Red Devil (Dangerous Spirits) (26 page)

Chapter 32

“Hey, Alexei!”

Warm arms around him, a voice in his ear that is not a hundred years old, warm breath, warm blankets. He shudders, the ice around his heart slow to melt, and clutches at the arms, presses his head to the chest. Still he feels the decrepit landscape around him.

It is Sol’s voice that reaches him. “Hey, you were having a nightmare.”

He lifts his muzzle from the black-furred chest into the gleam of green eyes in a dark room. “Yes,” he says. Automatically, he adds, “I am sorry I woke you,” even as his mind races with the terror of the dream. He sees Konstantin behind Sol, for a moment as clearly as if a lightning flash had illuminated him.

“Ahh!”

He yelled and scrambled to the nightstand, grabbing for the light. The lamp toppled over and fell with a crash, and Alexei came completely out of the dream. In the darkness, he could see very little in the room. Even Sol’s green eyes had disappeared. The wolf was still grabbing at him, but the image of Konstantin burned into Alexei’s eyes made him hypersensitive to touch, and he shoved Sol away.

“He’s here, he’s here!” Alexei yelled over the wolf’s curse.

Even with his ears flat against his head, he could hear Sol’s harsh breathing in the silence that followed. “Where?” the wolf whispered. “In the room?”

Alexei breathed in through his nose. The only smells in the room were fox and wolf, dinner and the dust of the silent construction site outside the window. No smell of old earth, no smell of decay. “I thought,” he said, and scanned the room. The darkness yielded to his eyes, which stretched as wide as he could open them.

Sol waited for several beats and then spoke. His dark fur blended into shadow so that his light blue boxer shorts seemed to float in the air, and when the dim light caught his green eyes, they flashed toward Alexei like beacons. “When I saw Niki,” he whispered, “it was just for a second. But it was really important. Were you dreaming?”

“It isn’t Niki.” Alexei knew Sol was just likening their experiences, but he felt he had to convey that Konstantin was not the same kind of benevolent spirit as Niki, who had reached out across a century and an ocean to protect Sol. Konstantin was reaching across the same century, the same ocean, but he wanted to draw Alexei back with him. And he had been unable to help Cat.
She is beyond your help.

“I know,” Sol said, but the rest of his words were cut off when the door opened and light flooded the room, making both canids squeeze their eyes shut.

“What’s going on?” Meg’s voice sounded unnaturally high.

Behind her, Athos said, “Is it him?”

“I have to call my home.” Alexei pushed Sol away and swept his paw across his night table, looking for his phone.

“It’s two in the morning,” Sol said.

“Not in Siberia,” Meg said. “Why? What happened?”

The phone was on the floor next to the broken lamp. Alexei grabbed it, stabbed at the buttons until his call history came up, the number Cat had called from last. He pressed “Call” and flipped the mike out, breathing heavily against it. Ethereal whirrs and clicks filled his ear.

“I don’t know,” Sol said to Meg.

“Konstantin isn’t here?” Athos pronounced the name wrong, without the proper depth to the “o,” but Alexei didn’t correct him, nor respond. On the other side of the world, the phone was ringing.

“He had a dream, I think?” Sol got up.

Alexei curled his tail around his legs, knees drawn tightly up to his chest, and worked his way back against the wall, the bed and desk on either side of him bracing him, holding him up. The phone rang again and then the ring cut off. A clatter, and then a harsh, familiar voice said, “
Yes?
”

He spoke quickly, in Siberian. “
Cat
,” he said. “
Caterina
.”

Before he could say anything else, his mother snarled, “
Aleksandr. How dare you call? Did you know about this? It is your fault. If not for you, my Caterina would be here at home! Did you know? Did you help her run away?
”

“
It is not my fault
.” Sol stared at him. Meg turned over her shoulder to say something to Athos. Alexei barely noticed them. Surely, surely if something terrible had happened to Cat, she would have told him. “
She was never happy there.
”

“
We could have been happy if you had been a better son!
” His mother sounded close to wailing, her words distorted and stretched.

