Ravening Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  Markus blew a rebellious lock of hair out of his face even as he shifted his weight, trying to gain comfort against the pull of his restraints. “Wolves always blame hoods whenever something goes bad.”

  “In this case, I’m not sure we’re entirely innocent.”

  His hefting sigh took his eyes to the ground and his chin to his chest. “Geri, I have to warn you, I think you’re going native.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” Markus growled, “you’re siding with wolves. Wolves, Geri! The very creatures we’re born to defend against? To keep in line and buffer from humanity?”

  Superiority was hard to cultivate while tied to a kitchen chair, but I did my best. “The only side I’m taking is the truth’s. This pack has somehow managed to stay off our radar for at least forty years, and who knows how long before that. Then, within a few weeks of allowing hoods into their midst, their home is invaded by some Stockholm Syndrome-suffering slayer. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they’d enthralled her.”

  “Slayers can’t be enthralled. It’s impossible.” Markus looked up with eyes brightened by realization. “I read an entry in an old manuscript once, though, that said they’re actually stronger in the day time. Seeing as one threw a massive wolf over her shoulder and ran at warp speed with it, I think we can consider that confirmed. They got in through the tunnels too. Did you know that? Tunnels, I’m quite sure they didn’t know about, seeing as they would have stumbled on to the Pera Pack before now, if they had. Bet that was another thing your boyfriend blabbed.”

  “Tobias?” Raspberry. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I was talking about Caleb.” My cousin’s eyes became vicious slits. “Wait, did you just call a werewolf your boyfriend? Oh my god, you have gone native. You’re in love with a werewolf. Again. Your mother was right; there’s something wrong with you on a very deep level. You’re wiring is all kooky.”

  “Well, you know my mother. She’s always right.” Pulling at my restraints did nothing but frustrate me. Why try, then? If a righteous hood like Markus couldn’t find a way, I didn’t know how a relinquished hood like me stood a chance. “Did you say wiring?”

  “Yeah, wiring,” Markus repeated. “W-I-R-ing. Why, does that surprise you?”

  “Nothing my mother says disparaging me surprises me. Only, I think I know why neither one of us can get through these restraints now.”

  “Yeah, why is that?”

  I cringed as I pulled again, recognizing at last why the hairs on my arms were all standing straight up. “Because it’s insulated, electrified wire.”

  Markus chewed on that a moment. “Well, shit. Isolated wolves, but they still know our weakness. Sons of bitches.”

  “Not exactly an insult for a wolf. More a statement of fact, actually.”

  “You’re not funny, Geri.”

  When the door opened, we both closed our mouths and faced forward, eyes blank. Hood training always assumed the superiority of our kind, but it allowed that certain circumstances might favor temporary capture. Arrogance is a lubricant for the tongue and rusts the blade. Your opponent will never allow you inside his head, but if he feels you are defeated, you’re no longer a threat. Sometimes, letting them believe you’ve been bested leaves them at their worst.

  After the raid, when the pack was in chaos, it became all too easy for them to turn their ire from the Ravens (like we told them) to the “true outsiders” in their midst. As hoods, blame fell upon us like snow on a field. Markus had wanted to fight; he easily could have extracted us from the home. But how many dead wolves would that leave? Even one was too many. Plus, if I had any hope of rescuing both Caleb and Tobias, I was going to need help, even more than Markus could give. At my urging, he stood down. The pack wasted no time in securing us.

  Ayşe’s grim features painted a new mask on her otherwise cheery face. The shewolf entered the tunnel just beyond the kitchen door flanked by two other female wolves whose faces I’d come to know from afar, but whose names I had not yet learned.

  “Serhan was taken.”

  Weird, I thought. Wolves were a patriarchal society. Was it because this pack was also of a Muslim persuasion that women were being sent to interrogate another?

  “Amy?’

  Ayşe’s face flickered. Perhaps she hadn’t expected my concerns to lay with anyone but myself. “Safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Another house. Other side of Istanbul.”

