Gunmetal Magic (29 page)

Roman’s chant gained power, preternaturally loud, words pouring out, whipping and twisting through the roar like a live current of power.

The curtain of webs snapped taut and broke. Roman stood in the gap, arms spread wide, his black robe flaring as if caught by a ghostly wind. He grasped a wooden staff topped with the head of a monster bird in his right hand. The bird’s beak gaped wide open, filled with darkness and grotesque, so big a watermelon could have fit through it. The pearl-colored web twisted into a knot, sucked into that cavernous mouth.

The floor of the warehouse shuddered. Roman stared straight up, the chant bubbling from his mouth, each word vibrating with power. Splashes of pure darkness swirled around his black boots. Something peered at me through that darkness. Something ancient, malevolent, and cold.

The temperature in the room dropped. I shivered and watched a cloud of vapor escape my mouth.

A choir of deep male voices sang in tune to Roman’s chant. The web kept hurtling into the staff’s mouth.

My hands itched, wanting to release claws. Every hair on my body stood on end.

The warehouse shook.

An enormous bell tolled, a menacing bass note to the choir and the chant. Despair rolled over me like a thick viscous
wave. Images fluttered before my eyes: a hill of corpses against the dusk, bright red blood painted over by feathery frost, and a primal dark figure atop the corpse mound…

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the web on the wall flutter behind me, stretching toward Roman.

I dropped down and hugged the floor.

The web tore off the wall and flew over my head. For a second it stuck to the doorway of the office, billowing like a sail in a strong wind, and then it was pulled toward the staff.

The last of the web vanished into the dark beak. Roman’s chant changed, receding from overpowering to soothing. The darkness melted, taking with it the somber choir and the bell. The top of Roman’s staff closed its beak and shrank.

I sat up slowly.

Roman raised his arms, as if accepting an ovation, and grinned at me, flashing white teeth. “Huh? Am I good or what?”

I clapped. Roman bowed.

I got up off the floor and walked to the dark wizard.

“Do I get a hug for being a hero?” He wagged his black eyebrows at me. “Maybe a kiss?”

For being an evil priest of an evil dark god, Roman seemed surprisingly normal. Either he was hiding his evilness really well, or it really was just a job for him. Priest of darkness, nine to five. It’s just the family business.

“No kiss?” Roman looked sad.

Why not? It’s not like Raphael owned me or we were together. It could be much simpler with someone like Roman. We could start fresh and clean. I looked at the dark wizard. Really looked at him. He had the most wicked eyes, dark and full of a strange fire.
Here goes.

I leaned over and kissed him. His lips covered mine. He was good at kissing, not really claiming or demanding, but enticing, almost charming. And I felt nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. No heat, no spark. Nothing.

Stupid Raphael. I wished so badly I could be rid of him, but when he kissed me, I wanted to throw him on the bed and make him nuts. When Roman kissed me on the mouth, it felt like a peck on the cheek.

We broke apart. Roman grinned. Well, one of us had enjoyed it.

Roman’s gaze fixed on something over my shoulder. I glanced back and saw the fishing net hanging off the hook.

“That can kill you,” he said. “You better stand closer to me.”

“Any closer and we’ll be rubbing against each other.”

“Now that’s an idea…This can kill you, too.” He pointed at the monkey bust. “Also that.” The sandglass. “And those”— he pointed at the stone spheres—“those can kill everyone if used properly. This is like an armory for a mage.”

Roman pushed himself from the shelf, one arm protectively around my shoulder. “I think I need to see that staff now.”

I led him down to the office. “It’s in a glass case here. I didn’t touch it.” I realized he wasn’t next to me and turned. Roman stood in the doorway, his gaze fixed on the staff, his mouth slack.

“Kostyanoi posokh,”
he whispered.

“What?”

“The Bone Staff. Here, hold this!” Roman thrust his stick at me.

I shook my head. “No. It bites things. I’ve seen it do it.”

“He will behave,” Roman promised.

I gripped the staff. It turned and stared at me with its vicious raptor eyes. Its beak opened a fraction of an inch. I bared my teeth and pantomimed breaking it. The beak snapped shut.

