“Good evening Trajan,” Yvan said as he pushed past her.
“By the Gods, you are reborn. Come in quickly.” He waved them in and Anya felt guilty for dripping water and mud over the threshold. “I didn’t think you were ever going to hatch.”
“You and I both,” said Yvan as he took off his coat.
“I’m sorry but who are you and how do you know my name?” Anya asked suspiciously. Trajan looked her over but didn’t say anything. He was dressed in real world clothes she noticed; fine black jeans and dark blue dress shirt.
“There is a guest room upstairs Anya, second on the right. Do help yourself,” he said completely dismissing her. She opened her mouth to argue but Yvan shook his head at her so she shut it again.
“Thank you,” she mumbled as she picked up her bag and headed up the stairs.
“You have ten minutes to tell me how you came to be here with Ilya’s blood before I kill you myself,” Trajan hissed. Anya didn’t wait to hear the rest of the conversation.
She found the room and changed into dry clothes. She didn’t know who Trajan was but she didn’t trust him. Why had Yvan brought her here? A short while later she was wringing out her hair; as she turned to find her brush she let out a startled yelp. Trajan was standing in her doorway.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said as he lit the lamp on the wall. “I thought you might need some light up here. Skazki doesn’t like electricity so I am afraid it is back to lamps and candles.” The warm light cast shadows in the room and against his face. His eyes gleamed golden brown and flecked with a dark red. A flicker of fear shot through her and she gripped her brush tighter.
“Why are you wearing real world clothes?” she asked when the silence became too much.
“They are comfortable. I apologise if I was impolite earlier. It gave me quite a shock to see you on my doorstep with Yvan of all people. I find it rather surreal that you are both here.”
“He surprised me too,” Anya said. Trajan smiled and she felt a little less awkward. “How do you know who I am?”
“I knew your grandfather.”
“I heard you mention Ilya before.”
“Eavesdropping is rude.”
“You spoke too loudly, I wasn’t eavesdropping at all.”
“In that case, yes I knew Ilya as I have known all of your line down to Eikki and yourself.”
“I have never met you,” Anya pointed out. He walked slowly around the room, lighting lamps as he went.
“You have met me. You were only a girl at the time. A tiny thing. I am not surprised you don’t remember me. I have seen you since then but you would’ve been far too sick to remember then either.”
“How long ago was that?” she asked suspiciously.
“How do you think Eikki found you so easily when you ran away to Moscow? He came to me and I found you. I am very good at finding people and if that fails I have a friend who could follow your scent to the ends of the earth.”
“Do I really smell that bad?” Anya asked lamely.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a bad smell,” he said, “But it’s distinctive.”
“I think that sounds worse.”
He studied her for a long moment. “You have grown up.”
“How can you even be alive if you knew Ilya?”
“I age differently to everyone else.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I do,” he said simply.
“Fine then, keep your secrets”
“Come downstairs, I am sure Yvan has managed to cook up something for you to eat,” he said if sensing her unease.
“That sounds like a good idea.”
Trajan had a large kitchen and soon they were all sitting around a well-scrubbed table. Yvan had made her soup from what they had left in their supplies.
“Aren’t you eating with us?” Anya asked Trajan.
“I ate before you came,” Trajan replied. “I would like to hear about more of your adventures since you woke Yvan.” So Yvan and Anya told him how Tuoni had appeared to her and the events that followed. Trajan listened patiently, rarely interrupting. Anya wanted to bombard him with a hundred questions about Ilya and how they knew each other and what made him age so slowly for he only looked about thirty years old. Her headache was coming back. The cynical part of her wanted to write Tuoni, Yvan, Trajan and the whole of Skazki off as a strange dream before waking up in her creaky house on the farm. She knew that was impossible now no matter how hard she wished for it.
“I am going to turn in,” Yvan yawned, breaking her train of thought, “Sleeping rough with this one complaining has taken it out of me.”
“Because your snoring is so easy to live with,” Anya retorted. Yvan just smiled at her. He did look tired and a little rugged but it suited him. Finally alone with Trajan she decided to make the most of it.
“So are you going to tell me how you met Ilya?”
“Only if I have to,” he said seriously without taking his eyes off her.
“You are really not going to tell me anything?” Anya got to her feet and started clearing the plates away. She needed to do something with her hands. She found his steady gaze intimidating.
“Not if I can help it.”
“Why?” She had her back to him and suddenly she felt him behind her. She hadn’t even heard a chair move.
“It’s complicated,” he said. Anya shrugged her shoulders.
“So un-complicate it,” she turned and realised he was standing very close. She could feel the line of heat off his body.
“Can I show you something?” Trajan asked unexpectedly. Anya nodded slowly and followed him from the room. She was uneasy about their host despite his claimed friendship with her family. She kept telling herself that Yvan wouldn’t have brought her there if he thought he was putting her into more danger.
“Your grandfather was a remarkable man,” Trajan said breaking her out of her train of thought. “We didn’t always see eye to eye but we could always count on each other.”
“If you were such good friends how come he never mentioned you?” she sounded almost accusing but Trajan didn’t seem to mind.
