Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1) (21 page)

Ian shook his head, as though trying to wake up. “She said something about disappearances? I guess it’s too much to hope for that a bunch of vampires just decided to run away.”

“Yes, it is too much to hope.“ Nazeem turned to Mike. “Do you think any of the local voiders could be responsible for the disappearances?”

Mike bit back a snippy response and forced himself to give an honest answer. “Possibly. Svetlana seemed hostile enough.”

“And let’s not forget Andrei.” Rose unzipped her coat and sat down on the wide stone step. “Not to mention everybody’s favorite glowing psychopath.”

Who, after tonight’s interruption, they were no closer to finding. “None of these are good options.”

“I would have thought you’d be in favor of someone killing vampires,” Rose muttered, just loud enough Mike knew she meant for him to hear.

“Rose.” From Nazeem, a gentle rebuke.
 

“What? It’s true.” Rose ran her hand over depressions in the stone caused by countless feet over countless years. “Just cause I can’t read his insides doesn’t mean his face hasn’t been giving him away all night.” She looked up, met Mike’s eyes. “Vampires aren’t the only ones in this city out for blood.”

After thirty years fighting to keep people like Rose safe, Mike didn’t owe her an apology or an explanation. “When I want to kill someone, you’ll know it. Because they’ll be dead.”

“Wow, what a brilliant approach to diplomacy.”

“Shut up, Rose.” Mike was done with holding his temper for the night. “You don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about. These creatures are killers. Nazeem there’s got a great act for being human, but
he’s not.
None of them are. They only live because of the blood they take from people like you. They’re unholy abominations, and not one of them can pretend to be otherwise. All my life I’ve been cleaning up the bodies they left behind, so you’re just going to have to excuse the fact I’m not thrilled with being here, forced to make nice.”

Rose jumped to her feet. It didn’t take a sensitive to see her hostility, but before she could speak, Nazeem was at her side, hand on her shoulder. “Forgive Father Mike. He speaks from experience. What he doesn’t understand is that his information is somewhat out of date.”

“Oh really?” Mike resisted the urge to touch his cross. “Do you still drink blood?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Nazeem answered in a low voice, “Yes.”

“And you’re still rejected by God.”

It wasn’t a question, but Nazeem answered anyway. “As you say.”

“Well there you go.” The question was settled, as far as Mike was concerned.

Rose, of course, couldn’t let it go. “But they don’t kill people anymore! Nazeem said—“

“Oh spare me.” Mike was getting sick and tired of what Nazeem said. “You’re going to tell me all the vampires got together for a slumber party one night, roasted some marshmallows and decided they didn’t want to be predators anymore?”

“There were no marshmallows.” Wentworth had returned, standing at the top of the stairs. Behind Mike, but Mike could still clearly see the vampire in the garish mirrors that covered the walls. “Only the fear of extinction. A fear you should consider if you insist on slandering our species in continued earshot of her Imperial Majesty. Might I suggest you continue your discussion of whether or not vampires deserve to live from a different location?”

How Mike hated to be in a position where he agreed with Wentworth. “Come on. He’s right. We shouldn’t be talking here.”

Rose looked like she had questions and, honestly, so did Mike, but he grabbed her coat and pulled her along when she seemed like she was going to stand there and ask. Mike had been remiss to let them stay here this long. Blame short sleep and adrenaline and frustration, but any way you looked at it, it was sloppy.
 

Walking didn’t stop Rose from talking; she only re-directed her questions to Nazeem. “Is that true—what he said?”

“That we shouldn’t talk here? Yes.”

Rose rolled her eyes, but—call it a miracle—she stopped talking.

No one spoke on the short ride back to the hotel. As they piled out of the car at the entrance to the Astoria, Mike preemptively cut Rose off. “I know it’s not that late, but it’s been a busy night. I’m going to bed, and I suggest all of you do the same. We can continue this tomorrow.”

“I agree,” Nazeem said, and Mike didn’t miss the disappointed slump of Rose’s shoulders at that. But she didn’t argue, and Mike took that as a sign of how much tonight’s action had worn her out. Worn them all out.

