Natural Enemies (Spirit Seekers Book 2)

by Janna Ruth

  I don’t know why he doesn’t want any help from the Varga brothers, but it’s fine with me. Maybe this way, I can sneak in some subtle detours to look for my mother. We arrive at Elizabeth Bridge just after the morning rush. The giant white gates gleam in the sun, guarding the entrances to Buda and Pest. A fleet of small and large boats drifts through the waters of the Danube underneath while cars swoosh by on top.

  We take the pedestrian walkway on the northern side and walk up to the middle. Flowers are laid out for the victims of the drowning, an all too stark reminder that not all spirits are friendly. It’s several metres down to the water surface, large enough for even the biggest ships to go through smoothly. How any nymph could reach this high and sweep away twelve human lives is incomprehensible to me and maybe the greatest testament to the spirits’ power.

  Wulf watches the water beneath us for a whole ten minutes without saying anything. People are walking by, pointing their fingers at him. I assume he looks rather impressive with his old-fashioned seeker staff that looks more like a wizard staff than a weapon.

  “Can you see any nymphs?” he asks after a while.

  I look down into the water—not that I haven’t done so before, just not for ten minutes straight. “It’s too deep down there. Nymphs like shallow water. We’ll probably have better luck on the banks if you want to talk to them.”

  “Talk to them?” He turns to me with his usual frown. “Why would I want to talk to them?”

  “To find out what happened here?” I mean, what does he expect? That the nymphs show up right now to re-enact their attack?

  He studies me for a moment, then shakes his head. “You’re weird.”

  “So, what’s the plan, then?” I ask, maybe a smidgeon grumpily.

  Wulf shrugs and starts walking towards the Pest end of the bridge, forcing me to keep up with him. “There was some truth in what you said. Nymphs usually stick to the banks of the river, especially when they try to kill people. It’s much easier to drag someone off the sides than to produce a tidal wave high enough to sweep over one of these bridges. So, I’m interested in why they’ve changed their behaviour so much and how they’ve managed it.”

  I still think that asking the nymphs would get us answers to his questions, but I will not suggest it again. Instead, I tell him, “I talked to some dryads last night…” Oh, oh, big mistake.

  Wulf stops short and turns around to me. “You did what?”

  “I talked to some dryads.” He opens his mouth, but I’m quicker. “They had something interesting to say. And I’m sure they would’ve said more if Rebeka hadn’t appeared. In any case,” I say louder because he’s just about to speak again. “They are afraid of the nymphs, more than they are of spirit seekers.”

  Now, he can talk or tell me off. Instead, Wulf closes his mouth and actually thinks about the information. “So, there’s infighting between the spirits?” he asks at last.

  “No, I mean, I wouldn’t really say that the dryads are fighting back. They’re just afraid.” I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t thrown a fit yet.

  “Well, as far as I know, dryads are afraid of everything. They’re not exactly the strongest spirits.” He resumes walking.

  I remember how a dryad almost strangled me with its roots less than a month ago. Or how the bushes in Tiergarten gave some creeps hell. “They’re not weak at all. They’re just… more mellow.”

  “Either way, the dryads aren’t our problem here,” Wulf says, slightly strained. “The nymphs are.”

  Gosh, he’s frustrating. “Maybe they could help us figure it out, though.”

  “I don’t work with spirits.” Definitely strained now. “We don’t work with spirits.”

  “Fine,” I grumble. “Have it your way.”

  The look he gives me tells me that he always has it his way and that my way is ridiculous on top of being wildly inappropriate. I resolve not to help him figure this one out. After all, what could the mighty Wulf Bachmann ever need my help for?

  We reach the other side and go down to the bank. Wulf opens his backpack and gets some glass vials out, which he proceeds to fill with water from the Danube. I manage to watch him sullenly for almost three minutes before my curiosity gets the better of me. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing the water for residual spirit energy.” He carefully stows the vials away.

  “You can do that?”