  “Thank you.”

  The shewolf’s eyes widened. “You thank me for this?”

  “You’re protecting my friend. Of course, I’m thanking you.”

  She needed to keep the upper hand, which meant not acknowledging my gratitude. “Why did the Ravens take Serhan?”

  “Because he’s an alpha,” I explained. “A vampire only lives for about five hundred years after he’s changed, but the Ravens have discovered that the blood of other supernaturals lets them keep going past that. The blood of an unmated alpha or beta has that power. That’s why.”

  The wolf didn’t miss the conflict with that statement versus who had been taken. “But Tobias is mated. Why take him?”

  “Yeah, Geri,” Markus piped up. “Tobias is mated. Illuminate us on how you expected that all to work out.”

  I let the emotion drain from my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know either. Maybe they took them when they had a chance, to worry about the details later.”

  Through pinched features, she eyeballed me. “Lie.”

  I should have listened to Tobias and studied some Turkish. I wasn’t sure if in her broken English, she was calling me out, or giving me a demand. “Ayşe, please... If I tell you why they really have him, it would put you in more danger than you are already in.”

  Her shoulders eased. “Do you really love Tobias?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, that.” The shewolf’s finger wagged, and with it, I felt the room lighten. When Ayşe spoke again, it wasn’t with the heavily accented drawl I’d grown accustomed to, but with words flowing like honey. “That is the truth. Do you know why I ask you, Gerwalta Kline? Do you know I trust now that you are telling the truth, and that you are not like other hoods?”

  “Geri?” Markus stared at me, but with his head turned towards the wolves. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on, Markus, is that I now understand why this pack was in hiding,” I said. “They’re an anathema.”

  Ayşe’s face curdled. “I do not care for that term.”

  “And I don’t like to be called relinquished,” I said. “But that’s what I am. I know what it is to be rejected by your own kind, the way a pack whose alpha line is female would be. Serhan was never the alpha, was he?”

  Ayşe shook her head. “My beta. An uppity one at that.”

  Both Ayşe and I winced as Markus’s chair screeched across the floor. Even if it only moved him an inch or two, he was going to give it his darnedest. “So you’re the alpha? And somehow, you speak excellent English to boot.”

  “Of course, I speak excellent English!” Ayşe snapped. “I attended one of the best English-speaking universities in the country. We are not typical werewolves, Mr. Kline. Once the others of our kind rejected us, we were no longer bound by their traditions. Nor did we fall under your jurisdictions.”

  “No, I get that,” I said. “I just finished by BS in Biochemistry.”

  “Really?” Ayşe’s face brightened. “I just got my Master’s in Organic Chem.”

  She delved in the evil arts.

  “If I can interrupt your girl bonding,” Markus interjected. “Your beta is gone, and our... Tobias is gone. Along with our slayer, so we really need to get out of here and rescue them while we still know where they are.”

  “Slayer?” Ayşe rose from her chair, turning a lazy circle. “There are no slayers. They’re all dead.”

  “That’s we I used to think too. But last year, I met one.”

  “Who she dated,” Markus added.r />
  “And who she just broke up with.” I shot him daggers before turning back to Ayşe. “I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry they found you. Believe me, I am. But now that they know about you, now that you’re living right under their noses, they’re not going to leave you alone. We have to deal with them, and if we’re going to have any chance of that happening, we need to get the slayers out as well.”

  Ayşe’s lips pursed. “We know the Ravens only by reputation. We have no idea where there are.”

  Now that Markus had begun to see the path to our liberation, his mouth became a lot more productive. “We do. In fact, I’ve been casing their place for the last week. But what my cousin seems to be forgetting is that the Raven’s compound is like Fort Knox.”

  Ayşe laced her arms over her chest. “Fort Knox?”

  “It’s a saying we have in America,” Markus clarified. “Meaning, it’s highly secured. Armed guards, multiple gates, and all manner of video, infrared surveillance, motion detectors... Not to mention it’s full of vampires and slayers who may or may not be loyal to them.”

