“Oh shit,” said Adalia. “Shit, shit, shit.” She crammed her tablet into a canvas messenger bag, the side of it rich with hand-drawn artwork. Her headphones got tangled, and she tugged them free. “Shit.”
“What is it?” Danny took a step towards her daughter, then stopped. Val could see the internal dialog playing across her face, the one where Adalia said you don’t have to protect me all the time and Danny said something like yeah I do, and then they’d not speak for the next two days.
“I’m late for work.” Adalia sighed, shoulders slumping. “Fucking shitballs. Not again.”
“Oh,” said Val, “I thought maybe vampires had come in and started eating your face. You know, because of how you were talking.”
Adalia rolled her eyes at him. “Remember our talk about the value of hard work, and being a normal kid in a normal society? You gave it to me about,” and here she counted off on her fingers, “I’d guess four years ago. Was it four?”
“Near enough,” agreed Val.
“Well, I got a job,” she said, “because of that. And my boss, because you know he’s an asshole, this asshole says to me, ‘Ady’ — you know he calls me ‘Ady?’ right? — he says to me, ‘Ady, I need you here on the till at opening. There’s a hundred people who’ll work for less and all of them own a watch.’ He said that, to me.” She patted her pockets, pulled out her phone and checked the time. “Shit!”
“Sounds to me,” said Val, “like you’re learning all the important lessons about normal society. You’d best get to work.”
Adalia stormed out, her middle finger cranked high and pointed in Val’s direction. The door slammed behind her, and he shrugged, turning back to Sam. “Where were we?”
Sam was looking between the door, to Val, to the door, to Val again. “You … just let her go out?” He swallowed. “It’s not just the vampires! They own people. Everywhere. They’ve got a PMC — not Ebonlake, this is a different private military company — on the payroll.”
“Yeah, so about telling you everything. Adalia, she’s a little special,” said Val, then stopped, frowned, and looked around. “Where the fuck is John?” He pulled his phone from his pocket to check for missed texts. At least he hadn’t smashed this one; he was going through about three phones a week. Jessie had tried to make him feel better about his three-phones-a-week-habit by telling him that ditching burners was good practice when operating in enemy territory.
One missed text. From John. Hot chick. Not, I’m alive, or At the police station, but Hot chick. Val rubbed one hand over his face.
“What is it?” said Danny.
“Ten to one,” said Rex, “he’s on a date.”
“I’m not taking those odds,” said Jessie. “More like one to one, he’s on a date.”
“Wait,” said Sam. “Mr. Miles? He’s still with you?”
“What do you mean by, ‘with?’” said Danny.
“Do I need to go get him?” Carlisle was doing something in the kitchen area — stove, refrigerator, coffee machine tucked against the wall — that smelled like coffee. Val was going to have to fix that problem before it started; she made horrible coffee. He was sure it was something about every police academy everywhere: a stolid, base requirement to delete everything you ever knew about making coffee, replacing it with a love for too-strong instant shit. Maybe they put a chip in their brains? No wonder they all got ulcers.
“Stop,” said Danny. “Stop making coffee. Val will do it.” She looked at him. “Won’t you, baby?”
“What’s wrong with my coffee?” said Carlisle.
“Everything,” said Jessie. “Jesus, even in Afghanistan we had better coffee than what you make, here, in a city, with all the resources our wonderful society has. I’ve had coffee strained through a Marine’s underwear that tastes better than what you make.”
“Sometimes,” said Carlisle, pointing a spoon at Jessie, “you say hurtful things.”
Val looked at Sam, saw the look of blank comprehension on his face as he watched the conversation bounce around the room. “You okay?”
“You’re all crazy,” said Sam. “You’re all crazy, and my Charlie’s going to die.”
“Hey,” said Val. “No.”
“No?” Sam pulled at his collar, loosened a button. “How can you be sure?”
“It’s what I do,” said Val. He looked around. “What we do.”
“Adalia, she said he might die.”
