Disclaimer:in chapter1.

Author’s note:

Take Two – that’s what I heard a number of people call WWII

Korney Dozhdevoy is a combination of two things: Korney is a name that really exists and sounds a bit like Cory but fits into Soviet ranks better than Cory or Corwyn, and Dozhdevoy means connected to rain and Cory’s last name surely sounds rainy as in It hardly ever rains.

giaour is a word that denotes non-Muslims, mostly Christians, and does not usually have any nice connotations to go with it

Chapter 2

Cory Raines took a step back, tried his footing – just in case. Call it paranoia or experience, but you can never be too careful. Though this particular guy did not look very threatening. More along the line of strong, but easy to outrun. Well, where were my good manners…

– Hi there! – Cory tried his best casual grin, keeping safe distance from the climber. – Do you by any chance know where I can find a man named Tom McLaren?

Silence. This is not good. But, hey, probably the man’s just taking in the resemblance. Cory knew for a fact that sometimes it was too striking for those who knew the kid, so he waited patiently, enjoying the scenery while he could. Then, the man pronounced five short words that were to destroy all the beauty Cory ever learnt to see in the mountains, even though it wasn’t their fault, and the whole “lost beauty” concept looked terribly cliché. Damn contemporary pulp fiction printed on cheap paper, it felt real, as the guy was saying those words, slowly, painfully!

– Sorry, but he is… dead.

God, and he came here to drag two lovebirds home for the wedding when they did not come or call, or otherwise informed the whole pack, and Rina grew restless. Oh, how on Earth – …

– Dead? But… but I’ve seen him just a week before he came over here!

No, it must be a terrible, horrible mistake. Has to be… Cory Raines was no optimist, but a healthy sense of realism taught him that if anything, Tom McLaren was one of the best climbers these mountains ever saw, and Cory who believed in no Christian or Muslim God felt that he desperately craved to believe in a local superstition just then, a superstition the boy told him about at one of the family reunions, like, five years ago, was that – you see, mountains take to a professional, like a strong, dangerous beast does, and rarely if ever kill them, once they’ve accepted such person. But something about the man’s face that stood right in front of him made Cory’s heart sink. It was not a mistake.

– You knew Tom McLaren?

God, yes! He is…he was… And how exactly should he describe their relationship without getting into explanation of the ABC of immortality as well? The guy kept staring at him, was expecting an answer. Well, here it goes…

– Tom was my brother. Like, a twin. Guess you can tell.

The man gave him a nod and outstretched his hand, and Cory gratefully shook it. This must be Skip. A bit loud when he feels like it, sandy hair, king of beasts at heart, but overall, the good sort. Remember? I told you guys about this fella. He had a fall-out with our base medigirl Monique Aubertine like, a couple of months ago. Skip’s the kind of man you’ll trust with your life and never regret it. Just try to keep him away from your own woman to minimize regrets… He could picture Tom’s face, animated, carefree, when he visited home just two weeks ago, and talked about his team over here. When he was so excited about returning to Annie; when he was alive.

– Name’s Skip Tailor. Welcome to the base.

Bingo, Raines.

– Robin McLaren. Pleased to meet you.

The guy was taking him to their makeshift memorial for all who did not make it. Somewhere, there was a picture of his boy. God, it felt so… wrong!

– Um, Skip? I may be a big fat zero when it comes to alpinism, but everyone in the family knows that my brother was a professional. How did it happen?

Skip side-glanced at him, as if contemplating: to tell or not to tell.

– Tis true – Tom was one of the best I’ve ever known… and I dare say one of the best I never knew.

– Then how?..

– Two words, mister: Elliot Vaughn.

Cory felt cold inside, even though it was not exactly Hawaii temperature all around him either. Vaughn. That bastard got yet another of his boys, no matter how hard he tried to mix up the tracks… Again. Sliding through years and centuries, changing names, Elijah Waune… A Norman mongrel that happens to have a sick taste for hunting down Cory’s family. First cousins or great-grand-nephews, it did not matter to him, as long as they shared at least some blood with one Cory Raines. Same habits, same old shit! Why, he asked the man once, coughing up blood, guess it was in Berlin at dawn of 1945, Take Two, Cory himself a Soviet paratrooper Korney Dozhdevoy on a secret mission, and then-Von Bern a Nazi officer out to make sure no mission came to be. Well, he’d be damned if anything about the mission slipped to this monster… At least, not from him. Cory Raines went through similar procedure often enough to learn how to endure pain. For witchcraft in perfectly Christian countries and for supposedly being a giaour in the lands that belonged to Muslims… People were never short of reasons to kill him, no matter the place or time.

…And somehow, they tended to be more tolerant of those who stole from them than not-alike thinkers, no matter the epoch. Could be funny, was it not so gruesome at times... Yet then, again, it wasn’t completely the executors’ fault if the guys in charge of religion made even the kindest of hearts go cold and fearsome, conditioned to attack everything remotely threatening to said religion, and Cory grew to understand that part well enough to not hold a potentially dangerous grudge against the lay people who burned and tortured him or did nothing of the sort, but enjoyed the whole performance, in city market square… and somebody very old and wise said once that free men should not hold slaves of their enemy responsible, so he tried his best not to go turning their lives into one bog nightmare as soon as he revived after yet another execution, even though the possibilities were tempting enough. Besides, everyone can stop and say, hey, not gonna hurt this fellow just because somebody important said it is O.K. and God approves, and Cory got lucky here and there with the sensible… Most of the time, though, the guards and peasants were eager to do whatever they were told. And as for Vaughn, he was after no Scholasticism, oh no – only money and its equivalents, no matter the age. Or the country.

