Волк у двери (Wolf At The Door) Chapter 2
Chapter Two
She was alone now, but not in the literal sense of the word.
At least, the conspicuously placed security camera right above the door gave that impression.
Julia sat in the office chair, stared blankly at the wall for an unknown length of time. The room was cold and quiet, save the hum of the computer in one corner that probably could’ve used an upgrade.
She shivered again-against her bare feet the white linoleum was freezing-and tucked her legs up underneath her on the chair. She was small enough to do at least that much.
For the first time since she’d awakened that night, she was finally able to take stock of her situation. For starters, what she remembered was coming out of a very vivid dream.
Then, they were all vivid, those particular dreams…the ones where she ran on four legs and sniffed at the earth like a dog with her belly low to the ground, where she hunted small furry things and rummaged trashcans at times, lapped at stray puddles when she was thirsty and sometimes moaned or wailed like she was in pain when she was in fact not.
In the dreams she was always running, and that was the biggest thing. With time she would wonder to herself why she was running, and, if so, who or what she was running to or from.
And sometimes in the dreams she would be following invisible trails on the ground, but on occasion they were not invisible at all but like small rivers, made of all the colors of the rainbow. And in her dreams she would feel out these ‘trails’ with her nose and sometimes she would be suddenly overwhelmed with joy, or sorrow, or pain, or rage, or even lust.
When the dreams ended she would find herself back in her apartment, but not always in bed. She had been planning to see someone about this odd new habit of sleepwalking she’d picked up over the past two or three months, but with relocating to Moscow for teaching she simply hadn’t found the time, in between the moving and the unpacking, to find a decent GP.
And now here she was, with the dreams getting worse and lasting longer, and the sleepwalking clearly intensifying to the point she’d awakened to find herself in some alley somewhere, and naked, no less, with a strange man standing over her trying to convince her whatever had taken place whilst she was unconscious was perfectly rational.
This was not her idea of a good night.
Not at all.
Who were these people?
The stranger who had found her-and at the thought of him she struggled to put the name with the face; she knew the Russian language well enough but was still familiarizing herself with common Russian names…Artem, was it? No, Anton…-that Anton fellow had somehow sent for a car to come pick them up.
It was a nice car, so that meant either these men had money and were in a position of power, or they were a part of the Russian Mafia and had something in store for her.
And for some reason, maybe out of sheer weariness, she went right along with it. That part still didn’t make sense to her. Julia was a no-nonsense woman. There’d be no way she’d happily get into a car with total strangers, especially not in a foreign country. And especially not with someone who was telling her not to be worried about waking up finding herself naked in an alley.
They brought her to an unmarked building where a woman swept her up and Julia, despite the goings-on, felt instantly relieved. The woman introduced herself as Katya, and the very matter-of-fact way she presented things seemed to magically rationalize Julia’s terror, almost as if her presence rubbed a soothing balm over the burning truth of things.
But now Katya had left her here, and without the woman’s calming presence a slow wave of panic was setting in. A panic that brought her thoughts from the back-burner of advanced shock and into the forefront of concern.
What was she doing here?
Her left arm suddenly stung and she vaguely recalled that they’d drawn her blood. Some sort of blood test. What were they performing blood tests on her for? Julia was fit as a fiddle, as far as she knew. Granted, she didn’t exercise regularly, go to a gym or anything, but she was careful to avoid too many drinks out with friends. She didn’t smoke, either, though perhaps being from a very newly health-conscious country and moving to one where many old habits seemed to still be holding sway didn’t deter her any.
She stared up at the round-faced clock on the wall. Its hand moved slowly, even for counting out seconds.
Four-fifteen. Was it still early morning? Her mind wondered. Or perhaps had she lost track of time so totally that she’d lost an entire day in this place?
Two days? Maybe.
Anything seemed plausible right now.
Julia rubbed her arm, pulling the sleeve of the odd white t-shirt that was clearly not her shirt down over it, and quickly appraised herself. They were letting her borrow some clothes. That was kind of them. She wanted very badly then to be back in her own clothes, in her own apartment, miles away from this waking nightmare.
