In shaking hands, she unfurled the card. Horrible black smoke swirled up over her head, filling the room in inky clouds shuddering with light every few seconds, electric with enchanted lightening. Thunder even rolled through the house. Everyone else in the room froze. Even Valek.
The writing on the parchment wasn’t writing—not with ink—but rather branded into the paper. It smelled like a campfire. The embers smoldered, still alight and even a little hot.
It was a new note and addressed to her. As the stormy smoke dissipated, the letters seemed to cool, turning a shiny metallic—the same deep-red color as the envelope.
* * *
Dear Miss Charlotte,
You’ve been cordially…
* * *
But as she tried to read on, her vision blurred.
She blinked hard a few times, trying to focus. Maybe she’d had too much wine.
The script grew hazier and harder to decipher. In fact, nothing in the room was sharp. Her hands trembled more violently and next second, she thought she might be sick.
“Charlotte,” Sarah called to her, though her voice came distant and hollow. Its sound bounced around the edges of Charlotte’s consciousness as she grew woozier.
And then it came—just like it did the first time in Francis’s basement…
Fierce burning flared at the side of Charlotte’s throat, the place of Valek’s initial bite. Sirens—an unnatural sound—flooded her ears. She collapsed to her knees as the incinerating tore through her, down her spine, striking her core. Her hands shook—empty. Where was the note? Imaginary flames ate her flesh away from her bones. She wanted to die. Pain exploded, like a brushfire, up the side of her cheek, rolling down over her shoulder and the top of her arm. It tore her body in half.
It was the same thing she’d felt in Francis’ house, but so much worse now. Months passed. It hadn’t happened again…until now. Charlotte had nearly forgotten about the weird ailment. During the past weeks, there had been dizzy-spells. There had been random aches. Valek’s persistent questioning day in and day out. But nothing was like this terror—this agony.
Valek nor any of the others dared to feed from her since, relying on woodland animals and the occasional, unlucky village person.
“Charlotte?”
Valek’s voice filled with horror as she curled into a ball on the floor, mouth gaping, body overcome. The edges of her version started to go black. She searched for him in the tilting room, but he only appeared a blur against the firelight. She reached for him, gasping, unable to speak. Her fingers were sprawled. Sweat collected at the base of her neck and along her forehead. Everything was numb except the blistering scar.
And then it all went black. The last thing she heard was his voice, echoing, calling to her from down a long, dark tunnel. In moments, it was joined by a different voice, this one much clearer.
Charlotte Ruzikova…Child of Light…you will come to the dark city. You will give us your life. You will spill your blood….
New Blood
Racing the second hand of the wall clock, a gangly boy with choppy brown hair, deep-set eyes, and gaunt cheeks rapped violently at his laptop keyboard.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
If Nikolai didn’t finish his Norse Mythology paper by the end of class, Professor Sedlak would fail him for sure—seemed he’d had it out for him since the first day of term.
Another failing grade and Nikolai’s father wouldn’t hesitate to dismantle his limbs and mount them like hunting trophies. The pressure was enough to make his eyeballs burst.
With his pulse in his throat, he glanced up over the top of his computer screen.
As if he could smell the sheer misery from the other end of the musty classroom, Professor Sedlak’s beady eyes glinted maliciously from behind his spectacles reflective in the fluorescent light. His face held a grin that said I’ve got you right where I want you.
But today was the day. Nikolai worked hard all term. All he did was study. He would rise to this challenge at last. Today was the day to succeed! To conquer! This was it. A passing mark. Not just a passing mark—TOP marks! The Dean’s List! Honors! He could see it now.
Perspiration dotted over Nikolai’s forehead. He dabbed at it with the back of his sleeve. The clock ticked louder, the sound of the second-hand rattling between his temples—three minutes remaining and not a moment to spare.
His fingers darted faster than ever across the keys, refraining from even satisfying the nagging itch at his brow. No time. Two minutes left.
