Ravening Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  I white-knuckled the handle of the fridge door as I pushed him back to close it. “Damned alpha.”

  “Can we get back to what’s really important here?” Amy interjected. “If this Caleb guy is really as hot and sexy and sweet as you say, why are you not treating him better?” Her suspicious glare turned on Tobias. “Or do you have something to do with that?”

  “Me?” Tobias stuck a thumb into his own chest. “Don’t lay this at my paws. I’ve been telling her for months to sleep with the guy.”

  I threw up my hands at both of them. “As much as I appreciate you both trying to engineer the cashing in of my v-card, let me reassure you, I’m making that move only when I’m ready.”

  “Well, of course, sweetie!” Amy’s mannerism shifted from grilling best friend to sympathetic sister. “No, I’m not saying put out before he gets out. No! I’m just saying, if you got a great guy, why are you being so resistant to building a real relationship with him?”

  Tobias took a bite of bagel and shrugged. “I don’t care, I’m just sick of having to wait around at WWL for you. If you started staying whole nights with him, I’d get half my life back.”

  Amy snapped her fingers. “Another great reason. Look, I have to go change over my laundry downstairs. When I come back, you and I are going to sit down, talk this out, and make a plan.”

  Finally, with Amy out of the room and Tobias talking again, I could bring up the were-elephant in the room.

  “So Cody isn’t that mad with me?”

  The werewolf looked at me like I’d just suggested dumplings were disgusting. “Actually, I’d say he’s right pissed. You called him out in front of the pack and, by the way, made a fool of yourself in the process. If you were pack, he probably would have renounced you to save maw.”

  A fool of myself? How dare he? “Like your alpha did with you?”

  My verbal arrow hit its mark, and Tobias flinched. “It’s not the same.”

  “Okay, I’ll grant you it’s not exactly the same. You were trying to prove to your alpha that vampires were involved in your brother’s murder and your mate’s disappearance, but you acted out of love.”

  “You telling your ex-boyfriend—your married-and-mated-with-a-child ex-boyfriend—that you were still in love with him wasn’t heroic, Geri. You weren’t trying to right a wrong or alert others to danger; you were just shopping for sympathy.”

  “Sympathy?” I spit the term back in his face. “May I remind you that Cody was the one who brought up my feelings to begin with?”

  “Because every time you look at him, all dreamy-eyed and lovestruck, you weaken his position as alpha. He—” Tobias stumbled over his own realization as his flashing eyes went from me to the ceiling. “He set you up. He knew exactly how you would react, and he did it on purpose to create a scene so he could save face.”

  The notion turned over in my head only for a moment before my mind filled in the other part of that conclusion. “He did it because that was the only way he could let you go with me to Istanbul for the summer. He had to solidify his authority and make me look pitiful, so the others wouldn’t question why he was letting you go chasing after a hood. Not even a real hood anymore, a former hood.”

  Tobias ran a hand through hair badly in need of a cut. “Cody might be better at pack politics than I thought him capable of.” The werewolf extended a hand. “Peace?”

  I wrapped my hand in Tobias’s. “Until the next time we have a reason to fight.”

  ELEVEN

  “What about your parents, Geri?” Mrs. Popowitz asked as Amy and I posed for pictures in caps and gowns. “Did they make it into town for graduation? Amy says you’re from Minnesota. That’s not too far away, is it?”

  “Michigan, actually,” I corrected. “Unfortunately, my parents are very occupied running the family business. They couldn’t make it.”

  Truth be told, I’d been a little upset by the fact that neither my dad nor my mom had talked to me since last summer. But, as Amy’s parents reminded me, I didn’t have an exclusive on dysfunctional family drama. She had a feather of a mother and a stone of a father.

  “Yes, I understand how hard it could be to get away,” Mr. Popowitz grumbled. “Yet, somehow, I managed to do it, and I run a Manhattan law firm.”

  “Never you mind him, dear.” Mrs. Popowitz practically cooed as she ran a gloved hand over my cheek. I didn’t know if it was good genetics, or a great plastic surgeon, but she didn’t look to be more than a few years older than her daughter. “But is there no one here at all for you? How tragic.”