Roman dug in the pouch at his waist, pulled out a handful of moist black soil, and tossed it at the floor in front of the case. He knelt on the dirt, said something in Russian, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Nothing happened.

Roman cautiously opened one eye, then the other.

“No big kaboom,” I assured him.

The black volhv rose. “You got any more of those gloves?”

I pulled a pair out of my duffel and passed them to him. He slipped the gloves on, opened the case, and carefully took the staff out. The top of the staff flowed like molten wax forming an outline of a serpent mouth with two glistening fangs. The Bone Staff hissed. The bird staff in my hand screeched.

“Shhh,” Roman murmured. “
Tiho
,
tiho
, easy.”

The serpent melted back into the bone. A moment later the bird realized it was screaming by itself and shut its beak.

“We’ve been looking for this for eight hundred years.” Roman shook his head. “How did it even get here? When you described it, I thought it might have been a duplicate someone made to show off, but this? This is the real thing. I can feel the power through the gloves even.”

“So this is some sort of artifact?” I asked. I felt so tired all of a sudden. I had to make sure not to get bitten again. The snake venom was turning me into an old decrepit woman.

“The Bone Staff belonged to the Black Volhv, the head priest of our god,” he said. “It’s been missing for centuries, since the Mongols invaded Russia. Eventually the Horde came to the town of Kitezh on Lake Svetloyar. It was the last of the great pagan strongholds. But the magic was already weak, and the Mongols were too many, so the volhvi decided to work one last spell to keep the holy relics from the Horde. They sank the city.”

“What do you mean, sank?” I asked.

“Buried it in the lake. The whole thing. The Bone Staff was supposed to have been lost with the city, but then years later a respected old volhv, who was just a boy when Kitezh sank, claimed on his deathbed that the staff and other relics had been smuggled out of the city by him and two others before the place went under.”

“So this is a holy relic?”

“Yep. The bones are supposed to belong to a Black Serpent Guhd. My dad will shit himself.”

He was a walking encyclopedia of magic expertise. Just what I needed, except the picture of my knife was stuck in a nonfunctioning computer. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen off the desk and sketched the knife one-handed, still holding on to the staff. “Do you know anything about a knife? Looks somewhat like this?”

Roman squinted at my drawing. “Is that a walrus tusk?”

“No.” Obviously my drawing skills were lacking.

“Then no. Not off the top of my head, no. Magic knives aren’t exactly scarce.”

Drat.

“You better let me have that.” Roman reached for the bird
staff and I let go. The volhv took it and grinned. “Two staves. It’s like having two women.”

I rolled my eyes. Men.

“Thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome. Are you done here? If not, I’ll wait.”

I didn’t find anything useful in the papers. The only thing that had any valuable information was the computer. I crouched down, disconnected the tower, and picked it up. “I’m done.”

Outside, the night was pleasantly warm. We turned the corner and I pulled my hat off.
Phew.
The night breeze cooled my sweat-dampened hair.

Now I just had to get to the car. Get to the car and hopefully not pass out while I was driving. The exhaustion settled deep into my bones. It felt like I was dragging a cement block chained to my feet with every step and carrying another one in my arms. Look at the big bad shapeshifter. It was good that night had fallen and butterflies fluttered around. If one of them landed on me, it would score a perfect knockout.

Roman walked next to me, his stride brisk, looking fresh as a daisy. A very menacing black daisy.

“I can make it from here,” I told him.
I hope.

“Please,” he said, as if I offended him. “I’ll walk you to your car. Streets are not safe at night.”

I shifted the tower in my arms. “You do realize I turn into a monster?”

“When you turn into one, we’ll talk. Right now you’re not a monster. You’re a lady. A very attractive one. And this is a bad neighborhood.”

Heh.
Ever the gentleman. “So if someone were to make trouble, would you turn him into a frog?”

“I don’t do frogs. That’s my mother’s thing. The transmogrification never works completely. Changing the shape of something against its will requires a lot of energy, so you change someone into a frog and then it fails and he turns back into a human and comes after you with a gun.”

“Speaking from personal experience?”

“No, but I’ve seen it happen.”

We turned another corner. Roman cleared his throat. “So. You come here often?”

I cracked up.

“I like it when you laugh,” he said. “It’s hot.”

