Andrew had not apologized once we’d met up, but told me he’d distributed the wallets at police stations and to beat cops. Kage had backed him up—not that I much trusted Kage either. I’d thanked Andrew, making an effort to show that I appreciated him trying to put the wrong right. Maybe he just thought I was patronizing, though, because he’d been cold all evening.
Just as this Andrew in fur now stood with his tail to us.
We were all together for this bit, staying safe in a pack for vampire interaction before splitting up for the night ahead to try once more hunting shifters. Jason was also in fur, carrying his rope leash in his mouth since Kage couldn’t be bothered about it.
“I can go down and tell him what we found out,” Isaac said. “There’s no point in you having to go through there again.”
“That’s noble of you.” I sighed. “But we’ve got to make one more stab at getting information from him, even if we’re delivering bad news.”
Zar stepped forward to go as well, his face set.
“Zar … why don’t you let Kage go down? It’s not—”
“I want to be with you.” Zar had also been tense all evening.
The whole lot of them had been out of sorts ever since lunch break. And what was I supposed to do? Apologize to each one and hold his paw and say I would always love them for who they were? The whole jealousy situation was ridiculous.
At least I was pretty sure they wouldn’t all have another go at ganging up on Isaac tonight. We were too busy for it.
Isaac, Zar, and I ventured down to the silent hive.
We used a couple of small flashlights now. The journey was not as alarming as the night before because we knew what to expect. Still, hissing, sudden dart of rats, movements, occasional voices, all in the dark and heat like a bonfire coming from the walls, and the reek of death… No, it really wasn’t much better this time.
Again, nothing came after us and we reached the end room with the mounds of trash and a fortune in illegal drugs.
Maybe he wouldn’t be there. We could just go, turn and run, forget the whole thing.
No. There was Dieter, not in his pile, but sitting on the floor with his spindly legs out.
Only soft muttering and hissing from the room until Isaac stepped in and shined the light at him.
Then Dieter yowled like a cat. “Away! Away! Curse the damn brutes! Böse Hunde! Curses!”
Isaac aimed the beam at the low ceiling and I did the same with mine, casting a soft glow around the room with the reflection on concrete.
Dieter subsided, blinking and squinting at us. “Human,” he murmured. “It’s the human, the French girl. Max!” He coughed. “Französischen Mädchen back for you after all. Where is my Maximilian? Where’d you take him?”
At least we could get right to the point.
“That’s why we came back to talk.” Out from the passage, I stepped up beside Isaac, Zar at our backs, keeping an eye on the corridor.
I was distracted by what he was doing, using a tarnished silver table spoon to measure out scoops of white powder from a gallon bag into many little bags. One spoon for each.
“You have Max?” he asked in his gasping, hacksaw voice that hurt my throat.
“We looked. We spent half the day trying to find him. We did the best—”
“Bring him to me.” Lowering to a hiss—expectant, eager. “Bring my Max.”
“We … looked and … Max is dead. He died in 1918 at the end of the war. His family later had him put to rest in Germany—”
“Bring my Max.”
“And that’s where he is now. Max isn’t a vampire, is he?”
“Bring Max here.” With a disturbingly lascivious air, Dieter was running his tongue over his black, rotted gums, between two fangs still in place to each side of his empty mouth.
“So, I’m sorry we couldn’t help you more. We did our best.”
“Mind the gap,” he said with a flick of his tongue and chuckled—another horrid, broken sound.
I almost turned and left. But I thought of Abraham’s body, the bloody face, hanging upside down with a cut throat, the missing eyes, the stake to the heart. I stood my ground, my eyes watering in fetid, burning air.
“Dieter? I’m sorry we can’t bring you Max. We did try. Now, if there’s anything at all you know about these deaths, anything you could tell us to give even a hint—”
“His name is Maximilian Walkenhorst. Promoted Oberleutnant. You will bring him to me.”
“I just explained, we can’t.”
