“Listen Petr,” Gil continued, sounding clear-headed and mature, “you look beleaguered, frankly.”
Petr’s stomach grumbled again, clamoring for the aroma coming from the brown bag.
Gil laughed. “And hungry.”
Petr gave a defeated sigh as the exhaustion he’d felt earlier began to return.
“And I’ve got a giant bag of sliders. Bertram’s Diner.”
“I don’t want to eat your dinner, Gil. You and Jana obviously had plans.” The smell of the grilled meat made Petr’s mouth burst with saliva.
“Dinner? It’s after midnight. And look at her. Does it look like she eats hamburgers?”
Jana smiled and rolled her eyes, clearly taking Gil’s words as a compliment.
“Besides, maybe she’ll call again. The woman. And if you’re out driving around aimlessly, you won’t be here to take the call.”
Petr accepted Gil’s logic as sound, and within ten minutes he’d already eaten three sliders, lying and telling Gil he was full when his roommate offered him a fourth.
Jana decided to stay and hang out with the boys, but within fifteen minutes she was asleep on the couch, curled up like a cat.
“I’m sorry,” Petr grinned. “I know this isn’t how you were hoping the night would go.”
Gil waved him off. “She’ll rally.”
Petr told Gil about the lakeside funeral and Gretel’s plans to leave for the Old Country, and Gil listened with the attentiveness of a real friend, which, to this point, Petr hadn’t really considered him. But it was nice to have someone to talk to that wasn’t Gretel. He needed more male companionship in his life.
Jana stirred and asked the time, and Petr took it as a cue. He got up from the couch and thanked Gil for the food, and then headed to his room. As he grabbed for the handle of the door to his bedroom, the phone rang.
Petr stopped in mid-stride and lowered his head as if he’d been expecting the call, and then he looked over at Gil, who was wide-eyed and smiling, nodding his head. “I told you,” he said.
Petr walked to the phone and paused for a beat, taking a deep breath before answering at the end of the third ring. “Hello?”
A voice on the other end answered immediately. “Hello, my name is Officer Zanger. I’m a System officer in the East Point District. Who am I speaking with?”
Petr instinctually stayed silent, taking his time before simply blurting out his name. It was his last name, in particular, that gave him pause. ‘Stenson’ was as infamous a name as any in the history of The System.
“Pete,” he answered.
There was a second or two pause, as if the man was writing the information down, and then: “What is your last name, Pete?”
“What is this about?”
It was the officer’s turn to remain silent now, and Petr could see him debating whether to press hard for an answer to his question, and risk being hung up on, or to come clean about his purpose for calling. Thankfully, he chose the latter.
“I’m calling you because this number was the last one dialed from a recent crime scene.”
Petr said nothing.
“Did you receive any phone calls recently, Pete?”
Petr calmed his nerves, but answered immediately. “No. Not recently. I just got home...a few minutes ago. I’ve been away for a few days and I just walked in the door.”
“I see. Well, perhaps someone else at the residence took a call. Do you live alone?”
“I have a roommate, but he’s been gone all weekend too. I haven’t seen him since the day I left.” Petr looked over at Gil and put the tip of his index finger to his mouth.
There was another stretch of silence on the other end of the line and Petr recognized the technique instantly. His dad had always told him the easiest way to get information from people was to shut up and let them talk. He had said that people were naturally uncomfortable with pregnant pauses and glaring lulls in conversation, and the easiest way for them to fill them was with the truth. But Petr didn’t bite.
“I see,” the officer finally added. “Would you be willing to answer a few questions for us, if necessary? That is, if we need to talk with you about the nature of these calls?”
This request by Officer Zanger was obviously rhetorical, but Petr had no intentions of simply bending to the wishes of The System. He had sworn never to enter a System station again, and he planned to stick to that oath. If they insisted he come in and talk, they would have to arrest him. And if they detained him, Petr would offer them about as much information as a dead clam would.
But Petr was intrigued by the call and wanted to know more about the crime? And, more importantly, the woman who had been calling him. She had said his name on the phone, had asked Gil for him by name. Perhaps the officer already knew exactly who Petr was and was trying to catch him in a lie, something damning and convictable.
“I would be happy to talk with you, Officer Zanger, but I won’t be available for a few days. I’m very busy with school.”
“You’re a student then?”
Dammit. Based on the location of the phone number, the officer probably knew that detail already, but Petr hadn’t intended to offer any more information than he had already. “Yes, that’s right, and I’ve an incredible workload this week. Perhaps next week would suffice?”
“We’ll have to see where the investigation takes us, Pete...” The officer drew out the ‘T’ in Petr’s name, waiting for Petr to fill the space with his surname. He had no choice now.
“Soren,” Petr lied. “Petr Soren.” He had now lied to a System officer, had given a false identity, which was, if prosecuted, a jailable offense.
“Thank you, Mr. Soren, we will be in touch. And please keep in mind, depending on where our investigation leads us, we may need to speak with you sooner. Possibly much sooner.”
