The Progeny

by Tosca Lee

  Luka gives me a weird look as the lady returns my “documents” and tells us to come back at one o’clock.

  We have enough time to buy a change of clothes, backpacks, sandwiches. We check in to a nearby motel long enough to take turns in the shower and change. The spray of hot water in that chipped and scuff-marked bathroom is the most luxurious thing I can remember. And I will never take brushing my teeth for granted again. I even have time for a half-hour nap, the experience at the passport agency having drained the last of my reserves. When I wake, Luka’s gotten me some ice for my lip, which is still a little swollen but already beginning to heal.

  By the time we return at one, I wonder if there’ll be police waiting to detain me. Instead, I’m handed a spanking new passport.

  Less than an hour later, we’re back on the L to O’Hare. And for the first time since we left Lafayette, Luka, in a new black sweater, face half-obscured by a hat, looks nervous.

  “Keep your head down and phone on,” he says as we arrive, and then strides out of the train ahead of me.

  I make my way to ticketing, through security, and catch a glimpse of him only once before reaching the gate. I sequester myself near the window and keep an eye out. Ten minutes before boarding I start to panic.

  Despite my suggestion that he should have taken his shot at freedom while he had it, and the knowledge—if not the memory—that I have taken this trip before, I am afraid. Not of abandonment, or even of being alone. But at the prospect that the one tie I have to who I was has disappeared.

  It occurs to me in that moment that, regardless of what she was to others, a part of me hates my faceless mother. Despises her for not going into hiding or doing whatever she had to in order to keep me. For leaving me with the inheritance of a cause that superseded her daughter, took my mother from me . . . and may, at any moment, end my life as well. Yes, I’m thinking only of myself, it’s selfish and I don’t care.

  A sound chimes from behind me and I realize it’s the phone ringing in my backpack.

  “I’m standing across the concourse, near the McDonald’s,” Luka says. I glance up, just under the brim of my cap, and find him facing the other direction, phone held to his ear.

  “I see you,” I say, feeling instantly, stupidly better.

  A pause, the sense that he might say more.

  “See you in Amsterdam,” he says at last.

  I nod, though I know he can’t see me, and line up to board.

  * * *

  Midway through the flight I head to the bathroom and spot him near the back of the darkened cabin, hat pulled low on his head. Asleep like the other passengers around him.

  I emerge from the lavatory to an empty galley, having suggested to the two attendants on duty that it’s time for drink refills in coach. Meanwhile, I’ve started the slow climb out of my skin again. I’m just pouring myself an unsteady cup of coffee with a full inch of cream when the curtain parts.

  I glance over my shoulder.

  Luka says nothing as he steps behind me. His fingers cover mine on the cup. He takes the coffeepot from my other hand. His breath is warm on the curl of my ear as he pours, steam rising in the too-dry air. I close my eyes, the cup weightless in my hand. A bead of sweat slips down my sternum.

  A passenger comes through the curtain and Luka moves away. But electric verve has fired my veins, and the moment he moves I gulp the coffee, burning my tongue.

  I’m aware of him as I return to my seat. Glance back once. Know he sees me.

  I tell myself I can’t sleep after that. Try to watch a movie—

  And I am gone.

  I wake just before landing, a crimp in my neck. Rub my eyes and grab the napkin off my drink tray.

  The guy next to me has apparently finished the entire Steven James novel he started before takeoff. There’s an in-flight magazine on the tray in front of me, open to the crossword in the back, a pen resting in the fold. But what catches my eye is not the magazine itself, but the smattering of Ts scattered across the page.

  No, not Ts, with their thin middles and thicker ends. Tao crosses.

  That, and a drawing of some kind of dog—a German shepherd, maybe—inside a circle.

  I slide the magazine closer. What the heck?

  “Excuse me,” I say to the man beside me, offering him the pen. “Is this yours?”

  “Yes, thank you.” He slips it in his pocket. I wait several minutes and then tear out the page, wad it up, and drop it in the melted ice of my drink just in time to hand it to the flight attendant upon landing.

