Red Devil (Dangerous Spirits) (19 page)

Chapter 23

Clouds loom overhead, not the Siberian grey of previous dreams, but thick and black, thunderclouds straining downward. The air is tense with the pressure of rain, still like a held breath. Alexei’s fur stands on end as he looks around. He tries to remember his anger, but there is nothing here to be angry with.

He stands on flat paving stones, with grass struggling up between the cracks. Near him, just out of arm’s reach, a wall rises, rough stone and mortar beneath a top row of heavy ash-colored granite, broken away at the top. The wall stretches away to two corners, and around to define a square. Opposite Alexei there is a gate, closed, of thick iron bars with a crest in the center. He cannot make out the crest from where he stands, even in the dream world: he squints, but it shifts and blurs.

And in the center of the square is a statue of a tiger, tall and wide in the shoulders, fangs bared toward an invisible enemy. He wears no shirt, only pants with stripes carved into the sides. In his foremost paw he holds a sword as long as Alexei is tall. In the paw held down at his side, he holds a flag, a banner with the emblem of Siberia emblazoned on it.

Alexei walks forward. The statue is dark bronze, polished, and the tiger’s muscles seem to ripple with the reflected churning of the clouds. The base, a wide block of marble that would easily have fit Alexei’s bed atop it, has no plaque, nor inscription, on the sides facing him.

He expects to hear Konstantin’s disembodied voice at any moment, but the only sound is the hiss of wind. It buffets his ears, swirls around his stomach and tail, and then he feels the touch of the first raindrop. He hugs his arms around his bare chest, burying his fingers in his fur, and hurries around the other side of the statue.

Here, facing the gates, is a plaque, dark against the marble. The words, carved in relief on the bronze, are difficult to make out. Alexei leans forward as raindrops spatter between his ears.

Alexander III, Emperor of Siberia.

Movement catches his eye. He looks up. Did the bronze sculpted flag just shiver in the wind? When he lowers his head, the plaque has changed.

There has been no statue erected of Nicholas II,
the words now say
. He was weak. He placed himself above his duty.

What does that mean? He looks again up at the tiger, and jumps in shock. The fierce jaws that had been facing away to his right now face him directly, and above them, the empty metal eyes flicker.

Alexei backs away, his heart pounding louder than the wind.
The gate,
he thinks, but if he turns his back on the tiger, it will certainly leap after him and destroy him. So he backs up, and the statue watches him go. He takes two steps, three, and then lands awkwardly and looks down to be sure of his footing.

When he looks up again, the tiger is standing in front of the pedestal. Alexei backs up another step, keeping his eyes on the statue, fixing it with his gaze. But even as he backs toward the gate, getting lightheaded with fear, the statue advances on him, another step, and another, the muscles rippling for real now.

Raindrops smack his fur and ears. Alexei stumbles backwards, slips on rain-slick stone, and falls. The tiger continues to advance, inexorable, and Alexei has time to get up and run to the gate. He knows the tiger is behind him, but he can run faster. He is a fox; he can get away, he can outsmart his foes.

The gate is locked. Not with a visible chain or padlock, simply closed and refusing to open to Alexei’s increasingly desperate pulls. Behind him, metal footfalls come with the regularity of a clock.
If I die in my dream—

A scrape, so close behind him it might nip his tail. He turns, back to the gate, and the tiger is there in front of him, the sword barely a foot from his nose—but it is not a sword, not up close. It is a long, clear, unlabeled glass bottle.

The bottle draws back, swings forward. Alexei, as he did so often on the playgrounds against much less deadly opponents, ducks and slides to the side, running along the wall. He is faster than the statue, he thinks as he reaches the corner, even if he can do nothing but run from corner to corner, before a pursuer who moves slowly, but never tires. The clank-clank of feet behind him punctuates the static hiss of the rain.

There is a crack in front of him: a bottle shatters against the stone, fragments of glass bursting like stars. He jumps, runs the length of the wall, and another crack sounds behind him, another in front of him, fireworks exploding in glittering points, and he avoids them all, gets to the next corner, and turns—

—and the tiger is there, impossibly, and this time he thrusts the flag at Alexei like a spear. Alexei flattens himself against the wall and the long metal pole and metal cloth pass inches from his fur. Cold radiates from them onto his wet stomach.

