“The Sugar Bean” was sprawled in cursive across the side of it.
After two attempts, the truck maneuvered into an empty curbside spot down the street. A petite woman, head bound with a red bandana, hopped out of the driver’s seat while a curly-headed stick figure in skinny jeans came around from the passenger side. They disappeared inside the back of the vehicle, then two panels in its side swung open, one up and one down, creating a counter and a window open to the grassy square. Within minutes, a line of people stood at the food truck.
Behind him, Sokach heard Morana dismiss Velimir; the office door opened then closed.
She joined him at the window. “Something amiss?”
He shook his head. “Looks to be nothing.”
She inhaled deep, nostrils flaring. “Smell that?”
He followed suit, sorting through the many varied unpleasant scents of the city until he found the sweet, buttery goodness of fresh baked pastries.
“Reminds me of the old days.” She stepped closer to the window, her neck lengthening as she peered down at the sidewalk below. “I think it’s the sacrifices I miss the most,” she continued, watching the humans scurrying about like ants. “Endless banquets of breads and sweets and meat. Do you remember?”
Sokach nodded. He remembered. But thinking of those times only opened the door to other memories, nightmares really – the hell of fleeing; of carrying Morana, bleeding and near-gone, in arms aching with fatigue; of fighting through hard-swung blades, biting hot flames; of that beast, Lucifer, sweeping into their realm, setting the Underworld afire.
“You still had your brothers then,” she continued, her voice a murmur of sorrow. “My boys. My Shadows. Xander, Niko, Ilija, Lucijan, Aljoša.” She recited their names like a mantra, a prayer. When she turned to him, heartache etched fine lines at the corners of her eyes, across her forehead, marring her exquisite beauty. With her fingers, she brushed hair from his brow then caressed his cheek. A mother’s loving touch, gentle. “Sokach. The last of my firstborns. My most precious.”
Such melancholy was not good. Not for a queen with a fight to come. Sadness only begot doubt and fear.
Morana’s hand dropped, her gaze went back to the hustling masses below. “Soon another war.”
“Not if we cut off the head, kill Dragić.”
“Oh, I would like that.” The corner of Morana’s generous lips turned up. She looked at him, all ill humor gone. Mischief glinted in her blue eyes, sunlight on ice.
Sokach frowned. He knew that look. She was about to ask for something.
“You know what I would like almost as much as that?”
And there it was. His turn to sigh. “Yes, my queen?”
“One of whatever smells so delicious.”
Chapter Two
Bluebell closed he r eyes and grinned up at the morning sun burning like hot gold in the sky, letting its warmth melt over her. It promised to be a perfect day. Near her head, the dry rap and swish of cloth dancing on the breeze sang above the noise of the street – The Sugar Bean’s red, white, and blue OPEN flag flying free.
The sweetest sound.
Well. Almost.
Nothing could ever top that crack of wood against bone as the arresting officer’s night stick connected with her ex-husband’s knees. Nor the primal howl that followed. She’d been two toes into the next world, but had heard them clear, as holy and soul-cleansing as a church bell ringing bright and pure.
Tough guy til someone else is swinging, eh? The policeman had snarled to a writhing, whimpering Jimmy.
Ten years later and the memory still brought a smile to her lips.
“Coffee’s ready. And just in time, looks like.”
Blue opened her eyes. Ricky leaned out of the servicing window, pointing at the small herd of people making their way to The Bean.
Yep. It was going to be a perfect day.
She was ready for it. She’d been up since three that morning, getting the batter and frosting ready for a day of baking. They’d stay here until lunchtime, then move to the industrial park on the other side of town. The evening would be spent down at the ballfields where the summer leagues were in full swing.
She took the truck's three steps in two. With the ovens baking at 350 degrees, the inside of the truck was a sauna. Just pulling an apron over her head caused beads of sweat to form at her temples and dribble down the side of her face.
And it wasn’t even high noon.
