It was a taser. The small black device was a handheld taser. I knew exactly where I was. How had I gotten here?
A metal gate, large enough to back a truck through, hanging ajar. I was in Kirill Volkov's wolf cage.
Where were his wolves?
Run, run run! My instincts screamed. I sucked in deep breaths of frigid air and stood motionless. I knew a dog was more likely to give chase if you ran, how much more a wolf? And not just any wolf, these were fat, spoiled, bored wolves that had their meat delivered to them via truck every day. A lost orphan running and screaming all over the castle grounds was an occurrence that probably filled their wolfy dreams at night.
I needed to look boring, stern, and calm.
Near the open gate, a mound of torn flesh bloodied the snow. I couldn't tell if it was a reindeer or a pile of rabbits or what. Why had they left their meal? I scanned the wolf run. Nothing. Not a beastie in sight.
Standing so still made my body tremble with energy. I could feel the burn of adrenaline through my veins. But even with the heat of a fight or flight reaction throttling my senses, the cold returned to me, it crept down my spine like dead fingers against my skin.
The wolves were loose.
I had left the door in the stone wall open and Kirill Volkov's wolves were loose.
I bolted for the wire gate, then yanked my body back under control and forced myself to walk. Boring, stern, calm. Boring, stern, calm. I chanted the words to myself and marched forward. I strode past the carcass and was two steps beyond it before the import of what I had seen sank in.
The breath froze in my lungs. I turned, stared, and then bolted for the gate again.
This time there was no reasoning with my pounding legs and trembling arms. I was in a full sprint when I hit the gate. I shoved away from the cold fencing, and jumped for the small wedge of open space that marked the exit.
Something yanked me back and I hit the ground hard. I flinched. A sharp burn around my ankle accompanied the fall. A horrible noise rang in my ears. Terrible, breathless screaming. I sucked in another breath and the screaming began anew. My ankle had pushed through the wire when I hit the gate and was now held fast.
The wolves were loose. I was screaming and the wolves were lose and that pile of bloody flesh in the snow beside me was neither a reindeer nor a dead rabbit.
The carcass the wolves had abandoned was the frozen body of a man.
5
Worse Than Slavering Wolves?
Stop screaming! You have got to stop screaming!
I urged my mind to take control. Screaming and flailing and flopping around with one leg stuck in a gate was exactly what the wolves' dream snack would do. I would not be their dream snack. I clamped my mouth shut and held my breath. Fifty, sixty, seventy seconds. Darkness began to sparkle at the edges of my vision. I sucked in a breath and held it. OK, this was good. One more time. I gulped down another icy breath. Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
I screamed and yanked my foot free. I ignored the burn in my ankle as the valenki slipped off and flopped in the snow. I found myself standing with my back pressed against the gate, screaming again.
A pretty young woman in her early twenties took a step toward me. Her dark hair was pulled into a braid that swung over her shoulder and a white ermine coat and hat protected her from the cold.
My screams faded into an awkward silence that hung between us like our frozen puffs of breath.
“Are you injured⦔ She saw the bloody snow and froze. She looked back at me, her eyes wide and her mittens pressed against her mouth. Our gazes locked and held. She reached into the deep pocket of her ermine coat and yanked out a slender phone. Backing away from me she snapped it open and pressed a single button.
I could hear it dialing from where I pressed myself against the gate.
“Leave the pastries and get down here, Igor.” She whispered into the mouthpiece as though I might leap and accost her at any moment. “Someone released the wolves and killed uncle Kirill.” She snapped the phone shut and took another step back. “How could you do such a thing? Why? He never⦔ She balled her hands into fuzzy ermine-covered fists and seemed to steel herself. She took two rapid steps toward me. “He was just a strange, quiet little man. How dare you.”
“I didn't, I don'tâ¦.” My numb lips refused to move in my defense.
She lunged forward and grabbed my upper arm.
My future played before my eyes like a blockbuster movie gone awry. Barely anyone in the village knew me. I'd hardly left the orphanage for the past eight years. Ms. Melora could vouch for me, but she would not. I had been found over the mangled body of a very wealthy man. His niece would make certain that someone would pay. That someone, looked to be me.
