by JL Merrow
“Family is important,” Christoph said vaguely.
Yeah, right. Because without family, who’d there be to tell you what a loser you were?
“So you’re an only child too?” he persisted.
Damn. “Yeah. Kinda. Yeah.”
“It’s not a difficult question.”
“I had a brother, okay? He died. Can we not talk about this?”
Christoph’s hand rested briefly on my shoulder. It felt warm and solid through the cotton of my shirt. Comforting. “I’m sorry.”
I took a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “It was a long time ago. Are we close to this place yet?”
The hand went away again, making me wish I hadn’t been so abrupt with the change of subject. “A couple of streets.”
I guess Christoph finally figured out I didn’t want to talk about Ben, as he quit with the interrogation. He was a damn liar, though. It was a good twenty minutes and one of my sneakers was giving me a blister by the time we rounded a corner and Christoph stopped dead. He pointed to a building halfway down the street. “It’s here.”
He didn’t make a move. “Did we come here just to look at the place?” I griped. Then I turned to look at him, somehow aware there was something off about him. I drew in a breath, about to speak—and that’s when I realized what it was.
It was fear. I could smell it on him.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I tried to imagine what it must be like for Christoph, to have to go in there and show these guys he worked with what had happened to him. Hell, maybe there was someone in there he had the hots for—maybe even someone he was involved with.
How the hell was he going to feel if they took one look at his face and recoiled in horror?
And if I was really, brutally honest with myself, how was I going to feel if they didn’t?
“Listen, why don’t we come back here after hours? When it’s dark?” I suggested, before I could talk myself out of it. “Hell, we got into the zoo—how hard can it be to break into this place?”
For a moment, Christoph seemed to be wavering. “It’s not worth the risk,” he said in the end. “Getting arrested would be a bad idea. And it’s possible Schreiber may have the place under surveillance.”
Shit. I looked around hurriedly. Sniffed the air. Nada.
I guess Christoph figured out what I was doing. “He would not dare to act by daylight. We should be safe, as long as there are people around.”
Maybe. Just how far gone did a psycho have to be anyway before he stopped caring about all that shit? “So, we’re going in now?” I asked, my throat dry.
Christoph nodded. “You don’t have to come.”
I searched his face, trying to figure out what would be the best thing to do. Would it just make it worse to have me around, or could he use the moral support? I’d never have put Christoph down as a moral-support kind of guy, but I guess I was finding out I didn’t know him any too well. “I’ll come,” I said. “Just in case.”
He didn’t ask, “In case of what?” He just stood up a little straighter and set off down the street. I took a deep breath and followed.
Chapter Thirteen
The receptionist was the first hurdle. Her over-made-up face froze on the “o” of “Guten Morgen,” and she stared at Christoph for a long moment, scarlet lips wide.
“Frau Müller,” Christoph said, formal as all hell. It seemed to snap her out of it.
“Herr Schäfer! I didn’t expect you in today.” Her eyes were locked on to his scars like a missile sight. I guess in normal circumstances, she’d have been wondering why he’d come to the office dressed like a bum, but with his face looking like a car crash, the clothes probably didn’t even register.
“I won’t be staying,” Christoph told her curtly as he strode past her desk to push open a door. Figuring the last thing I wanted was to hang around and field her questions, I followed him, catching the door just before it swung shut.
The office was modern and quietly bustling. Most of the drones had their heads down, so our entrance didn’t cause a stir. I guess I’d been subconsciously expecting something a little more old-fashioned, with antique furniture and clerks scratching out Gothic script with fountain pens, but it was all clean, utilitarian lines and what looked, to my untrained eye, like the latest in office hardware. The only note of whimsy was the collection of oil paintings on the walls. They looked like they’d all been painted by the same hand and showed forest scenes—dark and gloomy yet somehow majestic. An old-fashioned style of painting. I liked it better than the over-bright colors and too-clear lines a lot of artists seem to go for nowadays. “This way,” Christoph said, shepherding me through the open-plan bit before I could finish looking at everything.
