Page 39 of White Wolf
One corner of Nikita’s mouth twitched. “I suppose it does. Go brush your teeth. And make sure your hands are clean – get beneath the nails.”
Sasha nodded.
In the bathroom, Ivan stood in front of the mirror, shoulders spanning the distance between the wall and the tub – he wasn’t built for the indoors; he belonged, Sasha thought, in a logging camp somewhere, hauling felled trees by chains like a draft horse. His huge fingers were careful as he styled his hair, though, an open tin of pomade balanced on the edge of the sink.
He caught Sasha’s gaze in the mirror and winked. “This is American. Good stuff.” He wriggled his sticky fingers. “Want me to do yours?”
“No.” Sasha smoothed a palm across the crown of his head, feeling a residual dampness from Nikita’s hands. “Thank you.”
Ivan shrugged and washed his hands. “It won’t be so bad, wolf pup. They just want to look you over. Let Nik and the old man do all the talking, yeah? You don’t need to be nervous.”
“I’m not,” he lied.
Ivan put the pomade tin away in the medicine cabinet and turned to him with a smile. Clapped his bear paw hand down on Sasha’s shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. “Say that enough and maybe it’ll be true. It’s what I’ve always done.”
His heavy footfalls moved out of the room, his voice booming as he joined the others and demanded breakfast.
It seemed like Ivan had used up all the oxygen in the bathroom, because Sasha’s chest was tight, his head spinning. He braced his hands on the edge of the sink and stared at his wild reflection. His eyes looked like dirty glass under the harsh electric light. His hair was already trying to creep back into its usual disarray, unfurling from the little finger-shaped tunnels Nikita had raked it into. He looked monstrously out of place, here in this place of concrete and factory smoke, frayed and windswept, smelling of the wilderness. The idea that he had a part to play, that he was needed, rattled him down to his foundations. Who was he? What could he do that harder men couldn’t?
He took one shaky breath, and then another.
Last night he’d watched a man conjure fire. Today he was going to the Kremlin.
He lived in an age of miracles. He thought it might just take one to get him back home.
~*~
Monsieur Philippe was in excellent spirits – too excellent, considering there was snow on the ground and they were walking down sidewalks lined with barbed-wire and anti-tank barricades.
“Beautiful morning,” he said happily, rubbing his gloved hands together.
Beside him, Nikita shook his head. He’d never cared for the cold.
Itwasa beautiful morning, though, in the way that a sharp knife could bring a smile to your lips. A westerly wind had swept the snow clouds away during the night, and dawn had arrived in clear, frostbitten layers of gray, the sun rising as a smooth disc of hammered steel above the clustered building tops. The factories belched black, rolling clouds of smoke. Ravens wheeled, cackling at one another, dive-bombing the markets and plucking scraps from the drifts of dirty snow. Most of the pedestrians were soot-streaked female line workers, trundling home with exhausted faces, bits of wild hair slipping loose from their kerchiefs and hats. Army lorries rumbled past, crushing the snow into icy slush, their exhaust flavoring air that was already tangy with ash and frost.
The sight of his city in the morning always stirred something light and almost-happy in Nikita’s chest. For those moments, with the cold air in his lungs and the snow under his boots, he forgot to be angry.
He glanced back over his shoulder as he walked to look at Sasha. The boy had been actively nervous back at the apartment – no longer terrified of them, like he’d been, but jittery as a kid on his first day of school – but was attempting to disguise it. He snuck glances from the corners of his eyes without turning his head; sucked at his lower lip and looked overwhelmed for flashes, then schooled his features again. The jagged ends of his too-long hair peeked out from his hat, over his ears and forehead. Bundled up in his furs, boots scuffing the pavement, he was almost childishly cute, like a lost puppy.
Pyotr walked on one side of him, chatting amiably and pointing out landmarks. Ivan was on his other side, interjecting with loud corrections and a sweeping arm movement that nearly knocked the hats from both boys’ heads.
Nikita caught Kolya’s gaze a moment and his second-in-command rolled his eyes.
He returned the gesture and faced forward again. “Assure me again that you aren’t going to do something terrible to this boy,” he said to Philippe.
“Would it matter if I couldn’t?”
His immediate answer was, “Yes.”
“Hmm. And after all the terrible things you’ve seen and done yourself. Interesting.”
“Can you still make fire with my knife sticking out of your throat?”
Philippe chuckled. “Rest assured, Captain, I’m not going to harm the boy. In fact, I’m going to make him very powerful.”
“Like you?” The mental image of Sasha holding a palmful of fire was disconcerting.
“Somewhat. Different, but perhaps stronger than me, in his own way.”
