Magic Slays

Chapter 9

IN ANOTHER LIFETIME, JOHN WHITE PARK HAD housed a golf course flanked by a nice middle-class neighborhood of brick houses and arbitrarily curving streets. The houses still survived, but the park had gone to hell some time ago. Dense underbrush flanked the crumbling asphalt road, and past it tall ashes and poplars reached their way to the sky, vying for space with mast-straight pines.
The pre-Shift maps put the park at around forty acres. The recent Pack map, which was the envy of every law enforcement official in the area and of which I was now a proud owner due to being the "Consort," put it closer to ninety. The trees had eaten a chunk of the subpision south of Beecher Street and chomped their way through Greenwood Cemetery.
Ninety acres of dense woods was a lot of ground to cover.
I turned the corner. A large duck sat in the middle of the street. To the left of the duck, a deep ditch took up half of the road. No way through.
The magic was up and my Jeep made enough noise to give a thunder god a complex. You'd think the stupid bird would move. I honked the horn. The duck stared at me, ruffling its brown feathers.
Honk-honk. Hoooonk!
Nothing.
"Move, you silly bird."
The duck remained unimpressed. I should get out more. This mated life made me too soft. I couldn't even scare a duck off the road.
I got out of the Jeep and walked over to the duck. "Scoot!"
The bird gave me an evil stare.
I nudged her gently with my boot. The duck rose and flopped on my foot. The bill pinched my jeans and the bird tried to pull me to the left. One of us was nuts and it wasn't me.
"This isn't funny."
The bird turned left and let out a single loud quack.
"What is it? Did Timmy fall down a well?"
"Quack!" I took a few steps forward and saw a narrow gap in the wall of green. A path, ping deep into the park. I peered at the forest. It didn't give off an "I'll kill you with my trees" vibe the way Sibley did, but it didn't look welcoming either.
The underbrush was too dense for a duck flight. Hard terrain to cross on foot, especially if you have to waddle.
"How am I supposed to follow you in there, you demented bird? You can't fly through that wood. Unless you're planning on dropping ten pounds ..."
The duck shivered. Feathers crawled, sinking back into flesh, folding on themselves. My stomach lurched. Dense fuzz sprouted as the duck's body flowed, reshaping itself. The blob that used to be duck stretched one last time and snapped into a small brown bunny.
I closed my mouth with a click.
The bunny swiped some nonexistent dust from his nose with both paws and hopped down the path.
I went back to the Jeep, shut off the engine, and chased the duck-rabbit down the path into the dense thicket of the John White woods.
THE FOREST TEEMED WITH LIFE. TINY SQUIRRELS dashed up and down the trees. A ruffed grouse shot from the forest floor. Somewhere to the left a feral pig grunted. Three deer watched me pick my way down the path from a safe distance. I sank into the quiet measured gait I used when walking through the woods: quiet and deceptively unhurried. The little rabbit fell in step and scampered down by my side.
A bowstring snapped. I jerked to the side and jumped behind an oak. The rabbit crouched by my feet, shivering.
I leaned out just enough to see. An arrow sprouted from the ground where my foot had been a second ago. The angle was high. I looked up. Across the path, a man crouched in an old tree, poised in a spot where the trunk split into two massive branches. Young, mid- to late twenties. Tattered jeans stained with brown and green, plain brown T-shirt. Looked like Army issue. Hair cut short. The branches obscured his face and most of his chest. No place to sink a throwing knife.
When unsure of the stranger's intentions, the best policy is to open a meaningful dialogue. "Hey, dickhead! Who taught you to shoot, Louis Braille? That arrow missed me by a mile."
"I was aiming at the rabbit, you stupid bitch."
"You missed." If I pissed him off enough, he might move to get a better shot at me. My throwing knives couldn't wait to say hello.
"I see that."
"I figured I'd let you know, since you must be blind. Maybe you could practice by aiming at a barn." A bowstring twanged. I ducked back behind the tree. An arrow sliced the leaves a hair left of the oak. He was good, but not great. Andrea would've nailed me by now.
"You alive?" he called out.
"Yep. Still breathing. You missed again, hotshot."
"Look, I have no problem with you. Give me the damn rabbit and I'll let you go."
Fat chance. "This is my rabbit. Get your own."
