I sat on the steps of a closed but illuminated museum with them, Andrew and Isaac on their feet. Sure enough, once they’d swallowed a burger each, the brothers gulped down the next, then the hot fries. Zar had polished off most of these in a few seconds when he looked up and moved over to sit beside me. He held out his bag rather tentatively, like he thought I was mad at him.
“I’m sorry, Cass.”
“For what? You didn’t do anything.” I took a couple fries.
“Not being … good company.”
“Don’t worry about it, Zar. This is really hard for you both. We’ll come back tomorrow. Although … I don’t know if we should. Not the same group. They obviously noticed us after a while.”
Zar nodded miserably over the bag. “If we don’t work this weekend Hannah will nail our pelts to our benches. We’re way behind.”
“Then stay home and work. You’re not the only ones who care about finding Gabriel. I’ll come back myself and talk to the people in there. We’ll come up with something. Hopefully different staff on the weekend. If we still don’t get anywhere … maybe fur again. Andrew or Jason could find him. Either in there or somewhere else. In fact … we should check into a room tomorrow.”
“Got four hundred quid on you?” Andrew asked.
I looked up. “What?”
“Four hundred pounds?” he asked. “I researched the place. That’s almost what the rooms start at.”
“Start at? Per night?”
“Unless that’s by the hour, darling.”
I let out a breath. After the exchange rate, I could almost pay my shared rent in Portland for that.
Zar rubbed his eyes. “Gabe’s standard of living has certainly changed…”
“Maybe he married a rich widower,” I said. “Anyway … yes. Even if it costs four hundred pounds. If we don’t take a room and enable someone to sniff the place out in the night when it’s quiet…” I shook my head. “We’ll figure it out. Or, for all we know, he’s been out in London all day and Kage and Jason are seeing him walk in right now.”
“Yeah,” Zar said gloomily.
“Go ahead and finish those. Thank you, Zar. And don’t worry about having to work this weekend. You’re not in this alone. Someone will be here.”
“You shouldn’t be.” Same tone, like a turtle from inside its shell.
“What?”
“This isn’t your problem. You’re supposed to be finding vampires and translators and looking for kindred.”
“I’m doing that too.”
We soon went on for the long walk up to Bateman Street and the alley there.
With Max ready in his bag, it felt like the moment of truth again. Except that moment had already come a couple times before. So it just felt anticlimactic and worrying as to what we’d do next if we still couldn’t get a word with the vampire. Also, we weren’t usually out this early and busy streets made me uncomfortable. The last thing we wanted on any of our missions was attention from mundanes.
“We’ll check first,” Zar started, but I shook my head.
“Let’s think positive and go down with Max. It should be too early for Dieter to be out. We’ll find this one also.”
Chapter 27
Isaac, Jed, and Zar, with Max, accompanied me underground—leaving only Andrew to wait for us.
I soon forgot this unease amidst the one of being once more below London in the silent hive.
As before, the place was smothering, the heat of it worse than a sauna. The stink of rotted corpses turned my stomach and I had to fight down those few fries I’d just eaten, pressing the back of my hand against my mouth. I’d meant to get something like a painter’s mask with essential oils on it if I ever had to come back in here. Yet, with one thing and another…
While I compressed my lips at the bottom of the steps, Isaac switched on a pocket flashlight and I drew up my glow. The magic made a soft, misty light rather than a directed beam, giving a sense of safety—false or otherwise—in 360º visibility.
As we’d done before in this place, Isaac led the way down the black passage, a concrete wall to our right, endless alcoves of bunks to our left. I followed him and Zar followed me, then Jed, all keeping close. Jed had never been down here, but, as far as I could tell, didn’t bat an eye.
Isaac walked with more purpose than before, heading straight back toward Dieter’s lair at the end of the long rows of nooks. This made my heart pound as I kept up, watching shadows shift from the flashlight beam, slinking into their alcoves. As we passed, many voices hissed.
And … wasn’t that another voice? A murmuring, wheezing sort of sing-song chant? Echoing at the end of the passage?
