Five weeks? That would seem to put him in Italy, not killing Koppen in Dublin when the egg disappeared.
“I don’t suppose the gendarmes found his car,” I said.
She looked surprised. “They did, as a matter of fact. Why?”
“I’d like to see it if I could. I don’t even need to touch it, just get within a few feet.
Thompson made a phone call, and an hour later I stood next to the Fiat registered to Paolo Salvatore. The car, and especially the trunk, had such a chaotic aura that I was convinced he had used it to transport a Dragon’s egg. But five weeks prior to that, an Elven student had seen an egg in the Dublin market.
Chapter 17
“Where do you plan to look for the egg next?” Josef asked when I called him to tell him the egg had gotten away.
“Romania,” I said. “I think looking in the more reputable markets is a waste of time. We’ll spend a day in Vienna and a day in Budapest, but I think the Bucharest market is more likely to provide a lead.”
“I’ll let my uncle know you’re coming. Are you flying?” I had him on a speaker phone so we all could hear the conversation.
“No, we’ll take the train again,” Göndul said with a pitiful sigh.
We could have been in Vienna in a day, but since we had to go through Munich, I insisted we stop over and have dinner in one of my favorite beer houses. Göndul grumbled until she tasted the food, and completely surrendered after tasting the beer.
A day in the Vienna magic marketplace showed me nothing I hadn’t seen before, and no inkling that anyone knew of a Dragon’s egg for sale. We stayed in a cheap hotel that night and had a sumptuous dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. The pastries, both there and at breakfast the following morning, almost made me rethink my decision to leave so soon, but Göndul and Cassiel didn’t seem to be pastry lovers. I decided that might be Cassiel’s lone character flaw.
The Budapest market was a repeat of Vienna, only sleazier and with lower-quality goods. Unfortunately, that sleaze was most notably exemplified by Vampires. Lots of Vampires. I had been in the marketplace less than two hours before I realized I had an entourage following me around.
I signaled to Göndul and made my way to the exit. On the way, I sketched a rune, but didn’t activate it.
When I emerged, I saw Cassiel lounging in the entrance to an alleyway across the street, trying to slump and be nondescript. That was like trying to pass off a royal tiara as costume jewelry.
I turned right and walked toward a metro station that would take me to the center of town. I only made it two blocks before a vamp stepped out of an alley and pointed a pistol at me.
I started to speak the Word that would invoke my shield, but it wasn’t necessary, as Göndul appeared behind him and hamstrung him with her sword. He shrieked and went down, dropping his pistol. I stepped closer and kicked the gun out into the street. Drawing my sword, I lopped off the Vampire’s head.
“Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” I asked.
“I wanted to question him.”
“When we get through with the rest of them, leave the last one alive,” I said, turning so that she and I stood back-to-back about six feet apart. At least a dozen vamps were on us immediately, armed with those long, serrated knives they seemed to favor.
“You don’t want to do this, boys,” I said as the first one came within reach. His head bouncing off the pavement punctuated my warning. The rest of them hesitated, but then a guy to my left got brave and tried to go low at my legs. His head did reach my knee—to his head’s detriment—but his knife, still gripped in his hand, lay several feet behind him. I wondered why they didn’t recognize the problem with using a long knife against a long sword.
“Don’t you have families or girlfriends you might miss?” I asked. “Maybe a blowup doll you’re fond of?”
Two more Vampires tried to come at me from opposite sides at the same time. I slipped under one’s knife stroke, drawing the edge of my blade through his body as we passed. He stumbled into the other one and they both fell.
“Do you always talk to people who are trying to kill you?” Göndul asked.
I chanced a glance in her direction and saw her take a Vampire’s head with a two-handed stroke. A couple of more bodies lay in front of her.
“If they would just go away, it would make things so much easier,” I said, parrying a strike from a Vampire as I kneed him between the legs.
“Optimist,” Göndul said.
“Can you climb?” I asked as I parried a blow from another assailant.