"It's not your rabbit. It's the witch's rabbit."
Figured. "You got a problem with the witch?"
"Yeah, I got a problem."
If Evdokia wanted him dead, he would be dead by now. This was her forest. She hadn't killed him, which meant she was amused by his antics, or worse, he was a relative or a son of a friend. Injuring him was out of the question, or I could kiss good-bye any chance of cooperation from Evdokia.
"Last chance to give me the rabbit and walk away from this."
"No."
"Suit yourself."
A shrill whistle burst through the woods, lancing my eardrums. It drowned all sound and shot up, higher and higher, to an impossible intensity. I clamped my hands over my ears.
The whistle built on itself, slicing the petals off wildflowers to the left and right of the oak, stabbing through my hands into my brain. The world faded. I tasted blood in my mouth.
The whistle stopped.
The sudden quiet was deafening.
Russian fairy tales talked of a Nightingale Bandit, able to bend trees with his whistling. I seemed to have run into the real-life version.
"You alive?" he called out.
Barely. "Yep." I dug in my brain, trying to recall the old Russian folk tales. Did he have any weakness ... if he had, I couldn't remember any. "You whistle so prettily. Do you do weddings?"
"In five seconds I'm going to split that tree down the middle and you with it. Hard to make jokes with your lungs full of blood." I slid a throwing knife from the sheath on my belt and sneaked a glance. He sat in a tree, one leg under him, the other dangling down. Relaxed and easy.
"Fine, you got me. I'm coming out."
"With the rabbit?"
"With the rabbit." I slipped a throwing knife in my hand, flipped it, and rustled the weeds to my left with my foot. The Nightingale leaned to the side, trying to get a better look. I lunged right and threw the knife. The blade sliced through the air. The wooden handle smashed into his throat. The Nightingale made a small gurgling sound. I sprinted to the tree, grabbed his ankle, and jerked him down. He crashed to the ground like a log. I hit him in the throat a couple of times to make sure he stayed quiet, flipped him on his stomach, yanked a plastic tie from my pocket, and tied his hands together.
"Don't go anywhere."
He gurgled something.
I circled the tree and ran into a horse tied to the branch, its head swaddled in some sort of canvas. A coil of rope waited on the saddle. Wasn't that nice.
I snagged the rope and hauled the Nightingale upright against the tree, facing the bark. He was short but well-muscled, his dark hair cut down to a mere fuzz on his head.
A hoarse gasp issued from his mouth. "Bloody bitch."
"That's nice." I finished tying him to the trunk. He couldn't even turn his head. "Just remember, it could've been the other end of the knife."
I stepped back. He looked secure enough. I sliced the tie off and dangled it by the bark so he could see it. "I'm going to go see the witch now. In your place, I'd try to get free. I might be in a bad mood on my way back. Come on, bunny."
The rabbit hopped down the path and I followed it, listening to the sweet serenade of curses.
THE STICK WAS SIX FEET TALL AND TOPPED WITH A grimy human skull, decorated by a half-melted candle. It jutted on the side of the road, like some grisly path marker. A few feet past it another yellowed skull offered a second candle. Some people used tiki torches. Some people used human skulls . ..
I looked at the duck-bunny. "What have you gotten me into?"
The duck-bunny rubbed his nose.
The skull looked a bit odd. For one, all the teeth were even. I stood on my toes and knocked on the bony temple. Plastic. Heh. The bunny hopped down the trail. Nothing to do but follow.
The path opened into a garden. To the left, raspberry bushes rose next to gooseberry and currant. To the right, neat rows of strawberries sat, punctuated by spears of garlic and onion to keep the bugs off. Trees rose here and there, surrounded by herbs. I recognized apple, pear, cherry. Past it all, at the end of a winding path in the middle of a green lawn, sat a large log house. Rather, the back of the large log house. A couple of clean glass windows stared at me above a wraparound porch rail, but no door was visible.
We stopped at the house. Now what?
"Knock-knock?"
The ground shuddered under my feet. I took a step back. The edge of the porch quaked and rose, up and up, rocking a little, and beneath it huge scaled legs dug into the ground with talons the size of my arms.
Holy shit.
