22
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
The forest was quiet around him, early enough in the season that the mosquitos were still mostly dormant, the calling birds and the swish of new, budded leaves in the wind the only sounds.
The only sounds obvious to human ears.
For an immortal bodark, there was lots to hear.
Sasha shut his eyes, and listened.
The wind came to him as a complex layering of sighs, and whispers, and squeals.
He heard the droning of flies.
Heard a squirrel’s claws grip tight to the bark of a tree.
Heard the soft, barely-there crunch of a leaf underfoot. A human foot.
He breathed deep and smelled pine sap, leaf mold, the richness of the earth.
The scent of small wild rodents, bird droppings, fresh water.
Smelled the musk of his wolves and, distantly, the unwashed tang of human bodies – the rest of his pack.
He opened his eyes and smiled. “Swing wide,” he told his alpha female.
She snorted and trotted off, taking the rest with her. They would be his backup, but stalking he had to do on his own, to prove that he could.
He had a true mission now. A purpose. It filled him with something almost like joy.
Grinning still, he set off through the trees, as silent as his four-legged wolf family.
~*~
“You’re a crack shot, but you can’t hide to save your life,” Nikita drawled beneath her, and Katya inwardly cursed.
“I don’t think soldiers look for snipers as closely as you look for me,” she shot back, glancing down to him.
He stood with one gloved hand braced on the tree trunk, looking up at her with an expression she was beginning to read as fond.
“You’re ruining the exercise,” she said, tone as flat as she could make it. “We aren’t supposed to be chatting.”
He shrugged. “Who cares? What’s the old man going to do? Set us on fire?”
Which was something he actually could do. She’d seen him light their campfires with little balls of flame in his palms.
Katya shivered. “That’s not funny.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.” He made a face. “I wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
She huffed out a breath that stirred the fine hairs that had slipped from beneath her hat. To think she would wind up feeling exasperated by the kind attentions of a Chekist. Old Her could never have predicted something so crazy.
“It’s a lot to take in,” Nikita continued. “Holy men coming back from the grave. Government coups.” His smile was tense. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were frightened.”
She’d been frightened two nights ago, standing with him in the dark, her face pressed to his coat, wondering if she could work up the courage to kiss him at some point. But now, in her element, perched in a tree with her rifle in her hands, she felt composed and, thanks to his breach of the exercise, irritated.
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” she said, which was only partly a lie.
He lifted his brows. “I’ve seen a lot, and even I wasn’t counting on Rasputin.”
She snorted.
“Okay. Maybe I was a little.”
“You’re a very strange man.”
“Yes, I think that’s been well-established by now–” He cut off, face going white, and that was when Katya heard the sound.
It was tinny, and muffled, but it sounded like the ringing of a bell. A small one, like a little hand bell.
She glanced wildly through the trees around them, toward the clearing that lay just beyond. Was this part of the exercise? Was Monsieur Philippe ringing it?
But, grimly, Nikita said, “It’s mine.”
When she glanced back down, he had a hand over the utility pouch on his pants leg.
“What?”
“The bell. It’s mine.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “Jesus.”
~*~
Sasha jumped over a narrow ditch, trotted up a hill, spun around the trunk of a large pine…and there he was.
The man stood with his hands folded neatly together, pale hair hanging straight down both shoulders, fine and shiny as spun gold. He had the face of an angel, and the rich dark-red velvet coat of a prince in a painting.
“Are you a prince?” Sasha had asked, when he was just a boy, and the knowledge slammed into him suddenly, solid as a fist, bringing him to a halt. This was the same man he’d seen years before, down to the gold buttons on his coat and the half-amused curl of his lips.
“Hello,” the prince said, once again in his perfect, but strangely-accented Russian. “It’s Sasha, isn’t it?”
Sasha opened his mouth and breathed in deeply, searching for scent, a taste, something. But all he smelled was the forest. The prince had no scent whatsoever.
He smirked. “Ah. You can’t smell me, can you?”
“How–” Sasha started.
“I’m not really here, you see.” He extended one pale, long-fingered hand, palm-up, in invitation.
Sasha studied it a long moment, wary. If he’d had a scruff like his wolves, it would have been standing on end. Thinking of his wolf pack, he wished now that he hadn’t sent them off in another direction.
The prince sighed. “Come on. I can’t hurt you.”
