Ilona Andrews: Dark and Stormy Knights

“We’ll make a run for it,” I told him.

A faint scratch made me spin. An old man hung outside the window, suspended on a rope. Gaunt, his white beard flapping in the wind, he peered through the glass straight at me. In the split second we looked at each other, twelve narrow stalks unfurled from his neck, spreading into a corona around his head, like a nimbus around the face of a Russian icon. A bulb tipped each stock. A hovala. Shit.

I grabbed Saiman and threw him at the door.

The bulbs opened.

Blinding light flooded the apartment, hiding the world in a white haze. The window behind me exploded. I could barely see. “Stay behind me.”

Shapes dashed through the haze.

I slashed. Slayer connected, encountering resistance. Sharp ice stabbed my left side. I reversed the strike and slashed again. The shape before me crumpled. The second attacker struck. I dodged left on instinct and stabbed my blade at his side. Bone and muscle. Got him between the lower ribs. A hoarse scream lashed my ears. I twisted the blade, ripping the organs, and withdrew.

The hovala hissed at the window. I was still blind.

Behind me the lock clicked. “No!”

I groped for Saiman and hit my forearm on the open door. He ran. Into the hallway, where he was an easy target. I lost my body. Goddamn it.

I sprinted into the hallway, trying to blink the haze from eyes. The stairs were to the left. I ran, half-blind, grabbed the door, and dashed up the stairs.

The blinding flare finally cleared. I hit the door, burst onto the roof, and took a kick to the ribs. Bones crunched. I fell left and rolled to my feet. A woman stood by the door, arms held in a trademark tae kwon do cat stance.

To the right, an older man grappled with Saiman. Six others watched.

The woman sprang into a kick. It was a lovely kick, strong with good liftoff. I sidestepped and struck. By the time she landed, I’d cut her twice. She fell in a crumpled heap.

I flicked the blood off my saber and headed for Saiman.

“You’re Voron’s kid,” one of the men said. “We have no problem with you. Pavel’s entitled. His son just threw himself off the roof.”

Ten to a million the son’s name was Grigorii.

I kept coming. The two men ripped at each other, grappling and snarling like two wild animals. I was five feet away when Pavel head-butted Saiman, jerking his right arm free. A knife flashed; I lunged and saw Pavel slice across Saiman’s distended gut. A bloody clump fell, and I caught it with my left hand purely on instinct.

Magic punched my arm. Pale glow erupted from my fist.

Saiman twisted and stabbed something at Pavel’s right eye. The volkhv stumbled back, a bloody pencil protruding from his eye socket. For a long moment he stood, huge mouth gaping, and then he toppled like a log. Saiman spun about. The muscles of his stomach collapsed, folding, knitting together, turning into a flat washboard wall.

The whole thing took less than three seconds.

I opened my fist. A small gold acorn lay on my palm.

The golden shell cracked. A sliver of green thrust its way up. The acorn rolled off my hand. The green shoot thickened, twisted, surging higher and higher. The air roared like a tornado. Saiman howled, a sound of pure rage. I grabbed him and dragged him with me to the stairs. On the other side, volkhvi ran for the edge of the roof.

The shoot grew, turning dark, sprouting branches, leaves, and bark. Magic roiled.

“It was supposed to be mine,” Saiman snarled. “Mine!”

Light flashed. The roaring ceased.

A colossal oak stood in the middle of the roof, as tall as the building itself, its roots spilling on both sides of the high-rise. Tiny lights fluttered between its branches, each wavy leaf as big as my head. Birds sang in the foliage. A huge metal chain bound the enormous trunk, its links so thick, I could’ve lain down on it. A feeling of complete peace came over me. All my troubles melted into the distance. My pain dissolved. The air tasted sweet, and I drank it in.

At the other side of the roof, the volkhvi knelt.

Metal clinked. A black creature came walking down the bottom loop. As big as a horse, its fur long and black, it walked softly, gripping the links with razor-sharp claws. Its head was that of a lynx. Tall tufts of black fur decorated its ears, and a long black beard stretched from its chin. Its eyes glowed, lit from within.

The cat paused and looked at me. The big maw opened, showing me a forest of white teeth, long and sharp like knives.

“Ask.”

I blinked.

“You were the last to hold the acorn,” Saiman whispered. “You must ask the question or it will kill all of us.”

The cat showed me its teeth again.

For anything I asked, there would be a price.

“Ask,” the cat said, its voice laced with an unearthly snarl.

“Ask, Kate,” Saiman prompted.

“Ask!” one of the volkhvi called out.

I took a deep breath.

The cat leaned forward in anticipation.

“Would you like some milk?”

The cat smiled wider. “Yes.”

Saiman groaned.

“I’ll be right back.”

I dashed down the stairs. Three minutes later, the cat lapped milk from Saiman’s crystal punch bowl.

“You could’ve asked anything,” the creature said between laps.

“But you would’ve taken everything,” I told it. “This way all it cost me is a little bit of milk.”

In the morning Peters came to relieve me. Not that he had a particularly difficult job. After the oak disappeared, the volkhvi decided that since both Pavel and Grigorii were dead, all accounts were settled and it was time to call it quits. As soon as we returned to the apartment, Saiman locked himself in the bedroom and refused to come out. The loss of the acorn hit him pretty hard. Just as well. I handed my fussy client off to Peters, retrieved Peggy, and headed back to the Guild.

All in all I’d done spectacularly well, I decided. I lost the client for at least two minutes, let him get his stomach ripped open, watched him stab his attacker in the eye, which was definitely something he shouldn’t have had to do, and cost him his special acorn and roughly five months of work. The fact that my client turned out to be a scumbag and a sexual deviant really had no bearing on the matter.

Some bodyguard I made. Yay. Whoopee. I got to the Guild, surrendered Peggy, and filled out my paperwork. You win some, you lose some. At least Saiman survived. I wouldn’t get paid, but I didn’t end the job with a dead client on my hands.

I grabbed my crap and headed for the doors.

“Kate,” the clerk called from the counter.

I turned. Nobody remembered the clerk’s name. He was just “the clerk.”

He waved an envelope at me. “Money.”

I turned on my foot. “Money?”

“For the job. Client called. He says he’d like to work exclusively with you from now on. What did the two of you do all night?”

“We argued philosophy.” I swiped the envelope and counted the bills. Three grand. What do you know?

I stepped out the doors into an overcast morning. I had been awake for over thirty-six hours. I just wanted to find a quiet spot, curl up, and shut out the world.

A tall, lean man strode to me, tossing waist-long black hair out of the way. He walked like a dancer, and his face would stop traffic. I looked into his blue eyes and saw a familiar smugness in their depths. “Hello, Saiman.”

“How did you know?”

I shrugged and headed on my way.

“Perhaps we can work out a deal,” he said, matching my steps. “I have no intentions of losing that bet. I will find a form you can’t resist.”

“Good luck.”

“I’m guessing you’ll try to avoid me, which would make my victory a bit difficult.”