Page 31 of When Among Crows
“Let’s go, then.” Ala stalks down the aisle toward the door, and Dymitr follows her, with Niko at his heels.
By the time they step out onto the sidewalk again, it’s dark. The night air has never smelled as good to Dymitr as it does then, away from the close, decaying smell of the theater. Petrichor and wet pavement, fried food and cigarettes.At any other time, it would have been unpleasant, but now, it signals normalcy. Humanity.
They walk to the Jeep together in silence. But when Niko reaches the driver’s side door and sticks his key in the lock, he stops, and sighs.
“We could just agree not to talk about any of it,” he says.
Ala, standing on the sidewalk by the passenger-side door, kicks at the curb with the toe of her boot.
“I’m not ashamed,” she says. She raises her head, and looks up at the Uptown Theatre, where even the back of the building is decorated with patterned stones, diamonds and concentric circles and flourishes. Sections of it are covered with plastic, to keep it from crumbling in the wind.
“My mother was in agony,” she says. “She begged me to end it, and I did, even knowing I was furthering the curse along. I thought… she had put in enough time. Enough suffering. The irony is…” She smiles, and though Dymitr can tell it’s forced, it still looks alarming, her inhumanity laid bare. Her cheeks crease around her too-wide mouth, as if straining to keep it contained. “The irony is, it was her suffering that gave me the magic to do it. I put her to sleep, first.”
Dymitr braces himself against the back of the Jeep, where the spare tire is fixed just above the bumper. He sees a puddle of rainwater in the middle of the street.
Strange. It hasn’t rained in days.
“I don’t feel bad about it,” Ala says, though she must, or it wouldn’t have counted as a confession.
“Good,” Niko says. His eyes are like sunlit honey, like the amber that preserves insects forever, like a fire burning low. Dymitr can feel the pressure of his mouth, the tickle of his speech—
“You did her a service,” Niko says. “And it took strength.”
Ala offers him a small smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“And you?” she says to him. “You were… born mortal?”
Dymitr has never heard her voice so gentle before.
Niko rolls his eyes. “I had strzygi blood. It was dormant in me. A powerful witch simply… awakened it.”
“Who?” Ala says. “Why?”
Niko looks at Dymitr as if pleading with him, and Dymitr feels compelled to make his own confession, to finally release himself from the lie that’s stood between them from the start of all this less than twenty-four hours ago—
And then an arrow hits the streetlight above them, shattering it so glass rains down on the sidewalk, right next to Ala.
Dymitr has his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other before he draws his next breath. He steps in front of Niko, his back to the car, searching out the source of the arrow. But the moon is hidden behind the clouds, and the streetlight is out, and all the houses along this quiet side street are dark. The glow of Broadway on his left casts long, strange shadows.
He can hear something drawing nearer. Something with heavy, dragging footsteps. No—many somethings, somethings that stoop over the puddle of rainwater to suck it into their mouths, somethings that snort and paw at each other. Pale, hairless things that glow in the faint moonlight.
Upiór. A horde of them.
Most of the quasi-mortal beings of his home country have been called vampires at one point or another. For the upiór, the term is perhaps the closest to being accurate—but they aren’t similar to zmory, or strzygi, or even wraiths. In cities they gravitate toward each other, driven by the same need to drink and content to share food sources as long as there’s enough to go around. They’re creatures of mindless thirst, his grandmother once told him, easy to kill because they’re stupid and hard to kill because they keep coming and coming.
And coming.
They’re skinny, ungainly creatures, their arms and legs too long for their bodies, their eyes as milky white as their skin. They have long, sharp teeth that stick out from their lips, not lining up quite enough to fit into their mouths. The only sound they make is a loud hissing that reminds Dymitr of a video he saw once of a Madagascar cockroach, recoiling at the jab of a man’s finger.
Beside him, Niko shifts, his face morphing into the fierce, inquisitive owl’s, his round eyes still the same bright amber. Wings explode from his back, bypassing his clothing by magic, and his trim fingernails grow into claws.
Ala is the first to move. She steps toward the advancing upiór, and she relies on a familiar trick: a dozen copies of her fan out from the toe of her shoe, illusions that seem to confuse the horde. They tumble into each other, confused by the disconnect between their snorting noses and their eyes. Then Ala grabs one and digs her thumbs into its eyes. It’s more fragile than a human would be; her fingers pierce its flesh like it’s a peach. Dark blood gushes over her fingers and rolls down the backs of her hands. The upiór screeches and lashes out, not at Ala, but at one of the other vampires; the two topple to the street, streaked dark red with blood. They scratch and claw and bite at each other.
Niko and Dymitr move at the same time. With a powerful beat of his wings, Niko rises into the air just enough to stab down at an advancing upiór’s chest. Dymitr lets an arrow fly at the one closest to him; it strikes the creature’s throat, and it lets out a horrible scream. Dymitr backs up against the Jeep and nocks another arrow and fires again, in one movement. This time he only hits one in the leg, and it keeps coming, clawed hands outstretched.
It’s too close now to fire. Dymitr takes an arrow in hand, instead, and stabs at its neck. He hits the juncture of neck and shoulder—not enough to stop it. The upiór’s hands close around his throat. Dymitr twists and thrashes, but upiór are strong, and they don’t feel pain.
Inspiration strikes, and Dymitr goes limp, letting the creature bear all of his weight at once. Startled, its grip slips, and Dymitr rolls under the Jeep, where its bulk keeps the upiór from following him. Little bits of gravel and glasscling to his palms as he army-crawls beneath the Jeep to get to the other side. He needs more distance if he’s going to use his bow and arrow.
