Red Devil (Dangerous Spirits) (18 page)

“Hey.” Mike came to stand near Liza and Alexei, facing Sol and Kendall.

Alexei ignored the big sheep, letting his frustration out at Kendall. “What would you know about team? Is all about you, always.”

The pine marten wiped rain out of his eyes, raised a paw, and waved it around. “Says the guy who just runs off and does his own thing.”

“Always showing off,” Alexei said. “Always puffing out your fur. Always putting down others.”

“At least I have something to show off about,” Kendall snapped back.

Liza stepped between them. “Hey,” she said, lifting her paws to both shoulders. “We are all friends. Have a beer and we will talk about the picnic in two weeks—”

Kendall slapped her paw away. “This isn’t about being friends. It’s about winning games.”

He said a few more words, but Alexei didn’t hear them, because his ears were rushing with more than wind now, the cold clarity wavering dangerously. He put himself between Kendall and Liza, chest bumping the marten’s. “Don’t strike her,” he said in a low, iron voice that he barely recognized as his own.

“Strike her?” Kendall leaned his weight into Alexei, smirking. “Is that some Siberian thing? She touched me first.”

Sol reached around to try to pull Alexei away, and in pulling out of his grip, Alexei bumped into Kendall, pushing him back. Later, he would admit to himself that it was not entirely accidental, but he had not planned to do it when he pulled back from Sol.

The pine marten reacted immediately, shoving Alexei in the chest with both paws, knocking him back into Liza. She clutched at his shirt, missed, and fell.

The rushing sound in Alexei’s ears got louder, as though the rain were heavier, and the edges of his vision frayed and blurred. The world took on a reddish tinge, so that the mud spatters on Kendall’s shirt became the dark rust color of bloodstains. Sol was speaking, but Alexei only saw his muzzle moving; he heard none of the words. He panted, tension coiling in his chest like a spring, and before he knew it, he’d cocked a fist and punched Kendall in the stomach.

It felt good. His blood sang, and the impact, the whoof of breath leaving the pine marten, the flesh against his fist, all rang with triumph. He watched Kendall stagger and fall on his butt on the ground, and smiled. A large hand came to rest on his shoulder and he left it there for the half-second that the pine marten actually stayed down.

And then Kendall bounced back up, fists coming right for Alexei, and the fox had only a moment to adopt a defensive posture before meeting those fists. But Kendall was weak and didn’t really know how to fight, and Alexei blocked most of the blows aimed at his face, sending a couple more into the marten’s gut. The joy of the fight blazed up in him even as hands tried to pull him away from Kendall. “Weak,” he spat at the marten, easily knocking aside another punch, and then both his arms were held from behind just as Sol was holding Kendall.

At Alexei’s insult, Kendall twisted and writhed and squirmed free. He leaped on the fox, his weight tearing Alexei out of Mike’s arms, bearing them both to the ground with a hard thud that crushed Alexei’s ribs, drove the breath from him. “I’ll show you weak,” Kendall snarled, and Alexei felt sharp teeth close in his ear.

Never bite in a fight. Unless in close quarters, and then tear away quickly. If someone bites you, they have made their head a target. Hold it. Strike it.

The words came to him in a flash, in images and barked orders—

—and memories, soldiers grappling in close combat under a grey sky, flakes of snow drifting between them—

—that he processed in the length of time it took him to shift his weight to roll to the side of the ear Kendall was biting, and then drive his head down sharply into soft flesh and the bone beneath it with an impact that hurt his skull. He brought a fist up to the trapped jaws and got in one good blow with a satisfying snap before the hold loosened, and then people were dragging him away again, across the slick ground. Grass and blood filled his nose along with the smell of wet pine marten, and he turned his head to one side and spat as he struggled to his feet.

The first thing he did was look sharply about him, ears perked for any further threat. But Sol was helping the pine marten to his feet, and Kendall had one paw to his mouth, looking dazed.

Mike’s comforting bass, anxious, asking how he was. Liza, higher and sharper: “Your ear.”

“I am fine,” Alexei said, though his head was ringing.

