The driver climbed down and plodded around to the back of the cart. I joined him from the other side, water squelching through my hiking shoes. I eyed his battered rubber boots in envy. He threw a tarp to one side, and from between stacks of crates pulled out my traveling backpack, which he set on the steps of the pension.
I counted out several bills. “Thanks for the ride.”
As he accepted the money and pressed it into a shirt pocket, I noticed the dull ring on his third finger. A familiar figure was embossed in the thick face: a rearing dragon.
“Y-your ring,” I stammered. “My grandfather had one just like it. Where did you get it?”
He looked down at the ring briefly and without interest. “A street seller.” Climbing back up to his seat, he took the reins in hand but hesitated mid snap. “Do not be fool,” he said, peering down on me. “The journey is not for mortals. It will not forgive curiosity or covetousness. Tell your friends this.”
“Friends?”
He raised his gray eyes to the pension.
“You are not only foreigner here.”
3
I encountered foreigner number one just beyond the pension’s entrance, in a sitting room. The young man, with a stylish tousle of blond hair and cheery blue eyes, looked to be about my age. He sat in a corner chair facing the door, a glass of dark wine in hand, as though waiting for someone to join him in drink and conversation.
“Lovely weather, eh mate?” he said in a pleasant English accent.
I wiped my shoes on the mat and dropped my pack beside the door. I was interested in food, a bath, and a bed, in that order. There was no space on my immediate itinerary for chit-chat.
“Name’s James.” He pushed up a sweater sleeve and crossed the room with his hand extended.
I dried my hands on the sides of my pants and accepted his hearty shake. “Everson Croft.”
“Let me guess. You’re also on the hunt for the fabled manuscripts of Dolhasca?”
I stopped unzipping my jacket and looked up at him.
He laughed as though we’d just shared in a particularly clever joke. “I read the article in the Historical Journal, too. I’m a fifth year at Oxford. European History.”
“Midtown College in New York,” I replied. “Mythology.”
“Sharp minds think alike, eh?” He clapped my shoulder.
“Guess so,” I muttered.
He switched to an old form of Latin. “The manuscripts are said to be in archaic Latin.”
I nodded and answered in kind. “So I’ve heard.”
He beamed at me as though I’d passed some test. “Well go on,” he said. “Shed your jacket, grab a towel. I’ll ready you a glass of the local spirit. Not vintage, mind you, but it gets the job done.”
At least he wasn’t treating me like a rival. Academics could be petty that way. Take the new chairman of my history department, Professor Snodgrass. Now there was a piece of work. I sank into the couch and accepted the glass of wine he’d prepared. James raised his own glass brightly and we both sipped. To my surprise, the hit of alcohol, coupled with the soft cushion, soothed my travel pains and the irritability that went with them. James tugged at the white collar of a shirt that poked from his too-green sweater. He could have been a golfer taking a break from the links.
“So how long have you been here?” I asked.
“Since Monday. I was hoping to set out for the monastery yesterday, but the weather’s been bloody dreadful.” He sighed and gazed out a window running with rain water. Distant lightning paled his face in twin flashes.
“You sound confident in the monastery’s location.”
“Well, I have technology to thank for that.” As he dug in his pocket, the ensuing thunder rolled in, shaking the walls. James held up what looked like a small two-way radio, a rubber antenna poking from the top. “Using a satellite map program, I was able to identify the ruins. That gave me a GPS location. According to this, the monastery is approximately 48 kilometers north by northwest from our current position.” He held the device toward me. “Care to take a look?”
“No, no.” I leaned away and showed my palms. “I have a way of breaking that stuff.”
It was true. Technology never failed to get pissy in my presence. The last time I’d tried to use a library computer, the screen blacked out and smoke drifted from the keyboard. Seconds later, the entire college network crashed. Fortunately, I was a whiz on my mechanical typewriter.
James shrugged and returned the GPS device to his pocket.
“But, hey…” I went to retrieve my pack. “Would you mind looking over my maps and telling me if I’m in the proximity?”
“What in God’s name for?” James asked. “Now that you’re here, we can make the journey together.”
I lowered myself back to the couch. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Two heads are better than one. I’d enjoy the company, besides.”
“Well cheers to that.” I raised my glass, and we drank again, my worries over the monastery’s location resolved. But with the next flashes of lightning, I recalled the driver’s scars, the pale ridges of tissue shining through his damp hair. The wolf’s claws must have flayed the poor bastard to his skull.
“Something the matter?” James asked.
“Has anyone warned you about going into the forest?”
“Other than everyone I’ve talked to?” He smiled and waved a hand. “We’re in the old country, mate. Good people, the very salt of the earth, but simple minds. Where there are unexplored wilds, there must be monsters, right?”
“I get your point. But I’d feel better if we had an escort. There have been wolf attacks.”
James examined his held-up glass with an unconcerned air. “I’ve already asked around. No one’s interested, I’m afraid. It seems there are only four of us willing to venture into those wilds.”
The driver had mentioned foreigners, plural. “Who are the other two?”