“You mean, like a building? Like some kind of spider?” she asked.
One of the Vampires yelled something in his own language.
“Yeah. Do you speak their language?”
“He said not to worry about killing the redhead, the greenhead was the one they needed alive. And no, I can’t climb a sheer wall.”
“Lovely.” I sliced through a Vampire’s arm, separating it from his body at the shoulder.
“I can call Cassiel,” she said, “but he can’t lift both of us.”
“Tell him to pick you up, and I’ll meet you,” I said, skewering one Vampire and kicking the legs out from another.
“He’s on his way.”
I hadn’t heard her call or say anything, but I didn’t know all the kinds of magic either of them had. Halflings were wildcards, their magic often manifesting in unusual ways. Maybe Göndul and Cassiel had some kind of telepathic link.
“I’m outta here,” I said. “Watch your back.”
I gathered myself and leaped, landing on the ledge of a third-floor window and grabbing the top of the window frame with my fingertips. Within a few seconds, a Vampire landed in front of me, a toothy grin on his face. I grinned back and chopped off the arm he was using to hang on with. His grin froze, and he toppled back into the alley, knocking down three of his companions who stood looking up at us.
A golden-winged man swooped down into the alley, waving his short sword back and forth, batting Vampires out of his way. He grabbed Göndul by the waistband of her pants and continued down the alley. When he reached the street, he pulled up, wings beating hard.
I fired paintballs at the two Vampires climbing the wall toward me, then shot five more into the alley. The gas didn’t work that great on Vampires, but I figured the pink mist spreading all over everything was a good distraction.
I spoke the Word that triggered the shield rune I had been holding. Clamping my sword in my teeth like some kind of cartoon pirate, I climbed up the brick wall. Gunshots came from below, and a couple of bullets hit my shield.
When I reached the top, I heaved myself over and came face-to-face with a huge wolf. That was one of the last things I expected on a rooftop. I reached out, grabbed his neck fur, and pulled him toward me. Since he was already set to launch himself at me, I used his momentum against him, and he went plummeting over the edge. He landed hard on a couple of Vampires.
Pulling the paintball gun from my bag, I shot the three Werewolves still on the roof with sleepy-gas balls. Then I turned and looked over the edge of the roof. A bullet zinged by my head, and I decided I should keep moving.
The roof didn’t have an access door into the building, but the fire escape reached the roof. As I rattled down it to the ground, I thought about how cool it would be to just fly away from such problems.
Three blocks away from the ambush, Cassiel and Göndul dropped into an alley as I was passing. We didn’t bother going back to our hotel.
“They’ll be looking for us at the train station,” Göndul said. She gave Cassiel a glowing look. “Maybe we should fly.”
“Are we in a hurry?” I asked. “Since we don’t know where the egg is, when we arrive in a given place really has no meaning, wouldn’t you agree? For all we know, it could show up here in Budapest tomorrow, after we’ve gone.”
They conceded my point, and I led them down to the river, where we booked a fifteen-day cruise down the Danube
to the Black Sea. I had taken the same cruise a few years before and found it to be very relaxing. Just the thing I needed. Let Mondranar and his minions go crazy looking for us.
The first time I booked a cruise down the Danube was out of curiosity, and I loved it. The Danube is named after Danu, goddess of the Elves. In the distant past, the last time the veils shredded, a large contingent of Elves had come to live on Earth, conquering most of Europe and the British Isles. I had left Washington in the first place to lower my stress level. Until we got on the boat in Budapest, my stress hadn’t noticeably decreased.
It could have been a very romantic cruise if Göndul hadn’t been with us, but I was realistic enough to admit she probably felt the same way. She obviously had picked up on my interest in Cassiel, as they were very careful not to display their affection for each other when I was around. I assumed they thought I was useful and didn’t want to alienate me.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was the stretch known as the Iron Gates—an eighty-mile passageway between the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains.