  I bit my lip. It didn’t feel tragic until she had said something. But then, wading through the crowd, wearing the darkest pair of sunglasses I had ever seen, strode my unwitting bodyguard.

  “Actually, there’s one person.”

  I squealed as his embrace picked me up off the floor and set my legs pinwheeling through the air.

  “Damned proud of you, Little Red. Even though I don’t understand what the hell it is you’re going to do with that degree.”

  “It’s just official documentation that I’m smarter than you.”

  “Could have told you that without you wasting all that money on tuition.”

  My feet tingled by the time Tobias set me down. He played nice, shaking hands with Amy’s parents, then asking what they thought about their daughter’s plan to join them in Istanbul for the summer.

  Mr. Popowitz’s face screwed up, as though he’d just smelled something foul. “Istanbul?” He turned to his daughter. “I thought you said you were going to Europe for the summer.”

  “Istanbul is in Europe,” Amy sighed. “Or at least, half of it is.”

  You could have polished a blade on his sharpened eyes. “Amy Helene Popowitz, how can you even think to go to such a backward country for the whole summer?”

  I snatched the werewolf’s hand before he could try to slither away. If he had opened this can of worms, the least he could do was stick around to watch them crawl out.

  Amy, however, must have anticipated her father’s objection, and came out fighting with silver-studded facts. “Actually, Daddy, Turkey has a higher GDP than both Switzerland and Austria, is one of the world’s leading producers of textiles, hazelnuts, and tobacco, and has the highest levels of education of any Muslim country in the region. They’ve even had a woman prime minister—something America still hasn’t managed.”

  Mr. Popowitz looked off in the distance at nothing in particular. “If there was a woman worthy who’d run, we would have.”

  “But... Turkey,” Mrs. Popowitz persisted. “It’s rather dangerous, isn’t it?”

  “How is New York City different? Or the United States?”

  Her father pushed his black-rimmed glasses up his nose. “And when do you leave for this escapade?”

  “Tomorrow night. We have a direct flight out of O’Hare.”

  Mrs. Popowitz took me and her daughter by the hand and walked us toward the door. “Oh, that’s soon! Let’s make sure you both are well fed before then. I hear they don’t have any pork in that country. Can you imagine? A whole summer without bacon.”

  Tobias winced as I elbowed his ribs.

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE A PLACE like this really exists.”

  Ignorance was a fertile field in which surprises grow.

  I’d been to large cities before: Detroit, Frankfurt, Munich. And of course, two years living in Chicago. Metropolises on their own, I’d thought, were interchangeable, after you got past a few distinguishing landmarks or sports stadiums.

  Istanbul was a city defined by landmarks, one which a modern city had managed to grow into the cracks of and cocoon over the outside. Even Schloss Wolfsretter, the majestic, ancestral home of the House of Red and current de facto United Nations building for my entire species, would fade into the background among such colossal edifices. As I looked out over the European side’s skyline from the cabin of the massive SUV Igor had waiting for us at the airport, snaking its way up the Asian coastline, a cr
ick in my neck began to throb from all my head turning.

  Igor grinned, although he too kept his eyes fixed on the living museum landscape. “Five hundred years since I first saw her, and she still has the power to make my heart beat.”

  “Wait, you mean your heart’s not beating?”

  Amy’s question proved to be a bucket of cold water that awoke all of us to reality. Istanbul released its mystical hold on our attention, and our conversation turned inward.

  Igor smiled. “Beating might be an exaggeration, but it functions, just in a much different way, from what I’ve been able to gather.” Once he’d learned that Amy was definitely and enthusiastically in the know about the supernatural world, he’d decided that knowledge trumped ignorance, even if he wasn’t sure of this particular huey’s trustworthiness as yet. “It’s been difficult to know much about how vampirism changes the internal organs and biochemistry of the subject. As we heal from minor injury so quickly, and given that when we do die, our corpses turn to ash as soon as they’re struck by sunlight, it’s been impossible to learn much through postmortem examination.”

