by Gaja J. Kos
With a smile forming on her lips, she motioned to a western-type bar. It was tucked into the ground floor of an older building that had been modified into a high rise at some point in the past—though odd, the combination was endearing. Besides, there were only three tables outside, a thin red fence separating them from the ruckus of 7th Avenue, and all of them empty.
Rose could hear the cheerful voices coming from inside, the smell of lunch—burgers and steaks—flowing through the slightly ajar door. It was as good a spot as any, and with the New York streets as charmingly packed with cars as usual, she figured nobody would be joining them on the small patio outside. You could barely hear yourself think, let alone carry a conversation.
Luckily, they wouldn’t be doing either.
They waited in silence for the waitress, gave her their orders, and used the time to observe the traffic rumble by in its steady current. It wasn’t until two pitchers of beer were placed on the table that the cheeky smile returned to Serafina’s lips and was mirrored on Rose’s features shortly after.
“I still don’t know how this works, exactly,” Rose confessed, although the whispers of Mokoš had already begun to thrum inside her body.
The Koldunya chuckled. “Neither do I, but we’ve been doing a great job so far without putting much thought into it.”
Rose lifted her beer in salute and took a sip. Serafina was right. Neither of them had forced the silent communication before, yet it had kept on running in the background from the moment the Land Rover’s engine had roared to life in Radovljica.
A slight pang of guilt shot through Rose at the thought. She had shipped her jeep home like some wrecked old car on the back of a truck. But leaving it in Grenoble would have been an even worse choice. She only hoped the trucker upheld his part of the bargain and actually delivered the Defender to Ljubljana. Rose frowned. She should have contacted one of the pack to see if everything was alright; however, they had unanimously agreed that the separation should be complete. No exceptions to the rule, save for immediate, life-threatening danger. And as much as she may love it, Rose couldn’t risk startling the weres because of some damned car.
A reassuring whisper caressed her rattled energy. Letting go of her concerns, Rose gave the Koldunya an apologetic shrug.
The truth was that thinking about deliberately using another power made her nervous. The odd method of communication was foreign and familiar at the same time; but most of all, Rose wasn’t certain if what Serafina had proposed would even work.
The whispers of Mokoš always carried messages of a more emotional manner, revealing the things each woman kept hidden beneath the surface.
Rose took a deep breath.
Perhaps secrets of a different kind worked the same.
All they had to do was try.
She focused her mind on the wish to learn more. She envisioned her desire for knowledge, how it might aid her in what she hadn’t wanted to admit even to herself—the situation that appeared to be more grim, more hopeless, with each passing day. The Koldunya’s brows furrowed together, and instinctively, Rose knew Serafina was channeling her own frustration at not being able to help more.
The two women looked at each other in silence, the whispers beginning to gain volume.
Somewhere, somehow, the two emotions mixed and transformed into a beacon. Rose’s eyes shone with golden light that seeped past her Ray-Bans, but she didn’t dare avert her gaze. Just as the Koldunya didn’t flinch as the bubble of warmth around her intensified, engulfing Rose whole.
None of the passersby paid any attention to them, almost as if the enhanced energy of the earth Serafina emitted created a boundary that separated the pair from the rest of the world. Spontaneous glamor, perhaps.
Rose let the power of the beacon heat the very blood in her veins, turning those barely audible whispers into full-bodied words. And when she accepted them as if they were her own, the strings of sentences began to form, spilling out a tale of gods and immortals like the pages of a book.
“Wow.” Rose exhaled as the last syllable flowed through her body and was devoured by golden light.
“Wow,” Serafina agreed, her cheeks flushed from the same rush that had snapped Rose’s claws out without her even realizing it until they tickled the side of her thigh. Slowly, Rose reeled them back in.
With unsteady hands, she lifted her pitcher of beer and took a long sip, willing the golden gleam in her eyes to calm down. She let out a hearty burp, followed by laughter that she couldn’t stop from spilling from her lips. Across the table, Serafina cradled her own pitcher. Her head bobbed from side to side in astonishment, but her features were illuminated by the widest grin Rose had ever witnessed.
“I can’t believe it worked,” the Koldunya said.
“I can’t believe there are so many of you privileged bastards,” Rose blurted, then snickered in disbelief. The higher-ups were selected, that much was true, but they certainly weren’t the selected few Rose had always envisioned. “I feel left out.”
Barely toning down her excitement, Serafina winked at Rose. “Not anymore.”
Rose’s smile faltered at the unintended implication. Biting her lip, she reached over and grabbed the Koldunya’s hand. “You’re sure you won’t get in trouble for this?”
“Like I said, I couldn’t tell you anything, and I didn’t,” the witch answered in a leveled, relaxed tone—the kind Rose hadn’t heard since that day in Tignes and now washed over her in a loving wave of reassurance. “I don’t know how many discovered that rightful descendants of the same god share something that links them to one another—not many, I presume, since even I didn’t know until I met you. But even if they did… Rose, you told me yourself how easily things slipped through the bond before the pack practiced shielding. I could feign ignorance of passing this particular information on to you.”
