by Gaja J. Kos
The thought, the name, hit her like a blow to the gut, but Liesl didn’t allow her mind to wander to the twins and Greta, standing their ground right in the very eye of the storm. Instead, she breathed in the scent of early morning, of humans and a few werewolves commuting to work, cradling their steaming cups of coffee or dragging on their cigarettes to savor those few moments of privacy before the winding hours at the office began.
While she knew it might not last long, the sense of normalcy still filled her with an almost overpowering warmth.
Munich had taken the reveal of the supernatural well. No excessive outbursts, no mindless cowering from the streets out of fear that the monsters might snatch them. The surprise was there, of course, but it was fueled predominantly by intrigue, not dread of the unknown.
Then again, Liesl figured that when someone spent their entire life drinking beer with a person, it made little difference whether said person turned furry, sprouted fangs, or wore only human skin over a human interior. A friend was a friend, and DNA couldn’t change that.
She sighed.
Humans deserved so much more than becoming cattle for the rogue vamps. It was a fate she would not have wished on them even if they hadn’t been as accepting of interspecies differences. So there truly was no question, no doubt left in her mind.
Whether she liked it or not, she would do everything within her power to keep that from happening.
And so would her sons.
Hans cast her a sideways glance, the shadows in his striking blue eyes telling her the spell of normalcy had broken at last.
“Where?” she asked.
“Moosach.”
Liesl frowned. “I thought the Grünwalds were focusing on the south side.”
“They were, but one of the Moosach weres reached out to his brother in the pack.” His lips flattened into a thin line. “He smelled a larger group of vampires lurking around the Borstei and wanted to know if it was, by any chance, related to the Grünwald pack’s mission.”
As she processed the information, Liesl scanned the Marienplatz U-bahn station. She filtered through the scents weaving from underground and coiling through the early-morning air, twisting and breaking as they brushed against the ornate buildings.
“Did they attack?” she inquired when her gaze skimmed the looming city hall before coming to rest on Hans once more.
“Two pedestrians were injured. The Moosach pack took the rest of the vamps down before—” He went perfectly still. “Scheiß.”
Hans pressed his hand to his ear, his eyes turning cold and a growl spilling from his lips into the morning air. Every fiber in Liesl’s body seemed to burn with the dread of Ludvig’s message, and she silently cursed herself for refusing to carry one of the comm units herself.
Having someone rattle in her ears while she fought suddenly seemed like a far lesser evil than waiting.
But before her agitation climbed to a new level, Hans let his hand fall to his side, fingers clenched into a tight fist. Liesl sucked in a breath.
“Borstei was a decoy,” he seethed. “The vampires just hit the southern perimeter of Moosach and are moving on Neuhausen. En masse.”
3
New York
Claws clicked against the pavement in a sharp, precise rhythm as Ileana ran down the illuminated streets, grateful she didn’t have to compromise her speed by keeping to her human form—and, consequently, endanger the lives of others.
Even seconds could mean the difference between walking away unscathed and picking up bodies drained of their blood. The reveal of the supernatural had been, after all, the deciding factor in making her comply with Rose’s request to keep the New York chapter of the higher-ups in the dark.
While Ileana didn’t question Cornelius’s integrity or his dedication to maintaining peace among the species, there had been enough discord within the group to take the risk of letting them know of the Black pack’s plans. However, not rallying the troops in advance upped the number of possible victims falling in the streets before she managed to raise the alarm.
In wolf form, it was at least only a matter of minutes.
Still, the shadow of doubt loomed over Ileana, slicing at her with talons of guilt for playing with the wider population’s lives. It had been a gamble to presume the vampires wouldn’t start an all-out war, but rather keep the beginning stages of their attack as discreet as possible. A gamble, but one that had paid off.
If word of Rose’s plan slipped out, the streets would have been drenched in blood by now, she thought, pushing herself harder.
The buildings whizzed by in a blur, the few lone pedestrians she passed jerking as they noticed a large black shadow, but not anything more than a faint shape. She was reaching her limits, surpassing them, her muscles burning painfully as she faced the harsh truth.
Death was inevitable.
The only thing she had done was decide which was the lesser of two evils. To go in unprepared, risking the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of New Yorkers, should her calculation be wrong—or to risk losing the battle before it even began.
Not excellent choices by any standards. And yet, there had always been only one answer, even if she’d tried convincing herself otherwise.
The cold, terrifying reality was that no matter how many casualties the night brought, it was still a far better outcome than falling under the vampires’ and Upirs’ reign.
Sometimes, sacrifices were inevitable.
A few homeless people scurried out of her way as she snarled in warning and dashed down one alley, then the next, leaping over dumpsters and chain-link fences without a second’s worth of hesitation. The path turned from one she had previously mapped out to a route she knew by heart, and in less than a minute, she all but exploded through the back door of the restaurant. The only thing that kept the damned thing from falling off the hinges was Garrison’s compliance to leave it open despite her extreme lack of explanation.
