Acknowledgements
About the Author
Books by Justin Fisher
About the Publisher
Captain Nikolai Volkov and his men had travelled all the way from Irkutsk. The city was home to the 24th Spetsnaz Brigade and the young captain had long been counted in their ranks as the man to “get things done”. He was not in a good mood. The stories he’d heard were not untypical for such remote parts of the region. Superstitions and old wives’ tales about “magic and monsters”, silly stories to keep their children from straying into the woods and a complete waste of Volkov and his specialist task force’s time. The cramped cabin of his DT-30 mobile base was at least warm, though its powerful diesel engine was interminably loud and smelt even worse than it sounded. Outside, the twenty-five-strong squad of men travelled on sledges behind harnessed reindeer. Each one carried GPRS tracking devices, night-vision goggles, grenade launchers, specialist automatic rifles and every other gadget and technological advancement that the mighty Russian Army provided. But their most valuable asset was the Siberian reindeer. Reindeer did not break down and a reindeer could travel through a forest’s thickest region where a twenty-tonne troop carrier could not.
The villagers of Kazimir had greeted them with teary eyes. Salvation had finally come after months of begging. It was only when officials from the local district had ventured into the woods and subsequently disappeared that the high-ups from Irkutsk had ordered Volkov to the area.
“Go, Nikolai, put these poor villagers’ minds at rest,” they had said. “We know it’s a bear, you know it’s a bear, but the denizens of Kazimir need proof.”
That had been days ago and here he was now, in the middle of a forest with the most highly trained pest control unit in the world.
“Magic and monsters,” he muttered, as the DT-30’s caterpillar tracks ground to an icy halt.
Bang, bang! came the pounding on the cabin’s hatch. “Captain Volkov, the transport can go no further.”
Volkov stepped out into an impossibly cold night. Even his gruelling training could not stop him from pausing to catch breath. It must have been -55°C at least. Surely not even a bear could withstand this cold? And anyway, didn’t bears hibernate in the winter months? In front and behind the forest lay black; their DT-30 had taken them as far as its tracks would allow.
“A curse on this cold, a curse on Siberia and a curse on this blasted mission!”
“Your orders, captain?”
His number two, though covered in extreme snow gear, was easy enough to recognise for the simple fact that he was the size of a bull. Galkin was younger by almost a decade but in Volkov’s opinion as able a leader as he was and Volkov was always glad of it.
“Take three men and scout the way forward; we’ll follow with the supplies.”
The bull saluted and paced on ahead.
Volkov never liked to walk through a forest at night. It made him feel as though the stars had been sucked out of the sky. After more than an hour, even the deep winter snow could no longer find its way through the taiga’s wooded canopy. There were no stars above and no snow below, just the ice-cold embrace of a pitch-black wood. As they trudged through the frozen mud and pines, Volkov’s gut started to twitch. His gut had never let him down. Like a dog sensing danger long before it arrives, Volkov’s gut always told him when trouble was brewing and the reindeer clearly agreed. The beasts came to a complete standstill, honking in their throats nervously, their hooves skittish on the ground.
“What’s got into them?” seethed the captain.
As a born and bred Siberian, no one knew more about reindeer than Volkov’s handler, not even the actual reindeer.
“I wish I knew, captain. I’ve never seen them like this, never.”
Volkov’s gut began to rumble more steadily. A quick gesture of his hand and his column of men pulled down their night-vision goggles. Everything turned to electric green and the reindeer stopped. As Yenotov and the other handlers pushed and prodded their now immobile animals, something through the trees moved with a flicker of dark green over black. Volkov raised his weapon and those not tending to the herd followed suit. The targeting dot from his laser slowed by a tree and something behind it moved.
“Six o’clock.”
“Eight.”
“Eleven.”
One by one his men called out movement in the trees, and seemingly from everywhere.
“Brace!” ordered Volkov.
The Spetsnaz dropped to one knee and prepared to fire.
All of a sudden, their supply column of reindeer broke free and fled from their handlers, all twelve animals with their heavy packs and Volkov’s much-needed supplies bolting as a feathered storm flew at the squad, a flapping of a hundred wings, magpies, pigeons, sparrows and hawks, swallows, barn owls, finches and crows, filling the air in a living squall, then just as suddenly parting.
Nothing.
Volkov and his bemused men got back to their feet and were trying to understand what had just happened when the first scream called through the darkness ahead of them.
Without a word, his men fanned out wide, running as best as they could through the undergrowth and straight to the sound of their screaming comrades. A little way forward something big was running towards them, crashing through branches with all the violent force of a crazed animal. It was Galkin, Volkov’s number two.
His helmet and scarf had come away, lost somewhere in his flight, and his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. The man was crazed with terror. Volkov had seen this before with new recruits, young soldiers that had no place with the Spetsnaz, but Galkin? The man was unbreakable, or at least had been until now.
“Galkin, calm yourself. What happened?”
“M-mmm–”
Volkov grabbed the man by the shoulders and shook him hard.
“What, man? What are you saying?”
“M-magic and … and m-monsters,” Galkin finally managed.
Two of the squadron stayed with their sobbing second in command, as Volkov led the others forward. Some way through the forest the trees began to thin till they came to a vast clearing. At its centre firepits bellowed and a great iron structure jutted out of the ground like an angry tooth. To Volkov it looked very much like the beginnings of some fortress. The Spetsnaz had grade one clearance – they would know of such a thing, surely? Why had he not been informed? And what had happened to the sky? At first he thought he was looking at a mirror, or that the world had turned upside down. The air was black with smoke from the firepits, and the stars – every one of them had fallen to the ground. They lay along the clearing, too many to count. A great wondrous carpet of yellow and white in all its shimmering glory. Volkov and his men removed their goggles.
And the stars roared.
What had looked like heaven quickly became hell. The stars were not stars at all but the eyes of a great horde, monsters from old wives’ tales suddenly made real. From the lick of orange