I hung up the phone and glared at Curran. "What's so funny?" "You."
"Laugh while you can. You have to sleep eventually, and then I'll take my revenge."
"You're such a violent woman. Always with the threats. You should look into some meditation techniques ..."
I jumped on the couch and put the Beast Lord into an armlock.
Chapter 8
THE TWO TRACKERS REPORTED IN EARLY THE NEXT morning. They had picked up Julie's scent, hit wolfsbane, lost her, and found her trail again at the crumbling Highway 23, except it was two hours old and mixed with horse scents. She was hitchhiking. Great. Awesome. At least she always carried a knife with her.
When I relayed this to Curran, he shrugged and said, "If she kills anybody, we'll make it go away."
Shapeshifter parenting motto--if your kid slits somebody's throat, always have a backup plan to make the body disappear.
I put on my clothes, grabbed my sword, kissed Curran good-bye, and headed to the lower floor. Barabas waited for me by the desk, slim, dapper, and wearing an ironic smile. The first thing you noticed about Barabas was his hair. Cut short on the sides and the back, it was about an inch and a half long on top of his head, and he brushed it and rubbed gel in it until the entire inch and a half stood on end, like hackles on a pissed-off dog. It was also bright, fiery red. He looked like his head was on fire.
Technically, Barabas wasn't a bouda. His mother shifted into a hyena, but his father was a weremongoose from Clan Nimble. As was customary in the interclan unions with the Pack, his parents had an option of belonging to either clan, and they chose the loving embrace of Aunt B and the protection of her razor-sharp claws. Faced with the same choice on his eighteenth birthday, Barabas chose to remain with Clan Bouda and pretty soon ran into some personal problems. When Aunt B gave him to me, it was for his benefit as much as mine.
"Good morning, Consort." Barabas handed me a package wrapped in shimmering red foil. A big red bow was set on top of the foil.
"Why the wrapping?"
"It's a gift. Why not make it special?"
"Thank you." I untied the bow. "This render Curran is supposed to hunt today. Leslie Wren. How good is she?"
"Pack's top twenty. I wouldn't fight her," Barabas said. "I know some alphas who wouldn't either."
Great. I unwrapped the paper, revealing an old edition of Osvintsev. "Where did you find it?"
"In the Keep library."
"The Keep has a library?" "Both paper and digital."
I flipped through the pages. Runes, runes, runes ... Runes. An inverted Algiz rune. The caption next to it said "Chernobog." The Black God.
Right. Of course, it wouldn't be Chernobog, God of Morning Dew on the Rose Petals, but a woman could always hope.
I riffed through the pages looking for the gods and goddesses. The Slavic pantheon broke into two opposing factions, benevolent and malevolent. I skipped the "good" faction.
The moment I turned the pages to the dark faction, an inverted Algiz rune stared at me. Next to it was a sketch of a man with a black mustache frosted with silver. His black armor bristled with spikes. His hand clenched a bloody spear. He stood on a heap of dismembered corpses covered in black ants while black crows circled over his head. Fury warped his face into an ugly grimace. The caption read: Chernobog. The Black Serpent. Koshei. Lord of Darkness and Death. Ruler of Freezing Cold. Master of Destruction. God of Insanity. Embodiment of everything bad. Evil.
Barabas glanced over my shoulder. "This doesn't look good."
Understatement of the year. De Harven was sacrificed to Chernobog, probably by a volhv, a Slavic pagan priest. Volhvs had broad powers, like druids, but unlike the druids, who were very self-conscious about their human-sacrificing past, the volhvs had no aversion to violence. And Atlanta volhvs really didn't like me.
I tapped the book, thinking. The Slavic pagan community was self-regulating: light gods were counterbalanced by dark, and volhvs of both factions were equally respected. Sacrificing de Harven took a huge load of magic. A volhv packing that much magic would be well known and rooted in the community. I wouldn't get anywhere by talking with them. I had to find a Plan B.
The volhvs were all male. If you were female and practicing Slavic pagan magic, you were likely a witch, and the most powerful Slavic witch in the