As Ileana crossed the antechamber and leaped into the next room, she promised herself that the date the two of them had been dancing around for a year now would happen as soon as the rogue vamps were lying dead before her feet. Garrison deserved as much. And, gods, she wanted it, too.
She shifted shape in the dimmed light of the office, the were in question already halfway across the space. He smelled like coffee and musk, and carried an air of a man forcefully keeping himself from sleep. But the impression was quickly replaced by a display of utter attention.
Garrison’s gaze briefly dropped down to her nude form, a spontaneous reaction Ileana couldn’t blame him for, yet there was nothing but iron focus in his lovely brown eyes as he looked up and asked, “What happened?”
“Gather the pack,” she ordered, her words clipped and saturated with urgency. “Get them to call in everyone they can trust to be on our side of the fight.”
Garrison didn’t hesitate. He didn’t ask her to elaborate, just as he didn’t protest her ordering him around. Instead, he howled—a loud, piercing signal to those of his pack residing in the levels above—then reached for his phone. Despite the tension riding Ileana’s limbs, warmth uncurled in the confines of her chest. It spread through her body in a smooth, overpowering wave she knew she couldn’t stop. So she accepted it.
This.
This was why she loved him.
Why she respected him so much.
Garrison would never get into a pissing contest when lives were at stake. And he trusted the word of those who had proven themselves worthy almost unequivocally.
Cradling the sensation and letting it hone her mind into the familiar, much needed sharpness, Ileana walked over to the phone resting on Garrison’s desk, half buried under various ledgers and stacks of paper. She loosened a breath and dialed the number one of her contacts had thankfully managed to dig up.
How, she had no idea. But the Blud more than earned every fat dollar she’d paid him.
“Yes?” A cool, silken voice answered on the second ring, the tone g
uarded with just a hint of a threat seeping through.
Not surprising, since this line was reserved only for a select few.
“Cornelius, it’s Ileana.”
“How did you find—”
“We don’t have time,” she pressed. “War has broken out in Ljubljana, and the world is starting to feel its ripples.”
The vampire swore, somehow making the words sound vicious and elegant all at once. “I’ll alert the other chapters immediately. Where are you?”
“At Garrison’s. He’s mobilizing the weres.”
“Good. Can you—” A brief hesitation pulsed through the receiver. “Can you reach out to the members not opposed to The Dark Ones? I’ll contact the rest myself.”
“I will. I hope I’m wrong about this, Cornelius, but if we have a full-blown outbreak…”
“We take no risks. I will see you in twenty.”
They hung up simultaneously. Cornelius didn’t have to specify where. The chapter had a crisis meeting point set up for precisely these kinds of hackle-rising reasons.
Ileana rubbed her hands against her face, dispelling the agitation that had started to grow anew, then walked over to the small, narrow locker Garrison had stacked against the corner of his office. She turned the dial, the metal door opening with a click, and pulled out the spare clothes she’d stashed with the werewolf the previous day. While she enjoyed fighting in wolf form—enjoyed the higher efficiency with which her body moved—it made communicating infinitely harder. She didn’t share an ethereal link with other werewolves, not even the members of the chapter, who were, in a way, bound by the almost sacred knowledge. So until the fight started and they all had their tasks laid out, sticking to human shape was her only option.
She unfolded the clothes. Nudity, like with most weres, wasn’t something that bothered her, but walking around New York in nothing but her skin was still something she would rather avoid. The people had already been forced to face the existence of the supernatural. There was no need for them to see the full extent of it just yet.
Besides, the fabric would serve as a mild buffer in case things got out of hand and the vampires turned too fangy before she got the chance to shift.
Hoping her precautions weren’t in fact some eerie premonition, Ileana pulled on the form-fitting black pants and matching tank top, then strapped two knife sheaths on her thighs, and another on her forearm. Just as she finished, Garrison walked back into the room, five muscular weres at his back.
His handsome face was nothing but hard planes and sharp edges as he met her gaze and growled, “Let’s get those fuckers.”
4
Munich
Liesl knew what the vampires were up to long before the other packs who’d joined the fight after the alarm in Neuhausen had drawn them out had conveyed the bastards’ movements. While Slovenia’s capital had always been the intended eye of the storm, it didn’t mean the bloodsucking supremacists, tainting the air with their existence in Liesl’s town, hadn’t done their fair share of preparations.
A growl trickled from her lips. She should have known the relative quiet meant something was up.
Luckily, her forte had always been improvisation, even if—at times like this—she would have very much preferred to have the comfort of a solid course of action to fall back on. The single consolation was that the last minute arrangements brought with them a decent chance of surprising the vamps and souring their plans.
In the beginning, the human policemen had taken some convincing, but when she had laid out the deeper meaning behind the Moosach and Neuhausen attacks, as well as an explanation for the series of vampire violence spurting up all over the city that followed, it was enough. Enough to convince them she wasn’t just some crazy old were blabbing about horror stories, concocted in the depths of her mind. Word had then spread through the force like a silent, electric storm, leaping from human to human until she had the entirety of the Münich Polizei at her beck and call.
