by M. A. Grant
“Fine,” Atlas said.
Cristian shook his head and pressed his hand to Atlas’s chest, pressing lightly with his fingers. “No. Not fine. The minute we set foot in there, everyone will be watching us. They’ll be looking for weaknesses, and if they find one, they’ll exploit it without hesitation. You may be with me, but you’re a human, and you don’t bear any of my marks on you. You’ll be their first target. I have to know you’ll tell me if you can’t handle what you see.”
Atlas started to lie, to tell Cristian he was trustworthy, but he stopped with such effort the muscles of his jaw tensed in the streetlight. Another pair of people walked past them before Atlas gathered himself enough to promise, “I’ll tell you.”
“Thank you,” Cristian breathed, and reached up to clasp Atlas’s face in hand to steal a quick, grateful kiss before they walked into hell. “Let’s go.”
The guards into the nest were arrogant enough they hadn’t bothered to hide their true features. The one on the left held up his hand, stopping them from entering.
“What’s your business here?” he asked Cristian.
“We’re here to pay our respects to the ispán,” Cristian said. “May we go up to see him?”
Cristian didn’t expect to receive celebrity treatment, but the next hour required all his patience. The guard called up to receive Grigore’s approval to let them enter. It didn’t come. Cristian and Atlas stood to the side as donors were welcomed in. Cristian was about to say fuck it all and walk away when the guard got a call back.
“You’ll go now,” the guard ordered. He left the other guard to sort through the donors and led Atlas and Cristian inside. He shut them inside the rusting birdcage of an elevator and stepped back. “Enjoy,” he sneered as they rose.
Cristian doubted they would. The creaking elevator cable might snap at any moment and send them plunging to their doom. At least then they’d be dead or unconscious and wouldn’t have to tolerate the full host of foul odors pervading the nest. The stench of donors’ emotions hadn’t lessened, but now it was combined with a potpourri of piss, alcohol, stale sex, and blood. So much blood, in varying degrees of freshness, and heavy enough in the air Cristian swore he could see it condensing around them.
And it wasn’t getting any better the higher they rose. It leached into the walls and carpet instead, became one with the building, until Cristian wanted to gag from it. He’d buried his nose in his elbow by the time they’d hit the third floor. It helped, but still couldn’t filter out all the scents. God, he was going to have the worst headache when this was all over—
“What is this place?” Atlas ground out, trying subtly to breathe through his jacket collar.
“Did you bring your meds with you?” Cristian asked, instead of answering. When Atlas gave him a flat, unimpressed look, he added, “If I’m going to have a headache, I know you will too. So, did you bring them?”
“They’re at the hotel.”
Their elevator slowed as they neared the top floor. This time, Cristian could see the spill of blood tracked into the carpet as he smelled it. Standing beside a man who bore the scars of a vicious attack, he began to understand why Atlas had called him, had called vampires, monsters. Grigore was certainly doing his damnedest to live up to the title. Mircea may not have thought change was possible, but hopefully Emil’s reports to Mihai would bring an end to such behavior.
“I’ll take one when we get back,” Atlas promised miserably.
“Good.” Cristian reached out and dared brush his fingers against Atlas’s hand in a subtle intimacy. “Best get this over with.”
The elevator halted right in front of the stained path leading down the hall to their left. Its door wrenched open with a painful screech of metal on metal, and they stepped out of it, following the blood trail. They passed a vampire sitting against a wall outside a closed apartment door. Someone inside was crying, and the vampire in the hall was too focused on clutching her head to notice them passing.
“Is she—” Atlas started, only for Cristian to nudge him past her more quickly.