“Yeah,” said Val.
“But you’re saying he won’t.”
“Yeah,” said Val, again.
“Who do I believe?” Sam looked around, Jessie’s eyes finally open and looking at him, Rex with his half-eaten Pop-Tart. Danny, arms crossed, and Carlisle, half-way through making coffee, as if there were a point she was trying to make by it. Back to Val. “Who do I trust?”
Val thought about that. “I’d say, you got to trust yourself until you get to know us, and then you can work out if we’re the kinds of people who can be trusted.”
“And … let me get this straight, one of you, John Miles, Mr. Miles is currently out on a date?” Sam’s throat worked. “While Charlie is…” and then the words ran right out of him, and he sat down on the floor right there, five thousand dollar suit and all.
Carlisle walked from the kitchen over to Sam. She crouched down. “Sam?”
His face was blank, more shock than anything else. “Yes?”
“Sam, I’m going to give you just the highlights. Because this asshole,” and she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Val, “takes too long and misses the important bits. Vampires came along, a kind of apex predator that only hunts at night. They pretty much fucked everything, even the other apex predators who also only hunt at night.” She looked meaningfully at Danny, then back to Sam. “They’re destroying the world. And how they do that, Sam, how they do it is that they take the children of powerful men and women. They hold them to ransom until they’re grown up, making those powerful men and women do what they want. After those children are grown, kind of indoctrinated, you see, right then they get turned. Into new, baby vampires. Who then run those companies for all eternity.” She swallowed. “What you need to know, really, is that Charlie is on his way to being dead and eternally damned at the same time, and he’ll do it right over the top of your dead body. These assholes,” and she jerked a thumb at Val over her shoulder again, “are set on stopping them.”
“Why?” said Sam. He looked around the room.
Val crouched down to Sam’s level, looked the man in the eyes, felt the hot snarl come—
We are not for hunting. We are not prey.
—to his face. “Because it’s not right. They’re not right. They have torn everything right from the world. But also … Sam? I need to be honest with you. It’s because the world is ours.” He stood back up. “Also, we’d be worse than them if we didn’t. We have the strength, and the means.”
“There’s … there’s only two of you,” said Sam, looking between Danny and Val. “There are hundreds of them.”
“Technically,” said Val, “there are seven of us, but I get your point. There are two werewolves here.”
“How are you going to win?” Sam looked lost.
“Because it’s us,” said Val.
Sam looked around the room, then levered himself to his feet. Carlisle stood with him, held a hand out but he waved it away. “I get that now’s probably the time most people would say something like, ‘We’re screwed.’”
“Most people would,” agreed Val.
“You’re going to kill all the vampires, and I’m going to help you,” said Sam. “What do you need?”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
It was funny the things you remembered, after all the years had passed. Some things you couldn’t get away from. He’d been an odd child, he knew that, always too serious — a black-haired waif that moved around the feet of his parents, looking out at the world with wide, dark eyes. He’d been given a serious name, after all: Maksimillia
n Kotlyarov. He loved the name, the weight of it, the length of it, how it sounded when spoken aloud. His mother had tried to call him Maks, but he’d refused to answer to it, a deaf dog when the whistle blew. The fad had subsided, and Maksimillian had remained. She’d said to him once—
He screwed up his face. What was her name? What was his mother’s name?
He couldn’t remember. Too many names, too many faces. No matter.
She’d said to him once, One day, Maksimillian, one day a pretty girl will call you Maks, and then what will you do?
He’d looked back at her from his three feet off the ground and said, I will tell her my name is Maksimillian.
She’d laughed, of course. But it had always rankled, this thought that someone would have a right to call him something else. He’d tried telling his mother that, and she’d laughed harder.
Maksimillian looked over the edge of the fire escape, taking in the people hurrying below him. A woman there was wearing fur. So gauche, in this day and age. It was real fur, not some faux mixture of plastic fibers designed to evoke an emotion. A man was with her, carrying a briefcase. Now a briefcase, there was a thing from out of time, from when all the men in entire world bustled about with those black cases held firm in a hand, as if the annual reports and lunches inside were priceless jewels.