“Oo oke aye oof!” Kendall said, trying to focus on Alexei.

“It’s over.” Sol looked between the pine marten and fox, and then past them, at someone Alexei couldn’t see.

“He broke,” Kendall said, still holding his jaw, “my tooth!”

“You bit my ear.” All the ice of a Samorodka winter was in Alexei’s voice.

“Did not,” Kendall muttered.

Liza’s fingers brushed the soft, wet fur around Alexei’s ear. “It’s bleeding right here. Definitely a bite.”

He had had his ears bitten before, on the playground; they healed well with iodine and bandages, but walking around with bandaged ears was not a badge of honor, as bandages on the battlefield might be. Still, Liza’s touch felt good, and then he turned and realized that it was Mike holding his ear, Liza simply looking on.

The urge to pull back, jerk his head away, spread through his muscles like fire, but equally strong was his urge to lean into Mike, to let the sheep take care of him. He shuddered with the conflicting pulls of those violent impulses, and Mike let go of his ear. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“A little.” The cold in his voice would not thaw. He forced out warmer words. “Thank you.”

Kendall had his mouth open for several of the others to examine his teeth. “Yeah,” Alice said. “That left canine is loose, probably gonna fall out. Shouldn’t have bit him.”

“Didn’t,” Kendall muttered again, as best he could with his mouth open, and then, when he snapped it shut, “He just slammed his head into my jaw.”

“Look,” Mike said, “it’s not worth getting this worked up over a game.”

Kendall leaned on Sol, and the black wolf supported him. “I feel kind of woozy,” he said. “Your friend has a thick head.”

“You should get some rest,” Sol said.

“Maybe something to eat,” Kendall replied. “If I keep it down, then I probably don’t have a concussion.”

“Is your head so soft you get a concussion from grass?” Alexei said.

“Hey.” Mike grabbed him, turned him away. The sheep’s hands felt good, and again, Alexei felt the warring impulses in him. Liza was there, too. He should go with her, shouldn’t he?

No, that was ridiculous. He shook his head, slowly. Liza didn’t like boys.

Better than a perversion.

She wasn’t even a vixen. They couldn’t have a family.

You fight like a soldier and then renege on your promise. What about Caterina?

The promise felt unfair, a pledge made with his sister’s life held over his head. Mike was here, Mike was real. He set his teeth, staring at the ram’s white fur and golden horns until he felt again the draw to stay with him, to follow through on their date. Behind him, Sol and Kendall were talking, and Liza was saying something to Alice, but Mike was focused just on him, with a soft, “I’m not mad at you. I didn’t hear who started it, but I saw Kendall charging at you, so…talk to me, Alexei.”

Do not think you can abandon your promise so easily.

His resolve faltered. The implied threat prickled his fur, chilled his ears, but he said, silently,
I am only keeping a friendship, not breaking my promise—and you have not kept yours, either.

In that moment, when a gust of wind blew rain into his face and he had to wipe his eyes clear, the urge for him to court Liza vanished as though blown away. He almost fell against Mike then, almost shook and collapsed into his soft strength, but he saw a shape among the trees of the park, a fox in a military coat, walking away. Leaving him—no, not leaving him. Not conceding, not surrendering; preparing for their next battle.

He straightened, called on his own inner strength, and focused his attention on Mike again. “Thank you,” he said, stretching his mouth into a smile. “I think I should go home.”

“Don’t go home just ’cause of him.”

Alexei shook his head. “I have caused trouble here, and I think it is best to let everyone cool down.” Though he knew they were gone, he turned anyway, to look for the muskrat and weasel. There was no sign of them.

Mike followed his look. “The Peaches guys? They must’ve taken off. Well, I’m sure they’ll get in touch with…”

Of course they would not. What team needed a somewhat-talented player who got into fights? Alexei had always felt that their consideration of him had been at least partly motivated by charity, and here he had shown himself to be belligerent and violent; he had punched Kendall, unmistakably escalating what had been just a shoving match. As clearly as if he had seen it, he knew that Colin and Vic had looked at each other and come to agreement without speaking. And he knew what Mike had only realized on the cusp of finishing his sentence: that the muskrat’s connection to the team had been Kendall.

