“Anyway, you’ll have Elaine.”
“Gwaine hates Elaine more than anyone. Why don’t I swap with Mordred?”
“He’s too inexperienced. He sticks with me. One squire per team and you’re in Gwaine’s.” Arthur tapped his watch. “It’s late, Billi. Get some sleep. The flight’s at seven.”
“Not until we’ve finished discussing this.” She stood in the hallway, glowering.
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “Fine.” He twisted his wedding ring. “You’re even more stubborn than Jamila.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Billi, why are you trying to pick a fight with me? Is this really all about Gwaine?”
Billi shook her head and scowled. “It’s not right. We’re meant to protect innocent people like Vasilisa. I can’t believe her sacrifice is even an option.”
Wearily, Arthur took off his coat, and Billi saw the slowness in his movements. He’d taken a beating down in the tube and was as bruised and busted as the rest of them. It shocked her to see her dad’s moments of frailty. “Billi, the world’s not black and white. The bad guys come bright and beautiful, and the good guys might look like monsters. You of all people know that.”
Michael. The commander of the Shining Host. The archangel had tried to kill every firstborn child in London. He’d been beautiful right up to the moment she’d destroyed him.
“You know it’s not the answer, Dad. If we kill Vasilisa, we stop Baba Yaga. This time. But what about the next Spring Child she goes after? We kill that one too? And the one after that? What we really need to do is kill Baba Yaga.”
“I don’t disagree. That’s why I’m going to Karelia. Maybe Vasilisa’s grandmother can help us. But it’s a long shot. Baba Yaga’s very old and very powerful. If she could be destroyed easily, someone would have done it a long time ago.”
“Maybe the right people have never tried.”
Arthur laughed. “You stick with that attitude.” Then he sat down next to her. “Billi, this is important. If you have to choose between saving one life or saving millions, you can’t have any doubts. I have to trust you on this. If the time comes, you must kill Vasilisa.”
Billi sat in the hallway well before dawn with her bag packed and ready. Her dad had gone to sort out the last-minute flights and visas for Russia.
She hadn’t slept a wink. How could she? The clock in the hall ticked away every second, and the noise reminded her of what was at stake. Billi stared at Kay’s photo on her mobile, tracing the outline of his face with her fingernail.
Once, a long time ago, she’d believed being a Templar was cool, noble, even. No matter how hard it had gotten in school, the secret that she belonged to something old, important, and powerful had kept her going. Her training, her loneliness, her bruises all meant something. She’d hung on to that after Kay’s death. The Templars fought the Unholy. They fought the ghosts and the ghuls and all the supernatural evil that preyed on mankind. They protected the innocent.
Billi searched Kay’s face, trying to find the answer. He had known his death was coming and had prepared for it. But that hadn’t made it any easier for her to be the one left behind.
Billi had killed Kay, and it had almost destroyed her. Now her job was to cross half the world and do the same to a nine-year-old. Billi remembered her last dream. Had Kay been trying to tell her that Vasilisa had to die?
It was hopeless to think otherwise. Baba Yaga would destroy everything if she had Vasilisa. How could the life of one child compare to that?
There could be no room for pity. The Knights Templar, from being an ancient order of warriors, was now a death squad.
So be it.
Billi looked at Kay one last time, then deleted him forever.
16
THE ERUPTION HAD THROWN UP SO MUCH ASH THAT flights throughout Europe had been delayed. Now, two days after the eruption, the backlog of weary and irate travelers still hadn’t been cleared. People slept on the seats, on the floors, up against the walls. Long lines of cars and buses blocked the entrance to Heathrow Airport as the passengers were transferred to other airports or hotels, all being managed by a forlorn airport staff.
Billi and the other knights picked their way through the groups of abandoned passengers and climbed over piles of waiting luggage. It wasn’t yet seven, but the airport was overflowing.
Billi watched the news on one of the big overhead screens. The destruction of Naples dominated everything. Almost thirty feet of ash and rock had fallen over the city in the last two days, and only now were any rescue vehicles able to even approach the devastated city. Buildings had collapsed under the sheer weight of the falling debris, burying scores of people. Ash had set as hard as concrete, and the drills and picks and the desperate hands did little good.
Miracles still occurred. People continued to trickle out of the tunnels. They’d fled into the underground system, then walked out once the eruptions had ended. Thousands were gathered in an ever-growing refugee camp, and families pored over long lists plastered to wooden walls, hoping to find a relative or friend among the survivors.
“It seems so hopeless,” said a woman watching the coverage.
Hopeless? Maybe. But people still fought on. Billi stared at the small figures moving over the vast gray city like ants, struggling against the wrath of nature. That’s what humanity did, wasn’t it? Despite the overwhelming odds, it fought on.
No weapons. Arthur didn’t want anyone getting arrested at customs because they’d tried to smuggle in a broadsword. Lance knew an arms dealer in Moscow from his bad old days as a smuggler, and that was where Gwaine’s team would tool up. Arthur had friends across the waters in Finland, and they would deliver gear to the Karelia team. Each Templar had a package of Elaine’s wolfsbane poultices.
Billi pulled off her backpack while Elaine arranged the boarding passes. She scratched her shoulder blade. The claw marks had healed up nicely, but she had no plans to get bitten or clawed again. She’d put the roll of stinking brown cloth in an airtight Tupperware sandwich box, but still the smell seemed to linger on everything.
The Knights Templar gathered at the coffee shop on the other side of passport control. The Karelia flight was just before the Moscow one.
Arthur brought his latte over to Billi.
“How are you feeling?” He sat down stiffly.
“Better than you, I think.”
“Funny girl.” He stirred in his sugar, and the chair creaked as he leaned back. “It’s going to be a bad one, Billi.”
Like she didn’t know. They were going in blind. Here in Britain the Templars had secret contacts and hideouts scattered across the country. Russia was the unknown. It was Baba Yaga and the Polenitsys’ heartland. They’d be outnumbered ten to one, at least.
“Tell me about the Bogatyrs,” Billi said. Everything had been so rushed, she’d had no time to find out about the Russian knights.
“Christian warriors, set up before the Templars. The Russians never got involved in the Crusades; their enemies weren’t the Saracens, but the followers of the old ways-pagans, witches, the werewolves.”
“And what about this Romanov bloke? Alexeithingamajig?”
“Alexei Viktorovich Romanov. Please get the pronunciation right-he is royalty. Great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas, if I remember correctly.” Arthur scratched his beard, trying to remember what else he knew. “The story is that everyone in the royal family was killed at the beginning of the Russian revolution. That much is history. But there were always rumors that one Romanov survived; the princess Anastasia. She was saved by the Bogatyrs. Since then her children and her children’s children have served, and led, the Russian order of knights. Stalin tried his best to wipe them out, and they went into hiding, like us. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bogatyrs became active again, under the leadership of Alexei. Tsar Alexei.”
