The Volk Advent (9 page)

We continued down the tunnel, Rasia supported between us. All three of us were shivering. Ms. Volkova mostly from shock, Jean Claude from the horror of experiencing a wolf attack first hand, and I was actually just cold.

The thin sweater had provided more insulation than I realized and the moldy furs were scratchy laying flush up against my skin. We pressed on.

A scuffing noise made me freeze. I heard the click of claws on the tunnel floor. Adrenaline scorched through my body and I backed up against the wall preparing myself for a last stand against the pack.

Woo wooo woooo echoed down the tunnel.

I slumped against the wall with relief.
Thank you, Lord.

Chobo had caused her fair share of trouble, but she had yet to hamstring anyone. The chubby fluffball thundered around the corner and proceeded to cheer up Ms. Volkova. This involved a great deal of licking. Perhaps her methods had merit.

Rasia revived enough to throw up a hand to fend off the slobbery tongue, although the girl's whispered command of “Stop it, you big jerk” lacked the volume necessary to have any effect whatsoever upon the irrepressible dog.

Liev appeared around the corner. Our gazes met for an instant. Then he was beside me. He slipped his arm beneath my own and took Ms. Volkova's weight. They hobbled forward a few steps. Then he glanced down at her wound. “How bad is it?”

“The wolves tore up the back of her thigh. The muscle is shredded and bleeding badly.”

Liev's face paled and he scooped Rasia up in his arms.

A twinge of envy squeezed my chest. I pushed it away. If I had to get shredded by wolves to get Liev Rodion Alkaev's attention, then I would pass. Not that I wanted his attention, especially with my hair hacked off and my face still gooey with dog slobber.

Liev carried Rasia down the tunnel toward the church.

Jean Claude and I attempted to keep up. Why hadn't I ordered Jean Claude to carry Ms. Volkova? Things would have gone much faster.

Jean Claude's face was still pale and void of any expression. The lack of professional courtesy from the wolves had rendered him numb and less than helpful.

It was a good thing Liev had stumbled upon us.

“I'm glad I found you, you understand.”

Hmmm…perhaps stumbled was the wrong word. Was he here to accuse me of murder and lice infestation?

I gave Liev a tentative smile, hoping that my hair looked windblown and heroic. It probably looked more like the ragged tresses of a trapper after two months alone in the Taiga with no one to talk to but a dog and a cache of dead sable.

He stopped in the tunnel and nodded toward his fur coat. “It's in the front, left pocket. Kirill Volkov wanted you to have it.”

I stepped forward and attempted to slip my hand into his pocket without touching him. I managed that, but I couldn't help catching the scent of fresh soap and leather and wood. I stepped back and looked at what he'd brought.

It was a thick cream envelope with a silver stamp of a howling wolf on the back. The official Volkov stationary.

I removed my mitten and slit the envelope open with my thumbnail as we continued down the tunnel.

Liev seemed fine.

Instead of offering to help, I opened the packet of thick paper. I read the pages as we walked, turned them over looking for more, then flipped back to the beginning and read them again. “I don't understand.”

“You're a smart girl, Faina. I think you do.”

“He wouldn't.”

“The man lived for years with guilt and suchlike. Yes he would.”

I stared at the back of Liev's head as we plodded along. This was impossible.

“What does it say?” Rasia whispered.

The words stopped up my throat for a moment. How could I tell her?

Liev saved me from answering. “Matter of fact, it was eight years ago yesterday, Rasia. Your uncle accidentally shot down a plane. Faina's folks died in the crash.”

Rasia gasped and buried her face against Liev's shoulder.

He continued, “Volkov took her to the orphanage. He thought that paying the director to keep quiet would be just the ticket. But the guilt ate at him. Finally, he asked my father to find a lawyer and make arrangements. He couldn't face Faina, but asked us to tell her. Kirill Volkov has made Faina his heir. Someday, all that he owns will be hers.”

A feeble laugh escaped Rasia's lips and she panted with the effort. “Is that why you killed him?”

