Containment (Winter Solstice Book 2), page 2
Eventually, the music melts into the background, and the sun comes up far too soon. Wow. I guess being kidnapped and almost killed is exhausting enough to let me sleep in a new bed without tossing and turning all night.
Like a zombie, I get up and trudge across the apartment to the bathroom. The clatter of a pan dropping into the sink makes me aware I just streaked past Cristiano. Oh well; I’m either comfortable around him or too tired to care. Probably a little of both. On my return trip from the bathroom, I’m conscious enough to notice him staring at me the whole time I walk by. He seems surprised, curious, and a bit amused.
I stop halfway across the kitchen area and give him a full frontal. “What are the chances we can stop somewhere and I can get a couple more things to wear with money I don’t have?”
He smiles, drinking in the sight for a few seconds more before turning back to the stove. “I was planning to pick up some stuff for you today. We can add clothes to the list.”
“Sounds great,” I manage before yawning.
The cat trots by, heading for the bathroom. “I trust there will be food in my immediate future,” he says over his furry shoulder.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” says Cristiano, “so there’s no cat food here… yet. Eggs?”
“That is acceptable for now.” The click of claws on toilet seat comes from the hallway.
Once I get dressed in the sweatshirt and jeans Motya and Rada gave me, I take a seat at the table and wait. Cristiano sets a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of me, along with a jar of grape jam. He hesitates briefly, trying to decide if he should put a bowl of eggs on the table or the floor for the cat. The bowl winds up on the table, and Moody stands on the chair with his front paws on the table to eat.
Cristiano spends a few minutes at another appliance before carrying two cups of coffee over and sitting.
“Oh, you’re amazing.” I grab the mug. “I was beginning to wonder if coffee existed in this country.”
He didn’t make any eggs for himself, and has only some toast with a buttered muffin. Guess he thinks the American needs eggs. Moody didn’t hesitate to attack his food, so I dig in, too. Minimal conversation happens while we eat, and I mechanically help clean up the dishes once we’re done.
On the way to the door, Cristiano puts a button-down shirt on over the black body-hugging one he’s already wearing, but leaves it open. No sense advertising he’s got a handgun.
I decide to carry Mr. Moody out of overprotectiveness. He offers no protest, taking the opportunity to nap. It’s a bit chilly out still, though it isn’t raining anymore. Cristiano’s little car sounds like an angry lawn mower, but has a surprising amount of pickup. Tracey, the receptionist at The Spiritualist, is a big fan of ‘fail’ videos… and she’s shown me more than a few Russian dash-cam ones, enough to make me feel that getting in a car over here has a safety rating somewhere between wire-walking sixty stories up and gladiatorial games.
“Relax,” says Mr. Moody. “Those videos are out there because they are dramatic. It’s only a small percentage of Russian drivers.”
Cristiano chuckles. “To a point. There are people who try to get hit on purpose for the money.”
“Great…” I white-knuckle the seat corners.
The ride is uneventful, though I do get more than a few stares from people in other cars. About a half hour later, we park along the street in an area dense with tiny storefronts. It’s almost like we went into Chinatown or something, other than the total absence of Chinese people. I can’t put my finger on it, but I have the sense we’ve entered an enclave of a different culture than the majority of the city.
A blast of frigid wind comes in when Cristiano pushes his door open. “The Dovzhenkos are allies. Lesya’s got the gift, but her husband is like me.” He wiggles his fingers at me. “No magic.”
I hop out and clamp my arms tight to my chest. The wind seems to go through my shirt like I’m not even wearing one. I definitely need to get something warmer, not that I fault Motya or Rada’s kindness. Cristiano walks around the hood to the sidewalk and heads for a small store with baubles, candles, and little jewelry boxes in the window. The Cyrillic letters on the glass don’t mean anything to me, but the presence of arcane energy here is quite noticeable.
We step inside and the interior slams into my senses with the overwhelming smells of incense, candle wax, and something astringent I can’t place. It’s strong enough to make my eyes water, and set Mr. Moody off sneezing, but it doesn’t bother Cristiano in the least. Yay for keen senses. Ugh.