The fangs, the eyes lock on his. The flagpole draws back again. He hears the words in his head:
If you will not be strong, then this will be your fate.

The voice is Konstantin’s. He bends his knees, dropping below the flag and trying to roll forward, hitting the flag and then rolling around it, and he is away again, and this time he calls,
Konstantin! Konstantin! Wait!

A crack of lightning answers, nearly blinding Alexei, followed almost immediately by a peal of thunder. The fox keeps running, his feet wet and cold, the wind lashing his face with rain. He is close to the gates—

He slips again on the stone, and stumbles. Lightning flashes again, and with the roll of thunder he sees the tiger in front of him, cutting off his escape. The right paw now holds a sword again, drawing it back as the teeth flash, and in that moment as Alexei tries to catch his balance, he hears a deep, guttural voice, and this one is not the old fox’s voice. It is not a familiar voice, and yet Alexei knows it is his father’s voice, the deep growl of the formidable tiger.
I should never have believed in you.

The sword descends quickly. Stone against his back holds him in place. He squeezes his eyes shut, senses light and pain against his side where the sword’s arc ends, and the stone gives way beneath him.

Chapter 24

He hit the floor with a yell, the rasp in his throat momentarily disconnected from the sound in his ears until he realized that he was the one who was yelling. He closed his muzzle with a snap.

The dark room was full of the smell of wet wolf and wet fox. His back and tail still felt damp, but that could have been from the rain last night. His side hurt, but it seemed not so much from the blow of a dream sword as from landing on his elbow. Alexei closed his eyes and perked his ears, inhaled to catch all the scents of the room, until he was satisfied that the only smells were himself and Sol, the only sound the thumping of his heart. He felt slightly dizzy, so he lay on the floor another moment until his heart slowed.

His head, however, spun faster than ever. Why had Konstantin only spoken, not appeared? Was he furious, or simply away doing what Alexei had asked? Or was Meg right, and this whole set of dreams was simply in his head?

No. He’d seen Konstantin on the football field, he knew he had. And if it was simply “stress,” as Meg said, then what had changed to remove Konstantin from his hallucinations and dreams? The soldier had been intimidating, never threatening, never physically pursuing him. But perhaps Konstantin had enlisted a more primal, vengeful spirit to frighten him…one that knew Alexei’s past.

He sat up, now worried that a tiger statue would come through the window, a fierce, shirtless statue of Vasily—

The name came to him as easily as the name Konstantinov had come during the ritual to summon the ghost. Alexei chewed his lip with one canine tooth. The tiger had been Alexander, not Vasily. Alexander III had been the Emperor before Nicholas, but the pictures Alexei had seen in his history books melded together, a parade of tigers in different uniforms, in black and white or color oil portraits. The tiger statue from his dream might have been any of them. He was sure none of them had been named Vasily, though.

The other line on the statue’s base, about Nicholas II, referred to Alexander’s son. Alexei knew little of them beyond the basics: Alexander had fought to keep Siberia together in the face of Western society and technology that threatened to change the fabric of their lives. Nicholas had seemingly been cursed from the start, too weak to impose his will on the nobles or the would-be revolutionaries who had been active since the time of Alexander II.

Alexei huddled on the floor. Sol had not woken, his breathing slow and regular, but Alexei still did not stir from the carpet, drawing his knees up and his tail around them and rocking forward. The bottles from the dream were all too familiar, and those had likely come out of his own memories, whether dredged up by him or by Konstantin. They had served another purpose, though: to remind him of the danger his sister faced. A broken paw, a twisted ankle, and who knew what else she was concealing from him?

When he stood up, he saw glimmers of dawn out of the window. It was four-thirty, almost not worth going back to sleep. So he took his phone out into the kitchen and called Rozalina’s office.

She answered, and although she had not yet been able to locate Chichikov, just talking to her calmed him. She asked how he was doing and whether the exchange program had been successful, and he told her that it had, although he was still exploring ways to remain in the country permanently. He asked if she knew of any options, and doubtfully she suggested he call the local State Department office to ask.

