Midnight In St. Pertsburg (The Invisible War 1) (26 page)

Rose wasn’t an expert, but he seemed a lot worse off tonight than he had after the fight in the tunnel. All that blood—“You sure? You don’t look good.”

His tight smile came with a now-familiar pulse of amusement. “Thank you.”

Rose refused to be distracted. “Don’t you need…you know…to get better?”

“Yes,” he answered, simply and honestly. “But I wouldn’t trust my welcome at the Winter Palace right now.”

Slowly—ever so slowly—Rose was parsing out the complicated counter-resonances of Nazeem. Enough that she could recognize the hints of discomfort and confusion when he mentioned the palace. “That business the other night, you never really explained what was going on. I got that the vampires were breaking some rules, and that you didn’t think Anastasia should get to be mad at what we did, but can she really—I mean, can she really tell you no if you go to her for help right now?”

“She can. Of course she can.” He risked another light touch to his side. “I need to clean up.” When Rose opened her mouth to object, he held up a hand. “I promise, I will answer your questions. Just let me shower and change.”

That sounded fair. “Okay, sure. I’ll be in my room.”

*
   
*
   
*

Rose wasn’t covered in blood, but St. Isaac’s had left her coated in an emotional film of greasy gloom. It wasn’t the sort of thing that scrubbed away in the shower, but that didn’t stop her from trying. After that, an old, wash-softened pair of sweatpants and the fluffy, hotel-provided bathrobe seemed the only options for comfort. Not the sexiest outfit ever for receiving strangely attractive vampires in her room, but Rose was past the point of caring.
 

Nazeem’s knock came just as Rose finished dragging a comb through her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said when she opened the door. “I can return after you’ve had time to dress.”

“I’m as dressed as I’m going to get tonight. Come on in.”

Without thinking about how it might look, Rose went straight for the bedroom. Nazeem stopped in the doorway and burned confusion and what might be disapproval. After the night they’d all had, Rose didn’t care. “The circle.” Rose pointed at circle charred into her rug. The circle she and Nazeem could see, but that was hidden to the hotel staff. “It’s better when I’m inside it. Especially after any time inside St. Isaac’s.”

“Of course.” Nazeem had cleaned up and fresh clothes hid his injuries, but he couldn’t hide the gray cast to his skin or the tilted way he stood, favoring his injured side.

Rose scooted herself back against the headboard and and stretched her legs out. “You look like you’re going to fall over. Come sit down. There’s room.”

“Father Mike would not approve,” Nazeem said in a dry voice, with the familiar wash of his amusement behind it. But he accepted her invitation, settling in at the foot of the bed, legs crossed and facing her..

“Father Mike can bite me.”

Nazeem’s sharp look and the hint of a smile sent a shiver through Rose as it occurred to her she should be more careful using that phrase. Some people in the room just might want to follow through on an invitation like that. “Are you—when you’re hurt, is it harder not to…?” Why was this so difficult to talk about?

Fortunately, Nazeem knew what she meant. He radiated the usual waspy discomfort, but filtered through a resigned slump of his shoulders and a bearing overall more relaxed than Rose had seen him so far. “It isn’t like that. We do not,” he paused to consider his words. “In many vampire stories—“

Rose’s eyebrows went up. Her expression amused Nazeem. The warmth of it reached out to her like a caress. “Yes,” he said, the hint of a laugh in his voice. “Every vampire reads the stories sooner or later. Both the horrific and the romantic.”

“I imagine it’s hard to resist. The way it’s hard to walk past a mirror without looking to see yourself.”

“Precisely. Invariably, those stories are full of vampires listening to pulses and driven half-mad by the scent of blood and other nonsense. It isn’t…it isn’t like that.”

“So you never get hungry?” Rose felt comfortable enough to tease.

“Not in the way you’re thinking. Perhaps better to say, there is no connection between our physical need for sustenance and any cravings that develop.” He looked away, agitated again. “So you needn’t fear that in my injured state I will be overcome with the need to assault you.”

“Which puts you three steps above my homecoming date.”

It was the right thing to say, the joke. Nazeem relaxed again. But Rose was ready to change the subject. “So tell me about Anastasia and why she scares you.”

