by K. T. Tomb
In his room, he dressed in his finest attire, using the reflection from the water in the washbasin, since the silver in the room’s mirror made the object useless to him. He was admiring how he looked when he heard Nora’s soft tapping at his door.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Nora wasn’t happy with herself as she left Miko’s hotel the following evening, transformed into an owl and hurried back toward Bucharest. After all, she had an urgent message, which she’d just learned about, to telegraph to Alfred in London. Their theory had been confirmed and they now had an exact location. She ought to have been excited, but because she had given in to the powerful, seductive charm of Miko, she felt nothing but great regret and the enormous weight of her shame.
At first, she had resisted his advances, but Miko had a way about him. His touch had been like fire on her skin. The moment she felt it burning, in spite of her will to resist, the deeper instincts of her feminine essence overcame her. He caressed her and drank in every inch of her skin in a way that she had never experienced before. It aroused in her something that seemed helpless to resist.
Nora had allowed his kisses to travel all over her body, to cover even her pale breasts, her smooth stomach and flow further below. His kisses... released something savage within her, something unexpected and wild, and she found herself lost in a raging passion of a primeval nature that went well beyond the act of touching and of uniting their bodies. She had never known the sweet release of her body, mind, and spirit the way she did last night with Miko. She had never known that such pleasure even existed.
Once hadn’t been enough for her. She had gone with him, entering those erotic gates over and over until they had both collapsed from exhaustion and drifted off into peaceful slumber.
When she awakened, she no longer stood before those gates and she was instantly adrift in an ocean of shame. Her first instinct was to flee. Without making a sound, Nora kept her eyes focused on Miko, gathered up her clothing, dressed, and quietly moved toward the door. She had her hand on the knob, ready to leave her shame behind.
“You might want to take my report before you go,” Miko called out.
“I have to go… I can’t…” She couldn’t seam the words properly.
“I understand,” he responded. “But I have important information for you to pass on to Alfred and to share with Andrik.”
“What information?”
“I know the exact location of the cache—and I know how they’re moving it there.”
In spite of her most urgent need to be away from him, Nora could not bring herself to ignore what he had to tell her. Without moving back toward him, she pressed her back against the door and listened to him as he revealed what he had learned from the Russian colonel. The ordeal of staying in the room and listening to his report had been difficult, but it was doubly so because he seemed to be taking so much time, leisurely prolonging his account and increasing her discomfort... and her desire for him.
“Is it so urgent for you to report? Can’t you stay a while longer?” he asked, rising up from the bed and displaying his nude body for her inspection as he strolled toward her.
Nora’s response had been to quickly turn around, open the door, and rush through it. Immature, certainly, but she had to be away from that man! She’d scurried down the hall, rushed out of the hotel and transformed, not caring if anyone happened to see her do it.
Now, she pushed the images and sensations out of her head. She was close to Bucharest and she needed to start organizing herself in order to send the message that she needed to send. It was not the scheduled time to send the message, which would, necessarily, encourage a great deal of urgency on the part of Alfred when he received it.
Realizing that she had been foolish to transform so publicly in Galati, she took more caution in Bucharest. When she was back in her natural form, she hurried to the telegraph office. There, the clerk was surprised to see her at such an early hour, but she quickly explained it away.
“I have an urgent message to send to my husband in London,” she lied. She would learn that all good spies lied as easily as breathing.
“Go ahead,” the clerk responded. He was poised with pen and paper to copy down what she dictated to him.
“First, look at me,” said Nora.
The man did, frowning, and once she had eye contact with him, she had him. He stayed frozen in that posture, with pen raised, hunched over the loose paper, as Nora moved around him and telegraphed the message herself. After all, it wouldn’t do to give the clerk state secrets. She would have to kill him, and she didn’t want to do that.
Nora took the pen and paper from him, snapped her fingers, and said, “Thank you for all your help. I will be at the Wallachia Inn. When the response comes, please send it to me with the utmost urgency. And, of course, you will not read it.”
“I will not read it,” he said, blinking and shaking his head.
Settled in her bed in her hotel room, she found sleep impossible. Not only was she anxious concerning the information she’d just forwarded to Alfred, but she was eager to rejoin Andrik so that they could confirm the information Miko had gotten out of the Russian colonel. She made an earnest attempt to push both of those worries out of her mind in the hope that she might relax and get some rest, but when she did, the image of Miko hovering over her with eyes burning with intense passion, and the sensation of pleasure that had coursed through her, slipped back into her mind. She threw back the covers and stepped out of bed.
Determined to focus on the mission, she pulled out a pen and paper provided in the desk by the window and sketched a map of the area at the south end of Balta Ialomitei. She recalled it from Andrik’s map, but she was also drawing on what she had seen with her own owl eyes as they had made their wide, turning circle over Silistra and had started to follow the Danube back toward Fetesti. She remembered the large lake and had marveled how it seemed to stand alone with no inlet or outlet to the river. That had to have been Lake Bugeac.
The mental exercise made her drowsy and, just before dawn, she slipped back under the covers of the bed. With a heavy sigh, she drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-eight
With Nora away, Andrik’s own searches had provided him with nothing.