She got to her feet, and her legs felt like rubber, like maybe she hadn’t used them for a while. As soon as she felt she could manage it she moved for the door, opened it and crept cautiously out into the hallway. The floor here was easily as cold as the floor in the previous room, but she kept moving.
She felt not unlike a child in these borrowed clothes that sagged on her and her bare feet making little pattering noises on the linoleum. Like a child on Christmas Eve sneaking downstairs when everyone else in the house is asleep to risk the chance to open a present…
She wanted to find the way out. She could see to a phone, at least, call a co-worker and friend in the area, Ania Borsegova. Ania was a native to Moscow and a teacher like herself up at the University. She’d at least have a better idea of the lay of the area, maybe could come meet her at a metro station somewhere…
Lost in her thoughts, Julia wandered down a flight of stairs onto the next level, which was looking far more like an office building and less like some sort of hospital wing. This held little comfort to her, however, as she suddenly heard the approach of quick footsteps ascending the flight of stairs leading up to this level.
Panicked, she ducked into a dark room off to her left and slid the door closed as gingerly as she could manage.
The footsteps got louder.
She held her breath.
The footsteps passed.
Finally exhaling, she tried to let her eyes adjust to the room around her. Though she couldn’t see much, she could feel that the room was warmer.
Shooting a glance back to the door where a thin line of light managed its way through the space beneath it, she decided to wait it out here for a while rather than risking her chances of escape.
Shaking, she edged forward into the dark. She could barely make out a table and the large rectangular shapes of what could only be beds in the oppressive blackness, and made for the nearest bed.
Without warning she instantly felt a wave of fatigue wash over her, as if someone had been waiting behind her to toss a blanket over her head.
The bed, less than a foot away, was inviting enough to her weary state of mind that she decided to herself, ‘Just a few minutes won’t do any harm…’ before climbing in and throwing the blanket over herself entirely.
And this time she did not have a vivid dream, or even dream at all.
--------------------
I opened my eyes, and it was as if I had just awakened from some thousand year slumber, that is how heavy my eyelids were.
Gazing stupidly out the window a moment at the bleary winter morning that had firmly interlaced its icy fingers through Moscow, I watched the mess of traffic in the crowded streets not far below. A few solitary people were moving on the sidewalks and in between the kiosks, some hurrying to work at this hour, others begging for handouts from the ones with the jobs to be at.
I was almost jealous of this normalcy.
Almost.
Yawning and blinking, I sat up. My t-shirt was wrinkled, as were my pants, not that I could be bothered with them currently. Glancing at my watch: 10:30AM.
I had slept the sleep of the dead; Boris Ignatiavich had been right about that. Then again, there wasn’t much he was wrong about.
I paused upon standing up.
Something was odd, even for Night Watch headquarters. Even for me. I looked around the room; everything seemed in order, until my eyes fell on the disheveled lump of blankets in the bed opposite mine.
It stirred a moment and was still.
Now, who could be here? I pondered, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. Tigercub had a nice little house not far off, and a decent enough car to get her there, so I didn’t suspect her. Ignat would never deign to spend the night in such sub-par accommodations. The boss had his own secret quarters in his office…then who? Olga, perhaps? Though it’d be just as likely she’d be up in the boss’s quarters with him at this hour…
The mystery person stirred again, then rolled completely off the bed and crashed to the floor with a grumble.
Within seconds the stranger sat up, and I saw it was Julia.
Did all Americans roll right out of bed like that?
Her hair looked even more disheveled than it had when I’d picked her up last night, but at least she didn’t seem quite so fatigued. Her eyes darted wildly around the room a moment before they fell on me.
She rubbed one eye and seemed to mumble something apologetically in English.
I said nothing; I didn’t speak much English, let alone understand the string of words that fell out of her now.
She stopped mid-sentence, seeing my bewildered face, and grinned a half-grin before switching to Russian.
“I-I’m sorry. I take it you don’t speak English?”
“No, not regularly.” I admitted. A bit of conversational English from back during my overseas training on the Watch was about as much English as I had.
She coughed once and wrapped the blanket around her, as if suddenly self-conscious of my looking at her.
