Chapter 2
Chapter Two
KATERINA
Fear snaked through Katerina’s veins, warring with joy in equal measure, as she and Niko crossed the border that separated the forest from Kalach.
The rowan-fires still burned, their smoke indistinguishable from the clouds that hovered over the village.
The gate hung open, unguarded by the Shadows meant to flank it, and beside her, Niko growled in admonition.
A shiver ran through Katerina—it was no small thing for Shadows to abandon their posts.
It meant only one thing: that the threat within Kalach exceeded the one that lay without.
Of course it did. The threat within Kalach’s borders was Gadreel himself, the Fallen Angel of War, who had unleashed the Darkness on them all. Gadreel, who was wreaking havoc on her village as an act of revenge, because he’d come seeking Katerina and failed to find her.
She’d known he wanted to own her, to use her. But until Niko had told her what Gadreel had confided—that the demon had penetrated Rivki’s defenses and was possessing the Kniaz, controlling the nobleman’s every move—she hadn’t understood the extent of his plans.
While she was in the Underworld, fighting to save her Shadow, Gadreel had traveled to Kalach, under cover of the Kniaz’s arrival and Katerina’s planned bonding ceremony to a new Shadow.
With the wards weakened, perhaps the village’s Shadows had not been able to sense his presence, just as they’d failed to detect Sammael.
Or perhaps he’d never meant to enter Kalach himself, but had simply planned to lurk in the woods, using the Kniaz to lure her to him.
The end result was the same: The villagers had bent over backward to welcome the Kniaz with the finest hospitality they had to offer, scraping the bottom of their near-empty larders to cobble together a feast. All the while, they’d had no idea they were rolling out the royal carpet for a prince of Hell.
It had all been a ruse to get his hands on Katerina, to leverage her gifts to drive back the Darkness.
And when it had failed, the Dark Angel of War had sought retribution.
Who had he killed? What if the Darkness devoured Kalach, because Katerina had prioritized saving her Shadow over loyalty to her village?
Fury simmered in her blood, overtaking everything else, igniting her magic.
She braced for the out-of-control pitch and yaw of it, the unpredictable surge and ebb that had so terrified her ever since she’d lost her Shadow.
But instead, her body hummed with the familiar pulse that had always accompanied her rising magic.
Even though they ran toward what might well be Kalach’s destruction, she couldn’t help but find joy in the renewed balance of her gifts.
The moment they barreled through the gates, though, Niko’s paws pounding the ground at her side, all of her elation fled, replaced by terror.
The village was under siege. Everywhere Katerina looked, buildings burned, flames licking up their sides with avid hunger, as if the firewitches’ magic had somehow failed to hit its target and had turned on itself instead.
The air was laced with the sickly-sweet scent of Grigori demons’ blood, and sure enough, some of the creatures lay along the path to the village square, caught between one form and another, leaking their silver-blue blood into the earth.
Grigori demons were shapeshifters, fond of assuming whatever appearance would do the most physical or emotional damage to their victims. In death, they often lost control, reverting to earlier forms they’d taken.
One of these appeared to be part-Shadow, judging by the gear they wore, and part-Bukovac, a six-legged creature with long, curved horns, fond of drowning its victims. Another had died with its form frozen halfway between Likho, the one-eyed, black-cloaked woman known for bringing misfortune wherever she traveled, and Psoglav, an iron-toothed creature with the hind end of a horse, the head of a dog, and a taste for human flesh.
The third was so contorted as to be unrecognizable.
Beside them lay Natalya, the young Dimi who’d once delivered the message about Satvala’s demise, and across her body, blessed blade still gripped in his hand, lay Gregory, her Shadow.
His blade had skewered the unrecognizable Grigori, half-buried in its chest—but the demon had had its revenge.
Gregory’s body was scored with demon bites; they had had their way with him, piercing his skin with venom over and over again.
He had fought them to his last breath, as he was trained to do, and had taken the creature down with him as he fell.
But it had been too late for him and Natalya.
