The Shadows and Sorcery Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  “Ah, I think we’ve found it.” Yulian rubbed lichen off the name carved in the stone above the archway—Drakoi Dostoyevski. “My dear friend,” Yulian murmured to the stone. “I’m sure time has not been good to your bones.”

  It had been years since I spent so much time with Yulian—back when Catie was alive, and we shared many of our days with him. Even so, I could still sense his heart where he wore it easily on his sleeve. Whoever lay in this tomb, now a pile of dusty bones, had meant a great deal to him in life.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  Yulian turned his watery gaze to me. “Trust me when I say my darling Drake would want to be a part of this. However, I must ask you to do the retrieval. If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.” Inwardly, I seized. Opening up a dead guy wasn’t high on my bucket list.

  Yulian tapped his flaming thumb to the long-dead torch over Drakoi’s tomb. As the flame flared, he removed the cobweb-covered handle from the rusted holder. He held the light out over the stone sarcophagus, light spilling into all four corners of the tomb, and turned his face away.

  I slipped beneath the archway and into the cramped space, adrenaline pumping through me. I had little room to work with, so I pressed my back against the wall and braced my hands on the lid of the sarcophagus. Using the wall behind me for leverage, I pushed.

  The lid slid an inch, the screech of stone on stone loud in the chamber. Startled by the almost human-like cry, I paused to allow my nerves to settle. Then I took a breath, and on the exhale, shoved again. Little by little, the lid shifted beneath my hands, my muscles burning from the effort, until Drakoi appeared in the torchlight.

  The dry air of the crypt had preserved much of his body. Thick dark hair pillowed his skull, and his face was covered in a thin tissue of skin, shrink-wrapped by decay. He wore the white robes of the clergy, his mummified hands clasped at his heart where his rosary lay entwined with his fingertips.

  Dom, who had watched expectantly from the archway, stumbled away at the sight of the corpse. “Nope. Hell no. I was expecting bones, not a half-decomposed body. That’s all you, Gad.”

  Yulian chuckled and watched her walk away, but he remained with his back to the coffin, too. “Strong as an ox, but her constitution for blood and viscera isn’t high.”

  “I doubt there’s blood or viscera left. Just skin.” I reached into the sarcophagus and gripped the man’s arm. His skin felt like fragile, dusty paper beneath my fingertips, and his bones moved easily. “Which bone do we need?”

  “The femur. Thighbone. Strongest bone in the body.”

  Yulian kept his eyes averted from his former friend as I worked. I opened the man’s robes, making a face at the melted mound where his penis should have been. Facing the destruction of the corporeal body was bad enough, bringing about a sense of fragility and finality. But to see what happened to the man parts? I’d have nightmares after this.

  As I’d guessed already, Drakoi’s skin tore easily enough, exposing thick, dry tendons and bone beneath. Even though my constitution was stronger than Dom’s, I couldn’t help the roil of disgust in my stomach. I was ripping a man’s leg from his body as if ripping a wing off a cooked chicken.

  “I’ll need a knife,” I said as the tendons held fast. “I don’t want to rip him to shreds. That doesn’t feel right.”

  “Dominika carries one. Dom?” Yulian called into the hallway, his cloudy gaze searching the darkness. “I can’t see her. Where did she go?”

  I unfolded my body from the tomb and stretched in the hallway, looking around for our missing girl. Even her torch had disappeared in the inky crypt. “She probably walked off to check things out and got lost. Dom!” My deep voice boomed, echoing off the stone. Surely, she’d hear that.

  A beat of silence, and then a woman screamed.

  15

  Dom.

  Thought and logic fled at the sound of her screaming my name. I broke into a sprint in the direction of her yells: without a weapon, without a light, without any idea how I’d find her.

  Yulian’s boots slapped against the floor behind me as he kept pace. The wildly waving light from Dom’s torch danced on the walls around us, casting the maze of hallways into deep shadows.

  I rounded a corner, my gaze sweeping the empty stone. With every turn, I thought her voice came closer, but another turn would take us farther from her. This place was a labyrinth. We needed a map and damn good luck to navigate it.