  Wulf snorts. “There’s more to being a spirit seeker than just waving your staff around. You can test how spirit infested the water or air is. It doesn’t work as well for the other elemental areas, but in this case, we’re lucky.”

  I kind of want to know more, but I’m too grossed out by the way he said spirit-infested. Spirits aren’t a pest.

  “If you attended the academy, you’d learn all kinds of stuff about spirits, how they affect the world, how to find their strongholds.” He stops talking when he sees me roll my eyes. “Seriously, it would do you good.”

  “I’m sure I’ll do brilliantly with my non-existing high school diploma.” Seriously, my ass. I can do very well without being humiliated in spirit physics or whatever courses they study. “Besides, I know things about spirits they don’t teach you.”

  Wulf presses his jaws together, takes a deep breath, and says, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The new lecturer for spirit behaviour is supposed to be pretty good.”

  “Too bad they didn’t teach you then.” I walk off, only to hear him snort behind me. Whatever they teach them in spirit behaviour obviously doesn’t change their desire to capture every spirit they encounter.

  We walk back to the other side of the river, keeping a one-metre distance between us. Wulf does his thing with the vials again, and I take a little walk along the shoreline, getting my own groove of the river. Grudgingly, I have to admit that he is right about the excess spirit energy. The water feels like it’s brimming with some sort of power. I hold my hand in the water and let it weave through my fingers.

  At first, it feels completely normal, but then something oily winds itself around my index finger. I study the water, yet it doesn’t look any different. It’s just a distinctive feeling of wrongness. Shivering, I pull out my hand and wipe it on my pants for good measure.

  Wulf is screwing the cap onto his last vial and stows it away. “Let’s head back to the base. Do you know which subway we need to take?”

  The thought of going back into that hole so early doesn’t sit right with me. Besides, I had other plans. “Budapest is a city best explored by walking.”

  “We’re not tourists,” Wulf replies.

  “Iván was right then,” I remember. “They did take the fun out of your class.”

  In response, the muscles in his cheek spasm. He’s either pissed because Iván said something like that or because he doesn’t want to be known as joyless. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do? Analyse those vials all day?” I take a breath to soften my voice. It probably doesn’t help my case to aggravate him. “Please, I haven’t been here in such a long time. We’ll go back. We’ll just do it a bit slower.” Then I play my last card. “If you want, I can tell you which line to take and where to get off. I can’t help you with the analysis anyway, so I could go alone?”

  Wulf seems to consider it, but in the end, he gives in. “Fine, show me the city.”

  We could’ve just walked along the Danube, enjoying the views on either side of the river, including the gorgeous Hungarian Parliament. Instead, I drag Wulf up Castle Hill on the Buda side of the river to stroll through the gardens of Buda Castle. It’s still early spring, so they’re not as impressive as they will be soon. If there are any dryads here, they keep well hidden.

  Walking up the Dísz tér, we reach the famous Matthias Church with its colourful roof and intricate spire, and from there to the one place I remember clear as day from my childhood days in Budapest: Fisherman’s Bastion. Seven turrets of limestone, one for each of the seven chieftains of the
Magyars that founded Hungary in 896, stand tall over Budapest, creating a viewing platform of the Danube valley.

  The wind ruffles through my hair as I lean on the guardrail and take in this beautiful city. We can see the Széchenyi Chain Bridge from up here and the Parliament on the other side, as well as Margaret Island to our left. The city crawls into the valley on the Pest side of the Danube, stretching as far as I can see. On this side, hills like the Gellért Hill to our right with its beautiful limestone caves rise among the houses.

  Once I had my fill of sightseeing, I try to look deeper.

  Childhood memories suck. You can have some very clear images, unmarred by time, and in between, everything’s fuzzy or blurry at best. I remember visiting Fisherman’s Bastion with my mother, hopping on those marble stairs and trying to climb the statues. I also recognise the City Park and Heroes’ Square beyond that. But I have no idea which streets we walked down, and most importantly, where that house is that we were so often invited in.