Next to Katerina, Niko growled at the sight of the fallen Shadow. It came to her that she hadn’t told him he no longer held the pack, that Baba had appointed Alexei as alpha. Well, there was no time for it now. They would do what they must, alpha Shadow and shamed Dimi or no.
Shrieks emanated from the heart of the village, and her Shadow’s eyes met hers. In them, she saw perfect understanding: they would charge toward the threat, as they always had, and meet it together. She carried his blessed blades, and her own magic. It would have to be enough.
Niko leaned against her side, bracing her, and she buried her free hand in his fur, the connection between them both reassurance and strength.
Again, she felt that disturbing hint of Darkness stirring within their bond, the one she’d first sensed in the clearing.
Niko tensed, as if he felt it, too. But now was not the time for questions. She would ask him later, if they lived.
She let him go, and they ran onward, past buildings charred with smoke and women weeping on their knees, past small children that wandered, lost and wailing, through the streets.
The apothecary was aflame, the scents of burning sage and garlic and yarrow filling the air, in a terrible perversion of a healing spell.
The anti-venin, Katerina thought with dismay; that was where the village stored the powerful antidote to the demons’ bites.
Without it, a Shadow in human form would die. And the apothecary was burning.
She swallowed her horror and forged on, past buckled earth and piles of ash, Niko keeping pace at her side. Where were Ana and Alexei? If something had happened to her best friend, she would never forgive herself.
They had to be in the thick of the fighting. As the alpha Shadow, it was Alexei’s responsibility and his right. And where he was, there Ana would be, also.
But…where were the Druzhina? Surely, the Kniaz hadn’t traveled here alone, puppet or no. Where was his guard? Why did they not fight to defend the village’s borders?
Maybe they, too, were in the midst of the battle. It was the only explanation.
There was a tremendous roar, as if the earth itself had cracked open.
Katerina ran faster, her heart pounding so hard, she could hardly breathe past it.
What if that sound heralded the destruction of Kalach, the way it had in Drezna?
What if everyone she knew and loved was plummeting into the Underworld, and she and Niko were too late to save them?
She summoned her witchwind to aid her, sweeping at her back, pushing her and Niko forward.
And then, between one step and the next—she was airborne.
It took her a moment to realize that Niko had grabbed her tunic in his jaws and was holding her back, dangling her above the ground as if she were no more than a marionette.
“What are you doing?” she snapped at him. “Put me down!”
He shook her, demanding she pay attention. And then, as had always been the case in battle, his voice spoke inside her mind. Look, he said, a grim command.
Katerina did as he bid—and gasped. Darkness bubbled up from the ground where she’d been about to step, thick as welling tar.
It sucked in everything it touched: leaves and twigs and even a squirrel whose instinct to flee had come too late to save it.
With a squelching sound, the puddle of Darkness swallowed its bounty whole and seethed, its edges blurring outward hungrily, seeking additional prey.
“By the Saints,” Katerina breathed.
There are no Saints here. Her Shadow’s voice was rough, laced with fury, as he set her down to the left of the Dark quicksand. Come, Katerina. But tread carefully.
Katerina wanted nothing more than to race toward the rising screams. They emanated from the square in the middle of Kalach, which meant the village stood, at least in part.
It meant there was still someone to save.
But she knew Niko was right; if she ran toward the fight, heedless of where she stepped, she’d be the Darkness’s next victim.
Instead they made their way one arduous step at a time, relying on Niko’s enhanced Shadow vision and the small flame Katerina called to her hand to make out the places where the earth of Kalach had been subsumed by Darkness.
On one horrifying occasion, they came upon a submerged body, only its fingers sticking up aboveground.
Katerina made for the figure nonetheless, ignoring Niko’s warning growl, only for the Darkness to suck whomever it was down into its depths with an obscene gurgle.
She shuddered, fighting the urge to vomit, and pressed on.
At long last, they reached the village center, where the brightly colored tents and makeshift stage lay in ruins.
In the midst of the square, Dimis and Shadows battled Grigori, horribly outnumbered.
