31. Gustav
My favorite part of horse racing was watching the jockeys breeze the horses in a circle before the race. I’d always pick which one I thought would win, and sometimes it was because I liked their silks.
Other times, it was the shiny coat of the horse.
As I grew older, it was the spring in the horse’s step, or sometimes even the odds on the horse.
I was eight the first time my dad taught me to place a bet at a horserace. I still remember Dad handing me a fifty sant?m note. I’d never held that much money in my hand. He walked me through placing my bets, more patient than I’d ever seen him as I told the Totes employee what I wanted to bet on.
The race was the most exciting one I’d ever seen, because I had money on horse number twenty-two. His silks were bright orange, and he had odds of eleven-to-one. Imagine my giddy joy when he won.
I wanted to go home with a fistful of sant?m for my mother, but Dad insisted that I try again. By the end of the night, I’d lost every single lati I’d won, but I went home with a fifty sant?m note clutched in my fist. I hadn’t won, not according to Dad’s criterion, but I’d contained Dad’s desire to spend all the money we made.
I went home with the fifty he gave me—not a win or a loss. A containment. I have to pull off that same miracle again, and I think I can. Of course, not everyone has faith in me.
“I never liked you,” Grigoriy says. “Not from the minute you tried to run from us in that lobby.”
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t try to run.”
We’re nearly to Birch Creek, after driving through the night, and the others still haven’t agreed to my plan. Baba Yaga’s words keep running through my head over and over.
Contain him.
Like my dad forced me to do with my money that night when I won big on my first bet, our job isn’t to win. It’s not to lose. They make me repeat everything she said at least three times, and I nearly have the whole thing memorized by now.
“She didn’t say we couldn’t kill him,” Grigoriy says again.
“That’s Leonid’s problem,” I say. “He thinks the answer is killing anyone who’s bad. That can’t be our solution, or we’re the same as him.”
“I don’t think we should kill everyone,” Grigoriy says. “Just him.”
Katerina rolls her eyes. “Do you have rocks in your brains? Baba Yaga said?—”
“She was afraid of someone,” Grigoriy practically explodes. “Gustav said as much. She’s covering herself, and I’m not going to let him wander off again just because he’s her long-lost lovechild or whatever.”
“The point,” Kris says, “is that we’re asking Gustav to confront him head-on, and he has a plan.”
“A plan with a price that would be paid by us,” Aleks says.
Kristiana sighs, because he’s right.
“A plan that’s the best idea I’ve heard,” Katerina says softly.
No one argues with that.
“Fine, but if we do this, we kill him afterward.” Grigoriy folds his arms with a huff.
“I agree,” Aleks says.
“As do I,” Alexei says.
“And me,” Mirdza says. That one surprises me.
“Not that anyone cares, but I vote that he dies, too.” No shock Adriana wants him gone. He almost killed Alexei and Grigoriy the last time they saw him, from what I hear.
“We’ll have time to decide after seeing how he behaves,” I say. “We can vote afterward, and we’ll do what the majority demands.”
That shuts them up, miraculously.
But when we reach Birch Creek, nothing goes as we expect. There aren’t any roadblocks. There are no guards anywhere. In fact, we drive right up to Steve and Abigail’s house, and it almost looks like there’s a party happening. Amanda Saddler and her husband Tommy are here, judging by the big truck parked beside Abigail’s SUV.
Several kids are darting around the swing on the front porch, playing some kind of tag-affiliated game.
But when we pull up and kill the engine, everyone freezes. I open my door and jump out. “Is everything really alright?”
“You came.” Abby’s not smiling, though. She looks a little ill.
“I’m so happy to see it.” Leonid steps out from behind Steve, and I realize that he’s grilling burgers on the side of the house.
Leonid’s just standing around, grilling burgers.
No guards.
No Boris or Mikhail, at least, not that I can see. There’s no one else here at all, other than our friends.
“Won’t you join us?” Leonid’s British accent is the only sign that he’s not a local when he waves us over. And then in Russian, he says, “You got here just in time. I was running out of patience, truth be told.”
“Where’s my brother?” Katerina asks.
“Boris and Misha are out back, playing a rousing game of horseshoes,” Leonid says, still speaking in Russian. “If you’ve never heard of it, it’s this strange thing they do here, where they try and throw a horseshoe as close to a metal stick as they can get it.”
What on earth is going on?
Leonid’s gaze shifts, his eyes turning toward me.
