Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
“How?” Finn sputtered. “You were dying.”
“Funny thing about a god’s tears—they pack a lot of divinity. Those assholes wish I was dying. Instead, I am pissed off and filled with the horrible love of my god. You did well, Finn. Come inside. It’s time we talk about it.”
Roman leaned Klyuv against the wall and patted the staff. Good boy. Klyuv was picky about letting itself be touched. The kid still had all his fingers and both eyes, which was some kind of miracle.
“Go sit by the fire, Finn.”
The kid stumbled off and landed on the floor in front of the fireplace like a sack of flour. He looked like death.
Roman tossed another chunk of wood into the fireplace, poked the logs with a stick to get them situated, and went to the kitchen. This called for heat and sugar. He pulled the bottle of sbiten out of the fridge. He’d made some three days ago, because he’d been craving it, but ended up just drinking his eggnog instead.
Eggnog would’ve so hit the spot right about now.
He poured sbiten into a kettle, returned to the living room, slid the kettle onto an iron hook attached to the fireplace, and swiveled the hook into the fire.
Finn sat unmoving. The shepherd puppy had wedged herself next to him, her head on his lap, and was looking at him with devoted eyes.
The doggie door banged. A moment later the melalo scurried into the living room and hid behind the metal ash bucket, half of his good head with a small, round eye sticking out.
“There you are, paskudnik.”
The melalo shivered.
“Look at what you’ve wrought. Got yourself caught, now the child is traumatized.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Finn muttered. “They were trying to catch Fedya. He ran at them to distract them.”
“Is that true?”
The melalo shivered again. Roman got up, came back with a piece of jerky, and held it out. The melalo scooted from behind the bucket, snagged the jerky, and ran back to his hiding spot.
Steam escaped the kettle’s spout. Hot enough. Roman pulled the swivel arm out of the fire with the fire poker, grabbed the kettle’s handle with a folded towel, and poured two mugs of the hot brew. The scent of spices filled the room. He handed one mug to Finn. “Drink.”
“What is it?”
“Sbiten. Honey, jam, water, and spices. Will warm you right up.”
Finn sipped. Some color came back into his face.
Roman landed in his favorite spot on the couch and drank from his mug. “I’m all ears.”
Finn looked into his mug.
“We’re past the point where you can be shy about it,” Roman told him.
“They took my sister.”
“Who?”
Finn gave him a dark look. “The gods.”
“The Slavic gods?”
He nodded. “She made some kind of deal with them. She is always off, doing something they want. Sometimes she comes home, but she never stays longer than a couple of days.”
Not unusual. Deals with gods always came with strings attached. The question was, what did his sister get out of that deal?
“Then, last year, in February, I started getting these dreams. Winter, northern lights. Snow. Ice. Dark forest.” Finn drank more sbiten. “I would wake up and the bed would be covered in frost.”
That sounded about right.
“Did you have powers before that?”
Finn shook his head.
“This happened before with my sister, but in a different way. My parents took me to Biohazard. There is a man there who can tell what your magic is.”
“Luther Dillon.”
Finn glanced up. “You know him?”
Roman nodded. Luther was a rarity—a powerful, formally educated mage who didn’t have his head up his ass.
“What did Luther say?”
Finn’s eyes turned dark. “He said I was chosen by a pagan god. He couldn’t tell which one, so he narrowed it down to two: Ullr and Morena. When he said her name, it was like a bell rang in my head.”
Better than pain.
“I looked up what she is,” Finn said. “She is evil, cold, and dark. She’s the goddess of death and winter. There was a family in New York that offended her, and she froze all of them, even the babies.”
“She did. It wasn’t just a family, it was Lihoradka’s cult, and they incubated a plague inside themselves, but yes, she did freeze them all. Even the babies. Subtlety isn’t what gods are good at. That’s why they have us. We mitigate.”
“Well, I don’t want to worship her. I’m not even Slavic. None of our family is. She shouldn’t have picked me.”
“You don’t have to be Slavic for a Slavic god to pick you. My neighbor is Polish. Not a Celtic bone in his body. But druidism spoke to him, and so he is a druid.”
“Well, at least he had a choice!”
The sbiten was clearly doing its job. The kid had come back to life.
“And you didn’t?”
“It didn’t feel like it. She left me alone during this last summer, but in September it started again. Snow, blood, cold, every night. I’d wake up, and my windows would be frozen. The pipes in my bathroom burst twice. It cost a lot of money to fix.” Finn slumped. “She hounded me.”