He wanted to hang up, to cut them off again, but he had not spoken to them in over a year. “
Let me talk to Cat!
”

“
We gave you a home
.” His mother’s voice held no more love, and Alexei wondered now if it ever had. “
We gave you food, gave you shelter, promised you everything.
”

“
Not what we needed
,” Alexei said. “
You thought only of yourselves. Never of us.
”

“
We thought of nothing but you!
” his mother shrieked. In the background, he heard his father cursing at him. “
You abandoned us and lured your sister away and now look at what has happened!
”

“
Caterina only wants to come live with me, with her real family who loves her
,” he said in spite. “
We will start—
”

“
No!
” His mother’s cry drowned out his words. “
She will be buried here!
”

She shouted more curses, but Alexei didn’t hear them. His fingers on the phone went numb, as though the phone were a block of ice, and his breath caught in his throat. “
Buried?
” he choked out.

His mother didn’t hear him. “
You ungrateful cub. I wish I had drowned you in the river. I wish you had never lived! I would rather mourn a dead newborn than this, than to see how you corrupted and destroyed my Cat, my darling.
”

“
You never loved her
,” Alexei said, trying to suppress his reaction to the words. He’d known his parents despised him for leaving, but wishing him dead? His tail curled tightly on itself; he drew his knees up, hunched on the floor. “
What happened to her?
”

In the background, he heard his father say, “
Hang up. Hang up! Do not waste breath on him.
”

“
She’s dead!
” his mother screamed into the phone. “
Dead, and you killed her!
” And then there was a click, and silence.

Alexei sat without moving. He kept the phone pressed to his ear, though nothing but silence came through. Dead to us, that’s what his mother must have meant. Cat would be buried there in Samorodka—eventually. But his blood remained cold, and his muscles refused to unlock.

Sol and Meg stared at him; Athos had gone. “One more call,” he whispered, and dialed Rozalina’s number—the home number she had given him, since it would be Saturday morning in Siberia.

“What’s happening?” Sol said. “You were angry and then went quiet.”

“And not a good kind of quiet,” Meg added.

He held up a finger for them to wait, and they did. The phone rang and rang, and on the third ring, Rozalina picked up. Alexei identified himself quickly. “
I am worried about Caterina
,” he said. “
I called my parents too—
”

“
Why did you call your home? You should not have done that.
”

“
—and they were very upset.
”

“
I told you they were upset.
”

“
I think something may have happened to her. Please, can you see if any young vixens were reported…
” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. “
In Moskva? She said she was going to Moskva.
”

“
Why do you not ask them?
”

He could have, he supposed, but he did not trust them to give him an honest answer. They could easily say she was dead just to spite him even if she were just upstairs. “
They were very upset,
” was all he could think to say.

She tapped on a keyboard. “
Your father called this office eleven times when you left.
”

Meg and Sol were talking softly to each other and watching him. “
I know. I am sorry.
”

“
It is not your fault. But you should not call and antagonize them. Now he is going to call here again and they always send the calls to me, and there is nothing I can say to him. He will yell at me and call me terrible names and hang up, and then call back to do it all over again.
”

What else did she want him to say? “
Don’t talk to him
.”

“
Then he reports me and I have to suffer through a review and explain your family again
.” They’re not my family, he wanted to say. Not anymore. “
I am not seeing any reports in the news. There is…wait.
”

Her voice softened, and Alexei’s heart filled with dread. His ears flattened back. In the room, Sol and Meg quieted, watching him. For three, five, ten seconds there was no sound but keys being tapped, then clicks, and then not even that. “
There is a report
,” she said slowly, “
that a young vixen fell from a building and died. They think the roof, perhaps a high window
.”

“
Like the wolf from Samorodka
,” he said before he could help himself.

