by M. A. Grant
But the memories were there. An endless, broken line of memories he tried to parse through. The meeting with Florica and Luca. Grigore’s sneering face when he was ordered to appear before Mihai to testify on what was happening in his territory. The bookstore clerk laughing at his flirting and handing over the map. A rainy road. A hunched, ashen figure appearing out of the forest and ramming the car over one of the steep embankments and into the river. Hands on his shoulders, dragging him from the wreck. Whispers in the darkness. Pain. And hunger. Hunger so deep and unrelenting no one could survive it, no one could ever be satiated. There wasn’t enough blood in the world to drown the need coursing through him—
“I will release them tomorrow,” Emil promised.
His eyelids stuck together painfully when he tried to peer into the darkness of the old chapel. He must have been crying again. He ignored the sharp prick of lashes pulling free from skin and looked out to the nave, where Emil talked on the phone. He used to look back when he heard him moving, but he no longer bothered. There was no chance of escape, and it wasn’t like he would live through this anyway... Emil had nothing to hide from a dead man walking.
“Four,” Emil said. “That’s all the cages would hold.” He paused, listening to whoever was on the other end. “Yes, I understand, but he wouldn’t care. The ends justify the means.” A long pause. When he spoke again, he was quieter and far more deferential. “Yes, of course. I will do as you say.”
He tried to dig deeper into the memory, to stick with it, but it floated and folded in his mind like a spiderweb cut free of its moorings. Rather than chase it further, he forced himself to pull free of the bond. He surfaced from the sticky morass of Radu’s scattered thoughts with a grunt of displeasure and a sudden awareness of the burning pain in his wrist.
“There you are,” Radu whispered with ill-disguised worry. “I was worried you wouldn’t come back before he returned.”
“What did he mean, four?” Cristian asked. “Was he talking about the strigoi?”
“Yes,” Radu confirmed. His voice grew stronger, a sign the feeding had worked. “I heard them fighting and screaming outside. Then a door closed and the engine started. I don’t know where he took them.”
Emil’s awkward surprise at spotting Cristian the other night made sudden, horrible sense. The van he’d walked away from must have held the strigoi. And he’d driven them somewhere to release.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Cristian told him. “Does he ever leave?”
“All the time,” Radu said, and fell quiet again. It was a different kind of quiet though. He waited, forcing himself to stay patient, to not think of what could be happening to Atlas, and was rewarded at last when Radu warily said, “But he didn’t plan on coming back tonight. He must have changed his plans because of you. I don’t know what he’ll do now.”
“He’ll leave again,” Cristian declared. “And when he does, we’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to get out of here.”
“Who was he?” Radu asked. “The man who screamed?”
Cristian swallowed hard. “Atlas.”
“Will he be able to help us too?” Radu asked.
“Yes,” Cristian lied. He pressed his back into the corner of the cell, between wooden wall and iron bars, and drew his knees up. He rested his aching cheek against his knees and closed his eyes. Maybe if he closed them hard enough, he could hold the tears back long enough for Radu to believe him.
“Yes, he will,” Cristian said, more firmly. “Now, rest.”
Chapter Fifteen
Atlas hit the ground and rolled to a stop. Above him, strigoi snapped and hissed. He curled his wounded arm into his chest in a vain attempt to hide the blood and waited for their strike, for the agony he’d survived once before. Saliva dripped from their mouths and spattered his skin. He had no knife. No hope. Nothing but regret to follow him to this death.
They didn’t attack.
They stalked and paced the empty space around him, lifting their clawed hands and feet to avoid stepping on him.
He crawled into a corner and pressed himself into it. The memories rose thick and fast, but he kept his arm to his chest and forced himself to count and breathe through the surge.
The nauseating burn in his arm where the strigoi’s fangs had pierced his skin flared with every beat of his panicked heart. His shoulder hurt where he’d landed on it.
His night vision couldn’t handle the transition from moonlit night into this hellish pit. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t see, actually. His body was in overdrive, hypersensitive to scents and sounds and reacting instinctively to every promise of threat. He jerked and shifted, bared his teeth, prepared for pain...and by the time his vision righted itself, he was still in the corner, untouched and unbothered by the monsters milling about.
A trap? A miracle? How was he still alive?
He swallowed and tried to listen to the world beyond the thick wooden walls, but couldn’t make out anything. Had Emil walked away? And where was Cristian?
Cristian. He had to find him, to make this right. Cristian could still be alive. He had to be. He was too much of a pain in the ass to die now. Atlas clung to the shred of hope as he watched the strigoi.
They didn’t even glance his direction.
He’d known. He’d known the second Daria walked in the door and leveled him with a glare that could kill...he’d known then Cristian had gone to meet Emil. He’d chosen to risk himself to save others, the same way Atlas had behaved again and again. But Cristian did it with hope. Atlas never had.
He’d never seen any honor in sacrificing himself. It had simply been the only fitting end for him. The noble packaging didn’t make his choices any less a death wish, except in Cristian’s eyes. He saw Atlas’s resignation as stoicism, his tempered fear as bravery, and his dishonesty as an attempt to not cause pain.
