“You’re kidding me. This is where Myanya attempted to get her grind on in 1962?”
We stood in the middle of Red Square, looking toward the iconic St. Basil’s cathedral, its lofty towers topped with huge onion-shaped turrets even more breathtaking in person than they’d been in all the tourist guides and online travelogues I’d been able to read before Nikki and I had made our hasty trip to the Kremlin. That monstrosity of a government building sat behind us and to the right, looming like a malevolent god, and it was all I could do not to look over my shoulder to make sure it hadn’t advanced upon us while I wasn’t looking.
We’d left Danae and Kreios in Vegas. Kreios to keep an eye on Armaeus, and Danae to track reports of Myanya’s global appearances, in hopes of narrowing down the possibilities of where she and her vessel witch were camping out. Meanwhile, Nikki and I needed to figure out what to do with Myanya when we caught her.
I focused on St. Basil’s. The church—while undeniably beautiful—was simply that, a church. A very Catholic, orthodox church that was a rabbit warren of tiny chambers and intricate passageways on the inside, the only real space to breathe evident when you looked up. We’d been booked on an official tour on this chilly morning, but nothing about this place felt like the setting for a witch to have a throwdown with an ancient spirit facing the fated cycle of possession, oppression, then redemption. Especially a witch who beat the odds and the spirit and lived to tell the tale.
“This is where Armaeus said Iskra Mikhailova would meet us,” I said, though I didn’t want to think too much about the Magician and his reasons for sending me off so abruptly…let alone the whole romper room setup in his library. Had I missed any sign in his penthouse office of something deeper going on? He’d been acting weird—the whole Council had been acting weird, but was it really my job to keep up with their internecine politics? I had a job to do here. I was busy.
Still, I couldn’t help extend a thin thread of connection all the way to the other side of the world, where I suspected Armaeus was still holed up in his fortress. I wanted to feel him, sense him. Know he was there.
I got nothing back.
“If so, she’d better get a move on,” Nikki grumbled. “I didn’t douse this coat in borax for no reason.” She fluffed her coat, which didn’t need the help—a voluminous bright white faux-fur tent that ended well north of her knees, the better for her to show off her tights-clad gams that were also encased in fur-topped knee-high boots, complete with thick, chunky platform heels and faux-fur tassels. She also had a bright red faux-fur hand warmer and a matching cap that settled on her ice-blonde updo as if defying the wind to knock it askew. The wind, wisely, didn’t take that challenge.
I drove my hands deeper into my wool-lined leather duster, my outerwear of choice for the brisk Russian morning. We’d made the journey to Moscow with my evolving skill of teleporting. While I was still unfortunately singed by each new experience—which explained Nikki’s garment treatments—I had to admit I appreciated the advantages of avoiding commercial air travel.
First, there was the benefit of instant gratification. You needed a flight to Moscow? You simply braced yourself and went. Particularly when traveling to places like Moscow, there was an added benefit of no customs lines. I was becoming more and more of a fan.
In fact, there was no official record of us even being in Moscow, now that I thought of it. I frowned. How many people in the world had this ability, besides myself and Armaeus? Because the temptation to use such a skill for personal gain could very well prove impossible to ignore. As one of the more avaricious artifact hunters back in my day, I felt a familiar itch along my spine…
“Justice Wilde!” The voice was thickly accented, but the words were in English, and Nikki and I both turned to see a young woman bustling through the square, her stylish wool coat swinging along her calves above sleek leather boots. She was wearing a cap similar to Nikki’s, though also in wool, and her face was bright, blue eyed, and—undeniably young. This wasn’t Iskra Mikhailova. She could have been Iskra’s granddaughter, if Iskra had ever had children. Which, after her date with Myanya, she hadn’t.
“Welcome, welcome,” the woman said, turning immediately. “I’m Svetlana Mater. Thank you for meeting me here. Dr. Mikhailova is not so happy with the cold in our beautiful city anymore, but she wanted you to go through the church before you met her. The church, it is everything to her and her story. Especially if the prophecy…” She shook her head, pursing her lips. “Well. There will be time for that. You have seen the cathedral?”
“Only the outside,” I hedged. “But we could take the tour. We’re signed up.”
