by Tosca Lee
“How many Progeny are in the city tonight, do you think?” I say.
“Two hundred,” Claudia says.
“Three,” Nino says.
“And they’re all talking about you,” Claudia says.
Luka reaches down and takes my hand. Our heads turn in unison at the sound of running steps. Nino, sprinting for the edge of the roof. I scream, and Luka lets go of me to hurry after him. I follow suit, already afraid of what I’ll see. But before I reach the edge I hear Nino’s whoop from somewhere below. Luka stops on the edge of the roof, shakes his head. A second later, Piotrek blazes past us. Ana pulls off her shoes and lobs them one at a time onto the neighboring roof before following suit.
Claudia catches my arm when we’re the only ones left.
“You met him, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Not just him. Nikola was there, too.”
Her eyes widen.
“Luka and I have to leave, Claudia. And so should you and Piotrek.” I give her a slight smile. “It’s time for that trip to China.”
Shouts from below, calling us.
“They want you to find it, don’t they? What you forgot.”
“If I don’t, they’ll come after us.”
She nods, squinting toward the east, which is just turning the color of denim. “Ana and Nino can go where they like. But Piotrek and I . . . we’re coming with you.”
“Claudia, I can’t find it. Whatever it was is gone.”
“We stay together.”
“It’s not safe!”
“Screw safe! We’re family.”
“You can’t speak for Piotrek.”
“He’ll tell you the same thing himself when we get back.”
And then she’s running off the edge of the building.
Thirty minutes later, Nino has hijacked a Vespa, which he plans to take to some skateboard park.
“It’s his new thing,” Ana says with a laugh before climbing on the back. I’m going to miss her.
“Meet us at the flat before dawn. It’s important,” I say before they speed away.
We leave Claudia and Piotrek to talk in private near a low bridge over the river, where I know she’ll end up diving into the muddy water. A last burn before we pack up and go. But I can’t fathom jumping into even a tributary of the Danube. Not after my conversation earlier tonight.
Instead, I persuade an off-duty cabdriver to drop us off near the funicular. I’ve been silent all this time, Luka worrying his lower lip between his teeth. Now that we’re finally alone, I begin to shiver violently in the rain.
The moment the cab pulls away, I collapse to the wet pavement with a shudder.
“Audra!” Luka slides an arm around my middle.
“He killed her.”
“Who? Killed who?”
“Nikola. He was there tonight. With Tibor. He killed Amerie. He killed my mother!”
Luka pulls me to my feet. But I curl in on myself, sobbing. Finally, he just lifts me into his arms.
I can smell him even in the rain. The scent that is a part of him as much as his eyes. His hands are strong—enough to kill—but gentle as they hold me to his chest. He touches a kiss to my temple as he carries me into the building, down the stairs of Claudia’s flat.
“We have to leave,” I say. “When Claudia and Piotrek get back.”
“All right.”
He doesn’t bother to get a towel, wraps a blanket around me after he’s peeled away my wet clothes, setting the package beside the bed.
His hands know me. His mouth knows me. And, impossibly, his heart knows me, too.
Better than my own.
I lift my face as though he were sun, rain, air. Tell myself there is no future and no past. Nothing but the soft sound of his groan. The ragged hiss of his breath. The whisper, when it comes.
I love you, Audra.
Words are eternal.
The moment, however, is not.
28
* * *
“Someone else just got back,” I say.
We lie, limbs twined, after the final burn of the night. It’s nearly dawn. I felt the first couple return hours ago. I can hear them, talking in the front room.
Luka smells like sweat and skin. I know this scent, though I don’t remember it. I love it—and him. I know that, too, though it’s only been days. But experience is not love.
And I am done with logic.
We talk in the darkness of the purple lamp, and I tell him everything. He’s quiet the entire time.
“I haven’t been afraid since the day you walked into the Food Mart,” he says at last. “Not really. Not until now.”
Claudia’s words ring through my mind:
I want to live.
I straighten against Luka’s chest, lift my head to look at him.
“Then we’ll go until we aren’t afraid,” I say. I roll toward the package on the bed stand, tangled in my obi.
Luka’s fingers light on my spine.
“Audra . . .” he says strangely.
I peer inside the package and then curse. It’s full of cash, no passports.
“What’s this, on your back?”
I crane around, not knowing what he means.
A scream erupts from down the hall. At first I think it’s an obscene laugh, or a screech from the kitchen, maybe the coffeemaker. Until it comes again, horribly human and hysterical.
I shove my arms into Luka’s damp dress shirt and run into the front room after Luka, who is still buttoning his jeans.
Ana is swaying on her feet; Piotrek grabs her by the waist. Claudia, pale and frozen, holds her phone in a shaking hand.
“What’s going on?” Luka says.
Claudia turns the phone toward me.
I cup my hand around hers to steady it. A picture on the screen—a video. A human form, bound and badly beaten. I take in the angle of the shoulders, stymied by the blackened eyes and swelling cheek. But I recognize the aubergine jacket, which I last saw riding away on a Vespa.
Nino.
