Iron and Blood (22 page)

Veles had been a few steps behind Jasinski for months, closing in only after the crafty witch had slipped the noose. Jasinski had sought counsel from other witches in Europe. Nowak, Dabrowski, Jasinski, Kozlowski, Bajek, Chomicki, Kubiak, Radwanski… the names replayed like a chant in Veles’s mind
.
Some of the witches Jasinski had consulted had gone into hiding themselves, and the ones who had not, Veles had killed, but only after they had revealed what they told the Witch of Pulawski Way.

Now, Veles had more pieces of the puzzle he needed in order to force the
gessyan
to do his bidding. For now, he wished to force them back into the depths until the tourmaquartz had been mined. Afterwards, he could use his control over them to wield them as a weapon—but not until Veles found the artifacts Jasinski had gotten Brand and Desmet to acquire.

When the streets were quiet, Veles made his move. Jasinski had a shop on the first floor of the old rooming house where he told fortunes and set or removed curses. Above that was his apartment, and in the back of the building was an apartment that belonged to the landlady. At this hour, no lights glimmered in the back windows.

It should have been an easy thing to break in, ransack the place, and remove whatever notes or artifacts Jasinski had acquired. Except that it wasn’t. Not with the wardings the witch had set. Thwaites had tried sending his men, but they had been unable to enter. Veles’s prior attempt had gotten him nowhere, and he had been wary of attracting attention. He doubted that the landlady would have any special ability to get past Jasinski’s wards, even if his men strongarmed her. That meant it was up to him to make another attempt.

The last time, he had tripped a magical alarm that set up a huge racket and caused brilliant white lights to go off all around the building. Simple, but effective—and it took skill to make such a warding undetectable. Veles had not stuck around to see what happened next, and had grudgingly upgraded his estimation of Jasinski’s abilities.

Now, Veles walked in a slow circle around the building, a small dagger hidden in the palm of his left hand as his
athame
. Even at a distance, he could feel Jasinski’s wards like a tension pushing outward from the building. Veles was sure he could get up to the rooming house, maybe even enter the landlady’s apartment. But so far, the wards had repulsed any attempts to enter Jasinski’s shop or apartment.

Veles stepped over the warded circle. A distinct uneasiness washed over him, the sense that he was not welcome and should leave. That alone would have been enough to send most regular people away. Taking advantage of the temporarily quiet street, Veles moved closer, fighting a growing sense of discomfort that escalated with every step.

By the time he reached the front door of the shop, his palms were sweating and his heart was racing. Yet while he was uncomfortable, nothing had physically prevented him from advancing. He had gotten this far before, only to fail when he had reached for the doorknob and been driven back by a burst of most unpleasant power.

This time he was better prepared. From a pocket, he withdrew a withered, blackened hand. From another, he took a candle, made according to strict specifications that would enable its light to be seen only by him. The hand itself had been difficult to acquire, even more difficult to imbue with the magic that would turn it from the severed hand of a hanged man into a true Hand of Glory, capable of opening any lock.

As he reached toward the knob with the Hand of Glory, he chanted under his breath in Romanian, gathering power from the rivers and coal seams, the valleys and cliffs. He sent the magic into the withered hand, felt the power swell, and reached for the door.

An invisible force crashed down on him, like being crushed beneath an ocean wave and swept out to sea. He found himself several feet away from the house, at the inside limit of the warding circle he had drawn, feeling as if he were being pressed by a heavy weight.

Veles sent a blast of his own power to counter the attack. His effort only made the force more difficult to resist, making it hard to breathe, almost impossible to move. He was pinned on his back in a public place. Jasinski’s intent—to both repel and humiliate—was abundantly clear.

Veles lashed back with his own magic, shredding the force that attacked him. He stood up, brushing the dust from his clothing, and looked around. No one was in sight, but that did not preclude the neighbors from having seen him from their windows. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he hurled a bolt of power at the building, strong enough to blow the clapboard house apart. The energy hit Jasinski’s warding and dissipated in a brief, golden glow, succeeding only in bowling over a couple of nearby garbage cans.

The defensive magic had the distinct ‘aftertaste’ he had come to associate with Jasinski’s power. But this time, Veles sensed something else besides the magical signature of the Polish witch. Although he could not exactly say why, he felt certain Jasinski had warded the house specifically against him. That meant that any power Veles sent against the protections would generate increasingly dangerous repercussions.

Damn him,
Veles thought, berating himself for losing control and using his magic in a loud and useless attack.
He knew it would be difficult for me to find another witch powerful enough to try to break his wardings. Andreas and Renate Thalberg are the only witches of sufficient skill, and they’re on his side.

Swearing under his breath, Veles strode off, sure that if the clatter of the metal cans hadn’t drawn the attention of the neighborhood, his sorcery had. He had judged Jasinski’s abilities as a witch to be powerful, but lesser than his own.
That might be, yet he’s used his power cleverly
.
He’s more of a problem than I expected.

Returning would do no good. Another witch might be able to slip past the wardings, but only a massive strike from Veles might do the trick—one that would be sure to destroy the building and bring the attention of authorities. And while Veles was sure that the Alekanovo stones themselves were not in the house, he was equally certain whatever papers or journals Jasinski might have kept, that he was so desperate to guard, would be of use.

I don’t have time to play games,
he thought darkly as he strode away, eager to be gone before anyone investigated the noise he had caused.

He had not gone far when he felt the chill of old, fell power. The street around him had fallen unnaturally silent. A warning prickled at the back of his neck, and he called up his magic, ready for an attack.

