Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1)

by Barbara J. Webb

  Mike tried to set an easy pace, but Dmitri pushed ahead of him. The old man was raring to go. Mike didn’t have to imagine his excitement—Mike felt it too. Once fighting evil got in your blood, it was a hard thing to sit out. No matter how old you got. He couldn’t imagine how many years Dmitri had been ghosting about his monastery, refused the chance to do what his very soul cried out for.

  Honestly, what would Mike be doing if he hadn’t come to St. Petersburg? Sitting alone in his room drinking? Letting the other retired Templars—mostly broken or senile old men—talk him into a poker game for pretzels? For all he found the St. Petersburg purpose hopeless and the situation perilous, he at least got to use the skills God and the Church had given him.

  Would he have been as strong as Dmitri, holding onto his purpose through years of being stuck in a little room, smothered by well-meaning care?

  If Dmitri died tonight, he would do so covered in glory. If Mike died, it would be the same. For the first time since Mike had received his orders to leave Chicago, Mike was glad he’d come to St. Petersburg.

  Ahead, the golden dome of St. Isaac’s loomed, a shadow against the stars. At Mike’s elbow, Nazeem hesitated. “Men ahead.”

  “My men,” Dmitri reassured him. “Waiting for us.”

  Mike strained his eyes and could barely make out the dark shapes of men beneath the trees. Waiting outside the lights that surrounded St. Isaac’s. Good. Mike didn’t want to give the shining killer any advanced notice of their presence. “We should stay out here. Ambush him once he’s gone inside.”

  Even in the darkness, Mike couldn’t miss the glinting white of Dmitri’s grin. “An ambush here? You think?”

  Nazeem grabbed Mike’s arm with sudden, painful strength, and pulled him back from Dmitri. Mike trusted the vampire’s instincts, at least, and moved with him, but several of Dmitri’s black-clad monks had moved up behind them and Mike found himself tangled between two of them.

  “I recognize—” Nazeem’s words cut off as Dmitri’s men—who had, Mike realized, formed a circle with him and Nazeem in the center—pulled crosses from their jackets.

  “Oh, dear.” Dmitri smiled all around, positively gleeful. “Troublesome vampire senses. I had hoped to get you two inside quietly.” He raised his hands and began to glow as he lifted off the ground.

  Nazeem moved between one breath and the next, but he had nowhere to run. Mike tried to give him a chance. He knifed his hand through the air, sending a shock of power that knocked down two of the black-clad men. “Nazeem, go!” But Dmitri was ready and a net of energy dropped over Nazeem, drove him to the ground. Dmitri’s men piled onto him.

  Outnumbered, surrounded, and feeling more of an idiot than he ever had in his life, Mike’s attention was on Dmitri—glowing, floating, demon-sworn Dmitri—and he didn’t see coming the blow that sent him spiraling down into darkness. His final, slipping-away thought was of Rose and Ian, waiting helpless inside to be blindsided by Dmitri’s treachery.

  * * *

  Rose followed Ian. As he stormed back through the throne room, the gathered folk turned and stared, mouths open and eyes half-lidded, like they were drinking in his anger. Creepy. Inhuman. The soldiers Rose had seen, the cu sith, even Todor—none of that had prepared her for the crowd of monsters before her.

  They ranged in size from squat little creatures no taller than her waist to giants twice Ian’s height. Eyes and teeth and hands and tails in endless variety. A riot of color—all the shades of nature and beyond, in clothes and fur and hair. Glowing and shimmering, gossamer and flame.

  Above them all, sprawled on his throne, Pyotr. He was, at the same time, the most and least human of them all. He looked—Rose couldn’t wrap her mind around how he looked. The most dolled-up Hollywood starlet would be dull and ordinary next to him. He compelled the eye, the mind, with a presence so strong Rose couldn’t focus on him with any semblance of analytical thought. When she looked away, she couldn’t remember what she had seen, only that she hungered to look back.

  The pageantry of the room was something out of a Disney fairy tale. Beneath it, though, Rose felt the sickness, the decay, the twisted darkness. Did Ian realize? Would he notice if he had some time to look around once he’d gotten past the shock of his father?