I’d have said that Katerina had the most stunning, the brightest green eyes I’d ever seen, but I’d never seen Leonid Ivanovich in person. His eyes are brighter than the grass in Easter baskets. They’re the kind of bright that you really only see in CGI-enhanced movies or cartoons.
And he is annoyingly handsome—even more so in real life than he was on the television screen.
“You must be Gustav. You know, your friends here were so sure you’d come. I didn’t have nearly the same faith that they did, but look! They were proved right after all.” He smiles, and I want to strike him.
All you can do is contain him.Baba Yaga’s words come back to me over and over.
I hope my plan isn’t complete lunacy.
“Why are you just standing there?” Leonid gestures. “We’ve got food back here.”
“How did you find out where we were?” I ask.
“You have your grandfather to thank for that. He’s quite a man, you know. Self-made, or at least, mostly. He took his father’s modest energy empire and turned it into something unique. I’m sure his disappointment when your mother fell in love with your father was truly deep.”
If he thinks he’ll taunt me into acting with rage over a few barbs aimed at my father, he’s sorely mistaken. “My father disappoints everyone. It’s what he does best.”
Leonid steps closer. “You and I have more in common than I realized, Gustav. My father was a monumental disappointment as well.”
“Yes, I imagine we could be besties in no time,” I say.
“Sarcasm.” Leonid nods. “It’s the lowest form of humor, but bravo. If I were in your situation, I’m not sure I’d be cracking jokes at all.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask. “Did you drag us here and threaten our friends just?—”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Leonid gestures toward Steve. “Where’s dear old Amanda? Tell her to come out and say hello.” He turns back toward me. “Friends? I think not. To me, these people are more like family.”
And suddenly, I’m with Grigoriy. I want to kill him.
“Look. Here she is.”
Mikhail has his arm run through Amanda’s and he’s walk-shoving her toward us, even as she stumbles.
“I’m sure you’ll be alarmed to hear that her heart problem took a turn last week.” He throws both hands up, palms out. “No fault of mine, I assure you. But the doctors say she hasn’t got much longer to be with us.” He clucks. “It’s such a shame, but people cannot live forever, can they?”
She truly looks terrible. She’s leaning on Mikhail like she’d collapse without his body as support. Her skin’s pale, and her eyes aren’t focusing properly.
Katerina and Kris both step toward Amanda.
“What do you want?” I ask again. “Just tell me.”
“I could heal her,” Alexei says. “If you just grant me my water powers for a moment, I’ll heal her.”
“Oh, but your darling Gustav now has powers.” Leonid tilts his head. “I should so like to see him save his cousin.” He looks around, a forced smile on his face. “I think we all would.”
“But I can’t,” I start. “I mean, I don’t know how?—”
“It took me years to learn to heal things,” Alexei says. “And years beyond that to be capable of something like a delicate heart repair.”
“Not a fast student, I see,” Leonid says. “I was able to heal Grigoriy after mere minutes using water.” He sighs. “I suppose not everyone’s created equal, no matter what this misguided country likes to believe.”
Alexei looks ready to strangle Leonid with his bare hands. “Just let me?—”
“Let you?” Leonid laughs. “It’s a free country here, or haven’t you heard?”
“But you know I can’t use my magic.” A vein in Alexei’s temple is throbbing.
“I can try,” I say.
“You could kill her,” Alexei says. “Her heart is leaking.”
“You can feel that?” Leonid’s eyes widen. “Spectacular. So you still have the affinity, just not the energy to do anything with it.” He smiles. “That’s even better, truly.”
“What do you want?” Katerina’s voice when she asks is soft. Like she’s talking to an old friend who’s lost his way.
His face shifts when he hears her voice. It hardens.
“Why did you travel this far?” Kat asks. “Why did you summon us here?”
“Have you ever had a gun pressed to your head, love?” Leonid takes three steps to a mesh yard chair and sits down. “Have you ever been afraid you were about to die?”
I glance at Katerina, looking for some kind of guidance, but she’s frozen in place, her entire being focused on him and his taunts.
Leonid turns toward me, and he raises his eyebrows. “Oh, my. You two are dating.” He starts to laugh, then, standing up and pacing. “You do not waste any time, do you, my dear?”
Katerina’s cheeks are bright red.
“He’s handsome. I’ll give you that—you have consistently good taste.” He sighs and taps his index finger against his lip. “What do I want? Everyone keeps asking, but I’m shocked that you don’t already know.” He folds his hands together, and then he throws them outward. “I want peace for all the world. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Even Captain America, or was it Iron Man, who says, ‘Peace in our time.’”