Liev stopped and turned back to me, shock on his face. “He's really dead, then? Kirill Volkov is dead?”

“Yes.” I stuttered. “But I didn't kill him. The wolves, someone—”

“Someone released the wolves to cover up their crime and you're not fooling me with your harmless, homeless waif act.”

“I didn't. I swear.”

Liev gave me a single nod, as though he might possibly believe me.

But both Jean Claude and Rasia looked at me as though they faced an infestation of rabid slugs.

I was so dead.

Once, at the orphanage, I'd found one of the babies dead in her crib, her tiny ribcage unmoving, her pink cheeks sallow and pale, her delicate hands cold to the touch. She came to me in my dreams after that. I checked each one, every night from then on. I would creep into the baby room with my heart in my throat. Hold the back of my hand under each tiny nose and wait for the warmth of a breath against my skin. Other children had died since that night, but it was the first one that haunted me.

Rushing that delicate little body to Ms. Melora, only to have her snatched away and disposed of. I had been eleven years old, but that terrible moment was as fresh as the breath in my lungs today.

I was dead. As dead as that cold, little girl in the gray, orphanage crib.

Someone had killed Kirill Volkov. Volkov had made me his heir before he died. With a certainty that I could not explain, I knew that his killer was privy to this information. I couldn't just run off into the Siberian night and hope I could stay alive. Kirill Volkov's killer was looking for me. He knew Volkov had changed the Will and had ended the old man's life because of it. It was only a matter of time before the killer hunted me down to finish the job he had begun.

15

The World Is Full Of Ugly

We stood frozen and staring at one another in the dark cold of the escape tunnel. My breath condensed before my face in icy puffs that sounded loud in my ears. What now?

Kirill Volkov had felt bad about shooting our plane out of the sky. So he'd tried to make amends. Well yippy-ki-yay for him. At least his conscience was assuaged before whoever was supposed to inherit found out.

Now I owned my very own, wolf-infested castle and the actual heir was all revved up to turn his murder into a double homicide.

For an eternal instant, I leaned my forehead against the icy tunnel wall. Everything came slamming back into my beleaguered mind. The night had been stormy and dark, the flight far longer than our pilot promised. Something was off, I felt it in the tense angle of my dad's shoulders as he leaned forward to speak to the pilot. I felt it in the way my mother hesitated before stretching out her hand to wipe the frost from the window so she could see out. I felt it in the electric silence that made the air feel tight. The storm was bad, but there was something else, something worse.

Looking back, they probably never intended to fly at night.

Something stretched the trip until dark. Every adult in the plane knew that it was foolish to continue and I had felt it, though I didn't understand. But for whatever reason there had been no place to land and so the pilot had flown on, into the darkness and the storm and Kirill Volkov's terrible mistake.

The noise of the crash had been incredible. The silence that followed seemed larger than the whole of Siberia. Smoke roiled and sharp metal cut my knees as I crawled from the plane. I remembered icy flakes on my sooty cheeks and blood soaking the snow black. Barbie yipped from out of the darkness and a stranger sobbed as he carried me against his chest.

I had sat in the long, gray silence of the orphanage because of him. Not knowing the language, not sure what had happened, assured that I was crazy and stupid and wrong. I had rocked babies in the darkness because there had been no one to rock me and I understood deep within myself how they ached at being alone.

Now someone wanted to kill me. My hair was in shreds, I wore a moldy fur coat, and was aching with cold. A pretty picture I was not. The least God could do was make sure I was an attractive corpse just in case Liev happened by. But nope, that would not be the case. The world was full of ugly.

What would life have been without Volkov and the crash? I still had pale glimpses of my other life. A strong, square house with polished pine floors. A pink-walled room full of dolls and stuffed animals and puppy toys. A classroom with a fish tank and a teacher who smiled and knelt to put an adhesive bandage on my knee when I tumbled from a swing. Wearing a pretty, puffy dress to Sunday School and singing about God's love.