He struggled to tie up his final thought at the end of the last paragraph. The curser on the screen taunted him. Wretched paper. Horrid class. Last line—he had this—he was going to make it—
Three…two…
“Whatchya workin’ on, dick-weed?”
The sickening sound of Peter Huba’s voice, a boy as swollen as an agitated rhinoceros, jolted Nikolai from his focus on his screen. But he didn’t dare look up. Not when he was so close to completing the final paper. He’d deal with Peter after studies were over.
In the very next second, Peter slammed the laptop hard over Nikolai’s fingers, zapping a nasty pain up to Nikolai’s elbows. He cried out and peeled back his hands, curling his fingers under his chin and hissed through clenched teeth as they throbbed.
This isn’t happening. Not now.
Nikolai mustered up whatever courage he had coming to a boil at the bottom of his gut and glared at his tormenter square in the eye.
“What the hell are you doing you bloated….” The pain was intense enough to silence him, curling and uncurling his fingers again to ensure nothing was broken.
Peter flew at him over the front of his desk, grabbing Nikolai up by his collar. “Who do you think you’re talking to that way?”
Nikolai winced, releasing small frustrated gurgles as he grappled with the two-meter-high goliath, kicking, wheezing, and willing Peter to release him. Blood filled his flattened knuckles, now pounding to the same rhythm of his fevered pulse.
Nikolai had no friends to come save him. For his whole life, the rest of the world teemed by without ever a mere glance in his direction. Peering down for a second at his trashed computer, he knew his dreams of top marks were done for. Dead and buried. He didn’t dare peek at the clock. This term was as good as trash now. Eighty percent of the final grade. Fuck.
Peter gave him a violent shake. “Answer me when I ask you something, Marek!”
This close, Nikolai could see oily beads of sweat forming along the bully’s upper lip. His breath smelled like week-old cabbage and mustard that had been in the sun too long.
Nikolai gulped thickly, his knuckles aching. He could only imagine how his father, an alumnus from the same Charles University Creative Literature Programme, would react when he got wind of this:
Another failure. More embarrassment.
Nikolai’s cheeks sweltered. Fury coursed under his skin. A plot swirled like a furious storm forming at the front of his mind. There’d never been a time when he’d been this fed up—at the end of his tether—
Rage blossomed. This was it. He’d taken shit his whole life. Enough was enough.
“Put. Me. Down.”
Nikolai’s glare locked with the greasy colossus, but in his periphery, he caught sight of Sedlak, all the sudden too immersed in the latest edition of the Prague Monitor to care about the misconduct happening on the other side of the lecture hall.
Professor Sedlak wanted to see him get pummeled, Nikolai realized. He would have bet a thousand crowns the snively, little man was wearing a big smile behind the lip of that newsprint. Nikolai couldn’t understand this hatred the professor had for him. But nevertheless, he did hate him.
A mossy yellow grin spread across Peter’s face, which now turned an even deeper shade of purple, his fists winding tighter in the plaid material of Nikolai’s shirt.
“I’ll be happy to put ya down, Nikki.”
To his surprise, Peter did as he said and Nikolai’s feet found soli
d floorboards again.
“How’s that?” He brushed off his shoulders. “Now…you can repay me by handing over your paper. You see, the professor has kindly allowed me a late deadline, seeing how I’ve been so tied up with hockey practice.”
Best on the team, Nikolai repeated Professor Sedlak’s praise for famed Peter Huba in his head. Famous goal-keep…nation-wide. It had been the same since they were in junior school—since Nikolai and his family first moved to Prague from Brno—since he’d been the scrawny new kid who, at the seasoned age of ten, had already been dealt a crappy hand of cards in life.
Nikolai suppressed the desire to roar like a lion in the oaf’s face. Instead, he smiled and shrugged.
“Sure,” he said casually. “I’ll do that. RIGHT AFTER YOU SWALLOW SLUGS YOU FREE-LOADING, HAIRY—”
Wham! Peter’s meaty fist collided with Nikolai’s jaw.
Through the ringing in his ears, he swore he heard a chuckle from the far end of the room, the newspaper shuddering slightly. He wiped at his lip, smearing blood across the back of his hand.
