed them out. “A toast,” he said, “to old friends lost and new friends found.”
They clinked glasses. Poulov drained his glass in a go. Mike and Ian did the same. Rose sipped at hers. “No, no,” Karchenko said, grinning. “For a toast, you must drink all of it.”
Rose grimaced, but she managed to drain her glass. Karchenko poured refills. “Now, we are friends. Let us talk.
“I know, of course, of your interest in the killer that stalks the streets of St. Petersburg.” Karchenko smiled and nodded, although none of them had spoken. “Ah yes, I know. As I know that as of yet, you have no true suspects.”
Mike bristled at Karchenko’s smug tone. Rose, too, looked all flavors of annoyed. “And how exactly do you know that?”
Karchenko brushed the question away with a shrug and another glass of vodka. “You have nothing to offer right now that is worth the answer to that.”
Ian drained his own glance and set it down with enough force to produce a solid thunk. “So what did we buy, last night, cleaning up your vampire mess?”
Karchenko refilled his own glass and Ian’s. “This meeting. I will tell you what I can.”
“What you can,” Rose repeated, matching Karchenko’s inflection. “But not what you know.”
His smile offered no apology. Mike’s initial vague dislike of the man was blossoming, gaining definition. Poulov Karchenko was no Andrei, not an aggressive thug, but Mike had no doubt the man was enjoying the fact that he knew more than they did, that he had the power in this interchange.
Fortunately for Mike, you didn’t live to Karchenko’s age playing these games without being a solid judge of what information was worth making people jump through hoops for. “So let’s hear it.”
Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1) Page 17
