“I’m sorry, Zaniel, I’m so sorry,” she said, voice hoarse. I couldn’t tell if it was from screaming or emotion.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Kate, not for anything. I’m just sorry that I couldn’t have gotten you out of the room sooner.” It was my turn to look away; I didn’t want to see her looking so fragile, knowing that if I’d only gotten her free sooner . . . Heaven help me, Heaven help her, because we were both going to need it after today.
“I was the one who hurt you, so I should be the one who’s sorry,” she said.
That made me look at her again. She was looking straight at me now, her brown eyes staring up at me through the tangle of her hair. So she looked like a frightened little girl and then her eyes filled up with . . . her, I guess, and suddenly I knew she was no child, no teenager, because you had to be older than that to have a force of personality like that in your eyes. Something eased in my chest and I didn’t feel like a dirty thirty-year-old guy who was hitting on teenagers at the mall. Men like that had creeped me out when I was a teenager; my opinion of them had never changed. I didn’t always know what kind of man I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew not that.
“You’re stronger than you look,” I said, trying to make it light.
“It wasn’t human strength that cut your arm.”
I looked at her, not sure what to say. I tried for light again. “Is there something I should know?” I even smiled, but she didn’t smile back.
“My ancestors are originally from Russia.”
“I’m an all-American mongrel, maybe a little extra Irish thrown into the mix,” I said, and again I smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but she wasn’t going to let me lighten anything.
She stared up at me through that tangle of hair with those big, dark eyes. The strength and fire of her seemed to be burning deep in them, as if brown eyes could be flame. “Do you know any Russian folktales, Zaniel?”
I shook my head.
“Do you know who Baba Yaga was?”
“She was the crone witch, the original wicked witch that lured children to be eaten, right?”
“Some of that’s true. Baba Yaga did take bad children away to cook and eat them, or maybe she adopted them and raised them as her own and taught them her magic, or maybe she captured someone’s child and a father petitioned her to save his family, or maybe he wanted treasure, or a question answered badly enough to risk the Baba’s magic and trickery, because make no mistake if you give her a chance to trick you, she will and if she wins, you die. That part is very, very true.”
I didn’t know why I was getting the CliffsNotes about the Russian bogeyman—sorry, woman—but I didn’t interrupt her. She was too earnest, and her eyes through her hair seemed like the eyes of an animal that you just glimpse through the leaves. I fought the urge to shiver as she continued.
“What we do know is that my great-great-great-grandfather slept with the Baba Yaga and not only survived to tell the tale but had good luck from that time forward. Any business he started prospered, any bet he made he won, it was like all the fates were on his side until the day he died at a hundred and three.”
“Good genetics,” I said.
She stared up at me with those feral eyes, lost in the wilderness of her own hair, and said, “The Baba would have kept a girl child, but it was a boy and she laid it on his doorstep one night for him to raise. That was my great-great-grandfather who had a son who became my great-grandfather who had a son . . .”
“So, you’re saying that your great-great-great-grandmother was the Baba Yaga?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, and she looked at me as if waiting for me to be angry, or disgusted, or something negative. Her eyes almost dared me to say something bad.
I smiled at her. “Glad you didn’t inherit her iron fingernails; you’d have done a lot more damage.”
“That’s exactly what I inherited,” she said.
I frowned at her. “I’d have noticed that, Kate. Your nails may be harder than normal, but they aren’t iron.”
“They were before I came here to have a magic therapy that one of their specialists created to help make me more human.”
“Not just iron fingernails, then?” I asked.
She shook her head so that her hair fell around her face and finally slid to one side like a curtain to show her pale face with those golden freckles across her nose and cheeks. If I’d had to guess her heritage, I’d have thought Irish, or Scottish.
“Do you want to tell me what else the therapy was supposed to change?” I asked, voice soft.
“No,” she whispered.
“Then you don’t have to tell me.”
“If I hadn’t had the therapy to change my nails and teeth to something more human, I could have fought the demon off myself. I was stronger than a human woman my size, but I had to give the strength up to lose the nails and teeth. I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be a monster anymore, but today a monster could have fought that thing off me. I’d have had the strength to help you open that door. It wouldn’t have put anything inside me. I could have saved myself, damn it! But I wanted to be like everyone else, to have a normal life.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting that, Kate.”
“You see the irony, though, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I see it,” I said.
“I wouldn’t have needed you to save me, I could have saved myself, and instead I’m like everyone else, a victim, like everyone else.”
She started to cry then, and I tried to find something to say that would help, or make any of it better, but thankfully Hazel came and saved us both.
Hazel mouthed, Thank you, and then she showed me the door. There was a new doctor coming through as I left. This one was a woman. I guessed that was better than a male doctor, if anything would have made any of this day better for the Baba Yaga’s great-great-great-granddaughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I was relieved to go back to the hallway and talk about demons and angels or anything but what had happened to Kate and what was about to happen. She wasn’t the first victim that I hadn’t been in time to save who needed a rape kit, but I always prayed that it would be my last time, that from this point on I would save them all, save everyone. I knew better, knew it was impossible to save everyone, but there was part of me that still agreed with my twenty-something self that we should be able to do it. Younger me might have waited in the hallway as if that helped, but me now . . . I’d have rather wrestled another demon than had to stay in the room and hold her hand during it, even if it would have been appropriate.
The crime scene techs filled the hallway; they were all dressed in full plastic gear. It wasn’t hazmat gear with its own oxygen, but it was close. They looked like something out of a science fiction movie and I suddenly felt underdressed.
I looked at Charleston. “Is there something I should know? Why are they all wrapped up like it’s contagious?”
“This is the new protocol for all the medical examiner’s staff on a case with unknown supernatural elements, according to the techs. The ones who are straight normal had a few issues with magical evidence, so now everyone must wear the gear on supernatural crime scenes regardless of whether they’re norm or magic.”