Cristian was a fool, and Atlas loved him for it.
Here, facing the nightmares of his past and destroyers of his future, he accepted that truth.
He loved Cristian and his aggressive optimism, and he wouldn’t let Emil kill that.
He had to move.
His brain ordered it over and over. His body responded slower. A flex of the finger. A nervous push of the foot against the floor. No reaction from the strigoi. Some still wandered, while others curled up, some quiet, some whimpering to themselves.
Move.
He took a deep breath. Another louder one. A strigoi a few feet away twitched. He froze, but it didn’t glance back.
They don’t care. Move.
They should have come after him by now. They knew he was here. Their indifference bothered him almost as much as the fear that they would kill and feed off him. These strigoi were different from those in Scarsdale—
No. No, they weren’t. He’d assumed the strigoi at the riverfront reacted to him and Cristian. But as he searched his memory of that chase, tried to fit the frightened pieces together, he couldn’t pin down an exact moment when the strigoi had keyed on him. Hell, he’d even tackled it off Cristian, taken it unawares.
Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t unaware of him. Maybe it just didn’t consider him a threat.
They were clearly pack animals. They worked together. They supported each other.
Is that what the strigoi thought he was? Pack?
You have to test the theory. You have to move. If you don’t, Cristian will die.
His legs shook and his knees threatened to go out from under him when he stood. Adrenaline spiked through him, but he bit his lip and sucked in another breath through his nose and imagined Cristian teasing him about passing out on top of a strigoi because he couldn’t get himself under control. Blood dripped sluggishly from his arm onto the floor. No strigoi lifted its head to sniff the air.
He coaxed himself to take one step forward. Another. Each footfall exploded th
rough the room.
He stuck to the wall. The strigoi had started to move closer to each other, huddling like puppies in the center of the room. A few avoided the pack, but they were easy enough to see and avoid. He put a hand to the thick logs and used them to ground himself as he began a cautious circuit. The floor beneath them was made of thick, rough-hewn lumber, so coated in dirt and sawdust and God knew what else that it didn’t shift or creak under him. All the windows were boarded up, preventing any light from creeping in. He pushed on the boards, but found no give. Emil had probably strengthened everything to prevent the strigoi from breaking out.
If he focused on the logistics, he could continue. He only focused on finding a weak point. He’d pay for ignoring his injuries later, but for now, purpose and reason kept him moving.
He made a slow, shuffling circle of the room without finding any obvious escape route. Fine. He’d find another way. He couldn’t climb quietly up into the makeshift loft to test the roof’s strength with his injured arm. The walls were solid. The barred windows strong enough nothing could break through. That left the floor.
Panic squeezed the air from his lungs when he knelt. Breathe. When it no longer controlled him, he put the edge of his hand against the seam where wall met floor and crawled forward, checking for any gap or hole. He didn’t expect to find any, which is why he drew up when one of the boards in the corner to the right of the locked door shifted under his weight. He prayed, went back on all fours, and pressed his hand against the board one more time. The hairline fracture he’d found cracked farther and bowed under his weight, lifting the end of the board.
Behind him, a strigoi stirred and he bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood in an effort not to whimper. A quick check over his shoulder confirmed one of the strigoi on the outer edges had sat up on its haunches and was watching him. It didn’t move, didn’t attack, simply sat there like a sphinx, and waited.
He sucked in another breath and pried the broken board away. The dirt beneath his hand was cool and loose from the years it had been protected from water and sunlight. He dragged his fingers through it, amazed when it cleared out easily. He could dig his way out.
He pressed a hand to his chest, trying to suffocate the flame of hope that lit up, but it was too late. That flame grew, roared, and swallowed him whole. He pried the first board away and slid his fingers under the second, pulling on it. His injured arm sent sharp, electric bites of pain with every movement. The board stuck firmly, but he kept at it, willing it to move so he had more room. He was so caught up in his feverish escape attempt he nearly forgot the strigoi.
The clicking of claws over the floorboards threw him from his focus. He swore and moved away, preparing to defend himself. But the strigoi still didn’t look at him.
It clambered over to the exposed dirt, lowered its disturbingly humanoid face to the earth, and breathed in deeply. A strange warble trilled from its chest, and the pile in the center of the room shifted as the others came to. Atlas stuffed a hand to his mouth and bit down to silence himself. The dust coated his lip and ground against his teeth, but it helped.
He waited. Waited and watched as the strigoi converged on the small, exposed section of floor. A few of them sniffed the area before growling and trilling at each other. Then they all fell deadly silent. They moved as one, ripping away boards and tossing them aside, while the smaller strigoi shuffled into place near the dirt and began digging. The earth churned and the air grew heavy with dust left undisturbed for too long. He stared in horrified wonder as the job that would have taken him an impossibly long time was quickly finished. A gaping hole opened up underneath the outer edge of the building; he could see the moonlight on the other side, just waiting for someone to crawl out.
The strigoi didn’t wait for him. The first one, a slender, tiny monster with brilliant, pearly white fangs, slid into the hole the second it was large enough. Its body twisted sinuously, as if it couldn’t feel its bones bending in impossible angles, and with a frantic shuffle of its feet, it was clear of the building. Free.
