Ravening Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  “If I had only told him what he wanted to hear...”

  “Then you would have been lying.”

  Amy’s rebuke nipped my latest downward spiral of guilt in the bud, even if only temporarily. An hour had passed since the delivery of the letter, and though we still had no idea what it said, couldn’t even state with certainty that Caleb was in fact a hostage, we all felt it. Only, where the others were merely perplexed and worried, I was manufacturing self-blame like I was planning to sell it wholesale.

  “The last slayer is dead, or will be,” I muttered, staring off into space. “And it’s all because of me.”

  “Seriously, you have to stop. We don’t know anything. You’re jumping to conclusions. Plus, can I remind you that the only one to blame for any crime is the criminal.”

  A scratch at the front door made both of us jump. An hour ago, when I’d opened the door to the messenger, I’d done it without a second thought. The last tendrils of sunlight had still streaked across the sky, and that fact had filled me with a false sense of security. Now, with night having descended over Istanbul, every person in the street had become a monster in my mind. A city of fourteen million heinous creatures, all wanting to destroy us. I’d even convinced myself that my ability to sense wolves had returned. The Pera Pack would mount an attack posthaste, as contact with us would eventually lead to retribution on their account.

  Amy, however, had found a way to keep a level head, even as my nerves wrapped me in a ball. She looked at the peephole, then bearing some frustration, opened the door just enough to look out.

  Tobias’s snout pushed into the opening, the precursor to his giant wolf’s frame making its way inside. He shook off the mist that clung to the misty night, spraying the air. The moment the door was closed behind him, he shifted back to his upright form.

  I stood, handing him the pile of clothes he’d discarded before heading out. “Anything?”

  The werewolf shook his head. “As soon as I got out to the main street, there were too many scents for me to pick out that messenger’s. I would have tried going a few blocks in other directions, but I was already getting a lot of worried looks from the locals.” He pulled up his jeans and buckled them. For once, Amy seemed not to take any delight in having a naked man in her presence. “There may be plenty of street dogs in Istanbul, but a wolf the size of a pony still sets everyone’s teeth on edge. Anything from Igor or Inga?”

  Amy pulled out her phone and looked at the screen. “No, but Spain is two hours behind here; it still won’t be sunset there for another hour.”

  “And you sent them a picture of the letter?”

  “Of course, but I don’t think we have to wait.”

  She held up her phone and turned the screen our way. On it, a photo of the letter we’d received, and overlaying the lines of text, boxes outlined in red, on top of which English words were superimposed.

  She turned the screen back in her direction. “These online translation engines aren’t exact, but it’s more than we know now. It’d be better if it was printed instead of handwritten.”

  “Enough, woman!” Tobias exclaimed. “What does it say?”

  “Remember, this may not be completely accurate, but...” Amy focused on her phone. “Think you victor my field? I keep your crusader, want monarch. Throw yourself. I am finding where raptors sit in a high place.”

  She shrugged as the two of us gawked at her.

  “I told you, it’s not perfect. Look, just try to think around the literal translation. The first sentence, ‘think you victor my field,’ sounds like some arrogant ass boasting about something. Heard enough lines like that through many a break up.”

  Tobias balanced his chin on a cupped fist. “One thing we know about Vlad, about all the Ravens, is that they’re very full of themselves, so that fits. The crusader is probably Caleb, but sounds like they wanted someone else instead.”

  Already I was pulling on my boots. “I don’t care who they wanted. Who they’re getting is me.”

  “Like hell, they are.” Tobias seized me by the forearm, pulling me to my feet. “What do you think you’re going to do, Geri? Even with your hood abilities, what could you do? Silver doesn’t harm them.”

  “Not on its own, but I still haven’t met something that can survive without a head.”

  “So, what? You’re going to magically find a highly dangerous clutch of vampires we’ve been searching fruitlessly for for over a month and chop off all their heads, just like that? And without a weapon? I thought you were the one who said we needed to interrogate them first.”