I blink.
Aleks frowns.
Grigoriy grunts.
“Say something that makes sense,” Alexei says. “You already have Russia, and now also Belarus, apparently. Why come to America?”
“Because, dear Alexei Romanov, in my life, I’ve had many, many guns pressed to my temple. I’ve had people threatening me for my entire life. I intended to ignore you and your new, shiny puppet. I don’t need to own the whole world, as I’m sure you can understand. But when I felt you load up a gun here in America, I couldn’t just ignore it any longer, could I?”
A gun. That’s me. I’m the gun.
Contain him. That’s all we need to do. The plan will still work.
“I will swear never to leave the United States,” I say. “I’ll swear never to come to Russia, or even anywhere near it.”
Leonid sighs. “So quick to roll over and expose your belly. So quick to make a deal.” He steps closer, his bright eyes flashing. “You have mastered all five elements now, and like me, I suspect you can see what lies inside the human heart?”
I don’t want to, but I find myself nodding.
“Bravo, really. I mean, you can’t do much with it yet, apparently, but you did find your magic and subdue all five elements in under a month. It’s impressive. You might one day be a worthy foe.”
“Please.” Amanda’s voice is soft. I can barely hear her. “Please go and take your fight elsewhere. There are children here.”
“Let me try to heal her,” I say. “And let’s do as she asks and let them go. This isn’t their fight.”
“Oh, but they made it their fight,” Leonid says, “when they welcomed you into their home and helped in any way they could.”
“That’s right.” Abigail’s standing on the porch, scowling. “We may not have magic, and we may not even be related to any of you like Amanda is, but we will always oppose evil, wherever we see it.”
Leonid claps. “See?” He shakes his head. “How could you not love them, these small-town folk? Scrappy.”
“If you admire them, then do as she asks. Let them go.”
“Now that you’re here, I don’t need them.” Leonid beckons for Mikhail to bring Amanda close, and he drops his hands on her head. “I suppose, since it’s either heal you or watch you drop dead in front of us, I’ll go ahead and do it myself.” He sighs. “Poor Alexei would, but he can’t. You see, he’s still powerless.”
Amanda’s arms flail, and her mouth opens, and she screams. I feel it, the pulse of water, the shot of life injected into her, and although I can’t see it from here, I know he’s doing something small, directed, and precise.
Almost as fast as she begins to scream, she slumps forward.
“Now, that pacemaker can’t be helped, but you don’t need it anymore. You should have a few more years left before everything else starts to give out, one by one.” Leonid smiles. “I even cleared out the clogged valves and vessels while I was in there. See? I’m not the devil after all.”
“I never thought you were,” Katerina says.
He freezes for a moment, and he turns toward her slowly, his lips compressed. But then he shakes it off, his lips twisting into their sardonic shape again slowly. “Lying doesn’t become you, my dear,” Leonid says. “We all know you despised me—first and longest.”
“You still haven’t told us what you want,” Kristiana says. “You healed Amanda, which was a show of good faith, and now you’ll let the locals go. But then what?”
Leonid tosses his head at Mikhail, and he and Boris step back. “You’re right that they can all go. Let’s talk when they’re gone.”
It takes a few moments, but eventually Amanda and Tommy, Steve, Abigail, Abigail’s sister Helen, her husband David, and all the children have been loaded into their cars, and all that remain are Leonid, Boris, Mikhail, and the eight of us.
“Amanda’s beyond the age where she can have children,” Leonid says. “But I need Gustav and Kristiana both dead, and then I’ll need Grigoriy and Aleksandr to surrender their powers, and we’ll be done here.”
Total and complete surrender. Those are his terms. I’m not shocked, but I am disappointed. I had hoped for something less. . .draconian.
“I’ll think about your demands,” I say.
The look Katerina gives me is, well, it’s adorable.
“Alright,” I say. “I’ve thought about them, and I’m afraid we can only agree to two of the three.”
Leonid blinks. “Two of the three? Are you saying I can kill Amanda and you, but not Kristiana?”
I snort. “Hardly.”
“What, then?” Leonid arches one eyebrow. “Because, honestly, I was just being polite. If you don’t agree to my terms, I’ll just kill you one by one until I can take what I want.”
Aleksandr swears in Russian, and then he slams a tornado of dirt into Leonid’s chest, sending him flying back. “You’ll never kill my wife. Never.”
These idiots are just incapable of sticking to the script.
Leonid, of course, fights back, shooting a strangely spiraling burst of water and fire at Aleksandr.
