Noises of awe and fear echoed in the sparkling room.
The mayor’s attendants carried a cage of amber. Candlelight glanced off the carvings at its crown, caught the herbs trailing down the delicate bars. Linden tree leaves lined the bottom of the cage. Lukasz assumed they were merely decoration. And inside, of all things—
“Is that a vila?” he murmured to Franciszek.
At the head of the table, the mayor smiled. His two sons watched, eyes narrowed.
Lukasz was riveted on her, whatever she was. Her blue-white hair swept the bottom of the cage. Her arms were wrapped around shaking knees. Her face was bent away from them. Her shoulders trembled. In the stifling heat of the room, she emitted a chilly kind of glow. She was light, she was monochrome, she was beauty.
She was fear.
Thick enough to taste. Bitter enough to choke on.
“A challenge.” The mayor steepled his fingers, blew smoke rings at the ceiling. “It would seem that a common dragon is no match for a Wolf-Lord. Why not something a little more . . . sophisticated?”
Nervous laughter around the table. None from the brothers. Eryk spoke.
“We’re supposed to kill her?”
The laughter died. One of his sons, thin and blond, pushed back his chair and left the room. The mayor ignored him and gestured to the cage:
“If you can resist her.”
Eryk stood up. He’d already lain in the arms of all the beautiful things in the world. He’d had everything, was invincible to anything. The vila didn’t stand a chance. He circled the table, and very slowly, he crouched down before the cage.
He whispered something to her. She lifted her head.
Lukasz put down his glass.
A ripple of awe raced through the guests. She wasn’t just beautiful. She was enrapturing. None of them knew it, but even as they looked, her eyes were slipping into a different shape for each of them. For some, they were big and innocent. For others, narrow and sly. Her lips bent and unbent a dozen times, her hair flowing into a thick straight mane, then back into gentle waves. And if it was what they wanted, then she stopped being a woman at all. None saw what the others saw; they saw only what they wanted. What they needed. In that moment, she was all things to all people.
Afterward, Lukasz wondered what Eryk had seen.
He unlatched the cage. The vila trembled, weakened. Afraid. She knew, probably. Knew that he was invincible. He alone impervious. In his own way, Eryk had her enchanted. He leaned inside, put his arms around her, and drew her out.
To Lukasz’s surprise, she came willingly.
Her long arms wrapped around his neck, and she buried her face in his shoulder. A sheet of silver-blue hair fell over the black of his uniform. As her face disappeared from sight, the enchantment evaporated. The room let out a breath. Cutlery tinkled, gowns rustled, and voices sounded.
“What are you doing?” asked the mayor.
Eryk ignored him, crossing to the window. The vila had wrapped her legs around his hips, tightened her arms around his neck. He unlatched the window, flung it open. Black sky and cold air rushed in, almost snuffed out the candles. Still, she clung to him. Looked helpless. Nothing like the powerful spirits Lukasz had always secretly dreamed of meeting on a dark and lonely road.
“I said—” The mayor got to his feet. His voice had gotten dangerously low. “What are you doing?”
The vila looked up.
The room went still again. Maybe they were under her spell. Or under Eryk’s. He was too lupine, too magnetic. He carried his own magic in his hypnotic eyes. Pulled you in. Didn’t let you go. And when he spoke next, it was in a voice so harsh and so thickly accented that even Lukasz barely understood him.
“I don’t hunt things in cages.”
“That’s a vila,” sputtered the mayor. “Vermin.”
Eryk leaned back, enough that she turned that gorgeous face—a face Lukasz wanted back—to him. He smoothed down her hair. Lukasz had never seen him look like that. He looked sad, wistful. He looked like a boy. He looked like every moment thus far had led to what he saw in the face of that wraith.
“Everything wants to live,” he whispered.
“Don’t you bloody dare—” began the mayor.
Eryk did not answer. The vila was growing mistier at the edges, pieces of her floating away on the wind. He stared at her, and she at him. They were entangled, enraptured. She had Eryk, only Eryk, in her spell. Or maybe he had her.
