Volya gawked at Damir. "What... what's going on?"
Surely, he misunderstood. His hearing was superb, but with the rushing water and thin mountain air, who knows.
"Let's find a quieter place to talk it over." Whatever that it was.
"No, Volya, we won't." Damir's cigarette made another loop in and out of his mouth. At the end of the move, it practically stopped trembling and sprinkling the pristine wilderness with burned tobacco. Damir rolled his head back, closing his eyes. A white plume of smoke aimed upward, but jerked in three different directions by the crazy wind. "I let curiosity overpower my judgment as is. I shouldn't even come this far."
Volya glanced over his shoulder at the hidden cave. "You came here with us. Dumping us at the doorstep sucks."
"Agreed. I should have dropped you off in Baksan and returned to Moscow."
This was getting better and better. "That's not what I meant!"
"I know that." Damir let the cigarette linger between his fingers, forgotten, threatening to burn his knuckles. "You, Nadezhda, Kramola and the rest have a compelling moral reason to be here. It's your heritage. You're living it. Me? Quite the opposite."
Volya suppressed a scream. "You're our expert. We invited you in." Technically, he bullied the Crones into inviting Damir, but close enough.
"It's an illegal dig. Even knowing that you're about to hack through that passage hoping to discover an undisturbed Bronze Age burial and..." Damir gave Kramola a careful look and settled for waving his hand.
"Don't be shy now. What were you going to say? Vandalize it? Rob it?"
A line of ash falling off the cigarette was turning from gray to white in the mud. "It compromises my integrity."
Volya licked his lips.
"It doesn't have to be an illegal dig," he said. "At least not completely."
Instead of panic he felt, confidence suffused his voice. "In fact, you're here to ensure that we do it by the book."
Damir scoffed.
"Do you really think that an excavation can only be done correctly if a proper authority conducted it? This is Russia." Volya wanted to add how Damir's own faculty ignored all the meticulous research he had done, because Nesterov carried influence. How everything in human chains of command was rotten. How corruption permeated everything here, including archaeology.
His impassioned tirade remained in his head, however. Damir's face was transparent for once—he had been making those same arguments on their way here. It was better to let him mull it over, not beat him over the head with what he already knew.
Volya took a deep breath in, curbing his anger. He wished he could imitate the siren's voice that had propelled Liam to fame. "After we're done, we'll seal the cave properly, and you can report the find. Locals tipped you off or something. Your supervisors know you travel a lot, so they would buy it."
Damir's features sharpened into an expression that Volya could only describe as hunger. He could smell the man's sweat. So, he followed up with an ace up his sleeve. "You'd said composite skeletons were rare, right?"
"Very." Even this short word didn't come out of Damir's mouth easily. Perspiration dotted his temples. His eyes burrowed into Volya's, like, I know what you're doing.
Volya rolled his shoulders, skirting a dangerous boundary. Where did trying to convince ended and subduing another's will began? He thought he could sense it. "Then you can excavate next summer with all the officialdom's paperwork in hand. With all the bells and whistles. You will be the first to find the Bronze Age composite skeletons in Russia."
An audible grunt escaped Damir. He was tempted, thoroughly tempted.
"Surely, a find like that could boost your credentials?" Meaning, it would help Damir to his long-overdue, deserved PhD... but there was no need to be this crude.
"It shouldn't," Damir said drily.
"But it will," Volya guessed.
Amusement flickered in Damir's eyes. "Look at you—and you haven't even started in academia yet. Yes, of course, it will."
This was the kind of compliment that made a man wince. Volya winced, but didn't let himself be sidetracked into the discussion about popularity contests and funding. "Will you stay?"
Damir stomped the cigarette butt out and carefully hid it in a zip lock bag. "I can't. I already regret having to know if something was here... and I can't."
"You were never a rule-abiding guy," Volya grumbled. He was also sweating now, from efforts and imagining the consequences of being alone with the Walkwe. Nadezhda would stretch a protective cloak over him, sure, but would it be enough? "Why start now? Why? Why me?"
