My Wild Horse King (The Russian Witch's Curse Book 4)

15. Gustav

The first time I came to Manhattan to visit my grandfather, I’d been at Yale for less than a month. He had a party for work, and he wanted to introduce me. I carefully prepared my clothing for the event from among things Grandfather’s personal shopper had chosen.

I was going to make him proud.

But less than three blocks from his New York City office, I was mugged. They took my wallet, my watch, and my pride. When I limped up to the party, my shirt torn, my face dirty from being pressed against the filthy ground, I swore that would never happen again.

The only thing I studied harder for than econ classes was boxing.

Ivy League schools are known for having fine instructors. Yale has the best economics program in the country. Its political theory classes are unparalleled. But my boxing instructor at Yale was, perhaps, not the very best. He wasn’t horrible, but I felt like he was preparing me to perform some kind of shadowboxing showcase.

I wanted to learn how to get out of a bad situation, and that meant I needed to learn street fighting.

Luckily, MMA had really gained a foothold in the United States at the time, and one of the top trainers was only a twenty-minute drive from New Haven. It took me three years to really become competitive, but that last year of school, I focused on multi-opponent fighting. The key is distraction and elimination.

They’re principles I still use in my everyday life.

For instance, I escape my apartment with promises that I’ll return with the best Italian food in New York City, but really I just wanted to get away from their incessant hounding for a moment. I’m still two blocks from Pistoia, my favorite Italian place, when I hear a strange sort of clattering sound. It’s one I’ll probably still recognize when I’m a hundred years old.

It’s the distinct sound of hooves striking the pavement.

I turn around just in time to watch the gorgeous palomino from my dreams the past two nights kick a gun from some man’s hand. I can hardly believe my eyes. What on earth is that horse doing in the middle of New York City? And what’s more, why is it the one from my dreams for the past two nights? I’d actually started to worry that the palomino was me, and that my subconscious was telling me that my destiny was to master my powers and start shifting into some golden horse.

It’s absurd.

Because horses aren’t a superhero form. They aren’t terrifying. But watching this horse strike at the shady character across the street, I rethink my position a little. Only, after disarming the aggressive man, more men pour out of the neighboring building and the parked car, and suddenly, there are six men pointing guns at the poor thing.

I don’t think. I just move.

Before I know it, I’ve shot across the street, sprinting through a gap between a bus and a BMW. The edge of the BMW clips my arm, but the pain is brief. I manage to leap onto the curb in front of the man the horse just disarmed. He seems to be the one in charge, and I’m not about to let these criminals mow this gorgeous creature down.

“You will not shoot my horse.”

The horse turns its head toward me, for all the world acting as if it understands exactly what I just said.

“Do you know what the penalty is in New York City for shooting a police horse?” I lift both eyebrows as if these guys care what the penalties for any laws are.

“This isn’t a police horse,” the large man facing the horse says. “Now get out of here, before you find out what happens when I shoot a man.”

Distract. And eliminate.

I pull a pack of gum out of my pocket and toss it behind the horse, gum and wrappers flying in every direction in front of two of the men. At the same time, I kick the accumulated debris from the gutter at the two men closest to me, and then I slide under the horse’s neck, kick one gun out of the farthest man’s hand, and strike the other man’s wrist, taking his gun for myself.

The horse hasn’t been inactive—after I flung the gum, she kicked back with full force, knocking those men back into the windshield of the car behind us. Its alarm immediately starts to blare, woo, woo, woo, and I use the helpful distraction to drop the aggressive man into a headlock, the gun I nabbed pressed against his temple. “What was that you just said about what happens when I shoot a man?”

The man swallows, his eyes bulging.

“I wonder whether it matters,” I say, “where I shoot him. Would the result be different if I shot his foot?” I point the gun downward. “Or is the head better?” I press it back against the side of his head.

“What?” The man’s spluttering. “No.”

“Put your weapons down,” I say quietly to the men who are now covered with mud, trash, and bits of leaves. “Or I’ll splatter his brains on the side of that building.” I toss my head. “Now.”

“Do it, idiots,” the man says, spit flying from his mouth.