Slowly, Sasha reached forward and laid his palm in the prince’s. Tried to, at least. His hand passed right through the other’s, the seemingly-solid image of it giving way to vapor.
Sasha gasped.
“Not really here, I told you,” the prince said, pulling his solid-again hand back and refolding it with the other.
“What are you…what?”
The prince sighed. “Tell me you at least remember me.”
Sasha nodded. It would be hard to forget someone like this, clean and gleaming, dressed in rich finery the likes of which hadn’t been seen around here in Sasha’s lifetime. “You’re a prince, you said.”
“Very good.” His smile seemed mocking. “And you, it would appear, went and got yourself turned into a wolf.”
“I’m a wolf,” Sasha confirmed, feeling guarded.
The prince rolled his eyes. “Fine. Act secretive if you want to. It’s not as if this is the only means by which to entertain myself.” He glanced off to the left and said something sharp in another language. Sasha thought it might be English. But there was no one else there.
“Who are you talking to?”
“One of my delightfully stupid jailers. Neanderthals, the lot of them. You’d think,” he grumbled, “if you were going to lock a man up for centuries, you might at least offer him a little reading material.” He turned and shouted something into the empty forest, face harsh with anger.
“Um…your majesty? Are you–”
“I’m not insane, no. It’s a projection – no time to explain.” He waved at Sasha, a fast leave off motion. “Here. Sit down. I have something to tell you.”
Curious, wary, confused, Sasha eased down to the ground, sitting cross-legged, watching the way the – projection? – prince followed suit across from him, elegant even while seated on pine needles.
“Let me guess,” the prince began once they were settled. His expression was caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “You’re traveling in the company of Monsieur Philippe, a most charming Frenchman with ties to the late tsar and tsarina.”
Sasha blinked at him. “Um…yes. How did you know?”
Another wave. Don’t worry about that. “He’s probably given you the whole patriotic speech, hasn’t he? About bringing back the empire, and destroying Communism? Overthrowing Stalin in a rain of bullets and the glorious screams of your enemies.”
“He didn’t put it quite like that. But. Yes. More or less.”
The prince snorted. “It’s all a bunch of bullshit.”
“Says the projection.”
The prince grinned, his very-sharp eye teeth flashing in the sun. Sasha remembered those teeth, and felt his imaginary hackles rise in response. “You catch on fast.”
Sasha snorted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Nikita would have given a little wave and said “get on with it.”
The prince rolled his eyes skyward. “I’m not lying to you, projection or not. Your mission is doomed, Sasha, it always has been. Whites, Communists, Mother Russia – none of that matters to our esteemed Monsieur Philippe. He wants only to be the left hand of the devil, so that he can rule in a hellish court of his own design.”
Sasha refused to react in any outward way, but inwardly, his stomach tightened and his breath chilled in his lungs. If any of this was true…and not just the crazy ramblings of someone who might have been a figment of his imagination…
That thought soothed him somewhat. He wasn’t himself anymore, after all, and who was to say that he wasn’t capable of hallucinating.
“You doubt me,” the prince said, leaning forward. He seemed so real: the smooth white skin catching the light along his high cheekbones, down the straight slope of his nose. The trees were reflected in his eyes, evidence of his reality. “Tell me, Sasha: what do you think is the single strongest driving force on this earth? What moves the men you travel with? What’s their driving motivation?”
Sasha thought of Ivan, and Feliks, and Pyotr, and even stern-faced Kolya, all brothers to one another. Thought of Katya with her rifle and her Red Army uniform, and her brave attempt to hide her heartbreak. Thought of Nikita, the way he stared at Katya when no one was looking, the way his eyes grew somber when he talked about his dead best friend. Thought about the way he’d gently cupped the back of Sasha’s neck and told him – promised him – that he wouldn’t let him become a soldier. Thought of all their collective bitterness when they talked of what had been done to a tsar they were loyal to still, despite twenty years of Communist rule – or maybe because of it. Thought of his wolves, of Mama and Papa safe back home in Tomsk because he’d left.
And the answer came immediately and simply. “Love,” he said. “That’s the strongest thing.”
