by Dalia Wright
“Arina.” Danniven Lubanov licked his lips nervously, keeping his hands held high. The amber eyes pleaded with her, obviously wondering if the risk of talking to her was one he should have taken.
“Give me one good reason to not shoot you on the spot. Because I’ve been reading a lot of bad news about you lately, Danny-boy.” Arina rolled the last syllables, her gun arm unwavering. She spoke in English, prompting him to do the same.
“I don’t. But I just wanted to say – I smelled you as I was passing through this town. And I wanted to say that I’m meeting up with someone who has been looking for you for a while. Is quite desperate to meet you.”
At these words, Arina’s arm trembled a little. Her heart beat just that tiny bit faster. “Who was looking for me?”
“Markus.” The name made Arina’s heart twinge. “He followed you to America. He tried looking for you in Sofia some years back, heard you moved to North Dakota. Came here. No luck finding you. I’m heading to him now. Hoping for safe passage in Canada.”
Arina Vasilev stared at Danny Lubanov for a long time, comparing him from the suspected killer in the paper, and the boy she had once known, who had hugged her and cried, who once roamed with her in the far-off lakes of her former home. “Were any of the kills werewolves?”
“Some. Others, no. My father, I did what he said. I was weak. He is dead, now, though. There are no more kills.” A lump rose in Danny’s throat. His handsome features drooped. “But is too late to explain the error. Too late for those who did die.”
Reason warred with desire. It was true that Danny had deliberately sought her out, despite the risk of being caught, of not knowing what she did. If he had sought her out, it at least meant that he didn’t intend to kill her. It was also true that he had saved her life once upon a time. “What happened to you, Danniven?”
“Everything,” he said simply. “But nothing, compared to you. I am… I’m glad you’re alive. Well.” He smiled, so sadly, that it took Arina’s breath away. She lowered her gun arm, enough so that an opportunist might leap for her. Danny did not, but lowered his hands as well. “All I ask is that you, my old friend, find the time to see Markus. I give you his number, I ask you to phone him. It has been his dream to find you again.”
Arina tucked her Sig Sauer back into its holster. “You’re going to see him now?”
Danny nodded. “Yes. He is two hours by car, though I planned to run it.”
Arina sighed. She knew what she was planning was possibly stupid and insane, but the idea of seeing Markus, of knowing he had been looking for her after all these years, sent a longing, deep in her bones. She had been looking for him as well. All of them. Right now, Danny Lubanov looked nothing less than the boy she had known, although wearier, haggard from the chase and of living on the streets.
“I’ve got the day off tomorrow. I can drive you. If you show me the way.”
The apprehension on Danny’s face turned into slow delight. He stepped closer to Arina. He opened his arms delicately, and moved close enough to embrace. “Can I?”
She nodded. He wrapped her in his arms. “Arina. My friend. I missed you.”
Arina’s cheeks flushed. “I missed you, too. I was so angry and fucking scared though, seeing all the news and your stupid, ugly face in the shots.”
“Is scary for me, too,” he said, inducing a laugh.
She asked for Danny to wait in her living room, and unlocked two doors, to dash, shower and change into casual clothes, letting her dark hair out, and placing a spray of Ralph Lauren perfume on her neck, scalp and wrists.
“Can I eat the cheese?” Danny called from the living room, and Arina rolled her eyes.
“Make sure it’s not moldy!”
“Is not!”
Belatedly, when the doorbell rang outside Arina’s apartment, she realized she’d completely forgotten about the Indian take-out. She dashed down, scooped it from the deliveryman’s hand and stuck a wad of cash in his palm, and yelled to Danny that they would be eating the food before leaving.
Danny had quite the appetite, helping her devour her tikka masala in the space of five minutes, and then chewed through garlic naan bread. She had to laugh – the Danny back then had been a ravenous boy as well, always happy to eat the sweets from the villages, or try out the human foods with relish.
