Matabar

Book II. Chapter 20 - The Hunter

Time stretched out like honey in winter. Its bloody, relentless march slowed to a single, held breath. As Ard’s fingers strained for his staff that seemed to be drifting away on a slow tide, the world resolved itself into a series of silent, screaming moments.

The gangsters, their heads bound in white, had cocked their rifles. Ardan saw it all. He saw the triggers yield to pressure, saw the rifles shudder. From their muzzles, a stream of fire began to leak, slow as ink spilled in water. It swelled, bloomed, and then, through its crimson cloud, a nimble, whistling, leaden hornet took flight. In place of wings, it wore a trailing cloud of gray powder.

A dozen rifles roared, followed by a discordant choir of thunderous voices.

Some of the people at the front of the street managed to react, to crash to the ground, pulling their companions down with them.

It did not help.

The bullets shattered porcelain into splinters, sliced through the thin backs and legs of chairs as if they were paper, and then buried themselves in the soft flesh of people. Mouths opened in silent screams. It all happened slowly, unhurriedly, as if fingers were not being torn from hands, as if cheekbones were not being scoured clean, leaving behind grotesque bridges of bloodied teeth hanging in the air. It was as if scalps were not being shaved away, scattering a gray substance across the ground.

People fell, instinctively flinging their arms up to shield themselves from a threat they could not stop. It did not help.

And the killers began to move. They advanced in teams of three, their movements calm, their faces empty of emotion as they worked the bolts of their rifles. They walked down the street, and when they reached the edge of the bloody ruin they had made, the first trio dropped to their knees. The second raised their rifles over their heads, and the last six turned to cover the Niewa Avenue.

Bullets ricocheted off walls, shattered glass, and struck down waiters and patrons who had not been quick enough to find shelter inside.

Somewhere, a child screamed.

It sounded like he was crying for his mother, the one who had covered him with her now bullet-riddled body. She was still twitching, convulsing, and seemed to be trying to whisper something, but only bubbles of pink foam escaped her lips.

Another whistle from a steel hornet silenced the child’s cry.

They all lay there just so.

The three of them. The father of the family, who had overturned their table and pressed his back to it to save his wife and child. Part of his face hung by shreds of skin, torn open by the splintered bone of his own skull. His chest and stomach were gaping holes now, bristling with tatters of internal organs matted to his clothes. In front of him, on her knees, her body hanging limp over the child, the wife gave one last shudder. Her severed hand touched a small, white, child’s sandal, down which bloody serpents still trickled. The child had no head anymore. The last hornet, having taken the mother’s heart, had also taken the five-year-old boy’s head as well.

In the space of a moment, the ruthless killers had painted the entire area with death and blood, using molten lead as their brush, leaving behind a dozen such portraits on a canvas woven from pain and fear.

It had all happened too quickly. Ard didn’t even get a chance to realize that he would never reach his staff.

Boris, like the unfamiliar man, had kicked over a table. He’d also used his own staff to shove Elena and Tess back, then stood before them and raised a modified Anti-Bullet Shield. It wasn’t a sphere, but a shimmering, nearly-transparent wall that looked like the shell of an armadillo.

As Elena and Tess had fallen, they’d knocked Ard’s staff away, and it had rolled toward the edge of the parapet—farther than the young man could ever hope to reach.

Elena, scrambling to her feet, tried to form a military magic seal. Something to do with stone and gravity. Perhaps she meant to bring down the walls of the houses on the bandits, but she could not seem to gather her thoughts. Boris, who was constantly feeding energy to the shield that covered the three of them like a sheet, could not afford to be distracted for even a second.

Ardan, a flare of pain searing his right shoulder, watched one of the leaden cones. It spun on its axis, slicing through the air. It flew past a waiter who was slumping sideways; it shattered a crystal glass already doomed to fall upon the blood-soaked cobblestones; it met no resistance as it tore through the tatters of dresses and tablecloths alike…

As if fighting against a raging mountain river, straining the muscles in his neck, his mind racing ahead of the bullet’s flight, Ardan followed its trajectory and turned to his right.

Tess, who had recovered with impossible speed, instinctively reached for him. She reached out to try and grab his collar, to pull him behind Boris’s shimmering shield. Anyone else would have faltered. Would have fallen into shock. Maybe even screamed in terror.

Most other people would have done exactly that. But not the daughter of the Governor-General of Shamtur.

The bullet passed a millimeter from her hand as it was deflected by the shield and slammed into the space directly before his face.

Boris, noticing what had happened out of the corner of his eye, swung his staff. The base of it struck Tess in the chest and threw her back.

It seemed like Boris was shouting something. Ardan couldn’t hear him. His hearing was still deafened by the shriek of the Maw beating its claws against its cage; by the screams, pleas and moans of the wounded; by the inexorable rhythm of the military rifles—when the first two trios ran out of ammunition, they retreated in a single, fluid motion behind the other gangsters covering them, while those men took the places of the previous shooters with symmetrical precision. The fire never stopped for even a second.

