Blood Hound

Epilogue

Sunrise dawned hot over St. Vladimir’s, raising fog from the hard pavement outside. The church was holding funerals early to avoid the worst of the heat because—even with the air conditioners on—the mortuary wax used to restore Mariya’s body wouldn’t hold its shape right come midday.

Ukrainian funerals were not private affairs. St. Vladimir’s was packed with mourners for both brother and sister: Mariya’s customers and friends, her tear-streaked ex-husband, his family, his friends, Vassily’s friends, his released prison buddies, nearly every member of the Organizatsiya who cared to attend, and curious members of the local public streamed from the doors and down the aisle. The Orthodox church was not made for so many people, and they mingled and bickered and chattered out the door and onto the street, where Vanya’s hand-picked bouncers patrolled and guarded the gates.

Outside the church grounds, the street was full of gawkers. Police pretended to have a real reason to be there, while civilians clamored like crows at the fence, trying to get a glimpse of a rumored Mafia funeral.

I found my place by Vassily’s side from the moment the doors opened. Both he and Mariya had open caskets, their bodies buried under piles of flowers. Mourners came to touch, kiss and lay more flowers and flags down over them. Jewish flags, Ukrainian flags, white banners, even dollar bills. They came and left around us in a blur. Their words, their faces and scents bubbled formlessly around me. I only had eyes for my family.

Vassily was milk pale and sunken, his expression serene, eyes closed. His hands were folded over his chest, and I drank in every detail of his tattoos: the cat and dagger on the left, the snake and skull on the right. Each one commemorated his cunning and loyalty and determination, and for all his flaws, he had earned them. The blue ink seemed to float just under the surface of his skin, as if it had turned to glass. He had taken these images for his father, and Vassily had embodied them with the kind of passion that he’d be proud of, had he been alive to watch his youngest son grow to adulthood.

The Scopolamine fog made it impossible for me to tell which memories of that awful night were true and which were not. I was sure Zarya was real, and the DOG. I know I worked magic that took my breath away to think about. The rest? I couldn’t say. All I do know is that this place, these people, and these sick men I grew up following are wrong. The Organizatsiya is a disease. Now, I realized why the smell of the DOG was so familiar: Because it smelled like home.

I only broke from my vigil once, to use the bathroom and check my arm. Two days had passed. My wounds were gone, but something had cut deeper than the DOG’s talons. Zarya had healed me, and the flesh the DOG had chewed out of me was filled in, but the scars still ached. They wound up my forearm like twin serpents. Looking at them made me dizzy, and when I went back out, I lingered in the threshold of the bathroom, paralyzed until I caught a sweet draft of honeysuckle air from the open church door. It was as raw and pure as incense. The scent freed me of my freeze, but my hands remained heavy and hot.

Nervously, I put my gloves in my pocket and moved bare-handed back into the chapel hall. I wanted to go back to Vassily, but an impulse I could not name drew me outside. I stepped out onto the garden path, breathing deeply of the humid air, and scanned the crowd.

There was a line of men smoking near the door, killing themselves slowly while they paid their respects to the dead. Sergei’s distinctive raucous laughter boomed from around the corner of the main building. I went around the corner of the chapel to see what he was laughing about, only to see him lift a screaming baby up high over his head, clasping it in huge meaty hands as he cooed and chuckled. Even at this distance, I could see the appraisal on the old man’s face, the calculation.

He handed the baby back to his mother perfunctorily, praising her, and she blushed. Not thirty feet away, Vanya’s three boys were playing around the only tree behind the church, a sickly looking maple that was shedding its leaves prematurely from the summer heat. The two older boys were bullying the youngest. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I watched them push him to the ground with sticks and feet. The young boy didn’t cry; he got angry, face burning, and picked up a stick of his own to charge them and continue the cycle of violence.

“Take them in as men and horses, and churn them out as numbered corpses.” Kutkha said, whispering deep within my imagination. It was something I felt like I’d once read, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the source.

Even as I tried to remember, something prickled at my skin. I refocused to my left. Sergei was watching me. He was overdressed, as always. The huge man wore a gaudy black velvet suit dressed with a heavy gold medallion that rested over his tie. He caught my eye and smiled knowingly with far too many teeth, then turned and went on to continue entertaining his guests, the couple breeding the next generation of cogs in his machine. Beside him, Vera stood with her hands folded behind her back, feet shoulder width apart, and stared at nothing with dead doll eyes.

A chill passed through my gut, a lance of unnatural cold that made my mouth itch. I bowed my head and peeled away from the wall, reentering the church with a churning stomach.

Kutkha fluttered in my awareness with the pressure of protective wings. As I mounted the dais a second time, I felt the gentle indigo-black throb and pulse of his substance as he meshed quietly through my being, silent and supportive. I had my Neshamah. I had Binah, waiting for me at home. I had Zarya’s final words. “We will see you again.”

For the last time, I looked down at Vassily’s face.

“Until we meet again.” I leaned in to commit his smell to memory. Without really meaning to, I pressed my lips to the waxy skin of his forehead, lingering just long enough that I would always remember how it felt. Then I turned and walked away.

I didn’t want to. A part of me wanted to join them down there, in the deep Green sea. I didn’t want to live, alone, in a world where people like Sergei and Nic survived and Mariya and Vassily did not. I didn’t want the loneliness that would come with my decision. But I am a Magus, a Phitometrist, a catalyst. Whatever it is I must do, I would not find it here.

It was time to go.