“Ah! You have not done so already. I was hoping that was the case. I will show you a bit of a secret, if you would allow me.” She flashed us both a winning smile and started moving briskly across the square towards the church. “I have credentials for us all, given Dr. Mikhailova’s position with St. Basil’s.”
“Which is what, exactly?” I asked. “I thought she worked with the university.”
“She did, for many years. But what most do not know is that, though St. Basil’s no longer had any religious function at the time of her trial, Dr. Mikhailova secretly converted to Russian Orthodoxy Catholicism immediately after her tribulation and became a nun. She remained in service to the Father for eight years before exiting again, and has made volunteering at the cathedral her life’s work thereafter.”
We’d entered the cathedral’s main doors by now, bypassing the ticket booth with a flash of our credentials, and Svetlana pitched her voice higher, talking about the nine chapels housed within the building as she ushered us past two other groups. “The original church was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible to honor his victory over Mongol forces in 1552, and in the very beginning, it was as white as snow, the domes painted gold. But very little is known about how the church evolved over time. Some believe the structure was intended to mimic the churches of Jerusalem. Some say the idea of building eight churches around a ninth chapel in the center was intended to evoke the symbol of the eight-pointed star. Regardless, the result has the effect of being buried under several layers of mysticism, cloaked and framed in it, if you will. It’s a labyrinth in all directions but up, which is very much intended.”
“Up,” Nikki echoed, peering skyward. “Not so useful if you don’t have wings.”
“And yet we are all angels sent here to learn, are we not?” Svetlana said cryptically. “So in the end, an exit up is all we truly need.”
She let us chew on that as we meandered through several more corridors, taking in the crowded red-hued splendor of two of the chapels. Finally, when we were alone in a narrow hallway lined floor to ceiling with heavily framed paintings, she turned and gave us a smile. “You are not allowed to touch anything or take any flash photography, you understand? It is vitally important.”
I frowned at her. That sort of warning was typically given at the start of any proper tour. “Of course—”
I lurched back as Svetlana’s hand swept forward, cracking against the wall. Instantly, the panel clicked and swung inward, and she urged us forward rapidly. “It becomes harder and harder to open this door, but there is no way for us to get in to fix the hinges now that Dr. Mikhailova is no longer on the restoration committee. So we do not use it so much, but you had to see what is above to understand what is below.”
“I—sure.” I had no idea what Svetlana was talking about, but I was willing to go along with it if it got us to Iskra more quickly.
We descended into a stairway that had none of its own lighting. Svetlana used her phone as a makeshift lantern to guide the way. The stairway curved down thirteen steps, clearly cut inside a column of stone given its tight spiral, as if it were some sort of refurbished well. After a short landing, it continued down another thirteen steps. “You won’t have to exit this way, of course,” Svetlana murmured. “But you understand the sense of this space now, I think.”
“When was this built?”
“We believe this underground chamber was created at the same time as the primary cathedral, the mechanism to its entry cleverly concealed. Ivan the Terrible had no real need to hide here from his enemies, but he was nothing if not a practical ruler. The rumors that circulate regarding the blinding of the original builder to keep him from ever building a similar church stem in part from the creation of this underground escape route. While it is a historical fact that no such blinding occurred, the threat was leveled not to keep the builder from erecting a more beautiful church later on, but from revealing the location of this hideaway. It proved an effective deterrent.”
“But if Ivan didn’t really need it, what was it used for?” Nikki asked. “Because it’s definitely been used.”
I squinted in the confined space as Svetlana flipped switches, flooding the subterranean space with light. This chamber resembled a drawing room from a bygone era—large wingback chairs, shelves lined with books, couches draped with heavy blankets. I glanced around, trying to get a sense of how the place was heated and lit, if, in fact, it was intended to remain hidden. “The custodians have to be aware of this place.”
“The custodians, no. Certain agents in the government, of course. But the information about what lies beneath St. Basil’s is a question of national security, and it always has been. As a result, very few people know the truth. Dr. Mikhailova was part of the Muscovite coven, which was active at the time St. Basil’s was built and provided workers for the project. The information about not only the location of this shelter but also the secret passages that link to it is a coven secret.” She smiled. “And now your secret.”