We ignored a few startled glances and slipped into a large corner office, shutting the door behind us.
“Uh, isn’t this the boss’s office?” I whispered, feeling intimidated by the size of the desk. There’s probably a word for it. Megalodescaphobia. Or something.
“And?” Christoph’s tone was curt.
“Uh, nothing.” I jammed my hands in my pants pockets and looked around as he pulled out an expensive-looking chair and sat at the desk. There was an oil painting hanging behind him that was a little different from the ones outside. It sent a shiver down my spine when I recognized a house I knew only too well. Schreiber’s house—that had used to be Christoph’s. Put down in oils, the decay seemed somehow romantic rather than gloomy. For the first time, I appreciated the beauty of its woodland setting.
He’d wanted to be an artist, Christoph had told me. Shit. I was beginning to realize just how much the guy had had to lose. I could picture him, how he must have been before Schreiber arrived on the scene: young, talented, successful, buying a fixer-upper he had big plans for. Plans that didn’t involve a hostile takeover by creatures from out of a nightmare.
He probably wouldn’t have looked twice at a guy like me back then. Or maybe he would have: once to notice I looked hot, and the second time to figure out it wasn’t worth wasting his time on a guy who’d never amount to anything. He might have wanted me in his bed, but in his well-ordered, ambitious, comfortable life? No way. He’d have gone for some cute, career-minded guy who wore sharp suits and hadn’t flunked out of college.
I was jolted out of my bitter thoughts by the fluting sound of one of Microsoft’s greatest hits. Christoph had fired up his computer. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, annoyed. “Newsflash, but we’re on the run from a bunch of psycho werewolves here. This isn’t exactly the time to be worrying about clearing your inbox.”
“I need to send an email,” Christoph said without looking up. His long, thin fingers flew over the keyboard, then he paused for a moment before clicking Send.
“Who to? I thought you didn’t have any friends it was safe to get in touch with.”
“Myself.” Christoph shut the computer back down and started rummaging through his desk drawer.
About to ask him just what the hell he was on, I jumped as someone knocked on the door. Christoph called out “Herein!” and one of the drones poked his head in, then followed it nervously with the rest of him.
“Christoph?” He was a skinny, dark-haired guy in a tight designer suit, with a pastel-colored shirt that set off his bright blue eyes. I hated him on sight.
Christoph looked up at him and seemed to freeze. “Florian.” And what the hell kind of a name is that for a guy?
I didn’t like the look of this. Flower-boy approached the desk, and I got a waft of his girly cologne that nearly made me barf. “My God, Christoph—what happened to you?”
Asshole. Did he think saying something like that was going to make Christoph feel better? “He got savaged by a dog,” I butted in, moving to stand between them. “He’s fine. Don’t you have work to do?”
“Who are you?” Flower-boy looked down his pointy little nose at me. “Christoph? Who is this American?” The way he said it, you’d
have thought “American” was another word for “piece of shit”. Hell, maybe it was in his prissy little dictionary.
“Florian. There is nothing for you to concern yourself about.” Christoph stood up. Maybe he wanted to prove he was taller than the both of us.
“But—your face, Christoph!” Flower-boy put his hands on his face like he was posing for a camp remake of The Scream. “My God, have you even been to a doctor?”
He made a move to get even closer, so I grabbed his bony arm. “Hey. He says he’s okay, just shut the fuck up, you got that?”
Flower-boy tried to shake me off, but it was like a flea trying to shake off a dog. I tensed as I saw his fist clench, even though I figured there was no way pretty boy would risk those perfect incisors in a fight. Just in case, I shifted my weight, ready to roll with whatever girly little punch he put out—and then shoot one right back at him.
“Verdammt!” Both of us jumped a fucking mile as Christoph slammed his fist down on the desk so hard a pen pot leapt in the air and fell on its side, scattering pens and pencils and God knows what across the polished wooden surface and onto the floor. I lost my grip on Flower-boy and he scuttled away, holding his arm like he was worried I’d broken it. I noticed he didn’t go any nearer to Christoph.
