Sundown, International: Duty & the Beast

by Cat Marsters

  She wasn’t kidding. When they encountered a long queue to check out, she glared at Finn and said, “Well? Use that charm of yours to get us to the front. We don’t have time to waste.”

  Indeed, with every second she wasn’t moving, she got more agitated. Why the rush? Finn didn’t like to sit around doing nothing, but he had no idea why Sofie was suddenly racing around at the speed of light.

  Of course, there was heavy traffic in Dresden. And once they hit the autobahn, road work slowed them further. Sofie was nearly vibrating with frustration.

  “Why so tense?” Finn asked, drumming his fingers idly on the wheel.

  “I hate wasting time,” she said tersely.

  “It’s not a waste of time! You’re in a gorgeous car, a design classic, lovely scenery…” He glanced at the industrial landscape surrounding them and amended, “shortly to be lovely scenery… charming companion.” He winked at her. She didn’t seem impressed.

  “Haven’t been to Moravia in a while,” he said, making conversation as the traffic edged forward.

  She said nothing.

  “You spent much time there?”

  “Not much, no.” She was staring out the window, mutilating one fingernail.

  “Whereabouts is your dad from?”

  “Prague.”

  “Oh. And where were you born?”

  “Budapest.”

  “Ah. Nice city, Budapest. Well, twin cities. Buda and Pest. Gotta love a town with a name like Pest, eh? Do you know, there’s a town in England called Ware? ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Ware.’ ‘Yes, where?’ ‘I said, Ware.’” He glanced over at her. She was ignoring him.

  “See, hours of fun,” he said, into the silence.

  She sighed.

  “Don’t suppose you fancy a quick shag,” he said idly, mostly to see her response.

  She turned murderous eyes on him.

  “No, didn’t think so,” Finn said gloomily. He brightened, thinking of a new topic of conversation. “You got a boyfriend?” That might explain why she wasn’t affected by him. Women in love rarely made fools of themselves over him.

  “No.”

  “Fiancé?” He checked her hands and found them bare, but persevered anyway. “Husband?”

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  She turned her head slowly and narrowed her eyes. “No.”

  “Dog?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dog, you know, hairy creatures, very enthusiastic, like wagging their tails.”

  “Like you,” she said dryly.

  Yes, a response! “I suppose so,” he said, grinning. “Yeah, I like that.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, do you have one?”

  “No.”

  “Cat? Goldfish? Collection of dust-bunnies under the bed?”

  Was that the tiniest flicker of a smile? “No,” she said. “I live alone.”

  That figured. “Shame,” Finn said. “Humans aren’t meant to be alone. Pack animals, you are. Need companionship. Partnership. Someone to while away the hours with. Monogamous beasties that you are.”

  He was trying to goad her into questioning his humanity. Of course he wasn’t human, he was Elf through and through, but he had the highest respect for humans. Well, maybe respect wasn’t the right word. But he was hugely fond of them.

  Sofie didn’t take the bait. She just stared right ahead and sighed again. Finn, giving up for now, dialed up a number on his phone.

  “Please don’t use that while driving,” Sofie said.

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s illegal. You could crash.”

  Him crashing would probably please her, if only it didn’t mean they’d be even later. Finn plugged a headset into the phone, waggling his eyebrows at Sofie, and hit the call button.

  “Sundown, Inc.”

  “Magda!”

  At the sound of her cousin’s name, Sofie looked around sharply.

  “Finn,” Magda said warmly. “How’s Prague?”

  “Dunno, only saw it for about twenty minutes, and that was the inside of a morgue,” he said cheerfully.

  “Morgue?”

  “The writing was on a body.” At the memory of it, Finn’s mood went dark. “Which is why I’m calling. Does Masika still do work for you guys?”

  “She certainly does. Why, was she responsible? Because you know we take no responsibility --”

  “No, no, actually the opposite,” Finn said. “The body was of her Childe.”

  There was a pause while Magda digested this. Creating a vampire Childe wasn’t something that could be done on purpose: any vampire sired by a Master could potentially rise as a Childe. The Master-Childe bond was strong, like that between parent and child. Masika would be grieving heavily for the loss of the punky vampire killed by the Elfking.

  “She did it, then. A girl with cancer. Begged to be turned. Mas didn’t know she’d be getting a Childe in the bargain. Christ.”

  “I saw her last night. Masika, I mean.”

  “You did? She said she had business to attend to. I just didn’t think…”

  “Listen, Magda. What killed that vampire was the Elfking. Have you heard of him?”

  Another stunned pause. “Yes, but I didn’t think he was real.”

  “Well, no one did. But I read those symbols, and that’s what killed that vampire. And last I saw, he was chasing after Masika.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I have no idea. But she needs to be warned. She’s one of the oldest Masters around, right? She must have a pretty big flock. Er, collective. Er… what is the name for a group of vampires?”

  “Trouble,” Magda said.

  “Right,” Finn said. “But believe me, nothing compared to the trouble the Elfking can cause.”