“She’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

This time, he didn’t smile. Nazeem had turned serious. “I don’t think you understand the magnitude of what I’m saying.”

“Of course I don’t,” Rose snapped. “How would I? You won’t tell me anything.”

“Hush.” He laid a hand on her ankle. “Let me talk.”

His skin was feverishly hot against hers. Nazeem was always warm, but tonight it felt like something inside him was burning. Because of his injuries? This was probably the wrong time to ask.

“I’ve killed a great many vampires,” he said without removing his hand. “More than Father Mike, I’m certain. I say this not to boast, but so you can have some sense of my experience in these matters. When I say Anastasia is like no vampire I’ve ever seen, I say that as someone who has faced down a number of the oldest and most dangerous of our kind.”

The idea of Nazeem as a murderer on that scale—it was hard for Rose to reconcile with the man sitting quietly on her bed. “So you’re a vampire who hunts other vampires?”

“Not exactly.” This topic, at least, didn’t make him uncomfortable.
 

Rose wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not.

“I told you we don’t kill people anymore. I’m sure you’ve put together by now the fact that wasn’t always the case. There was, I suppose you could call it a coup, although that implies a centralized leadership that never existed. A number of vampires—of which Carter Wentworth was one—declared there would be a new order. New rules. Any vampire who wouldn’t submit would be executed. I was one of the vampires charged with enforcing this new law.”

“So you’re like a vampire cop.”

“Nothing so benign.” For a moment, it seemed Nazeem was going to leave it there, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry. That was evasive. You deserve honesty, if we are to be a team.

“I was an assassin. There’s no more noble word I can give it. I was not arresting those vampires who couldn’t change. I didn’t confront them or offer them the opportunity to explain or apologize. I killed them whatever way I could find.”

Now he waited. For rejection? For censure? Rose wasn’t sure how she felt. Except, “Those vampires you’re talking about—they’re the ones like Mike believes in. The ones who kill people?”

Nazeem nodded.

Mike had enjoyed killing that vampire last night. He’d been proud of himself, so jazzed up he’d gone looking for another fight, another chance to kill. Nazeem showed none of that excitement, none of that joy in the killing. He wasn’t ashamed of what he’d done, but he wasn’t exactly proud of it either.

Which of them was the monster?

“Didn’t your people know Anastasia was still letting her vampires hunt the streets? Why hasn’t someone come after her?”

“We didn’t know.” Buzzing discomfort. That scared Rose more than anything—the fact Nazeem was that nervous about her. “We didn’t know there were any vampires in this city at all.”

“Wentworth never mentioned his new job to anyone?”

Nazeem’s tone was soft and dangerous as he answered, “He did not.”
 

If Wentworth wanted to be a threat, he was just going to have to get in line. “Is it possible he just found Anastasia and didn’t have any more idea what to do about her than you do?”

“He should have told someone. She’s a danger, even if she bears no ill intent. There are stories of vampires like her, ancient stories. Xolotl. Set. Kali. They’re remembered as gods.”

“And not the friendly kind.” Rose sighed and rubbed her eyes. This was all too much to think about. “What happens if Mike pushes her too far?”

“We must try to make certain that doesn’t happen.” On that cheery thought, Nazeem stood. “Enough lessoning for tonight.”

Rose got up to walk him to the door. As she stepped out of Ian’s circle, the sudden assault of St. Petersburg battered against her exhausted mind. She gasped and swayed.
 

Nazeem was at her side instantly, an arm around her waist, but she pushed him away. “I’m fine.”

“This city—are you sure it’s good for you to stay?”

“Are you sure it’s good for you to go without blood?” she answered back, sharper than she meant to. Nazeem moved a step back, withdrawing, but Rose caught his hand. “Look, let’s both trust that each of us knows how to take care of ourselves. That’ll save a lot of arguments.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t presume.” His thumb stroked across her knuckles, a brief caress before he pulled away. “Sleep well, Rose.”

*
   
*
   
*

Sleep should have been the easy part. Mike’s body screamed for it, but his churning thoughts kept it at bay. Ian’s question kept echoing. Just what was wrong with St. Petersburg? After half an hour staring up at the dark ceiling, Mike gave in and reached for the light.
 