Sol and Meg glanced at each other at the mention of Alexei’s hometown. Rozalina sucked in a breath. “
And the other one
,” she said, but Alexei cut her off.

“
She was dating the wolf, the one who jumped.
”

“
You don’t know it was her, Alexei
,” Rozalina said, but he did know, could feel it like a lump of ice lodged in his chest. He could see her looking at the window and remembering Slava, how if all other avenues of escape were closed to her, at least she had his lead to follow. He thought of the times he had talked to her about ghosts, about living beyond death, and how she must have thought she would see Slava again. In trying to protect her, he had led her to Bogdan, encouraged her, and it had been a trap.

“
The corsac fox
,” he said, with as much clarity as he could. “
The one I asked you to look up. Bogdan Chichikov. He did this to her.
”

“
Alexei—
”

“
Promise you will tell the police about him. Promise
.”

She paused. “
Bogdan…Chichikov
.” She spoke slowly, as though writing down the name. “
I will tell them. But—
”

“
Thank you
,” he whispered. Before she could answer, he hung up the phone.

“Well?” Meg said. “You going to translate for us?”

In his head, the words were in Siberian:
Caterina is dead
. He understood Meg’s words but could not for a moment cross the barrier to form words to say back to her. “My sister,” he said, reverting to some of his first English lessons, struggling to pull words together. “I hear my sister has…” Jumped, died, suicide: the words clattered around in his head, refusing translation, refusing to pass his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his phone to the floor, barely noticing the thump as he pressed a paw over the bridge of his muzzle.

His whiskers twitched as Sol knelt next to him. Crammed into the space between the bed and the desk as Alexei was, it was difficult for Sol to get an arm around him, but the wolf crawled halfway under the desk and got one paw on the fox’s shoulder. “Hey,” Sol said. “Come on out. Let’s get you something warm to drink.”

“He doesn’t need coffee,” Meg said. “Maybe he just needs to be alone.”

“No.” Alexei and Sol said it at the same time.

“We promised we’d stay in case Konstantin came back,” Sol said.

“I just meant that maybe he doesn’t want to talk about his sister,” Meg snapped back. “Maybe we can just talk about, I dunno, movies or some shit.”

Sol and Alexei shared a look, and in that Alexei saw Sol’s sympathy, the experience they shared. Sol had never lost a sibling, but he had been lost in a different way, his world falling apart around him. “Do you need someone to listen?” the wolf said softly.

Alexei’s ears came partway back up, and his whiskers rose and fell. He exhaled and crawled out from the corner he was in. At least listening to Sol and Meg seemed to have restored his ability to speak properly. “I do not know what will do any good,” he said. “I fear I have done a terrible thing to my sister.”

“In your—” Sol’s ears flicked toward Meg and then back. “Dreams?”

“No. In…” Alexei circled his finger around in the air. “In this world. She wanted to escape. I am afraid…”

Sol reached out for him then, and Alexei let the wolf hug him. After a moment, he hugged back and rested his head against Sol’s shoulder.

At the table, a little later, he was able to tell them more. They were silent, and then Meg said, “Well, that sucks.”

“Nice.” Sol glared at her. “Any other obvious unhelpful remarks to make?”

“I’m being sympathetic, smart-mouth,” she retorted. “If you have an idea for a more practical response, I’m all ears.”

Sol turned back to Alexei. “I know you said Konstantin wants to make you stop being gay, but…does he want to help you? Can you ask him…?”

“I already did.” Alexei shook his head violently. “This is why—” He stopped himself. It was not why this had happened; Konstantin had in fact tried to warn him about Bogdan, but had done it too late. Alexei himself was the one who was at fault for encouraging his sister to leave, for filling her with false hope and a desperation strong enough to make her easy prey for a cunning predator who recognized her spark shining out amidst the desolate small town.

