All translations in this chapter were done by Em (objectiveheartmuscle).
Valya was dead on her feet after the journey from Vancouver to Balandino Airport in Chelyabinsk. It was the closest airport to their main destination: a small village high in the mountains near the border to Kazakhstan. They'd been traveling for almost thirty hours straight, with an eight hour layover in Moscow during the middle of the night. Valya had snored on Hershey's shoulder for most of it, with Hershey choosing to sleep on top of Jasper. She swore she heard Rose snap pictures.
"Welcome to Rokin," Rose said as she opened the door of the rental car.
To call Rokin a small village was generous; it was more of a pit-stop on the way to Kazakhstan. There was only one paved road, with a post office, corner store, cafe, and a small community center. Everything in Rokin was edged by towering trees. While they were already rather high up in the mountains, they could still see even larger peaks in the distance. It was like being transported into another world.
"We're meeting our host here, then unpacking our things in preparation for a round of patrolling tonight," Rose said. "We want to get a lay of the land. Cadet Belikova, Specialist Mora, you have the first patrol shift."
"Yes, General," Jasper and Valya chimed in varying degrees of enthusiasm.
"The sun will only just have set, so you'll be fine. Not a lot of Strigoi get up that early. Although," Rose looked around at the density of the trees. "You'll have to tread carefully."
Jasper and Valya exchanged a look of exhaustion. They were more ready for a nap than they were patrolling the woods surrounding Rokin for hours.
The oddest thing about Rokin was that even though it was late afternoon and the sun was still hanging at the edge of the horizon, there was no one out on the street or in the shops. Valya rubbed her sleeve against the window of the cafe and noticed the hours for the day.
Tuesday: 8am - 2pm.
Sunset wasn't for another hour at the least, and even then it was only four in the afternoon.
"This place has a weird feeling to it," Hershey said in a voice just above a whisper.
Valya bit her lip as she inspected the cafe through the windows. It looked like people hadn't been there in months. "Yeah. I agree."
"I hope we're not here long," Hershey added. "I don't think there's much in the way of wifi here."
Valya chuckled. "No Instagram updates, then."
"Like we'd even be allowed to make an Instagram account," Hershey replied. "I'm worried about getting my data back to Corinth. If the hard drives get damaged, there's no way to save them."
"We better make sure they aren't damaged, then," Valya said with conviction. She looked Hershey in the eyes and nodded. "As creepy as this place might be, we've got your back."
Hershey smiled. "Just make sure my brother doesn't die tonight?"
"That I can promise."
An old truck pulled up beside the rental car Rose had gotten from the airport in Chelyabinsk. It was yellow, with peeling paint and rust stains. A middle-aged woman exited the driver's seat and shook hands with Rose. They spoke Russian in hushed tones.
"Team," Rose said. "This is Ekaterina Omarova, our host for the mission. Her house is just over the ridge. We're going to follow her on foot for now, so take your gear."
Valya wondered absentmindedly why they'd even gotten the rental car in the first place, but she knew that the host family probably didn't want to draw a lot of attention to her house, and one way to do that was to have a massive black SUV parked directly outside. She couldn't think of what a house in the village of Rokin would look like; images of the cottage from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves came to mind. It was offensive, that much was true. Valya definitely needed to get out more.
"Privyet," Valya said to Ekaterina. She continued in Russian, "Thank you for letting us stay in your home."
"It is my pleasure," Ekaterina said with a smile that, while hard, held warmth. "We want it gone."
Valya took her pack out of the back of the car and furrowed her eyebrows. "It?"
Ekaterina nodded, but didn't say anything. The emphasis on the dehumanization of whatever was terrorizing the surrounding forests of Rokin seemed to be a sore subject. Rose was right; the townspeople were superstitious, and superstition often encouraged silence as well. Valya decided she needed to talk to the townspeople to get information, but that was under Gin's job description, not hers.
The team followed Ekaterina through a packed dirt road lined with irregularly-shaped stones. The air smelled of a late spring and rotting vegetation, a slight breeze rustling through the leaves of the treas like whispers. The back of Valya's neck prickled; they might not have been watching the forest, but the forest was watching back.
Ekaterina's house wasn't far from the town center and was set back into the trees like an animal lying in wait. The house was one story tall, with dull red shutters standing guard on either side of long, dark windows scratched with dust. At first glance, the house appeared abandoned but like everything in Rokin, it too had a spirit. Valya shivered uneasily in the cool air.