Liza had told him that alerting the government that you were attempting to remain before you had a specific plan was a quick way to get yourself sent back to where you’d come from. But his only plan at the moment was to march into the Millenport office and seek asylum based on his sexuality, which at the moment felt to him like basing his hopes on drawing a playing card from a deck. So he thanked Rozalina and said he would look into that, with more cheer than he felt.

“
You know
,” she said, “
of course we would love for you to remain in Siberia, but I cannot fault you for leaving your town. Moskva will be best place for you if you return.
”

“
I hope it will not come to that
,” Alexei said. “
I am happy here
.”

“
There was a news article about desperate cubs in many small towns
,” she said. “
We knew about terrible conditions in some places, yes, but there have now been
,” she lowered her voice, “
suicides
.”

Alexei’s ears perked. “What?”

“
Suicides
,” she said. “
I recall Samorodka was mentioned. One moment
.” He heard a rustling of papers, and then she came back. “
I cannot find it, my apologies. But I believe it was written that there were…two suicides? A teenaged wolf jumped from a high building, and a younger hare one week later. Very sad
.”

“
In Samorodka?
” The room felt colder.

“
Yes. Did you have friends, wolf or hare? I am so sorry
.”

“
No
,” Alexei said. “
I have not kept close to anyone except my sister
.”

“
Oh, well
.” Rozalina sounded relieved. “
They have blocked off the rooftops there, so I believe no more will jump. It is a sad thing, but not all cubs are smart and driven as you are
.”

“
Driven, perhaps
.” Alexei wanted badly to call his sister.
Since Slava left
, she had said. Had Slava been the wolf who jumped to his death? Why would he have done that? If he hadn’t killed himself, then where had he gone that Cat was reluctant to talk about? Had he simply broken up with her? “
Rozalina? Could you do something else for me?
”

He read off his parents’ phone number and asked if she could call and ask after his sister, make sure she was doing all right, and then he would call her back.

“
I would be happy to
,” Rozalina said. “
But if your parents do not want to talk to me…
”

“
I know
.” Alexei felt relief. “
Do whatever you can
.”

He sat at the kitchen table after hanging up and stared at the glow of his phone in the slowly brightening room. Could he call his parents himself, force them to put his sister on? What would he say if he called them? He was powerless, here in the States, but now that he had turned eighteen, his parents were equally powerless. They could try to contest his student visa—had done so—but even if it expired or were revoked, now, he would just return to Moskva. He would never go back to Samorodka.

They knew that. So there was no threat sufficient to make them put his sister on the phone. Rozalina, a neutral party, would have the best chance.

The phone blinked off because he hadn’t touched it in two minutes. He set it on the table and sat, thinking about his sister, until the day brightened and he decided he should shower before Sol woke.

They walked out in silence down to the bus. The rain had cleared but the humidity remained, making Alexei’s fur sticky and rough. He rubbed his paws down his arms even though he knew it would not help. Sol rubbed the back of his paw, his tail tight against his body.

When they reached the bus stop, Sol cleared his throat. “Kendall isn’t sure his insurance is going to cover the repair on his tooth.”

Alexei made a noncommittal noise, as if he cared. Sol looked at him, but Alexei kept staring forward at the cars passing in the street. “I told him I’d talk to you about paying for it if it doesn’t.”

“I will not pay for it,” Alexei said.

“I mean, you did break the tooth,” Sol said.

“He bit my ear.” The ear with the healing wound was on the other side from Sol. Alexei flicked it anyway.

Sol sighed, his tail uncurling and relaxing. “I know. I told him that too. I said you own up to mistakes. He was saying you wouldn’t even care if he needed dental surgery.”

Alexei could hear Kendall saying those words, too. The thought made him grit his teeth. He ran his tongue over his own unbroken canine teeth and smiled. “I hope he does not need dental surgery,” he said, at least partly sincerely.

“That’s what I told him,” Sol said, but he didn’t sound so sure, and his tail was flicking like it did when he was thinking about one thing and talking about another.

Alexei rubbed his paws together, wondering if he should say something, but after the dream and the conversation with Rozalina, he was worried about Cat all over again. Slava had killed himself—the more he thought about it, the more he was sure of it. And Cat, if she didn’t get out of Samorodka, who knew what desperate lengths she might go to? He wanted the day to be over, the moon to rise so he could call Rozalina and hear her confident Siberian voice saying,
Your sister is fine. She sends her love.