He slumped back in his chair and covered his muzzle in his paws. “Hey,” Sol said. “Hey, come on, keep it together.” Another of those expressions that Alexei had to focus to understand. Together? He was coming apart, alone, powerless to control even his fate, let alone his sister’s or anyone else’s. It would be best to do nothing, to sit here in this room where he could not hurt anyone, most of all himself.

Chapter 33

Alexei spent Saturday sitting on his bed staring at his phone. Around him, Sol and Meg hovered, with Athos throwing in statements on occasion. Meg made him chicken soup for lunch, after he’d refused to eat breakfast.

“I know it’s for like, when you’re sick with a cold, but in case you get some psychosomatic shit happening, this isn’t going to fuck with your system any.”

He shook his head. “I am not hungry,” he said.

“Well, you’re not going to starve.” She stood with paws on her hips and stared down at him. “And I can stand here all day until you finish it, so you will eat it.”

When he still didn’t move, she added, “And I’m not gonna reheat it. So you’re better off eating it while it’s hot.”

He sighed and turned toward the bowl. The soup did smell good, and best of all, it smelled nothing like anything his parents had made for him, brought back no memories of home. He brought the spoon to his muzzle and sipped. “It’s good,” he said.

“It’s Campbell’s,” Meg snorted. “I dumped it out of a can. Keep going.”

The taste did, for a short time, drive off the memories. He watched the noodles float in the golden broth, watched the patterns the chicken fat made on the surface, and emptied his mind until his spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl.

“Right.” Meg took the bowl to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a plate and two slices of bread. “Here. In case you get hungry. Athos and Sol and I will be out in the kitchen.” She looked down at her feet. “If you wanna talk. Or something.”

“Thank you,” Alexei said softly. He barely noticed when she left. Sol spent the morning and early afternoon with him, then left to run some errands, after making sure Meg would be home if Alexei needed anything.

All day, he was thinking of Cat, of the time that beaver had stepped on her tail and Alexei had knocked him down; of the time their father had whipped her with his belt and she’d hidden in Alexei’s room sobbing; of the time the two of them snuck out and just sat in the moonlight in the overgrown weeds; of the time with the loaf of bread, the time with the pencils, the time with the half-eaten fish. And he thought of Konstantin telling him that Chichikov was a “bad sort,” of how overjoyed Cat had been in her letter to him, of how desperate she must have felt standing on that roof.

Slava’s death must have weighed on her. She had probably stayed up nights just as Alexei was now, thinking of the wolf’s body diving into free-fall, arms outstretched, just as he could see her standing on the edge.

The skies are grey behind her. She stands perfectly still. The stone is sunlit-warm beneath her toes, and up here, the wind pushes against her as though desperately trying to hold her up. Her tail flows out behind her, catches the sun, but does not shine as it once did. Inside her there is something black, something gnawing, sapping the brightness from her fur and her smile. She extends her arms as perhaps Slava did—

Or:

There is nobody on the roof; he checks before coming through the door. The slight weight of the faded vixen is no trouble for the stocky corsac fox. She lies limp in his arms, drugged (already dead?). He crouches, scuttles to the edge of the roof, and lifts her body—

Or:

He is not her savior. She runs from him, escapes the apartment somehow and finds the stairs. She goes up, hoping he will think she went down, but he hears her or smells her or he has done this before and he knows. She runs to the roof and then there is no more escape. He is not worried; they always come down. But not this one. She is new, her spirit still flickering, and she has nothing to go back to. She climbs onto the roof, and when he advances one more step—

Alexei buried his muzzle in his paws. He heard Cat’s laughter, smelled her as though she were standing beside him, felt her hug him good-bye and kiss him on the cheek, heard her whisper, “Good luck.” He saw her writing the letter, determined that she would come and join him, tongue tip sticking out of her mouth like it did when she was concentrating on something (one of the many unladylike habits she had). He saw her falling from the tree they had climbed, the time she scraped her ear, the time she twisted her ankle.