The hills have eyes indeed, she thought.
Ekaterina took a set of keys from the chain around her neck. The dark silver keys clinked lightly as they unlocked not one, not two, but four locks on the front door.
"Medvedi," Ekaterina explained in Russian.
No bears Valya knew could unlock front doors. She exchanged a glance with Rose, who said nothing.
Inside, the house was cozy and looked lived-in, if a bit dark and dusty. Valya wandered through the small foyer, her bag on her shoulder, as the rest of the team made for the stairs to the basement. Pictures of a happy family lined the walls of the hallway: a younger Ekaterina with a man (her husband, Valya presumed), and a small girl. The photo looked to be around a decade old.
"Coming?" Hershey's quiet whisper came from the top of the stairs.
Valya nodded and tore her gaze away from the photographs, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. The stairs creaked as she descended into the basement, an equally as dusty place, but with significantly more space.
"Cadet Belikova, would you care to translate for the team?" Rose asked with a pointed look at Valya.
This is your chance to be useful, is what her dark eyes said to her daughter. Take advantage of the opportunities you're given.
Valya cleared her throat and stood next to Ekaterina, prepared to translate anything she said into English.
"Zdravstvuyte. Dobro pozhalovat' v moy dom.," Ekaterina began. "Vi budete zheet' v podvale, no rasreshaete v glavnom dome v lyuboy moment."
"She wants to welcome us here," Valya said, the act of live translation still a bit rusty at the moment. Ekaterina smiled at her. "And we can go upstairs at any time, but we'll be staying in the basement."
"Pozhaluysta, vvodite cherez zadnyuyu dver' tak chto moya doch' spokoynoe," Ekaterina continued. "Ona spala bi v nachale dnya."
"We should use the back door to come back because her daughter..." Valya furrowed her eyebrows and spoke quiety with Ekaterina in Russian. "Her daughter... keeps odd hours. She goes to sleep very early."
Ekaterina nodded. "Ne skazhite c moey docher'yu o svoey missii. He privlekaet yeyo voobshche."
"We can't talk to her daughter about the mission," Valya bit her lip and looked at Ekaterina out of the corner of her eye. "She can't be involved in what we're doing."
"Yesli vi prinosite yego v moy dom, ya budu ub'yu vas vsekh v pervuyu ochered'." Ekaterina stared at them with a stone-faced sincerity that transcended language barriers. Jasper nearly flinched, but Rose nodded, her face grim. "Obed budet v shest' chasov."
"She'll kill us if we bring the Strigoi killer back here," Valya translated. "And dinner's at six o'clock."
"No daughter, be quiet, dinner. Got it," Pollock parroted. "Now, let's get to work."
"Spasibo," Rose said to Ekaterina. The older woman smiled and shook Rose's hand. She looked at Valya knowingly before ascending the basement stairs.
"She's an odd one," Valya said in an aside to Rose.
"She's a valued contact, you mean," Rose corrected. "Strange doesn't mean bad, Valya. She'll be able to help us as much as we help her."
The bags of equipment went on the floor in a circle as the team began to set up a makeshift home base. Because they were staying in Rokin for a projected six weeks, they needed to create a stable workspace first or the crucial first pieces of data would be lost in the flood that happened later. Studies that were this long usually only revealed the bigger picture after it was all over, and did Valya want it to be over already.
She helped Hershey clear off the desk in the corner and begin setting up computer equipment used to track Strigoi activity. Valya knew that most of her patrol shift with Jasper would be out placing sensors in the forest and nearby hills: a tedious process that was invaluable as a first alert system in the case of an attack, but mind-numbingly boring for the those who had to cover the miles it would take to properly map out the area.
"Think we'll find anything?" Valya asked as she placed a plug converter on the computer cord.
"Let's hope so." Hershey adjusted the monitors. "It'd make living here a bit easier."
Valya shrugged. "I don't get out much, so this is just an excuse to work on my tan."
Hershey raised an eyebrow. "I don't think the famous Russian sunlight is going to help you there."
Valya glanced back towards her mother, who was speaking in hushed tones to Gin and Pollock in a corner of the room. Pollock clenched his fists, but pulled them behind his back to calm himself. Gin, conversely, seemed to agree with whatever Rose was saying. She glanced over and locked eyes with Valya for a moment. There, Valya saw a glimmer of something, a secret held in Gin's eyes.