“Well, there’s a Flor from Spain.” He lowered his voice. “A treat for the eyes, but beware her tongue. I believe I still have a few welts from our little disagreement this morning at breakfast.” He chuckled as he rubbed his upper arm. “The other is Bertrand, a prominent French academic. Not particularly friendly, though.”
“A real United Nations,” I remarked, to which James chuckled again. “And they’re trying to reach Dolhasca, too?”
He nodded. “But we’ve all been pinned down by the weather. We have that and the monastery in common, if nothing else.”
“What if we all set out together?” I asked. “The stronger our numbers, the less likely any wolves would be to mess with us, right?”
“Sounds like perfectly good reasoning to me, but you’ll need to convince the others. Their interest in Dolhasca seems nothing short of mercenary.” He pronounced the word as though the concept were far beneath him.
“Maybe we can all meet for dinner this evening,” I said. “Talk it over.”
“Splendid. I’ll arrange it. There’s a restaurant on the corner.” He bussed my empty glass. “But you should go up and get some rest, my friend. You look right knackered.”
I did as James suggested, finding the pension owner, an elderly woman, who showed me to a simple room on the second floor. After washing up, I lay on the single bed, the day’s motion swimming through my exhausted body. It was hard to believe I was less than thirty miles from the Book of Souls—a title that vanished from Grandpa’s collection with his death. A title research had shown me should never have existed in the twentieth century.
But then to read of it last month in the Historical Journal, the author believing that Dolhasca’s founding monks had transcribed reams of lost texts and tomes, among them the Book of Souls. I closed my eyes. To think that in two days time I could be holding the same book I had seen in Grandpa’s hands ten years earlier. My thoughts began to drift on that thought.
I was nearly asleep when, in the far distance, a wolf’s cry went up.
4
Bertrand shook his head emphatically, eyes closed. “No.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I planned a solo expedition,” he replied in a stuffy French accent, “and a solo expedition it will remain.”
The middle-aged man sitting across from me was tall and lean with a sour face and eyelids that fluttered when he voiced an objection, which was often. James had been right about the “not particularly friendly” bit. More to the point, he was a dick.
“And we are after the same manuscripts, no?” he continued. “Why would I want to share my findings with a group of amateurs?” He returned to his stewed rabbit with prim stabs of his fork and knife.
We had convened for dinner about an hour after I’d lain down. Thanks to the wolf howls, which had grown into a nightmare chorus, I hadn’t slept a wink. Tiredness and anger now growled inside me. Before I could respond to Bertrand’s “amateur” dig, James clapped his hands once.
“Well,” he said cheerily. “Party of three, then?”
We all turned to Flor. With her sultry eyes, pouting lips, and sheen of shoulder-length black hair, she was hard not to jaw-drop over. But I saw what James meant about her mercenary quality. It wasn’t just in her black tank top and cargo pants, but also in the flat, almost groaning way she spoke.
“I am of the same mind as Bertrand,” she said, dropping a gnawed bone onto her plate. “As much as I hate to admit it.”
I looked around in exasperation. The restaurant was an older couple’s home, three tables pushed into a dining room and adorned with sooty plastic flowers. In a back kitchen, pots clinked and water gurgled. Despite that we had the place to ourselves, I lowered my voice.
“Look,” I said. “What I’m proposing will entail some compromise, yes. But it gives us the best chance of reaching Dolhasca. Attempt it alone and there’s a chance we’ll not only fail to find the monastery, but end up as wolf food.”
Bertrand sniffed. “It sounds like the American is afraid.”
Heat flashed over my face. “And you sound like a—”
“I asked around after our chat earlier,” James interrupted. “Everson’s concerns about the wolves are to be taken seriously. The history of the region is peppered with attacks on villagers, some of them fatal. Even the hunters don’t dare venture into the deep forest anymore. The roaming packs have little fear of humans, it seems. And they are especially aggressive at night.” Like everything else, he delivered the dire news with an almost buoyant air.
“Tales,” Bertrand decided.
“And what makes you the expert?” I was struggling not to rise and smack the haughty look from his face.
He touched his napkin to his lips and took another half minute to chew and swallow. “I was educated at your Harvard University, an overpriced, overrated institution, if ever there was. I completed my doctoral work at the Sorbonne in Paris, where I have been a full professor since. My publications are extensive—perhaps you’ve read my tome on medieval philosophy? I have won two book awards and am presently up for a third. And I am constantly being asked to lecture at prestigious conferences and universities.” He looked pointedly at James. “Last month I turned down an invitation from Oxford.”
“Thanks for the curriculum vitae,” I said, “but I missed the part where you slayed wild animals.”
Bertrand went to work on his potatoes as though he hadn’t heard me.
“Maybe the American is right,” Flor said. “Maybe we should stick together until we reach the monastery.”
I pushed my upturned palms toward her. “Thank you.”
“But once there,” she continued, “we will need to decide how to apportion the spoils.”
Apportion? Spoils? I drew my hands back. “We’re not looters, for God’s sake. We’re researchers.” A slanting look in Flor’s eyes made me hesitate. “Wait, you are a researcher, aren’t you?”