  Until a cold hand touched my neck.

  I skidded to a stop, my chest heaving. I stood still, waiting to see if the disembodied hand would touch me again.

  Yulian ran into me because of my sudden stop, careening off my shoulder. He steadied himself, face twisted in distress. “What are you doing?”

  I’d never heard him sound so terrified. I wanted to help him, to promise everything would be all right, but I didn’t have time to answer. Four cold fingers pressed against my neck.

  Pushing me to the right.

  I zeroed in on the spirit leading me and focused on the pressure of his fingertips on my skin. He pushed me left, right, angled me to Dom. I couldn’t explain how I knew he was helping me to her location; I just knew.

  Suddenly, the fingers turned to a vise-like grip that stopped my forward momentum. I skidded, the ghostly hand keeping me from pitching forward down a vast, empty hole in the ground.

  Loose pebbles leapt over the edge. I, however, did not. For that, I had a ghost to thank.

  “Gad?” Dom’s voice was right beneath me: breathless, but whole.

  Yulian dipped his torch over the edge of the hole. Dom clung to the stones by the tips of her fingers, her boots dangling over a black abyss.

  My heart pounded in my ears. I hadn’t heard the pebbles hit bottom. Was there nothing beneath her? An endless pit to hell?

  I fell to my stomach and reached for her with my heart in my throat. I gripped her arms, tugging her upwards until she could grasp my neck. With a mighty heave, I pulled her from the hole, and we tumbled backwards to the stones

  She landed on top of me, shivering. I clutched her body against mine as if I could steady her shaking.

  Yulian knelt beside us and traced his long fingers over her limbs. A crackle of magic in the air made me realize he was checking Dom for injuries—another reminder of the brighter side of magic.

  None of us spoke as we waited for Dom to catch her breath, for her tiny sobs to filter away. I kept my arms locked around her, hoping the grounding sensation of my embrace would help her snap out of the shock and terror. Or maybe I needed the assurance she was okay.

  “What happened?” Yulian asked softly, glancing back at the hole in the ground.

  “I was walking,” Dom choked out. “The ground gave out beneath me. The torch fell. I caught the edge of the stones and could barely hang on.” She sat up, her weight moving to the ground beside me as she gazed at her shaking hands. Her bloody fingers were short a few fingernails.

  Yulian shoved his torch in my hand and embraced his daughter. “It’s an old building and an old crypt. You must have hit a weakness in the stone.”

  Dom buried her face in his robe, looking for all the world like a scared, little girl. The sight haunted me. Humans were so fragile; so at the mercy of the world’s dangers. Even strong, confident Dom could dissolve into terror and tears at the threat of imminent death.

  I slid to the edge of the hole and peered into the darkness. Either her torch had extinguished upon landing, or the hole went far enough that I could no longer see the flames.

  What could cause a massive pit to open beneath a long-abandoned building? Beneath the underground crypt of a long-abandoned building?

  Cold fingers touched my neck again, urging me away from the sinkhole—as if concerned I might fall, too.

  Back in Drakoi’s tomb, I worked fast with Dom’s dagger to sever the priest’s leg from his body. The cold presence had remained with us and guided us b
ack to the tomb. I could feel him flitting about the sarcophagus as I worked, an air of expectation coming from his ghostly form.

  I finished the job quickly, though trying to be as respectful as I could to Drakoi’s body. I wanted to get us out of the crypt before something else horrible happened.

  As I began to climb from the crypt with the femur in hand, the spirit’s cold fingers stopped me one more time. Confirming my suspicions, he guided my hand to the rosary entwined with Drakoi’s fingers.

  He didn’t have to tell me what to do.

  I joined Dom and Yulian in the hallway, Drakoi’s femur in one hand. I held the rosary out for Yulian.

  “We can’t remove that,” Yulian said, aghast. “He needs it.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He wants you to have it.” I shook the rosary. “Take it. It’s a gift from Drakoi.”

  Yulian accepted the worn, beaded necklace and cross with tears in his eyes.

  The fingers touched my neck again with a hint of melancholy.

