“Hey there,” Alexei said, as calmly as if he arrived at such a gathering every day. “Look what I found a short way down the road.”
Gregori pulled off his own helmet and bowed in the general direction of the Baba Yagas, acknowledging Mikhail with a nod and an out-of-character wink. “May anyone join this party?” he asked. “I brought the makings for s’mores.”
Chewie wagged his black tail so hard, dust sprang up around him. “S’mores. Excellent.”
“You shaved off your mustache,” Mikhail said to his oldest brother. Gregori looked different without the Fu Manchu he’d sported for centuries in honor of his Mongolian roots, although his calm demeanor hadn’t changed. “And you cut your beard, Alexei. It’s almost...neat.”
“Bethany thought the long braided beard made me look like a cross between an out of work Viking and a troll,” Alexei growled. “Apparently that’s a bad thing. Go figure.”
Beka laughed, the sound a merry note in the too-tense clearing. “You’re not fooling anyone, Alexei,” she said. “You would have dyed it purple if Bethany asked you to. You’re wild about the woman.” She could sound so certain since the blond Baba Yaga had been around to witness their budding romance, which started while Alexei fought pirates, a kraken, and his own inner demons.
“Ha!” Alexei retorted. “Shows what you know. I like purple.” He turned to peruse Mikhail. “You haven’t changed at all, brother, although it is strange to see you wearing something other than white.”
All the brothers had given up their trademark colors—white for Mikhail, red for Gregori, and black for Alexei—when they’d stopped being the White Rider, the Red Rider, and the Black Rider. Apparently the others had found it just as painful as Mikhail had to stick to the clothes they’d worn so long for a role they no longer had.
Mikhail noted that they all had on nearly identical outfits—black leather jackets, jeans, motorcycle boots, and variously hued shirts. He wore a vivid blue denim that matched his eyes, Gregori’s was green silk with a matching leather cord that held back his long tail of black hair, and Alexei had on a white tee with the symbol of a pirate’s hook crossing an anchor which said “Sail in to The Hook and Anchor for a dangerously good time.”
“We have all changed,” Mikhail said with a shrug. “How could we not, when nothing about our lives is the same anymore?”
The three of them stood around for a moment, awkward after their long separation, and none of them seeming to know what to do next.
Chudo-Yudo cleared his throat in a vaguely threatening way and showed them all a mouthful of gleaming white teeth. “This is a damned reunion,” he said. “If I don’t see some hugging in the next two minutes, I’m going to bite someone.”
Jazz smothered a laugh, her brown eyes suspiciously bright.
Alexei was the first to break. He had always been the most openly emotional of the brothers, with everything he thought or felt right there on the surface. He wrapped one massive arm around Mikhail and the other around Gregori and lifted them off the ground in a huge bear hug. All the brothers were tall and strong, but Alexei dwarfed the others. It was not for nothing that he’d been called a one-man army, or a walking mountain, and he held them up with ease as they squirmed.
“Put me down, you big oaf,” Gregori finally said with an affectionate if somewhat aggravated note in his voice.
“Seriously, dude,” Mikhail added his protests. But he hugged both brothers hard for a second after his feet touched the earth again. “I’d almost forgotten how big you were.”
“As if anyone could forget that,” Barbara said briskly. But Mikhail was pretty sure he’d seen her dash away a rare tear.
“It is so good to see you all together again,” Bella said. “I don’t suppose any of you are hungry?”
Three heads nodded in unison, and Alexei added predictably, “And thirsty. I don’t suppose you have any beer? Or vodka. Vodka’s good too.”
* * *
A couple of hours later they were all sitting around on lawn chairs in a circle, with the two younger girls (and the dragon-dogs and cat) perched on the ground, having just finished off an excellent barbeque prepared by Bella. If anyone noticed that Sam still stayed a little further back from the fire than the rest of them, no one commented on it.
The brothers were finally feeling more at ease with each other, and Gregori thought that they had almost adjusted to the transformed Jazz. Babs had spent the meal shifting around the group to sit by each Rider in turn, not saying much as usual, but clearly happy to have them all together.