  The folk were frightened. That was the easy call, the obvious. They were restless too, trapped in this place. Pyotr or Patrick—one of them held the folk here. Against their will, yes. But even worse, against their nature. The discordant wrongness Rose could feel—the clash of their true selves against this stasis in which they were held.

  At the center of it, Pyotr. The worst of it, Pyotr, with an illness inside him so palpable it left a bitter taste on her tongue. He radiated lassitude and malaise. It sucked away Rose’s urgency, tried to bury her in hopelessness.

  Ian cut his way through the crowd. Fortunately, not towards the fairy door—Rose didn’t know what she would have done if Ian had left her alone here—but to an alcove carved into the far wall of the cavern. He struck the wall with open hands, then leaned in, forehead against stone, radiating waves of confusion and sorrow.

  Rose came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. They stood like that, together in silence, until Ian’s shoulder began to shake under her hand and a weak thread of Ian’s familiar humor pulsed up through him. “What’s funny?” Rose asked.

  “I was just wondering how sensitives begin uncomfortable conversations when it’s redundant to ask someone if they’re okay.” He lifted his head and gave her a tight-lipped smile. “It wasn’t actually that funny.”

  “We take what we can get.” She fought down an urge to giggle as she asked, “So, are you okay?”

  That earned her an honest laugh. “Yeah. I think. I guess. This just wasn’t at all what I expected. None of it. I never thought he might still be alive. And to find him here, and all this…” Ian waved his hand around to encompass the cavern.

  “Yeah, this place…” Now Rose was adjusting to the swirling chaos of the folk and Pyotr, now she could actually look around and get a feel for the cavern, it wasn’t helping her relax. “This place is really strange.”

  “No kidding.”

  “No, I mean, even more than you think. We’re in our world. I know that. But somehow, it’s different. Somehow just his presence,” Rose nodded towards Pyotr, “makes it so I can’t feel what’s going on just over our heads. It’s like we’re in a completely different reality, even though we’re not.”

  Ian reached up for the cross that wasn’t around his neck. “Pyotr—if he really is…it makes sense he’d change the world around him.”

  Rose realized she’d been wrong in her original premise. It wasn’t that Pyotr was hiding behind the supernatural malaise of St. Isaac’s. Pyotr’s presence was the seed that had twisted the cathedral to be what it was. “It’s so weird to think he’s been here all this time. Trapped.”

  “Trapped?”

  Rose wasn’t sure why she thought that. There wasn’t anything she could target in on, any particular feeling that had led her to that, but still, she was sure. “Yeah. Somehow. I think.”

  As Rose scanned the room, trying to make sense of it, her eyes fell on a familiar face. At the back of the room, in a cluster of her kind, the woman Rose had helped save. “Wait, what’s she doing back here?”

  The fairy woman noticed Rose. She frowned and approached Rose and Ian.

  She’d changed since Rose had seen her. She’d healed. The fear was still inside her, but it struggled with arrogance. The woman looked down on Rose and Rose felt, not gratitude, but anger. “You are the one who saved me.”

  “What are you doing here? I helped you get away from him!” Even now, standing before this creature of magic and beauty and inhuman cruelty, Rose couldn’t keep her tongue in check.

  “He knows my name.” Burning hatred flared within the woman. “When he calls, I must return.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought I was helping.”

  Per
fect lips twisted into a sneer. “But you did help. You saved my life. I am in your debt.”

  And not happy about that at all. In the darker fairy tales—the ones Rose had always preferred—the fairies were all about twisting words and wishes so they worked against you in ways you least suspected. Under the onslaught of inhuman resentment, Rose wondered if fairy obligation could be a dangerous thing. “Don’t worry about it, really. I don’t need anything.”

  “Humans,” the woman hissed. She spun away from Rose, returning to her cluster of…friends? Did fairies have friends? Nothing she sensed in this room felt anything close to friendship.

  A ripple moved through the folk, another wave of the hunger Ian had evoked with his intense human feelings. This time, it was flavored with eagerness, expectation. At the center of the wave was Pyotr.

  Even Ian felt it. He moved a protective step between Rose and the folk. “What’s happening?”