Boris must have been shouting that he couldn’t hold out for long. Without accumulators, even with two Stars, he would not withstand a third volley. He had already stopped no fewer than two dozen bullets that had made it through the chaos to the four of them.

Ardan was too slow. He couldn’t get to his staff. And all he could do was look at Tess. At the pain in her eyes as she looked back at him. There was no fear. Only pain. A deep, sharp pain, with claws that tore not at flesh, but at the very soul.

Ardan couldn’t reach his staff. And without it, he could call upon neither Star Magic nor the destructive arts of the Aean’Hane.

Ard could do almost nothing without the Ley.

But Ardan-the-hunter could.

Just as his forest friends had taught him.

Assessing the situation, tasting the scents and seeing the colors, he called upon the lessons of not only Ergar, but of Guta as well. If the snow leopard had taught his little friend how to hunt and strike from cover, killing his prey in a flash, it was the bear who had taught him how to fight entire packs of wolves, families of wolverines, and even several bears at once.

Ardan summoned them both.

Or was it no longer Ard, but Ardan-the-hunter?

In any case, for a brief moment, the sound of gunshots faded, outmatched by a mighty, ursine roar.

Boris maintained his shield, constantly feeding the minor, stationary seal his own rays. Perhaps if he’d had even a few accumulators with him, everything would have been fine. At least for him, his wife, and his only friends in this world.

Ard and Tess.

Perhaps if he had shouted for Elena to get Ard’s staff and pass it to him, something might have changed. Boris hadn’t asked his friend where he had learned to fight so masterfully, as he had demonstrated in his duel against Iolai Agrov. After all, Ard himself had not brought up the subject of the medallion and what had happened at the warehouse for nearly half a year. He’d also remained silent because Boris was a lord and was expected to behave as such. One did not pry into a friend’s affairs unless an invitation had been extended. It was neither polite nor proper.

And right now, Boris was also staying quiet.

He wasn’t sure that he could still maintain his hold on the spell and his Ley if he said anything at all. It was one thing to defend against training spells and magical clay bullets on the training grounds of the Grand University, things that could at most leave a bruise behind, and it was quite another to face real military rifles.

Where in the world had they come from? Here, in the heart of the peaceful capital, no less!

Boris could feel Elena trying to use a modified Stonefall spell to bring down the walls of the houses, but she was failing, the seal breaking again and again, taking one ray of her Ley after another with it.

But if Elena was trying to cast spells, it meant she was all right.

Boris’ body reacted faster than his mind. He shoved Tess away from the edge of the shield before he even registered what he was doing. His training at the Grand University and the private lessons he’d bought from retired boxers at the Spell Market had paid off.

Still, Boris couldn’t help himself and yelled out.

“Get to cover!” He shouted in case Tess tried to pull her fiancé under his shield again.

Damn it… Right before Boris’ eyes, one of the bullets tore through his friend’s right shoulder, ripping out a chunk of flesh. He was on the other side of his shield, clearly in shock.

No matter who had taught him military magic or how deeply he was mired in Peter Oglanov’s affairs, his close, his only friend was still just Ard Egobar. A former cowboy and a bookworm. He had not seen the things that children like Boris and Tess had grown accustomed to since birth.

He wanted to shout something else. To bring his friend to his senses. To make him forget the fear and the pain and crawl under his shield.

Maybe if Ard could get to his staff, they would have a chance and…

And then Boris almost lost his focus, almost unmaking his spell just as Elena was doing with her own spells behind him.

A thunderous roar, one that combined a roused bear and a Kargaam lion from the zoo in one sound, drowned out the cannonade.

Boris didn’t remember Professor Listov’s lecture on the General Theory of Star Magic where he had discussed the primordial color of the Ley all that well. Even so, Boris was still fairly certain that what he was seeing right now was exactly that.

The roar that came from his friend’s mouth… no, from his maw, seemed to resonate with the whitish mist that streamed from Ard’s very pores. Before Boris’ eyes, his friend began to swell with muscle, his suit groaning and miraculously not bursting at the seams.

If before, his hair had only vaguely resembled fur, now, flowing like wheat in the wind, lengthening and thickening, it truly became just that—a long, shaggy mane.

Ard’s skin turned gray, like stone. The canines in his mouth elongated to the point where they could have easily torn out the throat of a grown man.

But the most astonishing metamorphosis happened to his hands. Ard’s palms swelled and were instantly covered in thick, spotted white fur, and his nails turned into five-centimeter claws.

Ard roared again, and resonating with the sound, the whitish mist streaming out from beneath his friend’s clothes momentarily took on a ghostly outline. It was a chimera of some kind, resembling both a bear and a snow leopard.

A few bullets, whistling across the street, tried to sting their target, but Ard, with a speed no human could possibly possess, batted them away like bothersome flies. Through the torn sleeve of his suit, bloodied fur was now visible.

A human’s arm bones would have been shattered by this, his chest pierced clean through, but Ard was only scratched.

A human…

Eternal Angels!

Ard wasn’t entirely human!