“I understand.” Petr tried to sound casual, but he detected a crack in his voice. He was sure the officer noted it too. He hung up the phone.
“Goddamn, Petr. Who was that?” Gil asked immediately, the bell of the phone still ringing in the air.
“I’m gonna go.” Jana picked up her bag and walked to the door. “I need a ride.”
Gil didn’t look at Jana, but held a finger up, indicating he needed another second.
“It was The System,” Petr replied, and then added, as if to himself, “Who else?”
“Really? The System?”
Petr nodded.
“Why?”
“Something to do with the phone calls we’ve been getting. They said there’s been a crime at the place they were coming from.”
“Why did you lie? About us not answering them?”
“Gil, let’s go,” Jana called, standing at the threshold.
“Okay, go to my car. I’ll be right there.”
Jana threw the bag over her shoulder and stomped out, leaving the door open as she went.
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Gil,” Petr said. “And I don’t want to get you tangled up in my past. That’s why.”
Gil smiled. “Don’t know? About Gretel? And Anika and Marlene? Are you kidding? Who the hell doesn’t know about that?”
Petr was fairly certain Gil didn’t know who he was until Gretel joined him at the university, but his roommate had a point: it was silly to have thought he didn’t know the story by now. Everybody seemed to know now. Everywhere.
“Does that officer’s call have something to do with all of that?”
Petr didn’t really know and said as much, which caused Gil to shudder with fear at the possibility that the ordeal of the Witch of the North wasn’t over.
As if reading Gil’s mind, Petr said, “Marlene is dead. That much I do know.”
“Then why do you think these phone calls have something to do with your...story.”
“I don’t think they do, I just said I don’t know.”
Gil rose and walked slowly to the door, grabbing his keys from the table as he went. He stopped at the open front
door and looked at Petr. “That story used to scare the crap out of me,” he said. “Still does.”
Petr grinned. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”
Chapter 9
THE ANCIENT BEAST BRUSHED her crooked index finger along the side of the sleeping girl’s face, sliding it down and around the curve of her jaw, dropping it along her chin and throat until stopping just above her cleavage. The old woman groaned at the suppleness of the girl’s skin, and then smiled when the source opened her eyes.
She always loved that split second of confusion, that fleeting moment when her source awoke and began to blink desperately, struggling to find her way back to the moment. It was as if they were trying to transform the memory of their imprisonment into a dream simply through the will of their facial expression.
And how she adored the look that followed that one, that flash of terror that erupted in their eyes.
The source for this current batch was slightly older than those the woman typically strove for—this girl had perhaps even reached the age of thirty. But she had the characteristics of a younger female, her olive skin unblemished, her eyes fresh and alive, and the shape of her body suggested that no children had yet to pass through her. This last trait, the woman concluded, certainly meant the girl was barren, though she had denied that directly. But the woman knew better. In this land, a girl as shapely and beautiful as the one lying before her was often a mother before her eighteenth birthday, and always after twenty-one.
And this barrenness was a potential problem. If her source was, indeed, infertile, it could affect the effectiveness of the batch. The hormone balance needed to be proper, ovulation normal. She chased a recollection of a time when one of her sources had this same lacking quality, but the memory was fleeting, beyond her ability to find it within her dark mind. If she had experienced such a source, however, it had been long ago, perhaps before Marlene and Gromus had ever been born.
In any case, she couldn’t take chances, and needed to offset the imbalance with something strong enough to recreate the quality in the potion. The bungaru venom was perhaps overkill, but it had been effective once before, in another blend, and she could always cut it with something inactive if it was too much.
The source lifted her head and swallowed. “Hello,” she said, the remembrance of her current situation now forming across her face. She attempted a smile, but the dread in her eyes emitted the opposite expression. “How are you today?”
This girl was following the pattern perfectly. At this stage of captivity—almost a month in—the source typically became desperate, often resorting to attempts at convincing her captor that they had become friends, that she, the source, was understanding of the woman’s needs. Perhaps even a willing participant in the whole sordid ordeal, if a proper deal could be reached, of course.
It was a ruse, obviously, a fraught play by the source to establish some type of bond with her captor. The hope, of course, was that once the connection was made, the jailer would release her prisoner back to the world, the underlying goodness of mankind claiming another victory just before that final, fatal, extraction.
These sources, the woman thought. They didn’t know her at all.
“I’m just fine,” the woman said, playing along, “though I must confess, I’m a bit piqued by one of my vendors today. Not your issue to deal with though, dear.”
The prisoner gave a sympathetic frown, and the old woman placed the tips of her fingers to her mouth to stifle a giggle.
“I am sorry for your displeasure. Perhaps there is something I can do to help. My father is a vendor in the marketplace. The Central Markets. He is quite respected. I am certain he would be willing to speak with this man, to help broker a solution to your troubles. He is very persuasive in that way.”