“She’s calling,” whispered Eryk. “She’s calling me home.”
And suddenly, Lukasz knew what he meant to do. And deep down, he knew what Eryk saw in her.
And then he was gone.
Taken away by wind and night and the vila’s magic. The window was a gaping black square in a wall of amber and gold. Eryk’s words hung over them. Danced in the amber-tinted shadows overhead, settled in their hair. Lodged in their hearts.
She’s calling me home.
Lukasz never saw Eryk again.
26
LUKASZ STILL HADN’T COME BACK. Koszmar settled on the other side of their tiny fire, propped up on one elbow. The others were fast asleep, full of the Leszy’s food and the hope of reaching the Mountains.
For a while, it was just Ren and Koszmar.
As the darkness pressed in, he appeared brighter: hair so luminescent it seemed to glow. Sparkling eyes, as pale and icy as a vila’s skin. Long blond eyelashes. Face no longer a muddy tan, but corpse-pale, with an undertone of gold. Immersed in the darkness surrounding them, he burned with light.
“Do you think he’s going to be all right?” asked Ren.
She’d been shocked by the sight of Lukasz down at the river. In just a few days, he’d aged ten years.
“I used some żywokost on it,” said Koszmar over the fire. “It should help with the healing. We can try bylica if that doesn’t work.”
Ren tried to smile. She couldn’t stand the thought of Lukasz in pain. She wondered if that was a weakness. And if it was, she suddenly realized, then she didn’t care.
“Thank you,” she said. “You . . . I wasn’t expecting . . .”
Koszmar looked up.
“Me to help?” he murmured. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
Ren flushed. “I was trying to be nice.”
Koszmar put his pipe between his teeth with a click, which echoed in the darkness. His hawkish face softened.
“I know,” he said. Then he added, “I suppose I am, too.”
Ren wondered suddenly if Koszmar was as unsure around the others as she was. It seemed unbelievable that humans could be uncomfortable with their own kind. But all the same . . .
“How did you meet Lukasz?” she asked.
“In the village,” he said softly. “The day we met you.”
Ren’s eyes widened.
“I thought you knew him before,” she said.
Koszmar laughed. It was hard to believe she had ever thought him silly. Since beginning their journey, he seemed more angular. A little more uncompromising. Somehow, not unhandsome.
“No, no,” he said. “Lukasz is too famous for me. All the Wolf-Lords are—were. I’m a nobody.”
It was hard to imagine anyone as glossy as Koszmar being a nobody. He practically dripped gold.
“What do you mean?” asked Ren.
Koszmar grinned at her.
“I was born in a town called Granica, on the northern shores,” he said. “Ever heard of it?”
Ren shook her head. Koszmar laughed again and examined his perfect hands.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. You’ve never left this place. You’d like Granica, I think,” he added. For once there was no sarcasm in his voice. No pretense. “The beaches are white sand. There’s a pink hotel on one of them, with a pier that reaches into the middle of the ocean. The mayor’s house has entire rooms made of amber. The houses are all different colors. But ours was white.” He closed his eyes. “It smells like the sea.”
It was odd that someone who
so obviously loved the colors of his old world now dressed only in the same black uniform. The thought filled her with an inexplicable sadness.
“Granica has the biggest port in this country,” he continued. “The mayor collects taxes from every merchant ship that sails through that port. He decides on all the fashions of this country—on what silks the fine ladies will wear, on what spices the cooks will love, on what designs will be in vogue for the next thirty years.”
“Those seem like silly things,” said Ren frankly.
Koszmar chuckled.
“They are, Ren,” he said. “But they’re the things that humans care about. In my world—Lukasz’s world—it isn’t about who has the sharpest claws or the strongest jaws. It’s about who has money. And the mayor of Granica has the most of it. He is the most powerful man in this country. Probably even more powerful than King Nikodem.”
“You humans are very strange,” said Ren.
“We are,” Koszmar agreed.
Ren had never seen him like this. She wondered what could have come over him.
“So you come from this city?” Ren struggled around the word. “Granica?”
“Oh, it’s far worse, I’m afraid,” murmured Koszmar. “The mayor is my father.”
