by Gaja J. Kos
Barle groaned, but remained still. Her grip on him was solid, unyielding, even when the man she was holding above ground was twice her size.
“Let’s see if you can grasp the basics,” she began, her voice cold and saturated with distaste towards the suspended vampire. “The police and, more importantly, the pack, are investigating the series of murders. You decided to take justice into your own hands. We have a solid lead. You have nothing but blind rage. We have begun to narrow down the pool of suspects. You decided to take a horde of vampires and attack innocent bystanders.
“We will catch the person responsible, while you and your selfish motives will cause the twentyfourhourlies to become permanently subjected to the hatred of not only humans, but the whole supernatural community.”
Evelin fell silent, her emerald eyes shining as she fixed them upon the paling face of the impaled vampire.
“Do you still believe it’s wise to continue down this path?”
Chapter 14
Rose walked with Veles’s hand entwined with hers as they navigated the dark streets of Ljubljana. Mark and Zarja had delivered Mr. Barle back to his wife, the vampire cursing the werewolves for the slowly healing wounds and his now spoiled plans throughout the trip. But at least the vampire showed no intention of continuing with his rampage over humans.
Still, the pack felt unsure about leaving Ljubljana unguarded. Word could have gotten out about the twentyfourhourlies’ march, so Tim and the twins took the outer perimeter of the city, while Rose and Veles decided to do a sweep of the center.
Luckily, the damp cold of the night drove Ljubljana’s inhabitants to their homes, leaving the old town uncharacteristically abandoned, and Rose much calmer.
Even if the traditionals somehow got a whiff of the twentyfourhourlies’ plan, there simply weren’t that many targets for them to release their bloodlust on. And knowing the old-fashioned bloodsuckers, Rose figured the diminished numbers wouldn’t be to their liking. They preferred a much higher body count than what the evening offered, especially when working in groups.
Rose angled her head upward, testing the air. There were no disturbances, no currents of fear stirring through the cold night. The werewolves had successfully dispersed the rioting crowd; the vampires determined not to share Barle’s experience.
Maybe luck had continued to be on the pack’s side, and news of what had transpired hadn’t reached the orthodox vamps.
“I still don’t understand why you’re unable to sense if a vampiric soul crosses over,” Rose said as they veered around the corner, the Ljubljanica river coming into view.
Moments like this, having Veles by her side as they stalked Ljubljana’s streets were the only occasions on which the capitol felt intimate. Likable. Rose had spent her life shifting between Paris, New York, the small villages nestled deep within the French Alps, and Ljubljana. But the latter always struck her as the most foreign one.
If it weren’t for her pack, she would have left a long time ago… Yet standing in the heart of the city, her fingers brushing against Veles’s soft skin, Ljubljana felt oddly similar to a sensation she had long given up on. It felt like home.
She peered at the god, a small smile forming on her lips.
“Unlike you, I am able to see souls because mine is like no one else’s,” Veles replied after a fashion, still drinking in the gloomy sight of misty tendrils creeping along the riverbank. “You’re a werewolf, a special werewolf, that’s undeniable, but a representative of your species nonetheless. It should have been impossible for you to have an affinity for spirits, especially for those of your brethren, yet you do.
“You are truly unique in that aspect, Rosalind... You defy the highest laws of nature.”
They walked onto the Cobblers’ Bridge, gazing at the city laid out in front of them. A chill crawled down Rose’s spine, sending goose bumps down the length of her arms. Veles's hand in hers was warm, but the god’s expression regained some of the ancient distance it had held when they’d met for the first time.
“I, however,” Veles continued in a calm, yet somewhat authoritative tone, “being Velin’s descendant, have a soul that cannot be replicated outside my immediate bloodline. The detachment from all other living beings, including other gods, provides me with the means to be the lord of the underworld.”
His shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath. He stood gazing at the old city submerged in darkness, and Rose waited patiently for him to continue.
“Since I poured some of my power into the vampires, I had also given their souls a different structure. Much too similar to mine...”
“You gave them immortality. And a touch of death.” She nodded, not needing to see the god’s strained features to know she was right. Veles had detached those villagers from their living nature, reshaping their core until they were forced to thread the thin line between the realm of life and the one of endless death.
Something about not quite fitting into either world reminded Rose of herself.
“And as such,” Veles continued, “I have—in a way—made them my descendants. Vampires do not possess the strength to rule the underworld, since they are a reflection of my power, but do not come from my blood. Yet the similarities between our souls make it impossible for me to sense them.”
Silence fell between the god and the werewolf as they stood on the empty bridge, only the faint sound of their breaths mixing with the faraway murmur of their surroundings. Finally, Veles turned to her, his green eyes blazing against the darkness of night.
“I am not even certain vampires possess the kind of soul that can cross over.”
Cupping the sides of his face with her hands, Rose closed the gap between them, and trapped his lips in a kiss. The god accepted her affection, allowing the distance fitting for an ancient being to melt away, becoming nothing more than her friend, her consort once again. When Rose took a step back, leaning against the railing, she could feel the gold sparkle against the midnight blue of her eyes.