“Does it feel odd to be an adult instead of a teen?” Alexei finally asked Jazz in his usual blunt fashion. His third, or possibly fourth, beer dangled from his large hand, but with his size and unusually tough constitution, it was unlikely he even noticed.
Bella snorted. “Don’t let the outside fool you. She’s still a teenager on the inside, at least part of the time.”
“As if,” Jazz said, rolling her eyes. Gregori rather thought that proved Bella’s point, but he decided not to say so.
“Even if I hadn’t magicked myself older, I’d be seventeen now,” she said. “That’s practically an adult. But yeah, it is still a little weird to look in the mirror and see all this staring back at me.” She waved one hand from her older face down her changed body.
“We are all very sorry this happened while you were attempting a spell intended to help us,” Gregori said. “It was kind of you to try, but we would never have wanted you to take such a risk on our behalves.”
Jazz scrunched up her face in a scowl. “Right, unlike the risks you and Mikhail and Alexei undertook on behalf of the Baba Yagas through the years.” She dropped her eyes to the ground. “I’m only sorry I failed you.
“But hey,” she said, perking up a little, “after spending a year doing all this uber-training with Bella, I am way more skilled now, so maybe I could take what I’ve learned and try again.”
“NO!!!” Everyone else in the clearing shouted in unison.
“Jeez, you guys, overreact much?” Jazz said.
Bella, who was sitting as close to her husband as possible, banged her head against Sam’s broad shoulder. “Argh,” she said. “You might have put ten years on your life that day, but you took ten years off of mine. If you ever even think about trying that kind of spell again, I’m going to lock you in your room for a month; I don’t care how old you are.”
“Jeez,” her apprentice said again, but a small smile played at the corner of her lips. After spending most of her earlier years in abusive or indifferent foster homes, Gregori suspected that Jazz secretly liked the fact that someone cared enough to worry about her, no matter how annoying it might be.
Sam gave her a serious look, holding on to Bella’s hand as though she might vanish for another year. The queen had allowed Bella and Jazz to visit him briefly a number of times during their stint in the Otherworld, but it had still been rough on the couple, who were practically newlyweds. “Jazz, I think everyone appreciates how much you want to help the Riders, but maybe you should ask them if they even want their immortality back again.”
“What?” Jazz’s eyes opened wide. “Why wouldn’t they want it? Brenna stole their immortality from them. Of course they want it returned so they can go back to being who they were.”
Gregori exchanged glances with his brothers, Mikhail and Alexei nodding in silent agreement with the truth they could see in his eyes.
“I do not believe we would wish for such a thing, even if it were possible,” Gregori said. “We have all built new lives for ourselves, and found happiness with Human women. Mortal Human women,” he stressed. “If you were able to return our immortality, it would change everything.”
“I think we’re mostly content the way we are,” Alexei agreed, lifting his beer in a salute to his brothers, who raised their own in agreement. “I like helping to run the bar and talking to the local ocean creatures. And I wouldn’t give up Bethany for another thousand years of life witho
ut her.”
Mikhail smiled at Jazz. “You may be ten years older in body, and another year older in experience, not to mention being one of the most powerful natural witches who has come along in centuries, but you have a lot left to learn about the real world. Yes, there was a time when we probably would have given just about anything to go back to who we were. But things are different now.”
“Oh,” Jazz said in a quiet voice. “But don’t you miss being the Riders?”
Gregori heard something unspoken behind her words, and had a momentary ping from his precognitive sense. But as often happened, he could not quite pin down what it was. “Of course we do,” he said. “It was why we were created, and from time to time, no matter how satisfying our current existence might be, I suspect we all feel the drive to take to the road and find a Baba Yaga to help. But that part of our lives is in the past now.”
“Well,” Barbara said, a sly smile curving up her lips on one side. “We might just have a solution to that, if you still want one.”
“What are you talking about?” Alexei asked, sounding as confused as Gregori felt.