A woman with waist-length red hair pops out from a curtain of rough burgundy tatters. She’s got a white and brown dress, bead bracelets, and no shoes. As soon as she spots me, her eyes go wide and her pale, freckled cheeks light up with curiosity. I’m guessing she’s in her later twenties, but awe makes her look younger. When she stops close to us, I find myself looking up at her (no surprise there for the short girl). She waves off to the side while talking fast, beckoning someone else over.
Cristiano speaks Russian to her. She nods, never taking her eyes off me.
From the same curtain, a man emerges. He’s also got long hair, but light brown, and looks about thirty. The way he swoops up beside her and puts his arm around her back makes me assume they’re married, or at least lovers. He joins in on the conversation, and also spends most of it staring at me.
I fidget, not completely comfortable with feeling like a captured phoenix on display, but the couple is giving off a sense of wonder rather than ‘I wanna cut it open and see how it works,’ so I keep up a pleasant smile.
Following a blessedly short chat, the woman nods at Cristiano and beckons us to follow her to a glass display counter full of rings, amulets, and bracelets in the back of the room. Russian nattering continues to sail over my head as the woman squats behind the counter and reaches in among the baubles. None of the trinkets look particularly expensive. There’s no gold, some silver, and some bronze wire. Most of the items appear to be made of leather, wood, beads, or semiprecious stones. Probably why the case isn’t even locked.
“Alor mithriel,” says the man.
I blink at him. “What?”
Cristiano murmurs something to him that makes him give me a pitying glance before leaning close to me and whispering, “He said good morning in the Val’nathiri language. I told him you were raised among humans and don’t know it.”
“How the devil does he know it?” asks Mr. Moody.
“What he said,” I mutter.
“Oh, he’s not fluent.” Cristiano grins. “I know how to say good morning in a dozen languages. Doesn’t mean I can carry on a conversation.”
The redhead stands, holding an amulet. A grape-sized purple stone dangles from the leather cord, accented with a couple of glass beads. It’s egg-shaped and has striations of lavender, somewhat like marble. She holds it up like an official intent on bestowing a medal upon an Olympian. I cradle the stone in one hand, sensing a tingle of magic within.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“Something to make your life here easier,” says Cristiano. “When you put that on, you’ll understand and speak Russian… but while you’re wearing it, you’ll lose English. It changes your ‘native’ language.
“Oh.” I lean forward so the woman can put it over my head. “Does it work for everything?”
“This one is attuned to Russian,” says the woman.
I gawk at her. It sure sounded like she spoke English. “Umm. Hello?”
She smiles. “Hello. I’m Lesya, and this is my husband Bogdan.”
The longhaired man taps two fingers to his temple before flicking them upward in a gesture of greeting. “Welcome. A shame you have not studied Nalurin… it is a beautiful language.”
“Yeah well…” I glance down at the stone egg hanging over my sternum. “It wasn’t by choice, though I am happy with the family I have.”
Lesya grins. “It’s wonderful to meet you. Cristiano tells me you are strong with the art. Have you been studying long?”
I offer a helpless shrug. “My father taught me since I was six or so, but you know how kids are… like piano lessons. I didn’t give it much effort because I was made to do it. I’ve only recently started to take it seriously.”
“Oh…” Lesya scurries off into the store. “Then you’ll need a few things. One moment.”
“You are here about the creature ripping up warehouses along the Volga?” asks Bogdan.
“Yes.” Cristiano nods. “Have you heard anything?”
I glance up at him. “Wait. Ripping up warehouses? We’ve gone from munching cars to eating buildings? Just how big is this thing?”
Cristiano gives me a helpless shrug.
Bogdan shakes his head. “Only the same whispering I assume you have. The witches are all hiding in their dens.” He chuckles. “Whatever it is, they do not wish to discuss it for fear it will attract the beast.”
