“I am?”
“The Water of Life and Death,” she said. “The Water of Life and Death will cure anything, even radiation poisoning.” In fact, she could kick herself. If she’d just remembered to take a drink at some point in the last week, she’d be feeling fine right now.
Chewie let out a gusty sigh of relief. “Of course! Belobog’s balls—don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Marcus’s rugged countenance bore a look of almost comic befuddlement. “What are you two talking about? You have a cure for radiation poisoning? How is that possible? Are you sure?”
Beka’s weakness and queasy stomach almost vanished as relief washed over her like a wave. Here was the answer to another part of the problem too.
“The Water of Life and Death is an enchanted elixir that the Baba Yagas drink to increase their strength and magical ability. It also extends their lives so that they live longer than your average Human, and has miraculous healing properties in larger amounts,” she explained to him. She’d tell him how much longer sometime when there wasn’t quite so much going on. “If I’d been drinking it all along, the way I should have, I might not have gotten sick at all. Or at least, not as much as I have. But I’ve been having doubts about remaining a Baba, and Kesh must have figured out that I was slacking off on my dose while I was trying to make up my mind.”
Marcus looked almost as relieved as she felt. “So all you have to do is go back to the bus and have a swig of this stuff, and you’ll be as good as new?”
“Pretty much,” said Beka. “What’s more, it should work on the sick Selkies and Merpeople too. I’ll have to get permission from the Queen of the Otherworld before I can share it with them, but under the circumstances, I think she’ll probably allow it.”
“The Queen of the what world?” Marcus asked.
“It’s kind of a long story,” Beka said.
Chewie rolled his eyes. “Here’s the short version, dude. There is another plane of existence, kind of like the fairylands you read about in stories. It’s called the Otherworld, and it’s where most of the magical creatures went hundreds of years ago when it became too dangerous for them to stay here in the Human realm. The Otherworld is ruled by a King and Queen, and the Queen is kind of like Beka’s boss. If your boss is drop-dead gorgeous, all-powerful, and turns people into swans at the drop of a hat. There—now you’re all caught up. Can we get going, please? I for one will feel a lot better once Beka has taken her medicine and no longer glows in the dark.” He turned and marched in the direction of the front cabin, just in case the other two had somehow missed his point.
Marcus hugged Beka before grabbing her hand and starting after Chewie. “You’re sure this stuff will cure you?” he asked.
“Absolutely sure,” Beka responded, feeling hopeful for the first time in days. “And if I can use it to cure the sick water dwellers, then I have fulfilled half of my assignment to the Queen, and my promise to the King of the Selkies and the Queen of the Merpeople. You know, I actually think everything is going to be okay.”
TWENTY-FOUR
BACK AT THE bus, Chewie ground to a halt right inside the front door like a giant roadblock, causing Marcus and Beka to barrel into him. Beka, not as steady as she usually was, almost fell over his huge rear end and planted her face on the floor.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked, grabbing onto Marcus for support.
Chewie lifted his black muzzle into the air, pulling it in through his nostril in great snorting gulps. “Someone has been here,” he announced ominously.
“What? That’s impossible.” One of the reasons that Beka hadn’t been too worried about dragging Chewie away and leaving the bus unguarded was because the former hut was perfectly capable of guarding itself. There were magical protections built into the very walls, handed down from Baba to Baba. Maybe she’d slacked off a little on refreshing them, what with everything that was going on, but they should still be more than capable of thwarting any would-be trespassers.
“Impossible or not,” Chewie growled, “someone has been here. I smell the sea, and fish, and . . .” he sniffed again. “I think that’s Old Spice.”
“Kesh!” he and Beka said at the same time, and exchanged equally alarmed glances.
Beka bolted for the secret cabinet where the Water of Life and Death was hidden. She didn’t know how the hell Kesh had gotten past the defenses, but he couldn’t have found the Water.
But he had.
