Chapter 23 #2
The black-haired woman straightened, dropping the weeds she’d gathered into her horse’s saddlebags as it drank.
Freeing her hands, she signed to him, her lips quirking.
Gadreel had no idea what she was communicating, but it didn’t matter.
Her Shadow, the suspicious one, was looking at her now, taking in whatever she was saying. His eyes had drifted from the woods.
Signaling to his troops to draw closer, Gadreel closed ranks. Now, his soldiers stood in a semicircle within the treeline, venom-infused blades bared. Waiting.
Niko Alekhin had dipped his head into the water like the dog he was, and was shaking his hair to dry it. Now, though, he froze.
“Do you smell that?” he said.
The Shadow Alexei straightened, head back to sniff the air. This man had once been Alekhin’s second. They were no longer of the same pack; Gadreel could sense that much. But respect still lingered between them. These two would lay down their lives for each other.
Alexei would die first, then. Gadreel could not afford to have anyone protecting the cursed Shadow, and after all, it was only a matter of finishing the job he and Azazel had started.
Azazel, the traitor. He had to suppress a hiss at the thought.
“What is it?” His Dimi spoke for the first time, her voice hoarse as if from screaming.
“A threat,” Alekhin snarled. And then, louder, “Show yourselves, cowards.”
Now, then.
Sunlight slanted through the low-hanging branches of the forest’s canopy as Gadreel stepped forward.
His foot crushed the fallen needles at the base of one of the fir trees, and all three Shadows spun toward the sound.
Alexei growled at him, shifting seamlessly into the form of his black dog.
The Shadow could no longer speak, but he didn’t have to.
The look in his eyes was statement enough.
He owed Gadreel a debt of violence, that look said, and he had every intention of paying it.
Gadreel ignored him. “Well met, Little Firebird,” he said, as if they stood alone.
She glared at him and spoke not a word.
Did the nickname hold particular offense for her? He found it descriptive; she was as elusive and lovely as the Firebird in the ancient myths, the one the king’s sons had quested throughout the realm to find, risking their lives in the process.
“I mean you no harm.” He lifted his empty palms. “I wish only for you to hear me out.”
“I do not parlay with demons.” She spoke from behind Alekhin, who had moved to stand between her and Gadreel.
He was still in human form, but the other two Shadows had both Changed.
They flanked Alekhin, closing ranks in front of their Dimis, as if that would do them any good.
The rowans that overhung the edge of the pool, rooted in the rocky sand, began to smoke.
A glance from the silent Dimi and the wind gusted, coaxing the smoke into fire.
Gadreel sighed. “I will speak, then. You see the devastation that the Darkness is already wreaking on the land. We must stop it. On that, surely, we agree.”
Katerina Ivanova merely stared at him. In the woods beyond, a lone wolf howled.
“I loosed it. I can contain it once more. Your Light is the counterbalance I need.” Why did he feel as if he were begging? He, who had commanded legions of demons and ruled the majority of the Underworld’s territory since he had tumbled from grace thousands of years before?
It was unsupportable.
“I will give you nothing.” Her words came flat, without give.
Her Shadow was backing her up now, toward the water, a blessed blade in one hand.
The other was clenched into a fist, and between his fingers, ink-black tendrils writhed.
What did he intend to do with it? Gadreel was a creature of Darkness.
The Shadow could not wield it against him.
And yet here Alekhin stood, blade in one hand and Darkness in the other, muscles coiled as if to strike.
On either side of him, the black dogs crouched, prepared to spring.
A treachery of ravens settled atop the firs abutting the stretch of gritty sand that led to the water.
Their wings fluttered, and one of them let out a harsh, shrill cry.
Dimi Ivanova’s gaze flicked over her Shadow’s shoulder, fixing on the ravens.
Deep in the trees, the wolf howled again, this time accompanied by its mate, and her eyes narrowed, as if in thought.
She lifted a hand toward the rowan atop the boulder and twisted her wrist. With a crack, a single branch wrenched free, plummeting into the water far below.
What was she doing? Whatever it was, Gadreel could afford to wait no longer.