“Bad feeding,” he murmured. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”
Bonds broken during feeding were notoriously painful. They left the donor with a heightened emotional fragility, courtesy of reliving memories they weren’t prepared to process. The vampire didn’t get off easy either. They suffered the same emotional overload of the donor, as well as physical symptoms from a feeding gone wrong. Sore gums, splitting headache, nausea, and short-term muscular weakness as their body fought to process additional blood that wasn’t actually in their system. A physical warning that a bad bond was more painful than forgoing feeding entirely. A warning the vampire in the hall must have missed, if she and her donor were suffering this badly. No matter how much Cristian wished he could help, he knew from experience that the only thing that would ease the pain was time, and he and Atlas didn’t have enough of it to spare.
They continued to the apartment at the end of the hall. Cristian paused on the threshold, attuned to the noises coming from within, regretting more and more deeply his visit to this nest.
He suspected what lay beyond that door, feared Atlas seeing it, but turning back now would be more dangerous than forging ahead. Hopefully Atlas would still be able to look at him once this was over.
The door swung open into a narrow hallway. Electrical wires sagged from the ceiling, barely held up by the tacks pinning them in place. Some walls had faded pictures taped to them, aged tributes to the families who’d once inhabited the honeycombed living spaces of the building. Bare light bulbs stuck out from the sockets mounted above each of the doorways beyond, a long corridor of entrances and exits connecting the apartments that stretched out a fun-house mirror reflection. It was cramped and the air rushing to escape past them reeked of stale bodily fluids, desire, and misery.
Cristian ignored the people standing near the doorways of occupied rooms. Those silent, menacing watchers followed their progress past cheap doors incapable of containing the sounds of feeding and fucking occurring beyond. Cristian strode to the end of the long hallway as if the scene unfolding around him was commonplace. To his credit, Atlas followed like a shadow and didn’t utter a single sound.
No one stood guard at the door into the final apartment and the vampire ruling from the sole chair in the room barely glanced up from his feeding when they walked in. Only someone as powerful as an ispán would dare show such disregard to his guests. They were in the presence of Grigore at last. The woman sitting docilely in his lap shivered and shuddered, and Cristian could see Grigore’s throat working with every deep swallow he took as he fed from her scarred neck.
Too much. He was taking far too much, and there wasn’t a damn thing Cristian could do about it.
Instead of confronting the man, Cristian drew up about half the room away. He waited in the open space left by the crowd of vampires who emerged from the other apartments to circle the unknown visitors. Atlas stopped beside him, so close their shoulders brushed. It was the only thread of stability he could cling to as the reality of the situation crept in.
Too many painful seconds later, Grigore withdrew his fangs and stood. The discarded woman fell from his lap and would have crashed to the floor, if not for another donor who rushed in to catch her. Even from the distance, it was easy to see the woman’s parted lips and vacant stare. She’d be lost in the memories for hours, if she lived that long with such blood loss.
Grigore paid no attention to her plight. He was a tall man, as tall as Atlas, and broad shouldered. His nose was crooked, as though it had been broken multiple times in brawls or boxing matches. His dark eyebrows enhanced his squint of displeasure and a deep scar ran over his cheek and toward his temple.
“Who are you?” Grigore asked, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. The blood still dripping from his thick, black beard left a dark crimson smear across his scarred
knuckles. If he was a made vampire, he’d been a fighter before he was turned. And if he’d been born a vampire...well, Cristian’s estimation of him didn’t rise much, but he’d at least acknowledge the man had survived some ugly scrapes.
He wasn’t the only one cataloguing the new information. At his side, Atlas took a slow, steady inhalation through his nose. He must have been nervous, but he didn’t give any sign to indicate he was about to lose control.
Cristian kept his expression polite, despite his disgust at Grigore’s behavior and replied, “A traveler who wished to pay his respects to the ispán of this county.”
“A traveler with no name?” Grigore asked, taking a heavy step closer.
Another vampire, just as tall, but older, with the same stern expression Atlas usually wore, slipped his way through the crowd, carefully moving to take his place near Grigore. Atlas could worry about him; he needed to focus on the man before him.
“I don’t trust men who speak in riddles,” Grigore said, loud enough for his words to carry through the room.