It was safe to assume that the smugglers wouldn’t have been active every night, so patience would be the key. Now, he decided to approach this next night with a different strategy. Instead of flying high above the river, he would search along the surface; in particular, within the boats themselves. As a moth, he could eavesdrop on the conversations that were taking place onboard. Though he wouldn’t necessarily understand what they were saying, he did know the difference between the Slavic dialects of the region and Russian.
In the form of a bat, he flew to the river, landed in a tree and transformed into a moth. He saw the lantern on the first boat coming up the river and flew down to dance around it amongst a swarm of other moths. Alighting on the warm, wire handle, he paused and listened as crew members spoke to each other. After just a few phrases, he recognized the language as German. He remained on the lantern and watched the light of another boat coming down the river. When the boat drew alongside the one he was on, he fluttered across to the lantern on the other boat. In that way, throughout the night, he was able to eavesdrop on the conversations of nearly two dozen boats.
It was the early hours of the morning before he finally heard very distinct Russian being spoken on a boat that was heading up river.
This could be promising.
He stayed on the boat as it continued past the lowest point of Balta Ialomitei, where the eastern and western branches of the Danube split to form the island. The boat continued up the river for a short time and gradually began to slow and pull toward the Ottoman side of the river. Damn. There would be no reason for the Russians to be offloading weapons on the Ottoman side. He started to leave the lantern when he noticed that the boat was now pushing through some thick foliage. When the boat didn’
t strike land after several, long counts, he started to grow curious.
Could the Russians be so bold?
Hidden from above by a thick canopy, the boat continued to follow the narrow channel through the thick undergrowth until it emerged in a lake.
Is this Bugeac? he wondered.
Since there was no fear of losing the vessel as it moved along alone, Andrik fluttered off of the boat and out into the darkness. Behind the tree line, he transformed into an owl so that he could gain some height and a better sense of where he was. As he rose above the lake, he instantly realized that the boat had passed between the Danube and the lake via a hidden channel that he and Nora would never have seen from the air. He wanted to grin.
Andrik continued to circle the lake, keeping his keen eyes on the boat as it continued the length of the waterway and began to slow as it neared the western shore. He noted that the forest on that side of the lake came all the way down to the very edge of the water and he wondered if there might be another channel, perhaps a dock, hidden in the thick woods, as well. He flew to a point in the dense brush, alighted on a stump, transformed into a fox and trotted through the forest in the direction of where he saw the boat enter the woods. As he drew nearer, he could hear voices. They were Russian voices and someone was barking out orders. He moved in closer and noticed the boat had been brought into a dock, tied off and a dozen or so men from the shore were helping to unload the crates from the boat.
Andrik was certain of one thing, that it was some sort of a Russian smuggling operation. Did those crates contain munitions? There was only one way to know for sure. He looked toward what appeared to be a cavern opening in a nearly-hidden rock face, itself covered in vines and ferns growing from the many fissures. He noted bats returning from their nocturnal feeding, darting into the dark maw of the rock face. Andrik transformed into a bat and flapped hard to join the next wave of returning nocturnal creatures.
Andrik tried to stay close to the fluttering bats, but not become swept up with them, and also keep an eye on the crates being carried into the cave. When the group of bats turned into a side passageway, he broke away and continued down in the direction the crates were being taken; shortly, he emerged into a large room where nearly a hundred crates, similar to the ones being unloaded and brought into the cavern now, were stacked.
He flew to a shadowed corner of the room, attached himself to the ceiling and observed the events taking place. Within minutes, one of the crates was mishandled and broke open, and percussion rifles clattered to the stone floor.
Well, there you go, he thought.
“You idiots!” the man who had been barking out orders, bellowed in the regional dialect of the Dobrudzha, of which Andrik could mostly understand.
He waited until those who had dropped the crate were busy re-stacking the weapons, and launched himself into space, swooping down through the long corridor and toward the exit. He was nearly to the entrance when something closed in around him, tangling up in his wings. A net held aloft by a man with a long pole. Andrik fought the strands, but to no avail.
“What have we here?” the man chuckled. “A red fox, then a bat? Unless I’ve missed my guess, you would be a member of the mortal/immortal race, eh?”
Seeing only one chance to escape the net, Andrik transformed back into his MI state and swung with all of his might at the head of the man who held the net. The man leapt away from him with incredible quickness and dexterity; unfortunately, the man leapt to a point that closed off Andrik’s escape route. The vampire attempted to bulrush past him, but the man stood his ground and hurled Andrik backward with incredible force.
This is no mortal.
With the thought barely registering, two others leapt at him from behind. Between the three of them, Andrik stood little chance, and, before he knew it, he was bound and being led to one of the side passageways off the main corridor of the cavern.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The coded message she’d received from London was, more or less, exactly what she had been expecting.
It was short and to the point: Confirm location—(stop)—Reply with result—(stop)—Be careful—(stop)—Alfred.