It took a great effort to keep his shoulders square as he turned back. He put a paw out to the rain, and wiped the fur around his ears. The place where Kendall had bitten him still ached, but it wasn’t bad. His fingers came back smelling of blood, but only a little now.

Mike searched his eyes and reached for his paw. Holding it, not shaking it. “I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

Alexei swallowed. “I will call you,” he said. “I may not feel up to it.”

Mike’s eyes creased in disappointment, and Alexei’s heart sank. “Well,” the sheep said, “I guess I understand. But I’d still like to have that date. I can maybe help you figure out how to stay in the country.”

“I will try,” Alexei whispered. But if Caterina’s well-being hung in the balance, there was no question.

“You’ve got my number.”

“Hey,” Sol called over, interrupting them. “I’m going to take Kendall over to Starbucks on the corner there.” He pointed through the trees and the drizzle, where a green-and-white sign glowed. “You coming?”

Alexei shook his head slowly, again. “I will not.”

“All right. I’ll see you at home.” Sol turned his back and slipped an arm around the marten’s chest. Kendall draped a paw over Sol’s shoulder and leaned on him, and then, as they left, the marten looked over his shoulder with a malicious smile that set Alexei’s wet fur to prickling.

Mike stood at his side, and Liza came closer as well. “It seems Kendall has given up on you,” she said to Mike.

“Yeah.” Mike, too, looked through the rain at the black wolf and pine marten. “I suppose when I talked to Alexei at the Gameplay the other night, he didn’t like that.”

“Good riddance,” Liza said.

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Mike said. “I like him.”

Alexei stayed silent. He watched Kendall lean on Sol, watched the pine marten’s paw slide lower on Sol’s side as they crossed behind a tree, toward the Starbucks and out of sight. He did not feel as though he had won anything.

Chapter 22

Meg poked her head out of her room with a clink of earrings. “If you guys didn’t have dinner, there’s leftovers…What happened to wolfy-boy?”

Alexei closed the front door behind him and moved over to drip on the kitchen floor. “He is looking after Kendall.”

So Meg asked what happened, and he told her, and she clapped her paws together when he told her he punched Kendall. “That’s the guy who was mackin’ on your sheep, right?”

“I…suppose so.” He grimaced and rubbed his ear, where the pain had steadily increased. He had stopped at a pharmacy on the way home and couldn’t find iodine, so he asked one of the cashiers for something to put on an ear bite, and she’d given him a tube that he hadn’t looked at. He pulled the tube out of the bag and squeezed a greyish paste onto a finger, then rubbed it on his ear. “But that was not all that happened.”

So he told her the rest as well, including the departure of the people who might have hired him to play soccer. She gaped at him open-mouthed as he washed the excess salve off his fingers. “You want a hoop to go in that hole in your ear?” she said when he was done.

“There is no hole,” he said. “I think. The skin is broken, but…” he scraped at the bite with a claw and winced, “the ear is not pierced.”

“You should,” she said. “You’d look good with a pierced ear. So what pushed you to fight? I never heard of you getting in a fight.”

He crossed to the bathroom and stripped his wet shirt off, keeping the wounded ear folded down. “I fought in Samorodka,” he said, although the way he’d fought Kendall had been very different, and he was trying hard not to think about where that had come from. Thinking about Samorodka also reminded him that now he might have to return there.

“And this after you got ‘in his face’ at the game place the other night.”

He folded both ears back. “I have to take off my pants,” he said stiffly. “Perhaps you should go back into your room.”

She turned her back. “I won’t look. But I think maybe you’re tryin’ not to answer the question. You didn’t the other day, either.”

“What question?” He didn’t want to just take his pants off while she was there, but he had already said he was going to, so he had really no choice. He unfastened them and slid them down his legs.

“The question of what’s gotten into you. You used to be easygoing, more cheerful. You smiled a lot more and joked with me.” He didn’t answer. “Look, nothing happened when we did that ritual the other night, you know. I don’t know if you’ve talked yourself into thinking Niki is speaking to you, or,” her paws made air quotes, “‘empowering’ you somehow. But nothing happened. It’s all coming from you.”