A quiet voice in the back of her head told Valya that this was only the beginning of the secrets.
They had barely finished setting up Ekaterina's basement when Jasper and Valya had to go on patrol. Armed with stakes and hundreds of tiny motion sensors, they set out into the woods.
The trees blocked out any trace of sunlight that was left in the sky, plunging them into total darkness. Valya was familiar with this sort of feeling- the woods surrounding Corinth in the Canadian wilderness were similar, but these trees felt odder, colder. She chided herself for thinking that; of course the forest was different. It was Russian, not Corinth.
"What do you think so far?" Jasper asked. He placed one of the sensors on the ground and covered the small silver disk with a layer of earth.
"About what?" Valya asked as she did the same a few yards away from him.
"This is your first international mission, right?" he asked with a distracted nonchalance. "What do you think about getting out of Corinth for once?"
"I'd rather not be here because of nepotism," Valya snorted. "Other than that, it's fine. The fresh air is appreciated."
Jasper chuckled. "You're not here because of nepotism, trust me. If anyone is, it's me."
Valya shot him a confused look, but continued setting sensors in the ground. They'd made a good amount of headway between Ekaterina's house and the town center.
"Have you ever noticed that where Hershey goes, I go?" Jasper asked her.
Valya shrugged. "I just thought you worked well together."
"Hershey works well. I work... mediocrely." He clenched his jaw, then loosened it, as if remembering he needed to have a calmer temperament. "They make sure to add skilled fighters to the mission, ones that don't usually get hurt."
"Who told you that?" Valya asked.
"Colonel Hollis," Jasper replied.
"Ouch."
"Yeah, ouch."
Valya reached into the pack over her shoulder for two new sensors. "Well, if it's any consolation, I tend to get hurt a lot."
Jasper laughed, the sound odd and hollow in the dense wilderness. "The sentiment is appreciated."
A twig snapped in the distance and they both reached for their stakes in record time. Jasper and Valya went back to back, weapons at the ready.
"Do you see anything?" Valya hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
"No." Jasper's voice was tinged with fear. "We really need flashlights out here."
"No chance," Valya said. "They'd draw too much attention."
Jasper didn't reply as they continued to scan the trees. After a few minutes when nothing appeared, they relaxed and stowed their stakes.
"We're almost near town," Jasper said. "We should make a perimeter, then head towards the other mountain where two of the attacks took place."
Valya nodded. "Good idea."
As they turned to go, a shape darted out of the dark treeline. Valya caught a glimpse of bright red eyes and went for her stake. The bag of motion sensors hit the ground, spilling hundreds of small silver discs on the forest floor. The Strigoi went for Jasper first, and Valya swiped at it, missing its head by an inch.
"Get down!" she shouted to Jasper.
He ducked and rolled away from the Strigoi, giving Valya an opening. She grabbed the Strigoi by the hair and tugged its head back hard. Jasper managed to slash it across the neck with his stake. It emitted a shriek of pain through the night air.
Valya used the Strigoi's distraction to flip it around and shove her stake up through the ribs. She felt the silver tip pierce its heart and the Strigoi struggled, finally going limp only moments later.
The Strigoi slumped onto her. "Shit. Help me move him."
She and Jasper moved the body behind a tree. Valya placed the heel of her boot on the Strigoi's chest and yanked the stake out of its body.
"Fuck," Jasper said. He nudged the body with his toe. "Ten minutes here and we've already got a kill."
Valya set her mouth into a hard line. Her hands were trembling as she cleaned off her stake on the thigh of her jeans, but squared her shoulders when she talked to Jasper. "One less bastard to worry about."
"I guess." Jasper stared at the body for a moment, then took out his phone and began recording a video. "Strigoi kill, classification two. Carried out by Specialist Mora and Cadet Belikova. Kill shot: Cadet Belikova. Weapon: stake. Time of kill: 6:23pm."
Valya looked at the dead Strigoi with apprehension. Where there was one, there were ten more. She stepped over the spilled sensors and began putting them back in the bag.
"You ready to go?" She asked Jasper.
"Yeah. I'm just going to send it to Stasla real quick." A notification came back a moment later. Jasper chuckled and glanced at Valya. "She says good job, especially to you."
Valya smiled despite herself. She stood and slung her bag over one shoulder. "All in a night's work."
