The lull shatters.
I yank the steering wheel as hard as I can, jamming both feet onto the brakes and sending my face bouncing against the driver’s-side window. The black form in the backseat hardly moves, one hand clamping on the square of Plexiglas between us, sending stress fractures zigzagging through the half-inch thick plastic.
The cruiser noses onto the dirt shoulder and the front tires lock and slide, turning the car and twisting the steering wheel out of my hands. We spin violently, tires screeching, car shuddering over gravel and pavement. When we finally stop, the car rests sideways and slumping, front tires blown, only half on the narrow, empty road.
I’m already clawing at the door handle.
Behind me, I hear the Plexiglas shatter as the man in black reaches for me. Fingers drag across my back as the door groans open. Diving out, my head snaps back as his fingers slither through my hair.
“Fuck! Off!” I’m shouting.
The strength of that hand is inhuman. And his silence is unnerving. The silver-haired man isn’t breathing or grunting or making any noises at all. I only hear the scrabble of my knees on pavement and my own strangled gasps. The Plexiglas cracks inside the cruiser like a gunshot.
“Help!” I shout, stumbling into the middle of the road.
The empty two-lane highway winds away between towering pines. A few hundred yards off, a single utility pole spills a pool of orange-sherbet light on the stained lot of an abandoned gas station.
The police cruiser’s engine is off, siren quieted, headlights cutting across the road.
“Help! Help me!” I call, lurching down the yellow dividing line. My voice is swallowed up by rows of impassive trees. I hear the scrape of motorcycle boots on broken safety glass and don’t bother to turn around.
I run.
The first blow hits me from behind, in the kidney. Sprawling forward onto my knees, I collapse onto all fours with my face lost in greasy strands of my hair. Dirty pavement swims in my eyes as I retch.
“Where is the anima?” asks the silver-haired man.
“I—I don’t—” I gasp, trying to catch my breath.
The man crouches near me. His fingers close around the nape of my neck, and the asphalt becomes a moonscape as he presses my cheek against the ground.
“The relic. The one you reported to Oleg. It was not in the hotel. Where do you keep it?”
His voice sounds almost pleasant.
The artifact hangs around my neck, tucked under my shirt, pressing painfully into my collarbone.
“It’s in the car. In my bag in the cruiser,” I lie.
Spit and sweat and tears are mixing with the tangle of hair around my face. I can smell a hint of ozone as the first sprinkles of rain hit the pavement.
There is no bag in the cruiser. How long until he figures it out?
“Stay here,” he says, standing.
Boots crunch as he walks toward the cruiser. On shaky arms, I push myself up. I’m alone in the middle of an empty rural highway, tears streaking my face. The pines sway as a haze of rain sweeps in from the coast.
And in the distance, through the trees and rain, another pair of headlights blink into view. Another car is coming, thank goodness. The headlights shudder as it hits a dip in the road. It’s coming fast, not slowing.
Standing on the yellow divider, I wave my hands frantically. I can see now it’s a muscle car, glistening black and wrapped in chrome. The driver stares at me over a thick black mustache, his face lit by greenish dashboard lights, gloved knuckles rising like a mountain ridge over the steering wheel. For a split second, I’m frozen in his headlights.
Tires screech as his brakes lock, white smoke boiling up.
I drop to a knee and turn as the car hurtles past, missing me by inches. Hair flying in the hot exhaust, I open my eyes to see the fishtailing muscle car swerve directly toward the man in black. Riding twin streaks of rubber, the beefy car shudders toward the silver-haired man on screaming tires.
The man leaps neatly into the air, over the car.
The muscle car slides past and shivers to a stop in the middle of the road. It waits there for a moment, engine ticking. I hear raindrops hissing as they spatter against the car’s hood. White smoke rises quietly from the tires, and for a moment everything smells like burned rubber mixed with rain.
I watch from a crouch, stunned.
“You should not have come here,” calls the silver-haired man.
A black car door opens.
The man with the mustache ducks out and rises to an enormous height. His face is hidden under curly, tousled brown hair. He casually rests one tan-gloved hand on the roof of his car.
“How long has it been?” he asks.
“Centuries,” says the silver-haired man.
“Not long enough.”
The big man keeps his eyes on his adversary, wary as he moves closer.
“Leave her to me and go,” he says.
The other man smiles, puts his hands out as if in apology.
“You know that’s not possible. The world may be ending, but some secrets must always be kept.”
12
GREAT EUROPEAN PLAINS, 1725
This morning before dawn, Peter the Great, father of his country, founder and emperor of the Russian empire, true sovereign of the northern lands and king of the mountain princes, passed from this world and left no heir. Those of us allied too closely with Peter lost everything. By command of Empress Catherine, newly appointed ruler of Russia, we have been sentenced to death.
And so Elena and I ran, disguised as a father and daughter, leaving behind the only world we ever knew. And it wasn’t long before we attracted notice.
The group of plains bandits saunter toward us, hips rolling in their rain-spattered saddles. I raise my shashka and point the saber at the heart of the nearest man. In response, the mounted bandit smiles at me, his teeth rotting under a bushy black mustache. Four others hold back as he alone moves forward.
Even from this distance, I can see he is eager to close. I lower my saber. The gesture was futile. In a few moments, these men will run us down on the empty plains north of Saint Petersburg.
I will have to fight. And my little sister will fight alongside me.
On tall horses, the bandits that patrol this empty steppe are confident. Short wet grass rolls for hundreds of miles around, each blade glistening purple-green under the lick of lightning and caress of rain.
“Stay close,” I say to Elena.
The girl presses her hard shoulder against my thigh and the wind sweeps the tail of my kaftan over her chest. Misty rain has plastered her black wig to her forehead, dark ringlets striping porcelain skin. Her sculpted face is nearly lost within the hood of her cloak. Indistinct under the billowing fabric, she moves like a small, fierce animal.
“We cannot succeed,” she says, and her voice is a melody, the chirping of clockwork birds. Indeed, the mechanism that speaks for her was created from a singing wooden clock that came from the German Black Forest.