There was Ana, thank the Saints, flanked by Alexei, in the form of his black dog.
As Katerina watched, her friend ignited a ball of fire and hurled it straight at a demon’s head, only for the creature to dodge and lunge for her.
Alexei leapt at the thing, but the demon bared its teeth, slick with venom, and reared up, knocking Ana’s Shadow to the ground—
Katerina shrieked. She was still screaming when a black blur hurtled past her and sank its teeth into the demon’s throat, shaking it like a rag doll.
Silver-blue blood sprayed everywhere as Niko tore its flesh open and dropped the creature, dead, at Alexei’s feet.
Her Shadow threw back his head and howled in victory, and for a moment Alexei echoed him.
Then his jaw dropped and he stared at Niko, the look in his eyes as clear as if he’d spoken.
How?
There was no time for explanations. From between the blacksmith’s shop and the stables, sentient shadows curled like spilled ink, seeking a target.
As the battle in the square raged ever onward, the shades plucked children from doorways and dragged them through windows.
They twined around their victims like vines and seeped into their open mouths, leeching the life from everything they touched.
The children’s eyes shriveled like wizened grapes, their bodies blackened as if frostbitten.
They tumbled to the ground, mere husks, reminding Katerina of the blanched fields and fallen animals on the road to Drezna.
From inside the houses that flanked the square, where some of the Vila must have taken refuge, came a bloodcurdling shriek.
“No,” a woman wailed, her arms extending through the broken glass of the window, reaching for one of the little ones who lay, discarded, on the stones below. “No, please, not my Pyotr…”
The shades swept onward, as if driven by an invisible wind, swarming straight for the square.
If they weren’t thwarted—if they reached their destination—then Kalach’s best defenders would fall.
Already, Lara’s witchwind faltered as she attempted to drive a dark-haired demon back.
Next to her, Ilya fought in human form, his blades slicing another demon’s arm open as it reached for Dimi Assol.
The creature drew back, its squeal of agony like metal-on-metal, but as its blood hit the stones, the shades charged.
Assol stumbled back, out of their reach, tripped over a body lying on the ground, and fell.
In an instant, the shades were on her, swarming over her body like bees from a provoked hive.
She screamed and screamed as they descended, growing ever-darker as they consumed her life force.
Her Shadow, Bretzin, gave a howl of terror and denial, but there was nothing he could do.
Assol’s voice cut off mid-shriek, and the shades drew back as if satiated, revealing her desiccated corpse, mouth frozen in a rictus of her final scream.
Katerina had no idea whether Gadreel had commanded the shades to do his bidding, or whether, summoned by bloodlust, the Darkness was raging through Kalach of its own accord. Either way, the result was the same: disaster.
Within her, fury simmered—righteous and potent as the dark, sweet fruit of the blackthorn tree, an ancient protection against evil.
She turned to face the shades, hands extended, and reached deep, deep into the well of her magic, the same way she had in the woods outside Drezna, when Gadreel’s army had come for them.
She couldn’t ignite all of these demons, not when so many of Kalach’s citizens and warriors were scattered amongst them.
But if there was anything the Darkness could not stand against, it was the Light.
Now, she told Niko, and felt him brace as she drew on their bond with all she had.
Light burst from her, driving the shades back.
It illuminated the entirety of the square: the space between the buildings, the trees that surrounded them…
and the ravine beyond. Behind the Shadows and Dimis, by the treeline opposite where Katerina and Niko had emerged, the earth had split like a ripe peach.
This must have been the sound Katerina had heard, the one she feared heralded the destruction of Kalach.
Around them, her fellow Dimis froze, their expressions unified by a single emotion: shock. It would’ve been amusing if they hadn’t all been about to die.
Their gazes flicked from Katerina to the black dog by her side. To the shades, cringing against the battered buildings like animals whipped by their mistress. And then slowly, surely, in the direction of the crevasse.
At its opposite edge, clad in red finery, his sightless eyes fixed on the moon above, lay the Kniaz.
And next to him, glaring at Katerina with unadulterated wrath, stood Gadreel.