  “He loved you,” I said.

  “And I him.” Yulian glanced around, his tears falling freely now. “He is here?”

  I nodded.

  Yulian closed his eyes and clutched the rosary to his chest. The pain on his craggy face stretched deeper than the ocean. “Thank you, my darling Drake.”

  With those heartfelt words, the presence faded.

  Dom looked between Yulian and me, her brow furrowed. “What just happened?”

  I grinned. “I didn’t stay out of his space.”

  Back above in the silent cathedral, we chose an interior hallway as our base camp—far from any windows or doors, which gave us two-fold protection from being seen and being colder than necessary. We piled fragments of wood and rags on the stone and set a fire to chase away the darkness and warm our bones.

  We made our beds near the fire with threadbare blankets, using our packs as pillows. I passed out food—dried jerky and stale biscuits—while Yulian extracted his magical supplies from his pack.

  We ate in silence. I was lost in thoughts of Yulian’s dead lover, and the way he’d so carefully protected us. As if he’d known without needing an explanation just how important our mission was to the Circle. I thought of my dream, that night in the slave trader’s cell where Catie had come to me, and her heated warning that I had to survive because I was the Circle’s only hope.

  I wasn’t so sure about that as I watched Yulian patiently explain to Dom the purpose for each of his ritual items. I couldn’t save the Circle by myself. To be honest, I felt like nothing more than the messenger and the muscle.

  But maybe the three of us together could beat Belias.

  “Gadreel, do you think you could do the carving?” Yulian asked.

  I shook myself from my thoughts and glanced at the femur lying between us, still spotted with crumbling skin. “Um. Sure? I’ve never carved bone before.”

  “I’ll guide you. I’m just not sure I can… I know that isn’t Drake, of course. But where it counts, here,”—he touched his heart—”that’s still him. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. “Was he your lover?”

  “Gad!” Dom chastised.

  Yulian held up a hand, a smile curving beneath his mustache. “Darling girl, he was my lover, and I’m not ashamed of him. Gad has a right to know whose bone he holds.”

  “It’s none of his business,” Dom said hotly.

  Truth be told, I admired the girl for her knee-jerk loyalty. Kremlin Circle was a hotbed of backstabbing and betrayal. I found her honesty and loyalty refreshing. Attractive, even, though it was hard to admit that to myself.

  “I don’t care about their relationship, Dom. Chill.” I helped myself to her knife, relishing the noise of disapproval as I slipped it from her ankle sheath. “If we’re going to turn the man’s thigh bone into a weapon, don’t you want to know who he was?”

  Dom sank back against the wall, losing some of her bluster. “Oh. I guess. Yeah.”

  “Don’t forget I saved your life,” I reminded her cheekily. “We’re half-even now, right? Two to one?”

  “Whatever.” Dom rolled her eyes, but she was grinning.

  I brandished the knife over Drakoi’s bone. “I guess angels aren’t so bad after all.”

  Dom laughed. “I never said that.”

  I turned my attention to Yulian. “Come on, old man. Tell us your grand love story. You can leave out the juicy parts.”

  I hoped by making him focus on happier times, he’d forget about the bone beneath my blade. I couldn’t, though. Laying a blade on the bone felt wrong. But beating Belias wouldn’t be easy, so the steps to get there wouldn’t be easy, either.

  I set the edge of the blade on the bone and began.

  “I met Drake by happenstance,” Yulian said. “This was prior to the rift curse and Belias, of course. Back when life was normal. Demon-free.” Yulian sucked deeply on his pipe, his cloudy eyes shut on his memories. “Drakoi was the great love of my life, though of course, we had to keep our love secret back in those days. But that didn’t bother me. I loved him fiercely.”

  “What happened to him?” Dom asked.

  “He was one of the first to be executed during Belias’s takeover. They were sloppy during those days. Executions weren’t the pomp and circumstance they are today, parading the convicted in front of God and everyone. Ice demons cornered him in an alley and beat him to death.”

  Dom covered her mouth, her brows meeting in the middle of her forehead.