Well, perhaps Boris would not get to see it on the pages of history textbooks, but with his own two eyes: the reason the Empire had needed to send three fully-reinforced armies, several dozen artillery battalions, and nearly two hundred operatives from the Second Chancery into the mountains of the Alcade—all to exterminate a tribe of just fifty thousand mountain hunters.

Ard, now a good five centimeters taller, dropped to the ground and… literally tore his own shadow from the earth with his claws. He raised it to his graying lips and blew hard.

Boris had no idea what was happening, but a black mist shot from his friend’s palm. Unfurling like the wings of some anomaly or the shroud of an incredible spell, it instantly enveloped the street in nigh-impenetrable darkness. It clung to the walls, seeped through broken windows and warped doors, and pressed against the bodies of the slain townsfolk.

Boris didn’t lower his shield, but the Ley no longer left his Stars. The shots that had been aimed in their direction were now focused on only one thing.

On his friend. On the one whom others would surely have seen as a monster. A half-beast, half-man. Someone else might have seen exactly that, but not Boris.

His friend was alive, and he would no longer be fighting the bastards alone (if holding a modified shield spell together could be called fighting), but side by side with his comrade.

One could not have wished for a better turn of events in this disastrous situation.

“Elena!” He shouted, taking advantage of the time he’d been bought. “Please, find Ardi’s staff!”

And then he once again focused all his attention on what was happening in the darkness, a darkness that had devoured not only the gruesome scene, but all sound as well.

There, in another flash from a gunshot, Boris made out Ard’s silhouette. He was running on all fours, just like a beast… up a wall. His claws were literally tearing through brick and mortar, leaving a trail of stone dust hanging in the darkness.

The flashes of fire snatched individual scenes from the gloom, and Boris could not look away.

He saw an attacker raise a rifle, trying to defend himself from the swipe of a paw, but all he achieved was a look of bewilderment as a two-handed strike severed his arms. Then, a kick from a foot clad in a shoe that had been pierced by claws literally ripped his pelvis from his spine, throwing the pliant human flesh back and folding it in half.

The next flash revealed Ard being thrown back, several bullets embedded in his chest. They had clearly done some damage to the Matabar half-blood, but not enough to break bone or stop his onslaught.

Running along the wall again to dodge the gunfire, Ard leapt off it, coming down on several shooters at once. He smashed the first one’s head against the ground, crushing his skull with a single blow of his paw—the man’s eyes, tethered by his nerves, shot out to the side like sparkling wine corks. The second was a bit luckier; he only had his leg… torn right off. It was ripped out from the hip joint, flesh and bone alike, and it was this leg, with its exposed, broken bone, that Ard hurled like a spear at the next shooter, the fourth one, while the third was simply pulped beneath the Matabar hunter’s chest.

The flashes did not cease. One after another, they sliced through the darkness, only to reveal another primal, bestial, bloody horror.

Boris, after the first flash, had modified his shield so it was dense and opaque to everyone but himself. This was not a sight for a woman’s eyes…

One of the shooters was lifted off the ground, the way a bear sometimes lifts its prey, and then Ard, with a bit of effort… simply tore the man in half. His insides and blood rained down on the hunter’s own wounded, bullet-riddled body.

Who knew how much longer the Ley, which had altered his friend’s appearance, could sustain this metamorphosis.

Apparently, Ard was thinking the same thing.

He threw the two halves of the dead man aside and the bloody whirlwind began anew.

The once-orderly line of shooters was shattered by a vortex of fangs and claws. Their shots became chaotic and scattered. Flashes bloomed here and there. But wherever they cut through the gloom, Boris saw fur already red with blood, claws, fangs, and bright, amber eyes that were gradually being flecked with blue.

And the longer this went on, the more torn apart bodies there were, the higher the fountains of blood surged, the more twisted with horror the shooters’ faces became, and the less humanity remained in the lethal figure of his friend.

Ard’s body was swelling, becoming more and more covered in the fur that was claiming another patch of skin with each passing moment. His hair was thickening, coarsening, no longer resembling fur, but becoming it. And his face… His face now looked like a twisted, disfigured, bestial muzzle.

In the last flash, Boris saw his friend, or whatever had taken his friend’s place—he’d always been a warm, caring and very thoughtful man—plunge his claws into the eye sockets of a screaming shooter who had wet himself in terror.

Muscles that were not quite human and not yet fully bestial tensed. Jaws that were not a mouth but not yet a proper maw stretched wide and, with a rabid roar, Ard, without letting go of the man’s skull, pulled his hands in opposite directions.

His victim’s scream turned into a gurgle, and then, with a final twitch, his head was torn in half as well. His tongue lolled out of his throat, blood once again stained the Matabar hunter, and Ard used the two halves of the skull as knives. He slammed one directly under the chin of the second-to-last shooter, and hurled the other at the final one, who was trying to flee.

Boris recognized him.

And he understood why Ard had left this wretch for last.

It was his bullet that, if not for Boris’ shield, would have sent Tess to the Eternal Angels.