The wraith sprang from the shadows of an alleyway. It swept toward Veles in a billowing wave, growing larger as it neared so that Veles could see nothing of the street behind it. The wraith’s magic stank of decay as its shadows formed themselves into long, grasping fingers and bony, grabbing hands.

Veles stood his ground. “Go no farther!” he commanded, repeating the instruction in Romanian. He raised his right hand and held it palm out, summoning his power and sending a strong blast of wind toward the roiling darkness.

The creature fell back a pace, before regaining its momentum. Veles brought both his hands together in a loud clap, and a streak of lightning sizzled from his fingers, passing right through the wraith without slowing it whatsoever.

Veles reached beneath his shirt and drew out a silver medallion on a black silken cord. It was an old medal, imprinted with the scaled shape of a balaur, and like the legendary dragon, the medal was a powerful conduit of magic. A burst of midnight blue energy streamed from the medal, growing brighter and more powerful with Veles’s chants. The wraith twisted and thrashed, and an unholy screech echoed in the night air.

The creature gave a desperate lunge, and its darkness tore at Veles’s sleeves, ripping his coat and raising bloody scratches on his arms. He chanted even louder, holding the medallion white-knuckled, willing his power into it until the stream of energy was so bright he had to avert his face.

With a final, tortured scream the wraith slashed its claws across Veles’s face before tumbling back into the darkness, dissipating like smoke on the wind. For another moment, Veles remained frozen in place, still gripping the medallion, though the blue light had winked out at the same time the wraith vanished. Slowly, warily, he lowered the medallion, but did not replace it beneath his shirt.

He stepped out of the street, into a doorway and took stock. His power was depleted, and he knew that he could not withstand another attack this night. He blinked blood from his eyes, and a glance in the window of a nearby store told him that the wraith had managed to inflict three long scratches across his left cheek. The sleeves of his coat looked as if someone had taken a razor to them, and while the scratches on his arms were not dangerously deep, Veles would need to apply poultices and magical herbs to his injuries to keep them from going bad.

For a few heartbeats, his hands shook from the terror of the confrontation, and his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Long training enabled him to regain control of his body and emotions.
Anger is far more productive than fear
.
Once I get the Russian stones and the Polish witch’s book, those creatures will be terrified of me.
Veles scanned the area around him and quickly moved away—knowing that watchers would arrive soon. If the attack on the house didn’t get their attention, the fight with the
gessyan
was sure to.

“I
TRUST THE
trip to England was uneventful?” Dr. Konrad Nils turned away from the large desk where he had been examining an antique manuscript, and set down his monocle.

“We had a couple of ups and downs,” Jake replied, adjusting his collar.

“Nothing important,” Rick echoed.

Nils raised an eyebrow as if he suspected there was more to the tale, but let it go. “I wanted to let you know how very sorry I am about your father’s death. I relied on your father, and on Brand and Desmet, to bring me many of the lovely items in Mr. Carnegie’s collection.

Jake swallowed, and nodded. “We’re all adjusting to the loss. But I wanted to assure you that Brand and Desmet will continue.”

Nils nodded, and then poured cups of tea for Jake and Rick and himself, before settling in behind his massive, mahogany desk. “I’m certain that in this time of sorrow, you have more essential things to do than meet with clients. Which makes me wonder what the real purpose is for your call?”

Jake took a sip of tea as he framed his response. “First of all, we’re attempting to follow up on recent shipments, to make sure they were received.”

“Yes, the shipments came in. I’ve got the paperwork here somewhere. The items are in the receiving room; I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet.”

Jake smiled. “I’m wondering whether there might have been something… unusual about the objects that may have drawn unwanted attention to Father, or to Brand and Desmet.”

Nils put down his tea cup. “You don’t think his death was from natural causes?”

Jake shrugged. “Perhaps. But there’ve been a number of unusual incidents since then. Let’s just say, we’re trying to be thorough.”

For a long moment, Nils stared out the window before he spoke. “What I’m going to tell you can’t be repeated. If you quote me, I’ll deny it. You can’t be in the museum business for long without realizing that some things can’t be explained by normal facts.

“We handle artifacts used in religious rituals; mementos of important events, things that people valued because of their emotional significance. Sometimes, objects people wanted enough to kill or die for.”

Nils took a sip of tea and leaned back in his chair. “You won’t hear many scientists or academics talk about ghosts or hauntings, but very few people would find it comfortable to spend the night in a large museum, surrounded by the collections.” A rueful smile touched his lips. “Perhaps we lock the doors at night as much to keep things in as to keep people out.”

“What kinds of things?”

Nils gave an eloquent shrug. “Things as old as human memory—maybe older.”

“I’m not sure—”

“Some collectors in New Pittsburgh have been looking for certain objects for a very, very long time,” Nils went on. “Lifetimes, in fact. If such a dedicated collector were to discover that a coveted object had been acquired by someone else, the reaction might be quite heated.”

He knows about vampires,
Jake thought, working to keep his face impassive. “We’ve often seen bidding wars, when pieces go up for auction,” Rick replied. “The competition can get vicious.”

“I’ve seen many things in the years I’ve been tending Mr. Carnegie’s collections,” Nils said. “And on more than one occasion, I’ve suspected that someone who wanted an object very badly was willing to go to any length to obtain it.”

“That’s what we think, too,” Jake said. “But we don’t know which object, or who wanted it. Whoever it is, they’re persistent—and dangerous. And we don’t believe they have whatever it is they thought Father possessed.”

Nils’s expression was difficult to read. “You’re on the right path. If you hadn’t already started, I’d have suggested you look at the most recent orders and shipments your father handled—the official ones, and the ones that were off the books. I assume that is the reason for your visit? If so, I can assure you that none of our recent acquisitions would raise an eyebrow.”