by Taki Drake
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Author Notes
More Books by Taki Drake
More Books by TS Paul
We are not Prey
Conjuring Quantico
Copyrights
Contents
DEDICATION
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Author Notes
More Books by Taki Drake
More Books by TS Paul
We are not Prey
Conjuring Quantico
Copyrights
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my husband. His support and devotion have carried us through some pretty bad times. His ongoing belief that whatever I choose to do is the best decision at the time has enriched my life more than I can say. Thank you, John. Thank you for your love and support, and being there in my life.
This book also carries a dedication to a few other important people. One is the multi-talented TS Paul. His support and advise, caring and interaction occupy a special place in my heart and mind. Despite an affection for horrendous puns, you are a very special person.
Finally, this book is dedicated to the peerless Ds. They encourage, exhort, and occasionally apply pompom-concealed tasers to authors in need of their own special brand of support. To the women that do everything from development editing to brainstorming, thank you! I wish I would have met you earlier – but then we would have needed a bigger bail fund!
Chapter 1
The desolation was complete. It looked like God had reached out a hand and flattened the entire village. Building walls were toppled, roofs were broken, and the usual structure of their daily life had been totally destroyed. It would’ve been impossible to determine from the current scene that only a short number of hours before this it had been a village of over 4000 people. One teeming with the normal activity of a small village.
Zhanna stood with her hands balled into fists, staring around her. The sick feeling in her stomach was overwhelming. She didn’t know whether to fall to her knees, crying torrents of tears or to scream her rage to the heavens. Stuck between grief and anger, she was frozen.
How could have come to this?
The muted sound of soft sobbing filled her ears, and she turned to her left. Curled protectively around two small children, an older woman in the traditional head covering, or babushka, stared blankly at what remained of her home. It was Baba Marta. Zhanna knew that probably meant that the two crying children were Gregor and Anna, but she couldn’t see for sure. The sound of the children’s soft, frightened sobs told her both that they were alive and kicked off an unconscionable rage.
How could it have come to this?!!!
Zhanna had seen other places where disasters had happened. There was always a bustle of people trying to rescue and repair. Men rushing around, caring stretchers, comforting their families. But all that she could hear and all that she could see was a frozen aftermath of a horrible disaster. There was no bustle, no rescue. No men.
There was the main problem. There were no men in the village right now. They were all out on contract. Without the men’s mercenary work, there would be no food, no shelter. The entire village was dependent on having the best, and the brightest spend huge amounts of time away from their families.
Her dark thoughts were rudely interrupted.
<> sniped through her thoughts.
She looked down into the brilliant eyes of her cat, her familiar. Dascha stared back at Zhanna with a wicked glint in her eye. The cat was gorgeous. The deepest gray coloring and the black undertone of the fur seem to glow in the sunlight. Almost too dark for a Russian Blue, Dascha looked more like a Russian Black. Looking at her cat, Zhanna felt the blast of astonishment that occurred whenever she thought of how she had ended up with such a beautiful, powerful, impressive familiar.
She must’ve stared too long at the cat because the next thing she knew her ankle was pricked by a set of very sharp claws.
<
<>
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Zhanna drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. Forcing a calm look unto her face, the young woman walked toward the older one who was still clutching the crying children, calling out as she walked, “Just a moment, let’s see how you’re doing…”
<<<>>>
It had been a totally devastating time. Four days of unrelenting labor to take bodies out of the rubble, patch up the wounded, and salvage what they could of belongings. Zhanna was exhausted, and the remainder of the people in the town weren’t any better. Some of them were grieving the loss of friends and family, while others were coping with the destruction of their homes. The grief and the tiredness cast a dark cloud over the huddled people, one that was almost visible.
No one knew what had kicked off the twisters that had come through the small village. Appearing like evil fingers of fate, five of the roiling black clouds had zeroed in from the far side of the fields, ripping through the crops and colliding in the center of the town.
One of the observers had mentioned that it looked like a choreographed dance of death. The green cast of the clouds and the way that the winds twisted people into pretzels of tortured bodies and reduced sturdy buildings into a collection of splinters made Zhanna even less inclined to live anywhere where twisters were a common phenomenon.
