Ilona Andrews: Dark and Stormy Knights

Something bumped behind the front door. I swiped Slayer off the counter. “Bedroom. Now.”

“Can I watch?”

I pointed with the sword to the bedroom.

Saiman gave an exaggerated sigh. “Very well.”

He went to the bedroom. I padded to the door and leaned against it, listening.

Quiet.

I waited, sword raised. Something waited out there in the hallway. I couldn’t hear it, but I sensed it. It was there.

A quiet whimper filtered through the steel of the door. A sad, lost, feminine whimper, like an old woman crying quietly in mourning.

I held very still. The apartment felt stifling and crowded in. I would’ve given anything for a gulp of fresh air right about now.

Something scratched at the door. A low mutter floated through, whispered words unintelligible.

God, what was it with the air in this place? The place was stale and musty, like a tomb.

A feeling of dread flooded me. Something bad was in the apartment. It hid in the shadows under the furniture, in the cabinets, in the fridge. Fear squirmed through me. I pressed my back against the door, holding Slayer in front of me.

The creature behind the door scratched again, claws against the steel.

The walls closed in. I had to get away from this air. Somewhere out in the open. Someplace where the wind blew under an open sky. Somewhere with nothing to crowd me in.

I had to get out.

If I left, I risked Saiman’s life. Outside, the volkhvi were waiting. I’d be walking right into their arms.

The shadows under the furniture grew longer, stretching toward me.

Get out. Get out now!

I bit my lip. A quick drop of blood burned on my tongue, the magic in it nipping at me. Clarity returned for a second, and light dawned in my head. Badzula. Of course. The endars failed to rip us apart, so the volkhvi went for plan B. If Muhammad won’t go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Muhammad.

Saiman walked out of the bedroom. His eyes were glazed over.

“Saiman!”

“I must go,” he said. “Must get out.”

“No, you really must not.” I sprinted to him.

“I must.”

He headed to the giant window.

I kicked the back of his right knee. He folded. I caught him on the way down and spun him so he landed on his stomach. He sprawled among the ankle-tall ferns. I locked his left wrist and leaned on him, grinding all of my weight into his left shoulder.

“Badzula,” I told him. “Belorussian creature. Looks like a middle-aged woman with droopy breasts, swaddled in a filthy blanket.”

“I must get out.” He tried to roll over, but I had him pinned.

“Focus, Saiman. Badzula—what’s her power?”

“She incites people to vagrancy.”

“That’s right. And we can’t be vagrants, because if we walk out of this building, both of us will be killed. We have to stay put.”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Yes, you can. I’m not planning on getting up.”

“I believe you’re right.” A small measure of rational thought crept into his voice. “I suppose the furniture isn’t really trying to devour us.”

“If it is, I’ll chop it with my sword when it gets close.”

“You can let me up now,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

We sat still. The air grew viscous like glue. I had to bite it to get any into my lungs.

Muscles crawled under me. Saiman couldn’t get out of my hold, so he decided to shift himself out.

“Do you stock herbs?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you have water lily?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Laboratory, third cabinet.”

“Good.” I rolled off of him. I’d have only a second to do this, and I had to do it precisely.

Saiman got up to his knees. As he rose, I threw a fast right hook. He never saw it coming and didn’t brace himself. My fist landed on his jaw. His head snapped back. His eyes rolled over and he sagged down.

Lucky. I ran to the lab.

It took a hell of a lot of practice to knock someone out. You needed both speed and power to jolt the head enough to rattle the brain inside the skull but not cause permanent damage. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even try it, but these weren’t normal circumstances. Walls were curving in to eat me.

If I did cause too much damage, he would fix it. Considering what he had done to his body so far, his regeneration would make normal shapeshifters jealous.

Third cabinet. I threw it open and scanned the glass jars. Dread mugged me like a sodden blanket. Ligularia dentata, Ligularia przewalski . . . Latin names, why me? Lilium pardalinum, Lobelia siphilitica. Come on, come on . . . Nymphaea odorata , pond lily. Also known to Russians as odolen-trava, the mermaid flower, an all-purpose pesticide against all things unclean. That would do.

I dashed to the door, twisting the lid off the jar. A gray powder filled it—ground lily petals, the most potent part of the flower. I slid open the lock. The ward drained down, and I jerked the door ajar.

Empty hallway greeted me. I hurled the jar and the powder into the hall. A woman wailed, smoke rose from thin air, and Badzula materialized in the middle of the carpet. Skinny, flabby, filthy, with breasts dangling to her waist like two empty bags, she tossed back grimy, tangled hair and hissed at me, baring stumps of rotten teeth.

“That’s nice. Fuck you, too.”

I swung. It was textbook saber slash, diagonal, from left to right. I drew the entirety of the blade through the wound. Badzula’s body toppled one way, her head rolled the other.

The weight dropped off my shoulders. Suddenly I could breathe, and the building no longer seemed in imminent danger of collapsing and burying me alive.

I grabbed the head, tossed it into the elevator, dragged the body in there, sent the whole thing to the ground floor, sprinted back inside, and locked the door, reactivating the ward. The whole thing took five seconds.

On the floor, Saiman lay unmoving. I checked his pulse. Breathing. Good. I went back to the island. I deserved some coffee after this, and I bet Saiman stocked the good stuff.

I was sitting by the counter, sipping the best coffee I’d ever tasted, when the big-screen TV on the wall lit up with fuzzy glow. Which was more than a smidgeon odd, considering that the magic was still up and the TV shouldn’t have worked.

I took my coffee and my saber and went to sit on the couch, facing the TV. Saiman still sprawled unconscious on the floor.

The glow flared brighter, faded, flared brighter . . . In ancient times people used mirrors, but really any somewhat reflective surface would do. The dark TV screen was glossy enough.

The glow blazed and materialized into a blurry male. In his early twenties, dark hair, dark eyes.

The man looked at me. “You’re the bodyguard.” His voice carried a trace of Russian accent.

I nodded and slipped into Russian. “Yes.”

“I don’t know you. What you do makes no difference to me. We have this place surrounded. We go in in an hour. ” He made a short chopping motion with his hand. “You’re done.”

“I’m shaking with fear. In fact, I may have to take a minute to get my shivers under control.” I drank my coffee.

The man shook his head. “You tell that paskuda, if he let Yulya go, I’ll make sure you both walk out alive. You hear that? I don’t know what he’s got over my wife, but you tell him that. If he wants to live, he has to let her go. I’ll be back in thirty minutes. You tell him.”

The screen faded.

And the plot thickens. I sighed and nudged Saiman with my boot. It took a couple of nudges, but finally he groaned and sat up.