“Uhm, I want to apologize for last night. I didn’t think things through when I was yelling at you…I tend to sleepwalk sometimes, and it’s pretty bad lately…I was just surprised to see that I’d wandered outside…”
Even speaking in Russian, this stream of words was quite nearly as hard to understand as the English.
I couldn’t help a hopeless smirk that crept across the corners of my mouth.
This girl was a lot nicer today than she had been last night, and at least she had some sense to see that I was only trying to help her. But to think that she’d somehow rationalized her transformations into a wolf as mere dreams and sleepwalking, now there was something. Did Bear and Tigercub, in those wild early days, did they, too, shrug it off as just some crazy dream? I was finding it hard to believe, but then again, didn’t we all justify those things that seemed just too fantastic to be true?
She finally paused to catch a breath, and it was like some small weight had been lifted. As I glanced into the Twilight even her aura seemed less erratic now, lingering in a sort of pastel mixture of greens and tans with the occasional blue shot through that seemed common of all Others.
We sat there a moment, the both of us, me with my hands in my pockets, standing somewhat askance of the bed, and Julia watching for some response. I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been sleepwalking at all, that in fact she wasn’t even human anymore but a part of something much greater than even herself, or any of the people she loved or cared about. That she was soon to make a choice, a choice of sides, that of the Light or the Dark, and that in fact she’d probably already made that decision…
“Julia! You’re up!” Tigercub came bounding into the room and the change in mood she seemed to affect upon everyone, Other or not, was tangible.
She moved to Julia and sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes alight like she had some as-of-yet unknown plan for the girl, which I’m sure she did. She glanced from Julia to me, her pupils growing wide for a moment, and I had a bad feeling that already the wheels in her head were turning, putting two and two together when there had never even been a ‘two’…
I went to defend myself but already she had Julia’s hand in her own and was tugging her out of the bed.
“Anton, thanks for keeping Julia company. That was nice of you!” was all I heard of her as already the two were down the hallway before I had room to say a word.
Grand. I was hoping Tigercub wasn’t getting any ridiculous ideas about this girl and me. Rumors spreading of another woman were the last thing I wanted right now.
She was alone now, but not in the literal sense of the word.
At least, the conspicuously placed security camera right above the door gave that impression.
Julia sat in the office chair, stared blankly at the wall for an unknown length of time. The room was cold and quiet, save the hum of the computer in one corner that probably could’ve used an upgrade.
She shivered again-against her bare feet the white linoleum was freezing-and tucked her legs up underneath her on the chair. She was small enough to do at least that much.
For the first time since she’d awakened that night, she was finally able to take stock of her situation. For starters, what she remembered was coming out of a very vivid dream.
Then, they were all vivid, those particular dreams…the ones where she ran on four legs and sniffed at the earth like a dog with her belly low to the ground, where she hunted small furry things and rummaged trashcans at times, lapped at stray puddles when she was thirsty and sometimes moaned or wailed like she was in pain when she was in fact not.
In the dreams she was always running, and that was the biggest thing. With time she would wonder to herself why she was running, and, if so, who or what she was running to or from.
And sometimes in the dreams she would be following invisible trails on the ground, but on occasion they were not invisible at all but like small rivers, made of all the colors of the rainbow. And in her dreams she would feel out these ‘trails’ with her nose and sometimes she would be suddenly overwhelmed with joy, or sorrow, or pain, or rage, or even lust.
When the dreams ended she would find herself back in her apartment, but not always in bed. She had been planning to see someone about this odd new habit of sleepwalking she’d picked up over the past two or three months, but with relocating to Moscow for teaching she simply hadn’t found the time, in between the moving and the unpacking, to find a decent GP.
And now here she was, with the dreams getting worse and lasting longer, and the sleepwalking clearly intensifying to the point she’d awakened to find herself in some alley somewhere, and naked, no less, with a strange man standing over her trying to convince her whatever had taken place whilst she was unconscious was perfectly rational.
This was not her idea of a good night.
Not at all.
Who were these people?
The stranger who had found her-and at the thought of him she struggled to put the name with the face; she knew the Russian language well enough but was still familiarizing herself with common Russian names…Artem, was it? No, Anton…-that Anton fellow had somehow sent for a car to come pick them up.