Nora, of course, had every intention of following orders, especially now as she left Bucharest during the daylight hours. She couldn’t travel to Fetesti in daylight as a bat or an owl, the only two transformations she had mastered, but she couldn’t bear waiting until dark before seeing Andrik and discussing the secret cache. She recalled that a railroad track passed over the bridge from Fetesti onto the island and continued across it to the river on the other side. She and Andrik had speculated that railroad linked Bucharest to Constanta on the Black Sea coast.
So, I’ll just take the train!
She had to be careful with being in the sunlight. Staying in the shade helped a great deal, and there was always the cream. Applied before going into the sunlight, it served to protect her skin, but it would only last for short periods of time. She was taking something of a risk if she was in sunlight for too long of a period, but it was a risk she had to take. She needed to reach Andrik before he left at dusk; if she failed to get there in time, then surely, he’d waste another night searching for something he couldn’t possibly find. Or could he?
She shook her head. No. The route was cleverly concealed. Andrik was clever himself, but no one could find that supply route.
Nora applied the cream to her exposed skin and purchased a parasol as she exited the hotel. With the parasol to block the most powerful of the sun’s rays, she made it to the train station without burning herself. She purchased a ticket and sat in one of the darker corners of the station to await the train. Her wait was only a few minutes. She boarded the train, took a seat at the very back of the car where there would only be the light of the window beside her, and pulled down the window shade. She settled in for the three-hour ride to Fetesti.
“Miss,” the conductor said, as he came through the cabin and noticed that her window shade was pulled down. “I can put that up for you so you don’t miss the countryside passing by.”
“Please don’t. I have a horrible headache and the sun is just... too much.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he responded. “Can I bring you something for the pain?”
“Thank you, but no,” she smiled.
A passenger boarded at one of the villages along the route and chose to sit beside her.
“Do you mind if I put up the shade?” he asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” She explained once again about her headache and sun.
“In that case, we’ll leave it as it is,” the gentleman replied.
Though she was exhausted, she didn’t dare risk falling asleep and having someone raise the shade. In that state of mind, she made it to Fetesti and noted that it was close to noon. The sun would be at its most intense and she would have to be out in it. Fortunately, the distance from the train station to the hotel wasn’t far. Armed with her parasol, she covered the distance in a hurry and was soon inside the hotel, having mostly escaped damage to her skin. Her elbow was burned, as was the back of her arm. She knew, with time, it would heal again.
At the front desk, she was recognized immediately and given the key to her room; instead of going to her own room, she went directly to Andrik’s. He would be asleep, of course, but she would slip in, check up on him, deliver her report, and see if she couldn’t catch a few hours of sleep herself before dark.
She tapped softly at the door to his room, waited, then tapped a bit harder. Still no answer. She tried the knob. It turned and she pushed the door open. Andrik was not there and his bed was neatly arranged.
Nora, not prone to flights of fancy, had a bad feeling about this.
***
Waiting until dark fell was a trial of enormous weight.
Nora spent the time trying to guess where Andrik might have gone. While she waited, she hoped like crazy he would return, but, alas, there was no word from him. The trouble was, she had no way
of knowing where to look. Truthfully, he could have been anywhere—perhaps even on the island, but it was still a very large area to try to cover by herself. When the sun finally did set, she took flight from her balcony’s ledge and headed for the Danube. She had a very, very bad feeling. Andrik would have reported back.
Unless something had happened to him.
She decided to fly south, hoping that she might spot him or come up with some clue that would lead her to him. It was an effort in futility. Not only was there no way of knowing where he was, but if he was in the form of one of the animals he’d transformed into, then she wouldn’t recognize him anyway. As she neared the southern point of Balta Ialomitei, she caught sight of the lake.
I’m here; I might as well take a look.
Now that she knew where to look—and what to look for—she soon found the hidden dock. The Russian colonel had told the truth. Of course, he had died anyway. Nora shuddered at the pleased expression on Miko’s face as he regaled her with his tale. Next, she flew into the thick wood, following a narrow channel and came to a dock at the far end of it. The Russian had told the truth, until the very end.
All was quiet around the dock. A handful of boats only. No sign of movement, either. Was this the right place? It was certainly well hidden.
She transformed into her MI form and followed the shadow of a path, itself furrowed with deep tracks. Fresh tracks too. Something big—many somethings, in fact—had used this road. In no time at all, pushing aside low-hanging branches and ferns, the path opened up before her... and she saw it clearly now: a dark opening in what appeared to be a naturally concealed rock wall.
Voices echoed out toward her from the cave opening.
Nora withdrew into the dense trees and underbrush, hoping that she hadn’t been seen. She waited a beat or two, then transformed into a bat. She slashed through the trees, an expert flier already, and flew well above the heads of the guards themselves as she entered the cavern. It was dark, but luckily Nora could utilize the bat’s echolocation, which she had long since mastered. After all, it was the reason she flew so swiftly through the tangle of branches. Now, she avoided stalagmites and stalactites, both rising from the floor and plunging down through the ceiling. Ahead, she spotted a glow, and she zeroed in on that, picking up speed. The excitement within her grew, vying for the worry she felt for Andrik.