The other two Baba Yagas were openly grinning now, and they all turned to gaze in the direction of Barbara’s Airstream. As the Riders looked on in amazement, the door opened and the slim, upright form of the High Queen of the Otherworld descended gracefully down the steps as if she was walking into her own palace instead of a dusty clearing in front of a simple cabin in the woods.
Gregori could not remember the last time the queen had crossed through the doorway to this world. He was not certain it had happened even once since she ordered all the paranormals who could leave their earthly environments to relocate permanently to the Otherworld to escape the encroaching Humans. The unexpected sight was clearly a shock to his brothers as well. Alexei’s mouth hung open and the normally suave Mikhail wavered for a moment before he sprang to his feet. Gregori kicked Alexei none-too-gently on the shin to remind him of his manners, then all three rose to walk over to the queen and bow down on one knee before her.
“Your Majesty,” Mikhail said. “This is an unexpected honor.”
The queen looked as magnificent as usual, although she was marginally dressed down from her usual court attire. Her gown was an impossible variety of blue and green hues crafted from multiple layers of the finest silk, so that when she moved it was as though she was every shade of the ocean flowing together at once, but it lacked her usual train and wide skirts. Her gleaming silver-white hair was twisted into braids that had been bound up with beads of blue topaz, sapphire, and peridot, and then piled atop her head. The gems glittered in the fading sunlight, but not as much as her usual diamond and amethyst tiara would have done. Matching jewels hung around her swanlike neck and dangled from her delicate ears.
As always, her beauty was almost too much to behold, but Gregori suspected that this was her version of “roughing it.” He was honored and touched, as well as a little bit amused, although he was careful not to let any hint of the latter cross his face.
“It is wonderful to see you all together again at last,” the queen said. She stood before each man in turn, briefly resting one slim white hand on his shoulder before giving them each a light kiss on the cheek and indicating that they should rise.
It was both a blessing and a benediction, and Gregori felt it resonate down to his toes. Given the stunned look on both his brothers’ faces, he had no doubt they felt the same. It was a singular honor from a singular monarch.
“Goodness,” the queen said, looking up at them. “We always forget how tall you are. This won’t do at all.” She always spoke in the royal “We,” of course. “Perhaps someone might fetch me a chair?”
Bella had already sent Sam scurrying into the house, and he returned carrying a tall stool with a scrolled metal back on it. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said with a small bow. “I’m afraid it is the best we have. We don’t usually entertain royalty.”
The queen raised one silvery eyebrow and looked around at the parked vehicles, and the portable copper fire pit they’d all been sitting around on a motley assortment of lawn and camping chairs.
“One does get that feeling,” she said with just the suggestion of a smile. “But no matter. It is easily enough remedied.” She waved a hand languidly and the stool shimmered, transforming itself into an even higher chair made of ebony and wrought iron, covered with intricate designs. Two small steps lead up to it that might or might not have been carved from blocks of obsidian. She climbed them with her usual dignity, holding her skirts up out of her way and then arranging them effortlessly as she sat down on what now looked suspiciously like a throne.
“Ah, that is better,” she said, looking down at the three Riders instead of up. She aimed vivid purple eyes pointedly in Bella’s direction. “So. We see that We have interrupted a party. What are you all drinking?”
Bella flushed, clearly feeling as though she had under-prepared for a visit by such a grand monarch. “Uh, beer, Your Majesty. It’s a very nice one that is brewed locally, but I don’t know if it would be to your tastes. I could go fetch a bottle of wine, if you like.”
The queen gave an unexpectedly wistful smile. “Beer. A wizard from Chicago once visited Us and brought a gift of beer crafted by a man named Mac. It was quite delightful. We would be pleased to taste another. The wines of the Otherworld are most agreeable, but even their perfection can become tedious over the centuries. We might enjoy a change of pace.”
Sam hurriedly uncapped another beer and handed it to Bella, who looked at the plain brown bottle uncertainly. Barbara stepped up and plucked it from her grasp. “Allow me,” the eldest Baba Yaga said. She snapped her fingers and a golden goblet appeared from thin air, no doubt procured from her Airstream. She poured the beer into it and handed it to the queen with a flourish. “Your ale, Your Majesty.”