She was going to regret going with the t-shirt instead of a tank.
While she checked on the second batch of blueberry muffins, Ricky took the first order.
“Fat free? Did you see the sign, la tonta ? This is the Shuugarr Bean,” he said, drawing the word out with unnecessary exaggeration, a hand on his jutting hip. “Jou look fine enough to handle some sweets.”
Blue glanced over her shoulder. The two soccer moms, ponytailed and mascaraed, at the counter giggled themselves pink in the cheeks. No one got mad at Ricky. He was harmless. Which was exactly why she’d hired him. That, and there was no need to worry about those unwanted complications that came with men and women working together in close quarters for long hours – the kid’s romantic tastes didn’t wander from his own team.
Ricky left the counter to join her at the food prep area. “One strawberry tort, one muffin, y dos salted caramel cocoas.” He snorted, then pulled on a baffled expression. “Oh, I don’t know why I can’t lose this baby fat. My pants must have shrunk!” he mocked in a feminine voice.
Blue smothered a laugh and elbowed him. “You’re terrible,” she muttered low.
While Ricky set the coffee/cocoa machine to whirling, she folded one pastry in wax paper, then the other, and packed them in a small white paper bag.
“That’ll be $13.50,” she said, holding out the bag to the petite blonde, a new mom judging from the size of the tiny baby in the jogging stroller.
The woman turned around and looked up. “Tha--nksss…” Her response and sparkling smile faltered as her gaze snagged on Blue’s face and the scar running like a jagged and pink tear streak from just under her left eye to mid-jaw.
Blue tilted her head. Let the girl have a better view at the angry mark.
She wasn’t ashamed.
Neither of it nor the half dozen other scars marring her body. She could’ve had the surgeon cover them up, but what good came from pretending they weren’t there? Wasn’t that just like trying to fix up a house after someone had been murdered in it? Putting a fresh coat of paint over blood stains and spackling in the bullet holes didn’t erase the fact that something horrible had happened. Everyone knew. Even the house remembered. Better to put a frame around the damage and plaque beside it, declaring, “Learn from this. Do not make the same mistake twice.”
Especially a mistake like Jimmy.
The woman dropped her eyes as she reached for the bag, crumpling it in her haste, then concentrated on digging through her clutch purse like it was a complex puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out. “Here, um, keep the change,” she said, slapping a five and a ten on the counter, eyes never lifting again.
Blue smirked but didn’t give the snub another thought. The line of people waiting was up to fifteen.
The success of this business – that was all that mattered. Who cared about the opinion of a daisy that’d never known a storm?
As ten o’cloc k neared, Blue checked on the stock. The strawberry torts and blueberry muffins were selling close to the same rate. There shouldn’t be too many left over. In the next hour, she’d get the brownies in the oven. That way, they’d be done by the time she and Ricky shut down and moved to the lunch location.
“Santa Maria ,” Ricky all but purred. He leaned his elbows on the counter beside her and cupped his chin in his hands. “I’d like to put a little icing on that .”
Blue followed his drooling gaze to a solitary figure gliding down the sidewalk across the street, moving quickly, sleek, like a shadow floating over a field. A fit physique dressed
in a tailored black button down and charcoal slacks, he cut a fine figure. He wore his honey brown hair shorn close at the sides, laying a bit longer on the top. A lock fell across his forehead, defying any gel’s hold.
That kind of casual perfection probably took hours in front of a mirror to achieve.
“If you like overly handsome and knowing it. You’re welcome to him,” Blue said, picking up a nearby rag and wiping down the counter.
Against her will, her eyes stole a covert glance back at the man as he pivoted and headed their way.
Her heart did a little flip when he drew near.
She’d been wrong, very wrong, with her initial read of him. He was no playboy.
There was nothing pretty about his good looks. Where a movie star was soft leather, this man was all flint and shale. His cheeks were barren rock shelfs above a shear drop to a severe jaw and generous lips, smooth like river stone. But it was his eyes – silver iron with a hint of sky – that caught her breath.