  “And this slayer who you ‘dated,’” the alpha used finger quotes, “he is a mole? Someone who will help us from the inside?”

  Awkwardness skewed my features. “Not exactly. In fact, he might have bought into their cult. I’m not sure. But what I do know for sure is that the Ravens are now holding two people who are very dear to me, and there aren’t many people in this world that I care about. One way or another, I’m going to find a way to get Tobias and Caleb back and free the slayers, or die trying.”

  She digested this with steady, thoughtful repose. “Was Tobias assisting you in this quest?”

  “The Ravens killed his mate, his father, and his brother. I was assisting him.”

  “He was right. You are unlike other hoods.” The she-alpha stopped before me, reaching out to pet my braid. “It makes me wonder...”

  In quick words of her foreign tongue, the alpha sent her two backup dancers away, though I was certain not so far that they couldn’t bound right into the room if they were needed. When it was just the three of us, she couched in front of me.

  “Let’s say I did release you,” she said, tapping my knee. “Can you guarantee that you will return my beta to me safely?”

  It felt like I was shaking my head in a vat of molasses, so heavy was the weight of the deed. “I can only promise I’ll do my best to free him.”

  Suspicion spooled out into a string of diminishing width. “The problem remains how do we get into such a fortified compound?”

  We.

  “I’m not worried about getting in. I already know how to do that part. I’m worried about getting out. I did it once, but it was only because a slayer helped me.”

  “And your cousin, you ungrateful, little urchin!” Markus rebuked.

  I ignored his whining. “I was hoping to talk to that slayer tonight. Markus discovered that she takes a trip each evening to one of the parks near the Ravens’ place.”

  “That must be Bebek Park.”

  Markus nodded. “Yeah, that’s the one. It’s—Hey, you said you didn’t know where they were.”

  “I don’t,” Ayşe affirmed, a mischievous smile on her face. “But as I said, rumors. Speculation. My pack has lived concealed in this city for over five hundred years. We know every corner, even if we choose not to visit them. We also know its weaknesses. Istanbul’s weakness is the same as Constantinople’s, as was the same of Byzantium: it is surrounded by water.”

  “And Raven’s compound is right on the strait,” I said, as anticipation began to tingle all around me.

  Ayşe stood, a grin spreading across her face. “They’ll expect us to come to the gates. They’ll never be looking for attack from the sea. Slayers fear water, and they don’t think anyone but a slayer could ever be a threat to them. Once you’re on the inside, we must work quickly.”

  “And the escape?” I asked.

  “The same way we came. There is a huey who brings the products we sell at the Bazaar from Izmir. His boat will be far enough off the coast so as not to be suspicious. When we have everyone ready, a single flare will have him at the vampires’ seawall within sixty seconds. Now, little red, tell me how it is you’re planning to get in?”

  “That’s simple enough,” I said. “Escorted by Vlad through the front door.”

  THIRTY

  Not a single shopkeeper denied Ayşe’s request, and few even questioned it. Traditional wardrobe in my size? Done. Silver bracelets – just to loan out for the night of course? Granted. A bit of these wires and those electrical components, and some of this perfume and a little of that make-up? They would send her a bill when they got around to it, if they ever got around to it.

  Markus held up one of the silver bangles, turning it in his hand and capturing a video on his newly-acquired cell phone.

  Ayşe tightened one of the stiches just below my hip bone and paused. “What are you doing?”

  “If you want me to change this back to what it looks like now after we’re done with it, I’m going to need to remember what it looks like. I’m a hood, not a jeweler. It’s going to be tough enough as it is.”

  The alpha shook her head. “I still think it will give her away.”

  “It won’t,” I assured her. “A hood always has silver on her somewhere. Vlad must know something about hoods, as old as he is. He won’t think twice about it.”

  “But she’s relinquished,” the alpha argued.

  “She’d still wear it for...sentimetal reasons.”

  Even possibly sending me to my death, he finds ways to joke.