  “But you’re obviously still able to function humanly,” Amy countered. “How, without a pulse? How do your muscles get oxygenated? Wouldn’t you have continual strokes without it going to your brain? And what about digestion? You drink blood, which doesn’t have that many nutrients or other essential things like fiber? How in the hell do you survive?”

  “I still exercise regularly.”

  The attempt at humor fell flat. Igor cleared his throat and continued.

  “All good questions, and ones I myself long to learn the answers to, Miss Popowitz. Despite centuries of study, both in books and on my own person, the best I’ve been able to deduce is that that is the primary reason we drink blood. Whatever infests or infects us when we become vampire—call it a virus or call it magic—keeps our bodies in a perpetual state of rejuvenation. It cannot, however, deliver oxygenation. In effect, we drink blood to breathe.”

  Amy’s expression soured. “But you’d need to drink it, like, all the time.”

  Igor allowed an acknowledging nod, then added, “Then again, with practice, one can hold one’s breath for a very long time.”

  Amy could accept that Igor was a vampire, but she couldn’t accept that he had as quick of an intellect as she did. She settled back in her seat and turned her eyes back to the city. “You can’t hold your breath forever.”

  According to Igor, I shouldn’t be deluded into thinking that traffic would always be so accommodating, as the drive from one side of the Golden Horn to the other usually took several hours. Our advantage? At two AM, streets were merely crowded instead of congested.

  Tobias looked down at the waves below the bridge when we passed over, each rise kissed by light from both sides of the strait. “There’s more history in the square mile around us than England and America hold together. Really makes you ponder things, don’t it? How insignificant our existence is in the bigger frame of things?” His bottom lip pulled in, and a glisten on his cheek gave away what he struggled to hide in his voice. “Kara would have loved this.”

  Like the city reflecting in the waters below, I turned my thoughts back to the mangled histories that had brought each of us to this moment. If I hadn’t hesitated to say yes when Cody had asked me to mate him, I would be his wife now. Perhaps I’d even be sitting by his side this very moment, bouncing our baby on my knee. If Tobias had convinced me sooner to help him, Kara might still be alive. But then, who would be here to fight the Ravens?

  I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder. “She would have.”

  As Igor paid the driver (and selectively poked at his memory to delete too much detail about us), the rest of us unloaded our bags from the back of the car.

  “It smells like fish and piss,” Tobias grumbled.

  Amy paused, taking a moment to thoroughly scent the air herself. “I’m only getting the piss. Your nose must be better than mine.” When Tobias gave her a I’m a werewolf, remember? glare, she followed up with, “Oh, right, yeah. Well, I’d rather be able to smell the fish, frankly.”

  “And I’d rather smell anything.” I sucked down another lungful of air. Supernatural abilities denied, the profile proved limited. “Seriously, all I’m getting is...”

  “Bread.” Igor cut me off as the car pulled away. “There’s a bakery across the street. You’re smelling the yeast proofing the bread. In an hour or so, when the ovens fire up, you’ll swear you were back in your mother’s kitchen.”

  We all turned deadpanned expressions on him.

  “Seriously, none of your mothers baked bread?” Igor shifted his weight. “We’ll get a loaf in the evening when I rise, if they’re still open. It’s the next best thing. Empires universally result in two things: slavery and fine cuisine. The latter remains after the former has arisen.”

  The sidewalk leading toward the house before us seemed to be more worn down than welcoming. The structure, three stories high but only the width of two cars, still held an echo of beauty. At its zenith, it must have drawn the eye and inspired envy. Its wooden boards had long ago let go any hold of paint. The door, a dark-stained thing laced over with iron girders, looked like something salvaged from a pirate ship.

  “Suddenly, I’m thinking coming to Istanbul wasn’t my best idea.” Amy examined the home with a displeased eye. She turned to Igor. “You’re, like, an ancient vampire. Aren’t you supposed to have luxurious mansions all over the world?”

  Igor shrunk back, throwing his coat over his arm. “I suppose you also think I should only wear black capes with high red collars and seduce young virgins with my radiant sex appeal.”