“Florian, you will return to your work,” Christoph said, breathing hard. I smirked at Flower-boy. “Leon, control yourself!”
Damn. I lost the smirk. Flower-boy dithered by the door, but Christoph just sat back down at the desk and started rummaging through the drawer again, ignoring the both of us. In the end, Flower-boy flounced out, slamming the door behind him. The air he left behind was sickly sweet from his cologne, with a sour tang of fear underlying it. I liked the fear better.
“I’ve found it,” Christoph announced, standing and shoving something in his pants pocket. “We can go now.”
Christoph marched through that outer office like it was the Valley of Death, his eyes straight ahead as if daring those cannons to fire. News had spread since we’d come in, and the whole damn office had downed tools to stare at us.
Flower-boy was in a huddle with one of the other drones. Damn, it was tempting to let my teeth grow a little and bare them at him. But I didn’t want Christoph snapping at me in front of everyone, so I kept my mouth shut—at least, until I heard one of the office girls whispering to her girlfriend about how schrecklich it was, and that’s when I lost it.
“Fuck you, assholes! He got clawed, okay? Get the fuck over it!” Where did they get off, deciding his life was as good as over just because of a couple of scars?
“Leon,” Christoph said, his voice so low I doubt anyone heard him but me. I took the hint and buttoned it.
When we made it out the front door, I drew in a deep lungful of city air. “Damn, that’s better. But if I find my clothes still stink of Flower-boy’s girly perfume, I swear I’ll go back there and—”
I didn’t get to say what I’d do to him because that’s when the werewolves jumped us.
There were two of them—at least that I could see. Tobias and Michael. “You’re going to regret what you did to Sven,” Tobias said, his tone conversational as they sauntered out of a side street to stand in our path. I didn’t rush to join in the gabfest. For one thing, I figured he was probably right, and for another, I was too damn busy trying to figure out a way out of this shit. We could turn and run, maybe—but the last time I’d tried that, it hadn’t gone any too well. Looking at the length and strength of Tobias’s powerful legs, I figured there was no way I could outrun him. Christoph would be in with a chance if he left me behind.
I hoped that wasn’t what Christoph was thinking right now.
“I don’t want to fight you, Tobias.” Christoph’s voice was low and so full of menace the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention.
Tobias spread his hands wide. “Then don’t. Just bring Silke back to us, and your pretty little pet won’t have to get hurt.”
I swear I felt Christoph tense at that. It pissed me the hell off that he was so damn worried about Flower-boy. If I’d needed any confirmation they were fucking, that was it.
“Schreiber doesn’t deserve your loyalty, and he doesn’t deserve to get his daughter back,” Christoph growled—and then, without any warning, he lunged at Tobias, lightning fast. When he sprang back beside me again, there was a long gash stretching the breadth of Tobias’s T-shirt, and blood had started to well.
Shit. If there were humans around, they’d figure Christoph had knifed the guy. Were there humans around? I hadn’t gotten around to noticing, and now I didn’t dare take my eyes off of Tobias and Michael. Just as well—a heartbeat later, Michael’s face was morphing as he came at me, his hands raised and rapidly turning into lethal weapons.
Someone snarled out Michael’s name as I ducked out of the way of his claws. Survival instinct kicked in, dredging up a roundhouse kick from some long-forgotten martial arts class. It plowed into Michael’s kidney with zero technique but maximum desperation. He dropped to his knees, and I snarled in triumph. Someone grabbed my arm, and I whirled, claws ready to tear his fucking face off, but through the red haze, I realized someone had beaten me to it.
It was Christoph. “Leon. Come. Now!” He started to drag me away from the scene, and I realized Tobias was doing the same with Michael, hampered by having to hold his guts in with one hand. “There are witnesses. Come!”