The only numinae I remember reading about that would seek out someone discussing them are the ones responsible for stories of demons, but as far as I know, you’d have to speak their actual name instead of merely talking about ‘that creature.’
Leysa returns with a stack of books a touch over three feet tall. “Here you are. I can let you borrow these, or if you can spare a few minutes, I can make copies for you to keep.”
I glance at Cristiano. “I don’t want to cost you too much.”
“Not much,” says Leysa. “3,750 rubles. Enough to cover the ink and blanks.”
He gives her a nod. “That’s fine. It’s not my money. The Keepers are more than willing to cover necessary supplies. The police don’t make their officers buy their own guns.”
“Depends on how poor the village is,” mutters Bogdan.
Mr. Moody sneezes again.
“Oh, poor kitty,” coos Leysa. “Is she sick?”
After his rapid sneezing fit stops, Moody looks up at her. “I’m allergic to dust. And I’m a he, thank you very much.”
Wow. I guess me wearing this amulet also switches my cat to Russian.
Lesya starts to scream, but it melts into a laugh.
“That cat speaks?” Bogdan tilts his head like a confused dog.
“Either that, or you’ve been handling too many psychoactive mushrooms,” says Mr. Moody.
“He’s her familiar!” Leysa grins, before hurrying off and returning a few minutes later with another stack of newer-looking books plus a leather-bound case. “This will take me a little while, but not too long.”
She lifts the top tome from the stack of old texts and sets it on a table next to the stack of new books. The book turns out to be blank. From the case, she removes nine bottles of ink in various colors plus black and a giant raven-feather quill. Within a moment or two of her concentrating, the quill jumps to life. It flies from page to inkwell and back again, dipping different colors while copying the handwritten book, replicating the text and the illustrations exactly.
Cristiano hands a wad of cash over to Bogdan, and we spend a while chatting about the recent Convergence, which saw two worlds coming together again as a direct result of sabotage at the large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Oh, and it also saw me going from a normal spunky reporter to a paranormal freak of a reporter. Spunky was Fenton’s term for my attitude. Everyone else assumed me a new thirty-something clinging desperately to my twenties… but now that I think about it, perhaps I am still that young as an elf? Hell, the way I look now between my face and height, I wouldn’t get carded if I tried to buy booze―I’d get laughed at. Lucky for me, I don’t bother drinking alcohol since it doesn’t do much for me.
Leysa had already sensed a profound strengthening of her magical abilities, though word hadn’t yet reached her about why. I warn them about the OSA being right here in Volgograd. While I’m okay with the idea of making magic stronger and bringing it out into the open, those lunatic cultists are doing it the wrong way. Leysa sighs when I explain how they want to subjugate the vast majority of humans who lack magical gifts. To them, anyone who can’t use magic is basically a subspecies. Given that people capable of using real magic are an extreme minority, not only is it a reprehensible mindset, it’s also foolish.
Leysa tries to pry ‘elven secrets’ out of me, but as happy as I’d be to share what I know, my upbringing in Pennsylvania didn’t involve anything particularly elfy, aside from me having a compulsion to dance naked in the rain sometimes. Now that I know what I am, it does make sense. Even if the glamour my parents (and their friends) had placed on me kept me from realizing I wasn’t human, the cloaking magic didn’t fool the connection I have with the natural world.
The Dovzhenkos invite us to dinner on some future day, which we accept, contingent on our investigation allowing time. Worst-case scenario, we stop by afterward.
“Wouldn’t the worst case be you winding up in the belly of whatever’s tearing apart dump trucks?” asks Mr. Moody.
Okay, fair point.
“Cheery little friend you’ve got there,” says Bogdan.
I chuckle. “No, he’s a literalist.”
“Someone has to make sense in a world of elves and talking cats.” Mr. Moody licks his paw.
After much hand-shaking and thanking, Cristiano and I head out to visit some clothing shops.
A few hours later, I’m flopped on the bed in my little room, staring at books.