Black eyes focused on mine. For the first time in this meeting, he really seemed to be seeing us.
“No,” he said in a breath. “You’ve done nothing but make excuses. Bring me Max.”
“We can’t.” I raised my voice, speaking forcefully, darting my eyes to keep him from locking the gaze, drawing up my magic for a shield. “I already told you—”
“You have not even tried.”
“What would you have us do?”
“I would have you bring me Maximilian!” he shrieked and scuffled, setting aside his little bags, struggling to stand as his limbs shook.
Isaac touched my shoulder and we stepped slowly back.
“Please,” I said, “if you know something about these deaths, please, please help us. We are part of your community. The magical community. We don’t mean to be breaking the truce. We’re only looking for help.”
“Why not? Everyone else has,” he spat. “Broken, broken, broken. No one stays in place anymore. Everyone breaks it and goes where they will. That was another time, another world. Night on the line, the flairs going up, up, hang in the sky, having to see. They all had to see, they loved light, they loved lighting things up. Light up the others out there. Who was there for the bodies in the shell holes? Who was there below the lights and the shelling? Who was part of it all? Max! Where is Max? Why won’t you bring him to me? Curse you! Curses! Max!”
He fell into mumbling in German again. On his feet, he tottered with his bags, not approaching us, but lining up neat rows of those little scoops of white powder. Ready for his night’s dealing? Where did he go? Did he have an agreement with clients already that they brought blood, not cash? Or he would just drink from them on the spot?
The idea of letting that horror put his face on my skin almost made me imitate Andrew from the night before.
Instead of vomiting, I turned away. “Sorry to have bothered you. Good night, Dieter.”
“What about Max?”
I looked around.
Dieter faced me, steady as he leaned against the counter, looking into my eyes, apparently perfectly aware and present with us.
“I told you about him,” I said.
“Then you will bring him?”
“How many times…?” I stopped. For the first time, it occurred to me that Dieter understood what I was saying. And he wanted whatever there was of Max anyway. I swallowed. “Dieter, we can’t bring you Max. His remains are underground in another country in a coffin.”
“No need for the coffin.” Dieter smiled, his tongue again flicking out over his black gums, only a few teeth and those little fangs remaining in his mouth. The sight of his smile was the most terrifying thing I had seen down here. Or in my whole life.
My heart pounded as I stood there, all of us still and silent for a time.
“What do you know about this?” I asked softly.
“About the wolves with stakes in their hearts, eyes carved away with pocket knives, and throats cut open to bleed them out? Or have some been burned?” His smile grew. “Why … nothing, Fräulein. Nothing at all. Only Dieter here. No Max. Nothing any schmutzige wolf would want to hear from the lips of a hundred-year-old corpse.”
My pulse raced faster, throat compressed. At my side and back, Isaac and Zar were rigid.
“Your people are doing this,” I whispered, stepping forward. “There are vampires in the south, aren’t there? Everyone breaking the truce? Wolves here, vampires there? What do you
know about them, Dieter? Tell us, please, and we’ll see what we can do about Max.”
“See what you can do,” he hissed, gazing into my eyes—his own were black pools, unblinking. “See what you can do first. When you have Max, bring him.”
“If we did, if we could do that, you would tell us what’s going on? You know who the killers are?”
“Bring Max first. A talk with Max … yes … yes, Max was there when they lit up the skies, when the shelling stopped.”
“Why do you keep talking about World War One? That is what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Always a war. They’ve always been at war, the filthy beasts. They wouldn’t know any other way. A thousand years, ten thousand years, and it’s all they know. Always a war. Some … some in the open, the machine guns clattering. Some … in the dark.” The last words dropped away to a breath like a horrible death rattle. Then he turned his back to me and began sorting out his wares.
“Dieter—”
“Max?” He started talking in German, all under his breath, often mentioning Max’s name.