  Pyotr sighed and turned his face towards the ceiling. His eyes rolled back and he took a long, slow breath, drinking in the air. “It’s time,” he said.

  The folk broke into whispers. Eagerness, excitement. Whatever was happening, they wanted it just as much as Pyotr. “Time for what?” Ian murmured.

  Pyotr heard his question, turned his beautiful, empty eyes on Ian and Rose. “Pain and death. Hatred. Exultation.” He shivered with eagerness.

  “What—“ Ian began.

  But Rose knew. “The murders. He’s talking about the shining man.” How had Rose forgotten? The reason they were here—the reason they’d chased down here in the first place—to stop the supposed faelock from interrupting their battle with the shining man. “Mike and Nazeem and Dmitri are up there right now.” Had they confronted the shining man? Had the fight started? Even worse, had it ended while she and Ian had been distracted by the folk?

  “Yes, the old man,” Pyotr whispered. “Such delicious hatred. I know the taste of his pain.”

  Rose’s stomach churned. The old man’s pain. Pyotr knew Dmitri? Pyotr knew Dmitri. His anger, his pain. Familiar.

  Tottering, old, Father Dmitri. Voider Dmitri, who Rose couldn’t see inside of. Dmitri who had the strength and cunning to keep charge of the monastery through Soviet times—who had probably become very good at lying over those years. Dmitri who had been so eager to help.

  “Oh god.”

  Ian took another step forward. “It’s okay, Rose. They won’t hurt you.”

  He didn’t get it. “Ian, we have to go. The shining man: I know who he is. It’s Dmitri.”

  “What? How is that—“

  “Think about it. Who gave us the information that made you almost kill Poulov? Who’s been cozying up to us all along, completely in our confidence? Who lost plenty of his monks—his children—not killed by the Black Fist, but taken by them and corrupted?”

  “No. No, that can’t be right. He’s just a….” Ian trailed off, thinking.

  “A harmless old man?” Rose finished for him. “In St. Petersburg?” She should have known. Damn it, she should have known. How could she have so blindly trusted a priest?

  “Then Mike and Nazeem are walking into a trap.”

  “We have to help them!”

  Ian grabbed Rose’s arm as she turned towards the door. “Rose, wait. We can’t walk into the same trap. If Dmitri is our killer, he’s got his men with him and Mike and Nazeem may already be—“ He broke off, shook his head. “You and I can’t fight them all alone.”

  Incredibly, Ian’s words were backed with excitement, not despair. “What are you thinking?” Rose asked.

  “I have an idea. Come on.”

  * * *

  Patrick was still on the couch, vodka in hand. Ian got straight to the point. “How much authority do you have here?”

  The happiness that had flared in Patrick at Ian’s return muted into caution. “What are you asking?”

  “You were right when you said the folk here are different. The two who attacked us the other night with their hounds. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen. They were there with a purpose, under orders, and then they left when they realized—when they recognized me. Because I’m your son.

  “What I’m asking is, can you get them to help us? Our friends are in trouble, up in the cathedral. If we had a few knights of the folk on our side, that could change everything.”

  Patrick took another sip, his face bland, but he couldn’t hide the truth from Rose. What Ian had asked terrified him.

  That, right there, was the difference between Ian and his father that had been troubling Rose all this time. She’d never once, in all that had happened to them, felt fear from Ian.

  “Please, dad,” Ian said when Patrick’s silence continued. “Help us.”

  “You’ve been in hiding for almost twenty years,” Rose said, letting her instincts guide her. “Trying to keep Pyotr and his folk locked away from the world. But the whole reason you did that in the first place—the reason you left your family and the reason you never told the Black Fist what they wanted to know—was because you wanted to protect people. That’s your job, right? Just like Ian, you’re supposed to protect people.

  “There’s a man up above in St. Isaac’s who could be every bit as dangerous as Pyotr if we don’t stop him. And the next person he’s going to come after, if he manages to kill our friends, is your son.”

  Patrick set down the bottle. “All right.” He was still scared, but struggled against it with the same strength he’d passed on to Ian. “Let’s get your sword, Ian. Then gather our forces.”

  “We’ll go through the hidden door,” Ian said to Rose, excitement building inside him. “Dmitri will never expect us.”