Never particularly into law himself, but well after anybody’s property and – which sickened Cory no end – women to rape and other family were there any to get rid of. He asked him why the man killed and burnt down villages when he could just expropriate and be done. All the answers he got in between the torture chamber visits was laughter, bawdy jokes about the communist wasteland he was dying for this time around, and a phrase that got ingrained into the memory of Cory Raines for aeons to come, because I enjoy it. That Skip guy kept talking… What’s he saying right now may be important. It’s about Tom, and the scum that murdered him. Get a grip, Locksley, concentrate! You can always grieve and howl later, but now…

– Excuse me, could you say it again? I admit I wasn’t listening.

The man gave him a sympathetic look.

– Sure. Can’t blame you for that… I said that Tom was hired by Vaughn’s company, Majestic Airlines. Publicity crap and all that. The big shot of a millionaire tried to climb K2 five years ago, did not succeed… This time, the weather was rapidly changing for the worst again, but this million-dollar bastard wanted to go up the slope anyway. Long story short, Tom refused to risk the storm, turned the whole group back, and this piece of shit yelled something… too loud for the mountain to let it slip. The next thing we knew, there were three of them buried alive under devil knows how many tons of snow – Tom, Vaughn, and Annie Garrett.

– His bride was there too? You know, they were going to get married this week, on Wednesday at two o’clock…

Skip looked even more pained by the news; apparently, neither Tom, nor Annie shared it before. Yet another local superstition: never talk about something you’re going to do before you succeeded in the climb and came back. Sure, everyone in the camp knew that the couple was excited about Wednesday, two o’clock. They just did not know what Wednesday it really was supposed to be, everyone assumed the climb day. They were standing directly by the mound of nameplates and pictures now. God, why?..

The thing read TOM MCLAREN and under his name, the numbers: 1965-2000. Cory felt a sob building up in the throat. Of course, lives of mortals are always very short, too short, even if one believed in immortality of the soul... In a couple of centuries you’ll get used to it, his first mentor promised. But he never got used to losing those who were family… Especially those murdered, those like this kid – bright, Oxford and all, and besting the mountains, and being so full of life and the very spirit of living that sometimes Cory caught himself wondering if Tom was indeed mortal… Or what the use of immortality was compared to the short life so wholesome it did not need forever to be exceptionally special because it already were.

– Good girl, this one… Her brother took her away, to America. You came in through the same airport only an hour or so late to see Annie.

– Just my luck! Listen, Skip, do you think she told the truth? About this moneybag killing Tom?

– What can I say… She was frozen through, but her eyes… – Skip looked distant, remembering that day. – No, Annie did not make it up. I saw how sane she were before. When the rescue team brought her to the base, she looked close to tears, terribly weak, but the whole story – it is true. Your brother was murdered.

Suddenly it was hard to breeze, the very air got Cory a bit more than just dizzy; Skip kept on filling him with more and more details … Faces and facts floated around in a whirlpool, going faster by the minute… Ed Viesturs of no use, best mountaineer or not; Peter Garrett, a local ghost-like mountain pro Montgomery Wick and a handful of others, Skip’s-turned-Peter’s medigirl among them, doing the impossible, but it is too late for one Tom McLaren; Annie half-dead and a total mess, raving about her fiancé being murdered by Vaughn; the sun so bright it hurt to look at its shadow in the snow…

The next moment Cory felt that he was floating in the air among the faces, seeing his own body sink down beside Skip Tailor. He could touch every curve, every slope of K2… He could see the wind brushing ever so gently all around him, and he could notice the place, still a bit reddish with blood. He knew now, Tom’s blood that Vaughn happened to collect into a plastic bag. Scavenger! But it saved Annie, so who is he to complain… The kid would’ve approved.

The snow beside that crevasse had better days, clearly. Now there were footprints and marks of bodies laid there for a moment before the chopper could be summoned… Cory could swear there was still so much pain, angst clinging to the place…And sharp and very much alive, the buzz of one Elliot Vaughn was there too – coming to him from all the way down this icy little hellhole... If spirits can growl, Cory certainly did. He had to come back now, to climb up K2 in flesh and make sure that Majestic Airlines stay headless not only on paper. God, was it for real? Only mortals have souls that can… He felt pulled, and almost immediately there was the base, and the nameplates, and Skip kneeling beside him, feeling his pulse.

– Easy, there. You’ve never been to the mountains before, have you?

– No. Guess the air and the murder got the better of me. – He sat up, slowly, Skip supporting his shoulders. Cory sent the man a genuine grateful smile. – Just don’t tell my wife that I passed out here, O.K.?

Sandy-haired king of beasts grinned at him. Lion or not, but surely a good-natured predator.

– Oh, we’ll see… What do I get if I do as you ask?

A sunbeam caught up something and glittered at the snow, blinding them both for a moment. Cory squinted at the thing – it was his own watch. He knew the day, and the time…

God, it hurt.

Two o’clock. Wednesday.