Rise of the Firebird (53 page)

Pushing aside her nerves, Anya glided her hands up over his chest, stretching herself along him and kissed him. “I don’t want to sleep.” A wave of heat rolled up his body making her skin break out in goose pimples. As his hands moved up her back, Anya mentally checked the magical barrier she’d put on the room. She didn’t want their magic broadcasting out through Helsinki.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep?”

She rolled gently on top of him, luxuriating in the warmth of his skin. “I’m certain sleeping is the last thing on my mind.” The firebird’s magic rolled up through her and she stopped kissing Yvan.

A bit of privacy please
, Anya said to the firebird.

Humans are so weird about sex
.

“Now!” Both she and Yvan said at the same time and then burst out laughing.

“Oh, God, this is so weird,” she managed as they sat up together. “I thought I was going to be so cool about seducing you.”

“It’s okay, I like to hear you laugh.” Yvan smiled as he ran his fingers through her hair and down her arms. “I like having permission to touch you.” Heat flared through Anya’s chest as his mouth found the curve of her collarbone.

She had to be so, so careful with Trajan, his self-control always in the back of her mind even when they kissed. She didn’t have to worry about holding back with Yvan. Even if she lost control and set them both alight, or exploded with magic he could contain it, he’d be safe. Her hands tightened on the muscles of his back.

“Anya? Your magic just…” Yvan began but her mouth was on his, stealing words and breath. Yvan flipped her onto her back, his long body pinning hers.

“Look, Anya,” he whispered, “we are glowing.” Where their skin touched, magic was moving between them in a haze of light. “It’s linking on its own.”

Anya touched his face with a trembling hand, “I love you. I don’t want to hide from you anymore.”

“Then don’t,” he said with a look that swallowed her whole. “I love every part of you, and the dark parts of your soul that you fear, I’ll fill with scorching fire.”

He kissed her and her shields shattered under the flames that licked up their skin, burning away the last of her defences until all that remained between them was light.

Look through the heavy snow and dark night to a mountain hidden deep within the forests of Russia. On a plateau made of stone, a woman in fur stands in front of a blazing fire. Her pale silvery hair lifts in swirling wisps as the wind and magic of the ritual rise up around her.

She starts to chant in an old tongue, a black tongue, long forgotten by the world. She starts to move about the fire in a circle, her arms dipping and swaying as the power takes over her. A black slime starts to stick to her feet as she dances, calling up a power that should never be disturbed. She needs more allies in the war to come and she will sacrifice all to get them. Even what remains of her soul.

Vasilli stood against the wall of Yanka’s personal chambers and watched her braid her pale hair. “Have you heard from the men yet?” she asked for the fifth time that hour.

“They’ve arrived at the farm and are setting up your base camp,” he replied. “I’m not looking forward to going back there.” His scars had already begun to have phantom pains. When Yanka had told him that they would be returning to Anya’s farm a week before, he’d argued violently against it.

“It has to be there, I told you!” Yanka snapped. “You tried to rush the plan with Ladislav and now you wear the consequences of that on your skin. The farm is the best place for power. It stands on two crossroads with the power of four lands. We’ll need to draw on it if we are to destroy the walls to let Skazki and Russia become one once more. When it is done, I will draw all of the power from that place and make sure I leave that hell hole as magically dead as Ynys Yr Afalon. We need to get the game off that bitch Baba Yaga. One more place and I would’ve been able to take it.”

“We need to be ready for her. She’ll feel us bringing the army through. Her spies are everywhere, if they don’t know already.”

“It matters not. She can bring her rabble of ridiculous Illumination with her. I have allies she knows nothing of.”

“The Russian President you’re fucking won’t deploy the army for you. In any case, humans will be useless in this fight.”

“I was not referring to that fool,” she said as she walked to her wardrobe and dropped her dressing gown. Fresh pink scars, welts and bruises marred her skin. They looked recent and violent.

“What have you done, Yanka? What magic is this?” he demanded.

“I did what I had to do to ensure a strong alliance. Don’t look so surprised, Vasilli, you know how this game is played. If you hadn’t tried to rush things, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to go to such extreme measures.” Vasilli hated when she blamed him for things beyond his control. It made him feel like a little boy again and it riled him.

