by Peter Dawes
Still, at a point, the lack of conversation finally bothered me enough to break it. “How has Katerina’s research progressed?” I asked.
Robin straightened in his seat, in recognition of being addressed. “Not as well as she’d hoped,” he said. “Though she remains optimistic. She finally divulged to me that she’s been trying to sort out the purpose behind a spell her former captors were attempting to teach her.”
I perked an eyebrow. “I think that’s the first I am hearing that she had any other purpose with them than to cast locating spells.”
“While that is her niche, she’s a gifted sorceress all-around. The problem is, we stole her back before she could finish learning the incantation they had assigned to her. So, she has a beginning and not an end.”
“And she must determine the end by plotting its path.” I nodded. “Now, I understand why Patrick might have wanted to get to her before we did.”
“It’s an advantage, if we can figure out how to wield it.” Robin shifted enough in his seat to weigh me in his sights. I looked from the window toward him, evaluating him with curiosity while he regarded me with a noticeable amount of skepticism. “After your behavior last night, you’re going to have to forgive me for continuing to wonder about your mental welfare. What happened?”
Pausing to think for a moment, I struggled to recount what had occurred out of the ordinary and shrugged. “I think I was just tired. A little out of sorts because of it.”
“Peter, you looked ready to either tear out a human’s throat or have your way with them.” He paused. Whatever thought that had inspired, he gave it a moment to pass. “Did feeding tonight help?”
“Yes, I think it did. At least, I do not feel like doing either tonight.”
“Thank heavens. For a moment, I suspected you might have been struggling against Flynn.”
The evocation of my darker side woke something within me, like his name had become even more sensitive of a trigger. The moment arrived and faded rapidly, but in the brief space of time I became afflicted, Robin watched and waited for me to make eye contact with him again. Tilting his chin by a fraction of an inch, I saw recognition in his gaze. “He’s been quiet?” Robin asked.
“Yes,” I said, though I spoke the word on automatic.
“Good. Because if he’s up to his old tricks, then I promise he and I will exchange more than words. I do not intend to let my guard down with him. Considering he’s already stabbed me once in the chest.”
I twitched, but then nodded. “Message received,” I said before settling again. Our conversation subsided, though this time I did not fight against the pervasive quiet. Within a few minutes, we arrived at the airport and found another of the older bloodline’s representatives waiting to greet us.
He introduced himself simply as Lawrence, no surname, and escorted us to the jet. We parted company without any additional pleasantries exchanged. “They’re all business, it seems,” Robin noted as we ascended the stairs into the jet. I nodded, not apt to say anything else, and settled near the front, not desiring any further conversation. Robin took a seat across the aisle from me, requesting a Scotch from the stewardess who emerged from the back. While she looked confused over the order, when I asked for the same, she disappeared again to fulfill it.
“I do not think her usual clientele are the drinking type,” I said.
“Yes, I don’t think so either,” Robin said before settling back into silence.
The journey to Vienna took only a few hours. Throughout the duration, I nursed my Scotch and spent the time ruminating on the opulence of my surroundings. While I lacked the ability to classify what type of jet had been commissioned for us, I knew its price tag defied my ability to grasp even more. Golden trim lined the fixtures and adornments had been carved into wooden doors, both aesthetics complimenting the neutral-colored carpet on the floor of the aircraft. By the time we landed, I wondered if all of Evie’s ilk were millionaires.
Our escort in Vienna did nothing to prove otherwise. Dressed in a three-piece suit, he introduced himself and led us through customs without any incident despite my weaponry. Both Robin and I made silent note of his actions, and while I reasoned he had enthralled any of the agents who might have stopped us, Robin later said, “I didn’t notice any point when he stopped to do so.” The power of his influence transcended the supernatural, carrying us to the point where he handed over the keys to a luxury sedan. Not once did we stop for any of the usual formalities.
Robin and I settled inside the vehicle with the directions to a hotel where our accommodations had been arranged, and an envelope containing a fair sum of money. “I almost I prefer these people to the Order,” he quipped while inserting the key into the ignition.
“The whole affair is bordering on obscene,” I said while settling into the passenger seat.
“You aren’t wrong about that.”
Once more, we chose to settle into silence. My gaze remained fixed on the fading lights of the city surrounding us, travel and a time zone teleporting us beyond the hour most people remained awake. Still, I felt a sense of nostalgia wash over me, taking me over a decade into the past, when we had first traversed continents together. “How long do you reckon we have until sunrise?” I asked.
“Three or four hours,” Robin said. “You never do take well to sitting still while on a mission.”
“Not entirely, no.”
A short pause filled the space between my answer and Robin’s response. “It feels different this time, doesn’t it?” He said, prodding. “Too personal and too premeditated.”
“Like we are surrounded by quicksand.”
Robin hummed in agreement, not prying any further when I failed to offer anything else. Checking into the hotel left us with too little time to gamble in the effort to investigate the address where the suspicious activity had occurred. After helping Robin to secure the small, but posh, room for the daytime, I followed another impulse not to sleep and offered to keep watch during the day.