The old woman scoffed now, both amused and slightly offended that this girl thought her that gullible. She appreciated grace and creativity in the attempts for freedom, and this girl had shown neither.
“Have I insulted you? I’m sorry, that was not my intention. I just thought—”
“My dear,” the woman replied, the playfulness in her voice now a memory. “I am quite sure your father is not familiar with this particular vendor. He is, shall we say, somewhat of an outcast.”
The prisoner lowered her head back to the gurney and closed her eyes, squeezing back what few tears must have remained. Her arms and legs were tied with leather straps to a stiff, metal gurney—her arms just above the wrists, her legs at the shins—but she managed to lift her right shoulder six inches or so, an obvious attempt to alleviate the pain of a sore that had opened recently just below her clavicle.
For the first three weeks, the time during which the woman had performed the majority of the extractions, she had kept the girl on a standard sleeping mattress in the spare bedroom, a place that was relatively comfortable and warm given the circumstances. But at twenty days, the woman had transferred her to the gurney, a relic from an old hospital that had been bought at the market and placed in the middle of the home’s small laboratory.
The lab was impressive, the woman thought (if she did say so herself), as it was originally built as a den, and then later converted, by her, to its current specifications.
And this conversion was crucial. The woman had made several tweaks to the potion over the centuries, and for some reason she hadn’t ever quite figured, this tweak—the abrupt change from coziness to discomfort in the last half of the process—seemed to enhance the overall effectiveness of the product. The shock to the systems within the body—most notably to the endocrine system, she guessed—left the final liquid broth more palatable. The batches went down smoother, without the usual stagnation or sting of rancidity, and even the effects of the potion seemed more significant, often occurring immediately upon ingestion.
And most importantly, it took less than half the time to prepare.
She had tested this new method on the last dozen or so sources, and was certain she had the timing just right now. But the open sores wouldn’t do. That type of rebellion from the body had the potential to affect the batch, and she needed to tend to the wound immediately.
The woman turned on her heels so that her face was now only inches from a solid white wall that formed one of the long sides of the undersized room. She raised her hands to shoulder height, and then, with palms flat, pressed them against the wall and shifted them left, easily sliding the wall open to a width of about two and a half feet. She glanced back at her prisoner, who was now crying softly on the table, and then scanned the rest of the small room that had served as her prison for the last two years.
She exited the room and slid the wall shut, and was now in the front part of her home. It was a one-room apartment really, consisting of a kitchen, dining room, and tiny living area—rooms that were far more traditional than the hidden prison hiding beyond the back wall.
Private latrines were a luxury in the Eastern Lands, and for the two or three times a year when it became necessary for her to eliminate waste from her system, she used a floor toilet that had been built in the back room by the previous tenants.
The exterior of the house displayed a thin, squatty structure that sat wedged between a second-hand jewelry store to the left, and, to her right, a combination butcher shop and delicatessen, which also operated as a slaughterhouse in the rear of the building.
Her home was technically a two-level structure, but only the first floor was habitable, since the top floor was full of junk and debris left by the former occupants.
The living arrangement wasn’t her perfect scenario, and the city in which the house sat was a mass of wasted souls and depression. It was nothing compared to the Old World. Nothing compared to the cool air and open space of the Koudeheuvals, the place of her birth and her home of a thousand years.
But she had learned to adjust to her environment. For example, she had long ago learned the schedule of the lamb slaughters, and now knew them like she knew the tenets of Orphism. Whenever she had a sourc
e processing, she adjusted her extraction schedules accordingly, coinciding them with the preparation of the young sheep. Her privacy was her most important possession, and though this section of the city went largely ignored by the authorities, the constant refrain of screaming women would bring attention eventually. That was where the lambs came in, their braying cries of death helping to mask those of the young sources.
The woman walked to a small refrigerator that sat beneath the front window and fished the ring of keys from her pocket, finding the correct one before stooping and opening the door to the cooler. She took out the plastic case of medicine and then stood tall, holding it in front of her like a warm cup of tea while she stared out at the city below her.
It was a filthy place.
She watched with disgust as the pedestrians and bicyclists flowed past her home, their desultory lives as meaningless as the girl she held in the holding room only a few feet away. But the meaninglessness of these people was even more absolute; the girl, at least, through the fluids of her blood and bile and lymph, would help to extend the life of another. Someone significant. Legendary.
The woman had once loved it here, those first few years after her arrival, when the source material seemed as endless as the sands of the great deserts. That part, of course, hadn’t changed at all. The fact was, there were far more to choose from today than at any time in history. So many more.
But the woman had grown tired of her existence here. The Eastern Lands were as different from her home in the Old World as fire was from ice, and lately, the differences had begun to weigh on her. The crowds and bustle and heat and filth; they never slowed, never subsided. Most of her life had been spent in places where she could go days—even weeks—without ever seeing another person. Now she couldn’t look out her window without seeing two dozen, at least. These multitudes made the acquisitions easier, but once taken, the effort to keep them hidden was far more difficult.
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