A typhoon of rage gathered at his center. He saw red, then. Nikolai refused to be that same, scrawny kid from his past. He angled his face down, though kept his narrowed scowl pointed up at Peter.
“I warned you,” he whispered when he was sure Professor Sedlak was looking. He wanted him to see this too.
Nikolai waved his arm broadly toward the professor’s desk at the far end of the room. Energy coursed from the center of his chest, down his arm, buzzing electric. Blood beat in his face as he pushed the invisible force with all his might. Levitating off the ground, the massive, wooden desk hovered a moment before hurtling through the air. Pencils flew. Papers spilled from the drawers. The computer hit the floor with a loud crash.
At the sound of the professor’s gasp, Peter turned in time to see the great hunk of wood whiz straight for him. Nikolai rolled clear as the desk slammed straight into Peter’s chest, throwing him backwards, pinning him to the far wall.
Dust from the rusty lights overhead rained down and the flimsy plaster cracked halfway up to the ceiling.
The impact wasn’t enough to kill him, but Nikolai was sure it did crush a few of his ribs. His chest tightened with a sudden swell of guilt.
What have I done?
He gaped again at Professor Sedlak, who was now standing from his chair, the newspaper on the floor between his feet a wide length apart, like he wanted to run but couldn’t remember how. His mouth hung open. His fingers were gnarled like he meant to do something, but his face was ghost-white. He looked at Nikolai like he was looking at the devil himself.
Nikolai fantasized many times about this very event—the day he’d snap—the day he’d lose it enough to expose his incredible powers to those around him for the first time in his life. Finally, he’d stood up for himself, though the consequences would surely be dire.
His tongue swelled in his mouth. He glanced back down at Peter who still reeled, grimacing in pain. At least he wasn’t dead.
Flaring his nostrils, Nikolai muttered, “If you tell anyone what happened here today, I will hunt you down.” He punctuated the last word with the jab of his finger, turning again to the still-petrified professor. “I’m out of here. Take your marks and shove them up your ass.”
Hocking a wad of spit at the broken bully, he slung his rucksack over his shoulder and quickly swept from the room without a backwards look.
It was a good front—threatening—a bad ass, but it was all a rouse. Inside, his bowels couldn’t be more tangled. He was terrified and felt he might get sick in the bushes outside.
The doors slamming closed behind him resulted in an echoing boom throughout the corridor while a sickly veil of sweat coated the back of his neck. He swallowed the urge to vomit right there in the hall.
Several students he didn’t know watched him curiously as he stormed for the front entrance, fuming, tears streaming, bursting out onto the quad and the bright afternoon.
Hurting Peter wasn’t the right thing to do—of course he knew it, but that was what happened when a person’s been pushed too far.
Morons. Apes. They had it coming. Nikolai grinded his teeth—the punishment should have been worse.
Sucking in a deep breath, realization set in even more. His lifelong secret was a secret no more.
“Holy shit,” he whimpered.
With his hands squeezed tightly around the straps of his bag, he rushed from university grounds onto a busy street in Prague One, his heart pounding in his ears.
A garbled announcement from the school’s hallways was muddied and echoed as it reached him all the way to the adjacent block. Though he couldn’t quite make out what the person was saying, it was undoubtedly a response to what just occurred in the Literature Wing.
Glancing over his shoulder, he found a few students stopping cold to gape at him suspiciously. They started whispering things to each other.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
He was sure the police would be called any moment.
Stupid move, he scolded himself. Stupid freaking move.
He sped up, his entire life flashing before his eyes in between the mid-day bustle of the city. Cars rushed past, people swerved out of his way—but he barely noticed anything. He began to hyperventilate.
His own parents didn’t even know he possessed such abilities—such strangeness. He’d never uttered a word about it to a single soul, suppressing them all his life. His pulse almost suffocated him now as he replayed the scene over and over in his mind, the wildly frightened look on Peter’s face.