“I was just testing you,” Flor said. “And what I am is none of your business.”
Ouch. “Well, if we’re going to join forces, I think James and I need to know what you’re doing here.”
“Good luck, my friend.” James chuckled. “Flor and I have danced around the question a few times this week, haven’t we, love?”
Flor narrowed her eyes at him.
I decided not to press her, lest she change her mind about joining our party. Sharp-tongued or not, I didn’t like the thought of her attempting the journey alone. Plus, her presence strengthened our numbers.
“All right,” I said. “So that’s three. Bertrand? Last chance.”
He snorted and pushed himself back from his half-finished plate. “I would just as soon join the Three Stooges.” He slapped a pair of bills on the table and, donning his slicker and rain hat, strode from the restaurant. It wasn’t until he was gone that I saw he had underpaid.
James looked from the closing door to Flor and me. “So,” he said with a happy sigh. “What time shall we be off?”
“The weather is scheduled to improve around noon tomorrow,” Flor said. “We should reach the monastery late the following day. If you two do not slow me down.”
I slid James a sidelong smirk. “Yeah, we’ll try to keep up.”
He grinned back. “Well, I do like the sound of only spending one night in the forest each way.”
“And I have an idea for some wolf repellent,” I said.
5
Flor came down to the breakfast table the next morning as James and I were finishing up. Her grunted response to our greetings suggested she wasn’t a morning person. That didn’t stop her stray hair and sleepy face from playing games with my imagination though. I coughed into a fist.
“The Frenchman is gone,” she stated, ripping a chunk of bread from the loaf and slathering it with butter.
“Gone for a walk?” I asked. “Or gone gone.”
“He has taken everything with him.” The chunk disappeared into her mouth, and she chewed morosely.
“I heard him moving about early this morning,” James said. “It seems he’s set out on his own, the poor sod.”
“Yeah, to beat us there,” I grumbled. “Let’s just hope we don’t arrive to a fortified monastery.” Though I wouldn’t have put something like that past Bertrand, concern for his safety moved through me. I reminded myself that we had warned him, that he was a grown man.
As for our safety…
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, standing from the table. “The pension owner gave me kitchen privileges for the next hour, and there’s something I need to cook.”
“Then it looks like I’ll have this lovely fount of conversation all to myself,” James said, cutting his sparkling eyes to Flor. She stopped chewing long enough to glower at him.
Geez. Even that look on her was amazing.
I stumbled into a chair as I left the room.
Since I was a young boy, my head barely as high as Nana’s hip, cooking had fascinated me. Combining disparate ingredients. Getting the proportions just right. Adding energy in the form of heat. All to end up with something whose whole was greater—or at least tastier—than the sum of its parts. And Nana’s meals were some of the tastiest I’d ever had.
That process, that alchemy I suppose you could call it, still impressed me.
I placed a cast-iron pot of water onto the gas stove. From the refrigerator, I pulled out a large bag of Romanian hot peppers I’d picked up at the local grocer. I pounded the pale-green peppers with the flat side of a butcher knife, releasing the juice and seeds, and scraped the mess into the pot. Finding the pension’s black pepper, I ground it liberally into the steaming mixture.
James arrived twenty minutes later, as I was funneling the final dregs of the pepper spray between three spray bottles.
“Ah, your wolf repellent, I presume?”
“I made it extra strong, so be extra careful.” I screwed on the plastic nozzles and handed him a bottle. “It so much as touches your skin, you’ll think you’re under a fire-ant attack, so you definitely don’t w
ant to get any in your eyes. A wolf’s eyes are fine.”
Flor appeared from behind James and claimed her bottle. She smirked as she wrapped her fingers around the plastic trigger. “They are cute,” she remarked.
“Cute?” I’d been hoping for badass. “Just watch where you point it.”
Her lips straightened as she lowered the bottle to her side. “We need to set out.”
“But it’s still dreadful,” James said, lowering his head to the window to be sure.
Flor’s dark eyes fixed on mine. “What you said about Bertrand wanting to reach the monastery before us. It disturbs me.”
“Why?” I asked.
She peered over a shoulder, as though the man might be standing behind her, and then stepped close enough for me to feel her heat.
“Because he is not who he claims to be.”
We set out an hour later, tromping up a muddy road that led from the village into the foothills. Families paused in their field work to stare at us through the gray rain, their wan faces impossible to read. At a final farmhouse, I caught an elderly woman making the sign of the cross before withdrawing from her dark window and closing the shutters.
Okay. That wasn’t creepy or anything.
I jogged every few paces to keep up with Flor, and I noticed James doing the same. In her black combat boots, she seemed intent on taking the forest by bloody conquest. In addition to her backpack, she had set out with a titanium suitcase, declining James’s and my offers to carry it for her. When we’d asked what was inside, she had given the one-word answer, “Equipment.”
“So,” I breathed, when I’d pulled even with her again. “Are you going to tell us about Bertrand now, or what?”
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 2