Everyone was working tired. There just wasn’t enough food in the village to take care of everyone, so many of the healthier people were skipping their meals or splitting them. The children and the old people were the ones that everyone needed to watch. They were the ones most fragile in the face of injury or shock. Zhanna knew that her elderly grandmother would be especially vulnerable and resolved to somehow get her to eat. It would be an argument that she wasn’t willing to lose. Baba would eat!
<
The mental tone of Dascha, Zhanna’s familiar, worried the witch. Granted, the cat had only been her familiar for less than
six months, and they were still learning about each other every day. However Dascha’s normally snarky, semi-humorous tone was totally missing. The cat sounded serious, deadly serious.
Groaning audibly, Zhanna stood up and stretched her back. The other three people in her small work-group looked up at her movement, most of them too tired to do more than look. However, obedient to the “suggestions” of Dascha, Zhanna simply said, “I think I’ll take a last turn around the area just in case something got overlooked.”
Weary nods were the only thing that she got in response, so she thought that perhaps she had made the transition in an unobtrusive manner.
She walked toward the directional line of the psychic bond feeling in her head. The one that said, “Dascha is fine, Dascha fine” as a background mantra in her brain. The black cat was waiting for her in the semi-twilight just around the corner. The plush coat of the Russian blue was so dark that the subtle mixture of dark gray and black provided wonderful camouflage in the fading light of the evening.
Zhanna asked quietly, “Dascha, what is wrong?”
Dascha replied, <
<
<
Dascha moved to one side, allowing Zhanna to see what her body had been blocking. It was a small embroidered bag, about 4 inches tall and tied with brightly colored yarn. Even being within a few feet of the charm bag made Zhanna uncomfortable. It was like a cloud holding the stench of rotten blood in place. It made her skin crawl and her breath tight in her throat. A feeling of overwhelming stress and strain seem to press down on her from every direction. Zhanna shuddered involuntarily.
<
<
<>
<<<>>>
It had not been a restful night for either Zhanna or Dascha. Not wanting to upset her grandmother, Zhanna hadn’t talked much about the village or the situation after she got home the previous night. Instead, she made sure that her grandmother ate and played for a short period of time with the children that were camped out with their mother in the small parlor of Zhanna’s home.
It was actually her grandmother’s home, the place that her father had been born and raised, the place that she had come to as a small child when her parents had died. She didn’t remember much about them. Their faces and other details were lost in time and her childish memory. The only vision of her parents that she still had were really impressions. The black, sweet-smelling hair and soft hands of her mother, and the hearty laugh of her father rumbling low tones of ticklish energy up and down her spine. When she been much younger, Zhanna had mourned deeply for the loss of connection with her parents. She was lucky thought to have had more family. Her grandmother had been both mother and father to Zhanna and her brother, Igor. It could not have been easy acquiring two small children to raise at the advanced age of her grandmother. But Bolormaa had never complained.
Once, when Zhanna was in her early teenage years, she asked her grandmother what it was like to suddenly acquire a young family? Her grandmother had just laughed and said that it had been a blessing, although not one without struggles.” The young witch wasn’t sure if she truly understood that answer even yet.
Her baba’s response had been on her mind as she headed for the village school. The school building had been spared during the strange twister weather, and the children had been kept safely there, huddled in the school gym. After a night of tossing and turning, Zhanna had somehow known that there were important lessons and vital information that she had to touch or see around town. Her subconscious had pushed her to go to the school first. Without another alternative to focus on, the young witch decided to do what her intuition was pushing her to do and go visit the children at school.
The village didn’t have a lot of youngsters. Like other villages across Russia, many of the younger people were gravitating to the larger cities. There was more work there, or chances for jobs and stability, more places to go and see things. It had never drawn Zhanna. There is plenty to do in her town, and she felt like she would be abandoning her village, her heritage, and her grandmother if she left.