I was lying out on a deck chair admiring the scenery when I saw a large bird soaring overhead. That brought a smile to my face as I remembered flying with Cassiel. I watched as the bird seemed to pace the ship, flying along the river. I was shaken out of my dreamy reverie by Cassiel’s voice beside me.
“Ah, good. You see it, too,” he said.
“Yeah. I was just remembering flying with you. You’re so lucky. You could just launch and cruise along with that bird, if you wanted to.”
He barked out a laugh, his voice as harsh as I had ever heard it. “That would be my last flight. Kellana, that isn’t a bird. That’s a Dragon.”
It flew along the river over us for another hour, then as evening fell, it wheeled away toward the peaks of the Carpathians.
Chapter 18
The Danube forms the western and southern borders of Romania. It runs south of Bucharest to the Black Sea north of Constanta. Our tickets were for the whole trip, but the final portion took place by motor coach, or bus as we’d call it in the U.S. The Romanian city of Giurgiu faces the Bulgarian city of Ruse across the Danube, about an hour’s drive south of Bucharest. We debarked the ship with the rest of the passengers but contracted a limo service instead of continuing with the tour. The limo took us to the capital where we found our way to Josef’s uncle’s house. On the way, I tried to answer Göndul’s and Cassiel’s questions about what the hell we were doing.
“Josef has a living uncle?” Göndul asked. “Gods, how old is he? Josef must be over a hundred. I’ve known him for thirty years, and he hasn’t changed.”
“One hundred thirty-two,” I replied. “I’m not sure how old Antonio is. Two hundred, maybe? He’s ancient, and a letch. Watch yourself. His pinches can leave bruises.”
“I’ll bruise him if he tries anything.”
I chuckled. “You say that now, but I’m always so afraid I’ll break him. He’s a strong mage, and he knows everyone and everything about the magical community in Bucharest. He also has outrageous tales about all of the most notorious women of the past couple of centuries—first-hand accounts, if he’s to be believed. But other than trying to lure anything that’s vaguely female into bed, he’s a very sweet old man.”
Once known as the Paris of the East, Bucharest had suffered during its Communist period. Even after the fall of its Communist dictator, corruption and chaos made living there difficult for most of its people.
Uncle Antonio lived in a large nineteenth century house that had somehow managed to escape any damage from two wars. I had always assumed his wards protected it, and that his magic shielded him from notice by the fascists and the Communists. In any case, Josef told me that the house Antonio lived in was the same one as when Josef first met him around 1900.
The neighborhood had once been wealthy, the homes built by minor nobility. Some still stood, many of them converted by the Communists to public buildings, or the largest, into apartments. But the area was subject to allied bombings during the war and then further attacks when the Germans tried to re-take the city after a coup overthrew the fascists in 1944. Through it all, Antonio’s house and garden remained untouched.
He met us at the door and threw his arms wide to draw me into a hug. I was too quick for him and caught his hands, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. It was a long lean, since Antonio was barely five feet tall. He didn’t look any different than the last time I saw him. Wispy gray hair floated like smoke around his mostly-bald head, his bulbous nose was bright red, and he had more wrinkles than a prune. His bright blue eyes hadn’t lost any of their twinkle, and he still had all his teeth, which he displayed in a huge smile.
I introduced Göndul and Cassiel. Göndul wasn’t as wary or quick as I was, and he pulled her into a hug, burying his face between her breasts as he welcomed her to his home. I felt so sorry for her that I didn’t laugh at her mortified expression, but I did mouth, “I told you so.”
I knew his housekeeper and cook, Marina and Sofia, and his chauffeur Ilia. The women loved me, because instead of imposing a guest burden of work on them, I always pitched in and helped. And as the years went by and they aged, I knew they needed the help more than when we all were younger.
Sofia fed us lavishly, and Marina showed us to our rooms. The plumbing hadn’t been upgraded since the second world war, so a bath was an adventure, but all of us had dealt with far less modern accommodations.
The following morning, we set out to find the magic marketplace near Curtea Veche—a castle built by Vlad the Impaler, who was immortalized as Dracula. It had two distinct areas. To the north of the castle was the white market, and the black market lay to the castle’s south.