  Except—“Wait! The trap! You said it would hurt or even kill any folk who went through it.”

  “Shit. I’ll have to go ahead—“ He stopped, pushed a hand back through his hair. “I can’t. I need to make sure—“

  Rose understood. Maybe better than Ian, she understood the delicate edge of Patrick’s courage. If Ian left, he might hesitate, or worse. Ian had to stay.

  Rose didn’t. “I’ll do it.”

  Worry and hope braided together inside Ian. “Can you find your way back? If you get lost…”

  “I can make it.” If there was anyplace she could find her way back to by feel, it was St. Isaac’s. “Just promise you’ll hurry.”

  “We’ll be right behind you.”

  Rose ran through the throne room, didn’t stop to listen to the urgent pleas Patrick was making to Pyotr. She took a deep breath and ran through the fairy door, plunging once more outside of reality.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Saturday After Dark Continued

  As Mike came to, he realized he couldn’t move. Bands of pure force held him tight against the wall, a good ten feet above the floor. From here, he had a perfect view of the sacrificial circle and the bodies that lay within—Poulov, Andrei, and Nazeem. All three were bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Above them, hovering, Dmitri radiated his strange light.

  Spread about the church, Mike counted a dozen of Dmitri’s men. Although they stood in positions meant to guard, all their attention was focused on Dmitri and his captives. Mike had never wished harder for backup.

  “I see you’re awake.” Suffused with power, Dmitri’s voice echoed and reverberated against the stone walls. Even knowing who he was, Mike still had trouble reconciling that voice with the thin, crackly sounds Dmitri had made talking to them in the monastery. Such a brilliant job of subterfuge. He’d played them all for fools.

  “I wouldn’t want to miss the show.”

  That brought forth a familiar, cackling laugh. “Michael, Michael, Michael. What am I to do with you?”

  If only Mike believed he were honestly asking for suggestions. “I’m surprised I’m not down in your circle.”

  Dmitri clucked his tongue. “Now why would I put you in there? You’re misguided, my boy, but I know you’ve been doing what you thought was best. You’re not a murderer. Not l
ike this bunch.”

  “So, what, this is supposed to be a learning experience for me?”

  That earned a cackle. “I wouldn’t want you running off. You’ve made my life complicated enough tonight. Once I’m done here, once we’ve collected Rose and Ian, we can all go back to the monastery.”

  Mike couldn’t help but squeeze his eyes shut at the thought. The kids—how would they escape Dmitri, who they had no reason to mistrust?

  Dmitri must have seen his expression. “Oh, don’t worry, Michael. Little Rose is quite safe from me. She’s a dear girl, and I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. Honestly, I’m disappointed with you, dragging her into the middle of this. But Ian—well, he’s a killer and needs to be dealt with.”

  Mike hoped his bravado covered the chill Dmitri’s words sent through him. “Ian isn’t a murderer. You don’t need to do anything to him.”

  “Oh, but he is. Just last night. While you and I were dueling, he ran his sword through Ivan. I have to protect my children. Surely you understand that.”

  Mike sent his mind along the magic that held him captive, searching for a weak point. “Violence begets violence, Dmitri. It’s not our place to judge. Not our place to punish.”

  “Bah.” Dmitri spat. “I’ll hear no such lecture from a Templar.”

  “All my life, I’ve done no more than administer God’s justice.”

  Dmitri floated up to hover just in front of Mike. Mike had to squint against the blinding light, but he refused to look away. “God’s justice is a lie. A hoax we tell the peasants to keep them content with the horrors of their lives. You wield God’s hammer, but only against those enemies who reach through the curtain. Against the evils that men do?” Dmitri spat again. “God would see us all suffer as his son suffered and he lifts no finger to help us.”

  Dmitri floated up, away from Mike. He floated above the circle, making long shadows dance among the angels and apostles that looked down from the dome. “All my life, I waited for God’s justice. Listened for God’s word. What did I get for that? Soviet oppression. KGB spies.” He looked down at Andrei. “He wasn’t the only one. Not even the only one in my monastery. They didn’t trust us. Didn’t believe we were loyal comrades.”