“Dieter, if there’s more that you—”
He hissed, frail shoulders tensing, then went on with his quiet chatter.
Isaac again touched my arm.
Shaking with the tension, fear, frustration, and what Dieter had said, plus sick with the heat and stench and impossibility of getting what this creature wanted in order to get information out of him, I all but staggered out with Isaac and Zar.
The dark streets of London in summer had never smelled so good.
Chapter 10
This night, as we searched street after street, up and down like spiders building a web, even I began to despair. I didn’t care now. My heart wasn’t in it. We’d come to London mostly to look for wolves. Now, vampires were all any of us could think about needing to track. Or bribe.
With Zar, Kage, and Jason, we walked and walked. Jason drooping, miserable, but padding along, searching each sidewalk, Kage and Zar silent and tense, like myself, all of us thinking, I knew, of the same thing—of Dieter’s words.
If he knew, if there was even a chance he knew, we had to try. But we couldn’t. We couldn’t hop on a plane to Germany, dig up a corpse in some little town—the name of which was escaping me, but Isaac knew—and fly the crumbled old bones back to London in a carry-on.
It wasn’t even possible.
What then?
Think of some other way to get Dieter to talk?
Of course, Kage had suggested offering the vampire a stake to his own heart if he didn’t talk.
But Kage hadn’t met Dieter. He hadn’t been down in the silent hive. Of all our options, I knew that wasn’t among them. We couldn’t make good on such a threat even if we wanted to. Not with this vampire being our first real source of potential information. Then there was the setting: the other vampires; having to get back out.
And there were vampire/wolf relations. If certain vampires were killing off certain wolves because of old grudges and breaking old truces, a bunch of wolves destroying vampires in London, in their own realm, could not end well. Yes, the wolves were already in trouble, but, so it seemed, not from London vampires. From truce-breaking vampires.
If that was even what Dieter had meant. Which it sure as hell had sounded like.
After the disappointment of finding another fish and chips shop only after closing, Jason caught and gulped down a rat that ran across his path. The noise of the squealing, then crunching bones, and sight of him swallowing that little animal was the icing on my evening’s cake.
By 3:00 a.m. I told Jason to stop, we were going back to the hostel. Even my coffee intake throughout the day wasn’t carrying me any longer.
We left Drury Lane to start north and east. We’d been walking with the intent of heading “home” for ten minutes when Jason stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
Kage walked past him, then looked around.
By the time I also turned, I saw by streetlights that the fur stood up along Jason’s back. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated in the dark.
The black wolf returned slowly to the cross street we’d just passed. He sniffed the doorstep of a closed office building as I also moved near, watching Jason.
With his nose a foot from the sidewalk, he started down it, then made a sharp right, hugging the corner of the building, with Kage, Zar, and myself following.
We broke into jogs to keep up as Jason trotted past greasy fast food wrappers, a single discarded tennis shoe, and a scattering of broken glass. He jumped over the glass and landed at a lope. The long wolf stride devoured ground, yet no one called him back. We just ran along the dark street.
Kage hurried ahead as we nearly lost sight of Jason, who was not wearing the slip lead. Instead, it flapped, bunched in Kage’s hand as he tore after Jason.
As Zar and I rounded the next corner, I thought we’d lost any trail. Jason was pacing around a bus stop, his nose dipping up and down from ground to air, Kage dashed up to him.
We slowed our pace. I had a stitch in my side, breathless. Zar wasn’t even puffing.
Before we could reach him, Jason moved on. Nose in the air, he trotted up another street. I didn’t know which, or even know the direction, though it felt like north. We followed, Zar glancing at me.
“I’m okay,” I panted. “Just … need to get back into swimming.”
“You swim?” Zar sounded interested.
“Constantly as a girl. It’s been a while…”
“I love to swim. Remember those coves I mentioned?” He was smiling sideways at me as we jogged after Kage.