The branch sank beneath the surface and the pool began to ripple, as if something stirred in its depths. Gadreel crooked his fingers, summoning his minions. If Dimi Ivanova would not listen to reason, he would take her by force. He took a step closer, intent on his prey.
The cursed Shadow did not retreat. Instead, he smiled at Gadreel, a humorless show of his gleaming, razor-sharp canines.
“Come, then, Dark Angel of War, erstwhile ruler of the Fallen Realms.” He lifted the hand that held the Darkness and spread his fingers.
Inky tendrils churned above his palm. “I would love nothing more.”
The voice belonged to the Shadow, and yet it did not. It was the voice of legions of doomed souls, the voice of those who drowned within the Void. The voice of the Darkness itself. Gadreel shuddered at the sound, and the Shadow gave a mirthless chuckle.
“We are but three Shadows and three Dimis,” he said. “You have slain hundreds of our kind. Surely you do not fear us.”
The Shadow was goading him. Gadreel knew that, and yet he could not resist. It was what he wanted, after all; to take the creature’s life. He beckoned, and his minions surged forward, blades held high, giving a ululating battle cry carried on the rising wind.
He expected his Firebird to plunge into the pool, striking out for the other side.
Everyone knew demons could not cross running water, and though this pool was still and thus posed no barrier to his ilk, it was her best route of escape.
Indeed, the horses, with no one to hold them back, had fled, submerging up to their necks, their hooves kicking up clear spray as they made their way to the other side.
Battle-trained or no, this was not company they cared to keep.
But Katerina Ivanova did not flee. Instead, as the black dogs leapt at his demons, tearing at them as his soldiers slashed and parried, she stepped from behind her Shadow, ignoring his attempts to shield her, and tilted her head to the sky.
“Guardians of the forest!” Her voice rang out above the demons’ cries. “I petition you for aid.”
The corrupted Shadow’s dark brows lowered. “What are you doing?” he demanded, driving a blade into one of Gadreel’s soldiers who’d dared to get within a foot of Dimi Ivanova. But not using his command over the Darkness as a weapon. Not yet.
“What I have to.” She raised her hands to the sky, the sunlight transforming her tangled hair into a fiery halo.
“Lords of the forest. Mistress of the waters. If you deem us worthy, show yourselves as you truly are, not as gray wolf, black raven, or fir-tree,” she cried.
“In our time of need, I bid you, show yourselves to me.”
The wolves howled again in the forest. The ravens took flight, their black wings silhouetted against the red-gold sky.
On the banks of the pool, the black dogs growled, their paws digging into the sand and their lips pulled back from their teeth.
Flame shot from the taller Dimi’s fingertips, igniting another rowan branch, and the wind blew, courtesy of the Dimi that spoke with her hands, whipping it into an inferno.
Darkness foamed at the cursed Shadow’s feet, twining around his body like a lover.
And in the midst of it all stood Dimi Ivanova, her hands still lifted to the sky in supplication, haloed with Light.
Damn her to the most insidious corner of the Underworld. What had she done?
His demons had frozen, as if mesmerized. And a moment later, Gadreel had his answer.
Before his eyes, the firs changed shape, breaking loose from the earth.
Faces emerged from their trunks; golden horns sprouted from their branches.
Two men stood where the trees had been, green beards tumbling to their waists, thick staffs clutched in their hands.
Emerald eyes peered from their bark-brown faces, as bright as the needles of the firs that had flanked the water.
“Katerina.” It was the taller Dimi, her voice blank with disbelief. “How—what—”
She never finished her sentence. Instead, her gaze tracked sideways, and Gadreel’s followed.
From the depths of the pool rose the form of a nude woman, her hair topped with a crown of rowan leaves and her long hair dripping not with water but with Light.
She had no reflection, and yet there she stood, as real as Gadreel himself.
“In the name of the Saints,” Dimi Ivanova whispered.
She trembled now, as she had never done in the face of Gadreel’s wrath.
A flame of resentment ignited within him.
The Dimi feared these creatures, when she had thought nothing of standing her ground against a full complement of his finest soldiers.
“What is this?” His voice came low, malevolent. Beside him, his soldiers’ eyes flicked from the fir-men to the woman in the water and back again.