“You were the one that got caught by Baba Yaga to begin with and left me to clean up your mess like you always do.”

Yanka slapped him hard across the face but he bore it without retaliation. “Is this how you feel? You think I wanted to be caught by her. The marks that have you so concerned are nothing to what I had to endure for the years she held me. I cried out for you then and you never came.” Her green eyes narrowed. “It makes me wonder if you wanted to see me free after all.” Vasilli pulled out his knife and placed her hand over the hilt, pushing the blade tightly against his throat.

“Do it. Kill me if you really think that you cannot trust me.” The knife cut into him and warm blood spilt down his neck. Yanka pulled her hand away.

“You are the only one I do trust, but you must trust me in return.” Yanka held his face in her hands.

“I wouldn’t be standing here beside you if I did not,” he said. She leaned forward and licked the blood from his neck. Her power seared the cut and healed it.

“Let’s not fight anymore, my beautiful son. Let us go and feed on the fears of our enemies.”

“Promise me that you’ll kill Baba Yaga once and for all this time.”

“If you bring me Anya’s head, I will bring you Baba Yaga’s,” Yanka held her hand out.

“Agreed,” Vasilli smiled as he shook it. What a surprise she would get when he killed them all.

In Edinburgh, the crate that held the game began to rock and shake. Its guards eye it nervously before one of them picked up their radio. “Sorry to disturb you, Ma’am, but there seems to be something going on down here. You’d best come and see.”

Cursing, Baba Yaga stormed her way downstairs and pushed the guard out of the way. “Get out, the both of you,” she demanded. She didn’t like to handle the game when it wasn’t being played. It was a volatile thing and when she had tried to touch another player’s piece over a century ago, she had lost an arm. It took months to grow back and she still felt the burn of it when she got too close.

Baba Yaga opened the lid and looked in at the board. Anya’s white pieces were lined up like neat soldiers, and Vasilli’s fresh set of red ones that had appeared days earlier. She hovered a hand over them, careful not to touch. A vision of Vasilli sitting atop a throne of dead Álfr flashed through her mind and she gagged. She’d wondered what had fuelled his ascent onto the board. Now she knew.

“What have you created, Yanka?” she muttered. Her old student and nemesis had gone too far in her fear of Anya. Vasilli would have enough power to destroy them all. She closed the lid and relocked the crate.

Upstairs, she took a bundle of black wool from her basket and started to thread it onto her loom.
Clack!
Fire
Clack!
Death. Fear.
Clack! Clack!
Yanka’s naked broken body.
Clack!
Russia
Clack!
Farm.

“You, stupid cow, thinking you have the power to bring down the gates.” Baba Yaga pulled out her mobile phone and lit a cigarette while it rang. “It has started. I need every Illumination called in. We are going to Russia before the Darkness rips the worlds apart.”

At Legba’s Ladies, Isabelle had called together a meeting of every available hunter and ally they had in the city. There were fifty-seven altogether and as far as she knew, it was the largest group that had been assembled in over five hundred years.

“Thanks for coming, everyone,” Harley said after they had all calmed down. “I’ve asked you here today to pitch you an idea. At the moment, we’ve been working to stop the chaos that has erupted down South but the violence is increasing. The Council have over reached and now their shitty plan has backfired. They’re the ones that have started this war in the city they swore to protect. They killed my grandmother for speaking out against them.”

She paused, trying to keep the hitch out of her voice. “I propose we cut the head off the snake. Let’s raid the mansion on Coliseum Street. It’s an open haven for the filth that has infected our streets. Let’s end this. If we get rid of their protection, the others will skulk back to whatever dark shit hole they crawled out of.”

“There has always been a Conseil Neutres,” a bulky hunter from South Africa said. “Who will take their place?”

“Does anyone need to? The last lot has fucked up pretty grandly,” argued Sissy, a hunter from New York.

“You want to establish a council that has the city’s best interest at heart. Not to rule but to govern,” Cerise said. “If there is nothing, the city will remain unprotected to allow all sorts of pretenders seeking to establish a monarchy like the old days. There hasn’t been a successful queen since Queen Marie.”

“A monarchy can work if the heart of the ruler is true,” Lovelace claimed.