The darkness gradually dissipated. Thinned out by the sun’s rays, it burned away in the light. Or… rather… it melted away. Yes, it melted like the first autumn snow that arrives before its mistress, winter, truly makes her appearance.

And along with the magical gloom, Boris’ strength also waned. By the time Ard, or… not-Ard, had grabbed the fleeing shooter by the leg, there was neither any darkness nor a magic shield left on the bullet-riddled, blood-soaked street strewn with bodies.

Wearing tatters that barely resembled a fine suit, drenched in blood—his own and others’ both—riddled with bullets, with patches of fur all across his body, and what looked like the beginnings of a tail extending from his coccyx, Ard looked like anyone but his former self.

He was like some crossbreed of an anthropomorphic snow leopard whose mother had sinned with a bear.

The only things that had survived were Ard’s watch, which cast reflections near Boris’ feet, and his pendants, still swinging from the beast’s chest. Only thanks to them could one identify the somewhat otherworldly, pensive and modest young man in this shapeshifter.

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Elena, who had finally found Ard’s staff, dropped both it and her own. She covered her mouth with her hands and shed quiet tears. But not out of fear. At least not fear for herself.

She and Boris had both known that Ard was not entirely human. Elena had told him about how Ard’s features had changed during their first lunch at the Grand University the moment he’d smelled the wild meat.

But even so, what they were seeing now…

The creature, part beast, part man, drew itself up to its full height, tore the hundred-kilogram man from the ground, and lifted him a good meter into the air.

The shooter choked, clawing at the beast’s wrist, but his fingers slipped on the blood-slickened fur.

And then he fell silent as his face was pulled close to a gaping, fanged maw and another roar shook the street, stirring the doomed man’s hair.

It was utterly clear to Boris, and to anyone else who saw what was happening, that no matter what transpired, that even if the Eternal Angels themselves intervened and snatched the poor soul from this hunter’s clutches—he was doomed. The savage beast would always find him.

It would find him and tear him to pieces.

Because that was what it had been taught.

That was how it had been raised.

That was what made it what it was.

And that was exactly what the beast did. Still holding the silenced shooter aloft, it plunged the claws of its left paw under his chin and its right somewhere above his chest. And, with another shattering roar, it pulled. It exerted far more force than when it had torn that skull apart.

Boris, in his time as an aristocrat cast out from his family, had seen human cruelty more than once. He’d thought he was prepared for anything, or at least for a great deal.

And he was.

But only for how men killed.

Not for how beasts did it.

Elena couldn’t bear it. She turned away, and from the sounds of it, she parted with everything she had recently eaten. Boris himself felt a wave of nausea rise in his throat.

The beast ripped away the man’s head, along with his spine and part of his ribcage, and the body itself folded like an accordion. Like a sock carelessly and hastily pulled from a foot. Blood, internal organs, garlands of intestines—all of it crashed to the ground, and the beast, tossing the remains to one side, threw the head at its feet and, as if to finally confirm the shooter’s death, stomped its heel on the dead man’s temple, causing the skull to literally explode in a shower of bone fragments.

But one target remained. The very last one.

In a single leap, the Matabar hunter reached the cage with the screaming Maw held inside it and, flipping it upside down, slammed it to the ground. Like a tin can, it was instantly crushed, leaving no chance for the prisoner inside to survive, a fact confirmed by the crack of its chitinous shell and the green fluid that spread across the street.

After that, the beast, swaying slightly, clearly favoring one of its paws, surveyed the twelve foes it had defeated and, clenching its fists-paws while tensing every muscle in its body, began to spread them apart.

This time, its roar was filled not with fury or the desire to kill, but with something else. Something that was meant to show all who could hear it that only one predator was allowed to hunt here, and anyone weaker than it would follow the torn, crushed and mangled bodies that barely resembled humans—so disfigured were they by its claws—to the grave.

“Damn it,” Boris swore, knowing such cries well.

He had heard them before in the southern forests.

Only beasts made noises like that. And only when they were claiming another’s hunting grounds.

A man could not make such a noise.

Whatever had happened to Ard, there was clearly not much of the man left in him.

And, as if to confirm Boris’ thoughts, the Matabar hunter turned to them. Toward the three of them. And in the gaze of its eyes, which were no longer amber but fully blue, there was truly nothing but base, animal instincts. Fight or flight.

And the beast had no intention of fleeing.

Despite its monstrous wounds, despite the blood literally pouring from its body, it dropped to all fours and, baring its teeth like an angry cat, began to move slowly, carefully, like a hunter before pouncing on its prey, toward them.

The beast was wounded. And hungry.

It wanted to eat.

Eternal Angels…

Boris did not intend to become someone’s meal today. And he certainly did not envision such a future for his wife and child.

All he could hope for was that he could knock Ard out without doing more harm than the shooters already had. Then, perhaps, they could sort out his metamorphosis at the Heroes’ Hospital.

“Tess, don’t!” Elena’s cry came from behind him.