Sweat trickled between my shoulders and into my bra and ran down my temples by the time we reached the end. This was a room with a closed door leading off, heaps of rubbish and clothing lying about, and a counter with bottles and bags scattered on it.
Isaac shone the light around as the voice stopped.
I held out my hands.
Zar kept close at our backs, his shallow breathing in my ear.
I was distracted from looking for a vampire by noticing the row of fresh bottles lined up along the counter, and the diminished white powder since I’d seen it last. Where did he get his supply? And how?
And all that blood? How could his victims part with that much? Was he dealing with medical professionals who were stealing it, or did each of his clients draw their own blood over the course of days to fill a bottle for him? These ranged from plastic water bottles to glass jam jars.
I was just reprimanding myself—Stop it, you can’t think of that sort of thing—when a hissing voice made me jump.
“Max? Is that you, Maximilian?”
The shriveled, repulsive specter of the old vampire sat on his beanbag chair of a clothes heap toward the back of the room. Unlike before, he faced us. Almost as if he’d expected us. Maybe he had noticed some of what we’d said the night before.
I stepped forward, trying to focus, trying not to vomit. Isaac stood beside me.
“Dieter?” I wished I didn’t have to breathe, struggling to make my voice steady. “Do you remember us?”
“Max,” he hissed. “He’s gone away a long time. Where is he? Where’s my Maximilian? Max? The captain wants you, Max!”
“We went to find him for you—”
“Promoted Oberleutnant. Well … well…” A gasping, horrible little laugh. His black eyes lifted from a bleary gaze, avoiding our lights, and focused straight into mine.
Beside me, Isaac tensed, yet I looked back, facing Dieter squarely.
“You remember, don’t you? You know who we are?”
“The wolf-witch,” the vampire whispered, his voice changed, soft and focused as the black, unreflective orbs in his face that drilled into my own eyes.
I knew the charm now. I kept my own focus. The light, the magic, my own power. I didn’t know if I could block him, but I had to try so I could speak with him when he was coherent and not rambling about his war days of a hundred years ago, or hissing at us in German.
“The one who can’t mind her own affairs,” Dieter said softly. “They say they don’t get involved, the human lords and masters. They say we should mind our affairs. ‘We’ll mind ours. We’re the witches. You’re the wolves. You’re the dead.’ Then … here you are. Minding our affairs. Why are you here? What is it a wolf-witch wants?”
“I want to know who, or what, is killing wolves in the South of England. And it’s more than just here now. It’s—”
“Liar!” His frail shout and sudden change in tone made me jump. The word beat off the walls, echoing around us.
“I’m not lying—”
“Always the dogs they like. Good dog. Pretty puppy,” Dieter crooned in a rasping breath that made my skin crawl even more. “Who’s a good dog? Are you? Are they? The wolf-witch will miss them when their throats are cut and their eyes carved out and their hearts staked like the filthy vermin they are, won’t she? Then again �
�� so many troubles she has with them … what’s she to do? Interrupting her life, they are. Making things ever so … complicated for her.” He drew out “complicated” like a delicious flavor and flicked his tongue between the black gap in his gums.
Isaac grabbed my shoulder as the vampire spoke, yet I would not break the gaze.
“If they were all to … disappear it would solve so many of her problems,” Dieter went on, always staring into my eyes. “They will … soon enough. At the rate she’s going. They’ll all be gone soon. What’s another wolf hide? Still a bounty on them? Ears and tails? Aren’t we lucky? Then … why not a wolf-witch pelt? Who’s ever seen the like of it?”
Isaac stepped in front of me, cutting both our lines of sight. Dieter stopped abruptly, as if the loss of contact also left him lost for words.
“Tell us what you know about these murders,” I said softly, my knees weak, the sweat burning my eyes and making me blink. I pulled Isaac’s arm, moving again to be able to see the vampire. “We did what you asked. Your people are doing this, aren’t they? Why? How? By spawning newborn vampires? Strong ones?”