“That was Eikki’s plan. I wouldn’t be surprised if he removed your memories of the times you met people from his other life. He didn’t want you a part of this world where people could use you like a puppet.”
“He thought I was too unstable to be taught about magic or Skazki,” said Anya bitterly. “Now I am caught in the middle of a fight and I can’t use any of the weapons I should have.”
“You are very much like Yanka. She wasn’t completely unstable. She was too powerful and didn’t know how to control it,” he said. “So it controlled her. Between her and Baba Yaga they could have torn the worlds apart. It is understandable that when people saw you they grew afraid.” Anya didn’t want to talk about her mysterious albeit hidden abilities so she tried to change the subject.
“How old are you really?”
“Do you really want to know or do you think you want to know?” Trajan opened a door to a large sitting area. The walls were lined with bookshelves and there was a fire burning brightly in the large fireplace, heavy rugs on the floors and paintings on the walls. Unlike the rest of the house which felt empty and unlived in, this room felt comfortable and full. Clearly this was where he spent most of his time.
“Look above the fireplace,” he said. Anya walked towards the fire and she spotted it. Hanging in a frame was a crayon drawing obviously done by a very young child. The figure on the left had messy brown hair and was holding hands with the figure on the right who had blonde hair and green eyes.
“Did your child do this?” Anya asked. She hadn’t picked him as the father type but she had been wrong before.
“You did it,” Trajan smiled. “You drew it for me one day when I came to visit. This is proof that we have met before.”
“I was quite a terrible artist wasn’t I? I can’t even remember drawing it.”
; “When a fearless mortal girl draws you a picture you don’t throw it out.”
“Fearless? Hardly. I was always afraid when I was a child.”
“Not of me you weren’t.”
“I was afraid of the things in the darkness. Why would I be afraid of you?”
He hesitated for a few moments like he was weighing up replying. “Because I am the thing in the darkness. Every mortal fears my kind. It is deeply ingrained into them, except you were not afraid. You held my hand that day not knowing you were touching a monster.”
“You are hardly a monster,” said Anya as she sat down in an armchair next to the fire. She didn’t feel anything evil about Trajan. There was something about him though that unsettled her.
“That is because you have no idea what I really am.”
“I would like to though. If all the important men in my life have known you as a friend I can’t see why I would shun you for what you are,” said Anya quietly. “Besides I know what it’s like to be hated for who you are and it’s not something I would inflict on anyone.”
Trajan sat down on a chair in front of her, “Why do you want to know so badly?”
“If you are a monster than maybe so am I. I don’t even know what I am.”
“You are not a monster,” Trajan ran a hand through his hair. “If you were Yvan would have left you to Vasilli.”
“Why won’t you just tell me?” asked Anya.
“Because he is a demon,” said a very deep voice from the doorway. Anya turned in surprise and saw a huge wolf stalking into the room. It had shiny black fur, smelled like rain and had just spoken.
“Did that thing just speak?” Anya shook her head in disbelief.
“It did. Brace yourself.”
Anya heard the sickening cracking and snapping before the wolf even started to physically change. When his skin started to melt Anya had to look away.
“Couldn’t you have done that outside, Izrayl?” Trajan reproached.
Anya looked back to see a massive man standing by the fire. He had dark skin and black hair that fell to his waist. He had the deep amber eyes of a wolf and was naked. She averted her eyes. Maybe Yvan was right, maybe she really did have a problem with nakedness.
“And miss the look on her face?” he said as he stretched out his back with a final crack. Trajan handed him a blanket off one of the couches. Izrayl wrapped it around his waist before holding his hands up to the fire.
“It’s freezing out there. I’ve been trying to get here for a few days and tell you about this one walking around loose in Skazki,” he jerked his thumb towards Anya, “Her trail is bright red. Anyone could follow her.”
“I have a name. Why were you following me?”
“This time was pure accident. I thought my nose was playing tricks on me. I have followed you on and off before in Russia. You never saw me,” the man declared as he stretched out on the carpet in front of the fire.
“She doesn’t know anything Izrayl,” Trajan explained in Anya’s defence. “Eikki never told her. She doesn’t even remember meeting me.”
“I would really like to know who you are and what the hell is going on,” Anya got to her feet angrily. “I didn’t know anything about this world or that Eikki was a shaman until a few days ago. I was living an extremely boring life and now all of a sudden I am being thrown about with a man who can change into a bird, a fucking demon and now a werewolf.”
“I am not a werewolf. I am volk krovi. And do you call getting wasted every night a peaceful life?” Izrayl asked.
“What I did with my life is my business. At least people weren’t trying to kill me for no reason! I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Well it’s too bad because you’ve got it. You’ve always had people hunting you but someone has always been watching your back to stop anything happening.” Izrayl got to his feet and loomed over her. “So stop acting like a child and deal with it.”
“Haista vittu!” she shouted as she strode out of the room.
“Quite a mouth on her isn’t there?” she heard Izrayl say behind but she didn’t bother to stop and listen any further.
Anya sat down on the end of her bed and wondered what the hell she had got herself into. A third male voice was raised which meant Yvan had joined the argument downstairs.