Donors shrank back against the walls, or curled into the bodies of the vampires who held them possessively. The vampires were too focused to provide comfort; they watched their leader closely and whispered to each other, eyeing Cristian with growing dislike.
If they turned on him—and Atlas—there would be no chance of escape. The nest was full to the brim with vampires and donors alike and any kind of violence that broke out would have other victims. He understood too late this wasn’t Scarsdale, where Helias ensured Cristian could saunter into any meeting and walk out the victor. He’d overestimated himself and underestimated Grigore’s power over his people. It didn’t matter if this was Mihai’s territory and Cristian had permission to be here. Mihai wasn’t making this introduction, which meant Cristian had to forge his own path forward. A path he and Atlas would have to walk together.
He stood there, trapped in his indecision, until he caught a snatch of a hushed conversation between two of the nearest vampires who decided they would take Atlas when Cristian had been properly cowed by Grigore. He couldn’t help glancing to Atlas, who had heard them too. He may not have understood the language, but he understood the intent in their voices and hungry gazes. He held his muscles in check, trying not to show weakness. His body betrayed his desire for flight anyway. Cristian scented the air and all thoughts of diplomacy left him.
“Don’t—” Atlas began.
Too late.
“And I don’t trust men who allow their followers to openly discuss taking a guest’s partner away in front of him,” Cristian remarked, keeping his posture relaxed in direct defiance to Grigore’s attempted intimidation.
At Grigore’s shoulder, the older man’s eyes narrowed and his scowl deepened. The ispán didn’t notice. He glanced at the pair of vampires Cristian had overheard. He made no attempt to discipline them, simply waved them off in dismissal. “I promise they’ll do him no harm. Talk is cheap,” Grigore told him, as if that somehow nullified their ill intent.
“As is the promise of one who refuses to offer basic hospitality,” Cristian replied sweetly.
At that blatant accusation, Grigore came to a lumbering halt and glared at him.
“Have I not offered my respect, as is required?” Cristian asked. For all his hatred of political maneuvering, he could wield it to his advantage at times.
Unless Grigore wished to risk breaking tradition in front of all the vampires around him, he had to respond, and respond correctly. He managed it, though so bitterly Cristian wondered if he’d ever said the words in good faith before. “Your respects have been noted. Will you slake your thirst?”
He snapped his fingers and several young donors rushed to his side, spaced out from being fed on already and still desperate for his attention. Their open wounds, from fangs and other things, continued to bleed sluggishly.
Cristian shook his head. “Thank you for offering, but I’ve already fed.”
Grigore gave him a sour smile and barked a command. Other vampires stepped forward and claimed the refused donors, whisking them off into the darker reaches of the nest. There was no time to lament their fates.
“I am sure there is nothing else you need, now that formalities have been met.” It was a threat wrapped in casual words, one made even more obvious when the older man at his shoulder stepped forward, at the frustrated ispán’s side in a mirror image of Atlas’s stance. Definitely a bodyguard.
“My needs have been met,” Cristian agreed. “I look forward to my stay in your county.”
“Bold of you to assume I would allow you to stay,” Grigore growled.
The escalating tension in the apartment spread through the crowd. Half began dispersing, trying to avoid the coming fight, while the other half closed in a little tighter. As Cristian feared, they focused on Atlas. Several of the vampires tried to separate them, but Atlas glared and stepped even closer to Cristian, until he was nearly chest to back with him. Atlas put up a good front, but he breathed nervously and the frantic beating of his heart kept rising, until Cristian swore he could feel it hammering against his skin too. The panic Atlas had been pushing down threatened to break free, strains of discharged gunpowder and something heavier, like offal left exposed to the sun. A scent Cristian had noticed before in Scarsdale, when they’d faced the strigoi.
Atlas was afraid.