The cabinet gaped, its own magical locks clearly breached, although there was no sign of either physical or supernatural tampering. When she opened the door all the way, the space inside seemed to mock her with its emptiness. Impossible maybe, but the Water of Life and Death was gone.
Marcus had gone ghostly pale as he realized that Beka’s only cure was missing. “Shit,” he said with feeling. “Can you ask this Queen of yours to give you some more?”
Beka shook her head mutely. “Not a chance. If I admit I was careless enough to let the precious gift she gave me slip through my fingers, not only will she undoubtedly strip me of my title of Baba Yaga on the spot, she’ll probably turn me into something prickly and ugly to serve as an example to future Babas.” She fought not to cry. It wouldn’t help anything anyway.
“What’s that?” Chewie asked, poking his snout a little deeper into the vacant cupboard.
Beka shoved his nose out of the way and discovered a piece of antique parchment paper that had blended in with the brown bottom of the cabinet. Her hand shook as she read it aloud, but she wasn’t sure if the tremor came from fatigue or rage.
My darling Baba,
I am sorry that it had to come to this. But Brenna will make a much more powerful ally, and I have great plans I could not allow you to thwart.
When I am a king on land, ruling as I was meant to, I shall write lyrical songs to your beauty and grace, and remember you fondly. It is unfortunate that you will not be around to hear them, but in any war, there are always sacrifices to be made.
You should have joined me when you had the chance. You shall not get another.
Kesh
“Why that, that—” Marcus was so furious he was speechless. Beka thought he looked even more magnificent than usual, not that it mattered anymore. She was a dead witch walking. If the radiation didn’t get her, the Queen would.
“Brenna,” Chewie said with a snarl that bared lots of sharp white teeth. “That explains a lot.”
Beka, startled out of her reverie, just stared at him. “What are you talking about, Chewie?”
He tilted his massive head toward the note. “Didn’t you read what he said about Brenna making a better ally than you? That’s how he got in here; she gave him some kind of magical key to give him safe passage through the defenses. After all, she was one of the ones who created them in the first place, and I’ll bet you never thought to change them once she left. And she must have told him where the Water of Life and Death was hidden too. I wonder how long they have been working together. No wonder she came by and tried to convince you to quit.”
“Who is Brenna?” Marcus asked.
“Brenna was my foster mother,” she said, stone-faced. “The one who raised me from the time I was four to be a Baba Yaga and follow in her footsteps.”
Marcus glanced around the bus, clearly remembering the funky painting on the outside. “The woman with the tie-dyed pillows? She’s working with Kesh? Why?” That last bit came out a touch plaintively, as if they’d finally reached a part of the story that was beyond his comprehension.
Beka knew exactly how he felt.
“Brenna acted like she was a hippie earth-mother stuck in the sixties,” Chewie said flatly. “But she never cared about anything other than herself, and I always suspected that toward the end, she was beginning to lose her grip. I’m not convinced she is completely sane anymore.”
Beka didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse. If Brenna had succumbed to the Water Sickness that sometimes beset a Baba
Yaga who had overstayed her tenure, then maybe that could somehow excuse her betraying Beka to Kesh. On the other hand, if there was anything scarier than an insane woman with the power of a Baba Yaga, Beka couldn’t think of it off the top of her head.
“Damn,” she said. That seemed to sum things up nicely.
“Yeah, damn,” Chewie agreed.
Marcus made a movement toward where he would have carried a gun in bygone days, looking warily around the bus. “Do you think this Brenna came here with Kesh? Maybe to get the Water of Life and Death for herself?”
Chewie shook his head, bits of drool flying off in every direction. “Nah. For one thing, I don’t smell her here, and believe me, I’d recognize her scent after living with her for nearly two centuries.”
“Two centuries?!” Marcus’s eyes were wide and stunned. “How long can Baba Yagas live?”
Chewie waved the question off with a paw as incidental to the discussion. “Besides, I don’t see Kesh as the type to share, no matter what kind of deal they have cooked up between them. The Water of Life and Death is one of the most precious substances on earth. There’s no way he’d just give it to Brenna. No, my guess is that she gave him the information on how to get in here, knowing that if the Queen discovered you’d allowed the Water to be stolen, she’d be more likely to give Brenna back the position of Baba Yaga.”