“What kind of soul doesn’t have the ability to cross over?” she asked gently, the golden shimmer dying down.
The god propped his back against the cold stone, his gaze slowly turning to Rose. “Mine.”
The late afternoon performance had just finished, and quite a few spectators were still mingling in the downstairs bar. The room was decorated interestingly enough, with antique chairs set around transparent glass tables, and hand-welded iron chandeliers illuminating the space. Yet it did nothing to lessen the reek of self-importance that oozed from the crowd.
Tomo looked grim as he observed them, squeezed into an isolated corner and waiting for that unnamed someone who would eventually speak with him.
Evelin wasn’t in a particularly good mood herself, the commotion of no one knowing to whom they should talk getting on her nerves. She was cranky, yet compared to the officer next to her, she looked positively radiant. No, it couldn’t have only been the crappy organization that plastered that expression onto Tomo’s face.
Unsure whether she was in a position to ask a personal question, she remained waiting in silence. But even as minutes dragged by, Tomo didn’t appear to be doing any better.
“Tomo, is there something bothering you?”
The man’s face remained motionless. Only his gaze darted across the space as he surveyed the chatting crowd of spectators and actors.
Evelin followed his gaze, trying to grasp what the officer was seeing.
“My kid used to date one of these assholes,” Tomo groaned after a few more moments of silence.
Evelin turned to him. “One of the actors?”
“A younger guy from the ensemble.” Tomo nodded. His eyes shifted into that hard cop stare that spoke of underlying threats. “He nearly got him hooked on drugs.”
Evelin blinked, surprised by the blunt confession. She’d heard of the coke-sniffing reputation most of Ljubljana’s artists had, but she always thought it was more of a fashion statement than an actual addiction.
>
The tension oozing from the man standing beside her coated Evelin’s tongue. The flavor was that of the deepest hatred, the kind that wouldn’t diminish with time. And silently, she hoped the bastard would get what was coming to him.
“I know Blaž wasn’t some stranger to parties. He was a college kid, after all,” Tomo began after a few deep breaths filled his lungs. “But smoking weed once or twice a month and grabbing a few beers isn’t even remotely similar to a dude bringing a whole fucking case of drugs to some sinkhole party. Or sniffing second rate cocaine with a bunch of dickheads night after night, for that matter.”
“How did you find out?” Evelin managed to ask, almost suffocated by the deeply rooted emotions that rested within Tomo.
“He told me.” The older man sighed. “After Blaž realized his lowlife of a boyfriend was fucking everything that walked past him the very instant my kid wasn’t around to witness it, it sobered him up. Despite everything that had happened, he wasn’t some rotten apple. The excess drugs had never agreed with him, and the only reason he partook in those activities was to not be excluded.” Tomo laughed bitterly. “To not be excluded.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. If you ever have kids, promise me you’ll claw the shit out of any asshole hanging around them.” Tomo released a long breath, the tension in his shoulders lessening. A bittersweet smile played on his lips, his eyes regaining some of their previous spark. “The one good thing that came from the whole mess is that a contact from narcotics flagged this Belobog-forsaken place for illegal drug activities.”
Tomo laughed and fixed his eyes on a man in his early forties who had begun to cross the room.
The smug expression on his face and the air of self-importance fitted right into the vibe of the pretentious assembly. But the small scent of uneasiness disconnected him from the crowd and brought Evelin to the conclusion that he must be the one they had been waiting for.
“The downside is,” Tomo said quietly, his eyes still fixed on the approaching figure clad in a black turtleneck and cargo pants, “that someone tipped them off... Which means we’ll have a shit time getting the sleaze balls to cooperate.”
“What do you mean, yours?” Rose frowned.
A chilled wind stroked the back of her neck, ruffling her loose curls. She couldn’t tell which was icier—the breeze or the cool flames that had begun to crackle in Veles’s eyes.
“You found Psoglav’s soul and brought it into my realm, but you haven’t been able to locate my father’s,” the god said quietly, emotions flowing through his words despite his efforts to maintain steel control.
Although the information took Rose by surprise, Veles was right about one thing.
During the past six months, she taught herself how to enter the “waiting room,” as Veles had once called the ethereal pouch. She had succeeded in co-existing in the realm of the souls within the world of the living without suffering any consequences herself. The process had tired her once, but Rose had grown stronger with every attempt. And now she could access the darkness at her will.
When she had enough confidence in steering her power, she began to enact the role of a beacon for those spirits, calling them to her and transporting them into the underworld. Yet even more than merely mastering her energy and abilities, she continued to return to the darkness, hoping that one of those dense fields of air would be Velin.
But despite bringing over a little less than a hundred souls, Velin still eluded her.
She hadn’t told Veles about her side mission during her sessions with the god as he taught her how to deal with the ethereal essences of deceased beings. He couldn’t have known what she had been attempting to achieve, which meant he must have hoped...
“It doesn’t mean that your father isn’t there, Veles,” Rose whispered, wrapping her arms around the god’s lean torso. “I am only able to transport small groups at a time, and there are so many still in the darkness. I have millennia of lost souls to catch up on…”
She pressed her head against his chest, allowing the warmth of her body to break the strain that had begun to build up inside him.
