Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1) (3 page)

“What’s going on?” Mike asked.

Another pause, then, “You can’t come home.”

“What are you talking about?” Obedience was one of the virtues Mike had never mastered. “What the Hell? I came out here to evaluate the situation, and I’ve evaluated. It’s crap. It’s nothing we should be involved with. It’s a waste of my time.”

“I’m sorry, Mike, but Rome thinks otherwise. I’ve been instructed—this came through channels—my hands are tied. They want a Templar involved.”

“Then you should send someone else. I’m too old to be making friends with a vampire. I’m too old to be babysitting. I’m supposed to be retired, remember?”

“I’m sorry,” Stan repeated. Mike could have cheerfully choked him with his own apology. “But you’re the one they asked for.”

And there it was. “Who asked for? Who’s calling the shots on this?”

“You know if I could tell you, I would.”

Oh yes, Mike knew. Thirty-plus years in service to the church—Mike knew exactly how it went. “Thanks for nothing, Stan.” He hung up.

This wasn’t the first time Mike had hated an assignment, and while he could hope it was the last—well, he’d thought that before. He was supposed to be done with all this. Which only made it worse.

And long past time for the cigarette he’d used as his excuse for leaving dinner.

*
   
*
   
*

The last thing Mike needed right now was to stare at a damned church, so he left the hotel on the side facing away from the big cathedral. Sparse lights illuminated flat-faced buildings with dark, blank windows staring down at the empty street.

Rutledge had warned them not to wander alone after dark, but Mike had spent a lifetime fighting demons and the evil men who served them—he wasn’t about to cower inside for fear of muggers. As he walked, Mike lit a cigarette and hunched into his coat, annoyed with the wind and the chill. It wasn’t enough the Archdiocese had yanked him out of retirement; they’d found him a city even more arctic than Chicago. Someone back home was getting a good laugh out of this.

Mike had earned his retirement, dammit. He should have been done with cold nights and dangerous missions. He should be back in Chicago, watching the Illini get their asses kicked by Ohio State, not exploring dark streets halfway around the globe, wondering who he’d pissed off to get sent here.

Mike couldn’t read the street signs—couldn’t even puzzle out the sound of the words through the Cyrillic letters—but he felt confident in his ability to find his way back by the big golden dome of St. Isaac’s that towered above the downtown rooftops. The sharp, bitter wind off the river cut through Mike’s coat. The city felt vacant. Haunted. Mike wondered what all the little sensitive girl got from it.

Rutledge had made it sound like this was a nice neighborhood—or at least a touristy one. On the surface, it certainly looked pretty enough. Nothing plain or modern—no glass and steel skyscrapers in this city. As far as Mike could see, the dome of St. Isaac’s was the tallest thing around. A feel of old-world elegance that seemed odd in a city younger than New York or Boston. Every building that lined the street had columns or gargoyles or some other flourish to make it stand out from its neighbors. And their ornate stone faces were painted in pale yellows and oranges and greens. Historical buildings, gated courtyards, plenty of atmosphere. Just the spot for a nice evening stroll. Except…

Except.

The streets were empty. Mike had only seen two other pedestrians so far, and both had looked eager to be somewhere else, hurrying along with their shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. No cars at all, although he could hear the sounds of traffic not too many blocks away. The locals knew something or felt something. One of the first lessons of the invisible war—keep a close eye on the natives. They knew where the bad stuff lived, even when they didn’t know they knew.

All around, shadowy doorways, empty courtyards, and stairwells into darkness—what might be lurking just out of sight? Rutledge had said there were vampires living in St. Petersburg. Could the city be home to worse things? Mike had been fighting this war long enough to know that there
were
worse things.
 

Ahead lay a bridge across one of the many canals that cut through the city. The Venice of the North, a brochure in the hotel lobby had pronounced. A lone figure stood on the bridge, leaning out over the railing, staring down into the water. Mike recognized him at once. One of the kids—Ian. Christ, they were all kids here. All but Mike. Even the vampire looked young, though with their kind, it wasn’t like you could tell just by looking. Why was it always the children who got shoved to the front lines?