Maybe, she realized, he behaved this way because she was both queen and princess. And because, as he had just made very clear, Koszmar understood the value of such things.
“Your father?” she echoed. “Really?”
Koszmar smirked. It was a very different smile from Lukasz’s. Lukasz had the kind of smile that felt special, just for you. Lukasz pulled you in, turned you in circles, left the world a little brighter when he let you go.
Koszmar just made you cold.
“Certainly,” he said. “I was the second son of the mayor of Granica. Don’t look like that. I was never anything special. Seweryn, my older brother, is far more lovely than I. He is handsomer, smarter, taller. He is a general in the Wrony. He is a drunk and a gambler, too, but one day, he will be the mayor of Granica.”
Ren digested this for a moment. “You mean . . . you don’t like your brother?”
Over the heat of their small fire, he blurred and blended with the trees behind. Glowing, obscured by the smoke from his pipe.
“Ren, darling,” he said, smirking, “I loathe my brother.”
Ren thought of Ryś, snoozing gently on her other side. She couldn’t imagine loathing Ryś, or Czarn, or anyone in her castle. Even Lukasz was risking life and limb for his brother. It seemed very sad that Koszmar didn’t feel the same way. For some reason, it made her like him more. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault, that he could be so mean. And anyway, she’d forgiven Jakub for trapping Czarn, and whether she liked it or not, she knew she’d eventually forgive Lukasz.
Surely she could forgive Koszmar for being unhappy?
As if he read her thoughts, he laughed quietly. Ren looked up.
“Who would have thought?” he muttered. “A monster and a failure, searching our souls in a place like this.”
Ren smiled, even though she did not find it remotely funny.
“And why shouldn’t we?” she asked. She tried to keep her voice light. She couldn’t bear the thought of making him any sadder. “According to Jakub, we have so many souls, after all.”
“Ah yes,” he whispered. “The duality of souls. What a beautiful thought. To think any one of us could be a monster.”
“But Jakub doesn’t believe in second souls,” said Ren thoughtfully. “He thinks that saying someone is predisposed to evil is just making excuses for their poor character.”
“Maybe,” said Koszmar. “But it doesn’t make it untrue.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
Ducha swooped suddenly overhead, and Ren ducked. Koszmar didn’t even flinch. Only looked up, a strange, lazy admiration in his eyes.
“The eagle told Felka that things are worse in the village,” he said after a moment.
“I know,” said Ren, remembering the Leszy’s comments. “We need to get to that Mountain.”
They both fell silent. Ducha landed near Koszmar, and to Ren’s surprise, he stroked her sleek head. He smiled at the eagle. Or at the forest. She wasn’t sure.
The forest liked Koszmar. In a strange, luminous way, it suited him.
It entwined its dark fingers in his light hair, it settled in the crook of his arm in the twilight, and with him in it, it sang with life. His skin had faded to gray and his hair had diluted to silver. He practically glowed. Sitting here, in the darkening firelight, Ren felt like an intruder on their quiet understanding.
Koszmar hadn’t belonged in Granica. He hadn’t belonged in Miasto. But here . . . but here he had changed. Become handsome, braver, perhaps even . . . kinder? Perhaps here was where he could belong. Perhaps here was a place he could love as much as she did. Enough to live out his days here.
She’d welcome him, she realized. Like any lost bird, any cranky badger. She’d let him stay, if he wanted. And, as she drifted off to sleep, Ren had the sudden conviction that he would like that, too.
27
A SHOTGUN BLAST JOLTED LUKASZ out of sleep, left him cold on the ground.
He came to slowly, pushing himself to his elbows, vision not yet clear. He was vaguely aware of movement, of screaming, of scaly bodies and blast after shattering blast as rifle fire tore through the night. He ran a hand over his eyes. What was happening . . . ?
Sharp claws dug into his shirt, dragged him upright. The creature pushed its face into his.
“What the—”
Lukasz tried to scramble back, but the strzygoń sank its claws deeper. Yellowish drool coated what was left of its face. Its nose had lengthened into a beak. Scraps of embroidered cloth hung from its shoulders, but that was the last human thing about it.
