The flat was silent when he inserted the key and pushed open the front door.

Distantly, Perun could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise. That electric lash that told him danger was near sizzled in waves just under his skin and caused his fingers to involuntarily begin scratching at the upholstery of the machine .

The flat was holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable to happen, waiting and watching for the moment when the pebble that started the avalanche began its deadly tumbling. Whatever it was, he was utterly unprepared for it. But at the same time, he knew he should have seen coming a long, long time ago.

He closed the door behind himself and took off his coat, hat and shoes. Then he paused, listening into the stillness.

What was it? What was wrong? His memory was sounding the alarm but refusing to take one more step. No matter how much he slapped and kicked at it, threw it up against the wall and threatened it, it refused to spill its secrets. He simply couldn't remember what happened next. He was as abandoned to the whim of events as his former self was.

He was going to have to relive the entire thing again, alone. But this time, with the knowledge of what events it created, where his life divided and took a violent swerve to the opposite side of the river.

In the salon, sunlight was streaming in through the windows, stretching its fingertips through the open doors lining the corridor and illuminating his way to the bedroom.

At Libuše's bedroom door, he knocked lightly, not expecting her to be awake. And if she was, or dozing, he didn't want to take the risk of startling her.

"Libuše, darling. It's me," he said, pushing open the door a bit and peeking inside.

Silence.

The room was dim. The shutters had been drawn down carelessly, allowing light to squeeze in through the holes in the uppermost slats and throw itself in bright dots, like so many stars, across the walls and carpet. Libuše was lying on her back in bed, a light blanket covering her at an angle over her hips, one arm flung out from her side, the palm turned upwards. Her face was half-turned away from him.

He smiled and opened the door. She was asleep, which meant no fight. For a while, at least. He could get some rest now, and when they woke up, it would be much later and there would be time for discussing the future like adults. Perhaps they could go out to a café or take a stroll in the park. Yes, that was a good idea. Perhaps in the daylight and with a table buckling under the strain of so much food, she'd be inclined to listen to him.

Perun caught the smell before his former-self did. It was still light, but unmistakeable. If he could, he would have looked away, covered his face with his hands, turned tail and run, dragging himself out of the room to never return.

As his former-self approached the bed, his smile began to fade. He could now see that Libuše was staring at the ceiling through half-open eyes, her mouth slack.

"Libuše, darling," he said, but she didn't respond.

As he rounded the end of the bed, the feeling of anticipation became so palpable, Perun thought he was going to be ill. It was going to happen. It was all going to collapse. It already had collapsed. No one had told him, warned him. No one had given him another escape route. It was over, done with. History. Not real, not anymore. But it was about to become real again.

Distantly, he could feel tears like gentle rain trickling down the sides of his face and his fists clench.

Run! He urged himself. Run, get out! You don't want to see this!

But he did nothing of the sort. He continued to move towards Libuše as if attached by ropes, his own face beginning to go slack in disbelief and then distort in fear.

"Darling?" he whispered, and reached out to place a hand on her arm, gently stroking the silk sleeve of her bed dress.

No response.

His hand moved lower to take her hand, and dropped it.

Cold. Her hand was ice-cold. And that's when the vague, sweet smell of death reached his own nose.

"Darling! Libuše!" he shouted, taking her by the shoulders and shaking. "Wake up! Wake up, darling. Don't play games, Libuše, please."

Even as he grew more frantic, shouting her name louder and louder and shaking her more violently, he knew she was dead. He saw the way her eyes seemed to stare to the side, felt the beginning stiffness of rigor mortis under his hands, but didn't want to believe it. Couldn't believe it.

Finally, he fell to his knees next to the bed, grasped her cold hand in his and buried his head in the sheets and blanket bunched up by her side. Something hard and square knocked against his elbow, about the level of her knee. He attempted to push it aside, but it wouldn't move. And then it dawned on him what it was.

He searched in the folds of the blanket and pulled out a tin, Heroin written in fancy script across the top. The cover wasn't properly closed, and the vial of white powder inside nearly full.

Nearly.

"Oh, Libuše, no," he moaned, the tin dropping from his hand and then fell from the mattress onto the floor with a clatter. He buried his head in the blanket again and gave himself over to the attacks of grief and pain that threatened to tear him apart.

From his point of observation, Perun had moved past grief and into hot, molten rage. He'd loved this weak, stubborn woman. He'd made a fool of himself in front of the world for her. I'd become a murderer to save her, and now look. Dead. Overdosed on her precious powder she wouldn't give up, no matter what he offered her. And for what?