Inside her vehicle, they exchanged a little of their current lives. Danny was impressed she had made it into law enforcement, and she felt sad and relieved at the same time to hear that the Lubanovs had been exterminated by the other clans, though it had led Danny and his father into running all the way to America, and then across the states, when his father refused to accept the decree the American werewolves went by.
She asked him a little about the decree, and discreetly glanced as he texted to someone called Tia.
Danny: I’m near the border. I found an old friend. One of the Bulgarian girls from the village, I mentioned her to you. Arina Vasilev.
Tia: That’s awesome! Isn’t that the one you said that the Markus guy is crazy obsessed with?
Danny: Yes. We’re going to see him now. Miss you.
Tia: Miss you too. Stay safe. And say hi to Arina from me.
“Tia says hi,” Danny said, noticing Arina peeking over his shoulder, when they had stopped at red lights.
“Girlfriend? Human or werewolf?”
“Human.”
A shiver rippled through her, even as she smiled and congratulated Danny. Markus had been obsessed with her? She thought of the boy from her past with a strange flutter in her stomach. She had often dreamed of him, wondered where he was, what he was doing.
She wondered what Markus looked like, now, the real vision of him, and not the constructed fantasy image that floated in her head. She wondered what it would be like to meet him again after all this time.
She wondered, and smiled.
Chapter Three
They tumbled out together into the driveway of a small house, an actual house in the residential district of Marwen, a place that only had a few hundred people as part of the population.
“He will smell you, perhaps. He will be so surprised!”
Arina wondered if Markus Spirova had killed, as well. That sweet boy she knew was related to the one who chewed out the intestines of her little brother, a great uncle, a figure she had heard Markus talk about in great fear and disgust.
Those thoughts clashed with the hope and need to see him again.
Danny knocked on the door, after phoning Markus to say he was just outside. Arina heard the rustle and click of a key sliding into a lock, and then the white door swung open. Her heart hammered a thousand miles a minute.
Deep blue eyes set on an achingly handsome face, with trimmed sideburns and a beard greeted her. His dark hair was left in small black tufts, and his body concealed itself under a navy polo shirt and casual black pants.
His eyes expanded in shock when he saw Arina standing there, as nervous as a schoolgirl.
For a moment, they remained still, staring into each other’s faces.
Then, with a bark of elation, Markus leaped out of the doorway and scooped Arina up in his huge arms. Her feet lifted off the ground in his enthusiasm. “Arina! Arina! You found me! At fucking last!”
“Hi,” Arina said, her voice muffled in Markus’s shoulder. “I heard it was me you were looking for.”
“Yes!” Markus said, squeezing her tighter, making her lungs expel out air, and her limbs flail slightly. “I’ve been looking for you! I followed you! Or, at least, I tried to. My stalking skills haven’t been so impressive.
“That’s cool. Uh, Markus? I’d like to breathe.”
Her childhood friend reluctantly broke off, but then gave another quick hug, before carrying her into the house, followed by a grinning Danny. Surprise and happiness prevailed, as it occurred to Arina that her childhood friend had matured into an incredibly hot individual. The kind of hotness that she went for. She swallowed the thought down so she could focus on t
he two friends who had popped out of the woodwork at last. Markus practically skipped towards his kettle to make coffee, when he heard Arina would take it strong.
“So, if we have you two,” she said, switching to Bulgarian, “Then where’s Ordri and Luelle? What happened to those two? Do you know?” Arina idly tapped the side of the sofa as she considered the situation. “They disappeared. I worried a lot about Luelle. She was miserable about needing to marry.”
“I don’t think the years have treated her kindly,” Danny said. “I spoke to her a little before Gregorovitch, Spirova and Armanev decided to group together and attack the Lubanovs. She made out to us everything was fine, but I guarantee whatever bastard hellspawn she’s with, she’s not having a good time. She’s little more than a breeding bitch for that Russian clan so they don’t go extinct.” Danny bared his teeth in a snarl. “Acts proud but there was rage in her eyes, a plead for help that I couldn’t give her at the time.”