The hole grew, extended and widened with every strigoi that passed through it. He lost count of how many escaped. He wanted to wait to sneak out until they were all gone, but he worried Emil would come to check how they got out, find him, and move him to a new holding area. The threat of escape being stolen from him gave him the courage to elbow a strigoi back and fling himself down into the hole.
No snapping teeth against his legs. No claws digging into his back. He ignored his body’s protests and twisted to his back, contorting so his arms exited the hole first. He grabbed the outside of the building and hauled himself through before twisting again and crawling the rest of the way out. Dirt scattered behind him, and he rolled to the side, making room for the next strigoi to follow.
It slid out and made an odd, low rumble at him as it sprinted away into the darkness of the forest, where he could hear the others sliding through the brush.
Keep moving.
He staggered to his feet, but didn’t break for the forest. Without knowing where Emil was, it was foolhardy to try to make it there without being seen. Daria’s truck was still there, turned off now, but opening and closing the doors could draw unwanted attention. He settled for sneaking around the back of the building and hiding there. It was another stupid risk. If Emil even glanced around the edge of the building, he’d find Atlas sitting there like a naive child playing hide and seek. But it was the best chance he had. He couldn’t risk spreading the scent of his blood anywhere but near the area Emil had dumped him. Hopefully the vampire would count Atlas as good as dead and focus on the strigoi instead.
It didn’t take long. Across the open space, from farther up the hill, came a shout, followed by a piercing whistle. A few of the strigoi, the last stragglers, slowed at the whistle, but they didn’t stop. Freedom was their only focus, and they took off after the rest of their pack. Another whistle from the hill, but no return of the wayward monsters.
He caught the dark blur of a figure running down the hill and held his breath. Chase them, he commanded silently. Forget me and chase them.
Emil drew up at the base of the hill. He glanced toward the building and Atlas was sure he’d been discovered. But the vampire swore and sprinted to the waiting van. He climbed inside and the engine turned over. With a horrific grinding sound, the van leapt into motion. Its headlights cut through the nighttime as Emil gunned it down the road, chasing after the strigoi like a man possessed.
Atlas stayed crouched at the back of the building. He counted to ten. Then twenty. The engine’s rumble faded. When he hit thirty, he summoned all the courage he had left and broke cover, running to the hill. A narrow path cut up from the base of the hill, meandering up higher. And there, a shadow of yet another building against the night sky.
I need some space to think, Cristian had told him as he walked out. Atlas, in all his hurt and embarrassment, had focused on that, not the confident declaration preceding it.
I love you.
He didn’t deserve Cristian’s love, not after everything he’d done. He lowered his head and sprinted up the hill anyway.
Chapter Sixteen
They didn’t get a chance to rest. Radu tried; he curled up near Cristian’s feet, shivering and shaking as his body adjusted to the fresh blood. Cristian had only just tipped his head back when he caught a muted whistle coming faintly through the thick wooden walls. It was odd enough he looked to the nave. Emil didn’t come back inside. But the whistle sounded again.
“Radu,” Cristian whispered, “wake up. Something’s going on.”
He nudged Radu gently with a foot before clambering up and looking at the door. Radu grunted and tried to obey. He managed to kneel by the time a thud against the door reverberated through the small chapel.
Cristian, in spite of his dizziness and exhaustion, took a protective step in front of his wounded friend. He wished Atl
as were there, but such a miracle would involve rising from the dead. Strigoi did not let their prey go easily.
Still, he hoped as he’d never hoped before, and when the door swung open and a familiar silhouette took shape against the moon-bright night outside, his knees went weak.
“Atlas?” he whispered, terrified he’d be right almost as much as he was terrified of being wrong.
“Cristian?”
Atlas’s low, rough voice saying his name stole all his strength. He clung to the iron bars as his legs went out from under him, and slid back down to the floor. His eyes burned and even when the figure blurred as it hurried to him, he couldn’t look away. Atlas’s familiar, dear face swam into view and Cristian reached for him. He ran his fingers along the curve of his jaw, tracing the corded muscle of his neck, and back up so he could cup Atlas’s cheek with his hand.
“You’re alive,” he whispered in broken wonderment.
Atlas turned and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm. Radu made a confused noise at his back, but Cristian focused on Atlas, who had reached back through the bars. Atlas’s thumb rubbed over his cheekbone, a soothing motion, before he withdrew and turned his hand, exposing his wrist and the bloody bite wound on his forearm.
“Feed,” he said. “You need to see it.”
A fetid stench still clung to the torn skin of the bite, but beneath it, he could smell Atlas and the brilliant springtime scent of his relief. Atlas wanted Cristian to feed. Cristian was desperate to take the edge off his exhaustion and pain, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Cris,” Atlas whispered, “trust me. Please. I won’t hurt you again.”
He held the promise close to his heart when he struck. The hostile tension Atlas had thrown up against him when he’d fed before was gone. There was no resistance, nothing but willing invitation. It was everything he’d wanted, and he fell into Atlas’s memories with a relief too powerful for words.