  On the other side of customs, I make my way through Amsterdam’s airy Schiphol airport, past duty-free stores, open eateries, the casino. It’s early morning, the terminal bustling with the promise of a new day. But I’m not taking in the neat little sandwiches in the café cases, the tulips with their easy-carry boxes, the stores selling postcards of the famous Red-Light District. I’m looking for the hat obscuring that honey-dark hair, coffee on the brain.

  My phone rings, and I glance around, full panorama.

  “Hi,” he says.

  A half hour into the next flight, I make my way back to the empty galley. This time he’s waiting for me. He pulls me toward the window, arms winding around my waist, mouth already on mine.

  * * *

  By the time we lay over in Munich, pass through the chaos that is Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport, and land in the seaport of Trieste, I am exhausted, strangely elated, and thoroughly distracted.

  Outside the Trieste airport, which seems downright tiny compared to the ant farms of Amsterdam and Rome, Luka catches me by the hand.

  “Quickly,” he says, hailing a cab ahead of the line. I slide across the seat as Luka leans forward to say something to the driver. All I catch is “autobus” and what I assume to be something like “hurry.” He passes the man a fifty-dollar bill, and the car takes off with a screech.

  Luka glances back. I follow his gaze to the broad terminal doors in time to see someone rush through a clot of passengers, knocking the luggage from several hands.

  Luka talks to the driver, who nods abruptly several times, and eventually—after some lengthier explanation from Luka—gives in to a chuckle.

  When Luka sits back and winds his fingers around mine, I say, “What was that all about?”

  “I was watching you through the airport. Or rather, watching someone watch you.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, and I wonder if he slept on the last flight at all. “I might be wrong. I can’t tell.”

  “Why was the driver laughing?”

  “I told him we were running away together, and that I’d pay him double to help us get away from your husband.”

  “You speak Italian,” I say belatedly, realizing that he’s back on his home continent—something he doesn’t look particularly pleased about at the moment.

  “A little,” he says.

  “More than I do.”

  “You know what they say,” he says.

  “No, what?”

  “If you speak three languages, you’re trilingual. Two, you’re bilingual. One . . . you’re American.”

  “Sad but true.”

  We ride in silence, looking out at Trieste’s crowded streets filled with eateries, shops, banks, and offices with modern signs set in limestone buildings that look no less than hundreds of years old. We catch glimpses of the Adriatic. In another life, I’d want to walk, go down to the beach, take in the medieval charm of this place, along with some pizza.

  For all I know, I’ve done that.

  But more than that, I am aware of the gravity of him, of the air, heavy between us, filled with images of the flight before. The way he pulled back and touched my mouth where it was swollen yesterday, before kissing me again more slowly as my fingers tangled in his hair. This, from the man once charged with killing me. I am haunted, heady, at odds with the surreal fabric that has become my life.

  We arrive at the bus station and Luka pays the driver—this time in euros.

  “
Where’d you get the euros?” I say, berating myself for not having thought of exchanging money.

  “Left over from when we were here,” he says, getting out and reaching back for me.

  And just like that I am revisited by the echo of a past I no longer own.

  At the station he buys two tickets for the Autotrans bus just beginning to board, and we hurry down the stairs of the terminal. I climb on first and slide into one side of a bus only half full, next to the window. To my surprise, Luka sits beside me.

  We say little as we travel east along the coast. When I start to droop against him, Luka draws me into his shoulder. The steady heart rate I enjoyed for the last leg of our trip spikes and never quite settles. Now that we’re here, the danger of my life before seems far more immediate and real.

  “Luka . . .” I whisper.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you know anything about my father?”

  He tilts his head toward me. “Only that he was like you. Your mother was said to keep to her own kind.”

  “Rolan basically called her a whore.”

  “If that’s true, it’s news to me,” Luka says, and somehow I’m genuinely happy to hear that. Not that I’m into slut shaming, but all this time I was picturing some Sarah Connor Terminator fanatic sleeping with whoever would put her up or help her out.