Even though Robin resisted, in the end he disrobed and slipped into bed. I sat in a chair positioned in front of a mahogany desk and dug into my pocket for my mobile phone. Its battery warned me of its imminent death and while I rose to locate the charger, I also noticed a message which had been sent to me earlier. The effort to cycle through screens still a mystery to me, I somehow managed to finally load the text and frowned when I read it.
‘Still waiting for a response from your brother? – Gillies’
“Fuck,” I muttered, suppressing a groan lest it rouse Robin. As I attempted to fashion a response, I finally gave up and placed the phone aside, telling myself I would get around to it later. After another glass of Scotch, I had already forgotten it. Lowering into the chair where I had deigned to spend my morning, I spent most of my time sipping my drink and scrawling words onto a piece of paper, fashioning some poor attempt at poetry from the effort. My pen lowered when drowsiness overcame me and before I knew it, I had my feet propped onto the empty bed where I should have been lying.
When the onslaught of dreams crept across my mind, I startled myself awake. The second time it happened, I succumbed for longer, but mercifully, when I woke, it was an hour shy of sunset and I felt no ill effects from resting. After a shower and a change of clothing, the only thing I could complain about was hunger and my still-pallid appearance. Robin suggested we hunt when he roused, a short time afterward. I chanced agreeing, if simply to keep my thirst at bay.
A tenuous form of relief washed over me when feeding in Robin’s presence failed to inspire the same confusing reaction I had experienced two nights ago. I could not tell if the mouthfuls I imbibed had helped my appearance, but my mind felt sharper and, as we walked to the car we had been given, I felt ready to tackle whatever laid ahead of us. Robin dug in his pockets for the keys and the address we had been given to visit, donning his cap once he had these items secured. “Time to see what they’ve been up to,” he said. “Though I could kill Patrick for the fac
t that he forced me into this city again.”
“At the risk of defending a kidnapping psychopath, I doubt he did so on purpose,” I offered while opening the passenger side door.
“Generous of you to say.”
“Perhaps.” I flashed a small smile. “Simply making sure you are not blaming yourself for this.”
He snorted and opened his door as well. “You’re a few weeks too late for that,” he said while climbing into the vehicle, shutting himself inside once he had settled in his seat. I did likewise, flicking a glance at him when we started to move, in some effort to weigh my brother’s composure. That faint spark of awareness belonging to Flynn woke, but when the assassin remained quiet in my head, I decided against provoking him into full consciousness. My gaze remained fixed on the city, mind attempting to stay focused on our mission.
“Should I ask what it is about Vienna that disturbs you?” I asked, finally willing to let conversation distract me again.
Robin sighed, though I heard no evidence of frustration in his voice. “Ghosts that are better left in the past,” he said. “I’ve lived for a century and not all of those moments have been happy.”
Nodding, I thought about the brief glimpse he had given me into his thoughts months ago, after another virulent brush with my vampire nature had taken place. We had stood in Patrick’s coven while vignettes played their way across Robin’s mind, from the litany of heartbreaks he had endured to the final nail which had driven Sabrina and him apart. “The pianist,” I murmured, when I conjured the image of the blond-haired human again.
His lips curled in a bittersweet smile. “Yes,” he said. “Ilya. Though if it’s the same to you, I’d rather not talk about him right now.”
“I understand.” Mirroring the smile, I released it at the same time he did as if mimicking him and returned to my appraisal of the neighborhood. Within a few minutes, we turned onto a street which bore an eerie level of silence, parking in front of a large house which appeared to have been abandoned decades ago.
Furrowing my brow at it, I opened the car door once Robin had turned off the ignition. Without straying too far from the vehicle, I studied the exterior from the broken shutters in the attic to the missing boards which made up a small porch near its entrance. Whatever had caused the locals to ignore its dilapidated condition, I did not find it odd when I noticed the houses close to it looked almost as abandoned. A frown touched the corners of my mouth. “I do not know if the appearance or the aura of this place bothers me more,” I said.
“Your friend seems to have trustworthy informants then,” Robin quipped, shutting his door and walking around to the trunk. I observed him in my periphery, hearing the back locks disengage when he pressed the button on the key ring and listening to the light creak the trunk produced when he opened it. Robin pulled my sword from the back, choosing not to extract one of his before shutting the car up again. “Is there dark magic around us?”
“Perhaps so. If there is, though, it is something left behind. Whoever was here has long since left.”
“Should we thank the Fates for small mercies?”
“I would not be apt to thank them for anything yet.”
Robin nodded, handing me my sword as he approached and waiting while I strapped it to my hip. We pushed forward nearly at the same time, walking in unison to the stairs leading up to the front door. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on-end, prickles forming on my skin when we ascended a short flight of stairs and avoided the patch of missing boards. I tested the door knob and found it locked. “No, there is definitely something wrong with this place,” I said, crouching to peer into the keyhole.
“I suppose we’ll have to enter to discover what,” Robin replied.
“Yes, we will. Step back and let me walk ahead.”
He did as I instructed, taking a position behind me while I studied the lock. It only took a moment of squinting at it for my telekinetic abilities to pick it and the knob to finally turn when I gave it a twist. Holding onto the door to minimize its creaking, I took my first tenuous step into the house. Robin walked in with me, choosing wisely to keep the door open.