On his bedside table, the dossiers from Rutledge. Mike brought them in to the other room, ignoring the complaints of his shoulders and back. Not enough sleep. Too much walking. Way too much fighting. All in the wind and the cold. Thirty years ago, he could have done it every night for a week without issue.
 

With a pair of scissors from the sewing kit he always travelled with, he started cutting up the pages, separating each name. He lit a cigarette and started mixing the papers around. No real plan, just letting his subconscious mind go where it would. Names moved across his desk: Anastasia, Dmitri, Wentworth, Andrei, Justin, Vladimir.
 

He tore the top few pages from the hotel notepad, added more people to the mix: Pyotr, Rutledge, blank slips for the victims. Finally, full sheets of note paper on which he wrote St. Isaac’s, Revelations, Monastery, Palace.

Mike spread out the locations on his desk in an approximation of their real orientations, with St. Isaac’s right in the middle. “Why?” he asked the sheet of paper, thinking aloud. “Why does everything revolve around this?”

Four dead Black Fist voiders. He placed the blank slips on St. Isaac’s. Murdered ritualistically, violently, by someone harboring hatred. Seeking revenge.
 

Two fairy sightings in St. Isaac’s. Three if he counted Rose’s dream. Were the folk tied to the cathedral somehow? Could the murders be attracting them?

Or was there more of a connection? Power called to power, whether it was light or dark. While it could be a simple matter of the murders turning St. Isaac’s into the sort of place the folk were drawn to, he couldn’t ignore the possibility it was more than that. Even if Pyotr the faelock was not the murderer himself, could he be encouraging or directing the murderer in order to keep St. Isaac’s full of the black energies on which the folk seemed to thrive?

All his life, Mike had been trained—had become an expert—at identifying threats. Every instinct screamed there had to be a connection between these two dangerous supernatural elements who seemed so focused on St. Isaac’s. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

What was he missing? What didn’t he see?

Mike separated the Poulov Karchenko strip from the pile. Karchenko and his Black Fist. Andrei and the Black Fist. A connection between the voiders, between the Monastery and Revelations. But in all the jumbled mess on the table, Mike couldn’t see any connection between Pyotr and the Black Fist. Fairies and voiders. The only visible link between them was St. Isaac’s, but that was too big. Mike couldn’t write it off. Not yet.

What they needed was more information. Obviously. Someone who knew St. Petersburg well, who had been here for years. Someone who knew the players better than Mike, better than Rutledge. Maybe….

A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. Mike pulled the hotel robe on over his pajamas and went to look through the peep-hole. The vampire stood in the hall.

“What do you want?” Mike asked, opening the door. After a moment’s consideration, he stepped aside and gestured for Nazeem to come in.

Nazeem only came in far enough to shut the door behind himself. Not a step more. “I saw your light was on.”

Mike waited.

“We need to settle things between us. We need to find a way to get along.”

It couldn’t have been easy coming to Mike like this. A better man might have thrown Nazeem a rope. “Rose put you up to this?”

Nazeem leaned back against the wall. In the process, he winced and his hand twitched towards his side, where the
cu sith
had bitten him. “I came here on my own. But Rose is correct, and I think you know that. If things stay as they are between us, someone will get hurt.”

Mike’s hand automatically reached for his—empty—pocket. “Is that a threat?”

“Of course not.” Nazeem sighed. “I wouldn’t…I’m not your enemy.”

Pride insisted Mike keep standing here, eye-to-eye with the vampire, but Mike’s body had other demands. He gave in, returned to his desk, careful of the papers as he sat. “What do you want from me?”

“Rose…” Nazeem trailed off, like he couldn’t find the words.

Mike, fortunately, had plenty of words on this subject. “Would it make any difference if I told you to keep the Hell away from her?”

Mike had thought—hoped—the question might piss Nazeem off. But the vampire gave a rueful smile and shook his head. “She has her own ideas about what she wants. And that is—“

He stopped, considered, started again. “For whatever reason, Rose has developed some affection for me. Please believe me when I say, I consider this as poor an idea as you do. But she is not easily discouraged. And I cannot deny I find her company…” his gaze dropped as he searched for his word, “pleasant,” he finished without meeting Mike’s eyes again.