Babayaga

estimation, the priest grimaced, realizing the probable cause. “You will have to excuse me,” he said, reaching for his coat. “I believe God is burning down my house.”
    XVII

    Will scrambled to the corner of the barn, bewildered and naked, his ears deafened by the sound of crackling electricity, gunshots, glass shattering, and the screaming of women’s voices. Clouds of colored powders—seaweed green, turnip red, and deep orange—ballooned explosively throughout the room, jars smashed onto the floor, hurled down from above, where a ranting Zoya howled out strange phrases in what Will guessed was most probably Russian.
    In the fading light, and with all the dust blooming about, he could not make out the attackers. The silhouette of a woman, shouting loudly in a language equally foreign, stood in the doorway as she and the man beside her both fired their guns straight up into the loft. There was a second man standing beside them, seemingly doing nothing but observing. Squinting through the haze, Will could make the first man out as Brandon and was sure the second was little Bendix. He did not recognize the old woman.
    Other bullets were firing in from the outside, piercing the walls. The voices seemed to be coming from everywhere. Will desperately looked for a way to help. Another jar exploded, completely obscuring his view of the barn door. He realized they had not noticed, or perhaps could not even see him amid all the clouds of colored dust. He decided to try to sneak out the back and circle around to surprise the attackers from behind; he could possibly tackle one and maybe get a gun. He didn’t understand how Zoya was able to survive up in the loft; they kept shooting at her and she kept shouting. He knew he had to act fast.
    He grabbed a garden hoe leaning against the wall and ran to the small door at the rear of the barn. Opening it, he found himself standing nose to nose with a little girl holding a chicken. The girl wore a deep scowl and was busy chanting, “Fish coin, fish coin, fish—” Remembering her from Zoya’s apartment, Will went into a sudden rage, quickly grabbing the chicken by the neck and hitting the girl over the head hard with it. “Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted at her in English, walloping her again while the chicken wildly squawked. “Get the fuck out!” The girl went shrieking off across the yard, holding her hands to her head as she scurried into the thick woods. Will dropped the chicken, which looked up at him menacingly, aggressively clawing the ground as if readying for a fight. Without a thought, Will kicked the bird, sending it off after the girl, flapping and fluttering its wings.
    There was the simultaneous crack of a bullet and a stinging on his ear. “Ow!” He felt the warmth of blood down the side of his neck as he ducked around the corner. Checking, he found it was only a scratch of a wound. Mike Mitchell poked his head around the corner of the barn and took another shot with the pistol. It missed. With a leap, Will lunged back inside the barn and ducked to the side. He didn’t think Mitchell was stupid enough to come right in after him, but a second later that is exactly what Mitchell did, stepping cautiously across the threshold and getting clobbered in the face with Will’s hoe. It split Mitchell’s nose and sent blood spurting out as he collapsed. Will grabbed Mitchell’s gun as he fell and shot Mitchell twice in the head with it. Will had never killed a man before, and it stunned him how quickly Mitchell went from being alive to being dead. He quickly lay down behind Mitchell’s prone corpse, using it as a shield as he carefully aimed and fired toward the figures in the doorway.
    Under attack, his assailants reacted immediately. Brandon leapt to the side while Will fired two more shots in his general direction. Will then turned in time to see Bendix slip off as well, leaving the woman still chanting while firing her revolver up into the loft. Hearing Zoya’s shouting and her footsteps jumping around on the floorboards above him, Will realized she was, against all odds, still alive. He tried to get a sense of where in the cloudy, dusty barn Brandon was, but he couldn’t see him. The sound of electricity crackled all around him. He couldn’t figure it out. He stood up and aimed the pistol at the old woman, but his chamber clicked empty.
    Suddenly another figure slipped up behind her. Will paused. Who is that, he thought, the priest? There