Nikolai wondered if he’d be captured and studied by the government? Killed even?
—His powers were the real reason he’d never fit in anywhere—the real reason he would always be outcast and alone—
The city streets of New Town were chaotic and crammed shoulder to shoulder with tourists celebrating their winter holidays. Shop windows had been done up for Christmas and Old Town as well as Wenceslas Square were both dressed by bejeweled trees and twinkling lights. And though the pavement glittered with frost, Nikolai still felt sweaty with body heat and his own panic.
“Money, money, money!”
He gasped and fell back a step when a homeless Romany, high as a kite, yammered in his ear, his eyes bloodshot and crazed, his skin smeared with poverty.
Nikolai clutched his chest. “S-sorry. I’ve got none.” It was the truth.
When police sirens blared off gothic building facades, the rover made haste to retreat back into the crowd, his dumpster-stench following him.
Nikolai ducked into the shadows of an alley between a boutique and a Polish bakery. Throwing his bag onto the asphalt, he worked to yank from it his tattered North Face sweatshirt he’d stolen from a second-hand store. He pulled it over his head, his arms, and straightened it at over his narrow hips. Slinging the bag over his shoulder again, he pulled the hood up over his damaged face and pressed onward toward his apartment on the other side of town, trying his best to remain unnoticed by anyone.
“Excuse me.” A policeman stopped a plump mother of three on the sidewalk, holding up Nikolai’s picture on his cellphone to her. “We are looking for this boy. A student of Charles University. Have you seen him?”
Nikolai’s throat went dry and he picked up the pace at once, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt over his face a little more. Tears stung the corners of his eyes and he wished the day would just be over. So tired of hiding. So tired of pretending to be someone he wasn’t. So tired of having nothing and no one. He was truly the loneliest person he knew—and it was true—because he didn’t know anybody else at all. Not really. Not in the way one person ought to know another.
He didn’t want to run. That would seem suspicious. But as he walked a little faster, he looked down at his fingertips, imagining he could actually see the impossible energy buzzing under his skin. He scoffed and wondered what made him so lucky.
“Don’t you have any friends, Nikolai?” His f
ather used to ask over his morning cup of black coffee and a cigarette. He’d always be working on his next article, a sports columnist, when he’d mutter offhandedly, “What about joining the football team, eh? Or hockey?”
But Nikolai could never explain to his father why the other kids ignored him—why none of his classmates ever wanted to talk to him. He didn’t even understand it himself. Maybe his strange powers gave off a sort of social repellent—a rotten aura regular people could sense. He’d spend most recesses inside reading books about wizards and dragons—wishing—hoping he’d be transported into a world where he might belong. But his eleventh birthday came and went. No owl-delivered letters. No magical wardrobes. No white rabbits running late. Nothing.
Around the block, sirens blared louder.
Nikolai broke into a new run. He couldn’t help it now. The soles of his Converse hit the cobblestone so hard the slap of each impact sent an electric pain up his shins. He sprinted through shoppers in Wenceslas Square. His apartment was only a block away now. The heavy rumble of diesel-eating Skoda cars whirred past him. Reaching the corner, he stopped, bending double, his lungs searing.
Closing his eyes, he let the crisp air cool the heat beating in his face. He shoved his bruised fingers into the pockets of his jeans that were a size too big and inhaled slowly, focusing on one of his most useful abilities:
Concentrating hard, his thoughts spun round, the vision in his mind whirling a dizzying journey back through the crowded streets from where he’d just come, onto the university grounds, and back into the literature department lecture hall.
The visual he had on it was clear, though the edges were blurred like a dream sequence in a movie. The police were there, questioning Peter. EMT’s rushed in with a stretcher, but upon seeing the boy’s girth, they stopped, muttering about coming up with a different plan to cart him into the waiting ambulance.
Peter stammered, panting, his face a nasty shade of green as he glanced wildly around the room like he fought with himself about what the truth was. Maybe he didn’t believe it himself. Maybe they’d take him to an asylum.
Of Blood and Magic Page 8
