Page 43 of When Among Crows
“Brother and sister.” He thinks of Elza, with a sharp pain, and rolls onto his back to stare at the ceiling. There’s a crack there, where the paint has bubbled away from the drywall. It reminds him of the lines in his palm.
He looks at her again.
“Are you sure you want a brother who’s done what I’ve done?” he says.
“You’ll find there’s a lot of family drama among zmory,” she says, with a smile that he thinks would have looked menacing to him before, but now seems gentle. “We wouldn’t be the first to reconcile after one has killed another’s aunt.”
“Really.”
“Really,” she says. “Eternity is long, Dymitr. Time enough for hearts to soften.”
He wonders what he would look like to a llorona now.If the halo of sorrow around his head would still be as brilliant to them, or if untangling the curse from Ala’s blood, and hearing that she wanted him to be whole, has healed over some of the loss that divides him.
He sits up, and he startles himself with how quick the movement is, and how forceful—he falls to his knees on the carpet right in front of the bed. Ala laughs.
“The old legends used to say that we could transform into a hair and fit through a keyhole,” she says. “We can’t, of course, but we do tend to be fast and light.”
He lifts a hand and stares at it. His fingernail has grown back, and the wound in his palm is healed over. He comes to his feet, and meets his own eyes in the mirror above Ala’s dresser.
He looks like himself—there’s some relief in that. His eyes are still that odd shade of brown-gray, his hair still matches them, as before. The scar in his lip is still there. But there is something different about him, too. Something sharper, and wilder, like a fox that wanders into a suburban neighborhood in search of food—capable at any moment of ferocity.
Ala stands beside him, and he sees some similarity between them. That keenness.
“Sister,” he says to her, and she nods.
“No visions?” he asks her. “Memories?”
“Gone,” she replies, and she smiles so wide it looks like it might split her face in half. “Let’s go say hello to Niko. You can find out how worriedheis.”
She leads him out of the room. The scents of her apartment hit him all at once. Stale crackers and dust. Old bacon, rubber boots, petrichor. Mold, rust, and blood. He considers the blood for a moment—he has a feeling about it, an attachment. He follows that feeling into the kitchen, where he can focus on nothing else, though there are plenty of other things to see. He follows it to the kitchen trash can, which he opens, and removes a square of gauze stained brown with blood.
He stares at it. It’s his blood, from the gauze that covered the pulled fingernail.
“Did you wake up a vampire?” Niko’s voice asks.
“No, he’s just discovering his new nose,” Ala replies. “Give him a moment.”
Dymitr drops the gauze back into the trash. Niko is leaning against the sink, his arms folded, the light of the sun glowing behind his head. The menace that Dymitr used to see in his face isn’t gone, exactly. It’s just that it no longer creeps up Dymitr’s spine the way it used to. Instead, he can see that Niko is beautiful, like a statue of a Roman soldier, like a Kupala Night fire, like a well-made sword.
Niko asks Ala, “Do we call him a ‘zmora,’ since he’s male? Or is he a ‘zmoron’?”
Ala laughs. “Technically, it’s ‘zmór,’” she says. “Though if you want to call him a zmoron, I suppose you can.”
Niko smells like powdered sugar, and—Dymitr steps closer, and closer, following his nose to the curve of Niko’s neck in a way that would have been embarrassing, if he’d been in his right mind. He touches his nose to Niko’sthroat, and breathes in. He smells like some kind of flower, and ever-so-slightly of dark chocolate—
“Youareworried about me,” Dymitr says, pulling away. “And… a little bit afraid of me?”
Niko’s eyes are wide. They skip all over Dymitr’s face, and Dymitr wonders how he looks to Niko, if he’s still beautiful enough to fight for.
“The word you’re looking for,” Niko says, “is awe. I am a little in awe of you.”
Dymitr opens his mouth to argue, and Niko holds up a hand to stop him.
“Don’t,” he says. “You’ll ruin it.”
He curls his fingers under Dymitr’s chin and draws him closer. His breath smells like coffee and mint toothpaste. He kisses Dymitr, gentle and slow. It lights up parts of Dymitr he wasn’t sure existed, as if the fire that flickers in Niko’s eyes has kindled in Dymitr, too.
“See?” Niko says. “It’s good to be something new.”
