by D. N. Hoxa
“Yep. I’m from Europe.”
As if that was going to convince him. It didn’t, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what else he wanted to ask me. It had been the wrong move to go there, let alone speak without at least trying to change my voice a little. The answer to my earlier question was clear. A lot of them were going to think I was Hammer if I took my mask off.
“Did you know him?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Hey, what’s up with the voice?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled.
He had noticed my changing voice. Of course he had. Shit. I couldn’t catch a break.
“You sounded like you were sick,” El said, shaking his head.
“Let’s just concentrate on finding Drag.”
All the vampires around us watched, half curious, half suspicious as we passed them by, but none of them stopped us. We reached the end of the fenced yard where a long, slim table stood empty.
“Do you see her anywhere?” El whispered. I only shook my head. “I guess we’ll hear her heartbeat before we see her.”
“Guess so.”
“So, Brazil,” El said. “The best country on this earth, once. I don’t care what they say. It was the best.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, man. Beautiful buildings, a lot of green. And the women…” El said, smiling at himself.
“How long have you been a vampire?”
“About seventy years,” El said in wonder. “Seventy-three, if we’re being specific.”
“That’s a lot of blood sucking.”
I meant it to be joke but El didn’t laugh.
“You?”
“Fifty years,” I said. He believed me.
“Who’s your master?”
“We call them Doyens here,” I said. “Mine’s Ray.”
“Mine’s Alexa. She’s a real bitch,” he said dryly.
“Is that the name of the mistress who sent you?”
El shook his head. “No. But she gave me to her for using.” He wasn’t very happy about it. “And where is your Doyen?”
“No idea,” I said. I was glad about it.
El grabbed my forearm and squeezed. When I looked up, I saw Zuke. He didn’t look out of place in the crowd. His silent nature helped him fit in just about anywhere. He nodded his head at us, and then he turned around and disappeared toward the entrance.
“Let’s go,” I said, right when a huge guy stopped in front of me and blocked my way.
“Hey, there,” he said.
I looked up at his square face. His eyes were light brown and his hair cut really short, except for a long thin braid that started somewhere on the back of his neck and fell on his left shoulder.
“Hey,” I mumbled, extra careful with my voice.
“The name’s Tif, and my buddy over there at the bar wanted me to come talk to you. Any idea why?”
The fake cheerfulness of his voice irritated me.
“Perhaps because we’re not from around here, and he wanted you to make us feel welcome?” El said.
He laughed throatily. “Don’t you have a mouth on you,” he said, and turned to me again. I took a step back because he was way into my personal space. “What’s with the mask?”
“What’s with the braid?”
“Like it,” Tif said, grinning.
“Same here.”
“Where are you from?”
He nodded at me, as if to tell El to shut up. If I had the ability to sweat, I would’ve been soaked. Damn my stupid mouth.
“Spain,” I said. “We were just passing by, but we need to be on our way now.”
“Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?” Tif said.
Two more guys came behind him, watching me like they knew exactly what I was hiding.
“I get that a lot. Not sure why,” I said.
“As much as we would like to hang around, we really need to get going,” El said, and he began to slowly walk around Tif. To my surprise, he didn’t stop him.
“What about you? I’d like to buy you a drink,” Tif said to me.
“No, thanks. Already have one,” I said and showed him my wine bottle.
“I get the feeling we’ve met before. And you’ve not told me your name,” Tif said. He was eager to step in front of me, but something stopped him.
“I’m Mask, and I really need to get going.” I stepped aside and followed El.
“I’ll see you around, Mask!” Tif called.
I only raised my hand. People were watching, even more curious now. I walked faster, and El ended up running after me until we got out of that fucking place.
“Hey, wait!” he hissed. “You’re out of your fucking mind!”
“We have to find Zuke,” I whispered.
“What the hell was that? Why are you lying to people? Who was that?”
He kept waving his arms around.
“Stay calm, El. Vampires watching,” I hissed.
“Why are you lying? You know those guys, don’t you? They all seem to know you,” he whispered, completely frustrated.
I didn’t speak. We were very close to crossing the line between nothingness and the fucked up vampire community. I resisted the urge to run just to not mess it up at the end.
“Hey, stop!” El grabbed my arm. “Stop walking, we’re out!”
We really were farther than I’d thought.
“What the hell, man? What was that?”
“Nothing. They thought they knew me. They didn’t. End of story,” I said.
“It didn’t look like it. It looked like they knew you, and you were making that voice again!”
“Let’s just go find Zuke and Drag, okay?”
He didn’t say anything else.
I was a mess of nerves, completely pissed at myself and at the guys and at Morta. Mainly at myself for caring about the guys and Morta.
We walked in circles before Drag and Zuke found us. They’d been inside a building we’d passed before.
“We found her,” Drag said as soon as El opened the door.
“You did?”
“Yep, she’s not too far away from here. Less than ten minutes.” Drag grinned.