Boris, who had not yet struck the ground with his staff, watched as a limping Tess—she had clearly injured her ankle in the heat of the moment—started calmly walking toward… Eternal Angels… If Boris hadn’t known Ard and felt a deep kinship for him, he would have unhesitatingly called this creature a monster.

Not yet a beast.

No longer a man.

And the petite, red-haired girl was moving toward this mountain of muscle, fur and blood as calmly and elegantly as if she were returning home after a long separation.

She stood before him like a kitten before a snow leopard. Just as small and helpless.

***

Ardan-the-hunter rose onto his hind legs and roared loudly, trying to frighten away the strange prey. He was afraid of it. He wasn’t afraid of what the red-haired, two-legged creature could do, but of the fact that he himself could do nothing to it.

The instincts beaten into him by the tails and fangs of Ergar, carved into him by the claws of Guta and Shali, screamed:

Kill!—because no good comes from the two-legs, only dead fire and death. And then they added:

Eat!

—because he was wounded and would need strength to recover.There wasn’t much meat on her, but it would be enough for a few days. Then he could hunt again.

But Ardan-the-hunter couldn’t even move. He just stared into her green eyes, so unlike a beast’s, and did not stir. And so he was afraid. Afraid of what was happening.

And he roared. As loud as he could. To scare her away. He did it so that the strange two-legs with her strange magic would run as far away from him as possible.

And he could smell fear. The smell of fear was coming from everywhere. From all the strange openings in the stone cliffs, inside which he could hear the beating hearts of hundreds of other two-legs. They were afraid of him. Afraid of the Alcade hunter.

Besides the red-haired one, only two other strange two-legs felt no fear. Those two with the sticks, the ones standing by the river. No, they were afraid too. But not of him, but… for him?

But the small, red-haired two-legs felt no fear at all.

Why… why couldn’t he tear her apart? It would be so easy. Ergar had shown him how. Ergar had taught him how to tear apart the two-legs. It was even easier than catching the sickest of prey.

But why, then, was she not afraid of his roars…

Why couldn’t he move…

She raised a hand and touched his muzzle. He breathed in her scent. The scent of spring flowers blooming by the river. The scent of blueberries hidden in something that was at once familiar and unfamiliar to him. And also… he smelled his own scent.

Yes.

That was it.

This was his two-legs. Part of his pack.

He had missed her.

And worried for her.

Ardan-the-hunter rubbed his fur against her hand. If he was not mistaken and this was truly his two-legs, then he would feel calmer. He would stop feeling like he was in danger. Because she was here.

And that’s how it went.

The feeling of fear vanished, and with it, the need to bare his fangs and claws.

The two-legs opened her mouth and made some sounds. Ardan-the-hunter did not know the language of the two-legs, and the two-legs did not know the language of the hunters.

Even so, he tried to tell her that he didn’t understand, and this only caused another wave of fear from those around them.

What was he to do…

Ardan-the-hunter’s gaze fell to one of the two-legs’ strange limbs. She was limping on it, just like Shali’s sisters—the forest lynxes—did when they’d gotten caught in the traps of the two-legs.

Ardan-the-hunter roared and turned back to the remains of the two-legs. They had harmed his pack, which meant he had sent them to the Sleeping Spirits too quickly.

Well, he would correct his mistake.

The way Guta had taught him.

He would tear their bodies to shreds, so that not even scavengers would dare touch them, and the ancestors of these two-legs who had gone to the Sleeping Spirits before them would not recognize their own offspring.

And then, as Ergar had taught him, he would follow their scent to find their den and the offspring of those who had wounded his pack. And he would devour them. Every last one. Until neither the memory nor the scent of the foolish prey remained on the hunting trails.

That was what his forest friends had taught him.

But before that, he would deal with one more scent.

A dangerous scent. He knew it. Remembered it.

Another hunter was approaching, one who wielded not claws and fangs, but something akin to what the she-wolf Atta’nha possessed. Though his power smelled different. Very different.

And yet…

***

Boris, who had just breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the beast calm down and its features gradually return to human form, tensed up again.

At some point, the Matabar had seen Tess’ ankle as she’d stroked what was either his face or a feline muzzle, and it had roared again. Then, like a bear, it had begun to tear the already disfigured remains of the shooters to shreds with its front paws, all the while sniffing them intently.

“It’s all right, Ardi,” Tess said again and again. “It’s all right. We’re all safe… let’s go home, Ardi-the-wizard, let’s go…”

But the beast only gave short growls in response, like a predator that was annoyed that it couldn’t understand what was being asked of it.

And then it froze. It moved to the other side of Tess, shielding the girl with its body, and pressed its torso low to the ground.

A familiar siren was already wailing across Niewa Avenue, but it wasn’t the guards or the fire department that stopped at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, but… several old, black “Derks.” Anyone who had lived in the capital long enough would easily recognize them as the vehicles of the Second Chancery.

Several figures in black clothes and black leather jackets emerged from them—the Cloaks wore these in the summer instead of their namesakes.

A few of them were holding strange-looking sabers and oversized revolvers, and clouds of dark vapor periodically escaped their mouths.

Damn it…

The rumors were true.