Valya and Jasper arrived back at Ekaterina's cottage near midnight. There hadn't been any more excitement as they mapped out the first few square miles of Rokin, but they both still felt on edge. Jasper made a beeline for the basement stairs, intent on sleeping for as long as he could, while Valya went to the kitchen.
She opened the first few cupboards, but there was nothing but glasses and an endless stack of plates. Her stomach grumbled audibly.
"Shut up," she muttered. A door opened behind her, causing her to jump.
A girl no older than fifteen entered the kitchen. She was dressed in a long, handsewn skirt and a top three times too large for her waifish frame. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and Valya spotted a faded blue ribbon in her bright blonde hair. She had to be Emiliya, Ekaterina's daughter from the photographs. She looked like a ghost.
"Mama doesn't keep them in there," she said in Russian, her voice barely above a whisper. Emiliya reached past Valya and into a cupboard filled with mismatched crockery. She emerged triumphant with a box of shortbread cookies coated in chocolate. With a light giggle, she pulled one out and handed it to Valya. "Here."
Valya took the cookie. "Thank you."
Emiliya smiled knowingly and ate one as well, then put the box back behind a stack of unused, dusty cups. "You will find it."
"What?" Valya furrowed her eyebrows.
"What you're looking for." Emiliya touched a finger to Valya's heart, then made for the door back to the hallway.
"Good night," Valya called out after her.
Emiliya paused at the doorway and turned to face Valya again. "Is it?"
She disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.
A week passed in Rokin with barely any sign of Strigoi or the creature causing the attacks that had brought the team there. They'd completed mapping out a majority of the area with sensors, but uninhabited places like the mountain's peak and the nearby caves lay unexplored. Valya came to know Ekaterina well, but her enigmatic daughter stayed in her room and away from the team. Gin had attempted to interview a few citizens of the town, including family members of past victims, but doors shut in her face more often than they were opened. She'd asked Valya to come along to the interviews in the hopes that a nice, young Russian girl would ease their fears.
"Well that was a complete waste of time," Valya said as she flopped down onto the overstuffed couch in the sitting room.
"Not quite," Gin said. She took out her tape recorder and placed it in her pocket. "We know that they don't know anything about the vampire world. That's useful."
Valya shrugged, exhausted from having to translate in-person for a good portion of the day. "Not knowing is worse. If we could just-"
Gin cut her off with a swift shushing noise and indicated towards the basement door with her chin. Valya raised an eyebrow, but stood anyway and tip-toed towards the stairs with Gin. They pressed their ears to the rough-hewn wood. Valya could just barely make out two voices that were shouting at each other.
"You aren't being fair to the team," said one voice. "Withholding information-"
Pollock? Valya mouthed to Gin.
"Withholding?" The other voice was icy. "The information I know isn't available to the public. It's a secret for the greater good."
Gin nodded, then mouthed back: And Stasla.
"How can you even talk about the greater good?" Pollock shot back. "We're in the middle of nowhere trying to make sure Strigoi aren't picked off one by one by some ghost. The Pennsylvania mission was a mistake."
"The Pennsylvania mission is the reason we're all going to stay alive, Pollock," Rose retorted. "All you have to do is shut up and do your job. Can you handle that?"
"I don't even know what my job is anymore. You-"
Valya leaned too hard on the door and the latch made a noise as it slid closed.
"Someone's up there," Rose said. "We'll finish this conversation later."
Valya kept her ear on the door as long as she could to hear Pollock's reaction, but was dragged away from the door by Gin. They busied themselves with Gin's recording equipment and began chatting loudly.
"We sure got some information from that interview, didn't we?" Valya said, her voice loud and stilted.
Gin shot Valya a glare, then played along. "Yeah, we even might have a few new leads."
The basement door swung open and Rose entered the sitting room with a glance at the pair.
"What's this about new leads?" she asked. She had her hands stuffed into her pockets as if she didn't know what to do with them.
Gin and Valya exchanged a look of worry. They were both terrible at improvisation.
"The caves!" Valya said, her voice reaching an unnaturally high pitch. "We think there might be something at the caves. They're an ideal place for Strigoi to hide out, but we haven't seen any when we patrol past them."
"No caves," Rose shot the idea down quickly. "It's an easy place to get trapped and killed. We don't know how many Strigoi might live there."
"Right." Valya's tone was uneven. "We should put some sensors near the entrance though, right?"
"I said, no caves, Valya," Rose repeated. "That means, no caves."