  “She got away with having her dagger with her last time, but I’m not risking that again. If something goes south, I want to be able to find her. You hear that, Geri? Something bad happens, I want you to rip off this silver coin—” He held up the fake in his hands. “—and swallow it. If I don’t get you out of this alive, your mom is going to order my execution.”

  Markus set down the phone and placed the bangle in his flat palm. In moments, the circle melted inward, becoming a pool of liquid metal. Into the molten goo, he dropped one of the little doodads the electrician had been able to scrounge up for him, before commanding the silver into the shape of a token styled like one of the reproduction Ottoman coins that decorated harem costumes sold in the Bazaar. A costume, for reasons I still couldn’t comprehend, I was wearing.

  “I feel like a reject from the touring company of Aladdin. Ouch!”

  “Hold still!” Ayşe, crouched at my side, clicked her tongue. “If I don’t get this side sewed properly, you’re as likely to lose your pants as well as your head tonight.”

  “Believe me, Geri, of all the ways to lose your pants, in the process of outrunning vampires is not one.” Markus held up the completed belt, a string of coins and bells that he snapped around my hips before standing back to admire. “You know, if Cody had ever seen you in this outfit, you might have never lost him to that slut.”

  “Her name is Lisa, and she’s not a slut.” The belt rotated on the tips of my fingers as I hid the odd silver coin with the tracking chip embedded within in the back. “And, seriously, you want to bring up Cody right now?”

  “Cody?” Ayşe tied of the stich and took to her feet. “Tobias’s alpha?”

  “The same,” I confirmed.

  “So you were—or possibly are—involved romantically with two werewolves.” The alpha turned to Markus. “Is this normal for hoods where you come from? In this part of the world, they’d rather kiss a goat than shake hands with a wolf.”

  “I don’t think it was his hand she was shaking.”

  “Markus!”

  “What?”

  “Cody and I are not involved. In fact, based on our last encounter, he may hate my goats. I mean, guts.” My arms akimbo, I turned once, giving my two companions the full scope. “So, how do I look?”

  Markus balanced his chin on a balled-up fist. “Like an extra from the touring company of Alad
din.”

  When Timur’s gaze fell on me under Galata Tower, he couldn’t hide the grin.

  “If you’re trying to blend into the native population, you should know that even in Ottoman times, costumes of this style were worn only by whores.” The vampire sidled up to me, his eyes kept on a crowd that seemed to expect me to break out in some kind of performance at any moment. “Not to say it doesn’t suit you.”

  An elderly couple approached, speaking a language I didn’t understand. They seemed to be asking to take a picture with me. I happily obliged. “You’re not surprised to see me.”

  “We have both your boyfriend and a wolf with whom you were curiously found in the throes of passion. Of course, I am not surprised.”

  “We were not in the throes of passion!” No sooner had I snapped than I mended. “When I visited before, Vlad made me an offer. After further consideration, I’d like to discuss that possibility with him.”

  “Is this then a demonstration of that American phrase, dress for the job you want.” He shooed away the two tourists with the camera, who were busily trying to shove a folded bill into my hand. “That offer was made before you escaped and killed two of our staff.”

  Don’t back down. Don’t allow his rejection. “Which should prove all the more why I’d be a treasured addition. Plus, there is the fact that I was a hood. The daughter of a red matron, even.”

  The vampire’s curiosity piqued. “Why would that be useful to us, precisely?”

  “See this mark?” I rolled my neck to the side, showing off my scars. “That was done to me two years ago by one of Xin’s children after he’d been punished with sunlight. My blood completely healed him in a few minutes.”

  Timur stood firm, his feet planted at shoulders’ length and his arms crossed. “Impossible. News of something that miraculous would have reached us.”

  “News never got out. Right after that, I ripped his head off his body. Now do you think you might have a use for me?”

  Gone was the space between us, despite how foolish it must have been to move so quickly with so many tourists looking on. As though Timur himself realized his folly, his eyes scanned the perimeter.