“Love. Ha. That’s a rich word. Let me tell you something you probably don’t want to hear, Sasha. Those men you’re traveling with – you think of them as friends, yes? Well, I can’t say they feel the same. Those men, with their politics and their revolutions and their vendettas, they don’t love anyone. Not one another, not their cause, not their country, not some dead tsar who’s nothing but a heap of bones at the bottom of a well.” Snort. “Love is a foolish concept. People – petty mortal humans – don’t love, they crave. Fleshly pursuits, yes, but most of all they crave power. This quest you’re bound on has nothing to do with patriotism. Your friends don’t want to avenge anyone, save anyone. They’re all fools, the old man is a pompous windbag out of his depth, and the beast you’re setting off to wake is just that – a beast. Communism, the empire, the war, none of that matters. This is about one thing: power. Everyone craves it, and only a few can hold it. It’s the one lasting tenant of this world that survives century after century: the craving and pursuit of power.”
Sasha swallowed the rising lump in his throat. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” He arched a single brow, smile mocking.
“Why would you tell me all of that anyway?”
He shrugged and sat back. “I’ve always liked wolves, myself. Couldn’t stand the mages – crafty liars, all of them. But wolves have a certain rough honesty to them. They’re emotion, and instinct, and so rarely have machinations of their own.” He smiled up at the sky, almost wistful. Then glanced back at Sasha. “Consider it my good deed of the day.” He snorted. “Better make that decade.”
“Are you a vampire?” Sasha asked.
“Yes,” the prince answered, just as simply.
“Is Rasputin like you?”
“He’s nothing like me.”
In the silence that followed, Sasha heard his wolves approaching, their breath and heartbeats, felt their curiosity and wariness. They couldn’t smell the prince either, but could sense their alpha’s distress.
Finally, the prince got to his feet and dusted off his pristine breeches. “I better be going, then.”
“Wait!” Sasha said, and it came out a shout.
The prince gave him an amused glance.
“What’s your name?”
That earned him another fang-flashing smile. “I always tell my friends to call me Val,” he said, winked, and then was gone. Vanished into thin air, as if he’d never been there at all.
~*~
Nikita went from relatively calm to slick with cold sweat in a matter of seconds. The bell was ringing. He’d had the thing since he was born – he had dim memories of pawing at it as a toddler – and never once had it made noise on its own. But there was no denying its oddly clear chime, and the vibration of it inside his pocket.
“Jesus,” he said, curse and prayer both. “I don’t…” Words failed him. He stared at his pocket and wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to reach inside it and lay his hand on what was, no doubt, an enchanted object of some sort.
Werewolves, vampires, mages. What was one more layer of insanity to add to all that?
But the bell was the line, apparently, as he stood rooted to the spot, gaping.
Katya, though, was much braver than him in this instance. She hooked her rifle over her shoulder by its strap and slithered down out of the tree, lithe as a sable, landing on her feet in front of him. “What is that?” She bent at the waist to squint at his pocket, which put her face on level with his–
Despite his shameful fit of terror, his mind threw up an image that made his heart pound for a different reason. He imagined her leaning in even closer, pressing her hand to the front of his pants, imagined the warmth of her breath, hot and stirring even through the thick wool serge. Would she know how to do it? Draw him out of his clothes and take him into her hot, sweet mouth? Or would he have to tell her? Would he –
He took a step back, swaying like he was drunk. “Here, I…” His hand felt stiff, like he’d buried it in a snowbank without a glove, when he shoved it roughly into his pocket and curled it around the bell. The sound cut off at once, but the bell was warm against his skin. Hot, even. Not just his body heat, he didn’t think.
“It sounded like a bell,” Katya said, straightening. She looked at him expectantly.
He released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “It is a bell.” Unaccountably nervous, he drew it out of his pocket and opened his hand so she could see it.
It was the same as it always had been: tarnished, dented on one side, unremarkable in all ways, save the Cyrillic writing on the inside. Our Friend. The royal family had called Philippe that, and then, later, Rasputin.
“Family heirloom?” Katya guessed, because it had an obvious look of age about it.
“Yes,” he said, because it was…even if it wasn’t his family. “It’s supposed to” – he felt like a fool, repeating the thing his mother had always told him about the object – “ring when dark forces are near.” But given all that he’d learned in the last few months, he didn’t suppose it sounded bizarre after all.
Katya snorted. “Dark forces. Including you?”
He almost smiled at that. “Probably.” But there were still phantom ants marching up the back of his neck. He’d always considered the bell to be nothing more than peace of mind – and now, after the fall of the empire, a potentially-expensive trinket. A collector somewhere would no doubt love to have it. He hadn’t thought it had any actual power.
Then again, it had belonged to Philippe, and he certainly had power.