Caught up in his own exhaustion, Mike almost didn’t notice the little light blinking on his desk phone. A very demanding part of himself wanted to ignore it—at least till morning. After being up all last night, his afternoon nap wasn’t near enough to get him through another sleepless night, if this turned out to be an emergency.

But if it was an emergency, if he didn’t answer, who would? He picked up the receiver and pressed the button to play the message.
 

“Father Michael Sullivan, this is Poulov Karchenko.” Mike reached for the a pen and the pad of notepaper on the desk, ready to take notes, but the message turned out to be brief and memorable. “Come to Revelations tomorrow at noon. I know about the Saturday night murders. I know why the voiders are being killed.”

*
   
*
   
*

Rose didn’t expect she’d be able to sleep, but as soon as she lay down, her eyes became too heavy to keep open. She blinked them once, twice, then found herself standing in St. Isaac’s.

Another dream-vision, despite Ian’s magic circle. This time, she couldn’t see what had drawn her here. Unlike before, the cathedral was empty, quiet and….

A wave of despair washed over Rose, so powerful her legs gave out and she fell to her hands and knees on the cold marble floor. Loss, longing, loneliness drove against her with a physical force. She was drowning, couldn’t breathe, choking on the force of the emotional energies.

A dream. This was a dream. Rose repeated the words over and over in her mind, fighting for control, for distance. This sadness was not her own; she would not let it suffocate her. Bit by desperate bit, she drove the foreign emotions back until she could gasp air back into her lungs.

Around her, the colorful marble turned black. A writhing, oozing black that reached out for her with smoky tentacles. The darkness of St. Isaac’s in physical form, reaching for her, trying to drag her down. With the assurance of dream-logic, Rose knew she had to get away from it.

She ran for the doors, but they were locked against her. The windows were already covered in such a thick, boiling mass of the ick Rose didn’t dare try to go through them. Rose cast about, running from column to column, afraid to stop moving long enough for the grasping tendrils of foaming darkness to wrap around her.

She found a stairway going up and took the steps two at a time. Several flights led her up to the roof, where she burst out onto a walkway that ran around the golden dome. Above her, the stars were bright and clear, perfect diamonds in a pitch-black sky.
 

A long, soul-deep sigh came from the other side of the dome, and Rose made her careful way around the narrow walkway. The man who came into view, standing at the railing, looking out across the city—only the surreal setting of the dream cushioned her mind against the shock of him.

The starlight gathered around him, reflected in the liquid silver of his hair, glowed in the perfect sapphire of his eyes. Rose couldn’t focus, couldn’t make her eyes lock on any single part of him; her eyes slid by again and again, like with the vampires only more intense. Her mind formed the impression of beauty, of desire, of perfection. As with the
rusalka
in the river, Rose found herself approaching this man without having meant to.

“It’s all right.” He sighed again, interrupting the music of his voice. “The darkness, it won’t come here. Not for a while.”

Rose realized she had seen this man before, in another vision. Not her own—the memory the fairy woman had shared with her. This was the man who had kissed her, sucked her dry, broken her. “Who are you?”

“I’m not angry.” He waved his hand through the air with inhuman grace; starlight trailed from his fingers. “You invade my city; you cut off my subjects, but I’m not angry.” He pointed out over the rooftops. “Look, you see? What you have done, I have undone.”

Rose looked. She couldn’t have resisted his beckoning gesture if she’d wanted to. In the distance, she felt more than saw the pulsing, raw energy. Again, familiar. Another rip in the curtain. Another doorway through reality.
 

This time, when he sighed, she felt his breath stir her hair, smelled the warm, tingling scent of him. He stood behind her, pressed against her, leaned his face down to hers. Rose couldn’t pull away, couldn’t remember why she wanted to. “I can’t remember what it was like.” His lips brushed her jaw. “Warm blood beneath my fingers. Human breath. Human flesh. Human dreams.”

He buried his face in her hair, took a long, slow, breath. “So alive.”