A thousand thoughts and revelations swirled around her head. Izrayl had been watching her in the real world? Izrayl was of the volk krovi, wolf’s blood, and Trajan is a demon? She had thought that the things she had seen when she was a child were demons. None of them looked like Trajan, who reminded her more of a history tutor. Eikki had been religious in his own way but he wouldn’t have been friends with a demon. As for Izrayl being volk krovi, the wolf blood people were pure myth. She would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen him change with her own eyes. She wished Eikki was there to explain it to her in his simple steady way. She also wished he was there so she could yell at him for his stupidity for not preparing her for any of the surprises her future may hold. The three men downstairs seemed to be content with causing arguments with her and each other. She had probably made it worse by storming out. There was only so much a person could take and seeing Izrayl morph from a wolf into a naked man had been her breaking point. She wanted vodka, anything alcoholic, to calm her scattered nerves.
Anya paced the room wondering if she should go down and throw herself into the fray. Her mind was made up for her when there was a soft knock on her door.
“What?” she yelled as she yanked the door open.
“The other gentlemen and I request your presence downstairs,” Trajan said gently. “A cup of tea is also waiting.”
“I don’t want tea, I want vodka. Are you all going to talk like real people or just scream at each other some more?”
“They are going to talk. Izrayl has promised not to provoke you.”
“I want to know everything. I have that right at least. I will no longer be kept in the dark about what is happening. Understand?”
“Of course,” said Trajan softly, his face completely unreadable.
“And I want to know more about you being a demon.”
“I am not a demon, Anya. But I will tell you when other things are less pressing.”
“I will hold you to that.”
Chapter Eleven- The Pieces of the Puzzle
Anya held the cup of vodka in her hands that Yvan had poured for her without any arguments. Yvan sat on her left, Trajan on her right. Izrayl lounged in his wooden chair a leg flopped over the armrest. Compared to the rest of them he was the only one who looked relaxed.
“We have been talking,” said Yvan finally, “and we have agreed that you need to be told about Eikki and some other things concerning your family…”
“I don’t understand how she can’t know,” Izrayl muttered irritably.
“Eikki never told me anything. Whatever talents I had, have long been suppressed or weeded out. I don’t know why he made the decisions he did but I refuse to live with them now,” Anya said firmly. “Tell me what I need to know otherwise I am out. That’s it. I go back to the real world and disappear. I got into Skazki and I can get out again. What happens to you all after I leave will be no concern of mine.” She sipped her vodka and tried to feel as indifferent as possible. Yvan stared at her with a hurtful expression.
“Eikki came to me,” Trajan said. “He told me what you could do without any training at all. Even though he warned me against it I wanted to see you for myself. He had let many of his magical acquaintances see you to determine how powerful you would be. He was worried that others would come and try and take you away; people who wanted your power.”
“One day he came to us because you had disappeared. Run off like a brat and he was in a panic at what you could do and how many people you could hurt with the talent which was growing stronger,” Izrayl interrupted.
“We went to Moscow and we found you in a park, dying of hypothermia and you didn’t even know it.” Trajan crossed his han
ds in front of him. “We took you and Eikki back to the farm where he nursed you for many weeks.”
“Trajan stayed to help him because Eikki trusted no one else with you and the old man had to sleep sometime,” Izrayl added sternly. “Trajan put himself at a great deal of risk for that.” Trajan flashed him an angry glance. Izrayl pretended he didn’t see.
“So where do you fit in Yvan?” Anya changed the subject. “You told me you had met Ilya. Eikki had your egg. How does my family fit into all this?”
“It all started when I met Izrayl for the first time. After the quest for the firebird and I was living back in the palace. I was out hunting when Izrayl first approached me. He scared me half to death. Of course I knew volk krovi existed but I had never actually thought they lived in our forest.”
“Vasilli had been stealing our children to turn into minions,” Izrayl growled, his eyes growing a little more feral. “We knew the younger of Vyslav’s sons had more sense than the other two so we approached Yvan about it.”
“My father wouldn’t listen to me when I went to him about Vasilli so I knew I would have to find someone with power to take him down.”
“The only person we ever knew in history powerful enough to take on Vasilli was Yanka,” interrupted Izrayl. “It took us six months to find any trace of her. She was long dead. That was when we crossed into Russia and found Ilya, her son. We first met Trajan there. Even though Ilya was ridiculously talented he wouldn’t have half the strength to take on Vasilli. The last resort was to ask the firebird to use its power to destroy Vasilli. But before we could convince it Vasilli had attacked the palace and Yvan died.”
“We went to Ilya to tell him what had happened to Yvan. Ilya had many visions and he convinced me to help him to find the egg,” said Trajan quietly. “With his considerable protection I led him to the Greek lands in the Otherworld to the temple where a firebird’s ashes go to be remade. On that trip he told me of a very powerful vision he had of a woman who looked like Yanka and the firebird fighting Vasilli. But with Yanka already known to be dead we never understood it.” The three men suddenly all looked at each other guiltily.
Cry of the Firebird (The Firebird Fairytales Book 1) Page 9