  Eszti is the name of the woman whose round, soft figure and wrinkles of laughter are etched into my mind. I don’t know her surname or her address. I don’t even know why we had such a close relationship with her other than that I called her Dédi, which is a loving nickname for great-grandma. But then I called Pavel grandpa, and he wasn’t actually related to me. Still, one can hope.

  “So, are you gonna tell me why you so desperately wanted to come to Budapest?” Wulf asks. He’s leaning next to me, resting his elbows on the balustrade.

  “I told you, my mum grew up close to here.” My voice sounds a bit reserved. There are so many emotions in my mind right now, remembering Eszti and her hearty goulash, being back in Budapest, missing my mum.

  Wulf carefully probes a little deeper. “But you also said that it’s just one of your many homes. That you’re not Hungarian yourself. So why Budapest?” Damn, why does he pay so much attention to detail?

  “Part of me is Hungarian,” I stress, not daring to look away from the city into his eyes lest he sees how fragile the front is that I’m putting up against him. “I love this city with all my heart.”

  “It is rather beautiful.”

  I can’t withstand him when he agrees with my sentiment and turn to smile at him. The wind steals a tear from my eye, and I quickly return to the city view. Wulf keeps quiet, so after a while, I tell him. I have to, not because he asked, but because these words need the air and light as much as I do. They need to breathe again after being stuck underground for so long. “My mum and I spent many years here. And I miss her a lot.”

  I can feel his gaze on me like the sun warming my skin. His voice is very quiet when he asks, “What happened to her?”

  “Phew.” That opens up a deep cave of feelings. Somehow, I find the strength to venture inside. “You’ve ever heard of the Spring Cleaning?”

  “I did.” Of course, he did, living in Berlin and all. “It happened during my last year at the academy, just before I was sent to Berlin.”

  Or maybe he wasn’t living there at the time. “Well, I was fifteen. My mum and I had settled in Britzer Garden the year before. It was a great community. We didn’t do any harm. We even took care of the grounds.” My voice breaks a little. “So, if you heard how there was waste lying around and not enough hygiene measures, it’s a lie. We weren’t a homeless camp but Travellers. We respected the spirits, and they respected us.” A little bitterness slips into my voice as I look at him. “Fancy that.”

  There are many different people amongst the Travellers. You’ve probably heard of the Roma, Sinti, or Lovari, and then there’s us, the ones that chose a life amongst the spirits, savouring the gifts nature has provided us with. Sure, we flock to the cities in winter—we’ve got to live, after all—but we spend just as much time travelling through areas of undisturbed wilderness, however rare these places may be. We choose to travel rather than being chased from our homes like so many of our cousins.

  Wulf looks at me with a strange mix of compassion and distaste. I like to imagine that my spirit-loving upbringing is where most of the aversion stems from and not my ethnicity. Not that it makes it much better. “It seems to have worked for you,” he says diplomatically.

  Some people wouldn’t be so kind. According to others, we attract spirits, indulge them. Some even go as far as blaming us directly for spirit attacks, that we somehow directed them. People haven’t really changed that much since the fascist days. But Wulf says nothing like that.

  For that reason alone, I keep talking. “It obviously wasn’t good enough for the government. They ordered the Spring Cleaning.” In front of my mind’s eye, I can see the sirens flashing all around the camp. They had us surrounded. “Flush us out with one big strike.” I bang my hand on the guardrail. “They arrested my mum and sent me off with the Youth Welfare Office.” Even now, the memories make me shiver. “I took their bullshit for four months before I had to get out.”

  “You preferred the streets to a youth home?” he asks, mildly interested.

  I guess it sounds ridiculous to everyone else. “I thought I could go back to living in the wild. But it’s damn hard if you’re alone.” My cheeks hurt from trying to seem unaffected. “I stuck around in Berlin because I thought my mum would eventually come and find me. She hadn’t done anything, so why would they send her to prison? There’s no law against not owning a house. Or not being registered. For a while, I stalked the prisons. I even found a nice officer that looked into the system for me.”