“Stop,” I shout.
Everyone ignores me.
Grigoriy manages to knock the flame-water spiral off course with a gust of wind, but that sends it slamming into the side of Abigail’s house. I cringe as a chunk of wall shears off, exposing the family room to the fall wind, debris immediately covering everything inside.
Boris brings his hands together, preparing to strike as well, I’m sure, but Katerina has other ideas. She shrieks, “You’re such a total embarrassment,” and launches herself at him. She starts pulling his hair, and electric bolts fly outward at strange intervals, one striking a tree and splitting it in half. Another leaving a dark mark on a large grey stone.
The horses in Steve’s nearby paddock are racing around like mad.
Mikhail has joined the fray, slamming bursts of flame toward Aleksandr, most of which Aleks blocks with tiny tornadoes of dirt.
“Stop it now,” I say, only this time, I put some force into it, and my words come out so loud that the ground shakes.
Everyone freezes.
“It’s time,” I say, using the same amplification.
Grigoriy and Aleksandr meet my eyes, and they nod.
Aleksandr starts, because he can’t stand to be shown up, ever. “I hereby grant Leonid Ivanovich the right and ability to use earth.”
“And I grant Leonid the right to use wind,” Grigoriy says, never one to be outdone.
Leonid’s eyes light up.
But this time, I’m the one smiling harder.
“Why?” Leonid turns toward me. “You know I’ll kill you now.”
“I think not,” I say.
“No?” Leonid smirks. “Why ever not?”
“You’ve never come into two powers at once before,” I say. “But let me tell you, as someone who managed to master three at once, you’re about to go down—hard.” I spread my hands out. “And all I have to do is stay alive until it happens.”
Leonid’s jaw drops, and he starts to fight like a cat in a bag, heading down to the river. Fire and water, lightning and earth stream at me simultaneously. This isn’t someone who mastered his skills in a few hours or a few days.
No, Leonid knows what he’s doing.
And Aleksandr and Grigoriy can no longer do anything.
But in his distraction, Leonid forgets to cut off Katerina, and she manages to keep Mikhail and Boris distracted. Either that, or they’re afraid to really harm her.
I’m no mage, that’s for sure, but I’ve gotten good at blocking, and the more attacks Leonid launches, the more exhausted he becomes, his eyes closing and then slamming back open. He droops and then straightens like a board, blinking rapidly. After a very focused and very concerted effort, he weakens fast. His movements slow. He struggles to keep his eyes open.
And then he passes out.
Katerina’s chest is heaving, and a bead of sweat runs down the side of her face. “That was. . .”
“Brilliant?” I ask. “Well done?”
She snorts.
“You know you’re impressed,” I say. “Because it worked.”
“I’m not only impressed.” She steps closer and presses her hand to the side of my face. “I love you, Gustav Liepa. You’re everything I didn’t even know I wanted.”
When Mikhail tries to flame us, I pull as hard as I can on flame, and his power winks out.
Katerina barks a laugh. “That—that was awesome.”
“Now we’re all powerless,” Grigoriy grumbles.
“But,” Aleks says, huffing. “When we kill him, we’ll get our abilities back.”
“True.” Grigoriy stumbles forward, whipping out a long, angry-looking knife that came from who knows where. The man always seems to have knives.
Without any warning, Grigoriy plunges it into Leonid’s heart. The knife slides in easily, right up to the hilt, buried in his chest where his heart should be. But instead of jerking, or bleeding, or anything at all, something very, very strange happens.
The dagger disappears.
And Leonid shifts into a horse—a dark, rich, shiny chestnut with a narrow, perfectly proportioned stripe down his beautifully shaped face. He looks like he could be any racehorse Trifecta might have sponsored. He could be the one to watch for winning the Kentucky Derby, for heaven’s sake.
The knife did nothing.
Grigoriy whips out another. This one’s longer, and it looks even more wicked, with a serrated black blade. “Thinks he can shift to save himself, does he?” He plunges it toward Leonid again, very nearly in the same spot.
But this time, the knife stops, just outside of Leonid’s body, vibrating. Grigoriy cries out and drops it, cradling his hand. He’s swearing up a storm. Russian, English, and Latvian, all of them mixed up in a way that’s almost poetic.
“What does that mean?” Katerina asks. “Why can’t you stab him?”
“Contain him,” I say. “That’s what Baba Yaga said we must do.”
“What does that mean?” Aleksandr asks. “Is she protecting him?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “But we have a week or so to figure it out.”