Neither of us spoke. We honored some tacit agreement to wade further into the vestibule without alarming anything that might still be hiding in the shadows. One hand settled on the hilt of my sword while my eyes scanned everything they could take in, not encumbered by the darkness, but distracted by the growing sense of dread mounting in me. I was convinced whatever had been here moved on. That meant whatever it was, it carried an alarming amount of power.
“I hear a pulse,” Robin whispered, at almost the same time I heard the faint rhythm of a heart. Its cadence sped when I turned toward its source, and as we walked into what had been the living room, we wove around dusty pieces of furniture and stopped near a bookcase that had been pulled away from the wall. I drew my sword at last and paced closer, holding the blade aloft. When I reached the human’s hiding place, I swung around to face them and ensured I pointed my weapon directly at them while doing so. What appeared to be a young man peered up at me and if he noticed the sword, he remained unmoved.
“Over here,” I called to Robin, chancing a glance in his direction.
He nodded and jogged over to where I stood. I lowered the sword and moved out of his way, allowing him to crouch in front of the man and examine him more carefully. A set of eyes flicked to him in the darkness, looking at Robin with a skittish form of caution until my brother addressed him in German. After our bystander paused to chance another glance at me, he began a discussion with Robin.
I shuffled closer to the wall, leaning against it and watching the exchange take place. The man nodded at Robin toward the end, prompting the latter to look up at me and drawing my focus over to him. “It would seem Sabrina has been here,” Robin explained. “Joined by a few members of Patrick’s entourage. This fellow believes they were there to keep an eye on her. More like supervisors than mercenaries.”
“I wonder if our dear mother has earned Patrick’s ire,” I said, glancing around the room. The energy ebbed toward me in waves, making it difficult to relax. “Does he know why she was sent here?”
“She retrieved something from the upstairs. He thinks it might have been the old library.”
Nodding, I focused on the stairs and spirited toward them, leaving Robin with our witness. While the wood looked as precarious here as it did other sections of the home, I tread cautiously up to the second floor, peering once over the bannister to the living room only to confirm my brother’s well-being. He remained where I had left him, safe and sound. When I directed my eyes back to the landing in front of me, I ensured I had a patch of secure flooring on which to stand and paused there.
Taking a deep breath, I shut my eyes and placed a hand on the wall nearest to me. Attempting to still everything, from the reflexive breaths I took to the chaos in the back of my mind, I muttered a prayer to the Fates, asking to be shown what had happened here before our arrival. While at first, I saw only darkness, as my fingertips began to tingle, the compulsion to open my eyes again directly followed. Robin had disappeared when I looked over the railing again and the door swung open, as if on cue. Instead of witnessing my brother and I entering the house, I frowned when I laid eyes on her.
My maker strode into the vestibule, looking confident despite the uncertainty of the building’s condition. Behind her followed two other vampires, one male and the other female, who both exuded an aura which left me unsettled. If Sabrina minded them forming the tail of her train, she failed to show it. Instead, she peered around, admiring the residence as if it was an opulent estate.
“Won’t take but a minute, darlings,” she said. “You can wait here while I fetch it.” The redheaded siren strode toward me, mindful of her footing and apathetic toward it at the same time. She took the stairs one at a time with her posture straight, a short skirt swaying with each motion of her legs and carrying the reminder of how many conflicting feelings she could yet evoke wi
thin me. I watched her reach the same landing where I stood and stroll past me.
Releasing my hold on the wall, I followed after her.
We followed a corridor further into the second floor, past the overlook into the living area and nearer to an intersecting hallway. A few shut doors dotted the journey, but Sabrina ignored them, her eyes set ahead. I furrowed my brow, wondering at the slight curl of her lips and becoming more fascinated by whatever she might have been sent to collect. Once we reached the library, she pushed the door opened, not bothered in the slightest by the fact that it had not been fully shut.
Instead, she strode directly for one of the bookcases, pausing at the middle and reaching up for one of the books. As she held it in her hands, she shut her eyes and whispered over it, her words bearing the cadence of a spell and leaving me to marvel at how proficient she had become. The tome flew open at her command, a hole carved out of the pages inside which she reached. When she had extracted the item, she held it up long enough for me to determine she held the shard of a gemstone.
Closing her palm around it, Sabrina strode back for the corridor, leading me back to the living room. Her confident gait did not pause until she stood in front of Patrick’s entourage and handed the shard to the female member. “There you have it, as promised,” Sabrina said.
The other vampire quirked an eyebrow at her, then lifted the shard to study it. Once she had answered whatever question she held to her satisfaction, she passed it to her male counterpart. “How many more remain?” she asked.
“Only a few more. We’ll discuss it in the car.”
While the duo failed to press her, I could not tell if they understood why. Sabrina, on the other hand, lingered in the living room a beat longer than they did, glancing in my direction as if she knew where I would be standing. While I had been attempting to determine why the color of the gem plucked strings of memory, I became distracted by the way her gaze settled near me. Her lips curled again and finally, Sabrina turned to make her departure.