How had she'd got her hands on a new box of the stuff so quickly? Had she hidden one away just in case? He'd not been thorough enough. He'd not thought of everything, and this is was the result!

Distantly, he could feel not only his arms, but his feet slamming into the padded sides of the machine. Why hadn't he taken her out of Prague instead of going after the supplier? Locked her away somewhere where she couldn't hurt herself? Taken her to that manor in the forest. Taken her out of the country. Taken her anywhere, it didn't matter, just not here anymore. Why hadn't he found and killed her supplier earlier, and ransacked the flat to find whatever she had stashed away and destroy it? Why hadn't he taken charge earlier?

Why? Why?

He had been naive and stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He deserved every last bit of the suffering he was going through, and would go through for decades to come. He'd not protected her like he'd promised. He'd failed them both. He'd been weaker than she'd been and not recognised it. A weak, love-sick failure, that's what he was. He'd stood by while she'd destroyed herself and his princess was lost to him forever.

Even if his former self didn't hear it through his sobs, Perun did.

The long rustle of silk told him they were no longer alone in the bedroom, and he didn't need to guess to know who it was before he heard her voice. Now? he thought, Now you choose to make an appearance?

"Enough," said Veles. "Enough, Perun. It's over. Let her go."

He lifted his face from the blanket and looked up and behind himself. Through a smeary veil of tears he saw his mother and began to sob louder. She smiled down at him, and gently removed his hand from Libuše's. Her own was clad in long, green suede gloves that caressed his skin like the softest moss.

"Slide back. We must cover her." Although he didn't want to, he obeyed after a few moments hesitation, just as he always did. His knees hurt and he ached all over. He had no idea how long he'd been kneeling there, as he brought up an arm and ran his sleeve over his face.

His mother stepped around him, her puffy, green silk skirts brushing against him, and pulled the blanket up, letting it tenderly fall over Libuše's face.

Against his will, he was reminded of leaves, millions and millions of leaves shuffling and scratching against each other in a vast, dark forest brimming with life, and death. A forest that stretched beyond national borders and across centuries. A forest that was indistinguishable from his mother.

And that's when, from one second to the next, Perun -- locked in the time machine and sweating with rage and self-accusation -- remembered everything he'd shoved down into the black pit of his memory. 

Everything he'd wanted to forget. Everything he'd spent years hiding from.  

It was as if a magic spell had been broken and he was suddenly freed from the binds a witch had placed on him.

He knew he was a part of a large, centuries-old network of interrelated families that stretched over the middle and northern part of Europe, but not much beyond. They weren't exactly human, although they could, and had, fooled most of human society into thinking they were.

In reality, they were a different species that had developed simultaneously with humanity, or were a hyper-version of humanity, with heightened skills and more biological quirks than their more mundane, unimaginative and limited cousins.

There had always been stories about their existence, but in the last several hundred years, most people had seen them as nothing more than the dark gilding at the edges of myths and legends, no more real than ghosts or aliens. And Perun and his kind preferred it that way.

With more than a little surprise, he also knew that he was called the Dark Cloud because his quirk was the ability to brew storms by creating lightning, compressing and moving air masses according to his mood.

He was one of the destroyers, burners and flatteners of his kind. 

And one who had always preferred to kill in the rain. And for whom the rain had always obliged.

It had also been no surprise that he'd turned to crime. His kind played both the legal, and illegal, side of human society.

Bootlegging was only the tip of Veles' the iceberg, if a quite lucrative tip. His mother's businesses were diverse: weapons, pornography, the printing of banned books, money lending and laundering as well as keeping an up-to-date roster of assassins for hire. He knew that because he could clearly remember watching her flicking through it on more than one occasion to find the right name to attach to a problematic situation. But, she also owned and developed motor wagon workshops, photography salons and had only recently opened a Zeppelin park with daily flights between Prague and Brno. Money gushed into her dainty green purse in an all-consuming flow like the Vltava itself.

His theatre she found to be old-fashioned, admonishing him time and time again to be ahead of the world, not behind it. And she'd been less than pleased when he'd installed Libuše, a naïve human with a pretty face and an even prettier singing voice, in his city apartment and given her the stage title of princess. He'd done it anyway. He was an adult and could arrange his private life as he wished. His mother would just have to live with his decision.

And then there was one final thing that he knew without a shadow of a doubt. Something which completely drew his attention away from the corpse of his princess and to the woman standing silently next to him.

He had no father.

And he had no uncle.

He was the only male in his immediate family.

"Come, there is nothing more we can do here." Veles pulled him up off his knees and led him, as docile as a lamb, from the shadowy bedroom and out into the light.