  “That was before they kidnapped my boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend.” Amy slid her phone back into her pants pocket. “You two broke up, or don’t you remember that part?”

  Of course, I remembered! But what had happened afterward? The recollection stunned me for a moment, and I saw myself the night before in my mind’s eye, running after Caleb as he slayer-walked out of the museum. He’d been moving so fast, what possibly could have caught him? I couldn’t. Not that I was as fast as a slayer, not even when I’d been a nascent hood. The only thing as fast as a slayer was a...

  “They were there.” Realization slapped me in the face. “The dome of Hagia Sophia has windows. Anyone could have seen the light of that solarium.”

  Amy passed Tobias a look of confusion. The werewolf only grimaced and shook his head. The historical pictures that covered the walls of the rental house had been telling us the answer the whole time. Hell, even Ayşe had told us. We’d wasted so much time when the answer had been in front of us since we’d arrived.

  “Remember what Ayşe told us last time she was talking to us? I thought it was a metaphor, telling us not to mess with the Ravens, because they were too dangerous. It wasn’t a metaphor at all.”

  I crossed to the living room, where, over one of the low-slung couches, a painting of Istanbul at its height under the Ottomans hung. The modern city lay anchored on so many of its great monuments. Many of these buildings had been raised under the early sultans, but some of them stretched back to Byzantine times.

  “Think. What did Inga and Igor tell us about the Ravens? About Vlad?”

  Tobias pulled along beside me. Was he starting to see it too?

  “They’d be somewhere that was easily defended,” he said.

  “Somewhere that wasn’t built by the Ottomans. Somewhere that had large crowds nearby,” Amy added, making us a trio before the painting. “A place where there were lots of tourists without places to be, people to be accountable to. Easily fed from. Easily used without anyone noticing.”

  “Vampires can’t smell worth a shit, but they can see the faintest light,” I said. “Caleb thought we were inside, on a full moon night nonetheless. He didn’t think there would be any danger in showing me. But they saw it. They can see almost the whole city from there. It was like a... Like a...”

  “A giant bug zapper.”

  The werewolf and I both gawked at the huey.

  “What?” Amy asked. “You’ve never seen one of those? It’s like a cone and the light attracts bugs and that it zaps them—”

  “We know what a bug zapper is!” Tobias growled back. He refocused on the scene before us. “The whole time, and we’ve been running around in its shadow.” The werewolf cupped his hand over his chin, pulling on a beard that became more permanent by the day. “It’s the perfect place. They’re protected by a thousand eyes, and by the fact that they’re in a fucking tower. It will be hard, but I think I can do it.”

  I rounded on him with speed a cheetah would envy. “You’re not going anywhere near the Ravens. It’s my fault they got Caleb, and I’ll be the one to get him back.”

  “Unless we’re going to wait for Inga and Igor to come back, which I’m guessing would be tomorrow night at the soonest, assuming that the professor can’t leave Spain until he gets a belly full of his special diet blood, then it has to be me. I’m not going to let two hueys get themselves killed by Count Dracula
.”

  A squeak erupted out of our token huey. “Oh, I have no intention of going anywhere near them. Got my fill of intimate time with a bad vampire when one turned into the smoke monster and tried to kill me in front of a live studio audience. But Geri’s right, Tobias. It can’t be you.”

  “Amy, no matter how much you’ve learned about our kind since you came into the fold, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Actually, she does.” Shame took my eyes to the ground. “Your brother and your father were both alphas. Even if you weren’t an alpha, you still have the blood markers to be one. Remember what Igor said? Alpha-beta blood is one of the most powerful elixirs for a vampire to extend his life.”

  Tobias’s teeth ground. “I can’t let you go in there defenseless, even if that’s true.”