“You don’t know,” he said, and then stopped. He kicked free of his pants and threw them into the hamper.

“Ha.” She half-turned, enough that he could see her grin spreading her whiskers. “So you do think something happened.”

To put off answering, he walked quickly past her into his bedroom and grabbed an old pair of sweatpants Sol had given him. He jammed his legs into them and stood there, wondering whether he could just stand here and wait her out, or if he should try running to the shower. What he really wanted was just to towel his tail dry—it was dragging water all over the carpet—and then go to bed and not answer any questions about Konstantin or Mike or the muskrat or the ritual.

Meg said from the bedroom door, “I’m sticking my head in in a minute, so you better get on whatever you want to be wearing.”

“Don’t come in,” he said automatically, annoyed that she had forestalled him.

“You’ve got fifteen seconds.”

“I need to dry my tail.”

She didn’t say anything, but he heard her walk away. He barely had time to feel relieved before she returned, her black-furred face grinning from behind one of their green towels. She stood in the doorway and threw it at him. “So tell me. What do you think has been happening?”

He scowled, gathered up his tail, and wrapped it in the towel, losing himself in the pleasant feeling of rubbing the moisture from the fur. “It is probably nothing,” he said, staring down at the green cloth slowly darkening with the moisture it was absorbing.

“What is probably nothing?”

“Dreams,” he said, slowly, pushing the towel down toward the tip of his tail, which dripped onto the carpet. He curled it up so it would drip into the towel.

“Like Sol had?” She leaned against the door frame, her eyes fixed on him.

He shook his head. “I do not think so.” When he looked up, she had her eyebrows raised and was making a “go on” gesture. He sighed. “Sol told us he was dreaming, what, that he
was
Niki?” She nodded. “In my dreams I am talking
to
someone.”

“And this someone is…?”

Alexei shook his head again. “Do you think it is possible,” he said, “that I might be imagining conversations?”

“If they’re all dreams,” Meg said, “of course. If you’re seeing him in real life…” She waved a paw back and forth. “You might be having hallucinations.”

“That is bad.” Alexei had gotten to the tip of his tail and held it wrapped in the towel. He squeezed his paws around it. In one respect it would be reassuring if Konstantin were only a product of his own mind. In another, though…he would rather the old soldier were a ghost than imagine that his own mind were going to so much trouble to torment him. “It is also bad to listen to the dreams?”

Meg tapped the door frame. “Are they telling you to kill the district attorney?”

“What?”

She waved a paw. “Old States history.”

“No.” He shook his head. “They are telling me not to do things.”

“Dreams are created by the subconscious. And you know, you’re under a lot of stress. You and Sol are fighting, and if you don’t get this soccer gig, you might be deported, and then there’s the thing with your sister, which is probably a lot more stressful than you’re letting on.”

The towel had absorbed so much water that when he released his tail and ran his paws through the fur, the tip was still damp. But it wasn’t dripping, so Alexei let it go, hanging down to the carpet. “Sol and I are not fighting,” he said.

“Come off it.” Meg’s tail swished. “You guys used to talk all the time coming back from games, going off to work. He’s upset about his picture and you’re stressed about it. How’s the thing with your sister going?”

Alexei had the wild urge to say,
It depends on a dream
. Instead he told her about Cat’s voice mail, and Meg sighed when he was done.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’ll give you a whole steaming pile of stress. You want some weed?”

In his month living with Meg, even though she was considerate enough to smoke when the canids were out, or else outside on their stoop, he had smelled the distinct herbal odor of marijuana, and had deduced what Meg meant by “weed.” Back in Samorodka, they had thought of marijuana as something that rich people did in Moskva, and he had not yet gotten used to the idea that high school and college students routinely smoked it here. “No, thank you.”

“Better than alcohol,” Meg said.

Alexei shook his head. “I do not want a drink, either,” he said softly.

“Well, look.” She unfolded her arms and rested her paws on her hips. “If you want to talk about shit, and Sol’s not around or still pissed at you, you know you can bother me.” His expression must have shown his skepticism, because she said, “I promise I won’t make fun of you all that much.”