“Then what the hell are we still doing here?”
“We couldn’t go by ourselves. Remember what she can do?”
“Did you see her?” I said. The panic made me shiver.
“No, but heard her heartbeat. And she was talking to another vampire. Zuke heard her,” Drag said.
“Maybe we should take the night and think this through—” I tried, but they wouldn’t have it.
“No. We’ve taken all the time we could. We’re going after her tonight,” he said. “Besides, maybe she’ll agree to talk to us.”
“If she doesn’t, we still have plan B,” El said. If he only knew.
“You got your knives?” Drag asked El and Zuke. They both nodded, and then he looked at me.
“I’ve got everything,” I said dryly. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get to a point where we have to actually use them. We’re not going to win.”
“So little faith,” Drag said, shaking his head.
El’s eyes were filled with suspicion as he watched me.
“What’s up with you?” Drag asked him.
“Nothing,” he whispered. “Let’s just get this over with, and then we’ll talk.”
“Alright. Come on,” Drag said. He was so excited that he didn’t question El’s behavior towards me.
I was screwed. It was terrifying how the thought of Morta being close by took up most of my thoughts in a situation like that. What was I going to do now? How the hell was I going to warn her?
XXIII
It took six minutes to find her, not ten. Six. I hadn’t even started to think about what the hell I wanted to do.
She was inside a building somewhere, but her beating heart was a dead giveaway. As soon as my ears caught it, I shivered. I’d actually missed it. This kept getting weirder and weirder.
The guys walked slowly to it, while I tried to step on anything I could to make a little noise. To at least warn her that she was being followed.
I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard us until we were just a few feet away from the building. When the door opened, I knew I should’ve known better.
She stepped outside—so gracefully, so calmly—you couldn’t help but wonder if she was expecting friends to show up. But I knew she wasn’t. She didn’t have any.
“Hello, there,” she said. “Who are you?”
“We’re from Brazil, here to talk to…” Drag’s voice trailed off as he realized the heartbeat we heard was in her chest.
The next second, she was in front of us. My throat dried at the sight of her beautiful face.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed at me as soon as her eyes landed on my mask.
“Morta, if I could just talk to you…”
“No!” she shouted. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
Drag grabbed my arm. “I thought you said she had brown hair,” he said.
“Yeah, and that she was tall,” El said from the other side.
“Guys, just shut up and let me talk to…”
“If you value your pathetic lives, you’ll get the hell out of my face,” Morta said and growled at us. Her teeth were beginning to sharpen. The guys were ready, too.
I turned to Drag. “Just let me talk to her. Alone. Okay? Just for a second.”
Instead of speaking, he showed me his teeth and hissed. I jerked my arm to make him let go of me.
“Stop it, okay? Just give me a damn second! I don’t want anyone to get hurt here!”
I hoped he could see that I meant it. I didn’t wait for him to hiss at my face again. I took a step toward Morta. One step. What happened next happened so fast that I had trouble remembering the details afterwards.
Drag jumped at me. I felt him on my back, hanging onto my neck like a fucking monkey. The next second, I was free again. I turned around to see him on his knees, his back turned against Morta, her teeth sharp and ready to sink into his neck. El and Zuke kept hissing at her from both sides, but they didn’t dare attack with her teeth so close to Drag’s skin.
It took me a second to collect myself.
“Stop!” I shouted. “For God’s sake, stop it!”
But as soon as I said it, I had both El and Zuke to my sides, their knives under my chin. They held me by my shoulders and watched Morta as they pressed the tips of their knives on my skin.
“Let him go,” Morta whispered. Her voice was deadly. They both shivered. “Let him go, right now, or he dies.”
“Morta, please…”
“Shut up!” she shouted at me.
I would’ve been pissed if I hadn’t been the one to put her in that position.
“I’ll cut his head off if you touch him,” El hissed at her.
“And then?” Morta said. She straightened her back for a second, and her eyes grew wide as if she was confused all of a sudden. “Then what? Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“Morta, please. They just want to talk to you. If you just hear them out for a second—”
“Trust me, they do not want to talk,” she said.
“But I do! Come on, let him go. Talk to me. Please,” I pleaded.
I didn’t want her hurt. I didn’t want any of them hurt.
This time, there was no fake confusion in her wide eyes. It was real. She was thinking about it. If I could just get her alone and speak to her, all of this would go away.
But then Drag moved so fast, there was no chance she could’ve seen him. His arm wrapped around one of her legs, and the small syringe buried in her thigh. She hissed. Drag broke free from her.
“Don’t do anything stupid!” he said to El and Zuke. “We need him.”
“Drag, stop it!” I hissed.
My own teeth had turned sharp. I was so pissed off, I could’ve set the whole world on fire.
Morta took the syringe out of her thigh and threw it at Drag’s feet. She looked like she was made of stone with that skin and those silver eyes. The hair only helped.