As expressionless and cold as a Great White’s.
Instinct said she should be afraid, she should scurry to do his bidding and fall on grateful knees in the nearest church when he didn’t nick the life out of her.
But something had happened during that last fight with Jimmy, the one that almost killed her. A defiant fire had been unleashed in her, and instead of letting fear and uncertainty smother it, she fed them to its flames, oxygen to a forest fire. She would never back down again.
Blue flipped the towel over a shoulder and planted her hands on the counter. “Can I get you something?”
His eyes seemed to swallow her whole with one look. Her mouth became a desert of sand.
His chin jutted toward the menu board. “The strawberry.”
He had a light, yet distinct accent. Eastern European?
“Oh, ju don’t look like a strawberry,” Ricky said, running his eyes up and down the man’s torso, broad shoulders to narrow waist.
The man doused Ricky with a withering look. “I’m not.”
He was there for a woman then. Blue stole a glance at his hands as she turned to get his order. No ring. What kind of a woman had a man like that at her beck and call?
“Anything for you?” she asked when she was done and set the bag on the counter.
His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled. Was that his pleased look? God, she’d hate to see him angry.
“Coffee. Black.”
In her head, she tallied the total due as she filled the cup and snapped on the lid. But then those glacial eyes met hers again, and the simple addition turned into an algebra equation. While she lost all ability to do math, he dropped cash on the counter, picked up his purchases, and walked off. Both she and Ricky leaned out of the window to watch him cross the grassy square and stride up the street. Beneath a sign reading “The Adriatic. Fine Dining,” a door opened, held wide by another well-dressed man, and Mr. Strawberry disappeared inside.
After getting showered and ready for bed, Blue sat cross-legged on her couch, reading over the day’s accounting one more time. All six pages of it. It’d been a pretty good haul for the first day. With any luck, some of the customers would pass the word along and that total at the bottom of the page would grow. It didn’t have to reach the millions – she wasn’t greedy – but comfortable would be nice. Safe would be better.
She frowned. The best sales had come from their first stop, down the street from The Adriatic.
Of course. The place that all but screamed “Mob.”
She’d kept her eye on the restaurant throughout the morning, noting the near-constant flow of black SUVs and sleek sports cars swooping in to drop off or pick up sharply-dressed men and women. Each person, attractive in a fashion runway sort of way, radiating a cool, no-nonsense confidence. Slick, like gangsters. Serious as the black, unsweetened coffee they ordered from The Bean.
But none of them came close to the deadly sureness that oozed from Mr. Strawberry. He wore power like a crown, inherited and earned. In her mind, she imagined him walking into the dim restaurant, the bright afternoon sun behind him, casting him as a silhouette. The men stepped back as he moved through the room, giving him a wide berth. The women leaned in, drawn to his raw intensity like butterflies to nectar, desperate to be used and thrown away by him.
A shiver raised gooseflesh on her arms.
He was exactly the kind of man she should avoid.
And yet, somehow, self-preservation was losing its Whack-A-Mole war with curiosity. Could anyone be that stiff, almost blank all the time? What lay beneath that rigid exterior? More cold concrete?
One thing was for sure, she agreed with Ricky – the man was no strawberry.
Chapter Three
The bouillabaisse neede d a bit more saffron.
Sokach pinched a bit of the rusty spice from the nearby prep bowl, sprinkled it into the rolling broth, and slowly stirred it in. He inhaled the heady steam rising from the pot. Strange that a seafood dish called for such an earthly smelling ingredient to top it off, but the yin and yang of it worked beautifully…if, and only if, the right amount was used. And for Sokach, only perfection would do.
How long since he first tried his hand at cooking?
About two hundred years, give or take a few decades.
It hadn’t exactly been a planned thing, more like an outlet for his fury.