Another moment pressed forward in my mind. Sitting in the backseat of our minivan while Dad pulled the car over and handed a fast food sack to a man with matted hair and a tangled beard. The man held a sign that said
Will Work For Weed
.

Even back home with my pretty pink dresses and soft safe room, the world had still been full of ugly.

What was I to do with the particular brand of ugly that I found myself slogging through? I had clung to a child's faith for eight long, ugly years. I had fasted on Christmas Eve, wanting to honor God for coming to earth so long ago.

Now what? Where was the promised Messiah, now? Where was he when it was forty-eight degrees below zero and the wolves were loose and someone wanted to kill me? What was I supposed to do now? Something I had learned for a church competition slowly returned to me. So distant and yet it remained strong in my mind.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Well that was helpful. Not only had my fast lasted way longer than everyone else's, but God wanted me loosing chains and breaking yokes and sharing food as well. If He wanted me sharing food, He needed to cough up one of those miracles I'd heard so much about. There was no food to share. I'd already given the moldy fish to Chobo.

No, I needed to deal with the here and now, not some theoretical fast that I had no way to participate in. Someone wanted me dead and I wasn't quite ready to go. That took precedence.

It had to be Volkov's nephew, Vladim, right? Rasia was super ticked off at me, but she hadn't shot me in the head or anything, so I had to presume she wasn't the killer.

The wolves were simply a handy distraction. It was the human behind their release that I had to concern myself with. That human would come for me soon.

Rasia was wounded, Jean Claude was traumatized, and if I could keep Liev from witnessing every single embarrassing moment in my life (such as me being messily devoured by Eurasian wolves) at least I would accomplish something positive before the end.

I needed to get as far away from them as possible. No point in endangering the few individuals who were willing to put up with me. The situation was hopeless anyway. I needed to protect them. My only choice was clear. I had to run and I had to do it alone.

16

There Are Not Enough Castles for Everyone

We had been standing in the tunnel too long. I needed to get everyone moving toward safety. “I didn't kill him,” I repeated.

Rasia rolled her eyes at my insisted innocence. Why was she wasting time on sarcastic expressions when she might be bleeding out?

I plunged my hand into my pocket and brought out Mr. Volkov's journal. Chobo and I had fought tooth and claw over this, literally, but now was the time to give it up. I handed the diary to Liev and swallowed. My throat clamped down tight and my stomach ached with worry.

“Keep this safe for me, Liev, will you?” His gaze held me for a moment.

I resisted the urge to step closer and enjoy the quiet strength in his glance. This was ridiculous, I had more important things to do. But the longing to stay, even though he saw me as a lice-infested child, was terrible and strong. “You need to get Ms. Volkova to the doctor and the real killer is still out there. He'll be coming for me, so you guys should be as far from me as possible.”

“Faina, this is a fool's plan. We stay together.”

I smiled at him and took a step backward.

“So convenient, if you are the killer you get away and look like a saint in the process.” Rasia's head hung limp over Liev's shoulder, though her eyes were cool and hard with anger.

“But I'm not and you need to go.”

“Stay, prove your innocence. We can work this out. It'll be OK.” A touch of pleading colored Liev's eyes.

“You know what you need to do.” I took a second step back and then another. When he started to follow, I spun and ran down the tunnel alone. Liev didn't follow. He couldn't. Not with an injured girl in his arms and a traumatized movie professional in his care. I kept running, long after the sound of their footsteps had faded.

I had just made it back to the basement corridors inside the castle when someone stepped out of the darkness behind me.

I spun to flee, but he snatched my arm and yanked me back. I shone my ancient flashlight in his face. My attacker let go and I scrambled away. But he had only released me to knock the light from my hands.

The WWII relic skittered across the dusty basement floor and hit the wall with a crack. The darkness was complete.

The sound of his breathing echoed loud and angry all around me.

“I didn't kill your uncle, Vladim, but you know that already, don't you?”