The magical community in Bucharest was stronger and more diverse than almost anywhere in Earth’s realm. The Pontificium Consilium de Artium Arcanum Mortis—the International Council of Arcane Arts—was based at Brasov, north of Bucharest. It presented itself as a council to represent and control magic users, but some friends of mine considered it an organization to protect Human mages from incursions into Earth’s realm from non-Human mages. I wasn’t sure who currently headed the Council. The previous leader died on my sword some months before.
And if I planned to sell a Dragon’s egg, Bucharest was one of the two places in the Western Hemisphere I would go. I hadn’t wanted to think about going to China, so I had pushed that possibility as far into the back of my mind as it would go.
We spent two days searching through the black market, and then another day searching through the blacker market that I discovered. My introduction to the latter included meeting a part-Devil, part-Aesir, part-something-else merchant who had a chained demon for sale.
“It’s a simple transaction, Mistress. I simply transfer the binding to you, and you have your own demon to satisfy your every desire. I can give you a very reasonable price.”
I couldn’t help but shudder as I declined. My feelings of sympathy for the demon were far less than for the other slaves for sale. Cassiel, however, erupted in outrage at the slave trade, and Göndul had to drag him out of the place. Both of us forbade his return. Another major battle was not on my to-do list.
On my way back to Antonio’s house, after our third day trudging through the markets, a small, weaselly man stepped out of an alley in front of me. Luckily for him, I was tired, had a headache, and my reactions weren’t as quick as normal. As a result, he was able to step back and put his hands in the air in a gesture of submission when he saw my athame between us.
He said something, which was beyond my limited Romanian. Göndul materialized behind him and said something, also in Romanian. The man spun around, his eyes wide. Her illusion magic was really quite good, and he couldn’t detect her, but I was able to track her when she was close enough to feel her magic.
After a short conversation, Göndul said in German, “He says he knows where the egg is supposed to change hands tomorrow night.”
“And
how much does he want to part with that knowledge?” I asked.
“Ten thousand euros.”
I gave him a once over. Sharp dresser in a cheap suit. Patent leather shoes. Pencil mustache. I curled my fingers in the man’s dark hair and lifted him off the ground so we looked each other in the face. He was a witch, not a mage, with limited power. Even I could take him in a magical duel.
“Tell him I’ll pay him the ten thousand. After he takes us to see the egg. And I’m not going to allow him out of my sight until then.”
Göndul chuckled. “Do you believe him?”
“Can’t afford not to take him seriously,” I said. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him get away or give him any money before I see the egg. Let’s take him back to Antonio’s.”
If I thought the expression on the man’s face was fearful when I picked him up, he showed outright terror when we turned into Antonio’s gate. He dug in his heels and then tried to break away and run. He hit an invisible wall in Antonio’s shield. Easy to enter, impossible to leave.
I looked up to see Antonio standing on the front porch. He was laughing and called out to the man. “Andrei Dumitrescu,” Antonio said, followed by words in Romanian. Dumitrescu’s knees collapsed, and I thought he might wet his pants.
After we put Dumitrescu in a locked room, I prepared tea and we gathered around the kitchen table.
“Andrei Dumitrescu is a small-time fixer and deal broker,” Antonio began. “I used to bang his grandmother, but I don’t think he’s one of my descendants. Not bright enough. Could he have knowledge of the egg? Possible. Could he be double dealing? Probable. I’ve sent out feelers, and there are rumors of the egg all over Bucharest, not to mention Brasov and Constanta. And now you say Dumitrescu told you of a transaction tomorrow night? Let us talk to the man.”
Göndul retrieved Dumitrescu and brought him to the kitchen. Antonio questioned the man, and Göndul translated for Cassiel and me.
Dumitrescu was obviously terrified of Antonio. I knew the old man was a powerful mage, but that was rather eye opening.
Dragon's Egg (Dark Streets Book 2) Page 14