Rose wasn’t convinced that it would be enough to sway the higher-ups, but she decided not to ruin Serafina’s moment. If the time came to defend the Koldunya from those who deemed themselves above everyone else, Rose had no doubts she would already be in the eye of the shitstorm itself.
“Besides,” Serafina continued, oblivious to the turmoil constricting Rose’s stomach into a tight ball—though Rose was certain the whispers were doing their best to pass the sensation forward, “we’re daughters of Mokoš. I can’t think of anything else that would carry more weight than both of us bearing the mark of our goddess. We’re family. Not what one might expect, but we are.”
Pushing past the lump in her throat, Rose gave Serafina’s hand an even tighter squeeze. “I care for you.”
“I know,” the Koldunya replied, keeping her eyes fixed on Rose to emphasize her statement. “I won’t freeze up the next time.”
Rose’s breath hitched in her chest. She brought Serafina to New York with her to ease the witch through the shock of taking a life for the first time. So that she could take care of the Koldunya until she was positive her friend could return to her coven without bearing too many scars on her beautiful, innocent spirit. It didn’t matter how long the process might take. The outcome, however, was always the same. Serafina was meant to return home, where she could work from the shadows, if she still chose to.
But this…
Serafina was powerful. Sometimes, Rose thought the charming redhead was even more dangerous than all The Dark Ones thrown together.
Rose remembered how those vampires in Tignes resembled nothing more than husks of bodies that had once held life. Serafina, by her own account, had forced their frozen biological clock back into ticking, then fast-forwarded its time until the hands on the clock face stopped. Permanently.
She was Mother Nature incarnate.
A fragment of the earth itself, augmented with primal magic that existed in the times of Upirs and rivaled the strength of the living vampires’ own blend of power. That was enough to make even Rose’s hackles rise.
To have such a powerful ally by her side just might tip the chances of
getting out of this mess in Rose’s favor. However, it also meant there was one more friend to bury should she fail.
She didn’t know what to say, so she let the storm of conflicting emotions light the beacon between them instead, and allowed Serafina to hear it all.
After all, this kind of honesty was all Rose had left to offer.
It was almost nightfall, and Zarja’s legs had actually begun to ache. She scowled at herself, a promise of more hours spent at the gym lingering beneath her silent curses. Either her endurance was off, or she had truly thrown away so many hours of her life that even her body was telling her she’d had enough.
Neither option was particularly reassuring.
Among other less fascinating things, she had watched the Upir enjoy a meal at a well-known restaurant in the heart of the old town, observing how the people were oblivious to the female’s true nature.
Being able to shift into a magically enhanced human form was an excellent commodity. And one that irritated Zarja to no end.
To pass the time, she tried to break apart the Upir’s human scent. She had expected to at least find a hint of something unusual, something that would point to the magic flowing through the woman’s veins, yet her scent remained frustratingly ordinary. It was why Vaclav had been able to pass for Perko, why the fucker had been able to fool not only humans, but vampires and werewolves alike.
With nothing else to do, she used those tedious hours to catalog every face and scent of the people the Upir had met with. Not being able to tell if they were human or merely in their human skins, Zarja didn’t dare take any chances. She hadn’t even heard of the Upirs before the vamp murders during the winter months, and suddenly there were two ancient creatures in Ljubljana. Granted, one of them wasn’t running around with his two souls any longer, but that particular fact didn’t do a damn thing to soothe her temper. Vaclav and the unidentified woman had coexisted on these streets.
It would be more than ignorant to presume they were the only ones.
Dreading the idea of an enemy that could hide in plain sight, she continued to gather information. But the process of storing every fine detail was draining her energy and made her stomach rumble on more than one occasion. Not exactly ideal for stealth. She pulled a sports bar from her pocket and stuffed it in her mouth.
The only consolation was that all this trouble wouldn’t be for nothing.
Although she wouldn’t have minded some company, the pack’s resources were undoubtedly better used elsewhere. She was enough. The memory transfer had worked just like she hoped it would. Though she had been the only one to truly smell them, the pack was now aware of precisely which scents were lingering in and around the Upir’s apartment.
And she had every intention of repeating the procedure after she had a moment’s rest.
Until Tomo or Nikolai figured out who the owner and the residents of the town house were, faces and scents were the best the pack had to work with.
Zarja sighed, swallowing the last bits of the fruity bar.
Acquaintances certainly helped. Even if police presence had put her on edge, she valued Tomo’s work and determination to help. Gods, they sure needed it.
With the Upirs hiding in broad daylight, tracking was more of an investigation than a hunt. She growled. The werewolves weren’t used to relying on anything but their senses as they worked to bring down an enemy.
Although, by the way the supernatural gravitated towards the surface lately, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Compromise seemed to be the only solution left. She may have hated it, but she wasn’t about to fight it, either.
Once she was done with this gods-awful day, she intended to pass the details on to the pack to start organizing straight away. With her working on pinpointing new lairs, the six weres could split up and monitor the people the Upir had met with, determining whether or not they posed a threat. Hopefully even discovering that some of them were linked to the scents from the apartment.