He blew out a breath and put it back in his pocket. “Maybe we imagined the noise,” he suggested.
Katya gave him a look. “Trust me: nothing that’s happened is anything I ever would have imagined.”
~*~
The exercise was a simple one: track all members of his human pack, sneak up on them if possible, and incapacitate them. Or pretend to, at least. Sasha knew he could render them unconscious with one good strike, and so only mimed it, which drew chuckles from everyone.
Katya even threw up both hands from her perch in a tree, mouth a little O of fake surprise, grinning when he yipped up at her. If he had a tail to wag, he would have.
Once everyone was “caught,” they trooped back to find Monsieur Philippe waiting at camp, looking serene with his eyes shut.
He opened them when they were a few yards off, smiling, as usual. “Well done, Sasha. Not that I doubted you.”
Pleasantly tired and sore from the excursion, Sasha flopped down onto the forest floor and his wolves piled up around him. Snuffling and competing for the chance to sit closest to him. He reached for the omega himself, invited the coltish young wolf to climb half into his lap and rest his head on his knee. He always needed a little extra encouragement and affection, to know that his alpha loved him.
His humans sat on the logs and piles of firewood they’d arranged around the fire pit last night.
Ivan screwed off the top of his vodka canteen and took a long sip. He, like the others, smelled of sweat and unwashed skin. No doubt they could smell themselves when they crawled into their bedrolls at night, but Sasha smelled them intensely. It was how he’d found all of them right away during the exercise, following their scent trails across creeks and over hills and even, in Pyotr’s case, between the branches of trees after he’d shinnied up and then swung from branch to branch, moving like the New World monkeys Sasha had only ever seen in books.
He could smell that Katya had gone through her monthly cycle earlier in the week, the smell of thick, clotted blood. And he could smell that Ivan’s wound, the place where the bullet had grazed his side, still oozed a different kind of blood – thin but vital, dangerous. So far, he couldn’t detect the sour-rot smell of infection, but it needed a proper cleaning, and some stitches. It was good they’d be going back to the base soon.
He recalled the prince, Val, and his total lack of scent. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Monsieur Philippe what a projection was – and if it was even real – but he thought about what Val had warned him of, and he held his tongue for now. He wasn’t the sort of person who kept secrets, at least he hadn’t been before. But he hadn’t been a wolf before, either. Things changed.
“We should head back to the base at first light,” Philippe said. “It’s a long trip to Petersburg.”
~*~
They were going back. Back to a roof, and four walls, and showers. Clean clothes, hot food cooked indoors. Fresh underpants and shampoo and, thank God, a real bed with a pillow and sheets.
But she felt hollow with disappointment.
And she hated herself a little for the reason why.
It was full-dark now, the fire roaring, merry and hot. Its light bathed Ivan and Feliks’s faces as they played cards. Ivan’s smile twitched every so often, and he reached for his canteen. It had to be almost empty by now – she knew he’d brought three, and that this was the third. His gunshot wound needed looking at by a doctor – another reason to be glad they were going back.
Nikita sat away from the fire, on his spread-out bedroll, leaning back against a tree trunk. He stared down at his cupped palms, and she had a feeling it was the bell he’d shown her earlier.
She spared a glance for the others, but Sasha was curled up asleep with his wolves and Monsieur Philippe was telling Pyotr some story that had turned the boy’s eyes round and wide. Kolya was sharpening his knives – it was a loving compulsion, she’d come to realize.
Everyone was preoccupied, and no one would pay them any attention. She crossed the distance and sank down beside Nikita. There was just enough tree trunk left to rest the flat of her right shoulder blade against it.
It was the bell he held, and he made no move to close his hand around it, acknowledging her presence with a low hum that struck her as both welcoming and affectionate.
“Still stuck on that ugly old thing?” she asked.
He nudged it around in his palm with his thumb. There was just enough firelight to see the shape of it, a darker shadow against the dim backdrop of his hand. “My mother gave it to me,” he said, softly, and she was coming to learn that his mother was the only person he’d had before his few friends had come into his life.
“Oh. It’s special, then.” She laid her hand on his knee and he shifted, just a little, moving into the touch.
His voice dropped another notch. “It wasn’t hers, originally. It belonged to the tsarina. It was a gift from Monsieur Philippe.”