In a way, he was still the arrogant, sultry lord of the underworld who had kidnapped her in order to offer her his assistance, but she had come to know the human part of him… And that exact part was what had caused the god to close himself off from the rest of the world.
She wasn’t about to allow him to pull away from her.
“Psoglav was a freak accident,” she said into the thick fabric of Veles’s coat. “After him, the only souls I have been able to transport were those of humans and werewolves. That one time I came across a group of elf spirits hardly counts. I don’t think my power is evolved enough to grasp anything higher on the supernatural hierarchy yet...”
She still hadn’t been able to find the Banniks. The prophetic spirits the wolf-man had slaughtered in their own bathhouse hadn’t found their way into the underworld. Veles had tried, and failed, to locate them inside his realm.
But she hadn’t given up on searching inside the “waiting room.” She had been able to touch the soul of one immortal, and she had a hard time believing Psoglav’s essence had been the only one lingering in the ethereal pocket inside the world of the living.
She would locate the Banniks. And she would locate Veles’s father once her golden, olive-spiked power gained more strength.
Chapter 15
A slightly elevated part of the square-shaped lounge apparently substituted the managing director’s office for the evening. Despite standing a short distance away from the rest of the crowd, the spot was nonetheless too loud, too public for an official tête-à-tête—as Daniel Zupan had called it—but the managing director didn’t seem to mind in the least.
The unnatural grayish hue of the scrawny man’s skin shone under the artificial light, his mouth twisted sideways in an odd curve as his eyes flickered between the two people standing in front of him.
The director looked like a man with too much stress and alcohol in his life. Yet by the way he carried himself, one would think there was a throne of gold positioned beneath his ass.
“I am disheartened to hear about the preposterous demise of one of our beholders,” Zupan said, his mouth even more violently dragged to one side in a grotesque attempt at compassion.
Evelin almost lost the fight against the impulse to roll her eyes at the man’s demeanor.
“So you knew Alex Krastev?”
“I wasn’t acquainted with him in a personal manner, but since the nature of every theater is essentially esoteric, the gregarious disposition of post-show soirees brings several people to one’s attention. Even without exclusive association.” He smiled, but failed to achieve a pleasant effect.
“So you and Krastev did not share any exclusive associations, but you do recognize him as one of your regular spectators?” Evelin asked, using up all of her will to keep the mocking tone out of her voice.
“That is correct, yes,” the grayish man replied, his gaze following the curves of Evelin’s form before turning back to Tomo, the bleak brown of his eyes overly serious. “I do not wish to be equivocate, but other than a general affirmation of his presence at our opening night, I do not see how I may be able to aid you in solving this insidious matter.”
“I do,” Tomo muttered under his breath just before he regained his blank cop face and answered Zupan in a voice devoid of any previous emotion. “We need a list of all your employees that were present here that night, actors, hostesses, technicians, cleaning personnel... I don’t suppose you have a guest list?”
Irritation passed Daniel Zupan’s face like a shadow, but the man quickly recovered, his half smile still firmly plastered on his face. “Our audiences are capricious. We do not man data on who specifically procures the tickets.”
“Didn’t think you did,” said Tomo in a harmless tone.
Evelin held back the impulse to snicker; Zupan hadn’t even sensed the provocation. She noticed Tomo figh
ting the same battle, yet when the officer continued, there was no change to his words.
“But we do need that list of employees. And we need to know everything there is about the shipment of blood that was used that night; supplier, storage, people that handled it... Possibly a sample.”
“I will convey your request to our organizer. He should have information on who was on call that night. Although it may take some time to provide you with a bona fide index.” The managing director nodded to himself, his eyebrows drawn together as if serious thoughts rushed through his mind.
Evelin highly doubted that such an occurrence was even possible when it came to the repugnant man.
“The organizer should also have the requested information pertaining the blood,” he added, outstretching his slightly sweaty hand. “My assistant will relate the obtained data to you...”
He shifted on his feet, his gaze already darting towards the gathered spectators and actors; for him, the conversation was undeniably over. Evelin forcibly shook Zupan’s hand, followed by Tomo. With a cordial goodbye, the managing director hurried off into the crowd, his askew smile beaming as he saw a group of acquaintances.
Evelin turned, resting her back against the wall covered in photo prints depicting stills from several of the theater’s past and present performances. “Is everybody here so revoltingly full of shit? Not to mention useless?”
Tomo laughed, and it was a good, warm laugh. “Not everyone. But the full-of-shit assholes certainly have majority.”
Evelin pushed back the repulsion, cherishing her pack life even more than she had before. Working in the theater must have been torture for someone who didn’t shit gold.
“There was this one guy from the ensemble.” The policeman continued as he came to stand beside her, scanning the crowd. “A married man who didn’t like to partake in the drinking and drug activities the others were so very fond of. Subtly, he tried to warn Blaž about his choice of partner, but my kid wasn’t exactly susceptible to any kind of advice back then. At least not until things got blown the fuck out of proportion.”