It was a nice car, so that meant either these men had money and were in a position of power, or they were a part of the Russian Mafia and had something in store for her.
And for some reason, maybe out of sheer weariness, she went right along with it. That part still didn’t make sense to her. Julia was a no-nonsense woman. There’d be no way she’d happily get into a car with total strangers, especially not in a foreign country. And especially not with someone who was telling her not to be worried about waking up finding herself naked in an alley.
They brought her to an unmarked building where a woman swept her up and Julia, despite the goings-on, felt instantly relieved. The woman introduced herself as Katya, and the very matter-of-fact way she presented things seemed to magically rationalize Julia’s terror, almost as if her presence rubbed a soothing balm over the burning truth of things.
But now Katya had left her here, and without the woman’s calming presence a slow wave of panic was setting in. A panic that brought her thoughts from the back-burner of advanced shock and into the forefront of concern.
What was she doing here?
Her left arm suddenly stung and she vaguely recalled that they’d drawn her blood. Some sort of blood test. What were they performing blood tests on her for? Julia was fit as a fiddle, as far as she knew. Granted, she didn’t exercise regularly, go to a gym or anything, but she was careful to avoid too many drinks out with friends. She didn’t smoke, either, though perhaps being from a very newly health-conscious country and moving to one where many old habits seemed to still be holding sway didn’t deter her any.
She stared up at the round-faced clock on the wall. Its hand moved slowly, even for counting out seconds.
Four-fifteen. Was it still early morning? Her mind wondered. Or perhaps had she lost track of time so totally that she’d lost an entire day in this place?
Two days? Maybe.
Anything seemed plausible right now.
Julia rubbed her arm, pulling the sleeve of the odd white t-shirt that was clearly not her shirt down over it, and quickly appraised herself. They were letting her borrow some clothes. That was kind of them. She wanted very badly then to be back in her own clothes, in her own apartment, miles away from this waking nightmare.
She got to her feet, and her legs felt like rubber, like maybe she hadn’t used them for a while. As soon as she felt she could manage it she moved for the door, opened it and crept cautiously out into the hallway. The floor here was easily as cold as the floor in the previous room, but she kept moving.
She felt not unlike a child in these borrowed clothes that sagged on her and her bare feet making little pattering noises on the linoleum. Like a child on Christmas Eve sneaking downstairs when everyone else in the house is asleep to risk the chance to open a present…
She wanted to find the way out. She could see to a phone, at least, call a co-worker and friend in the area, Ania Borsegova. Ania was a native to Moscow and a teacher like herself up at the University. She’d at least have a better idea of the lay of the area, maybe could come meet her at a metro station somewhere…
Lost in her thoughts, Julia wandered down a flight of stairs onto the next level, which was looking far more like an office building and less like some sort of hospital wing. This held little comfort to her, however, as she suddenly heard the approach of quick footsteps ascending the flight of stairs leading up to this level.
Panicked, she ducked into a dark room off to her left and slid the door closed as gingerly as she could manage.
The footsteps got louder.
She held her breath.
The footsteps passed.
Finally exhaling, she tried to let her eyes adjust to the room around her. Though she couldn’t see much, she could feel that the room was warmer.
Shooting a glance back to the door where a thin line of light managed its way through the space beneath it, she decided to wait it out here for a while rather than risking her chances of escape.
Shaking, she edged forward into the dark. She could barely make out a table and the large rectangular shapes of what could only be beds in the oppressive blackness, and made for the nearest bed.
Without warning she instantly felt a wave of fatigue wash over her, as if someone had been waiting behind her to toss a blanket over her head.
The bed, less than a foot away, was inviting enough to her weary state of mind that she decided to herself, ‘Just a few minutes won’t do any harm…’ before climbing in and throwing the blanket over herself entirely.
And this time she did not have a vivid dream, or even dream at all.
--------------------
I opened my eyes, and it was as if I had just awakened from some thousand year slumber, that is how heavy my eyelids were.