Valya raised her eyebrows and looked at Gin with an uneasy expression. From the argument they eavesdropped on to her mother's demeanor now, something was definitely up.
She nodded. "No caves, then. We'll go back to patrolling the mountain peak."
"Good idea." Rose seemed distracted. She made for the door. "Remember, there's no patrol tonight. Enjoy your night off."
"Will you be there, Stasla?" Gin asked. "We thought of making s'mores."
Rose smiled and shook her head. "No, I'll be taking care of some business in town. Enjoy your s'mores."
She left the house, but the uneasy feeling lingered.
"Coming in hot!" Valya shouted as she plopped down next to Jasper on the makeshift bench they'd cut from the trunk of a fallen log. She threw down a bag from the corner store. "We've got all of the essentials. Well, most of them. I found some chocolate, but it's this weird dark stuff, so we'll see how that goes. There also weren't graham crackers, but I did find what amounts to shortbread in this country. And lastly, there were no marshmallows, but someone had the foresight to bring those from home."
She pulled a package of jumbo Jett Puff from her backpack with a wicked grin. "Have at it, kiddos."
"Don't call me a kiddo," Pollock said dryly. He snatched the marshmallows and opened them, taking two. "But good idea, brat."
Valya gasped dramatically. She pressed her hand to her forehead like a Southern belle. "Did everyone hear that? Did Liam Pollock actually pay little ol' me a compliment? Oh, happy day! I could die right now."
Pollock rolled his eyes. He pressed his two marshmallows onto a stick. "Don't count on me doing it again."
Gin snickered behind her hand and winked at Pollock when he saw her. They sat together on a log opposite Valya and jostled for room to roast their marshmallows like teenagers.
"Hey medic," Pollock shouted to Jasper. "Think you can stoke this fire a bit?"
Jasper shrugged and held out his hand. Flames poured from his fingertips towards the fire, the wood crackling cheerily in the darkness. It momentarily grew a bit too big and Hershey intervened, using her affinity for air to calm it down.
"Want one?" Valya held the bag out to Hershey. She took a marshmallow with a quick smile and began hunting for a stick on the ground to roast it on.
"This was a good idea, Valya," Jasper said. He stuck his marshmallow directly into the fire and it quickly turned black. "Let's just hope the fire doesn't attract any attention."
"And even if it does, there's five highly-trained Strigoi killers here waiting to give them what they've got coming," Valya said. "They don't stand a chance."
Jasper chuckled. "You've got that right. Will Stasla be joining us?"
Gin shook her head. "She said she had something to attend to in town. I'm not sure what."
"She's been acting strange lately." Jasper's glance slipped to Valya. "Anyone know why?"
Valya shrugged. "She's a weird lady. I would know: I've had to live with her my entire life. Did you know she tattoos her molnija marks herself?"
"Really?" Jasper asked. "That's a Court thing, not a Corinth thing."
"She gets Pops to do it if she can't reach the spot," Valya said. "Her entire back is filled with them now. She says it keeps her focused on the goal, that she won't stop until her entire body is covered in molnijas."
"She's a good egg, your mom," Pollock said.
"Yeah," Valya sighed. Her head shot up a second later. "Wait, was that the second nice thing you've said in my presence? Oh, you love me now, I can tell. Don't deny it, Pollock."
Pollock leveled a glare at her.
She sprang from her seat and walked around the fire to wrap her arms around his neck. She began singing, "You really like me... You want to hug me, kiss me and marry me!"
He extricated himself from her arms, a begrudging fondness for Valya developing despite his own misgivings. "You touch me again and I will murder you in your sleep, Belikova."
"No, you won't." Valya flounced back to her seat with a grin on her face. She picked up her stick for her marshmallow and stuck her tongue out at Pollock.
He growled.
"Let's all put our differences aside tonight and focus on a common goal," Gin said diplomatically. "Eating sugar."
"Hear, hear." Jasper raised his stick, the roasted marshmallow on the end a dark, flaky black.
They sat in companionable silence as the fire crackled happily and chocolate melted in their s'mores. A light column of smoke rose above the trees and drifted up into the stars that were scattered across the night sky. They laughed and smiled, bantered and argued, until the sun rose over the peak of the mountain. They enjoyed themselves until sleep couldn't be warded off any longer, and then they returned home. It would take another day for them to figure out what had gone wrong that night.
Rose Hathaway had been murdered.