I opened my mouth, then shut it and kicked her in the shin.
Rasia Volkov stumbled back.
I snatched up my beaded boot, crammed it onto my foot, and sprinted across the court yard toward the castle.
6
Out Of The Storm And Into The Maze
Adrenaline is an amazing thing. Ten minutes ago I had been a stiff, shuffling zombie, just about ready to call it quits. But scatter a few bloodthirsty pets around the castle grounds, throw in a wolf-ravaged corpse and someone accusing me of murder, and I sprinted across that courtyard like an Olympian. The legs that I had thought were reduced to icy stubs of uselessness, pounded over the frosty stepping stones that wound through Kirill Volkov's empty garden.
I made it to the inner keep, or main castle building.
But Volkov's castle wasn't quite a medieval fortress. It was more like⦠something from a book I'd seen long ago. The image was so clean and vivid and bright. It didn't make any sense at all. A girl lying on a thick golden carpet with a book spread before her in the sunshine. The paper crisp as she flipped each page.
A Tale of Two Cities
, a condensed version illustrated for children. The Volkov's castle was like the Versailles of that book, only abandoned and left to the ghosts.
The weeping gray stones were the color of a broiling storm. All forty-two of the dark, leaded windows on the north side of the castle stared down at my flight. Those rows of empty windows reminded me of the black, watchful eyes of an ancient spider considering whether a particular morsel was worth stirring from her web.
I shuddered and ran nearer.
An icy stone wall, complete with dark archways and a jagged stair and railing, made up the lower story. Then came the three levels of recessed windows. Only one window was lit. I ignored the narrow stair that climbed up toward the castle and darted for one of the dark archways.
The blowing storm was lessened considerably by the ancient stone arch. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, but eventually, a tall, slender gap in the stones led to a twisted stairway that cut down into the earth below.
No wonder the older Volkov had run out of castle reconstruction funds. If he'd been attempting to recreate any secret passages or hidden tunnels that had graced this ancient palace in its prime, that would mean digging through permafrost, a fairly fruitless endeavor. I mean, construction workers in the city dug through the permafrost to place the deep stilts that held city buildings in place, but that was about all the digging that anyone was willing to do this far north. Besides, as interesting as castle tunnels could be, they were also pretty much useless. Unless, one had a dragon's horde of stuff to hide. He really must have been mad, digging this deep, all for catacombs that no one would ever use.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Igor hustled across the garden toward me.
How far had the older Volkov gotten before his money ran out? It would be completely dark inside. Could I hope to run in utter darkness?
I walked toward the twisted stair and stood on the top step, letting my mittened hand rest against the stone arch as I peered down into the void. Something rattled beneath my hand. I squinted at the frosted stone wall and saw a tiny alcove, like something one might find in a fancy church. But instead of candles or a statue of a saint, the alcove held an old metal flashlight, painted dark green. It looked like something that belonged in a long ago war, but it had a small handle on the side, so I picked it up.
I grasped the cool metal knob and wound the handle. The gears inside groaned with use, but after about ten spins, they heated up and the knob wound faster.
Igor was closer now.
I stilled the noisy winding and pressed my thumb against the small, raised button. It wouldn't budge. I shoved both thumbs against it, nothing. I braced it against a rocky outcrop in the wall and yanked down. It slid. Yellow light poured from the lens in a bright stream. I wrapped my mittens tight around my treasure and plunged down the narrow stair into the bowels of Volkov's castle.
The crooked stair led down until it ended atâ¦a blank stone wall.
The scuff of a footfall across an icy stone above told me that Igor had not been fooled by my amazing stair descent. I stared at the wall. It sat there, just as one would expect a wall to do. Why would old man Volkov go to the trouble of digging the stair and building such a wall deep within the permafrost?