“This is not the time.” I was trying not to gasp like a fish. City blocks in London were long and the warm night and my own pounding heart and anxiety didn’t help.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’d still like to show you around more at home, though. If you’d do me the honor.”
I looked at him again. He was adorable, no denying it. I was getting into the long hair on a guy—black and wavy, while his brother’s was short and curly, not tight, but sort of tousled curly. That would look cute on Zar also. I wished I could see him with it short to decide.
Even so, not adorable enough. I’d made my choice that afternoon in a sushi restaurant. I should probably say this to Zar, though. At some point. It wasn’t fair not to. And to Kage. And Andrew. Tell them later. Not tonight.
An explosion of barking burst ahead of us. Someone walking a big dog at this ungodly hour. I’d hardly seen any dogs in the city.
At the next corner, a man was trying to drag a Labrador retriever along a crosswalk while the dog lunged back to get at Jason, who’d already made the turn and was tearing off now at full speed, either startled by the noise and trying to get away or picking up a better trail.
“Hey! Put that animal on a lead!” he shouted at Kage over the wild barking of his own dog.
Kage ignored him, racing after Jason.
I slowed to a walk as we hit the corner, catching Zar’s elbow. He stayed beside me and we walked casually along as if for a moonlight stroll, nothing to do with the man chasing his rare escaped bear-spitz down the street. A “black Russian bear-spitz” had been Kage’s cheerful introduction for Jason all evening the few times it had come up. One woman had asked if he knew any breeders, which had made Kage laugh.
Halfway down the block, with the man and his dog gone behind us, Kage and Jason were out of sight and sound. At least for me.
“I don’t understand something,” I panted. “When you’re in a human form, you still have wolfish senses. How? You look human, sound human, move human. But your noses aren’t human?”
“We’re never human.” Zar smiled. “We’re in skin or fur. You won’t catch a wolf saying he’s in ‘human form.’”
“Sorry. You think that’s an insult?”
“I don’t,” Zar said quickly. “Not now that I’ve met you and am starting to appreciate what human can mean.”
“Not just worms after all?�
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“We shouldn’t say that.” He shook his head.
“It’s okay. I know you, at least, don’t mean it unkindly. Compared to the strength and speed and senses you have, even in skin, I guess most humans do seem a little … worm-ish.”
“It’s just an old slang name. I’m sorry. You’re so smart and so elegant … it’s not a word I could think of when it comes to you.”
“Maybe you need to get to know a few more humans?” I suggested, still struggling for breath.
“I don’t have much chance, working at home.”
“I’d love to see something you’ve made.” Wait. Stop it. I’d just said I’d made a choice and had found my focus with them. And it wasn’t on Zar. Only … I’d said it in my head and not to him.
And what about this whole thing just being brief? Professional relationships? Keeping my distance? Well … that was long gone, really.
“Would you?” Zar beamed. He took my hand. “I’d love that too. Maybe I could make you something?”
“No, Zar, don’t—”
“You don’t seem to wear much jewelry. But I make bracelets and more. Or a bag. Have you ever had a deerskin purse? It’s the silk of leather.”
“Zar—”
“It would be such a pleasure for me, if you’d let me. But best if you could tell me something that would be of interest or practical use to you. Like … not a pair of shoes if you already own a dozen pairs, or a bracelet if you don’t wear leather jewelry. Is there anything you need?”
“You—I don’t—I’m not even going to be here much longer. I have a ticket home in a week.” And I had way more than a dozen pairs of shoes back home.
“Something small then, easy to take with you.”
I let out a breath. He still looked so happy. Anyway, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to take him up on it. The work sounded fascinating. I’d never known anyone who could make things like boots and purses with their own hands.
“Okay. If you end up home and have time and want to make something. I would love a bracelet. Anything other than black. Black is too harsh on my complexion.”
He nodded. “That’s why you wear pastels, or blue and purple if it’s darker.”
Moonlight Hunters: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 2) Page 7
