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)
Nothing good ever came out of the Honeycomb.
He studied the procession. The two guys in front—the dog handler and a thinner man with lime-green hair who stuck close to him—had to be hired hands. Their clothes were shoddier. The ten people behind them were a different story. They wore gray Three Season duty jackets, matching gray pants tucked into boots, winter caps, and assault vests. Three had chest rigs with deep pockets, fully loaded. Probably magic users of some kind. All of them carried a crossbow and a rifle.
They didn’t seem nervous. They weren’t in a hurry. They moved methodically through the snow, following the dogs.
Ten professionals and two trackers. Overkill for a runaway kid.
The group passed a tall hickory, singed on one side. It had gotten struck by lightning three years ago, but magic had kept it alive. Unless the kid’s trail led them in circles, they would reach the house in fifteen minutes.
Roman ended the spell, got up, washed his hands, and dried them with a kitchen towel. The little nasties watched him, ready to spring into action.
He went to the bedroom. The kolovershi followed him, sneaking in, peeking at him from around the corners. He entered his walk-in closet and opened a narrow cabinet. A six-foot tall staff waited inside, topped by the carved head of a monster bird.
Roman reached for it. His fingers touched the beech wood, polished and smooth. Magic nipped him. The bird’s beak opened, and Klyuv let out a piercing screech.
The kolovershi froze.
“Shhh,” Roman told it. “Not yet.”
Klyuv clicked its beak, its cruel bird eyes turning in their orbits and fell silent.
Roman went to the front door and swung it open. The snow was inches deep now. The world had turned black and white—black trees on white snow, and against that monochromatic backdrop, the nechists’ Christmas tree with its red and silver ornaments stood out like a challenge. Three sets of tracks led under it.
“Come here,” Roman ordered.
The anchutka, the melalo, and Roro slipped out from under the tree and ran over to the porch. Roro bounded up the steps, stood up on her hind legs, and clawed at his pants. Her mouth opened. “Roro.”
“Sit.”
Roro’s butt landed on the floorboards.
The anchutka leaped, flew a little, and landed on Roman’s shoulder. The melalo scooted by him, waddling anxiously from foot to foot. That was all of them. The kolovershi were already inside, and the auka had retreated to Chernobog’s kumir in the backyard. Chernobog’s idol, it was carved from a sacred beech tree, standing ten feet tall, and the auka had dug a long network of burrows beneath it. She would be safe there.
Roman raised his staff.
A bottomless darkness opened inside of him, a void churning with power and ice, straining to flow into him like a shadowy flood spilling into an empty vessel. He reached for it, grasped a thin current, and fed it into his staff.
Klyuv’s beak gaped.
Roman brought the staff down, striking a sound from the porch boards. Magic the color of soot pulsed from the shaft, rushing through his property like a blast wave.
He owned fifteen acres, and two of them formed his backyard. The thorn fence that encircled it awoke, the branches sliding against each other. Ice daggers formed over the thorns.
Deep within the ground, under the frozen layer of topsoil, bones stirred.
The stop sign in the front yard shook, flinging snow off itself. The old, brown blood on it turned viscous. The words KEEP OUT, scrawled in a jagged script, bled anew. The Striga skull on top of the sign opened its thick jaw, snapping inhuman fangs. The runes carved in its forehead turned bright blue, and twin blue flames ignited in its empty orbits.
Roman surveyed the front yard. He’d rolled the unwelcome mat out. Now all he had to do was wait.
2
The child-hunters came out of the woods right on schedule.
Roman had parked himself on a chair in his living room, by the massive tinted front window and had a bit of his coffee. The front yard sloped slightly from the house, and this spot gave him a beautiful view of the entire battlefield. The nechist promptly arranged themselves around him, with Kor flopping himself on his lap.
They didn’t have to wait long. First, a scout snuck up the driveway to view the house. He crouched by some snow-fluffed bushes, stared at the Striga skull for a bit, then retreated, and a few moments later two assholes circled the property in opposite directions and went to ground, one on the northeastern side and the other on the southwestern. They set up crossbows for the intersecting fields of fire and went still. Roman sent a couple of kolovershi to keep an eye on them.
Finally, the main force came up the driveway in a modified diamond formation: the two Honeycomb dickheads in the lead, armed with a dog each, followed by a pair of professionals; then the leader sandwiched between two more guys; another pair, and a rear guard.