Round about the time Le Rasoir National became Marie Antoinette’s hairdresser, they had opened the grandest version of The Adriatic yet, only to have Velimir put it and them at risk of exposure by reducing the kitchen’s three employees to smoking mounds of ash. Sokach had picked up a knife and chopped his first vegetable to keep from adding Velimir’s soot to the pile. The Adriatic had been Sokach’s brainchild, his creation. And at that time, it was the only thing keeping them alive.
The early centuries of exile hadn’t been easy, what with Lucifer’s hounds chasing them and the Judean’s zealots growing bold. But believers could still be found, here and there. Their souls provided Morana with much needed sustenance. Her wounds healed. She’d even found enough strength, or nearly so, to create Velimir, her first daemon, adding a third to their little family.
Then came the drought – those dark, hopeless centuries when Christianity reached such a fevered pitch that neither promise nor threats could entice a soul to worship, not even in secret. And while the Judean grew fat on their sacrifices and prayers, Morana slipped deeper and deeper into the quicksand of despair and began to fade. Desperate, Sokach had sought out the lowest of the lowest filth and struck a deal – souls for wealth, power, protection. A seedy crossroads tavern became the hub of the operation, and The Adriatic was born.
Sokach left the cooktop, went to the double wall ovens and peered in at the baking cabbage leaf-wrapped lamb. A small bubble rose and burst in its tomato sauce. By the time the bouillabaisse bowls were cleared, it would be ready to serve.
“When you leave to bring up the bouillabaisse, turn the temperature down to 200 degrees,” he said, turning to Maja and Damir, two minor daemons who acted as chefs in his absence.
They nodded.
“Are the tort shells ready?”
Maja stepped to the fridge and removed a tray of pie crusts, each about the size of an orange in diameter, for him to inspect.
He’d never admit it to anyone, but the inspiration for the new recipe had come after watching sticky cream and strawberry filling ooze out of the pastry he’d bought from that woman at the food truck. Morana had practically purred with pleasure as she’d eaten it, crowing that it was the best sweet she’d tasted in years. To him, desserts were an afterthought. If a meal was good enough, it needed no follow-on. But he’d be damned if he’d be out done by a mere human with a hiccup’s worth of experience compared to his centuries. Pride demanded he accept the unspoken challenge.
While he wiped his hands on a towel, the woman’s penetrating ebony eyes rose up in his mind, staring at him with a brashness that bordered on insolence, daring
him to – what? He couldn’t say, nor could he answer why his mind kept coming back to it. He discarded the thought along with the cloth and made his way out of the kitchen.
The door to the private conference room was closed. Standing guard beside it, Tonći reached for the handle to open it for him, but Sokach stopped him. Morana wanted the Heads comfortable, relaxed. Unsuspecting. They would be anything but that if he walked in now. Better to slip in unseen.
Sokach took his shadow form, his human features shimmering and fading until nothing remained. Neither human nor daemon could see him, only Morana had enough magic.
He smiled, seeing Tonći swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort. It was good to remind the youngsters who was the oldest, the most powerful of The White Death’s creations. The only one whose magic did not require a human host. The only one fashioned at the height of her empire. All others came after the exodos and had but a fraction of his gifts.
Slipping through the crack between door and floor, Sokach rose, still in shadow form, on the other side.
Windowless, lamps turned low, the room was dim even though it was early evening and the summer sun hadn’t gone down yet. The oblong table stretched before him, set with fine china and crystal goblets full of blood-red wine. The silverware glinted in the golden light of the chandelier. Morana lounged at the table’s head, invisible to the Heads seated in silence around it, six on each side. One for each of the full moons.
Once, those twelve places had been filled by white priests and priestesses, all worshiping his queen, the rare and beautiful thirteenth moon. Now, men and women representing the worst of mankind – human traffickers, drug dealers, gun runners, murderers – darkened those chairs, in her service not for love or piety but for the profit to be gained. A foul stench rose from their souls, like that of corpses rotting in the sun.
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