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And then I’m there, slamming into the cobbles in front of the church.
All around me, screams erupt. Of course they do. I forgot to step into shadow before I left. Even if I had, I’m not sure I could have kept it while stepping through whatever portal I just traveled through. I leap to my feet, immediately cloaking myself as I flee the square and the humans who have startled back like scattering birds.
I cannot worry about them and immediately lift my nose as I begin to run. I may not look as animal as my leonine brother, but I have the nose of a bloodhound. A supernatural bloodhound.
I’m disoriented as I spin this way and that in a city that is far larger and busier than I last remember. Horseless carriages spit black smoke, clogging the streets. St. Nicholas’s Cathedral is still there, but all around it are buildings so tall I can barely see the sky.
How am I to find my Ksenia in all this madness? What if I fail her as I did Layden all those years ago? Impotent to help when she needs me?
I stumble backward, overwhelmed by one smell after another.
Ksenia, my heart cries, my hands lifting to my head as I spin around uselessly again. Where are you?
There’s nothing to do but commit to one direction and see if I can catch her scent. So I do. I start running as fast as I can, inhaling deeply as I go.
The assault on my senses doesn’t get better, and I cough, choking on the foul emissions from the human’s machines. I understand more clearly why my ancestors deserted this plane. But I cannot let my desperation get the better of me. And it’s a little better once I get to a smaller street where it’s quieter.
Right as I sprint down the crowded sidewalk, an invisible phantom knocking into humans here and there who I cannot be careful enough to avoid, suddenly I catch not a scent, but a feeling, that stops me cold.
I feel a tugging.
A tugging from beneath my ribs, and I stop in my tracks, eyes wide.
Is that—?
I’ve only ever had this feeling described to me by souls in the bright heavenly plane when I asked once how they knew to congregate with others who had been their family on Earth. They described it as a string that’s tied beneath their lowermost rib, tugging them toward their own.
This is what I feel now, in the center of this mad city, pulling me in the opposite direction I have been running. I certainly never imagined one could feel it in this plane, but I don’t question.
I turn on my heel and sprint the other direction, trying to close out all else except the sensation of the delicate pull.
If I feel the tugging, does that mean she is still here? That I’m not too late?
I sprint faster, knuckles to the sidewalk as I speed towards my beloved. Not long later, I finally catch her scent in the air, and my heart both lightens and begins to speed up. She is near.
I’m still in the thick of the city, but it is quieter, block after block of uniform buildings with horseless carriages parked out front in neat little lines.
Her scent becomes stronger and stronger until I locate—she must be there! I race up the stairs of an apartment, hearing gunfire explode from within right before I burst through the door.
“Ksenia!” I roar, smashing through the wood and entering a warzone.
I step through just in time to see Ksenia’s hair flying as she flips over the edge of the bed, her uncle’s lifeless body dropping in her place with one of her favorite knives embedded in his throat. He has several more gunshots in his back as if she used him for a shield while making her escape to the other side of the bed.
Two of her uncle’s men are still firing in her direction. With a roar, I stampede them, tearing the guns out of their hands and smashing them with my other fists until they stop moving.
“Ksenia!” I say, turning around once I’m sure they won’t be getting back up again. My eyes widen as I see her stand up from the other side of the bed, a fresh blade in hand. She’s drenched in blood, like the first time I met her, and never more beautiful.
“You came,” she says.
But I’m speechless as I step out of shadow because beneath the overwhelming scent of blood and expelled gunpower is another scent shining through.
My consort is with kit.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
KSENIA
I run over to Kharon, everything still feeling dreamlike. But the blood dripping from my face and staining his blue skin seems real enough. As did my Uncle Pavel’s shocked face five minutes earlier when I yanked my favorite knife out from underneath my pillow, shoved it upwards into his throat, and twisted.