He looked at Beka with pity in his big, dark eyes. “It’s possible Brenna doesn’t even know about the poisoning, so maybe she isn’t actually trying to kill you.”
“Just get me kicked out of my job and banned from the Otherworld,” Beka said bitterly.
“Yeah, that.” Chewie shrugged. “So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to let Brenna and Kesh win?”
If it had just been her life on the line, Beka might have given up. But she’d made a promise, and Baba Yagas always kept their promises. She might not be one for much longer, but she’d be damned if she would let those little Selkie and Mer babies die because of Kesh’s greed for a power that didn’t belong to him.
Think, Beka, think. You’re a Baba Yaga. No two-bit, too-handsome Selkie prince is going to beat you.
“No,” she said, so firmly that Marcus blinked and Chewie took a half step backward. “No, we are not going to let them win. We are going to track down Kesh, take back the Water, and kick his ass from here to the Otherworld and back again.”
“That’s my girl,” Marcus said. “Um. How?”
“Yeah,” Chewie echoed. “How? He could be anywhere by now, and I can’t follow his scent if he goes underwater.”
“I’m guessing he’s going to be holed up somewhere on land,” Beka said. “If he has to avoid being seen by his father or any of his people, he’d have to stay onshore whenever possible. With all his talk about being a ruler here, I’m guessing he’s found himself a posh mansion somewhere and is sitting around in luxury gloating over his upcoming triumph in true arch-villain fashion.” The fish-eating, double-crossing son of a kraken. “And if he’s on land, I can find him.”
She crossed the room to root through an enameled box of miscellaneous shiny bits of crystal, old keepsakes, and the few pieces of jewelry she hadn’t made herself. “Aha!” she said, pulling out a gemstone-encrusted pendant hanging from a thick gold chain. “I thought I’d thrown it in there.”
“Are those diamonds?” Marcus asked, gaping at the sparkly necklace.
“Uh-huh. And some rubies, and I think maybe the blue ones are sapphires,” Beka said, walking back over to them. “Kind of over the top, if you ask me.”
“Ah,” Chewie said, a hint of laughter in his eyes despite his worry. “Let me guess: Kesh gave it to you.”
“Yup. This was one of his ‘little trinkets’ he brought me when he was trying to woo me, back in the beginning.” Before he’d decided it would be easier to kill me. “He told me he’d found it in an old wreck and thought of me, which is kind of a backhanded compliment, really. But the important part is that he carried it on him for an entire day before he gave it to me.”
She favored the guys with an evil grin. “The moral of this story, boys and dogs, is never give a Baba Yaga something that once belonged to you—no matter how briefly—if you aren’t going to want her to be able to track you down later.”
Beka took down her favorite sword and started grabbing a few basic magical items out of her tool cabinet. “I’m going to create a spell to find Kesh, using this pendant as a focus, and then I am going to go get what he stole from me. If I have to kill him a little in the process, well, that’s just too bad.”
It all sounded very good, but it probably would have been more impressive if she didn’t drop the salt because her hands were shaking so much.
“I have a better plan,” Marcus said, looking grim. “You find him, and I’ll kill him a little.”
“Marcus, you’re a Human. You can’t be involved in this. Besides, you have no idea how dangerous Kesh can be.”
Marcus raised one eyebrow. “I survived three stints in a desert hell-hole. I think I can take on one Selkie prince. And let’s face it, Beka; you are too weak to do this on your own. You can barely lift that sword, much less use it to fight Kesh. I’m not letting you go alone.”
“I’m coming too,” Chewie said stoutly. “After all, there is nothing left to guard here. I might as well come help with the biting and clawing part of the program.”
Beka shook her head. “I’ll take Marcus with me, but I have a more important task for you, old friend. Two tasks, actually.” She held up a hand when he would have protested.