The Second Chancery really did employ mutants!

Three others held staves made of Ertalain alloy, and one…

Boris flinched.

He had heard of this mage. He couldn’t remember the man’s name. Only the surname—Mshisty. And the fact that one of the Empire’s most experienced and one of its best military mages overall was missing his left arm, which Mshisty had lost in the Dead Lands on the border with the Enario Theocracy.

Boris wouldn’t be able to reason with a man like that so easily. But if he did nothing, Ard would surely be…

“Are you going to calm down on your own, Corporal, or do I need to help you out?” Mshisty’s slightly raspy voice cut through Boris’ thoughts. “You’ve certainly made a mess of things here…”

He was addressing Ard directly. Did they already know each other? Ah, yes, of course they knew each other. Because of Ard’s great-grandfather, Aror Egobar.

Damn it!

Things were even worse than he’d thought! Boris had to…

He never got to take that step forward. He had been about to declare that Ard Egobar was under his protection as a Lord, and if the Second Chancery intended to take his friend into custody, they would have to deal with the entire Upper Chamber of Parliament.

Elena stopped him.

She grabbed her husband’s elbow and said quietly, “Ard doesn’t work for Oglanov, my dear.”

“What?” Boris began to ask, and then that single word flashed in his memory:

“Corporal.”

So that was it…

Well, that explained a lot.

No—that explained everything.

Ard, who’d apparently been collaborating with the Cloaks all this time, let out a guttural growl and bared his teeth.

“I never thought this spell would be used for business again,” Mshisty said, shaking his head. “Ms. Orman, please step away from your fiancé.”

Tess obediently took a step back, and that settled all of Boris’ doubts. If a person like Tess hadn’t known for certain that the Cloaks would not harm her beloved, she would never have gone along with the request. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Mshisty, paying no mind to the dozens of bodies, both shooter and civilian alike, simply struck his staff against the ground. He did it a moment before the beast leapt toward him.

A yellow seal flared beneath the mage’s feet, and in the same instant, red vines shot out of the ground. They wrapped around the Matabar’s body and dug sharp thorns into its flesh.

Ard howled, and Tess flinched, but less than a heartbeat later, it became clear what was happening. The thorns on the vines began to shimmer with the same mist that had been streaming from Ard’s body. They were literally… sucking the Ley from him. And as the Ley drained away, the fur fell to the ground. His hair softened. His body deflated like a punctured water balloon. His skin turned pink, and his claws and fangs gradually retracted.

Soon, lying on the ground, covered by the cloak Mshisty had thrown over him, was Ard. His friend Ard. He had cuts all over his body, several bullet wounds that had gone clean through him, and he was breathing heavily.

They were already casting healing spells on him, but it was clear he wouldn’t get by without a trip to the infirmary.

“Everything will be all right, Ms. Orman,” Mshisty said, approaching Tess. “But you’ll have to come with us.”

“Yes… of course,” the red-haired singer nodded.

Mshisty then turned to Boris, met his gaze, and added curtly, “And you too, Your Lordship… and please don’t forget the Corporal’s staff.”

***

Opening his eyes, Ardi remembered everything that had happened. He remembered it perfectly, and he did not feel very well. Not just physically, which was a given since his entire body groaned due to his aching bones and muscles that felt almost wooden, but emotionally as well.

He remembered the feeling of power in his hands—his paws. He remembered the taste of blood on his lips and tongue. He remembered how easily, with a truly bestial pleasure, his claws had torn through yielding flesh.

It was nothing like what had happened with Lorlov.

Ardi hadn’t been a detached observer. No, he had remained himself. But at the same time, that had not been the Ardan who had lived among people for nearly seven years now, suppressing his instincts with culture, customs and reason. Not at all. All that had remained of Ardi had been the instincts of a hunter, a purely animalistic principle of life that was not applicable even to Matabar society, let alone the human one.

It had happened just as it had during his fight with the orc, with the sole difference that this time, Ardan had immersed himself even deeper into the pool of his bestial essence, the one that lived somewhere deep inside his consciousness.

“Sleeping Spirits…”

“Not so sleepy anymore,” came a familiar voice.

It was raspy from smoke, so weary that it had lost all hope of ever resting, and utterly matter-of-fact, with no tolerance for vague reflections or anxieties.

On a chair next to the simple hospital cot sat Dr. Nazar Glarkin, an endocrinologist. He wore the same dirty glasses as before, had the same dark circles under his eyes, and held the same metal flask from which the familiar smell of alcohol emanated.

Ardi had met this doctor before. Right after he had risked using himself as bait to fish for a little more information about the Spiders.

“So, it seems like we’ll be seeing each other often,” Glarkin sighed and, setting his flask on the small table, took off his glasses and began to clean them with the edge of his coat.

Given that the coat was trying to awkwardly hide an infinite number of stains among endless traces of bleach, it was unclear whether the fabric was cleaning the glass or just making it dirtier.

“I’m sorry… what?”