He was happy that the day of the briefcase seemed mostly behind them. Except for the odd fossil, a relic of a past age, like this man. Perhaps the couple, that woman with her coat and the man with the briefcase, were like Maksimillian. Perhaps they were also lost in time. Maksimillian pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck, sturdy sheepskin attached to faded denim. He’d loved blue jeans as soon as he’d seen them. He’d missed the entire denim revolution when he was on … vacation … for all that time, but when he’d got back to the world he’d worn them pretty much ever since. The honesty of the fabric appealed to him, but its real benefit was stealth. Blue jeans and a black jacket let him hide him among the numerous proletariat of the world, living in plain sight among all those faceless slaves.
Ah. There she was. The woman came into his eyeline a block or so away. A normal man wouldn’t have picked her out among the hundreds of people already clotting up New York’s busy avenues, but this one was special. He could feel her presence from here, his eyes drawn to her not through his gifts but hers. Green hair, shoulders held in a way that spoke of anger, or frustration. She moved at a brisk pace.
Maksimillian understood anger.
Truth, though, the woman with the green hair didn’t hold real anger. She held the anger of tiny things, of being in a hurry with a hundred people in your way, of a late subway car, of lights and traffic that just weren’t going your way. Anger, but not the same anger as when your entire family were killed before your eyes, your people lost, your village razed, your mother…
Enough. That didn’t really happen.
Did it?
He got so confused sometimes, the years that crushed him down like a hundred mountains. No man was supposed to live this long. How could he remember what had happened to his mother when he couldn’t remember her name?
The woman with the green hair made it to her destination, a Starbucks much like any other Starbucks. Nothing extraordinary about this one except for a particular counter worker with green hair. She had a canvas bag — no soul-dead black briefcase — slung over a shoulder, and she was talking with a man at the door. His whole attitude said, I want you inside but you have to persuade me. The manager then, a tiny man on the inside. After an animated exchange — perhaps they were short-staffed, so he would make an exception, but this is the very last time — she was ushered inside. The manager’s hand lingered on her shoulder as she moved inside, causing Maksimillian to frown. Perhaps this morning was the morning Maksimillian Kotlyarov would have a spiced pumpkin latte.
He swung himself over the fire escape’s railing, clambering down the outside. The old metal creaked, a few people underneath him looking up as he descended. Most walked on. New York isn’t a city that rewards the curious. As he arrived at street level, a final swing off the ladder dropping him to the sidewalk, he saw a few people were taking photos of him with their phones.
Cameras, now there was a thing. Who would have thought you could have a device that could capture the face of your mother for all time? He wished he’d had a camera back then, wished that they’d been around to help him remember important things. Wished that these photographs had been around for longer than their meager two hundred years.
He crossed the road to the Starbucks, shouldering through the crowd. Humans were so … tiny. Still, some of them were important, he had to remember that. His mother had said he, Maksimillian, was important; and she’d been right. He apologized to a man who he’d almost knocked over, helped him with his bag — this time, a one of the new styles, a messenger bag. Maksimillian turned the name over in his head. Clearly the people buying them weren’t messengers, and yet there it was. It wasn’t that English was a funny language, it was that people — any language, every language — were funny in how they used their words.
The door of the Starbucks opened, the warm inside, with its smell of coffee and promised breakfast, surrounding him. He saw a family — no, not a family. There, a man and a woman had children’s strollers, but for the little dogs with them. Amerikantsov. As if a dog couldn’t walk. As if a dog needed one of the four arm chairs the couple were using.
Maksimillian joined the line, looking at the menu behind the counter. For less than five dollars he could have a coffee, for a few more dollars one of their fine breakfast treats. He was in the mood for something with sausage; it had been a cold morning on the fire escape and he hadn’t eaten since—
Hot blood, the spray fine and red.