Mike took out another cigarette and joined Ian on the bridge. Ian’s hands were buried deep in the pockets of his duster, but that was the only concession he made to the chilly November night. No hat, no scarf—his coat wasn’t even buttoned. Ah, youth. Mike remembered being twenty-something and invincible.

Ian gave an absent wave as Mike stepped up next to him. His hair shone like molten fire under the streetlight as Ian angled his head to look back out over the canal. No natural color, that. Of course, Ian wasn’t exactly human.

“Looking for something, Irish?” Mike had to cup his hand around the cigarette to shield it from the wind that whipped over the water.

“Just looking.” Ian’s voice had that same unearthly quality. Nothing strange enough Ian couldn’t pass—although he’d never be someone who could lose himself in a crowd—but to a man as keyed to the supernatural as Mike, the signs were obvious.

Soldiers of the invisible war were used to keeping secrets, but Ian had nothing to hide from Mike. “I know what you are,” Mike said, leaning down to rest his elbows on the rail that held them safe from the freezing water below. “I teamed up with a guy like you about fifteen years ago. We hunted monsters together for a while.”

Ian turned to Mike, his expression unreadable in the streetlamp-created twilight. “I know what you are, too. Templar, right?”

Mike nodded, blew a cloud of smoke into the frigid air.

“So it makes sense why you’re here. Of course the Church is going to want one of their magic-cops in on this. And if there are vampires in the city, it makes sense to have one of them on our team.” Ian leaned back over the canal, his bare hands resting on what must be very cold stone. “What I can’t figure out is what
I’m
doing here. I haven’t seen any sign of the folk since I got here, and it isn’t like they’re good at laying low.”

The folk. Short for the fair folk. The fae. Fairies. Wild, bloodthirsty, inhumanly vicious—no, they weren’t good at keeping a low profile. It wasn’t in their nature. Mike had gotten his own crash course in the folk back when he was running around with the other hunter like Ian.
 

“It’s not that I mind an all-expenses paid trip,” Ian continued. “St. Petersburg is gorgeous and I’ve always wanted to visit Russia. But it makes me nervous when I can’t figure out why it’s worth a million dollars to someone that I be here.”

“Kid, everything about this makes
me
nervous.” Hidden motives and a haunted city. What could go wrong? “Come on, we should get back to the hotel.”

Ian shook his head. “You go on. I’m going out. See what passes for club-hopping in this country. Try to make the most of my time here.”

“Dangerous to wander alone.”

Ian flashed Mike a cocky smile, reminding Mike once again of that time long ago when Mike himself had felt young and immortal. Before Mike had watched too many other young, immortal men die. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He walked away whistling. Mike squared his shoulders against the wind and began the long, cold walk back to the Astoria.

CHAPTER THREE

Early Sunday Morning

Rose dreamed, but not of herself.

Rose was a man. A terrified man. She was with him, inside him. Both herself and himself all at once.

She…
he
…was blindfolded. Hands on her arms both supported and dragged her across a smooth floor, cool under her bare feet. Either blood or sweat ran down her back, soaking into the waistband of her skirt…
jeans
.

Pain, yes, there was pain. Dream or no dream, Rose felt every aching bruise, every scratch, every wrenched joint. She…
he
…had put up a hell of a fight, but the attackers had been too numerous.

Her head throbbed hard. Even for a dream, her awareness was too murky. A concussion, probably.
 

Who were these people? What did they want? Where were they taking her? The man didn’t know, and therefore Rose didn’t know, but neither of them expected anything good.
 

This wasn’t the first time Rose had dreamed her way into someone, but it had never been this intense, this immediate. The fear, the pain—it overwhelmed Rose’s sense of self, made it hard for her to do anything but sink into the nightmare.

Her captors let go, and Rose couldn’t find her feet fast enough to keep her balance. Her head and shoulders hit the marble floor with a blinding crack. Fluttery panic held her awake, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Couldn’t find her…her what? Magic? Yes, magic. This man she was living through—he was a voider.

Someone yanked the hood off her head and more pain sparked through her at the explosion of light. The man’s terror spiked, threatened to drag Rose along with him into gibbering madness.
 