“Damn,” she said, shocked. “Really?” Her eyes darted across the camp toward the old Frenchman. He punctuated his story with a dramatic hand gesture, red-orange sparks flying from the ends of his fingers. If he could hear their conversation – and damn the old mystic, he probably could – he gave no indication.
“Yes,” he said. “It…the thing about the dark forces. That was what Philippe told Alexandra, when he gave it to her.” He shrugged. “I never thought it was real. Not after…”
The downfall, the assassination. Everything.
“But it rang today,” she reasoned, wracking her brain for a potential cause. Once upon a time she would have laughed at the idea of the supernatural. But now. Well.
“I’d blame it on the old man, but it hasn’t stirred so far,” Nikita said.
“And not Sasha, either.”
“No.”
“Dark forces? What does that even mean?”
He shrugged and lifted his head, expression tense with thought. “Something darker than a mage or werewolf, I guess.”
“Hmm.”
With a sigh and one last speculative look at the thing, Nikita slipped it back in his pocket. “I guess you’ll be glad to go back to base.” He gave her another glance, this one more guarded, careful.
He’d seemed so cold when she met him, and now that seemed like an impossible impression. Even when he schooled his features, there were little tells: the notch between his brows, the way the lines deepened alongside his mouth, the quirk of an eyebrow. Things you had to look for, and most people, she figured, would be so put off by his flat stare that they wouldn’t take the time to search.
She saw them now, though, even in the near-dark. Felt a surge of fondness for him. “Being clean sounds heavenly.”
He released a little breath and nodded, his face relaxing. “God, yes. We all stink.”
She chuckled. “Yes.”
He glanced toward the fire, and the rest of his men. “We’re not really made for the wilderness. But.”
She waited a beat, to see if he would elaborate. She thought she understood, so when he didn’t, she said, “But it’s sort of peaceful out here.”
He nodded. “Except for the occasional Nazi.”
“Except for that.”
She felt the weight of unsaid things settle across her shoulders. But the words were muddied in her head. She had the sense of regret, and wanting more, the feeling that a window was closing. But she couldn’t shape the question properly. What did she want from him? A frantic, sweaty coupling on the pine needles? One sweet, lingering kiss? Or maybe the assurance that he would miss her. Maybe it was as simple as that – wanting to feel wanted.
Nikita said, “Will you be glad to rejoin the Army?”
She tried and failed to suppress a small, surprised sound. An unexpected twinge flared between her ribs. She didn’t want to leave them, she realized, this misfit band of pretenders with their wolf-boy. “Well,” she said, intelligently, stalling. “I’m…I’m a soldier, right? I don’t think ‘glad’ comes into it.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But I don’t think that I will. I’ll have to see what my assignment is.”
“Of course.”
Night sounds rushed to fill the silence between them: the murmur of conversation by the fire, the droning of flies and the first few mosquitos of the season, swish of newborn leaves rustling against their branches in the wind.
In a guarded voice, Nikita said, “The old man has sway. The generals believe he really can save the Soviet Union. So whatever he wants, he gets. If he was to – if I suggested–” There was just enough light to read his uncertain expression. “You could be assigned with us, if you wanted,” he said, quickly, half-stumbling over the words, like he was afraid if he didn’t say it now he’d lose the courage. “If you want to go with us to Petersburg, be our sniper, we could make it so.”
Her heart leapt. Did she want that?
“But I understand if your patriotism makes that impossible,” he added, voice small, now uncertain.
Her stomach clenched with a kind of anticipation she hadn’t felt since she was a girl. Joining the war effort had been the right thing to do, the responsible thing. The only way to seek justice for her family. But now – to her shame – she felt a child’s excitement over the prospect of an adventure. One with a real wizard, even! Of sorts.
As soon as the idea had occurred, she dashed it. How could she think such a thing after what had happened? While they were in the middle of a war? How could she?
Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked back the burn. “I’m not.” She sounded choked and had to clear her throat and start again. “I’m not as patriotic as I maybe thought.” Not if treason sounded like adventure.
Nikita’s arm went around her shoulders, strong and solid.
She shuddered and leaned into his warmth. It was confusing, all of it – the way he looked at her now, the way he made her pulse jump, the way she was softening toward all of them, and wanting them to succeed.
“Think about it on the way back,” Nikita said. “You don’t have to decide now.”
Overcome with sudden exhaustion, she nodded, and then laid her head down on his shoulder.
The others laughed at something Ivan had said by the fire, and around them, the dark forest reserved judgement.