The legs moved, turning the house with ponderous slowness ten feet above the ground: corner, wall, another corner, Evdokia in a rocking chair sitting on the porch.
"That's good," the witch said.
The house crouched down and settled back in place. Evdokia gave me a sweet smile. Middle-aged, she was plump and looked happy about it. Her face was round, her stomach was round, and a thick braid of brown hair snaked its way over her shoulder down to her lap. She was knitting some sort of a tube out of strawberry-colored yarn.
There was only one person in the entire Slavic mythology who had a house on chicken legs: Baba Yaga, the Grandmother Witch, the one with a stone leg and iron teeth. She was known for flying around in a mortar and for casual cannibalism of wandering heroes. And I'd walked to her house on my own power. Talk about delivering takeout.
Evdokia nodded to the chair next to her. "Well, come on. V nogah pravdi nyet."
No truth in legs. Right. Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly ...
Her smile got wider. "Scared?"
"Nope." I walked up the steps and took the chair. The house jerked, my stomach jumped, and the garden dropped down below. The house had straightened its chicken legs. Trapped. No matter. "Besides, I'm all gristle and tough meat anyway."
She chuckled. "Oh, I don't know, you might be just right for a nice big pot of borscht. Throw some mushrooms in there and mmm." Borscht, bleah.
"Not a fan?" Evdokia reached to the small table between us, poured two cups of tea, and handed me one.
"No." I sipped. Great tea. I waited a moment to see if I turned into a goat. Nope, no horns, clothes were still there. I raised the cup at her. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. You hate borscht because Voron never made it properly. I swear, anything you gave that man, he'd turn into mush. It took me the longest time to get him to eat normal food. For a while it was all `borscht and taters.' "
The bunny hopped onto her lap. Her fingers brushed the dark fur. Flesh and fur seethed, twisting into a new body, and a small black cat rolled on her back on Evdokia's lap and batted at her fingers with soft paws.
For a moment the witch's control slipped, and I glimpsed magic wrapped around her like a dense shawl before she hid it again. If this went sour, getting off this porch alive would be a bitch.
"Now, go on," Evdokia said. "You're tangling my yarn."
The kitten rolled off, jumped to the porch rail, licked her paw, and began washing herself. An all-purpose pet. How do you turn a duck into a bunny? I didn't even know where to start.
The needles clicked in the older woman's hands. "Had any trouble finding your way?"
"Not really. Ran into a Nightingale Bandit, but that's about it."
"Vyacheslav. Slava, for short. He's angry because I won't let him rob people on my land. Slava talks a big game but he's harmless."
He split solid trees into splinters and made people's ears bleed with a supersonic whistle, but of course, he was completely harmless. Silly me, worrying for nothing.
Evdokia nodded at the platter of cookies. "Have one."
In for a penny, in for a pound. I snagged a cookie and bit into it. It broke in my mouth into a light powder of sweet vanilla crumbs, melting on my tongue, and suddenly I was five years old. I'd eaten those before when I was very little, and that taste jerked me right back into the past. A tall woman laughed somewhere to the side and called me. "Katenka!"
I shrugged her out of my mind. No time for a trip down the memory lane.
For a couple of minutes we sat quietly. The air smelled of flowers and a hint of something fruity. The tea was hot and tasted of lemon. It all seemed so ... nice. I sneaked a glance at the witch. She seemed absorbed in her knitting. I needed to get on with the volhv questions. Evdokia glanced at me. "Have you heard from your father? He isn't going to let his sister's death go."
I dropped my cup and caught it an inch from the porch boards.
"Nice catch." Evdokia pulled her yarn to give herself more slack.
My mouth was dry. I set the cup very carefully on the table. "How did you know?" How much do you know? Who else knows? How many people do I have to kill?
"About your father? You told me."
I chose my words very carefully. "I don't recall that."
"We were sitting right here. You had sugar cookies and tea and you told me all about how your daddy killed your mom, and how you had to get strong and murder him one day. You were all of six years old. And then Voron came and made you run laps around the garden. Do you remember me at all?"
I strained, trying to dig deep into my memories. A woman looked down at me, very tall, with bright red hair braided into a long plait over her shoulder, a black cat rubbing on her feet. Her eyes were blue and they laughed at me. A hint of a voice came, happy, offering me a cookie in Russian.