“Get off—”
He swore, tried to reach for his gun. But the strzygoń had enough humanity left to recognize the gesture. Claws sank into his forearm, and it snarled.
Another blast. The creature exploded in a spray of blood and legs.
Lukasz shook off what was left of it. There was a scrape on his forearm, but he was otherwise unharmed. Thank God, he thought. He scrambled to his feet.
Strzygi vaulted across the campfire, scattering the coals. Jakub had his shotgun, blasting them away and reloading as fast as he could. Felka stood beside him, one of Koszmar’s revolvers in her hand. There were too many of them. They lurched, screeching and slavering. They swarmed in flashes of dirty red hair and gray, peeling bodies. Czarn and Ryś leapt among them, snatching them out of the air, dragging them to the ground. The strzygi were all claws, all jaws, all dark rolling eyes and echoes of this last, horrible bit of humanity.
Across the seething mass, Lukasz saw Ren.
She had his rifle, and now she threw it up to her shoulder and fired again. The blast scattered a horde of strzygi clustered over Koszmar. A single hand emerged from the throng, twisting, convulsing in the earth.
“Lukasz!” Ren hefted a second rifle. Koszmar’s. “Catch!”
It sailed over the swarming strzygi and Lukasz snatched it out of the air. He slammed a round into the barrel, took aim, and fired.
The monster on Koszmar exploded.
“We’ll hold them off,” she shouted. “Get Koszmar.”
Lukasz nodded.
He advanced over the congealing strzygi, blasting aside anything that got in his way. Koszmar was trying to get away. Lukasz could see the hand curling and uncurling, nails grasping. Fingers twisting. Shot after shot scattered the monsters. He blasted them back, their bony legs flailing. But there were always more. They just came back. Swarmed over the Wrony again. Devouring him.
“Come on, you little bastards,” he growled, advancing. Shot after shot. “Come on.”
Now that he was closer, he could see why Koszmar had been swarmed. A blistering pit, newly erupted, simmered beside the blond Wrony—it was still rimmed in red, still billowing tarry black smoke. Purple-black roots u
ncoiled from the darkness. Body after scaly body, the strzygi clambered out.
He raised the rifle for another shot.
Click. Nothing.
“Damn!” He squeezed the trigger again.
Click.
He was out of bullets. And the strzygi were still feeding, chewing away at that poor idiot’s soul. There was no time. They were insatiable.
Lukasz swung the rifle like a club. The swarming bodies went flying. With every blow, he ignored the screaming protest from his wounded shoulder. He swung with all his strength. It wasn’t enough. God, there were too many of them—
Fur flashed. Ryś. The big lynx tore into the strzygi.
“You okay?” asked Lukasz, between blows with the rifle.
More of an arm appeared. For the first time, the pristine black coat had been marred. Smeared with blood.
“Enjoying this, honestly.” Ryś caught a strzygoń in his teeth and flung it into a tree. He was soaked with blood, but his eyes burned. “You?”
Lukasz didn’t respond.
Long silver hair appeared. It was smashed into the earth. It took Lukasz a sickening moment to realize it was all that remained of the vila-hair helmet.
Koszmar’s face appeared. He was whiter than a mavka, streaked with his own blood. A gash yawned in one high-boned cheek. He whimpered, thrashed. For a moment, the strzygi receded.
Ryś whooped in triumph. Lukasz dropped the rifle, hauled Koszmar up. Somewhere, Ren was reloading and firing into the monsters like a clockwork machine. A warm feeling flashed in him, more than admiration. But he didn’t have time to analyze the feeling. Because Koszmar looked like he might be dead, and—
“Kosz.” He shook him. “Kosz, damn it. Get a grip—”
The cut in Koszmar’s cheek was so deep that it revealed his blood-streaked teeth. The gray eyes flickered.
“Oh hell,” muttered the Wrony. He stumbled, wincing. Put a hand to his torn-apart face and flinched. “My face—”
Don't Call the Wolf Page 23