Gazing stupidly out the window a moment at the bleary winter morning that had firmly interlaced its icy fingers through Moscow, I watched the mess of traffic in the crowded streets not far below. A few solitary people were moving on the sidewalks and in between the kiosks, some hurrying to work at this hour, others begging for handouts from the ones with the jobs to be at.
I was almost jealous of this normalcy.
Almost.
Yawning and blinking, I sat up. My t-shirt was wrinkled, as were my pants, not that I could be bothered with them currently. Glancing at my watch: 10:30AM.
I had slept the sleep of the dead; Boris Ignatiavich had been right about that. Then again, there wasn’t much he was wrong about.
I paused upon standing up.
Something was odd, even for Night Watch headquarters. Even for me. I looked around the room; everything seemed in order, until my eyes fell on the disheveled lump of blankets in the bed opposite mine.
It stirred a moment and was still.
Now, who could be here? I pondered, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. Tigercub had a nice little house not far off, and a decent enough car to get her there, so I didn’t suspect her. Ignat would never deign to spend the night in such sub-par accommodations. The boss had his own secret quarters in his office…then who? Olga, perhaps? Though it’d be just as likely she’d be up in the boss’s quarters with him at this hour…
The mystery person stirred again, then rolled completely off the bed and crashed to the floor with a grumble.
Within seconds the stranger sat up, and I saw it was Julia.
Did all Americans roll right out of bed like that?
Her hair looked even more disheveled than it had when I’d picked her up last night, but at least she didn’t seem quite so fatigued. Her eyes darted wildly around the room a moment before they fell on me.
She rubbed one eye and seemed to mumble something apologetically in English.
I said nothing; I didn’t speak much English, let alone understand the string of words that fell out of her now.
She stopped mid-sentence, seeing my bewildered face, and grinned a half-grin before switching to Russian.
“I-I’m sorry. I take it you don’t speak English?”
“No, not regularly.” I admitted. A bit of conversational English from back during my overseas training on the Watch was about as much English as I had.
She coughed once and wrapped the blanket around her, as if suddenly self-conscious of my looking at her.
“Uhm, I want to apologize for last night. I didn’t think things through when I was yelling at you…I tend to sleepwalk sometimes, and it’s pretty bad lately…I was just surprised to see that I’d wandered outside…”
Even speaking in Russian, this stream of words was quite nearly as hard to understand as the English.
I couldn’t help a hopeless smirk that crept across the corners of my mouth.
This girl was a lot nicer today than she had been last night, and at least she had some sense to see that I was only trying to help her. But to think that she’d somehow rationalized her transformations into a wolf as mere dreams and sleepwalking, now there was something. Did Bear and Tigercub, in those wild early days, did they, too, shrug it off as just some crazy dream? I was finding it hard to believe, but then again, didn’t we all justify those things that seemed just too fantastic to be true?
She finally paused to catch a breath, and it was like some small weight had been lifted. As I glanced into the Twilight even her aura seemed less erratic now, lingering in a sort of pastel mixture of greens and tans with the occasional blue shot through that seemed common of all Others.
We sat there a moment, the both of us, me with my hands in my pockets, standing somewhat askance of the bed, and Julia watching for some response. I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been sleepwalking at all, that in fact she wasn’t even human anymore but a part of something much greater than even herself, or any of the people she loved or cared about. That she was soon to make a choice, a choice of sides, that of the Light or the Dark, and that in fact she’d probably already made that decision…
“Julia! You’re up!” Tigercub came bounding into the room and the change in mood she seemed to affect upon everyone, Other or not, was tangible.
She moved to Julia and sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes alight like she had some as-of-yet unknown plan for the girl, which I’m sure she did. She glanced from Julia to me, her pupils growing wide for a moment, and I had a bad feeling that already the wheels in her head were turning, putting two and two together when there had never even been a ‘two’…
I went to defend myself but already she had Julia’s hand in her own and was tugging her out of the bed.
“Anton, thanks for keeping Julia company. That was nice of you!” was all I heard of her as already the two were down the hallway before I had room to say a word.
Grand. I was hoping Tigercub wasn’t getting any ridiculous ideas about this girl and me. Rumors spreading of another woman were the last thing I wanted right now.