  “One: ew, you’re old. And two...” She pointed to exhibit A: a three-story structure held together by nostalgia and a few remaining nails. “If there was a building in Manhattan that looked like this, it would be surrounded by a security fence and plastered over with signs saying condemned.”

  Igor found a key underneath a pot of pink flowers resting on a stoop before the front door, a metal relic longer than his hand that may have been as old as he was.

  “That is by design. We’re here to find the Ravens, hopefully while not being found ourselves. We want to lie low. I do have a house here—a beautiful home out on one of the Prince Islands. I’m certain Vlad would have someone watching it. Too risky to stay there.”

  “If this isn’t your home, whose is it then?”

  Tobias’s question echoed my thoughts. Immediately following which was, why here? For the past three minutes, I’d been scanning the run-down building’s edifice for security concerns. Other than the bars overlapping the windows of the first floor and the front door, little inspired hope in me that this house would stand up to a rainstorm, let alone a Raven.

  Igor turned the key. “I rented it online. Please remember, if any of the neighbors asks, we’re a group from the university, here doing research about street cats. Also, let me tell you one thing about this country: it teaches you not to focus on outward appearance. There is often something surprising hidden behind the veil.”

  I stepped around Amy, pressed forward by hope. “Are Inga and Caleb here? I got a text from him yesterday saying they were on their way to Istanbul.”

  The vampire, his hand flattened against the door, paused. “None of you are supposed to be using any devices.”

  Amy looked up from a tiny lit screen. “I thought that meant just for the flight.”

  Before my friend could blink, our honorary in loco parentis had her device in his hand.

  “George Orwell failed to foresee that you all would be the ones holding the cameras on yourselves.” With one simple gesture, Igor closed his hand, reducing the phone to e-waste. “No smartphones, no computers, no telephone calls. Inga will be bringing devices we can use that are guaranteed to be secure.”

  While Amy mumbled her grievances, I was still stuck on the one thing with which I couldn’t reckon. “Caleb?”

  I
gor motioned me into the house. “Soon, Geri. I promise.”

  He’d been right about one thing: the exterior concealed what the interior revealed. Not to say that I felt like we’d just stepped into something swanky like Caleb’s WWL flat or posh like a suite at the Ritz, but the home held its own in terms of quality. Hardwood floors were covered in aged yet intricately-patterned rugs. Clean, white-washed walls hosted a gallery’s worth of paintings and prints, many of which framed the very skyline we’d observed driving in.

  Igor set down his bag inside the door. “That over there,” he pointed to the right, “is the sitting room, though they call it a salon here. The kitchen is at the back of the house, along with a bathroom if any of you want to freshen up. There’s only two bedrooms upstairs, but they’re both pretty big. The third floor is one large room, empty of furniture at my request. I thought you all could use it for sparring and as a space to train Amy, like you were talking about.”

  “Only two bedrooms?” Amy asked. “So, who gets what?”

  Igor seemed confused by the question. “I thought it would be obvious: the women get one. The men, the other.”

  Embarrassment warmed my cheeks. “I thought Caleb and I would get our own room?”

  “So I’d get Tobias?” The blonde licked her lips. “Sounds good to me.”

  “No.” Tobias put his paw down. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Amy, but no. There’s no way I’m sharing a room with you.”

  “Amy and I will share a room,” I said, stepping in to play diplomat. Caleb would just have to join me at the negotiating table when he arrived. But something still didn’t add up. “What about you and Inga, Igor? Where will you stay?”

  “Ah, yes! Where is—Ah! Here it is.” In the middle of the house, between the entryway and what I assumed was the kitchen, the vampire opened an old wooden door that echoed the front door’s style. Beyond, a staircase descended into a dark pit. Must and dew scented the air. “This is why this house,” he said. “A cistern. Empty, of course. In the old part of the city, there’s hundreds of them. Every grand home or even apartment block in Byzantine or Ottoman times had one, and a number of them still survive in one form or another today. A favorite of vampires for day rest, of course.”