“Very well,” he says, yanking his reins and wheeling his horse around. “Continue down your stubborn path. But the decision you make today will last for a long time. A very long time, indeed.”
Clenching his legs, the pale man sends his horse galloping away. The dark woods quickly swallow his shining form. Our conversation lasted mere seconds, but I find myself staggered by the implications.
Elena pulls her horse beside mine. On the trail, under a cathedral ceiling of swaying trees, she looks at me in wonder.
“There are others,” she says.
Elena breaks into a smile. My face is not as good at performing the same action. Thinking about making the shape, something moves in my jaw and the skin around my mouth pulls back a bit.
“This makes you glad?” I ask.
Together, we continue warily alongside the rest of the oblivious entourage.
“I’m not sure. I think so.”
“How could they know of us?”
“Our anima,” she says, thinking it through. “We do not know where they came from, or who found them. Perhaps the others know us from…a time before now.”
“It does not matter.”
“Are you not curious about them, Peter?”
I ride for a moment, thinking.
“I am meant to serve my ruler, little one. There is nothing beyond that.”
9
OREGON, PRESENT
Avtomat. Oleg said something called the avtomat are coming.
You should run from here.
The words ring in my ears as I stumble out of the motel doorway and onto the narrow sidewalk. Two police cars are parked across the half-empty parking lot, lights flashing in the dusk. I’m still catching my breath as police officers rush toward me, smears of black in the twilight.
I wave, cradling my ribs.
A stern-looking older cop trots over, hand on his sidearm. Looking past me toward the motel room, he takes my shoulder and pulls me away roughly. The other, younger police officer, pushes past us.
“Come with me, miss.”
Behind me, I hear the other police officer enter the motel room, kicking the door open and shouting commands at Oleg.
“You okay?” asks the cop, yanking open the back door of his patrol car.
I nod, feeling numb. “Fine,” I say.
The cop is looking at me in a fatherly way, probably assuming I’ve been beaten up by my boyfriend. He doesn’t understand. None of them understand the strangeness of what’s happening. All these years, and I never told a single person about the relic. Now I broke my promise.
“Avtomat!” screams Oleg.
The Ukrainian sounds terrified, his screams muffled. He is trying to warn the police of something. Still holding me by the shoulder, the police officer guides me into the backseat of his cruiser.
I sit, looking up at him.
Blue and red lights play over the black leather of his holster and belt. His badge gleams. He is only half paying attention to me, glancing toward the motel room as he talks.
“My name is Officer Honeycutt, ma’am. Is it your nine-one-one call we’re responding to?”
“Y-yes,” I stutter.
“All right. The EMTs are on their way. I’m going to have you sit here for a couple minutes while we sort things out,” he says.
Another hoarse scream. Oleg sounds as if he is struggling. A third cop, a woman, is hustling across the parking lot now, tool belt jiggling, hand on her radio.
Honeycutt looks over his shoulder, then back to me.
“Yell if you need anything,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
I tuck my legs in as he claps the car door shut. Oleg’s screams are faintly audible through a small gap of open window. Honeycutt trots away, leaving me alone in the backseat of the gun-oil-smelling cruiser.
An open Plexiglas divider separates the front and back seats, the gate slid open like a small rectangular window. The radio quietly chatters to itself in the front. A laptop is mounted to the floorboard, covered in Strawberry Shortcake stickers. The photo of a little girl, taped to the dashboard, grins at me.
The key is missing, engine off.
Outside on the curb, a few people have stopped to watch. A skinny guy with glasses and a gray knit cap has his cell phone out, recording the parking lot. Vague shapes flash across the tombstone of light spilling from the open motel door.
Officer Honeycutt trots inside and closes the door behind him.
My breathing is finally returning to normal. Reaching into my shirt, I pull out the relic on its chain. I wrap the small artifact in my palm, leaning my knuckles against the cool window and chewing on my thumb like I have since I was a girl. Every move I make is loud on the cracked vinyl seat covers.
The radio stops chattering and fades into a hiss of soft static.
I rub my fingertips over the designs inscribed on the relic. The geometric curves have always comforted me. Fractal patterns are generated from hard math, but they resolve into organic, natural shapes, like the veins of a leaf or spiraling whorls of a seashell. It reminds me that a simple arithmetic is beneath everything we see—predictable rules that can’t be broken, not by anyone.
Everything will be okay. Maybe.
I hear the faint sound of an engine screaming. Louder. I tuck the necklace and relic back into my shirt.
A low silver motorcycle shrugs over the curb and hurtles into the parking lot. The rider is in black leather motorcycle armor, standing up on the foot pegs, face lost behind the mirrored visor of a helmet. As the motorcycle careens toward the motel door, the man plants both hands on the seat and pushes—launching himself straight up.
Somehow, he lands on his feet, trotting as the motorcycle speeds away.
“Oh my god,” I whisper.
The out-of-control motorcycle plows straight through the motel door, smashing it off its hinges. Catching a handlebar, the door frame explodes into splinters of wood and the wide front window dissolves into toothy slivers of glass. I can feel the impact in my chest as the tiny room swallows the speeding hunk of metal and rubber.
The stranger is already crunching over broken glass. He strides right through the gaping, smoking hole where the door was. Inside, the lights blink off.
Oh my god.
I grab the door handle and yank. Nothing happens.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Oh fuck.”
Oleg isn’t shouting anymore. The motel room has gone totally silent. A haze of white smoke, exhaust probably, is pouring through the jagged remains of the front door.
I see a flash and hear a gunshot.
Even from inside the car, I flinch as the tattered blinds start to dance with more gunshots, flapping through the shattered remains of the front window like tongues over broken teeth. The people on the curb have all run away except for the knit cap guy, still filming with his phone, crouched, the dull blue light of it shining off his slack face—like he’s watching a video game.
More screaming.
Blinds twist and flap as Oleg’s flailing body bursts through the broken window, glass slivers flaying his clothes and skin. The Ukrainian lands in a wet heap on the cracked sidewalk. He lies there, still, face dark with blood.