She could hear the students and the teachers talking as she walked into the small building. There were four classrooms, split into groups that were similar in abilities. Zhanna stopped beside the first open door and peeked in. Whether by subconscious wish or the luck of the draw, the first group that she saw was the oldest in the school. This contained students that were of the age that most of the women in the village stopped going to school. In rural areas, and small villages, marriage was the fate of many a young girl anywhere from age 14 through 16. In fact, Zhanna was a bit of an oddity. Her grandmother had steadfastly refused to consider offers of marriage for her, choosing instead to tell Zhanna that she needed to learn skills and a purpose of her own.
When Zhanna was a young girl, she resented this terribly. It meant that she didn’t share some of the attitudes or concerns of her friends and for school age children that is deadly. You either fit in everything, or you don’t fit in anything. School was the ultimate test of conformity and that had not been something that either Igor or Zhanna had ever done particularly well.
There were signs that it had been a rough time over the last few days in the wear and tear on the students and teachers. There were two teachers in this class, one an austere teacher that focused on mathematics and science, and who never seem to really get close to the students. The other teacher was gentle and nurturing. She was the one that soothed injuries and cheered up spirits. While the one was considered a tough old woman, the gentle one was only a couple years younger. The impression in the village was that the young one was loving, nurturing, and kind. Personally, Zhanna didn’t know if she agreed with that classification. She had never really spent the time to find out.
The older teacher noticed when Zhanna stopped by and peeked in the door. Without interrupting the test that was going on, the teacher cocked an eyebrow in inquiry and tilted her head. Zhanna shook her head in negation and with a little wave backed out of the room.
Walking around the rooms, Zhanna at first didn’t notice anything that was off. She muttered to Dascha, “I wish I knew what was so important that I see here. It’s like being told to do something that you have to see, but no one can tell you what it looks like.”
Dascha had been following along with Zhanna the entire time she’d been walking. The dark cat had blended in so well with Zhanna’s long skirt and boots that no one else in the school or village had been aware of her. The cat stopped abruptly, forcing Zhanna to also stop. <
<>
They both left the school in a thoughtful daze.
Chapter 2
There was a knock on the door. The sound seemed to echo through the small home like a harbinger of doom. Even the cheerfully ticking clock became muted. Zhanna and her grandmother looked quickly up to stare at the door and glanced at each other. It was fairly late at night, and they hadn’t expected anyone to stop by. It was a strange feeling to realize that they were isolated. The twisters had taken out both of their closest neighbors, leaving their small house alone on the hillside, some 15 minutes from the center of the town.
The pounding on the door happened again. This time it was a little harder, a little bit faster. It didn’t sound urgent, but Zhanna found herself sweating. Her hands were trembling slightly, and her skin felt clammy. She could feel the rush of blood through her veins and a flush growing on her face. There was a hint of stars in the corner of her eyes. Like the framework of a picture that you couldn’t quite see. That had been happening more to her lately. She kept promising herself that she look into it
later, but that time, that later, as yet had not been convenient.
Now she wished that she had done that investigation, done that exploration of possible power. Her grandmother, her Baba, had gone almost colorless in the face. The old woman’s expression was frozen. Staring at her grandmother, Zhanna was frightened for her. The possibility of horrendous grief was sitting on a knife edge held apart from them by the slimmest of threads, that of her grandmother’s expression.
Zhanna let out the breath that she been holding. She heaved herself to her feet and set off toward the front door. As she left the table, the young witch noticed her grandmother had made an abortive movement with her hands. When Zhanna stopped in response, the hands dropped to the table, and her grandmother slumped forward and closed her eyes.
<
<>
Zhanna realized that even her familiar was feeling unsure. That was not comforting at all.
It only took Zhanna 20 steps to get to the front door. Her Baba’s house was small, just the kitchen, a parlor, and a few bedrooms. Nothing palatial, nothing fancy. Just a warm home and a loving heart for two little orphaned children.
The knocker had been quiet as Zhanna walked to the door. Steeling herself, she opened the door just in time to almost catch a blow in the face as the older man waiting on her doorstep started to knock again.
