Crowbones

CHAPTER 94

Ilya

Windsday, Novembros 7

Ilya drove through the night, heading into the Addirondak Mountains. There were a few small shadows of Sanguinati tucked away in the wild country. Not an ideal situation for urban hunters, but the Sanguinati’s presence was necessary because human prisons were built far away from human communities, and some form of terra indigene was needed to act as liaison between the prisoners and the people who drove the supply trucks.

Besides, the inmates provided sufficient sustenance.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Kira said, sounding young and bewildered. “Viktor f-forced me to do those things.”

It wasn’t easy to restrain or confine a being who could shift into smoke, but the Sanguinati had learned to do such things out of necessity. Sometimes evil found fertile ground, regardless of species.

Evil sat beside him as he drove to the place that Stavros had confirmed was still used for private discussions. He would never know if she had been corrupted by Richard Cardosa or if the human had simply found her a willing acolyte who helped him conduct various experiments in manipulating behavior and feelings because that had been her nature all along.

It no longer mattered. For the sake of the rest of the Sanguinati in the Northeast Region of Thaisia, he couldn’t allow it to matter.

“And that professor . . . ,” Kira began.

“Best not to talk about him,” Ilya said, not interested in what lies she would tell about Richard Cardosa—or what truths she might tell.

He and Stavros, along with Natasha, Boris, Grimshaw, and Julian Farrow, had collected and pooled information from their various sources to create a kind of map of the destruction caused by Richard Cardosa’s experiments in manipulation and control of other beings. In other words, brainwashing humans and terra indigene alike.

Cardosa was not alone in his interests, but it was impossible to say if Ellen Cardosa Wilson had developed a taste for such things on her own or if she was her brother’s first experiment. Either way, she had left behind a trail of broken families, and several young boys who had been hastily buried each time she acquired a new test subject and left town.

Ilya wasn’t concerned about Ellen Wilson. That was Grimshaw’s territory and decision. But Kira . . .

He listened to her excuses and justifications and lies, saying little as he drove to the spot where he would finally say what had to be said.

So young to be so corrupt. He might have understood Kira targeting a human, even if that human was Victoria and the death of the Reader would have torn up more than Lake Silence. After all, humans were the Sanguinati’s natural prey. He might have understood, to some degree, going after the Crowgard in The Jumble because they were too present and too curious and could easily reveal secrets. But Kira had tangled up Karol, using the methods she had learned from Richard Cardosa, as well as her own female attraction, to manipulate the Sanguinati adolescent and ultimately set Karol up to die in that explosion. Well, he was the primary target, but Karol had been positioned as the second choice.

Luck of the draw, Vlad had said when Ilya, Stavros, Nyx, Vlad, and Grandfather Erebus had met in Lakeside to discuss what had happened around Lake Silence. Some odd things had been happening to some of the Sanguinati young around the Feather Lakes—things the adults couldn’t explain. There was concern that human contact prior to adulthood led to subsequent contamination that the Elders would not tolerate much longer—especially since the Sanguinati weren’t the only form whose young had contact with humans and were exhibiting strange behavior. Sanguinati leaders decided to send a few youngsters to places that had the right blend of containment and human contact to find out if this change in behavior was specific to a place or if it was something that now threatened the Sanguinati as a whole. Lara and Karol had been sent to Silence Lodge as a kind of blind test since neither of them had shown signs of this strange behavior but some youngsters in neighboring shadows had been contaminated. Subtle changes, but changes nonetheless.

Ilya had not been informed that the fostering was more than it appeared on the surface, a fact he didn’t appreciate—and a decision that, in hindsight, Grandfather Erebus admitted had been a mistake. If Ilya had known about the contamination sooner and the real reason Lara and Karol were at Silence Lodge, he would have viewed Kira and Viktor’s unexpected arrival with justified suspicion—and Karol might still be alive.

As for Kira and Viktor . . .

Realizing that the Sanguinati leaders were getting too close to learning about their part in the suspicious deaths that were being investigated in towns around the Feather Lakes, Kira and Viktor chose Lake Silence as a destination because they thought it was small and dull and no one would look for them there. Their letters of introduction were full of false information that would make it difficult to trace them back to their home shadows if anyone tried to confirm they’d been chosen for this fostering.

If Adam Fewks hadn’t dressed up as Crowbones and riled all the Elders, Kira and Viktor’s plan to hide out at Silence Lodge might have worked.

Maybe they could have resisted their own natures for a while and continued the pretense of being courteous youngsters, but Richard Cardosa’s coming to Lake Silence had put Kira and Viktor within reach of the mentor they felt had abandoned them, and that had overwhelmed caution—especially when Cardosa offered them doses of the feel-good drug in exchange for their assistance.

When Grimshaw and Julian Farrow searched the suitcases Cardosa left at the cabin, they found notebooks that contained records of Cardosa’s experiments, written in code. They also found written instructions to Professor Roash on where to deliver the suitcases as a favor to a colleague. Farrow was able to unravel enough about the manipulation of Sanguinati and Crowgard youngsters to give everyone who enforced the law around Lake Silence a good idea of what the “professor” had encouraged his subjects to do.

Ilya listened to Kira telling him how sorry she was, how it wasn’t her fault.

Wasn’t it? It no longer mattered if Cardosa had seduced a young Sanguinati female into playing these mind games just to see if he could, or if Kira, in the first flush of female seductive power, put herself in the path of this predator, choosing to join forces with him for the fun of harming others. What mattered was simple: Kira and Viktor had used Karol’s feelings for Kira to maneuver the youth into rushing to Kira’s “rescue” and ending up being killed when the flea market storefront exploded.

They had killed one of their own. For fun.

Viktor had attacked Lara to distract the Sanguinati adults in order to meet up with Kira and Cardosa—and kill Victoria.

Ilya turned off the paved road and drove to the end of a narrow gravel lane that ended at a tiny cabin. No smoke rising from the chimney. No lamps or flicker of candlelight.

Empty. But not abandoned. Arrangements had been made for privacy.

Ilya shut off the car and removed the key, dropping it on the mat between his feet.

“What are we doing here?” Kira asked, sounding young in a way he understood she hadn’t been in a long time. Then her voice changed, her manner changed, and the look in her eyes held seduction as well as malice. “What do you want to do here?”

He looked straight ahead, but he was aware of her. Very aware of her.

“I have been the leader of Silence Lodge for several years now,” he said quietly. “The shadow of Sanguinati who live there is small, of necessity, to maintain a balance with the available prey, and until a year ago, keeping watch over Sproing was, I admit, a boring assignment.”

Kira smiled and leaned a little closer to him.

“But, you see, leadership of even a small shadow that keeps watch over a boring little village is a reward Grandfather Erebus gives for a specific kind of service rendered.”

She leaned a little closer and stared at his neck. “What kind of service?”

“Until I became the leader of Silence Lodge, I was one of Grandfather’s problem solvers.” Ilya turned his head and looked into her eyes. “And you, Kira, have become a problem.”