Cristian wouldn’t allow these monsters to witness it. He didn’t want to give away his relationship to Mihai, but if it meant Atlas would be safe, it was worth the cost.
“Bold of you to assume you could stop me from staying,” Cristian tossed back. “Have you spoken to your voivode recently, Grigore? Did he say anything about honored guests? He was eager to receive word of my receptions throughout his territory. He swore his ispáns wouldn’t tarnish his family’s name.”
Like that, the tenor of the room shifted. The surrounding vampires retreated, giving Cristian and Atlas a wide berth. Grigore and his bodyguard were the only two to not try to distance themselves. The bodyguard’s expression had shuttered into cool indifference, but not before Cristian had caught the way his eyes widened in shock. Only one other person knew Cristian was coming here. It seemed they’d met Emil.
Grigore’s fists clenched at his sides and his fangs glinted as he forced himself to smile. “I didn’t realize Voivode Mihai’s prestigious guest would arrive so quickly. How long will I be blessed to host you?”
“I haven’t decided yet. But I’m sure you and yours will manage despite my presence.”
“Of course.” Grigore lifted his hands and bellowed to the room, “Spread the word. These two are Voivode Mihai’s esteemed guests. They will be treated like the voivode’s family. Memorize their faces. Inform me of their every need, that we may serve our voivode honorably.”
It was a clever subversion of Mihai’s expectations, Cristian had to admit. He and Atlas would be safe in Grigore’s county, but he’d just commanded all the vampires in the area to keep an eye out for them. Anywhere they went, there would be spies watching them and reporting back to their ispán. At least he knew it now and could prepare for the complete lack of privacy to come. The hard part would be explaining it to Atlas...
...who hadn’t moved away from Cristian’s side, but whose forehead was lightly beaded with sweat and who looked like he would have run if he weren’t duty-bound to remain. At least his scent was muted again, somehow back under control. It was time to leave, before they gave away something they couldn’t take back.
“Although I was unable to partake of your generous offer to feed tonight,” Cristian said, “I may have need tomorrow. Should I return here to do so?”
“Emil,” Grigore said. The bodyguard took another step forward and tilted his head to his ispán. “I believe our guest may enjoy touring our city. See that he finds an appropriate donor outside the nest.”
“Of course,” Emil s
aid.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Cristian lied. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
He led the way out of the room, Atlas at his heels, and Emil trailing them both. All in all, it wasn’t the worst possible outcome. Being denied access into the nest was a bit of an extreme reaction, but Grigore had unwittingly secured them time with Emil. Hopefully that would speed their search for Radu.
Emil waited until they were all in the small elevator and creaking their way back to the lowest floor before he spoke. “I will give you my number. Tomorrow I will contact you and help you find an appropriate donor.”
It was a pretty piece of theatre, especially since Cristian already had a way to contact him. But the wary gazes from the rooms and stairwells all around followed their descent, and Cristian knew it was better to play along. “I appreciate that,” Cristian told him.
Emil escorted them from the nest and they began their walk back to the haven.
Atlas tried to ask a question only once, which Cristian shut down with a blunt, “Not yet.” Somehow he read Cristian’s slow pace as forced, and understood the effort he was making to avoid looking as if he were fleeing Grigore. Connected with his refusal to speak where others might hear, Atlas must have understood Cristian’s artifice, because he didn’t question it.
Instead, he held his unnatural stillness even after they crossed over the line marking the edge of the haven’s property. Only when they were safe inside the narrow confines of their room’s inner vestibule did Atlas break, though not in the way Cristian expected.
He’d planned for an angry outburst, for Atlas lecturing him on unnecessary risks, hell, even for Atlas to break down in the sudden release of a repressed panic attack. He wasn’t prepared for tenderness, and there was no fucking way he was prepared for it to be focused on him.
The overhead fixture clicked on and Atlas took Cristian’s face in his hands, turning him gently into the light for easier inspection. Even when they could open the interior door, Atlas didn’t release him.