I turn away. But I can’t unsee it, or stop staring even after it’s gone from sight. A groan from the video. He’s alive, if not conscious. And somehow the sound makes it worse.
“Nino never showed up,” Claudia says faintly, holding the phone out for someone to take it. Luka does and, mouth grim, turns away to replay the video.
“Why? Why? Nino!” Ana cries, splintering my heart.
And I know, without being told, that this is because of me.
I convinced Nikola I needed Luka. Thought as soon as we left we’d all be safe. But the Prince of Budapest never meant to let me go without collateral.
How long have they been watching me? How easy was it for him to see my soft spot for Ana, for whom the moon rises and sets on Nino?
“Which of them did this?” Piotrek demands.
“Nikola,” I say, hoarse.
“Where would they take him? He can’t be that far.”
“Listen.” Luka turns up the volume. Drone of an engine.
I move toward him, force myself to watch the full twenty-two seconds from the beginning, to take in the dark interior, the jostle of the phone recording the video, the metal floor beneath him. “He’s in a semi trailer. He could be anywhere.”
I press my fingers against my eyes. One toss of my mask. A grand-bow exit. Claudia’s wrong—I didn’t give the finger to everyone, just to Nikola.
This is my fault.
I take it all back—the bravado, the insinuation. The accusations, the snark.
I have to find Nikola. To say I’ll do it. I’ll find it and give it to him, say I’m sorry—whatever he wants to hear.
Claudia’s phone rings in Luka’s hand. She stares across the room at it, face stricken.
“Answer it,” I say. She takes it from him as one in a trance. Answers, and then holds it toward me.
“It’s for you,” she whispers.
I snatch it to my ear. “Who is this?”
“Audra.” Tibor.
&
nbsp; I move out of earshot of Ana. “Where’s Nino?” I hiss.
“Is it true what you said?”
“Yes,” I say, not knowing what he’s even referring to, trying to replay the conversation now jumbled in my head. “Isn’t it obvious that he’s playing you? We just got a video of Nino beaten half to death in a truck! If you think for a minute that I’m going to do anything to help you—”
“I didn’t know about your mother. What Nikola said about murdering her . . . Progeny don’t turn on their own.”
“Nikola’s a killer, Tibor. Criminally insane. Where’s Nino?” I demand.
“I don’t know! I just heard that he was taken near the edge of the city.”
“Then tell me where to find Nikola.”
“You don’t just find Nikola! He finds you! Forget Nino. He’s as good as dead.”
I spin away, out of earshot of Ana. “Don’t say that!”
“I’m sending you Jester. It’s the best I can do.”
“I don’t want Jest—”
The call clicks off. I stare at the phone and then throw it across the room.
When I turn, even Piotrek’s face is white.
“We have to go,” I say.
We leave ten minutes later, Luka practically carrying a catatonic Ana to the car.
“Where?” Piotrek says as we leave the old upper city.
Behind darkened glasses, I mentally search the map I saw in the back of the in-flight magazine. The Budapest court, once our next destination, is now last on the list somewhere below Afghanistan. Which leaves Bosnia to the south, Slovenia to the north, and Italy to the far west, given our lack of passports.
“Go north,” Luka says.
No one speaks. Ana sags against the corner of the backseat beside me, doped up on something Claudia gave her. Whatever it is, I wish I had some, too. I can’t stop shifting, my legs too restless, my skull pounding so hard I think I may be sick.
Luka lays his arm around me, but it doesn’t help. I am replaying my conversation with Nikola last night, my unfortunate exit from court. Wishing I could redo it, sneak out the back, that we had all left within the hour. I cannot erase the image of Nino beaten nearly beyond recognition. Between him and Ivan, I wonder if I will ever be free of guilt.
Hell must be like this.
So this is what it has come to, the search that first brought me here: all of us in a crowded Skoda on the run to nowhere.
This time there is no mention of the mafia, no talking around what we are in front of Luka, and Ana is too doped to notice.
“Audra,” Luka murmurs near my ear sometime later. Claudia and Ana are dozing, Piotrek fixed on the road, his gaze miles away. I lift my head, realize belatedly that I must have dozed, too.
“I think I know what goes with your key.”
29
* * *
We stop a couple hours later at a hostel in Graz, Austria, where Piotrek books us a six-bed dorm room under the name Franz Müller.
We promptly pull the shades, put Ana to bed. Sometime after the others have gone to sleep, Luka gets up, rummages through the pack Claudia loaned us, grabs the little pad and pencil off the desk, and gestures me into the bathroom.
Inside, he switches the lightbulb in the fixture with the purple one from Claudia’s flat.
“What are you doing?”
“Take off your shirt,” he says.
“Seriously?”
“Just do it.”
I tug the back of it over my head, and Luka swivels me away from the light.
“Can you see this?” he says. I glance back in the mirror.
“What is that?” There’s a line of six symbols glowing down my spine like some alien street sign. None of them are familiar, but something about the boxiness of the figures is.
“I just noticed these this morning.”
“You know every scar on my body and you’ve never seen these before?”
“It’s not like I’ve seen you under a black light till this week. Didn’t even notice them until this morning. Look. They’re sharp—can’t be that old.”