  “And?” Wulf is frowning now, clearly intrigued.

  “And nothing. Not a single entry of her. I thought maybe she gave them a false name, but if she did, I couldn’t trace it. So, I waited and waited. And somehow, eight years passed.” Thinking back, it seems ridiculous how long I’ve held onto that hope.

  Wulf shifts next to me. He’s the one looking out at the city now, giving me a few moments to gather myself. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.” Taking a few deep breaths helps me centre myself. “But when you said you’re going to Budapest, I had to come.” It hurts so much to say the following few words I almost can’t bring myself to do it. “Maybe she just didn’t come back for me.”

  He immediately turns around to protest. “I don’t believe that.”

  It has to be said. Rip the plaster off. “Berlin is big. We could have missed each other. And instead of waiting, she just went back to our travelling ways. I was old enough to take care of myself…” Wulf is shaking his head, which makes me lose my train of thought.

  “She’s your mum. Why would you think she’d abandon you?” He’s visibly aghast.

  I shrug as if that could lift the mountain off my shoulders. “She didn’t take things too seriously. Like, for example, I don’t know who my dad is. I never really cared, but also, I doubt she knows.” My mum lived life to the fullest. She never had a proper boyfriend, but men that came in and out of her life. Or maybe it had been her that came in and out of their lives. “She’s not attached to any place or anyone. And as I said, I was mostly grown.”

  “You were fifteen,” Wulf protests. “That’s hardly grown.”

  I’ve only got a weak smile for him. “Thanks, but she never came. I thought maybe she would return to Budapest instead. We’ve stayed here for so many years, and this is her birthplace, so I’d hoped that I…” Suddenly, all the words fail me. Hope hasn’t served me well these last years. It’s such a meagre lifeline, just enough to keep you going, keep you pushing ahead, but not enough to warm you on a cold winter’s night, to feed you, to lend substantive help to you.

  Fortunately, Wulf knows how to end the sentence for me. “You’d hoped you’d find her here.”

  As I nod, I can feel the tears falling. I’m not strong enough to pretend anymore. “Or maybe a trace. Just something.”

  He looks out at the city, clearly uncomfortable with my stupid breakdown. “So, where do we start?”

  “What?”

  He turns back to me. “Where do we start looking
?”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What do you mean? You’ve got a nymph problem to handle and all this work to do.”

  My arguments make Wulf snort. Somehow, he looks sad. “Rika, I’m gonna help you find her. Or at least look for her.”

  “But why? You don’t even like me. I mean…” Gosh, did I really just say that?

  Once again, he scoffs. “I disagree with your attitude towards spirits. That has nothing to do with how much I like you.” He sighs, then brings the conversation back on track. “You know what happened to my parents. If there was any chance in the world I could see my mother again, I’d take it and run with it.” At that moment, I snatch a rare glimpse of the pain buried deep inside of him. “I’ll help you.”

  He turns his face away, looking back out at the city—or pretending to. I slip a hand around his upper arm and squeeze it lightly. “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  UNFORTUNATELY, WHEN WE get back to the convent, Iván welcomes us with the words, “Grab your staffs. Let’s go. There’s some spirit activity around Óbudai-sziget.”

  “Bloody spirits have the nerve,” József mutters.

  The Óbuda Island is just north of Margaret Island, connected by the same bridge. “So far, the nymph attacks have been far removed from our base, but it looks like they’re drawing closer,” Iván explains as we head to the northern tip.

  I watch them stride along the paths purposefully. Wulf hasn’t even broken a sweat switching into action mode after I dragged him up and down all those hills. This is what he came for. The spirit seekers have asked for his help, so if he can defeat the sylphs cleanly in one go, we’re done. I hope he remembers his promise afterwards and doesn’t book the next ticket home.