It didn’t ease her worry or lessen the burden of knowing what the suck-supremacist assholes had in store. But watching the police direct the pedestrians towards the U-bahn station with exceptional efficiency… Some of the tension in her shoulders subsided.
It was imperative to get as many people out of the city center as they could before the groups of rogue vamps successfully herded the masses into their ring of death.
The bastards were pushing in from every side, creating a perimeter around Münich and tightening the noose until the majority of the population currently in the districts bunched around Maxvorstadt and Altstadt would be reduced to nothing but sitting ducks. Reduced to nothing but a bloody buffet for the vampires to plow through with fangs extended and a craving for death opening their ugly mouths.
It was almost ironic. Munich seemed to have escaped the threat of the Upirs. And yet, without the two-souled ancients here, the rogues had nothing but their own agenda to further.
There was no greater cause, keeping them in line. No archenemy they wanted to defeat that would steal their focus from the civilians.
Their own aspirations were their only fuel, and, by the looks of it, that entitled entrapping a terrifying mass of people and packing them so closely together until they could feast on their blood whichever way they turned.
This wasn’t hunger. It was wantonness.
Such a blatant, nauseating disregard for life, that it almost made Liesl want to abandon her post and roam the streets with the other packs, sinking her claws in as many necks and hearts as she could muster. But while her red haze of fury could put a dent in the vampires’ numbers, it wouldn’t save those trapped within the deathly ring. Unacceptable.
So Liesl remained in the center of the city, working with every breath to put her hastily drawn plan into action. She had contacted her husband even before sniffing out the police and asked him to reach out to his contacts at the MVV. Granted, it had taken Paul the better part of an hour to break through the wall of disbelief he had encountered on the other side—which would have eroded Liesl’s nerves if she hadn’t been busy coordinating with the force.
But eventually, Paul’s old coworkers, aided by the quickly amassing reports of vamp attacks that were blasted all over the news, saw reason, and they didn’t hesitate to put words into action. Their response almost made up for the initial hold-up. Almost.
“The station is clear,” Hans said as he ran up to her, the two of them now headed in the opposite direction from the police-guided stream of people. “I also sent word to Karlsplatz and Hauptbanhof. The officers there neutralized the threats.”
Liesl didn’t ask how many vampires had been at the stations, waiting to take control of the trains once the march of death rolled this way. She didn’t care if the bastards had counted on entrapping the humans in the wagons, or simply planned to keep them from fleeing the buffet. As long as the rails were cleared, that was all that mattered.
“Your father confirmed the trains won’t stop until they reach their respective end of the line,” she said, already walking over to where a group of people spoke in panicked voices, a few of them even arguing with the amassing members of the police. “And the rest have been rerouted to go through the central stations and pick up the next wave.”
Hans stopped when she did, his gaze hard, crackling with the readiness to fight. “What do you need me to do?”
Liesl looked at her son’s handsome features, pride swelling in her chest at the man he had become. She placed a hand on his cheek and cupped it lightly. “Survive.”
5
New York
Probably for the first time in her life, Ileana was grateful for the time difference lying between her and her homeland. The six hours which had once been a nuisance, interfering with her ability to chat with Rose at will, had turned into a blessing that pierced through the dire circumstances and made them manageable. The cover of night weeded out the sheer number of people usually out and about, giving the vampires far less targets to sink their rotten fang
s into.
But even with the lull of darkness in play, there was far more blood flowing down the streets than Ileana would have liked. If there was even such a thing as an appropriate amount of carnage.
Perhaps there was—when the victims were the right, very much-deserving individuals. As were the three vamps she leaped over, their blood slowly crawling towards the drain.
But the others…
Unfortunately, even with the people Cornelius had managed to rally with impressive speed, Manhattan was still a territory far too large to cover in detail. The only plan the allies had in play was the most basic one there could be—kill every rogue in sight.
And that was precisely what Ileana was doing.
She crossed an intersection in a blur, tracing the pulsing scent of excited vampires. With no other living beings nearby to cast ripples of their presence through the air, it curled around her like a shawl, and she pushed on, blending into the shadows that pooled close to the darkened fronts of the tightly-pressed buildings.
While she had never been particularly averse to hunting alone, leaving Garrison’s side to hold her own quadrant still prickled at her subconscious like a nest of thorns.
It wasn’t concern, exactly. As a member of Svantovid’s line, Garrison could hold his own exceptionally well and certainly didn’t need anyone to look out for him. And yet her thoughts kept slipping to the brown were. Wondering how he was doing and wishing it were the steady beat of his heart accompanying her down the streets, instead of the solitary, almost inaudible thud of her own footsteps.
With a silent growl, she pushed the unexpected yearning aside.
Not only was it silly to crave Garrison’s company at a time like this, but his absence was the most logical move. He was a pack leader, after all, with men and women who counted on his words and orders as they rushed through the urban fields of death. She, on the other hand, was a lone agent with no one to oversee.