Dieter hissed as I stepped closer, recoiling in on himself, tongue flicking out, looking to the littered floor between us as if to keep track of my feet. “Mind the gap, mind the gap…”
I stopped moving. “Tell us what’s happening and we’ll give you your friend back.”
He hissed again.
I took one step back against Isaac.
Dieter’s hissing subsided. Did he know we had stakes this time?
He looked around distractedly in the dark, stinking, sweltering room. “Max? Have you seen Max?”
“Yes, we have. We brought him for you. Tell us what you know about the murders.”
“Max!” He reached out with both hands, grasping at the air even as he reclined in the filthy pile of rags that was his throne. “Bring me Max! Where’s my Maximilian? Where? Bring Max!”
“Tell us. You said you’d tell us who is responsible for these murders if we brought Max back to you. Tell us first.”
“Max? Come, Max. Come here. Max! Maximilian, the captain wants you!”
“Dieter—”
“Max!”
“Will you tell us about the murders or not?”
“Max!” Dieter wheezed, gasped, coughed, and blinked stupidly at me in the dim light. “Max? You want Max?”
“No, you want Max. We want information. Tell us who’s responsible for these murders among the wolves.”
“Murders and wolves.” He gave a retching little laugh. “Blood and fangs. Rats and sewers. Murders and wolves. All go, all go together. It’s the shifter way. Böser Hund, yes.” Another chuckle. “Such bad dogs all along the way, don’t they fight terribly?”
“Are vampires killing the wolves?” I asked.
“All along the way. All the way back. When the shells come in, you wait at the back. Listen, listen, know where it’s going. Wait for the fall, listen for the size. Listen and you’ll always know.” He looked into my eyes again. “Give me Max.”
“Tell us first. Who’s murdering wolves?”
“Max.”
“No. Tell us. And we’ll leave him here with you.”
“Dieter and Max. Dieter and Max. That’s what we are. Bring me Max. Bring him and then … yes … yes … bring Dieter his Max … mmm…” While he spoke, he sagged into his heap, as if melting, as if falling asleep and, indeed, fell silent.
“Dieter?”
Nothing.
“Dieter, tell us who’s doing this.”
He wheezed, apparently drifting off. “Max … yes … Max…”
“We’ll show you Max and you can tell us what you know. All right?”
Zar stepped forward while Jed kept an eye on the doorway, watching our backs. As Zar opened the bag, Dieter was already curled down into his nest. He folded his hands together below his head like a child, sighed, and his ragged breaths settled.
How did they breathe?
That’s enough. What difference does it make if he coughs?
Not like a student was going to ask me one day, “Miss Allyn? Why do vampires appear to be breathing when they’re actually dead bodies?”
Zar lifted the blanket from the duffel bag, set it on top of this, and delicately unfolded it so as not to scatter bones. One arm, two shoulder blades, most of the ribs, a skull and neck. All dark, grungy things like grotesque Halloween decorations.
Zar glanced from me to Dieter to the bones, back to me.
“See?” I asked. “We have him. Who’s killing wolves in the south? Tell us and we’ll leave you Max and be on our way. We won’t bother you anymore.”
The vampire went on with his nap.
Fine. We could wait. No handing over Max for nothing. Information first.
Except that I was moving from fearing this air and sickening smell and closed, boiling oppression would kill me to wishing it already had.
No. We couldn’t wait.
I nodded to Zar. “Dieter. Here’s Max. We brought your friend back to you. Will you please tell us what you know about the murders among the South Coast wolves? And the druids? And France?”
As I spoke, Zar lifted the old blanket and, keeping a close eye on the snoozing vampire, rested it, complete with the gathered bones at the base of the mound.
Dieter snuffled, blinked at the bones, and sat up.
Zar retreated to me.
I repeated my last message more or less in the same words as the vampire hunched himself forward on his rag pile to reach for bones. He stroked a pale finger down one rib, looking over what was there.
He did not answer or look up.
