Page 3 of Sanctuary

He marched off the porch toward the tree. The kolovershi squeaked and hid in the fir branches. The anchutka scuttled aside.

“What the hell is going on here?”

The melalo looked left, looked right, not sure what the best route to escape was, and then stared at him, terrified. Roman gave him a look.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you’re a Romani demon. Go be with your people!”

The melalo squawked and ran across the snow, diving under the tree.

“And you!”

The auka blinked.

“You’re not even a nechist. You’re a forest spirit. Why are you here? Why are any of you here?”

The auka waved at him again.

“At least have the decency to act contrite.”

He finally rounded the tree. An unconscious teenager hugged the trunk, curled into a fetal ball. Judging by the dusting of snow on his jacket, he had been there a while. A dark red stain spread over his jeans—something had either bitten or stabbed his thigh. Someone had stuck a Christmas wreath, no doubt stolen off some door, onto his head and shoved a little artificial Christmas twig with glitter and bright plastic berries into his exposed left ear. Tinsel wrapped his jacket, binding him to the tree. A small chunk of cookie stuck out from between his lips, smudged with glitter.

“Where did you get this human?”

Nobody answered.

He slapped his hand over his twitching eye, pulled the shiny twig out of the boy’s ear, plucked the cookie out of his mouth, tossed the wreath aside, grabbed him by the shoulder, and shook him.

“Hey kid?”

The boy’s eyelashes fluttered. He uncurled a little and Roman glimpsed a small black puppy in the curve of his body.

“You can’t stay here,” Roman told him. “It’s dangerous for you here.”

The kid’s lips moved. A little blood dripped onto his chin. He struggled to say something.

Roman crouched by him.

“Sanctuary,” the kid whispered.

“What?”

“Sanctuary…”

“Where do you think you are? Does this look like a Christian church to you? Do you see a priest’s collar on my neck?”

The kid’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he went limp.

Damn it.

* * *

Logs crackled in the fire, sending an occasional burst of orange sparks into the air. Warmth permeated the house.

Roman set the squirt bottle with saline aside and gulped his coffee. It was bitter and hot. He’d gotten used to drinking it black while in the service, because cream and sugar had been scarce, and he’d never lost the habit.

The kid lay on a pad of blankets in front of the fireplace with a towel under his injured leg. Roman had cut his jeans to expose the wound, and the laceration glistened with red, like an angry mouth. Something had slashed the kid’s thigh, cutting a four-inch gap through the muscle. A pretty deep cut, too. A couple of inches to the left, and he would’ve bled out. His face wasn’t too bad. Someone had punched him in the mouth, but all of his teeth were still there.

Roman slipped latex gloves on—worth their weight in gold, literally, since rubber was pricy post-Shift—pulled the suture needle from its boiling water bath with needle drivers and set about threading it.

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