She disliked playing detective—that much hadn’t changed in the past months—and taking this route would undoubtedly slow the pack down, but not so much as to put the mission at risk.
Besides, with no other leads, it wasn’t like they had much of a choice. Tomo could only provide them with the basics, in case any of those Upir-friendly individuals were in the system—but the rest was on the pack.
There was no handy supernatural database in existence, and the suspects were far from few. She wondered just how many she would put on her list by the end of the day.
She picked out a table on the patio of a cafe just a short distance down the street from the one the Upir had chosen for herself. Much to Zarja’s relief, the female had her back to her. Instantly, the tendons in Zarja’s shoulders lost some of their tension.
She ordered a much-needed coffee, deciding at the last minute that beer could wait. It was so much more rewarding to have a taste of the delicious brew after a hard day’s work had been done.
The Upir, however, had ordered a glass of wine for herself and nestled deeper in her seat to enjoy the orange-tainted sunlight of the early evening falling upon her face. The breeze that had been dancing around Ljubljana since morning blew in Zarja’s direction, intensifying the female’s scent.
Zarja’s back straightened, her lungs filling with the revealing air.
A trace of magic.
A single trace of magic that was gradually growing stronger.
Her eyes focused on the Upir, but from her point of view, Zarja failed to see any changes in the female’s physique. As far as she could tell, the woman was as seemingly human as she had been moments ago.
Yet that scent remained, prickling at Zarja’s senses until she wanted to snarl at the damned thing.
The Upir waved her hand, and every muscle in Zarja’s body tensed as she observed a man approach the sunlit table, a chilling smile set upon his lips. Regardless of the ample distance, Zarja tried to make herself as small as possible, immensely grateful for the coffee cup that had materialized in front of her while she had been transfixed by the scene. She wrapped her hands around it without averting her gaze.
The man’s pale blond, almost white hair gained an orange tint as he sat down opposite the Upir, giving the impression of having pure fire locked within the strands.
The thought sent shivers crawling down Zarja’s skin.
Because the scent of magic had originated from the stranger.
And it reminded her faintly of Rose.
Chapter 18
Tignes had been a foolish, rookie mistake. Fully devoted to tracking Rose, he had let the Koldunya slip from his sight. Serafina wasn’t his to protect, and he hadn’t even considered that the vampires might come after the redhead.
A foolish mistake. As if the twisted bastards knew honor.
The Koldunya was an innocent in all this, save for her friendship with Rose. But the vampires didn’t care if she was only guilty by association. The ones in Tignes hadn’t, and neither would all the others that were yet to come.
Casualties were a part of their game. Veles doubted the people around Rose could secure their safety even by putting distance between them and the werewolf. The desire to bring Rose down was running too high within them to be focused purely on the were. Knowing Rose’s temper, hurting those she kept close wasn’t the wisest tactic the vamps could employ, but it did mean eliminating their supposed enemy one body at a time.
The Koldunya hadn’t only been alone that day; she had never before exhibited the kind of strength the vamps had come to expect from the pack. Thankfully, the bastards had greatly misjudged their prey.
Veles sighed, the warm wind of late, natural spring that had just begun to tip into the early days of summer catching in his hair.
Not whisking in and retrieving the two women as they stood among those lifeless bodies in the alley was one of the hardest choices the god had to make—perhaps in his entire lifetime. But he didn’t dare reveal himself, didn’t dare reach for Rose, much less touc
h her. Not when her power had still reacted to his energy in Ljubljana mere days ago.
Besides, the werewolf was more than capable of protecting herself, as well as the Koldunya. He wouldn’t have insulted her by acting as her guardian, even if he had been working from the shadows for a while. The latter was, in his understanding, fundamentally different.
Dealing with shifts in the structure of society belonged to deities. He was well within his rights to interfere.
Offering his aid once Rose had already begun dealing with the situation at hand, however, would have felt like a betrayal. A lack of trust in Rose’s more than excellent capabilities.
A weak half smile tugged at his lips. The werewolf had most certainly delivered. She had been without her weapons, in broad daylight, with a wielder of magic trapped in a state of petrifying shock. Rose had not only succeeded in getting them to safety unnoticed but had managed to make the redhead visibly calmer by the time they tumbled into their apartment.
Seeing the kiss had stung. There was no denying the jealousy and regret that had raged within him. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been preparing himself to see Rose move on, either.
And even if she had chosen to find some happiness in these Chernobog-damned times with the woman so soon—barely months after that talk they shared in the dim light of her bedroom—he was, despite himself, glad for her.
But it had stung.
The kiss ripped into that last shred of light he still carried within him—an inexplicable hope that somehow, things would revert to the way they were.
He knew he had no right to even desire that from the werewolf. He had made his choice that night. Alone. But sometimes, rational thought was powerless over the untamed strength of emotion.
He missed those lips. The sound of her husky laughter, and that mischievous glimmer of gold in her eyes.
He missed her.
For centuries, he craved solitude, but now all he wanted to do was banish it from his life. Without Rose by his side, he was wading through darkness that had turned a familiar companion into a labyrinth of hurt.