The horse snorts and paws at the ground. “Now, all of you will back away.” I toss my head toward the building they emerged from. “I want you all to go inside that building and I want to hear the door close and lock.”

The man I’m holding panics, his eyes widening, and he struggles against me.

“Careful.” I tighten my headlock. “If you keep wiggling like that, my finger might catch.” I sigh. “I’m not a big fan of guns. In fact, when I learned to shoot, my trainer said I should never use one. I have a bit of a trigger finger, apparently.”

He whimpers—the massive nightmare of a man whimpers.

But his men move, and then I hear the turning of the lock on the front door.

“Alright,” I say. “This is what we’re about to do.” I spin toward the horse. “You want to get out of here, right?”

The horse nods.

It’s confirming my suspicion. “We’ve met before, right?”

Another nod.

“You’re going to give me a ride out of here, got it?”

It nods again.

One quick check, and I’ve confirmed it really is a mare, and then I fling the man away, out into the street. He has to scramble to avoid slamming into a moving car.

Only in New York City would this entire thing happen in the open on the street without a single passerby doing anything to stop it, but I can hear the police sirens now, and I’d rather be out of here by the time they arrive. I doubt Grandfather will praise me for getting involved in some kind of drug-dealer altercation, even if no shots were fired.

I pat the horse’s side. “I’m getting up now,” I hiss. “Move toward that fire hydrant.”

I’m not sure she knows that word in English, so I point. “That thing.”

She sidles over, and I use it to boost up on her back.

I haven’t been on a horse in at least ten years. Maybe twelve. I didn’t miss it at all. The skin feels strange against my hand, all disconnected from its body, and without a saddle or bridle, I feel like I could go sailing off at any time. I grab a fistful of mane, and then I empty the gun of bullets, cringing a little as they clatter on the pavement, and throw the empty gun at the jerk who started all this.

The sirens are closer, closer, growing ever closer.

I kick the mare and grab her mane with my other fist as well. “Let’s go before the cops get here.”

She doesn’t take off, though. She ducks her head down and snags a bag off the ground with her teeth, and then she leaps forward. No saddle, and I haven’t ridden in ages, so when she starts to really move, I nearly slide off. I shift until I’m crouched a little lower, my legs coming forward to try and balance my upper body a bit. I’m sure she’s hating the feeling of all my weight falling on her shoulders, but she’s going to have to deal with it.

“Katerina, right?” I sigh.

She snorts, which is probably the best she can do, with a bag handle clamped between her teeth.

“How on earth did you wind up with six men holding guns on you?”

She tosses her head.

I deserve that. This isn’t exactly the best way for us to talk. “Alright, here’s our plan.”

Before I can explain anything, a police car turns down this street and stops. He rolls his window down. “Hey!” the officer shouts. “What on earth are you doing, weirdo?”

“Door dash keeps raising its prices,” I say. “I decided to grab my Italian food myself.”

His jaw drops.

I salute him. And thankfully, Katerina continues to walk.

“Hey,” the cop shouts again. “You can’t just ride down the sidewalk.”

Adrenaline starts to pump through my system. Is this story going to be even harder to explain than my interference with a bunch of criminals? Am I still going to make the news, but in an even stranger way?

“Oh?” I turn back and look at him over my shoulder, tugging on Katerina’s mane so she’ll stop. Thankfully, she does.

“You can only ride horses in the street, with the flow of traffic.” The cop points. He doesn’t comment on my lack of bridle or saddle. He doesn’t comment on the fact that my horse is carrying a bag in her mouth, either. I seriously doubt there are laws about any of that, which is good.

I ask Katerina, with pressure from my right knee, to step into the street, into the barely-long-enough space between the two idling cars. Blessedly, she does. I wasn’t sure she was trained to interpret signals from a rider.

Would she be, when the horse is actually a person? Ugh. This is so awkward.

“Be careful,” the cop shouts, and then he turns his lights and siren back on and heads down the road toward the intersection we just left. I wonder what he’ll think when the witnesses there tell him a golden horse was in the middle of the whole ruckus.