Ardan tried to push himself up on the pillows but groaned from the sudden pain in his chest and sank back down. It felt as if he had been wrestling with nearly-grown bear cubs for several hours.

A few flashes of fire surfaced in Ardi’s memory, followed by the crunch of his bones and the groan of strained muscles.

No, on second thought, it would have been better to fight bears than to catch bullets with his body. At least claw marks and fang holes healed much faster than gunshot wounds.

“I’ve noticed a tendency during my service, Corporal. If a colleague of mine ends up in the infirmary several times in six months, he inevitably becomes, so to speak,” Glarkin chuckled, breathed on his lenses, wiped them again, and put the glasses back on his hooked nose, “a regular customer.”

Ardi turned to the window. There, just like last time, the lively Seventh Avenue greeted him with the exhaust pipes of cars and the clicking heels of passersby.

“I didn’t intend to visit you again, Dr. Glarkin.”

“Believe me, Corporal, no one ever does… except, perhaps, for Mshisty and his hounds,” the doctor reached for his flask, then thought about it for a moment, screwed the cap back on, and returned it to the inner pocket of his coat. “You have several broken ribs, a fractured tibia, a shattered left shoulder blade, three dislocated joints, not to mention liver damage, a collapsed left lung, and… ah, yes. Twenty-one gunshot wounds. They pulled enough lead out of you to cast a rifle barrel.”

Ardi frowned. He felt extremely unwell, but not as terrible as Glarkin described.

“Of course, most of the damage, by the time you got here, was neutralized by Mshisty’s hounds. Otherwise,” Glarkin spread his hands out, “to our great regret, you would have been dead long before you ever reached us.”

Despite his words, the doctor’s tone remained completely unemotional and uninvolved. It wasn’t that Glarkin didn’t care, he simply didn’t want to become emotionally invested in a patient’s fate. At least no more than his job required him to be. Ardi had heard about this from Kelly, when he’d discussed the doctors who’d come from Delpas to monitor Erti’s condition.

The doctors who had returned from the front had the very same traits that Glarkin was now displaying so clearly: a general sense of detachment, a penchant for alcohol or sedatives, fatalism, and a personality so sharp you could cut yourself on it if you weren’t careful.

And the smudges on his glasses and coat were not from slovenliness, but an attempt to hide himself from the smell and color of death, with which frontline doctors had literally slept in the same bed.

“We’ve patched you up,” Glarkin continued his summary. “My colleagues from the Ley-medicine department poured some concoctions into you, and the traumatologists refused to put you in a cast. Instead…” The doctor gestured to a whole stack of bulging IV bottles. “Nutrient solutions. I don’t know how this makes sense, Corporal, but that amount of protein and calcium would be enough for an entire platoon of soldiers. The result, of course, as one would expect from a Matabar half-blood, is impressive. I’m not sure you’ll be able to run in the next few weeks, of course. And you’ll have to wear a compression bandage on your chest, but overall, we can discharge you by this evening.”

“And how long have I been here?”

“Before we get to that, I’d like to tell you something, Corporal.” Glarkin sighed and, closing his eyes, leaned the back of his head against the rough texture of the green hospital wall. “After you asked me those questions regarding the nature of the Matabar, I, suspecting that we would meet again, conducted a small investigation.”

Ardi remembered their previous conversation, during which it had been revealed that Ardan, due to his blood being a mixture from different biological species, had a congenital disease. Like Erti. Only in his younger brother’s case, it was more pronounced. Ardan, on the other hand, would not feel the effects of his mixed species origins immediately. Maybe in half a century, maybe a little later, but one day, his body and mind would begin to fail him.

“Do you know why the Matabar tribes never had their own Aean’Hane? At least not any who lived with your ancestors on a permanent basis.”

Ardi knew why. Because all the Speakers, when their time came, were taken by the Fae, who turned them into Sidhe (the aristocracy of the Fae), severing their connection to the paths of the mortals.

How Aror had avoided this fate remained a mystery. But, one way or another, Ardan’s great-grandfather was the only Matabar in history who had not had his essence changed to that of a Fae Sidhe.

“I assume it has to do with the dual nature of your ancestors, Corporal,” Glarkin crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to be trying to doze off, as if he perceived the conversation as an opportunity to rest. “The beastly essence in them existed in an equal balance with the human, which endowed your ancestors with a certain set of shapeshifting abilities... Yes, the Matabar are very close to humans. Perhaps even closer than orcs, but that’s not the point. Such an equilibrium is, of course, based on complex biochemical processes, and also on the Ley. And if the balance is ever disturbed, then, sooner or later, one of the essences will become dominant. Therefore, I believe that the Speakers and the Aean’Hane did not linger in your ancestors’ packs for the simple reason that the Ley, in itself, is a destabilizing factor.”

Ardan did not like what he was hearing.

“What are you trying to say?” He asked.

The doctor opened his right eye and cast a brief, slightly sarcastic glance at his patient.

“You’re not a stupid young man, Corporal. So you’ve already understood everything yourself.”

Ardan had. Or at least he suspected it. But he wanted to hear it from a specialist.