  “Take anything you hear about your mother with—how do you say it—”

  “Grave offense?”

  “A grain of salt,” he says wryly. “There was a lot said about her, but from what I’ve heard, she moved in a very tight circle.”

  “Are any of them still alive?”

  “I don’t know. I was only given information pertaining to you.” I practically hear him grimace as he says it. “Another Progeny could get on this bus right now and I wouldn’t even know it, let alone anything about them.”

  “Did you know Rolan before this?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve never known another hunter, other than my grandfather, who’s dead. Makes it impossible to implicate anyone but ourselves if we’re caught. Even if one of us tried to talk, what would we say? We’d be written off as conspiracy theorists at best, delusional murderers at worst.” He hesitates. “Audra . . .”

  “What?”

  “You can’t tell anyone like you what I am. Was. If they guess, for even a minute, they may or may not kill me, but one thing is sure: They won’t trust you. And you need them right now.”

  We look out at the blue waters of the sea practically below us. The view is gorgeous, and I think if I’m going to die without family, at least I’ll do it in a beautiful place.

  Assuming, of course, that Luka, with his heady gaze, doesn’t do the job himself.

  His story’s been perfect so far. And I’m tired of triple- and quadruple-thinking everything. He’s telling either a very intricate lie, or the simple truth.

  The problem is I don’t know which. And right now I need him.

  15

  * * *

  Café Abbazia is a hole in the wall, boasting no more than eight tables in its dim interior. I take a seat near the back and apologetically explain that I don’t speak Croatian when a man I assume to be the owner comes to greet me. Even with the door propped open to let in the fall air and Luka watching the café from somewhere across the street, I feel both cornered and exposed in this cavelike place.

  That’s not all I feel. There’s a strange buzz here—not from the speaker over the bar, which is silent, or from the floor, which vibrates with the jackhammer at work in the street outside . . . but from something in the air.

  “Vino?” the man says, which still isn’t English, but is at least something I understand.

  “Coffee,” I say, though I really want a glass of wine—something Luka warned me against. “Alcohol jacks your persuasion,” he said before he exited the bus ahead of me. “Better to be nervous and amped in case you need it.”

  No worries there. My heart is drumming so hard I actually felt dizzy the minute I stepped inside.

  My gaze lingers on a couple seated near the front window, their hands twined atop the table. They’re all European chic—he, in skinny black pants and a fedora, she with her thin sweater dress, sunglasses perched on her head. There’s an older man sitting at a table against the wall, a paper folded in front of him. He taps away at a phone, glasses low across his nose. They’re the only guests other than myself.

  I glance at my phone. Three minutes past. I try not to bounce my knee or drum my fingers on the table. I’d shoved my hat in my backpack after I sat down, so I settle for obsessively smoothing the hair over my scrubby patch until the owner comes back with an espresso-size cup of coffee. He sets it in front of me with a small glass of water. I drink the water right away, shot-style, my mouth drier than I thought possible.

  The fact is, I’m not just nervous to meet this person I don’t remember. I’m desperate to lay eyes on someone else like me. To hear, firsthand, what it means to be what I am. To get some answers.

  Just as I start to doctor up the coffee, I find myself glancing at the open door as though a horn has just sounded from that direction. But there was no horn. A couple of teenagers pass by the café door, one laughing and jabbing the other in the shoulder. A dog barks somewhere outside. And then I feel the café itself fade into my periphery and fall away. There is only the door and the street beyond.

  An instant later a lanky form fills the frame, blocking out the afternoon light. He steps into the café and unwinds a scarf from his neck, the end of which was draped over his head as though he has come in not from the September sun but from the desert. He’s scraggly from the hair on his head to his beard, wearing work pants and a long-sleeved shirt, messenger bag slung across his chest. I am hyperaware of him, as though he exists more than the rest of the patrons combined.

