“Forgive me,” one anguished note read. “I have become the curse of all who know me, both at home and here in this awful place.”
Below it, she had dutifully entered another burial entry, this one for a man named Stefan Novyk, “Deacon of our holy congregation.” So that was his name — it had been obliterated from the headstone, but now the strange motif chiseled into the stone made perfect sense. The two doors in the upper corners had symbolized the deacon’s doors … leading through the iconostasis to the altar behind. The place where the true treasures of the church were, traditionally, kept secret and protected. “It was he who saved me from the wolves, and he who gave me shelter. And this is how I have rewarded him.”
The next few lines had become blurred and illegible, but below them, scrawled in what looked like a trembling hand, one last burial was recorded.
“Tonight, the Lord saw fit to return to me the mortal remains of Sergei Ilyinsky, my own poor, sweet, loyal, and much beloved Sergei. His body was washed up on the shore of this accursed island, and I have buried it myself in the last grave. I can dig no more. Around his neck, I have placed the emerald cross once given to me by the holy man in St. Petersburg. May it guard Sergei on his journey now … and may its chains no longer bind me to this earth. I long to be released, but I fear that its blessing has now become my curse.”
Kozak sat back in his chair, deeply moved by the anguish and loneliness of this anonymous woman. The rest of the page was empty, and Kozak turned it eagerly to see if there was anything more.
In the center of this last page were the words, “My soul endures here … forever. Mother of God, deliver me.” Just below, there was a signature that made his heart stop. He quickly tossed down a generous shot of vodka. The lights in the tent dimmed and flickered, and he wondered if it might be the aurora borealis, disturbing the magnetic and electrical fields again. But he was in no mood to go outside and see. Not now.
When the lights burned bright again, he read it once more.
But it was still the same.
He drained the rest of the vodka, and as he plopped the empty bottle on the table, the lights again did go out, plunging him into darkness. Alone with his thoughts, and the ancient ledger, he felt the same eerie chill he had felt as a boy when it was the rusalka he had imagined coming back from the dead.
Chapter 52
Slater stood up again and surveyed his work. He wasn’t proud of what had happened, but he had dealt with its repercussions as best he could.
With Nika’s help, he had pried Bathsheba out of the snowbank, and after a quick examination, determined that apart from a few bruises, the worst damage she’d suffered might be a fractured tibia. She could walk, but not well, and she had had to be suspended between Slater’s and Nika’s shoulders to make it back up into the house. Even then, she seemed to be more worried about Harley than she was about herself.
“It’s all Charlie’s fault,” she said, wincing with the pain. “Charlie gets him into trouble all the time. All Harley needs is somebody to take care of him, somebody that understands him.”
Slater and Nika exchanged a look; it sounded like she was describing one of the bad-boy characters from some romance novel. Using the supplies from the ambulance, Slater set her leg, made her comfortable on the sofa, then, because he could not have her warning the brothers that he was in pursuit — or worse yet, wandering off into town — he gave her a healthy shot of a painkiller before she even knew what he was up to. Enough not only to lessen the discomfort, but to leave her in a happy twilight state for several hours.
Rebekah had presented a bigger problem. He had regretted having to hit her so hard with the butt of the rifle, but when someone was trying to kill you, you didn’t have much choice. She was still unconscious, which was a good thing in that it allowed him to check her out without having to fend off another attack. Her lip was split, she had cracked a tooth in front, but her airways were clear and her heartbeat was regular. When she woke up, she’d be in a lot of pain — he left a bottle of Vicodin in plain sight, though he had no idea if her religious convictions allowed her to take it — and then, to be on the safe side, he used the rope her sister had brought to tie her to a folding chair.
“Take the cell phones, too,” Slater said, and Nika snatched them off the desk. The guns he took himself. “Okay then,” he concluded, “we’ve done what we can here. Let’s hit the road.”
Outside, the snow was falling so thickly he had to haul the shovel out of the back of the ambulance and do a little digging to provide some traction for the back tires. Nika confessed to feeling a bit unsteady — not surprising after all that had just happened — and Slater took the wheel. Even with only one headlight working, he could see tire tracks leading out of the Vane driveway and off in the only other direction available … toward Nome. Under his shirt, he could feel the ivory owl Nika had given him, and if ever he needed its help seeing in the dark, now was that time.
High overhead, but concealed by the storm, he could hear the roar of another helicopter racing toward Port Orlov. Whichever branch of the military or civilian authority had dispatched it, the overall emergency response, he knew, would be growing by the minute. The town of Port Orlov would be under a complete and rigorously enforced quarantine until further notice, and he was lucky to have gotten out when he did. Only he knew the full extent of the deadly cargo Harley and Charlie might be carrying in their pockets — or in their veins — and he was determined to avert any further catastrophe from occurring. As the head of the mission, he was responsible for allowing it to start, and now he was equally determined to be the one to quell it.
For a second, he wondered who would be assigned to replace him. Whoever it was had undoubtedly already been chosen. There was no time to waste.
“Call the sheriff,” he said to Nika as he gripped the wheel with one hand and rummaged around in the console between the two front seats. “Tell him about the women, and tell him not to let anybody in or out of the Vanes’ house until a hazmat team gets there. Full precautions have to be taken.” Although they had both been as careful as they could be — indeed, he could feel a pool of sweat cooling inside the thermals he wore under the damp hazmat suit — viruses were among the sneakiest things on earth. And this one, though its primary mode of transmission was airborne, thrived in the blood and flesh and bodily fluids of its carriers.
While Nika made the call — and he could tell she was getting static from Sheriff Ray — he found in the console a pair of woolly mittens, assorted loose meds, and a petrified Almond Joy bar. When she got off, she said, “I think we’re both going to be under arrest before this is all over.”
“Been there, done that,” he said, with a half smile. “Here, have some dinner,” he said, offering her the candy bar. “You’re looking peaked.”
“Not hungry.”
“Eat it, anyway. You need to keep up your strength.” She was slouched low in her seat though maybe it was just to avoid the stiff breeze blowing through the hole that the shotgun shell had left in the windshield.