That got him to smile. “If only I could believe that.”

“Hey,” she said, “I can be nice. Ask Sol.”

“Sol says that if your tongue were any sharper your cheek would be pierced too.”

She laughed. “Yeah, well. Not gonna say he’s completely wrong. But I can keep it in.”

He dropped the towel to the floor, and she made a ‘tch’ noise as she walked over to pick it up. “I’ll toss this in the hamper.”

She lifted her tail for balance as she bent over, moving fluidly, and he watched the lines of her body, barely concealed by her baggy clothing. The thought stirred in him that he could mollify Konstantin with her rather than Liza. If he asked her, would she pretend to date him? Would pretending be enough for Konstantin? Or could the fox hear his thoughts even now, would he know that Alexei was trying to trick him?

The older fox, if he were present or watching, remained quiet. Alexei felt a flare of anger that Konstantin had so invaded his life that he couldn’t even look at a friend without seeing a potential mate. He’d lived with Sol for nearly two months and they were only friends. Sexuality wasn’t about sleeping with the first available person of the correct gender; it was about finding the right person. And Meg was definitely a friend, no more than that.

No, this scheme of Konstantin’s to get him to be straight in exchange for Cat’s safety, even if he had agreed on it, was not right. He could not change his nature and the old ghost was wrong to ask.

Anyway, Meg had a boyfriend, or a sort-of boyfriend, and remembering him gave Alexei an idea about how to get rid of Konstantin. He was careful not to think overtly about it. “Athos is visiting this weekend?” he asked.

At the door, she paused and nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“I look forward to meeting him,” Alexei said. “I would like to ask him where he learned of the ritual.”

“Oh,” Meg said with a paw on the door frame. “I wouldn’t ask him about that. He’s real touchy about it.”

Alexei frowned. “He is…” He flexed his paws in front of him. In his preoccupied state, it took him a moment to properly translate “touchy.”

“It’s just that he does a lot of research into historical things,” Meg said. “He’s always paranoid that someone’s going to steal it. I know, like there are people out there just dying to publish his formula for getting rid of vampires. Come to think of it,” she rubbed her chin, “I guess some high schools might want that. But no, he’s ridiculous about it.”

“It can do no harm to ask.” He scratched at the fur between his pads. It felt like some of the mud from the game was still in there. Maybe he should shower after all.

Meg looked on the verge of saying something more, and then she just said, “You know, he’s…he’s touchy. It took me months to get him to tell me anything. I mean…” She gestured with both paws, slapping the towel into the door. “Just to get him to tell me that ritual, I had to promise that I would delete the e-mail right away, that I wouldn’t let you read it, that you wouldn’t tell anyone else about it…”

Alexei flicked his ears and nodded. “Well,” he said. “All right. If he is so concerned about it.” He let Meg walk off to drop the towel in the bathroom, and sat down on his bed, damp tail and all.

The night of the ritual remained crystal-clear in his memory, and he was certain that Meg had not asked him not to tell anyone else about it. She had said that she was not allowed to tell anyone else, and when Alexei had said he’d hear it, she dismissed that because, she said, he wouldn’t have memorized it.

He hadn’t, but he remembered some of it, especially that he had rung the bell once to summon the spirit, and had not rung it the second time to release it. It hadn’t seemed that complicated, certainly no more so than many he’d found on the Internet, and anyway, if Athos was as paranoid as Meg claimed, would she not have made more certain to tell him not to tell anyone else? Alexei ran paws through his tail’s fur, which definitely was dirty from the game. The only problem with asking Athos questions was that the grey fox was not here now.

There was not very much he could do right now, except go to the kitchen to eat leftovers. He had several hours before he could call Rozalina again. And later, he would have to sleep, and most likely deal with Konstantin. If Alexei could hold onto the memory of his sacrifice, of Cat’s sacrifice, and the anger at the old ghost—or hallucination—interfering, then he might be all right. Anger and pride: Konstantin understood those. Alexei was beginning to as well.