“I need you to go through to the Otherworld and get the Queen’s permission to use the Water of Life and Death to heal the Selkies and Merpeople who need it. You can tell her I couldn’t ask her in person because I was tracking down Kesh so I could bring him to her.”
She paused, arranging the supplies in front of her without really looking at them. “That way, if something happens and we don’t capture him,” she added softly, “at least the Queen will know who is responsible.”
“What about calling in the Riders to help?” Chewie asked, obviously not liking the odds any better than she did. Kesh was not only underhanded and dangerous, he almost certainly wouldn’t be alone. A prince wasn’t a prince without subjects.
“There’s no time,” she said. “The Mer Queen said the babies were getting sicker every day, and one elder has already died. And the Riders are still out looking for Mikhail. If they haven’t contacted me yet, they haven’t found him or he’s in even bigger trouble than they thought. Either way, we can’t wait for them. I could send for the Queen’s guard, but then she would find out that Kesh stole the Water of Life and Death, and that would be the end of my chance to save those children. Or myself. This is the way it has to be, I’m afraid.”
Chewie sighed. “Fine. I’ll go. I’ll even be polite. You said there were two tasks—what’s the second one?”
“Once you’ve come back from the Otherworld,” Beka said, “I want you to go to the Mer Queen and the Selkie King and explain what’s happened.” She didn’t envy him that conversation. She didn’t know how the King would react when he found out that his own son had been responsible for the poisoning of their lands and peoples, but she suspected that he might rival the Queen of the Otherworld for explosive potential. Luckily, dragons were pretty tough.
“Then ask them to gather all their sickest subjects and bring them to the beach down below us. If, by some miracle, we manage to find Kesh and get the Water back, we need to be able to get it to them as fast as possible.”
Chewie hesitated, then nodded. “Okay, Beka. You’re the Baba Yaga.” He gave her a big lick across the face, and an affectionate head butt that almost knocked her over. “Kill him once for me, will you?” he said, then vanished through the door to the Otherworld without a backward look.
Beka appreciated his show of faith in her. In truth, she wasn’t sure she shared it. But she didn’t have the option of failure this time. She wasn’t just
fighting for herself, but for the lives of innocents who depended on her, and in a way, for the sea itself. It was time to prove Brenna wrong, once and for all.
TWENTY-FIVE
MARCUS WATCHED BEKA add one more knife to a sheath around her ankle and said, “Are you sure you don’t want another three or four, just in case?” Maybe it came from being a Marine, but he kind of liked her fascination with sharp, pointy things.
Still, there was a limit to how many one person could carry. He’d chosen to borrow one extremely large bowie knife and a small, deadly switchblade, and call it a day. He dearly wished he had some of his old weaponry from Afghanistan. Sadly, the military hadn’t foreseen that he’d be involved in a paranormal conflict at home, and had foolishly insisted he leave it all behind. But since that conflict was not only killing the woman he’d grown dangerously fond of, but threatening the livelihood of his entire community, too, he was going to take down the guy behind it if he had to use his bare hands.
Beka looked thoughtful, clearly not hearing the sarcasm in his voice. “Well, maybe just one more,” she said, and stuck a long, thin blade disguised as a hair stick down the length of the braid she’d twisted her hair into. She was looking a lot better than she had, although still nothing like her normal perky self. She’d told Marcus that when she’d done the magical work on Kesh’s pendant, she’d also cast a spell to give herself some more energy. But she’d warned him that it was only temporary—like the esoteric version of a large pot of black coffee—and it would wear off before too long.
They needed to be on their way soon.
“Ready?” Marcus asked. He wasn’t sure he was comfortable yet with all this magical stuff, but if it led them to Kesh, he might just become a fan. The upcoming violence, on the other hand, he was completely on board with—especially if it ended up with Kesh lying on the ground bleeding profusely and begging for mercy.
Beka walked to the door, putting the pendant over her head so it nestled between her breasts. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Wickedly Wonderful Page 27