“You only say that because you still live under a monarchy,” Cerise huffed.

“What can be set up afterward is a later problem,” Harley interrupted. “To be honest, I don’t give a shit about a future council. I care about the death of the current one. I’m trying not trying to hide my feelings behind any noble intentions. I want revenge. I want all the fuckers dead and gone, but I need you to help. Those that are willing to give it, stay. The rest of you get the fuck out of my shop.”

“Easy, Harley,” Isabelle whispered cautiously. Harley was tired and through with mincing her words, but hunters were touchy at the best of times. A few left but the majority stayed much to Isabelle’s relief.

“She’s coming into her own, isn’t she?” Silvian said from beside Isabelle. Harley had Fox passing out printouts of the house and the easiest access points.

“She’s grieving but at least she is focussed.”

“Revenge is the great motivator.”

“It is for her. I’m sad that she’s going through this again. It took a long time for her to get over her parent’s death and take her revenge on her father’s killer. She still has nightmares. I don’t know what Lya’s death will do to her in the long run.”

“Blue Jay will always stand beside Harley and has the wisdom and experience to calm her.”

“You coming to kill some people?” Hamish slapped Silvian on the back.

“Of course I am. I haven’t had the chance to have a decent battle in over a hundred years. The last time, I had Aramis beside me and there’s nothing as beautifully psychotic as Álfr battle magic.”

“Aramis used battle magic? He seems like too much of a pacifist to use his magic for killing,” scoffed Hamish.

“There’s much about Aramis that you don’t know, young Hamish. He was one of the Álfr’s most proficient killers. He was an Enforcer with Søren and believe me, the pair of them fighting together was truly a horrific splendour. Put against those two on a bad day would have had you running away with your tail between your legs.”

“Good, it means that they’ll be able to protect Aleki and Katya and everyone else,” Isabelle said over the top of Hamish’s protesting.

“Don’t feel guilty for not joining them in Europe. They have the situation well in hand. We are needed here, not in Europe,” Silvian stressed. “The whole world is warring with each other. Let Anya take care of her home and you take care of New Orleans. We don’t need the Illumination or Darkness trying to claim it in the fall out.”

“I know that, but it still feels strange being apart from them for so long. I suppose you get used to the noise,” said Isabelle.

“You don’t think that this is loud enough?” Silvian pointed at the group of arguing hunters.

“Whatever happens tonight, I want Frankie dead,” she said firmly. “Harley suspects he killed Lya but Hamish
knows
he did. I don’t want Harley to kill him. They were very close once; they grew up together. She shouldn’t have to live with killing him.”

“But if you rob her of her revenge, then how will she get over it?”

“She’ll find a way. Lya was precious to me too. We all want revenge.”

At nightfall, the hunters filled the streets surrounding the Coliseum Street mansion. Harley and Silvian had set silencing and protection spells in the area so that no one would report a disturbance. Fox took the more pragmatic approach and cut the power and phones in the whole block. Isabelle carried Hamish’s Winchester rifles on her back and was loaded with as many weapons she could carry. Cerise was beside her, looking subdued in a black turtleneck and jeans, her firebrand hair tied back in a ponytail.

“I’m sorry if you see a side of me tonight that you don’t like,” she had told them on the car ride over. “I’ve been burning for a fight since that bitch killed Trajan and I’m not going to hold back.” Isabelle couldn’t imagine what a keres’ true form was like, but Cerise’s hands had already sprouted long curved claws and her eyes had turned black.

Hamish let out a long growl beside her and Isabelle gave the signal. A storm rolled in overhead as Silvian tore through the wards and protection spells around the mansion as if they were paper.

Hunters leapt of the picket fences and stormed through the house. By the time Isabelle got through the front door, the hallway was littered with bodies with long sprays of blood on the walls. She had to find Frankie.

Sissy screamed ahead of her as a Camazotz ripped her in half. Isabelle shot it full of silver bullets as Silvian’s scimitars hacked off its wings. With a bloody grin, he disappeared into smoke and the disembodied scimitars shot away. Harley appeared by her side sweaty and breathless. “The house is full of creatures I only dreamt of existing,” she panted. “The bastards have been planning something for a while.”