  “I’m not defenseless. I have a lifetime of hood training in both combat and negotiating. Just because I can’t move as fast as I used to or that I’m not as strong doesn’t change that. Besides, being a huey in this circumstance might be an advantage. I’m still the daughter of a red matron, and I doubt a vampire as arrogant and self-involved as Vlad or the other Ravens would know that I’ve been relinquished. Knowing I’m a matron’s daughter will make him think twice about killing me. Worst case scenario: he decides to feed from me.”

  The werewolf let me have me piece, then shook his head. “You really think that’s the worst-case scenario?”

  “It’s the worst one I’ll let myself think about.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  All my life, I’d known the weight of eyes. My mother’s admonishing glare, my father’s sympathetic gaze, the pensive stares from werewolves as I accompanied different members of my clan on rounds to regional packs. The scowls of other hoods during summer training trips in Germany when I would best them in competition after competition. Eyes had mass, gravity. I felt it now, the anchor of a dozen eyes upon me as I stood at the base of Galata Tower, weighing me down with expectation, confusion, surprise.

  Intrigue.

  Despite the crowds of tourists milling about, some chatting, some seated at nearby cafes taking in an early dinner, others snapping pictures of the tower above the square, I felt utterly singular. Was this really so different from the forests and rivers and stones I knew as home? Only there, my goal was to sneak upon the prey without it knowing. This time, I had to attract the hunter, being just another beast.

  The hunter needed bait, however. I lifted a hand to my head, wrapping my fingers around the hilt of my dagger. The familial weapon sighed from the sheath buried in my braid. Balancing the blade on the tip of my finger garnered little in the way of attention from the crowd. When I started to toss it into the air in a series ocomplex routines, however, a small crowd gathered. When I added fighting forms to the presentation, they fanned the edges.

  I felt like my old self in that moment: driven to the middle of an expanse, waiting for the challenge that would soon make itself known. Even though I’d made Tobias promise not to come anywhere near here, I felt his stare too. The liar. Familiar, comforting, almost like a warm blanket on a cold night. I swept the crowd, wondering if I could catch sight of him, but when I came about three-quarters of the way through my turn, a man stood before me who had not been there a moment ago.

  Black hair, feathered, haphazardly tossed and styled. A shirt as blue as the tiles that decorated so many of the Ottoman architectural wonders, opened down to the third button to show the sculptured, fuzzy chest beneath. Gray slacks and a suit jacket. A thick mustache that seemed the fashion among the natives. Native: he looked like one, but an air of otherness about suggested anything but to the trained eyes. He snatched my hand, his black eyes fixed on the drop of blood that pearled where my blade had nicked a finger.

  “Merhaba, canım. Dün gece nereye köştünüz?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t speak Turkish.”

  He grinned. Such white teeth. No fangs. They must be retracted. “English, then?”

  “Or some really elementary Spanish.”

  “Alas, my Spanish hasn’t advanced beyond the sixteenth century. Your owning of a pulse suggests yours wasn’t born until after that.” He looked at me with a more intense inspection, as though determining what dress would best suit me. “Most hueys would consider escaping from us a blessing. How intriguing that you returned to be captured willingly.”

  Escape? I escaped the Ravens?

  Despite the mixture of pride and confusion warring inside me, I had to maintain outward indifference, annoyance. Disdain. If you make their concerns seem petty, you make their players feel powerless, my mother would say. Set them ill at ease by letting them think their goals have no value for you. Then they must appease you in some other way to get what they want. Then, you can make demands.

  “What makes you think my being here has anything to do with you?”

  He lifted my finger up to the level of his eyes, examining the trickle of blood that had begun to crust over. “You’re either not as skilled with a blade as you assumed, or you yourself set a beautiful trap to get our attention. I understand you Americans have a concept called ‘finger food.’ I must admit, I did not think it so literal.”

  I managed to snap my hand back moments before his lips closed over the injury, leaving him holding air.

  “Where I come from, people like you have to ask permission to feed. I haven’t given it.”

  He dropped his hand and stepped to me, bringing our chests into contact. He’d seemed taller a moment ago, but I realized as our gazes locked that he was, indeed, the same height as I. His slender fingers petted down my hair, tracing an eventual line over my chin.