Vines began to twine from the forest, snaking along the ground and outward from the trees with the avidity of a hundred reaching hands, as the woman spoke. “This is a sacred place, consecrated to the Light. Demons, you have no business here.”
This was absurd. Gadreel refused to be defeated by a soggy nymph and two men who had been trees minutes before, no matter how impressive their horns might be.
He would take those as a prize, he decided, and mount them to the wall in his throne room, once its glory had been restored.
Whatever these creatures were, they stood between him and his quarry.
The smaller Dimi lifted a hand, sending the rowan-smoke wafting toward him. It chafed Gadreel’s throat, and he coughed, his soldiers echoing the sound. Steeling himself, he took another step forward, ignoring the black dogs’ raised hackles and Alekhin’s warning growl.
“I am the Dark Angel of War, the Scourge of Humankind, Slayer of Shadows and Devourer of Souls,” he spat. “I go where I please, and take what I will.”
The horned men’s green eyes flashed, gold flames flickering within their depths. From within the pool, the woman’s laughter trickled, cold and clear as the water in which she stood.
“We are the Lisovyki,” the men said, together. “Lords of the forest, kings of the wild barrens, and guardians of the groves.”
“And I am the Mavka.” The woman lifted one pale, languid hand to touch her crown. “Soul of the forest, temptress, and lure.”
Gadreel opened his mouth to tell her that he had lain with Lilith herself, mother of demons; it would take more than a waterlogged girl wearing a plant on her head to entice him.
But then he looked left and right. His demons, once flanking him, stood there no longer.
Instead they marched forward, heedless of the smoke, past the fir-men and the growling Shadows, past Dimi Ivanova and her besmirched bodyguard, straight into the pool of water.
Heedless of his demands to stop, to turn around, to obey him, they beelined for the Mavka.
One by one, she kissed them when they reached her, cupping their faces as tenderly as a lover, and one by one, they howled, then sank beneath the surface and did not rise again.
“What have you done to them?” His wings burst from his back in fury, beating against the ash-flecked air.
The smooth surface of the pool churned. From the depths came the metal-on-metal shriek of his dying soldiers.
And then, silence fell. A silver-blue slick stained the clear water, the Mavka at its epicenter.
She had only kissed his soldiers before they sank into the depths.
But somehow, she had murdered each and every one.
“What they deserved. These have not harmed me or mine, not yet. But their brethren stole my sisters away and made them suffer,” the Mavka said, her lips rising in a serene smile. “These soldiers have paid for their brothers’ crimes. Would you care to be next?”
What in the name of all the Grigori was she talking about? How and why would demons possibly make use of Mavky? It was ridiculous, absurd.
But whatever the case, this one believed it.
Her smile grew, lighting her eyes. Rivulets of water ran down her body, coursing over her bare breasts and belly.
The droplets gleamed in the dawning light, crimson as human blood.
And Gadreel felt it, then: the pull that had driven his soldiers to wade toward her, embracing their own demise.
It coaxed him, urged him, tugged him onward: a fishhook snagged in his very soul.
He set his feet, resisting it with all his willpower.
She might be able to ensnare his minions, but he was the Dark Angel of War.
A single water-nymph, no matter how powerful, could not lure him to his death.
And this one was powerful; her strength vibrated in his bones.
He didn’t stumble forward, toward her—but he couldn’t break her hold, either.
“Let me go,” he snarled, then choked as the rowan-smoke seared his lungs.
Blood roared in Gadreel’s ears as the Lisovyki and the Mavka spoke as one. “The Dimi called to us, and we have come. By the laws of ancient hospitality, we protect those who walk our paths. They will cross our waters without malice, and you shall do them no harm.”
The Lisovyki pounded their staffs on the sand, and the vines reached for Gadreel once more, yanking him backward into the line of trees.
They wrapped around him, binding his wings to his sides until the feathers bent and the bones creaked.
Before the smoke that drifted over the water and toward the forest obscured his vision, he made out Dimi Ivanova’s dark, triumphant gaze, and the gleam of her Shadow’s teeth as the accursed creature lifted a hand in farewell.