Rose woke sweating, her heart pounding, instantly aware of the smell of smoke. She fumbled for the lamp beside her bed. Squinting in the sudden light, she saw the haze around her and looked down. A still-smoldering ring had burned its way through the carpet in perfect correspondence to the magical circle Ian had drawn around her bed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Thursday Day

That night wasn’t the first Rose had spent sleepless because of her gift, but it put all the rest in perspective. Haunting dreams of other people’s problems were one thing, but she had been herself in that dream, and the danger had been real. As sure as she knew the taste of happiness and fear, she knew that.
 

When the clock finally dragged its hands around to six am, Rose shut off the droning television that had kept her company all night and dressed for breakfast. The hotel restaurant would be open now and Rose could use some coffee.
 

She was surprised to see Nazeem sitting at a table, a newspaper open before him and a cup of coffee cooling beside him. He stood as Rose came over and held a chair for her. The only person who’d ever done that before had been her geeky junior year boyfriend, and he’d been so aware of what he was doing, it made the whole thing awkward. Nazeem acted with a nonchalance that made the gesture seem the most natural thing in the world.

All his agitation from the night before had faded. Nazeem’s interior and exterior both had regained their slippery tranquility. “Did you sleep well?” he asked as he sat back down, folding his paper in a neat rectangle and laying it on the table.
 

“Nope.” Nazeem’s insides flickered and his eyes widened for a moment. She’d teach him to make small-talk. “But I don’t want to talk about it, not till Ian and Mike are around.”

“As you like.” He held a hand over his coffee cup as the waiter came by to fill Rose’s. “In truth, there is another matter I would discuss with you.”

Rose took a careful sip of the steaming, black coffee. “Do you drink that?”

Nazeem shook his head. “But I enjoy the smell.”

Rose inhaled the rich, bitter scent of her own cup. The more she learned about vampires, the less fun their lives seemed to be. “So what was it you wanted to talk about?”

Nazeem leaned back in his chair, calm, comfortable. For whatever reason, last night’s confrontation with Wentworth and Anastasia seemed to have given Nazeem some measure of peace. “I want you to stop trying to mediate Father Mike and I. It’s not an argument that will be solved by anything you could say, and it only creates a rift between the two of you when you try to defend me.”

“There’s already plenty of rift between the padre and I.”

“Then perhaps that should be the focus of your concern.” Inside Nazeem, the first ember of annoyance flared. “Rose, there is nothing untrue in what he says about me or my kind. His view may be narrow, but I understand his reasons. He is not the first Templar I’ve ever met; nor is he the most hostile. When he calls us monsters, he speaks from experience.”

“What does he know? Is he the sensitive here? For that matter, what do you know?”

Nazeem raised an eyebrow, smiled his little smile. “I think I have some expertise on the subject.”

Rose was in no mood to be charmed. “Doesn’t it bother you when he says things like that?”

His insides twisted. Just a little, but Rose was growing more attuned to him every day. His strange, other-frequency feelings weren’t entirely alien anymore. More like a counterpoint dancing in and out of the symphony of human emotions around her.

Nazeem shook his head. “It isn’t worth an argument.”
 

“But it does upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Pro tip: don’t lie to the sensitive.”

Nazeem fell into his eerie stillness. Rose could see his struggle, his failed attempt to clamp his feelings down, hide them away. “You know, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t keep me from seeing inside you.”
 

“I’m only trying to keep you safe.”

Frustration boiled inside Rose. “I swear, you and Mike both—you think I’m just some idiot kid. But seriously, I know what I’m doing. And I’m getting sick and tired of both of you trying so hard to protect me you won’t let me out of the shallow end of the pool.”

“I might never have figured that out.” Nazeem’s delivery was as soft and deadpan as ever. It took Rose a moment to recognize the sarcasm.
 

It was too much. After the dream, after her sleepless night, Rose simply wasn’t in the mood. “Whatever.” She pushed back from the table. “I’m going back to my room.”

Nazeem caught her hand. “Wait.” His dark eyes held hers. “Now I’ve upset you.”

“No.” Rose’s skin tingled at the warmth of Nazeem’s touch. “I mean, yeah, but…I’m not really mad. Not at you.”

“At Mike.” He sighed. “I wish—“

“Look, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say I shouldn’t step in the middle of this fight between you and the padre, and then turn around and try to tell me how to manage my relationship with him.”