Wickedly Dangerous (Baba Yaga, #1)(41)
Next, she saw Gregori Sun: always serene, with a quiet glow that seemed to emanate from some deep well in his being that no amount of ugliness or violence could touch. His face appeared stern to those who did not know him, but she had seen him nurse a wounded fox back to health, tending it and taming it just enough to heal, and then sending it back into the wild where it belonged. His long slender fingers could snap a man’s neck or strum a balalaika with equal ease and skill, and she had never heard him utter a word in anger in all the years she’d known him. Behind her closed eyes, his dark hair and slim figure coalesced into a solid representation of his essence. Come back. I need you. Come back.
Last, but certainly not least, she summoned the image of Alexei Knight, so different from the other two, and yet equally valued. Unlike Mikhail’s suave bravado and Gregori’s calm assassin’s grace, Alexei was brute force and animal instincts. He fought at the drop of a hat with a berserker’s wild joy for the battle, whether the cause was a mission of mercy or a careless word from a drunk in a tavern. As a child, Baba had once seen him tear an evil man apart with his bare hands, crimson blood bathing the sandy ground at his feet as he roared with laughter.
But he was also the only one of the Riders who took the time to play with the little adopted Baba-in-training, telling her tall tales and tickling her with the ends of her own braids until she giggled helplessly, while the old Baba rolled her eyes as she tended her cauldron nearby. During their intermittent visits, when the Riders weren’t off assisting some other Baba, it was Alexei who took her for walks in the woods, pointing out the tiny mushrooms that grew in the hidden nooks of mossy gnarled tree roots, and teaching her to punch and kick, so she would have something to defend herself with until she grew into her magic.
There were not many Babas, but there were only the three Riders, and she knew them almost as well as she knew herself. Come back, Alexei. I need you. Come back.
When she was done, Baba sat back with a sigh. She’d sent them out with a vague hope that they would see or sense something helpful. But they were running out of time. And now that things were going from bad to worse, she needed them at her side. She’d called—they’d come as soon they could. Now there was nothing to do but wait.
THIRTEEN
FOUR HOURS LATER, she was still waiting. The long summer’s day was sliding slowly into night, a strange purple dusk erupting like a bruise on the horizon. The wind had picked up; it whistled a discordant tune through the trees surrounding the meadow and rattled the metal pieces on the outside of the Airstream until they sounded like a steel drum band.
Baba ran around for a few minutes, tying things down and generally battening down the hatches, and then sat down on the top step leading up into the trailer to peer fretfully into the darkening evening sky. Chudo-Yudo came to stand in the doorway behind her, resting his muzzle companionably on her shoulder.
“I don’t like it,” she said, finally. The breeze pulled maliciously at her hair, forcing her to put a hand up to hold it out of her face.
“Which don’t you like?” Chudo-Yudo asked. “The fact that none of the Riders has reported in yet, or this storm?”
“Both,” Baba said, raising her voice a little to be heard above the bellow and shriek of the rising wind. “It never takes the boys this long to come in once I’ve summoned them, and they shouldn’t be that far away.” She shook her head, spitting a strand of hair out of her mouth. “And this storm is all wrong. There was no sign of it earlier, and I should have felt it coming; a storm this strong would have been echoing in my bones like a rock slide in a cavern.”
A crash of thunder punctuated her words, followed a moment later by a ragged flash of lightning through the clouds overhead. The sky opened up and dropped buckets of rain, coming down in sheets of water too thick to see through. Baba and Chudo-Yudo scrambled back into the Airstream and slammed the door behind them.
Baba uttered a rude word, fists clenched. “This is no natural storm,” she said to Chudo-Yudo. “It feels . . . malevolent, somehow.” She shivered, disconcerted and unsettled without knowing quite why.
“Do you think Maya—or someone working with her—is trying to keep the Riders from getting back to you?” Chudo-Yudo leaned up against her leg, his warm bulk solid and reassuring.
“Maybe,” Baba said, her brow furrowed as she thought it through. “But that would mean Maya, or whoever it is, knows who the Riders are, and could feel me summon them. Back in Russia, that wouldn’t have been unheard of, but here? Who would be familiar with the Riders here?”
“Huh,” the dog snorted. “And have the power to create a storm of this magnitude. That’s even worse.”
She nodded in grim agreement. “It could just be a coincidence, I suppose. Maya calling up a magical storm to torment the poor locals—this is going to wreak havoc on their crops—just as I happen to be calling in the Riders.”
Chudo-Yudo looked up at her, brown eyes wary. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“No,” Baba said softly. “Me neither.”
Hail pelted down on the metal roof, sounding like weapon fire. Baba ducked involuntarily, although the Airstream had so much magical protection built into it, it could probably drive through a volcano without incurring any damage greater than a slightly charred aroma. The Riders, out on their motorcycles, would be much more vulnerable.