“That’s all there was of him,” I explained. “We’re not sure what happened.”
Dieter had picked up the skull, turning it in both hands to look into empty eye sockets. When the two faces lined up, as if watching one another, nose-to-nose, Dieter began to chuckle in that painful gasp of his. This grew rapidly to a cackle more dreadful than any witch over a caldron could ever hope to achieve.
The sound went on and on, banging into walls, back into our ears like a gavel, laughing and cackling to a pitch of screaming. Yet jubilant screaming—a perfectly insane noise that I knew would haunt my nightmares.
Through the wild cackles, he shook the skull in front of his face, words bursting from the vampire’s rotten mouth.
“Did you think you could best me? Promoted Oberleutnant, Max, officer Max, mighty Max! Now look at you! Look!” A stream of German among the cackling. Then, “And look at Dieter still going! You blown in half! That was your knee past my ear, Max! That was your liver up the parapet! You thought you were unbesiegbar! Nein, nein, nein, you said, not like you, you creature of darkness! Look at you now! Nothing but bones! Bones! Bones! Du bist nichts als Knochen! Siehst du mich? Ich bin eine stolze Kreatur der Nacht! You? What are you, Max? Bones! Bones!”
He subsided into a fit of screaming laughter beyond words, then back to taunts and insults to the skull, apparently calling it names in German. “A fool, Max! Du Narr!”
On and on and on while Zar had his hands over his ears and my light wavered, ears seeming to bleed, head pounding, stomach turning over.
Dieter hurled the skull into the concrete wall. It smashed into several pieces. He grabbed handfuls of the rest and threw them about, still yelling and cackling and shaking with laughter.
He flung a shoulder blade into the wall after the skull. A rib rocketed past my ear. A piece of the clavicle smashed into the counter.
Jed growled and Isaac pulled me back while I tried to speak.
Dieter was deaf to me, blind to us all.
For minutes as if years it went on, Zar trying to get me to leave, gesturing out of there, Isaac holding my arm, the sweat rolling down my face and back, head spinning, palms scarcely glowing at all. Jed was in the doorway, only waiting for me to get out of here.
There are words people throw around that they don’t mean. “I’m starving.” “I was literally fr
eezing to death.” And so on. One is the word “torture.” I’d been guilty of it myself. Telling Nana, for example, that it was torture, her making me stay in on a sunny day when I should have been swimming instead of practicing my scries.
There, in that bunker below London on an August night, I finally understood the meaning of torture—which is an understanding I would not wish upon my worst enemy.
We never did get anything more out of Dieter. He was through with us.
We’d served our purpose.
By the time we finally got out, my light gone and clutching Isaac’s hand ahead of me, I was so sick, I could hardly climb. Emerging into the warm night air that might as well have been Antarctic by comparison, I sank to my knees on the sidewalk, curled over, gagging up bile. I remained there a long time with my nose inches from the pavement, mouth wide for huge, shuddering breaths. Tears fell straight from my lashes to the ground without having to travel down skin.
Zar retched and coughed. Jed was hunched over gasping. Isaac leaned both hands into the building wall, face bowed between his arms, breathing as fast as I was.
Andrew sat on the sidewalk beside me, not saying anything, but eventually resting his hand on my back and I leaned into him. Then Jed sat on my other side, panting, offering a bottle of water, which I took when I could to splash my face.
No one said anything.
Chapter 28
For nothing. Back and forth to him, night after night, all seven of us traveling across two countries, robbing a grave, spending days and nights and resources and our own time and energy on this one lead. For nothing.
The book, Kage pointed out once we’d collected them from The Abyssinian—no Gabriel—and were walking back to the bikes. Kage had brought a loaner so the seven of us could all get home on four motorcycles. At least we had the Blood Tome.
Did we? Did we even know that was what it was? Or had we also broken into a castle and stolen the personal diary of a thousand-year-old vampire for another lark? Just because we had nothing better to do? And had a death wish.
Moonlight Heart: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 4) Page 17