“That’s right. Take your time,” El said to her, grinning. Thinking he’d won. He let go of me, and together with Drag, began to approach Morta, who only watched them calmly, curiously.
“Guys, stop! It’s not going to work.”
As if they were listening.
“You drugged me?” Morta asked them, a dumbfounded smile on her face.
“Take it easy. It’ll be over soon,” Drag whispered to her.
“You dumb fucks! I replaced your fucking tranquilizer with water!” I shouted. I couldn’t hold it in me any longer. I just wanted them to fucking listen to me.
“What?” El asked, looking at me like I was crazy. Zuke’s knife was still against my throat, but I didn’t care. I moved, and if he cut me, I didn’t feel it.
“I fucking replaced your tranquilizer with water,” I hissed at both of them.
Before I knew it, Morta’s body dropped in between me and the guys, and she pushed me back.
“Stand back,” she hissed, and prepared herself.
“Just stop it, already. God, you’re just a bunch of fucked up kids!”
I must’ve been really loud because they actually looked at me. Finally. I turned to Drag and El first.
“You have absolutely no chance against her. You are not going to force her to do anything. Okay?” Drag’s brows shot up, but I turned to Morta immediately. “And you can’t bite them. You just can’t.”
“Why the hell not?” she said incredulously.
“Because they’re friends of mine.”
“Are you shitting me? They jumped at you—”
“Yes, they did, but they’re my friends. So could you please not kill them?”
“Damn it!” she hissed and took a couple of steps back.
It was so disorienting how she was reacting. I had frankly expected her to sink her teeth in my flesh long before. Yet there she was, taking my word for it. Listening to me.
I turned to the guys again. They looked even worse.
“Put those knives down, will you? Let me go talk to her.”
“Who the hell are you?” Drag asked me.
“A liar, that’s what he is,” El spit at my feet. “A fucking liar.”
He showed me his sharp teeth.
“Okay, I lied. I lied because I couldn’t just let you drug her and take her away.”
I looked back at Morta who now had her back turned to us. She was so confident that it was alarming. There were three guys who wanted her dead, right there, and she turned her back to them.
“I will talk to her now. Tell her why you’re here, and maybe she’ll be interested.”
“I won’t!” Morta called.
“You don’t even know—”
“I don’t have to know anything!”
“If you could just keep your mouth shut for a second—”
“I’m not going to listen to anybody’s bullshit!” she shouted.
I realized that it was useless to talk to her that way, so I turned to the guys again. “Stay here and don’t move. I’ll come find you in a minute.” I didn’t give them the chance to say anything before I ran to Morta. “And you will have to listen to me, okay?”
She turned her head the other way. “Why the hell do I have to do anything you tell me?”
“Because you do! Just like that. Can you please just accept it and come with me? Just for a second?” I walked to her other side so I could see her face. She still refused to meet my eyes. “Morta?”
She took her sweet time, and I analyzed each movement the guys made. They didn’t seem like they wanted to jump us. For now.
“Fine. You’ve got two minutes,” she said.
***
I followed her up a two-story building, not too far from the guys. We could still see them, but they would probably not hear us.
She had her back turned to me, and I waited for
her to turn around. Waited, then saw she had no intention of doing that, so I went in front of her. She turned to the side.
“Morta, just look at me, will you?”
“Stop saying my name,” she hissed.
“Alright, then. Fox,” I said.
She began to laugh dryly, and I could’ve sworn her eyes were filled with tears.
“Don’t call me that, either.”
“Well, I have to call you something.”
She laughed again, but in the end, it sounded like it was more of a sob.
“What do you want?” she said and took a step back. I took one forward. Why was it wrong to want to be closer to her?
“Those guys came here from Brazil.”
She finally looked at me. There.
“What do they want from me?”
“They have a message to deliver.”
“To me?”
“Yes, to you. Someone has asked you to visit them there.”
When her lips parted, it felt like someone kicked me in the gut, because for a second only, I looked at them and could swear I’d seen them before. I felt like they’d fascinated me before.
“Someone?”
Her voice brought me back to my senses.
“Yes. A woman. Someone who claims to have known you before you were a vampire. She even told them that she was related to you.”
The next second, she was at the very edge of the roof, practically a world away from me.
“Why the hell are you running away from me?”
“I’m not running away—”
“Yes, you are.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
I walked to her. “What the hell have I ever done to you?”
“I never said you did something.”
“Well, you’re sure acting like—”
“I’m not acting like anything—”
“You’re acting as if—”
“I don’t need to act like anything.”
“Could you stop for a second and let me finish a fucking sentence?” She was infuriating. She wouldn’t even let me talk to her.
Finally, she faced me.
“Fine. Finish a fucking sentence,” she hissed.
“I just want to talk to you, Morta. You won’t even look at me, and I have my mask on.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“Maybe I want to.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