Enough was enough. Rose dove deep, searching for herself. She found her name, her body, and the anchoring knowledge that she was in a dream.

A dream, yes, but real. This had happened. Or was happening. A shimmering echo of something so horrible it had burned its presence into the city’s bones.
 

Now she’d pulled herself free from the panicking man, Rose had a clearer sense of her surroundings. Echoing space broken by towering marble columns. Malachite and murals. Gold and stained glass. Above her, a dome rising up into darkness with a ring of gilded angels staring down at her. A church? It had to be. But more grandiose than any church she’d ever set foot in.

The only light came from an impossibility. Rose had ignored it this long, figuring it for the strange sort of symbolic nonsense that so often populated dreams. Except the man she inhabited also focused in on the creature, like he saw it too. Like it had been there when this happened for real.

A being. Glowing. Floating. Hovering in the air above her. Was this really what the man had seen, or was it an emotional echo, warped and twisted by his near-insane fright?

The figure spoke, but the words stretched and echoed in Rose’s mind, unrecognizable. She fought for clarity through the haze of sleep and fear and death. Pain dulled her senses, shredded her concentration, froze her limbs.
Just a dream,
Rose repeated in her mind as her clarity threatened to dissolve.

Someone pulled her left arm out straight. The shining figure leaned down and drew a flaming sword. An honest-to-god flaming sword. Now, his words were clear. “For your crimes.”

The sword came down and Rose screamed as burning agony shot through what was left of her arm. “Stop!” she yelled and the dream froze.

Rose stood and pulled herself free of the dying man. The shadow of his pain stayed with her, would stay with her until she woke up. Maybe even after that. She was in deep.

More than ready to wake up, to leave this horror behind, Rose focused her attention on the glowing man. Around her, the church, the goons, the victim faded to darkness. Only the strange figure was left as Rose tried to see through the blinding radiance that surrounded him, tried to pick apart the emotional illusion to find the core of reality.

At that moment, the shining man turned to look at her.

That’s not right
, Rose thought as she stumbled back. Rose had taken charge of this vision. Nothing should be happening if she didn’t want it to.
 

“Little girl,” the man said. He spoke in Russian, but Rose understood the words. “Who are you, little girl? What are you doing here?”

Rose retained enough control to keep herself from answering, but she couldn’t break the contact.
Wake up, dammit!

His hand reached out, floating towards her, but Rose couldn’t move. Time slowed and she had barely drawn a breath when his bony fingers locked around her throat. “Tell me your name! Are you with
him
? Are you one of
them
?”

Rose clutched at his wrist, but his grip was stone. Choking, she kicked at the figure, but despite the hand tight around her neck, the rest of him was too far away. “You cannot hide, little one. I see you. Yes…yes…come to me.”

Rose struggled as a gray haze grew at the edge of her vision. She couldn’t breathe. It shouldn’t matter. This was a dream, dammit! She shouldn’t be able to suffocate, but no question that was happening.

With a final, desperate burst of strength, Rose swung at him with a balled fist. Sudden, sharp pain radiated up her arm as her knuckles collided with something solid.

Rose opened her eyes. She couldn’t feel her feet. She was freezing. She wore nothing but the nightgown in which she’d gone to sleep, but she wasn’t in her room, wasn’t in her bed. In front of her, a massive door. Her knuckles were scraped and bleeding—the door was what she’d struck. She spun around, trying to get her bearings. Across a wide open square, she spotted the warm, welcoming lights of the Astoria. Somehow, she’d sleepwalked over to the cathedral next door.

In the darkness, the square had turned sinister. A larger-than-life statue of a man on horseback stared down at her from its shadowy pedestal, tricks of the shaded streetlights turning the eyes of both the man and his horse angular and evil. A dreadful stillness surrounded her so that she could hear the water of the nearby canal lapping against its concrete sides. The hotel looked very far away across a sea of dark concrete.
 

And the nightmare wasn’t over. As Rose stood there, trying to make sense of her situation, three men in black came around the far corner of St. Isaac’s. One of them pointed, yelled. The words were Russian, but his meaning was clear. They were after Rose.