“I know you don’t like him,” Sol said, “but he’s not that bad a guy. He said he didn’t realize you were interested in Mike, and so he’s stepping back to give you a chance with him.”

“I see,” Alexei said. “By the way, I will get your picture back tomorrow.”

He said it hoping that Sol would lapse into one of those silences that might be uncomfortable, but would at least spare him having to hear about Kendall. But when they got on the bus, Sol didn’t even mention the picture. He talked more about Kendall while Alexei tried in vain to stop his mind from picturing Slava leaping from a rooftop. He didn’t remember exactly what Slava looked like, so he could only see the face of one of his wolf friends from year six, and the resulting picture was even more disturbing.

It wasn’t until lunch in the small sandwich shop down the street from his warehouse, when his phone beeped with a text message, that he remembered about the date with Mike that evening.

He could beg off. He could say that he was still stressed from the fight, from losing his visa chance, and that he would not be good company. He could say that his sister was having a hard time and he was worried about that. Those stories had the advantages of being true. Of course, Mike had a younger brother and therefore maybe Mike would offer to talk to Alexei about his sister, and Alexei would rebuff him and Mike would feel bad. Or Alexei would talk to him about Cat and would have to tell him more about their childhood, the terrible conditions in Samorodka, and maybe Mike would be horrified that he’d left Cat there, or he would pity the two of them, ask how he could help. And he couldn’t help, no more than Alexei could, and probably significantly less.

Anyway, even if Alexei politely rescheduled, it would only postpone the date a couple days. He would still have to figure out if he were going to give up on Mike for good, as Konstantin wanted, or if he could just walk a careful line until the older fox had helped—or failed to help—his sister. The thing was that the same stubborn confidence that Konstantin had helped him build with his play in the games, with the dance-off and later the fight against Kendall, now pushed at him when he thought about giving up Mike.
Do not give in
, he heard in Konstantin’s voice, even though he was thinking about the old fox himself.

Where
was
Konstantin? The vision of the soldier at the game was fading in his memory to a trick of the light, a shadow, and he had heard nothing but a few sentences that might have been in his head, a voice in a scary dream. The threats from the nightmare felt like bullying he’d endured back in Samorodka, his father yelling,
I’ll see him at the bottom of the river
, his friends pushing him in the mud until he cried out whatever they wanted to hear. Konstantin had promised to help his sister, but so far he had produced no results. Had he simply used that as a lever to twist Alexei’s arm? Or had Alexei himself changed worry over his sister into guilt at his own freedom, as Meg would have him believe?

He closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of fresh-baked bread, the sweet smell of sliced meats, the musk of patrons coming and going, and pressed his paws over his face. The sandwich shop felt warm, cozy, and altogether too blandly normal for any ghost or hallucination to invade. If only he could stay here forever, and bring Cat, huddle with her in the alcove and look out over the flowing crowds together.

His phone chirped again, because he hadn’t opened it to answer the text, though he could see the words on the alert.
Still on for tonight, Playtime at 7:30?
Alexei felt a small wash of irritation, that special irritation reserved for people asking questions that were relevant but shouldn’t have been, as far as they knew, like someone asking for the exact card you’d just picked up at Old Maid. In the normal course of things, if he’d made plans and then told Mike he wouldn’t feel up to it, he wouldn’t mind Mike checking to confirm them—would expect it, even.

Alexei turned his phone over. Sometimes he wished he could just stop thinking so much about things. Of course Mike couldn’t know that Alexei had been ordered not to go out with him, could not know that his simple question was what the fox had been agonizing over for hours and days, whenever he wasn’t worried about his sister or his visa or, now, that Sol was going to start dating Kendall.

Okay. He took a breath. Sol was not going to date Kendall. He had that guy, Mitch, the one he liked. And there was nothing Alexei could do about his sister that he wasn’t already doing. Same for the visa. He turned the phone back over and stared at the message. He hated feeling bullied; he hated worrying about Cat. He worried that he would lose the rapport he was building with Mike; he worried that he would lose his already-tenuous connection with his sister. So what he had to decide, what he had to figure out right now, was whether he was going to reply to Mike with a yes or a no.