He saw himself promising they would make it out together. He felt the rough wood of the wall against his nose again, felt the splinters catch in his fur as Cat asked him, “Are you gay?”

She had understood, and whom else would he have told there? How else would he have had the courage to escape? Anger at his parents surged in him, but at the same time he felt that was no more than a diversion to escape his own guilt.

Later in the afternoon, he became convinced that Caterina was not really dead, that it had been some other vixen, that his mother had been drunk or hysterical. His phone had rung three times, twice from Liza and once from Mike, but he hadn’t answered it, and only Liza had left voicemail, which he hadn’t listened to. Still, he kept his phone near him, and when in the evening it rang with a Siberian number, he jumped to press it to his ear. In his excitement, he heard a female voice and said, “
Cat?
”

“
Yes
,” the caller said, and then, “
I am so sorry, Alexei.
”

“
What? Where are you?
”

“
In Moskva. Alexei, this is Rozalina. I have just talked to the police on your behalf. They confirmed that the vixen who died was Caterina Tsarev. I am so sorry.
”

“
No. No.
” He shook his head. “
Cat is going to call me.
”

“
Did you receive a message from her?
”

He bit his lip. Rozalina kept talking, but he didn’t understand all the words, until she said, “
Chichikov
,” and then he snapped back to attention.

“
What? What about Chichikov?
”

“
They arrested him, Alexei. He lived in the building she jumped from. They found pictures of young girls of many species in his apartment and items of clothing. He is a criminal.
”

“
And he killed Cat?
”

“
They cannot be sure. But they will tell me. I had to prove I was your legal representative. I hope you do not mind.
”

“
No,
” he said. “
Please tell me what they find.
”

“
She had a letter in her pocket
,” Rozalina said. “
It is addressed to you. Would you like me to read it, or send it on to you?
”

“
Send it
,” he said without thinking. He could not bear to hear it now, Cat’s words coming to him in Rozalina’s voice through the phone. He could not give himself that false hope.

“
How did you know of him? They wanted to know.
”

“
Cat told me
,” he said, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Sol came back later, when Alexei was finishing a second bowl of soup Meg had forced on him. “Any news?” he said, and then at Alexei’s expression, “Shit. Sorry. I got back as soon as I could.”

“She is dead,” Alexei said in a voice as flat as his ears. He had not told Meg yet, and now she hovered in the doorway, staring.

Sol turned to her. “You didn’t tell me.”

She pointed. “
He
didn’t tell
me
.”

“What happened?” Sol asked, softly, sitting on the desk chair so his knees were inches from the edge of the bed where Alexei sat cross-legged.

“She wanted to do what I did. She trusted a bad fox and then…” He spread his paws. “Perhaps he threw her out of a window. Perhaps she jumped, like her boyfriend did.”

“Jesus,” Sol breathed.

“Fuck,” Meg said. “Look, no way is that your fault.”

“I asked Konstantin to help her escape,” Alexei said. “I drove her into his arms.”

“You can’t blame yourself for some other sick fucko.” Meg spat the last word.

“And you’re definitely not moving out,” Sol chimed in. “Not now. Anyway, he didn’t help your sister. You don’t have to do what he says, now.”

Alexei had not heard from Konstantin in a very long time, it felt like, and yet he knew that the older fox was not gone. Konstantin knew grief and loss; Alexei had seen that in his eyes in the dream. He was bound to the old soldier now, with shared history and experience, an intimacy as close as family. Konstantin’s current absence was respectful, but Alexei knew that very soon he would have to face the soldier again, and this time, offered the chance to escape the guilt and tragedy of the world, he might not have the strength to resist. “I do not believe it is that simple,” he said softly.

“You can’t be alone.”

Alexei curled his tail around his ankles and stared down at it. “I am not,” he said, and Sol and Meg made approving noises, while grit itched between his paw pads and the dirt from the construction site smelled like a grave.