A dry, rattling laugh sounded from deep in the room, and the voice that followed it was as soft and murmuring as the air around us. “There are no secrets that can be held forever from Justice.”
I turned to see one of the piles of blankets shift. As Svetlana hurried to the center of the room, a petite woman with white hair stood, wobbling only slightly. Out of habit, my third eye flicked open, and both women lit up like Christmas trees. Not every witch was a high-powered Connected, or even Connected at all, but both Iskra and her young assistant qualified. Interesting.
“Justice Wilde.” Iskra inclined her head.
I roused myself to action, moving across the thick woven rug to grasp her hand. She held mine with both of hers, and her eyes narrowed as she dragged her thumb across the barely healed wound in my palm.
“Nul Magis,” she murmured. “Wielded by a very strong magician—and now residing in you. It won’t help you with Myanya.”
It was all I could do not to pull my hand back sharply, embarrassed, but Iskra had called it. The holdover toxin had taken up permanent residence in the palm of my hand, and I hadn’t had time to see about removing it.
That said, I wasn’t in the mood to have any of my secondary skills second-guessed.
“I wasn’t planning on using it for Myanya,” I informed her, gently removing my hand from her questing grasp. She turned and reached for Nikki’s hand, then paused, but was a second too late. Though any high-level Connected could block Nikki’s ability to read memories if they were expecting it, if Nikki caught them off guard, it was all over. Nikki pumped the old woman’s hand with enthusiasm, her jaw working as she quickly and efficiently read Iskra’s memories. Her brows shot high as she turned to me, but Iskra started speaking.
“You have come for knowledge on how to beat the spirit of Myanya, to keep it from flowering to its full force, but I say to you, you’re already too late. Myanya is a hungry spirit who must see the fulfillment of the cycle. She has no other choice.”
“Well, about that,” I said, as Svetlana clucked and fussed at Iskra’s side, eventually getting the old woman to take her seat again. “Why is she back? She apparently skipped one generation. Why not two?”
Iskra grunted. “Skipped? No. She didn’t skip a generation. She changed tactics. The witch she chose was already one in an established coven, already promised to a male not of her choosing. The girl’s subjugation was preordained, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Regrettably, she did not survive the ordeal of Myanya’s challenge. The coven was powerful enough to cover up the evidence of what happened and let it be believed that no attempt had been made.”
I stared at her, two things bothering me about this recitation. One, that it appeared to be common knowledge to Iskra, and two, that it belied what the Jones brothers had claimed. “The coven can hide all trace of Myanya from their peers? Even from the men who reportedly get some sort of supernatural call to action when Myanya rises?”
“They can and they must. It is only when the prophecy is fully executed that the coven that takes on this great power is able to leverage it for their own benefit. Far more often, the initiate witch dies during her trial and tribulation, or comes back so scarred and weak from the ordeal that she is of no use as a figurehead to her coven. This prophecy was conceived in a far more brutal time. Over the centuries, the covens have not kept up with their training as rigorously as they should. As a result, we’ve grown weaker, particularly in the face of such primal power.”
“What about you?” Nikki asked. “You not only were chosen by Myanya, you rejected her. And you lived to tell the tale.”
“Not without great personal loss,” Iskra whispered, her voice cracking. “I believe Svetlana told you of my time in the convent after the trial. That was in payment to a group of exiled nuns, whose prayer on my behalf dramatically altered the outcome of my challenge. I entered their order as a novice and remained in service for eight years instead of the usual five. When I left, they allowed me to maintain access to these sacred rooms. I had long since recovered from the physical trauma of my trial, but it took me those eight years to expunge the mental trauma. The spirit of Myanya does not give up her chosen easily, and I will feel her power evermore.”
“You still feel her,” Nikki groaned empathetically, ever the cop and psychic who had connected with far too many victims of especially heinous crimes.
Iskra nodded and her gaze shifted to me. “Which is why I can feel her now, and her building fury at being denied her rightful vessel.”
I straightened. “You know who she’s targeting?”
The old woman grimaced. “Yes, to my everlasting dismay. She’s targeting the last remaining member of my family.”