Oriena Rusayev

[Oriena]

Some months later

“Cara?”
Oriena braced her hands on the edge of the bar, smirking. It wasn’t exactly a warm greeting, though by now it was a familiar one. “They let you in looking like that?”
Ice glittered in the woman’s close-cropped hair and shuddered cold droplets against the skin of her face and arms, which she was wiping at now with her frozen palms. And maybe there were some tears mixed in. A frown touched Oriena’s brow. She didn’t even have a bloody coat on. “I don’t even suppose you’ve got cash on you. I can stretch to some JD, but you’ll owe me one.”


Cara took a shuddering breath, as though the sound of Ori’s voice had pierced a fugue. Her hands dropped on the bar, palms down; they quickly squeezed into uneasy fists, and her gaze focused on them. Ori shifted her weight impatiently, frowned. Waited.

“They found me. We need to go.”

“We?”
She scoffed the word. Friendship was such an uneasy term for what they shared; their affinity was rooted in their mutual strangeness, not something so mundane as actually liking one another. Not that she disliked Cara either, but they hardly spent Friday nights braiding each other’s hair and chatting about boys. The girl was unhinged. That was fine. Didn’t mean Ori was going to up sticks on her word.

“If they found me, Oriena, they found you too.” She finally looked up, and her eyes were two great gaping pits. She was scared. The girl could click her fingers and spring fire from nothing; could manipulate objects without touch; could boil water without a kettle. And she was scared. It prickled unease in the back of Ori’s mind; she glanced over at her colleague, currently leaned in and laughing with a group of patrons, then drew closer to Cara. “I didn’t kill anybody,”
she hissed. “I can’t even--”


“It’s not what you’ve done or not done,” she snapped. “And it’s not what you can’t do. It’s what you fucking are.” Cara snatched her hands back like electricity had sparked off her skin, fear diluted by a momentary flash of chagrin. One step took her back from the bar, then two; with a glare, she turned tail.

Offended. Cara was offended. Ori rolled her eyes.

Fucks sake.

She grabbed her coat from the back, didn’t even pause to explain her disappearance before vanishing out the door. Snow swirled lazily in the glow of the streetlamps, and the cold dug like little pinpricks into every exposed bit of flesh. She flipped her hood up and dug gloves from her pocket as she caught up to Cara’s hunched-over shadow scuttling up the pavement. The woman’s skin looked almost grey; she must be freezing.

“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”


“It’s kept me alive so far.”

A brief look to the heavens steeled Ori’s tolerance. The woman’s paranoia had always been there, right from the start; a deep dark little parasite that had sucked every ounce of vitality from her. Though since Ori contently shared the grand delusion of their “Powers”, she chose to ignore it; to accommodate the things she wasn’t sure she believed.

Frigid breath swirled out with a sigh. She’d probably lost her job tonight, just walking out like that. Place was a shit-heap anyway, and paid borderline minimum wage. She could do better. She would do better. Though she wished she’d thought to swipe a bottle or two alongside her coat; she had a feeling they were both going to need it.

“So what happened?”


“Raided.” The word shivered out, chilling Ori beneath her winter layers. Cara held up her arm and tapped her wrist, then wrapped her fingers round it as if to stifle the bad omen. The snake tattoo that marked hunters, she meant. A very specific type of hunter. A very specific type of hunter Ori had never had cause to believe in, but for Cara’s grim stories. She wished she could touch the warm light within, for comfort if nothing else. For arrogantly soothing strength. I won’t be hunted. “I escaped. But.” Her words cut off curtly, like she no longer wished to speak of it. And Ori didn’t want to hear it anyway. She didn’t need Cara to shade in the details. Bottom line, she was going to have to find somewhere else to sleep tonight. Fucking great.

They walked in silence, drifting from New Arbat to old. Shadows of snowmen, tens upon tens of them, dotted the wide street; the work of students and tourists, same as every year. It made it feel unnaturally crowded in the pooled darkness, and cold air radiated from their frozen bodies. Eerie. She and Cara picked their way through the silent sentinels, neither speaking. Ori pulled her coat close, burying her face into her hood and grimacing against the cold. Or maybe at the thought of Cara’s delusions. Hunters? Seriously? Probably better not to dwell on it. Snow crunched rhythmically underfoot, and her breath clouded in puffs from frozen lips. It didn’t matter where they were going, she supposed, so long as they kept moving. But they were going to need to head somewhere eventually, and there was absolutely no way she was taking Cara home.

Suddenly the other woman stopped. Gripped her arm, tight enough to pinch through the thick winter fabric, and Ori frowned and pulled away. Until she saw. The shadows. They were moving? Next thing, Cara jerked forward and hissed. Ori backed up into solid cold. It took a second to realise it was just a snowman, which crumbled a little as she forced herself away. Cara was spinning wildly, clutching the top of one arm.

"Ca--"
She cut herself off.

Around them the snow steamed, and the puddles began to boil. Cara's work. The garish silhouettes of snowmen loomed, watching. Silent. Melting. It was fucking creepy, and Ori’s eyes scoured for movement, her heart beating out of her chest. She found nothing, but internally she reached for strength anyway. And couldn’t touch it. No matter how hard she battled, she couldn’t touch it at fucking all. So instead she grabbed Cara’s ice-cold wrist and yanked her away. The woman stumbled. Her eyes were wide; she was breathing hard. She wrenched away.

“Don’t go back, Ori. It’s too dangerous to stick together.” She shoved her, hard, and Oriena scowled. Her heart stamped defiance, flashing bright and hot through her veins. Momentary fear had unbalanced her. Now she was just pissed off.

"What happened to we?"


For once Cara squared right up to her, and suddenly Ori could feel the power wreathing her in charged tendrils. It was not a new sensation, but for once it was a hostile one. Oriena burned bright in reply, hot and sweet as the sun and rife with challenge. Scared of fucking shadows? There had been nothing out there. Couldn't Cara see that?

Then her foot hooked on something soft and warm, and her other crunched on something bony. She almost tripped, but for chords of solid air that steadied her balance. An arm. A hand. Skin peeling and sizzling, the puddle of water still burning and bubbling at its edges. Ori didn’t look at the corpse’s wrist. She did not. But her eyes widened, and bile burned up in her throat, scorching out her taste of power. Cara's gaze was wild and desperate.

“Get. Out. Of. Here. Now.”

So she ran.