I let him haul me along the street. Suddenly the place was teeming with humans—and all of them were staring at us. I wondered which of us was freaking them out the most, me or Christoph, and desperately tried to force the change back to human before I lost it and ate someone. Not that I figured Christoph would let me. Hell, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d joined forces with Tobias to get me and Michael off the street. United against a common foe—and tearing each others’ throats out the minute we were out of the public eye.
I guess Christoph realized I’d changed back before I did—the first I knew was when he dragged me into a supermarket, of all places. I looked at my hands and saw they were just that: hands. “What the hell are we doing here?” I panted. “The weekly food shop?”
“People.”
Seriously, for a moment there I thought he was suggesting we eat them. Then my head stopped whirling, and I realized it made sense, if you substituted “witnesses” for “people”. Witnesses with cellphones. Hell, if anything happened in here, the pictures would be all over the Internet before the first corpse hit the floor. “So are we going to camp out here and live off tinned food?”
“I think this man might have something to say about that,” Christoph murmured, and I followed his gaze to where an overweight security guard was waddling toward us.
“Shit.” I guessed he’d seen us run in and figured we were trouble, which made him several hundred percent smarter than he looked. I straightened. “Hey, you got a problem with the facially disfigured?” I called out to the guard and anyone else within several aisles. “Don’t want guys like him putting your regular customers off? There’s got to be laws against that, you know.”
“Leon!” Christoph hissed at me.
I ignored him and spoke louder. “I ought to call the papers. Tell them your supermarket discriminates against the disabled. I bet they’d love to do a feature on that.” We’d gathered quite a crowd by now. A couple of old ladies started muttering about what a shame it was, and the guard swallowed. “Anyone here got a problem with us shopping here?” I called to the crowd.
There was a generally supportive rumble. The guard threw up his hands and walked away, shaking his head. I breathed again. “Okay, we’ll give it ten minutes and we should be okay to leave,” I muttered to Christoph. “You want to look like it’s a really hard decision between the name-brand fruit and the generic stuff?”
Christoph gave me a pissed-off glare, then turned to study a can of pears like he’d be having an exam on the ingredients later. One of the old ladies patted his arm sympathetically as she w
alked away. “I am not disabled,” he ground out after she’d gone, his voice sounding like he’d been chewing on nails.
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? Don’t knock it.” I picked up some peaches. I hate peaches. “Anyhow, you have an incurable condition. We both do. It’s the same thing.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You think our condition is a disability?”
“It’s sure as hell been interfering with my everyday quality of life.”
He actually smiled. “But there are consolations, no? The run, the hunt when we were with Silke—you enjoyed that.” He didn’t make it a question, so I didn’t bother answering.
It’d reminded me of something, anyhow. “Yeah, about Silke. They seemed pretty keen on getting her back, didn’t they? More than you’d expect.” Maybe they’d gotten tired of cooking up their own goulash.
There was a silence. I gave Christoph a sharp look. “What?” When he still didn’t answer, I slammed the peaches back on the shelf. “Come on, give.”
Christoph looked at me then. “There is more going on here than you think.”
“Such as?” For a moment, I thought he was going to talk to me, but then his face closed up again.
“I don’t know for sure. And this isn’t the place to discuss it.”
“Fine. Then how about we get out of here and find somewhere that is safe?”
Christoph nodded, putting the pears carefully back on the shelf.
Chapter Fourteen
Walking out of the supermarket felt like stripping naked and stepping onto a battlefield with a big target painted on my butt. I made damn sure I looked all around before I set foot out of the place, and Christoph seemed pretty tense too. Even the security guard didn’t look all that happy to see us leave. I guess he was just pissed off because we hadn’t bought anything.
There was no sign of Tobias and Michael, though. All the two-footed traffic on the streets was strictly human, both my eyes and my nose were telling me. I still breathed a little easier as we made it to the end of the street without being jumped. I felt even better after we’d stopped at an ATM and Christoph had taken out a stack of euro notes. Damn, they looked beautiful.
