Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

33. His Place of Power

True to his promise to stay up all night, Damir opened the door on the first knock, fully dressed and clean-shaven. Shadows lay under his eyes, but he grinned at Volya.

"Missed me already?"

Liam raised a questioning brow. Volya didn't think he should explain himself. Keeping distance, after all, implied not sharing every conversation he had with other men. Instead, he repeated his dream to Damir.

Damir took off down the hall the moment the word Yamnaya left Volya's mouth. His bedroom was on the second floor, a bit further down than Volya's, so Volya had a bit of time to describe the Shaman and the riders. Liam kept glancing at him with those eyes from under those brows, so he stammered like an idiot. Dammit, how was he supposed to focus?

They would probably ask him to repeat his account anyway, to make sure he didn't miss any details. Volya gave up on describing the things exactly and skipped straight to the reason they were going to the labs. "The Elder called me a foreigner, and it stuck with me. At first, I was just pissed, then I figured, hold on, maybe he was right. See, these northern places, like Moscow or the forests here, are foreign to me and I'm foreign to them. I'm from the South, the blood of the steppes, right?"

His conjuncture made more sense because Liam and Damir listened without grimacing.

The ancient peoples whose names echoed dully during the history classes shadowed him, stretching in a long line beyond this house and this moment in time. If he glanced over his shoulder, they dashed just out of sight, plastered themselves against the walls, blended into nothingness. It didn't mean he'd imagined them. He felt affinity.

Maybe he got it right this time.

Maybe, Liam was right, and nobody else could. Genes or magic or blood, whatever one called it, he was special.

"My dream showed me a place." He closed his eyes, visualizing the island. "My place of power. I can find it on the map."

When Liam lost hope yesterday, it was hard. Volya didn't fancy disappointing him again. "That's it. That's all I have. It should be enough, yes?"

His eyes found Liam's on their own accord. And, oh boy, were Liam's eyes like the sun rising, lighting the world with renewed hope!

Volya kept the quiver out of his voice. "We'll travel there and I'll see how the Shaman cursed Anabelle."

They crossed the yard and got to the research trailers. Damir directed them to the non-Mnemosyne one. While Damir keyed in the code and did a check-in with the security, Volya found Liam's hand and squeezed it. A friendly gesture of support, he promised himself, no funny business.

"If I enter the Mnemosyne there, it'll yield the truth, Liam. I don't know if it breaks the curse or not yet, but I'll find the truth for you."

Damir led them to a room next to the lab where Sangha worked on Volya's blood samples. "Welcome to our wee map room."

"Are you absolutely sure it's a map room?" Volya tried to sound doubtful.

Damir's eye-roll was not as expressive as Marina's, but with practice... "Maybe."

The maps were pinned to the walls, spread on the large central table, and stood rolled up in the boxes. The good, old-fashioned laminated maps, and the worn copies printed on the huge graphic printer, and the hand-drawn ones. Maps, maps, maps.

Damir turned on a large screen that presided over everything. His fingers ran over the keyboard, waking up the images of landscape and city grids in different windows. "I assume you want the area around Slobodinsk?"