Damir looked around uncomfortably, grabbed his pack, put it on, pulled its straps tight, jiggled it to reshuffle whatever content had shifted in the five minutes it spent on the ground.
"Got to start following the rules at some point," Damir grumbled and turned to leave.
"Oh no, you don't," Kramola growled. Obviously, she was listening to every word. Everyone did. She moved to intercept Damir. At the nod of her head, two other Huntresses flanked her.
Volya gathered his pent up desire to dominate and channeled it at his sister's posse. "Let him go."
The syllables echoed in that eerie way the feedback on a Zoom call sometimes does. Kramola's little helpers stumbled out of Damir's way, but Kramola didn't. She lifted her right arm and set her fist square in the middle of Damir's chest. Arrested in place, Damir swiveled his head toward Volya, putting him in a weird position. He wanted Damir to stay. And he hated Kramola.
"He'll betray us, my idiot-brother," Kramola said hoarsely. "He'll bring the cops and what not to stop us from accessing the tomb, if not arrest us outright for theft of prehistoric artifacts."
"You have the moral right. I'll not interfere," Damir said.
Kramola scoffed. The derisive sound shook Volya out of his impasse. He had to take sides or Kramola would take the choice away from him. "Damir is not like that."
He believed it. He had to believe that Damir's betrayal wouldn't extend that far. Sure, he'd be even more of a hero to the archeological community if he helped to apprehend the raiders of the lost centaurs, but no. Damir who handed Volya the list of Walkwe men without Young's permission was better than that.
Volya locked stares with his elder sister, which was basically the only way they looked at one another.
"Fine," Kramola snapped. "But we'll be patrolling the approaches and if something is not right—"
With the threat hanging in the air, she shifted maybe an inch to the right, permitting Damir to step around her. For a second, even the wind died down. Only the water rushing down the cliff and Damir moved.
"If you leave, who is to say there will be anything left to return for?" Volya muttered. "We don't even know what's in that cave."
Damir stumbled as if Volya's words were a rock that hit him between his shoulder-blades. Maybe he would stop.... but no. Damir marched on. He even picked up the pace. Maybe all this time Volya judged Marina too harshly for her choices. The man gave the impression of being so solid, that when he bolted like that, it hit that much harder. What did Nadezhda call the Others?
Fickle, cruel and fragile, the mist-wolf supplied helpfully. And unnecessarily—the memory was etched fresh in Volya's heart.
Sensing his hackles rise, the mist-wolf chuckled. You can make him stay.
I can, Volya agreed. And I don't want to.
The loyalty was worth a damn only when freely given. He rolled his shoulders, tightened his jaw. Being alone was what he always did well. He'd deal.
"We should... " he said to the rest of the Walkwe and stopped, gritting his teeth a little.
They should do... what? Tear the ash layers down with claws and shovels? He relied on Damir to know how to excavate without burying half his pack under a freak mudslide.
"First, we set the camp," Kramola said in a voice that brooked no objections. "Away from this noise and sheltered. There is a good spot downstream."
"Fair enough." This reply marked the second time Volya agreed with Kramola in the space of an hour, so he darted a glance toward the sky. It was where it always was, pregnant with night rain, maybe, but otherwise showing no signs of falling.
On any day it should be enough for a guy to feel fine, but today it wasn't enough. Volya lifted his face up and gave out a tentative, mournful howl. Whom was he kidding? A werewolf couldn't howl tentatively.
Ignoring Kramola's derisive glance, he shut his eyes, arched his back, stretching his chest till his ribs cracked.
His next howl rang long and true.
The mountain blended the echo with the splashing of the waterfall and the renewed gusts of wind. One by one, the Walkwe joined in. Nadezhda—the first. Kramola—the last, as expected.
The pack howled as one. They were werewolves. They understood such things.