"I remember a woman ... red hair ... with cookies."
Evdokia nodded. "That was me."
"There was a cat." I vividly remembered a leather collar with the Russian word for "Kitty" written on it in black marker. I'd written it.
"Kisa. She died seven years ago. She was an old cat."
"You were tall."
"No, you were a short little thing. I was the same size, except I was skinny back then. And I dyed my hair fire-red so your stepdad would like me. I was a lot dumber in my youth. Voron, he seemed a proper man." Evdokia sighed. "Very strong, handsome. Dependable. I really liked him and I tried. Oy, how I tried. But it wasn't meant to be."
"Why not?"
"For one, it was all about your mother. A living woman I could handle, but fighting for your father with a dead one, well, that was a fight I couldn't win. For another, your father wasn't the man I thought he was."
"What do you mean?"
Evdokia raised the teakettle and refilled my cup. "Sugar?"
"No, thank you." "You should have some. I'm about to speak ill of the dead. Sugar helps with the bitter."
She and Doolittle were separated at birth. Every time I suffered a near-death experience, he brought me syrup and claimed it was iced tea.
The older woman leaned back, gazing at the garden. "When I first saw you, you were two years old. You were such a cute, fat baby. Big eyes. Then Voron left and took you with him. I saw you again when you were four and then some months after, and then again. Every time I saw you, you got harder and harder. I'd braid your hair and put you in a pretty little dress and we'd go to Solstice Day, or out to our coven, and you would be so happy. Then he'd return and make you take it all off, and send you out to hunt feral dogs with a knife. You'd come back all bloody and sit by his feet like some sort of puppy, waiting for him to tell you that you'd done well."
I remembered that, sitting by Voron's feet. He didn't praise me often, but when he did, it was like I'd grown wings. I would've done anything for that praise.
"Finally Anna Ivanovna called me to come and see her. You were seven then and she was an Oracle Witch at the time. Old, old woman, frightening eyes. I took you with me. We visited at her house and she looked at you for a while, and then she said that it wasn't right what Voron was doing to you. It never sat well with me, and I'm not one to hold my tongue, so I cornered him that night over dinner and told him so. I told him that you were a little girl. An innocent. That if you were his own flesh and blood, he wouldn't be treating you this way."
If this was true, she stood up to Voron for my sake. Few people would. "He made me this way so I would survive. It was a necessity."
Evdokia pursed her lips for a long moment. A shadow darkened her eyes. Something inside me clenched, as if expecting a punch.
"What did Voron say?"
Evdokia looked down at her knitting.
"What did he say?"
"He said that you weren't his flesh and blood, and that was the whole point."
It hurt. It was the truth and I'd known it all my life, but it still hurt. He was my father in everything but blood. He cared about me, in his own way; he ...
"I told him that the Covens would take you in," Evdokia said. "He said no. So I asked him what did he think would happen when you and Roland finally met. He told me that if he got lucky, you'd kill your father. If his luck ran out, then Roland would have to murder his own daughter and that was enough for him."
A sharp pain stabbed me somewhere right below the heart. My throat closed up. It wasn't true. That conversation never took place. Voron loved my mother. She died for me. He trained me to make me stronger so that when the final confrontation came, I'd hold my own against my real father.
Anger vibrated in Evdokia's voice. "I told him to get out. I thought he'd cool off and I'd persuade him to give you to me. But he vanished and took you with him. The next time I saw you, you came to ask for a favor in the Belly of the Turtle. I almost didn't recognize you. It's not what we wanted for you. I know it wasn't all him. Kalina had ruined him, but I blame Voron all the same. It was his fault as well."
I struggled to speak, but the words wouldn't come out. I felt helpless, as if I were stuck in the middle of some void and couldn't break out of it.
"You were one of ours. We would've taken you in and hid you and taught you, but it was not to be. It gnaws at me to this day that I couldn't get you away from him."
My mouth finally managed to produce a sound. "What do you mean, one of yours?"
"Because of your mother, of course."
I stared at her.
Evdokia gasped. "He didn't tell you, that pridurok. Kalina, your mother, she was one of ours. An old Ukrainian family. Your grandmother's sister, Olyona, married my uncle Igor. We're in-laws."
The world jumped up and kicked me in the face.