Luckily, two blocks down, we reach Central Park, and Katerina listens as I nudge her forward. The second we can, I send her into the center of a bush and slide off her back. “Phew,” I say. “That was a really weird hour.”

She melts, then. I’m not sure how else to describe it, when a sixteen hand mare sort of swirls down into a perfectly small woman, wearing camel slacks, a mahogany blouse, and a long, flowing scarf. She shakes off, for all the world, just like my mom’s horses used to after rolling, and then picks up the bag she dropped. “Well. That was strange. I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell anyone you saw me, because I’m on my way to Icel—no, wait. I’m not telling anyone. Forget you heard that.”

Now I’m the one whose jaw is dropping. “You’re kidding, right?”

Just then, a strange tingling sensation blankets my entire body. It’s like my leg fell asleep, but instead of my leg, it’s every part of me. I drop to the ground, pulling my knees up against my chin while my teeth chatter.

Then just as suddenly, the feeling’s gone.

When I glance up at the motion beyond Katerina’s head, it’s a runner, and his face is bizarrely obscured by strange black splotches. A sick feeling forms in the pit of my stomach, like the sludge that accumulates on the rubber liner of the washing machine.

“Oh, no,” Katerina says. “You saved me.” Her eyes widen.

“But it was at no cost to me,” I say. “So that can’t—no way.”

“What happened to your arm?” She’s looking at my right shoulder, the one the BMW clipped, and I turn to look down at it.

Somehow, the bumper tore my jacket and gashed open the skin. It’s not a huge cut, but it’s bleeding pretty consistently. The swear words I use are a mixture of Latvian, English, and Russian. It’s how my dad always swore, and I haven’t done it in a very long time, but it feels fitting.

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice is small. Her face looks utterly sincere.

“You, missy, aren’t flying anywhere,” I say. “Because now that this is going down, you’re the only one I even partially trust.”

Her face falls, and she shakes her head back and forth. “You should not trust me. I’m a bad person.”

But her face says otherwise. Unlike the runner I just saw, it’s clear, it’s clean, and in fact, there are tiny golden sparkles I can see out of the corner of my eye when I shift the way I’m looking at her. “I don’t mean to call you a liar, but my new superpower—and Leonid was right. This is kind of lame—says you’re not.”

She blinks. “You can—” She pivots. “Look at that guy.” She points through the bushes at a man on his phone, yelling.

“Yeah, I see him for a split second, and then.” A strange sort of film comes over his face, and suddenly, it’s like he’s been splattered with mud. I blink, but it’s still there. “Not a great guy. I would not encourage you to go out with him on a blind date, for instance. Probably has a vial of date-rape-drug in his pocket.”

Katerina looks ill. “This is terrible.”

I realize what she means. Her big, bad evil ex-friend said he’d leave me alone. . .unless I did what I just did.

“So, Iceland’s off, right? At least I’ve earned that much, right? This did happen to me while I was trying to save you.”

She sighs and slings the strap for her bag over her shoulder. “I have even more reason to go now.”

“But you’re a good person. I can see it, so you’re going to stay and help me. Right?”

She looks directly into my face. “I went to Leonid to trade your whereabouts to him for Alexei’s powers.”

“Ouch,” I say. “But see? You’re telling me that so you’ll have a clear conscience, and you didn’t even know me then.”

“I know you now, and I’m not that impressed.” She folds her arms. “I should get as far away from all this as I possibly can.”

“You don’t think the fate of the world rests in my hands?”

She shrugs. “It may, but I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“Which is exactly why I need your help. It’s the heroes who don’t want to be heroes who make the best ones.”

“Isn’t that advice more suited to you?” She smirks. “Super Gustav?”

I cringe. “That’s the worst superhero name I’ve ever heard in my life. And if you’re from the nineteen hundreds, why do you know about superheroes?”

“I’m from the nineteen hundreds, but I’ve spent a lot of time in the present sitting in locked rooms, and what better way to kill the time than watching Marvel movies?”

“Better than the DC ones, I guess.” I can’t help chuckling. “I think we’ll be able to come up with some better things for you to do now, though.”

“Like training you to be a superhero?”

I groan. “Anything but that.”