  “A Raven is not given permission to do as he wishes. He takes what he desires.”

  An adversary must be equal at the very least. I mirrored the vampire’s action, raising my own hand to lay a hand over the dominant jawline. Anyone else seeing us in the crown would think us lovers.

  “So I’ve learned. Give him back to me, or I’ll be forced to take him back. I promise, if it comes to that, the consequences will be drastic.”

  The glint in his eye sharpened. Possibly from amusement. Possibly from the longing sparked by my racing pulse. Or both.

  “Vlad will find you most interesting.”

  “I imagine the feeling will be likewise.” I dropped my hand. Now that he’d confirmed he was one of Dracula’s clutch, and not the man himself, I wouldn’t touch him. It would suggest equity. “Summon him.”

  The vampire took the hint that the locus of this cat and mouse game had shifted. I’d played myself beyond the first maze.

  “He’s not here.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Do you suppose we reside here?” The vampire motioned to the tower overhead. “It’s merely our... official place of business. He suspected you’d come tonight. He made sure we had someone waiting for you when you arrived.”

  “Sorry, who?”

  The vampire shook with silent laughter. “In time, you will call him master.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Boot heels pounded on cobblestones. Tourists and locals swirled in a miasma. Tens steps from the tower, a sharp right, fifteen steps along the adjacent street, two steps off the curb into the black SUV that had arrived right on cue. A slamming door, and the weight of his stare lifted. Tobias had lost sight of me behind tinted glass. There was no doubt the werewolf was in the crowd, or that he was now panicking about what to do. On two legs, he’d never keep up with a vehicle, even in Istanbul traffic. On four legs, the feat was possible, but impractical. A two-hundred-plus pound wolf in a highly packed tourist area running as though he were hunting prey, though? The huey authorities would shoot to kill without a second thought.

  The Ravens had chosen their perch well.

  Two men sat in the front seat, textbook goons: slicked back hair, three-piece suits, holstered guns peeking out. Vampire or enthralled huey, I didn’t know. The man who’d harvested me slid into the backseat from the other side
and leaned over, a slip of cloth in his hands.

  “May I?”

  I very much doubted that. “Why not just enthrall me? Erase my memory when I leave?”

  He didn’t wait for permission to secure the blindfold over my eyes. “If you leave. And if you leave, it must be for certain you will not return.”

  “Am I being taken prisoner?”

  The goons in the front seat chuckled. They understood English. Was that important?

  The vampire beside me wore his smile in his voice. “You are an honored guest, until such time you give us a reason to dishonor you. No matter what my sister claimed, we are not blood-thirsty monsters.”

  “So, I’m not a prisoner, but my boyfriend is?”

  No answer to that. Either this vamp was unaware of Caleb’s capture, held an opinion on his detainment contrary to his master’s, or had been instructed not to discuss the matter with me. No point in further attempts at information; he wouldn’t provide it.

  “Do I at least get to know your name?”

  “I thought my sister would have told you that already.”

  “I know the names of all the Ravens, but I don’t know which you are.”

  After a few moments, his answer came out clipped. “Timur.”

  “Timur,” I repeated, inking the feel of it on my lips.

  “And you?”

  “I am eager to meet Vlad.”

  Power wasn’t about who knew the most; it was about who was able to share the least and still get what they wanted.

  PERHAPS AN HOUR HAD passed when the SUV parked. Timur and I kept our silence, though the driver and other passenger kept up a conversation I could make neither heads nor tails of. When the car came to its final stop, Timur circled to my side to open the door, guiding me out by the hand, giving the car time to drive away before the blindfold was removed.

  The structure before me looked more like something from Prague or Vienna than Istanbul. Six stories high and covered in vines, the mansion was definitely fit for a prince. Though its size blocked my view of the exterior and periphery, the taste of the air and the profile of the soundscape convinced me it was either right on the water, or within a block or two of it.