—he shook his head again. Those were not the thoughts he should be having here, in front of the woman with green hair. As if conjured, he found himself at the front of the line, face to face with her. Despite what Dragomir had said, had asked for, Maksimillian knew: he’d been waiting for this, this moment, this meeting for what felt like a thousand years. What should he say?
“What do you need to make your day better?” She scrubbed a hand through her hair, smoothing out a curl or two. Her name badge said Ady. It wasn’t her name, it wasn’t what her name was supposed to be.
“I am sorry,” he said. “But what?”
“You know. Coffee. Food.” She jerked a thumb at the board above and behind her.
“Ah,” he said. “I am thinking, this is not your name.” He pointed at her name badge.
“Eyes up, buddy,” she said, but there was a hint of a smile at her lips.
“Da,” he said, looking up. “See, is no one called Ady. Is name of aunt, or small dog. Is not name for beautiful woman.” Maksimillian thought for a moment. “Your boss, he is asshole?”
She laughed. “Strictly speaking, that might be true.” She looked over his shoulder. “Look, I’d love to do the asshole game, you know, find out which one of our bosses is the bigger one. I’d win. You know it, I know it. We both know it. The thing is,” and she leaned forward over the register, “there’s about a thousand people behind you, and sooner or later one of them is going to get thirsty and want one of our fine, fine frappucinos. So, sir, would you like to order something?”
“Da,” he said. “I would. A spiced pumpkin latte. Your website, it claims they are delicious.”
“Pumpkin spice latte,” she said.
“I am sorry,” Maksimillian said, “but that is what I said.”
“No,” she said. “You asked for a ‘spiced pumpkin latte.’ The board,” and here she jerked her thumb behind her again, “clearly calls them a ‘pumpkin spice latte.’ The order is important.”
Maksimillian frowned. “Is important?”
“Yes,” she said. “God only knows what you’d get if you really ordered a spiced pumpkin latte.” She was writing on the side of a paper cup. “Anything else?”
“A fine breakfast of
sausage,” he said. “Perhaps double the size an ordinary man would order.”
“An ordinary man, huh?” She looked at him over the edge of the cup. He wondered what she saw. Perhaps a young man, no grey in his hair. One with dark eyes. She might have noticed that he hadn’t had time to shave in a day or two, but that was fashionable these days. She might have seen the casual way he dressed. But above all, he hoped she saw his smile. He could swear he saw an answering smile on her lips, just the hint of it. “You look like a sausage, cheddar, and egg kind of guy. Am I not wrong?”
“You are not wrong,” he said, grinning. “You know me, da?”
“No,” she said, “but I know you want two of those. Coming right up..?” She left the sentence hanging, like a question.
He waited a moment, then leaned forward. “Da. Two.” He started counting bills out onto the counter.
“No,” she said again, pen poised, the fat black tip waiting. “A name for the order.”
“Maksimillian Kotlyarov,” said Maksimillian. “Is good name, for good breakfast.”
“Maksimillian Kotlyarov,” she said, “is never going to fit on this cup, assuming I can spell that bad boy.”
“Hey asshole,” said a man behind Maksimillian. “Just give the lady a name. Fucking Chewbacca, whatever. We’re dying of hunger here.”
Maksimillian felt the smile freeze on his face, turned around. There was a man, slightly shorter than most, slightly heavier than he should be, this last detail most noticeable in this city of short, thin people. He was wearing a light suit, and — of course — a messenger bag. Maksimillian felt like he should—
Rend this tiny thing. Feast.
—reach out and snuff this man from the world. He felt the grin tightening on his face, his fists clenching. Then, he thought about the woman with green hair, her cup held ready, waiting for this name. His name. He relaxed. “Am sorry. Is English, no? Very … you say ‘complicated,’ da?”
The other man looked up at Maksimillian, cleared his throat, and swallowed. “Hey,” he said, putting a nervous laugh behind it. “Don’t sweat it. She just needs a name.”
The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy Page 80