“Not all the ancestors of natural anomalies were former Matabar Speakers, Corporal,” Glarkin voiced his thought. “But all Matabar Speakers who did not disappear from the pages of history became anomalies sooner or later. The Ley within your body tipped the balance in its own favor, and since the Ley is much closer to unorganized structures than to complex systems, it naturally strengthened the beastly side. In other words…”

“At some point, I might just remain a hunter,” Ardan finished for the doctor.

“A hunter?” Glarkin repeated and thought about it for a moment. “So it’s not just a biological metamorphosis, but a neurological one as well? Curious, of course… But, in general, you are correct. If you abuse the artificial disruption of your body’s balance, then yes. Sooner or later, your body, and as I now understand it, your personality as well, will be completely changed by the Ley. You will become an anomaly.”

Ardi remembered the Wolf of Blazing Darkness again.

There was the answer to why the Fae had taken the Speakers to the City on the Hill. It was a question he had once asked Atta’nha, and she, smiling sadly, had never answered it. She’d only said that such was the dream of the Sleeping Spirits. Perhaps the she-wolf had hoped that his internal balance, due to his mixed blood, would end up skewed away from the beast?

Thoughts for another day.

“And given the mixing of blood in your case,” the doctor continued, “I don’t think your particular balance has the full benefit of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. So if I were you, I would be cautious and never resort to this particular ability again.”

“You think the next time could be the last?”

Glarkin gave a short shrug of his shoulders.

“Maybe the next time,” he yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth with his hand. “Maybe the time after that, or maybe the changes have already begun, but you won’t see it until a couple of decades have passed. No one knows, Corporal. As I’ve said before, science has barely studied the organisms of the Firstborn, let alone the individual cases of half-bloods. Maybe in a century, medicine will be able to answer that question of yours, but not right now.”

The doctor, unable to resist, took out his flask again and took a few gulps.

“You need to decide, Mr. Corporal,” he wiped his lips and, leaning his hand on the wall, got to his feet. “Which world you belong to. Ours, or the beasts’. In the meantime, get well, and I think the sedative should be wearing off any minute now.”

“Sedative?”

Glarkin walked over to the neighboring cot, hidden behind a screen. Ardi had assumed that he was alone in the room, like last time.

The doctor, with an almost theatrical gesture, pulled the cloth screen aside.

Curled up in a ball, a pillow under her head, wearing a wrinkled dress and covered with a thin sheet, lay Tess. She was breathing softly, as she always did when she slept. Her face was slightly drawn, there were hollows under her eyes, and her skin was pale.

“How long-”

“You were in a coma for almost ten days, Corporal,” and though Glarkin spoke quietly, Ardi was almost deafened by his statement. “Your fiancée spent all that time in this room, leaving you in our hands only for surgical intervention.”

Ardan, ignoring the pain in his body, the fact that he could barely move properly, and the fact that he could hardly breathe when he stood up, somehow managed to move from the bed to the chair and finally take Tess’ small hand in his.

Sleeping Spirits… She was so cold… A little more and one might think… one might think that…

Ardan flinched, remembering the bullet hitting Boris’ Shield. What if his friend hadn’t erected it in time? What if he hadn’t held it steady?

Tess could have… she could have…

Ardi felt his fangs and claws begin to emerge again, but this time, he did not give in to his impulses.

Enough.

He had had enough.

With an effort of will, he silenced the call of the hunter sleeping within him and drew his fangs and claws back into their sheaths.

He did not take his eyes off the tired, gaunt face of his fiancée.

One could say anything, convince oneself of anything, make the most insane plans and assumptions, but none of it would change the glaringly obvious. The tragedy that had happened on that street had happened because he was there—Ardan Egobar. That much had become clear the moment the foreign soldiers who’d tried to pass themselves off as members of the Saint Eord’s gang (Ardi had several reasons to believe this) had made the Maw scream. It was a chimera that was only ever used against the Firstborn.

The attack had been planned, rehearsed, and expertly directed.

They’d wanted to kill him.

Him specifically.

Ardan Egobar.

Maybe because of the Spiders. Maybe because of Alla Tantov. Or because of Aror Egobar. That still needed to be figured out.

But one thing was certain—Boris and Elena had nearly become victims, and, most terrifying of all, Tess had almost died as well.

The girl opened her eyes. Her soft, warm, green eyes. She reached out her hand and touched Ardi’s cheek.

“Good morning,” she whispered, as if they had just woken up, as they always did, in their small apartment at number 23 on Markov Canal.

As if nothing had happened.

But that wasn’t true.

Something had happened.

Something too big to ignore.

“I believe I’ll leave you to it,” Glarkin, his coat rustling, reached the door. He paused for a moment and added, “A certain Captain Pnev has been waiting for you in the lobby since this morning, but I haven’t allowed him up yet and… I don’t think I will for another couple of hours.”

To be honest, at that particular moment, Ardan couldn’t have cared less about Milar. The only thing he cared about was the fact that the person he loved had almost set off on the unseen paths of the Sleeping Spirits because of him.