An image came to me. A book spread out on my pillow and a flashlight in my small child's hands. The story was about this know-it-all girl and her two friends, one of them curvy and blonde, one of them a fierce fighter with short dark hair. I looked at the wall again. A small indent dimpled the stone in a place that was about shoulder height. Surely it wasn't possible. The story was only another of my concussion-related hallucinations, and even then it was just a story. Still, I reached forward and pushed against the indented stone.
The wall moved.
A revolving wall is way louder than one would imagine. There was a great grinding sound and the moan of hidden gears, followed by a shuddering of earth and a shaking within the tunnel that made me crouch and inspect the ceiling for falling stones. But despite the improbability, when the noise had abated, a two-foot gap stood in the wall.
Igor appeared at the top of the twisted stair, sucking in great gulps of icy air after his sprint across the garden.
I ignored all sense and slipped through the crack. I jammed my fist against a similar indent on the back side of the wall and was rewarded by the wall's grinding, groaning return to its former position.
It wouldn't take Igor long to figure out the mechanism, even if he hadn't read the book about the girl sleuths. Two tunnel mouths branched away from the revolving wall. I scuffed up the dust in front of both entrances, gave my ancient flashlight a few more cranks to boost the battery, and then plunged down the left tunnel. Hopefully, Igor would take the other one.
I had absolutely no idea where I was going. Right now any direction away from Igor would do. Besides, even though the catacombs were icy cold, they were sheltered from the storm above and a vast improvement over the possibility of running into escaped wolves. I plodded down the tunnel, exhausted and aching with cold.
After twisting and turning for some time, a dark alcove caught my eye. It wasn't deep and so I peeked inside. A single chest sat in the center. It was old, possibly a WWII era trunk, a perfect match to my handy flashlight. I sat down on the chest to rest. My body ached all over. I was not yet recovered from my brush with the Siberian cold and my shuddering limbs needed a rest.
The trunk was heavy and spotted with rust, but something didn't quite match its “came here straight from the war” appearance. A shiny, new padlock hung against the trunk's rusted front, locking it tight. Weird?
The lock was too new to have been placed by the older Volkov. Kirill must have updated the trunk's security. But why not simply place the contents of the trunk inside a bank vault in Yakutsk, or a wall safe inside the castle?
After maybe fifteen minutes, my body reached something close to a normal temperature. Warm cramping spread through the muscles in my legs and arms accompanied by the itchy rush of my circulation returning. Apparently, I would live. Yay, me!
Well, I couldn't sit on the strange trunk forever. No matter how great the enigma, I didn't have a key or bolt cutters hidden inside the old fur coat. The mystery of the trunk was not as pressing as keeping myself out of a Siberian prison.
I plopped my head down in my hands and groaned. Staying out of prison meant that not only did I need to keep from being frozen by the sudden storm and eaten by a pack of escaped wolves, I had to solve Kirill Volkov's murder as well. No one would believe I didn't do it unless the true murderer was brought forward.
Wolves, murder, a hidden stair? This was an incredibly unlikely scenario. I had to be asleep. I ripped my mittens off and pinched the soft skin between my thumb and forefinger. It really hurt. I pinched harder, closed my eyes, and took a slow cleansing breath. I opened my eyes. Trunk, new padlock, unrealistically trapped inside a tunnel through the permafrost. I was either incredibly insane, or awake despite the wolves and the revolving wall. So yeah, moving, I had to keep moving.
I wrapped the stinky fur coat tighter and got to my feet. Now that I was in command of my tired muscles once more, I hastened down the tunnel. Perhaps someone in town would have some odd jobs I could do for shelter and food. Maybe I could find out if Mr. Volkov had any enemies that might have unleashed his wolves upon him. Or maybe it had been a terrible accident?
But no, Rasia Volkova didn't think so and that was all that really counted. If she thought there was a killer, I'd better come up with a killer, or at least some sort of proof that it was a mishap.
The image of Mr. Volkov's torn body returned. No, it was murder. The man had owned wolves for five years, at least. Why would he fail to feed them, and then traipse about amongst them like a tasty, living snack? He would know better. That meant that someone had killed him and tried to cover it up, using the wolves to erase the evidence of their crime.