  He walks directly to my table as the owner greets him with a barely perceptible nod. Taking me by the arm, he says, “Come, hurry.” And I know by his voice this is Ivan. Behind him, the couple rise from their seats, move toward us in his wake. They are no longer holding hands.

  I grab my backpack as Ivan leads me past a curtain to the rear of the restaurant, through the kitchen and a grungy back door. Despite my nerves, I note, if slightly hysterically, that I’ve done this trick before.

  We move down the crooked alley behind the café. It’s narrow and who knows how old, open windows overhead gossip length apart, the occasional clothesline bridging the gap between them. I glance back to see that the woman has put on her sunglasses, that the pair follow wordlessly as we turn past a grotto chapel. We stop at a wooden door, a crest of some kind carved into the stone above it. Ivan pulls a key from his pocket, glances past us as he unlocks and then holds the door open just enough for the couple to usher me inside.

  The minute he locks the door behind him, the dizziness is back, and this time I know it isn’t my overloaded adrenal glands but them. Ivan in particular. I feel his presence like a wave—not the kind of surge that knocks you over but the eddy that buoys and surrounds.

  I put out my arm to steady myself, and the guy in the fedora catches me by the shoulder. We are standing in a side room lit through a lattice by what looks like construction work lights. Some kind of restoration has been halted on the other side, and I realize as I take in a stack of hymnals that this is an annex to the chapel.

  The woman removes her glasses and studies me coolly as Ivan moves to peer through the lattice. Seeming satisfied that we are alone, he finally turns to me.

  “Audra. It’s really you,” he says, as though he had not fully believed it until now. He is not in his forties, as I first thought, but younger, grizzled less by age than by weather or choice. He is not striking, though who knows what a haircut and shave might do for him. Nor is he tall, though the instant he stepped into the doorway of the café, I would have sworn he was over six feet. And while I find some of this weirdly disappointing, he has an energy that makes me dizzy, as though I had had that glass of wine.<
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  The woman is silent, looks me up and down. She’s like one of those pouty models from a magazine. The kind of person you instantly don’t like on meeting, but stare at anyway just because you’re jealous.

  “Returned from the dead,” Ivan whispers, eyeing me as though I were some kind of living apparition. His brows lift. “You changed your hair.”

  “Yeah,” I say. It’s weird feeling like your own impostor. Before I can reach up to touch the scrubby patch behind my ear, he tugs me into a tight embrace.

  “A daring move, Audra. From the bravest woman I know,” he murmurs in my ear.

  “Thanks,” I say, stupidly.

  He holds me away to look at me, and then lets go with a shake of his head. “I never knew what happened after you disappeared.”

  “Well, I guess you know now,” I say with a levity I don’t really feel.

  “I mean the first time.”

  I hesitate. “The first time?”

  “Six months ago. It was March. We were in Zagreb. One night, you simply vanished. Gone, the clumsy American who left her traces everywhere.” He lifts his palms. “You became a ghost. And then, just weeks ago, I received an alert that you had died in the U.S.” He’s looking right at me, and it’s awkward feeling like you’re being asked a question no one expects an answer to. Though it doesn’t seem he’s waiting for an apology, either.

  I glance at the woman, who has crossed her arms.

  “Ah, forgive me,” Ivan says. “This is Claudia, and her sibling, Piotrek.”

  “It is an honor,” Piotrek says, in an accent different from Ivan’s as he sweeps in to buss me on both cheeks. Claudia, who has not moved, says something to him in another language and he ignores her. When he moves away, his eyes sparkle with the kind of look that isn’t shy about liking what he sees.

  “I felt you when I walked into the café,” I say, and then look at Ivan. “And you, before I even saw you.”

  “Naturally,” Claudia says. Her accent, I note, is different from her brother’s.

  “My parents were both of the blood,” Ivan says. “Unlike Claudia and Piotrek, whose mothers were, but fathers were not. The legacy is passed through the women.” He lays his hand over his chest. “But I have become something of a hermit. The charisma weakens when the Utod are seen by so few, as it does with age. But you, you always could tell.” Is that admiration in his eyes?