He starts to copy them onto the pad. I strain the other way in front of the mirror, flipping the images in my mind.
“I think I know what that is,” I whisper and tug his phone from his pocket.
I search “Glagolitic script,” filter for images, and locate a chart of characters.
“Write this down. Z . . . B . . . G.” I search out each one, comparing boxy consonants, archaic vowels. “E . . . A . . . D. The last one’s not on there.”
He makes a face. “Zbgead something? Not Zagreb . . .”
“Are you reading up or down?”
“Down. Up spells something daegbz.”
“The same characters also stand for numbers.” I search through the chart. “Try 9 . . . 2 . . . 4 . . . 6 . . . 1 . . . 5.” I glance up at him. “That mean anything to you?”
“924615 . . .” he says. “924 . . .”
For a minute I think he actually pales in the black light’s purple glow.
“What?”
“I just . . .” He nods toward the key dangling from my neck. “Claudia said that was Shakespeare. I never saw you read Shakespeare.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think,” I murmur. Why do I feel like there’s something he’s not saying?
“Better than you do. Let me read that?”
I hold the key up, and he searches the phrase on the phone.
“Measure for Measure,” he says. I pull my shirt back over my head. But something’s bothering me, scratching at the back of my mind.
I squint at him as he reads: “A story of ‘morality and mercy.’ Sounds eerily familiar,” he mutters, and then hesitates. “It’s set in Vienna.”
“Vienna.”
“Austria. As in a few hours away.”
“We’re in Europe. Everything’s a few hours away. It’s practically New England.”
He frowns.
“I’m joking. Not really.”
“Who uses keys anymore? Old-school banks, maybe. But why would you need a key if you have a code? What if this key’s more about what’s on it than what it does?”
“So it’s telling me where to go, not how to unlock something.”
“Maybe. Meanwhile, if this is what you picked to remind you where it is—”
“I’m an idiot. Because anyone could have figured out the same thing. Seriously, a Google search? That’s my level of encryption?”
He gives a wry smile. “You have to admit, this does sound like your humor. ‘Some rise by sin, some by virtue fall.’ A jab at the Scions and claim to Bathory’s innocence in a single line.”
“Just in case it landed in the wrong pair of hands?” Apparently I’ve had my mouthing-off problem for a while.
“Audra,” he says slowly, “you could potentially find what Nikola’s after.”
I cross my arms around myself, not sure how I feel about that. And suddenly I have a very unwelcome thought.
And if you’re with me, then so could you.
I had thought my reservations about him settled. Literally put to bed.
“We don’t know what the other symbol is,” I say.
“Yet. Maybe Claudia or Piotrek has seen it somewhere.”
I’m quiet.
“Audra . . .” He takes my hand. “I’m with you, whatever you decide. Wherever you go.” He kisses my fingers. But there’s strange conflict in his eyes.
“Just do me a favor,” I say.
“Anything. You know that.”
“If, by some chance, you really are with me for a different reason . . . take the key. You have the code now. Don’t hurt anyone. Just go and do what you have to do and leave us alone.”
He looks as though I’ve struck him. And I hate myself for what I just said, but I can’t help it. Because I can’t stand the thought of one more life on my conscience—all because I chose to trust the one person I really want to believe more than anyone.
“What
does it take to prove myself to you?” he says, his voice breaking. “That I’m not after what everyone else is, even though I’m the most logical person to want it?”
“I don’t know,” I say and wish that I did. He takes me by the shoulders and kisses me—roughly, with rising desperation, fingers encircling my arms. I welcome it, wanting it to expel every fear inside my mind. Instead, tears squeeze out the corners of my eyes.
“I love you, Audra,” he whispers. “Don’t you get it?”
I love you, too.
And that’s what scares me.
I pull away and leave him there, return silently to bed.
A minute later, he steps out of the bathroom and quietly puts the lightbulb away. But I know I’ve hurt him. I know it, and I can’t help it.
And I know, too, that Ana’s not asleep.
30
* * *
I lay in my bunk a long time, trying to make sense of the symbols, the letters or numbers they represent. Pounding against the empty storehouse of my memory for anything to do with Vienna, Shakespeare, sin and virtue, even rearranging the words and then the letters of the cryptic line on the key.
Why did I go to the trouble of having those symbols permanently tattooed on my body? To put them in a place that only a lover—near a black light, no less—would see? Something meant to be revealed under the right circumstances—Claudia’s flat, the dark strobe at court. Something there, if I needed it, its discovery contingent on my return, but invisible under normal conditions.
The pants in the spare closet were mine. Did I also put the black light in that lamp?
A fail-safe. Like the numbers in the tao cross and the key I left Ivan for safekeeping, assuming we’d both be alive.
In the end I decided that the fact Nikola wants it so desperately is reason enough for me to deem it Bad. That we stand a better chance of surviving in some remote district of Mongolia or Siberia—assuming we can finagle a border crossing—than anywhere having to do with the Bathorys.
But what of those we leave behind? Four lives have already been lost. For all I know, Nino’s might already be the fifth. No wonder I erased mine to bury it all.