Markus was next to speak, after the pregnant silence that fell between them when considering Luelle’s fate. “Ordri, last I heard was that she was in the U.K. She joined a construction company there that is basically run by werewolves, and recruits them. Haven’t heard from her in a few months, but she’s okay. U.K is particular about co-existing with the humans. Probably because they’re stuck on a tiny island.”
Arina scowled. “Seriously, you werewolves are the most fucked up things I’ve had a chance to meet.” She placed her firearm on the side, making Markus pick it up to examine as he brought her double strength coffee. There were scratches on the underside of the weapon, revealing the use. “It’s like, it can’t just be normal happy families with you guys. No, you have to eat humans, treat each other like scum, even though you’re supposed to be proud of your race, but skulk in the shadows because it would be bad if regular people found out about your preference for human meat.”
“She’s not wrong,” Markus said, one side of his mouth curling in amusement. “We are pretty fucked up.”
“I’d say it depends more on how isolated the clans are. Most have been brought up with the old ways. The more progressive clans live near the cities, the less, like our families, in the wilds. The American ones seemed to have found a way to exist peacefully. I made contact with a Belgium clan in Bruges, as well. Snotty, because their country was the head of the EU. I liked them, though, and a lot of them had married human males or females.”
“Males? Really?” Markus ogled Danny in surprise. “That would have never happened in Bulgaria. Female werewolves are too valuable.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t give a shit. Makes sense – that country decided to run itself without a government for a year.
“Anyway, there’s two ways to make a werewolf. Bloodline, or receiving the blessing. The humans received the blessing so they could propagate.”
“Blessing?” Arina scoured her memory, trying to recall if either of her friends had mentioned this in the past. She remembered a werewolf couldn’t be made by being bitten. They needed direct descent, to have the gene inside them. “What’s that, then?”
Markus stared at her for a moment, his sapphire blue eyes contemplative. “We can ask the wolf spirit in the area we’re in for a blessing. Normally, humans and werewolves can’t have children. With the blessing, it gives the human the gene, so they’re able to have a child with the lover. Not to turn them into a werewolf, though. That would be the lucky child in question.”
“Wolf spirit?”
“I’ve not spoken to one myself. But that’s how it’s supposed to go.” Markus gave a shrug. “Find the patron wolf spirit, get blessing, everything’s cool. After all, werewolves had to come from somewhere, you know. They used to be humans once. Maybe they asked for a blessing for a successful hunt or something. Most of my clan didn’t know themselves where they came from, except from looking into the old Slavic mythology.”
Markus examined the pendant that Arina wore, a faint smile playing upon his face.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go into law enforcement in Bulgaria,” Danny said. “Things are pretty screwy over there.”
A lurching, knotted feeling invaded Arina’s skin. The mention of her homeland and the idea of her remaining in it made her queasy. She reined down the sensation enough to explain, “I didn’t want to stay in Bulgaria. Too many bad memories. I wanted a fresh start in a new place. Why not the land of the American Dream?”
Both werewolve’s noses quivered, sensing her trepidation. Danny Lubanov sighed. “Yes. That was part of our thinking too. But… you? I would have thought if you choose this… path, to be a cop, then you might have an ulterior motive for it. More than just making it a job. Though I could be mistaken.”
The unspoken thought lay between them. Arina knew the werewolves had a good suspicion as to why their human friend had chosen to pursue a career in law enforcement. Ricten Spirova’s leering face came to her mind out of the dark, frozen in the moment where he obliterated the remaining members of her family, reveled in it, loved it. Stamping on human lives as if they were cattle.
She took deep breaths, trying to release some of the venomous whispers, that told her she should run as far as possible from anything to do with werewolves. “He’s always on my mind. But I did find thinking about it too much was destroying me. I was spiraling down, you know. It got bad.”
