Page 32 of Spring's Arcana
Besides, it did not do to answer every cry. Humanity tended to take the reliable for granted.
Squeezed between two piles of concrete and glass, a wedge-shaped anomaly leered and throbbed. It was a brownstone excrescence, mortared with fudge-like growths gleaming damply despite the ice, and pulsing at its crown was a confection of spun steel and glass, the pyramid collecting and focusing numinous force. The crowning star glowed more fiercely as it sensed his attention but he was already on the steps, his boots a fast light tattoo. The front door shattered as he drove through, his left fingertips just below his nose and the smell a bright highway instead of a thread or even an obedient ribbon in Coco’s crimson claws.
This cavernous space was far too large for the brownstone’s outer appearance. It was the bottom level of a parking garage, echoes bouncing from concrete and lines of chipped paint glowing with radioactive hatred. Movement boiled in the shadows, and Dmitri’s right hand flicked down.
The gun—dull matte black, automatic, its blunt muzzle swelling at the end with a silencer when he needed quiet but now innocent of any addition—spoke, and the shot whined off a thick, striped concrete pillar. One of the things hiding in the shadows squealed, and now that he was inside he could hear the heartbeats far above.
So Koschei had her in his foul nest already.
Don’t worry, Drozdova. I’m coming.
His left hand dropped, and a warm handle of blackened ivory filled his palm. The straight razor’s blade was a bright star in the dark, and if his heart had been entirely his, it would have been pounding in fierce anticipation.
As it was, he smiled, his teeth gleaming like the razor’s flanks. “Housekeeping!” he caroled, and danced forward while the misshapen things lumbered from parking spaces, their sides painted with chrome stripes and their eyes headlight-bright. They were slow, easily dodged so long as Dmitri kept moving.
Oh, he did like a waltz or two, and had he simply happened across Koschei’s habitation one chilly night he might have left it at that. But the Deathless—and how Dima hated that name, as well as the fucker who claimed it—had done the unforgivable.
Someone had stolen from Dmitri Konets, from the lord of thieves himself. And that could not be borne.
Dima straightened like a matador as the first abomination bolted for him, groaning in its mechanical voice and slavering foaming oil. Its teeth champed right where Dmitri had been standing a moment before, it howled as his boots touched its broad, low-domed head, and he shot straight down, severing the nexus of unholy power granting it a semblance of sentience.
The monster made a grinding, terrifying screech; the rest of its siblings echoed the cry. The sound bounced through several floors, cold concrete connected with spiraling ramps suddenly full of stealthy movement, bright white gleams, waking motors, the reek of exhaust. He could have bypassed them easily enough, but each one he killed was an object lesson to the fucking sorcerer.
Singing a dirge from the old country, interspersed with snatches of a country song currently popular among the gangs on this city’sLower East Side, Dima leapt from his first victim, landing with a pleasant jolt. He killed again, and again, and again as metal screeched with pain and safety glass shivered into pieces.
The world was full of things mortals barely dreamed of, and he enjoyed murdering any number of them.
NATURE’S COURSE
A strange camera-shutter door flowered in the side of the golden glass pyramid, and just before Nat stepped out of the stinging, biting wind and into sudden deep sweating warmth she realized she wasn’t that cold at all. Maybe it was Coco’s dress, insulating her though her arms were bare; maybe it was just plain old adrenaline.
The glass triangles made a dry rasping sound as they closed behind her. Instantly it was quiet, and the rich smell of coffee and warm earth drifted up a wrought-iron spiral staircase. Polished wooden parquet glowed through the holes in the metal. She held grimly to the banister as she descended, because the stairs quivered as if the whole thing wasn’t quite fully bolted together.
A long, broad space at the stairs’ foot could be a ballroom; she almost shuddered at what kind of partiesthisguy would throw. All the same, it was a lot more cheerful than Jay’s mansion, because there was greenery everywhere. Household stalwarts like airplane plants and philodendrons hung in baskets, monsteras with giant fronds swayed happily. A tangle of orchids crawled over a black iron stand packed with moss and other strange vines, a riot of colorful alien blossoms. There were even low, shallow tubs full of tulips in gemlike shades, but she caught sight of other vegetation tucked here and there, familiar from the part of Mom’s garden child-Nat was never allowed in.
Things like aconite, and foxglove, and glowing nightshade berries thickly clustered on woody stems. Like horehound, and poison oak so fat and virulent it was coated with gleaming reddish ichor,and morning glory vines holding long thin seedpods. A giant castor nodded, two different colors of jimsonweed flanking it. Opium poppies spread bright papery petals amid fat swelling pods almost bursting with milky sap, and there were a few cannabis plants in the mix as well.
Maybe this guy was a supernatural dealer, and all the other greenery cover for magical drug smuggling?
Silvery rue lingered at the edge of the poison garden, and there was mugwort in giant square pots as well as mallow and a water installation thickly crowded with giant lily pads a frog prince would find acceptable, glowing lotus flowers floating serene and pale above a bottom that had to be mucky. The plants exhaled humidity, rustling as she threaded between pots, stands, and shelves.
The scarecrow-man glided through the labyrinth and broke into a vast savannah of more polished parquet, ambling unhurried towards a bonfire trapped in a massive stone hearth. Well-seasoned wood scratch-popped and crackled like an old vinyl record as it was consumed. A long table draped with snowy white damask held a bright silver epergne and dome-covered silver dishes polished to a high gloss; an ornate iron chandelier high above, on a chain festooned with barb-wire claws, shed far too much light for the candles trapped in its towering tiers.
An antique silver samovar bubbled on a curlicue-legged, tiled table to the left of the huge fireplace; a matching table on the right held a wonderland of alembics, Bunsen burners with steady blue flames, glass piping, and a whole host of other crap that looked like a mad scientist’s equipage in an old ’50s black-and-white horror movie.
“It’s not much to greet Spring with,” the scarecrow said, that rich, dry voice momentarily swallowing the fire’s ambient noise and the damp, rustling greeting of greenery. “But, as they say, it’s home. You have so many questions, don’t you.”
Oh, God, that’s the understatement of the year. “I like the chandelier.” Compliments were the best strategy in awkward situations, right? Her fingertips trailed the vine of a purple inch plant—Mom called themwandering Jews,but that didn’t seem quite polite. Thevine stretched like a cat on a sunny windowsill accepting a favored human’s scratching, and she glanced guiltily at the man to see if he noticed. “It’s very bright.”
His back was to her. “Should be, considering what it runs on. What a polite child you are after all; I’m sure that tickled Yaga’s heart.” He laughed, a mellow sound that spread goosebumps down her bare arms. “Are you familiar with dachshunds, Miss Drozdova?”
“They’re dogs?” Somehow she doubtedwiener dogswas an appropriately mannerly term too. She put her hands behind her back, but the plants had noticed her. None of them were making the high distressed noise that meant they needed water or more space. Whoever this guy was, he cared for his garden—or he had an army of people to do so for him.
Maybe an army of plump heavy shadows carrying watering cans. A shudder made Nat’s skirt sway.
“Yes.” The skeletal man began fiddling with the samovar, his reflection swelling and shrinking against its fat, polished belly. “Bred to go after rats. Have you ever been down a rathole?”
“Uh, no.” The little yellow house never had a problem with mice, though sometimes Leo muttered darkly about poison for the shed during particularly damp springs. And though rodents sometimes spoke to her, Nat never quite liked their piping little voices as much as the cats’ purring. “They’re too small.”