Everyone held their breath while the queen took a small sip. “Delightful,” she pronounced. “Now, to the reason for my visit.” She turned her attention back to the Riders.
“You are all looking quite well. We are pleased to see that this is so, even if,” and here she gave them all a stern but not entirely convincing scowl, “even if We had to make a pilgrimage here to see it for Ourselves.”
She ignored their murmured apologies. “It is no matter. I understand that each of you had built a new life for yourself out of the ruins of the old.” She gazed fondly at Alexei. “We are told you own a tavern now. How astonishingly suitable.”
Alexei grinned at her, as usual the least intimidated by her power and glory. Luckily, she seemed to like that about him, since she had so far refrained from turning him into a toad.
“Isn’t it, though?” he said. “The bar belongs to my wife’s father, a former fisherman. But he’s in a wheelchair and can’t handle the place on his own, so Bethany runs it and I help out from time to time.”
“If by help, you mean, toss people out when they get too rowdy, and carry heavy beer kegs around,” Beka muttered under her breath.
“Hey!” Alexei protested. “I also walk the dogs.”
The queen’s amethyst stare swung to Chudo-Yudo and Chewie and then back to Alexei. “You have dogs?”
“Dog dogs,” Alexei clarified. “Not dragon-dogs. Nothing magical about them, unless you count the amount of food they can make disappear. They’re Great Danes.”
“Ah,” the queen said, and turned to Gregori. “And do you have a dog as well?”
“Indeed, I do not,” Gregori responded. He thought dogs were mostly large and messy, rather like his brother Alexei, if one considered it. “My wife Ciera and I have a black cat named Magic.” He nodded at Koshka. “The cat is not, in fact, magical either.”
The queen pursed her perfect rose-colored lips. “But you are happy?
He bowed, hands folded in front of his chest. “I am, Your Majesty. Ciera founded a center for troubled youth, and I am pleased to assist her with such a worthwhile endeavor. Mostly I teach classes on self-defe
nse and meditation, although I will turn my hands to anything that needs to be done.”
The queen shifted on her not-throne. “And you, Mikhail Day. You have an infant, do you not? The child of your Human mate?” She gave a tiny shrug. “We do not recall her name, alas.”
Mikhail swept down in a showier bow that his brother had given. “My wife’s name is Jenna, Majesty, and her daughter—our daughter—is named Flora.” He gave the queen a rueful smile. “I’m afraid she is more a toddler than an infant, these days. Less random noise, more chaos. But a delight, none the less.”
A dainty sigh floated upward like an iridescent soap bubble. “One forgets how quickly things move on this side of the doorway,” the queen said with something like regret. “Do bring the child to visit Us again soon.” She looked around the semi-circle of Riders in front of her. “In fact, it is Our wish that you should all visit Us soon, now that you have recovered from your ordeal.”
Those purple eyes seemed to pierce Gregori’s soul, and he suspected they had the same effect on his brothers, as the queen stared at each of them for a long moment. “You have recovered, have you not?”
“As much as will ever be possible, Your Majesty,” Gregori answered for them all. “We have adjusted to our new circumstances, and we are content.”
“Happy, even,” Mikhail said, and Alexei nodded. “It’s a good life,” he said. “I can drink all the beer I want. Free.” Everyone chuckled.
“So, there is nothing more you want?” the queen asked. “You are completely satisfied with your lot? There is no boon you would ask from Us, if given the chance?” She took a delicate sip of beer from her goblet as if she had no great interest in the answer to the question she had just posed. But the way the gathered Baba Yagas shifted restlessly made Gregori think the inquiry might not be as casual as it seemed.
Alexei shuffled his feet, staring at the ground and saying nothing. Mikhail cleared his throat, started to speak, and then fell silent again. Finally, Gregori took a step forward, as reluctant to put his feelings into words as his brothers clearly were.
Dangerously Driven (Broken Riders) Page 5