Arina shivered. She didn’t like thinking about the years after she had turned up at the doorstep of her Godfather and his wife in Sofia. It wasn’t a time she cared to dwell in, because it poisoned her mind, tainted all the neural connections like black tar, dragging things to a twisted place. She’d tried everything, when she was old enough to understand, though not necessarily old legally. Sex, drugs, drink – all the classics people employed to forget about the shit that had happened to them. Nothing worked, because once the effects cleared, she was only left in squalor and misery, the gnawing feeling cutting at her heart, at the spot where her father, brother, and her four friends lived. It was a hollow emptiness, even with those memories.
Eventually, she crawled out of the pit, gathered the shards of her life together, and scrubbed everything clean. Left the dirt and the despair behind, and sank into America, where she’d emerged out in success. When she did reflect upon the past, she waded through the bad memories, the terrible things she’d done to herself, to remember the five of them together, in another lifetime.
She much preferred thinking of her current status, content in a different country, the threads of her past waving in the wind.
Except, some of those threads began tying themselves up again, congregating into the form of the two werewolves with her tonight.
“I’m glad you’re doing well, Ari,” Danny said, patting her on the shoulder. We often thought about you, wondered how you kept. Worried, a lot. You had some heavy memories in your heart. We were scared it meant we could no longer be friends. I believed that idea for a while as well.”
“Me, too,” Arina confessed. She licked her lips, steepled her fingers. “Easier to think you’re all monsters. But I’ve seen my fair share of human monsters, too. It’s not so straightforward.” Her eyes briefly flickered to her gun. Friends or not, she didn’t know fully the status of the two men with her tonight, how much they kept from her, and what truth they chose to share. She didn’t feel in danger from them, but she would be a fool to trust instantly with two decades of extra existence stamped upon their souls. Except, she finally faced Markus again, and the fluttering in her blood persisted, bringing something else she had tried to bury.
Love. She had loved that little boy. Had even declared to him that they should marry when she was eight, because marriage was what people were supposed to do when they loved each other.
A child’s dream, but the memory made her smile.
“What are you thinking, Arina?” Markus had been gazing at her softly, lips curled, drinking in the sight of her.
“Nothing,” she lied. “Just… amazed that I got to see you both again. I
should be heading back soon, though. It might be crowded in here for the three of us.”
“Oh, no! No, it won’t! Please stay. There will always be room for you. I insist,” Markus said, a tiny edge of desperation in his voice.
Arina allowed a smirk to play about her lips. “Well, I suppose if you’ve been looking for me all this time, it would be a shame to leave you so soon. But we can also stay in contact. Catch up. See what changed.”
“Yes. Of course. But stay with us one night.” A sliver of black invaded Markus’s dark blue irises. His nostrils flared. The gaze made Arina shiver, and a bolt of arousal streaked through her spine. A faint hint of desire creeped onto her cheeks.
Drat. She knew about the werewolf magnetism. She knew if she stayed here too long, she wouldn’t be able to resist. She’d take Markus, every inch of him, grope him in the darkness and whimper out his name, because the tentative fantasies she harbored for the boy she loved had stirred into thrilled hope, drawing her to him, into the snow-lake scent of him, that took her mind to far away mountains and cold, pristine lakes, and of bird calls in the trees, and the red squirrels, with their little tails flickering, scratching up and down the evergreens.
Danny Lubanov regarded the exchange smugly, clearly smelling the attraction. “I knew it.”
Arina shot him an irritated look. “Nothing untoward will happen. We’re going to catch up, share, and then go to sleep like good people. What you think you’re seeing or smelling isn’t actually happening.”
Markus shook himself, and flexed his arm muscles. “Right. Absolutely no attraction at all. We’re just old friends. Catching up. With things. That need to be caught up with.”
“Uh huh.” Danny sat back, clearly enjoying this. “You can keep telling yourself that, mister alpha werewolf and hotshot cop. Whatever makes you sleep at night. Or doesn’t.”
Arina and Markus simultaneously lashed out at Danny, and he blocked the hits, roaring with laughter. “I need to tell Tia this. She’ll love it.”