Woo! “Thank you, Mr. Wizard.”

“Oh no, not a wizard.” He shook his head. “Magus maybe. I could live with that, but the proper term is volhv, really. We are priests.”

I ducked through the gap in the ruin and stopped. My Jeep sat on four wooden blocks. Someone had taken my tires. They jacked my Jeep and stole my tires, the rims, and everything.

Screw you, Pucker Alley.

Roman shook his head. “Something tells me this is not a safe neighborhood.”

I exhaled rage through my nose, like a pissed-off bull. It would take me thirty minutes to reach the office at a fast run on a good day. On a bad day like today, I’d be walking for a couple of hours.

“It’s okay.” Roman let out a shrill whistle.

A rapid staccato of hoofbeats approached from a distance. The night parted and an enormous horse trotted toward us. Massive, its coat slick and soft, like midnight sable, the horse approached, pounding the asphalt with every step. She stopped by Roman and nuzzled his shoulder, her long luxurious mane falling in a black wave down one side.

Wow.

Roman shifted his bird staff into the crook of his elbow and petted her nose. “Good girl. See, we can ride.”

“Together on one horse?”

He grinned.

“You’re a dirty volhv,” I told him.

“Okay, okay, I’ll walk.”

“No, it’s your horse. Besides, I’m a big girl. I can make it home on my own.”

“No.” He shook his head. “If you walk away, I’ll just follow you. I’m going to see you home safe.”

His jaw muscles were set, giving his face that telltale stubborn expression. Great. My dark volhv turned out to be a Southern gentleman. I had struck some sort of uniquely male chord in his soul. In his head, abandoning me alone on a night street clearly did not compute.

“There are some women who’d be offended in my place,” I told him. “I’m not helpless and I turn into a monster.”

“Maybe I’m afraid and I want company.” He pretended to shiver. “I may need a big strong monster to protect me. You wouldn’t leave a defenseless attractive man out on the streets alone, would you?”

I laughed. “Okay. You win.”

Soon the two staves rested securely in a leather holder attached to the saddle and my tower was packed into a saddlebag. We walked, Roman with his hand on the horse’s black leather reins embroidered with silver thread and I next to him, carrying a compound bow and a quiver of arrows I had gotten out of the car.

“So why the Chernobog?” I asked. “I’m sure Russians have other gods, besides the deity of cold, evil, and death.”

“It’s the family trade. Our pantheon is all about balance. Where there is light, there must be darkness. Life is followed by death and the decay nourishes new life. Belobog, the white god, and Chernobog, they are brother gods, you see. My uncle is a white volhv, one of his sons will likely be a white volhv, too, and our side is the black volhvs. So that’s why I’m Chernobog’s priest.” He turned to me and grinned. “And also for the chicks.”

Ha! “The chicks?”

“Mhm.” He nodded, completely serious. “Women like a man in black.”

I laughed.

“Admit you were impressed,” he said.

I kept laughing.

“A little bit?” He held up his index finger and his thumb about an inch away from each other. “Not even a little bit?”

“I was impressed.”

“See?”

“It’s just you seem really funny and easygoing.”

“I do enough bad shit to keep ten city blocks awake at night wrapped up in nightmares. I don’t need to maintain an image. At least not all the time.” He glanced at me. “I’m really quite a nice fellow in my time off. I even cook.”

The street ended. Below us a vast graveyard of broken buildings stretched, some little more than heaps of concrete dust, some still faintly recognizable as their former selves. The moonlight gleamed on a million shards of glass. Wooden bridges spanned the wreckage. To the left, behind the empty
shells of the buildings, turquoise and orange fog rose, like a faint aurora borealis that had fallen from the sky. Unicorn Lane, the place where magic raged and bucked like an infuriated wild horse. We would be keeping clear. Only fools visited the Unicorn when the magic was up.

We started on the long bridge.

“So what about you?” Roman asked. “You seem different.”

“How?”

“You were all clenched up before.” He drew his hand over his face, turning his expression somber. “Very serious. Robot Andrea.”

Robot, huh? I showed him the edge of my teeth. “You liked me anyway.”

“Well, how can you not like this?” He indicated me with his hands. “I’m only a man.”

“You are shameless.”