  Protected from the worst of the demons deep beneath the soil, Dom wouldn’t have witnessed such an atrocity. She had lived her entire life below the city, only emerging for supply runs. She hadn’t seen the seedy underside of public violence. But the story of Drakoi’s death wasn’t new to me. I’d seen ice demons beat humans to death in the streets for the smallest of crimes.

  I wish I had never known that violence.

  Yulian went on. “His brothers brought him back to St. Basil’s and alerted me, as his closest friend, of his death. I was able to take part in his interment. Thus how I knew where he lay in the crypt.”

  “When Belias took over, St. Basil’s was still a state museum. Not a working cathedral,” I pointed out.

  Yulian cocked his head in agreement. “Just as they hoped it would seem. In reality, the minute the Rift broke open the universe and the demons came to Kremlin, the clergy turned St. Basil’s into a last bastion of defense.”

  “Why didn’t I know this?”

  Yulian shrugged. “Why is anything kept secret? To preserve it.”

  “But it isn’t a church now,” Dom offered. “It’s an empty husk. What happened?”

  “As you know, Belias and her demons are unable to step foot on consecrated soil. State museum or not, St. Basil’s is and always has been consecrated.” Yulian’s face darkened. “But the demons are patient—they have all the time in the world to defeat us. They simply had to wait.”

  “They didn’t let the priests leave,” I guessed.

  “Right you are. And the men ran out of food first. Then water. And within six months of the rift, they were all dead.”

  “Nobody could help? Not even you?” Dom asked, horrified.

  “I had just lost Catie and Gretchen, and my nephew had disappeared.” I cringed at his words, but he wasn’t chiding me. He wasn’t even looking at me. Yulian had become lost in the past. “When Drakoi died, I withdrew. I didn’t know what was happening at the cathedral. Not until it was all over. But I did return when I heard, to place the last man to die in his grave. But he had already done it himself.”

  “Oh, God. He crawled into his own tomb?” Dom pulled her knees up to her chest and stared at her father.

  Yulian nodded gravely. “Strong to the end, all of them. And with that brave soul’s death went the last of God in Kremlin Circle.”

  I cradled Drakoi’s femur in my hands, mulling over everything I’d never known about Yulian and the final stand at St. Basil’s. I couldn’t even recall what I did i
n the six months following the rift. Catie and Gretchen were gone; I had wanted to be, too.

  When I finally got my shit together—when I’d passed the early stage of denial and grief—fury took over. I remembered that moment. The rage. The taut feeling of my bow in my hand, and the way Kremlin Watchtower’s door had shattered beneath my boot.

  “So what happens next?” Dom pulled me from the memory.

  “Blood,” Yulian replied. “Tomorrow, we retrieve six vials of pure human blood and six vials of pure witch blood. The spellbook must be the last thing we retrieve, because at that point, they’ll know who we are and what we mean to do.”

  Dom stirred the fire, sending delicate embers into the air. Her voice was dire as she added, “And when they know, we’ll be marked for death.”

  16

  For the first time since Liliya ran thieving into my life, I slept hard and dreamless.

  Pure exhaustion, probably. Or the hushed, reverent silence of St. Basil’s cushioning me from my usual non-stop thoughts—and the world outside. But if I had to guess, the balm I needed came in the form of Yulian’s steady snores to my right and Dom’s unhurried breaths to my left.

  The loneliness I’d felt for years eased. Sleep came easily and remained.

  I awoke in the dark to find the fire had been extinguished, and both my companions were nowhere to be found. I shoved away the thin blanket, helped myself to a round cake of stale bread, and set off to find them.

  I came across Dom at the front of the building. She perched atop an old table with a scratched top and rusted metal legs, peering out the window into a gray, listless day. I gripped my bread between my teeth and climbed up to join her, praying the table would hold.

  “What are you doing?” I asked through a mouthful of crumbly yeast.

  Dom reached over, broke off a piece of my bread, and popped it in her mouth. “Watching.”

  Outside, the normal morning market routine was underway. Red-and-white tents spilled across the vast space, while dark forms dressed in their warmest clothes flitted around, organizing their goods for sale.