Cristiano’s gone off to do a little reconnaissance on our numina problem, so I’ve decided to get comfortable. I’ve draped an oversized red T-shirt over the back of the chair, in easy reach for when he comes back. It’s got a Nike swoosh on it, but the word ‘Nuke’ above it. I can’t tell if it’s a translation error or a political statement. The weird thing was that the letters made no sense to me until I took the amulet off. Evidently, Russian and English trade places in my brain when I wear it. I read/hear English as Russian while it’s on. Crazy. But kinda awesome too.
The Dovzhenkos gave me the impression the amulet’s a gift, since Cristiano didn’t seem to pay for it, and they didn’t ask for it back. I’m guessing it’s a basic item, probably quite cheap to make. A little memory of my childhood enchantment lessons (that Dad adored and I couldn’t stand) come back and make me think that the sacrifice balances out the gain, so it’s a beginner’s item. Basically, because it gives away one language for another, it’s a net change of zero, so it doesn’t take a lot of power or skill to create.
I’d imagine one that can do multiple languages would be quite a bit more costly. Unfortunately, the text in these books is written in Russian, so in order to read it, I have to wear the pendant. Since I don’t actually understand the language, I can’t translate it. I’m unable to write English with the amulet on, so any attempt I make to transcribe would just be writing Russian to Russian. I suppose I could go a paragraph at a time by memory and keep taking the amulet on and off, but ugh. Screw that. I can worry about translating later.
One thing I do know… I’ve got to hone up my magic game if I’m going to stand up to Desjardin, the head cultist who saw me as nothing more than an elfy ingredient in his master plan to raise Atlantis. I barely have a clue what I’m doing and I’ve worried him. With The Echo (the dimension that magic―and evidently my people―comes from) sliding closer to our world again, human mages―as in, those with natural magical tendencies―are going to gain power. My inherent aptitude for it won’t be enough to coast on without true skill behind it. So… time to study.
The first book has information on basic wards, like how to keep unwanted numina or harmful magic from invading one’s home. I skim over it as it’s not pressing, since what I have to do before I can go home doesn’t involve dueling with mages―though on second thought, those OSA creeps are underneath Volgograd, so perhaps… Aha! A ward against divination. That should prevent them from being able to locate me with scrying or rituals.
After reading it over a few times, I run around the apartment, invoking magic at every window as well as the front door. Hopefully, none of the neighbors see me dancing around wearing only an amulet. Though, maybe in Russia that sort of thing wouldn’t stir up as much of a fuss. America was, after all, founded by a bunch of Puritans. You know, people with the desperate fear that somewhere, someone might be having fun.
The book mentioned crafting ‘hexes’ out of sage and wormwood for added power, but I think between coasting on my elf-ness and not needing to empower the enchantment to block harmful spells, I should be okay. Divination or seeing magic doesn’t have the ‘penetration’ power of more dangerous uses of magic, like, if I wanted to protect the apartment against incoming fire spells or something. Merely putting a blindfold on anyone trying to find me in a crystal ball should be a walk in the park.
“Making the place like home?” asks Mr. Moody.
I glance down at him. “Just trying to make sure I get to go home. This should keep me off the cultists’ radar.”
Mr. Moody licks his paw twice before saying, “Here’s hoping.”
Once I feel I’ve properly secured my temporary environs against magical peeking, I make myself a cup of tea and return to the bedroom.
A few minutes less than an hour later, I spot a curiosity in the third book. It describes a minor enchantment that protects the recipient from extremes of hot or cold. While it won’t do anything against, say, a firebolt, it would make a blistering desert or the Siberian tundra tolerable regardless of how much or how little clothing I have on. The magic appears effective enough to prevent frostbite or even heatstroke. The WTF mental image of people reacting to me traipsing around the Sahara dressed like an Arctic explorer gives me the giggles.
“Well, I guess that’s how the Val’nathiri can run around in those skimpy things without freezing their nether bits off.” I glance sideways at the metal-and-fabric mess sitting on the desk.
“Yet, here you sit with nothing at all on?” Mr. Moody attempts to smile, then, perhaps, remembers he’s a cat.