  “Is it just vampires he’s after?”

  “I don’t know. Next time I’ll ask him. But remember, last time the Elfking walked the earth, vampires were the biggest menace the Elves faced. They’d drain us soon as look at us.”

  “Drain?”

  “Elf blood, way more potent than human blood,” Finn told her. “All paranormal blood is. But Elves have the least natural defenses. None of the physical strength of your lot, and none of the magical power the Fae have. No defenses at all.”

  The legend of the Elfking came back to him, and he frowned, remembering the detail.

  “So… the Elfking is out to kill the vampires? I’m guessing he doesn’t know about the truce?”

  “I’m guessing he doesn’t know about anything,” Finn said.

  “Will you be bringing him up to speed?”

  Sure, that sounded like the very opposite of fun. “I’ll have a go,” Finn said. “But listen, you need to warn Masika. Tell her to spread the word. God knows where he’ll be going next. Oh, and can you put a call through to Lapland, apprise Santa of the situation?”

  Beside him, Sofie was looking on in stark disbelief.

  “Absolutely. Stay safe, Finn.”

  “Now, where’s the fun in that?” He ended the call and glanced at Sofie, whose eyes were narrowed with sarcasm.

  “Santa,” she said in a dead tone.

  “You were eavesdropping,” he teased.

  “Lapland? Let me guess, you want to warn Santa’s little helpers?”

  “Absolutely. They need to know --”

  “Be serious.”

  “I’m absolutely serious. Santa’s a great friend of the Elves. Took hundreds in during the dark age. Elf dark age, that is.”

  “And the Elf dark age is, of course, different from the human one.”

  “Of course.” He grinned at her. “We had ours thousands of years ago. Still, it was sweet of you to catch up.”

  She scowled at him.

  Chapter Five

  It started raining in the afternoon, and as they went further south a storm blew up, making the journey even slower. Sofie seemed even more agitated by this, and by the time they arrived in the small
provincial town they’d been directed to, it was late in the afternoon and as dark as night. She leapt from the car, raced into the small hospital housing the local morgue, and Finn narrowed his eyes.

  Another body. She hadn’t exactly told him this.

  He hoped to hell it wasn’t Masika. Not that he was overly fond of the bolshy vampire, but he recognized her political importance. Her mate was the oldest and most powerful vampire in the world: if she died, he’d destroy half the universe in vengeance.

  He followed behind Sofie, his heart thudding dully with each step.

  “…most puzzling body I’ve ever examined,” a middle aged man was telling Sofie when he caught up with her in the morgue. “There doesn’t appear to be any obvious cause of death, all his organs are in perfect order --”

  His. Well, thank God for small mercies.

  “…but there are so many anomalies with the blood.”

  “Might it be blood poisoning that killed him?” Sofie asked.

  “No… well. Maybe. Each sample I tested gave a different result. So far I’ve taken seventeen different samples and they all have different blood types.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sofie said.

  “He’s got other people’s blood mixed in with his own,” Finn said, and the coroner looked at him, nodding.

  “My only conclusion is that this is what killed him.”

  “Transfusions gone wrong?” Sofie asked.

  “A lot of transfusions,” Finn said, moving past them to where the body lay on the examining table. “Keep checking the blood, you’ll keep finding different types. How many are there?”

  “Hundreds,” said the coroner.

  “Well, you’ll probably run out of blood, then.”

  But Finn knew bad blood wasn’t what had killed the man lying on the table. If anything, it had been what sustained him.

  The symbols covering every inch of his skin had killed him. He pulled on a pair of gloves and peeled back the corpse’s lips, but of course his fangs had receded. Only very new vampires went about with them on show all the time.

  He met Sofie’s eye, and she said, “What do they say?”

  Finn didn’t want to read the symbols again. The Unlearnt Magic was strong, powerful stuff -- spoken out loud it could very well kill everyone in the room. Maybe in the hospital. He didn’t even know how it had been cast on this vampire. Was it written on him? Or cast by the mind?

  He glanced at the coroner, and spoke to Sofie in Hungarian. “They’re the spell that killed him. Old magic, forgotten by my people thousands of years ago. The last person to know this magic was the Elfking.”

  She shook her head irritably. “How can a spell kill someone? Magic isn’t real.”

  He sighed. “Believe what you want. But this magic killed this vampire. And it will kill a lot more if we don’t find the Elfking and stop him.”

  She made a face, almost flinching, and he could see her trying to fit this information in with her own world view. The Elves and the vampires were nothing more than gangs to her, and the Elfking some sort of mobster.

  How could someone whose mother had grown up in a houseful of werewolves be so dismissive of the paranormal world?

  * * *

  By the time they were done with the coroner, it was nearly dark. Her panic escalating, Sofie demanded of the poor man where they might stay the night, and he gave them the address of his sister, who had a holiday cottage on the edge of town.

  As they left the hospital, the storm-darkened night busy with rain, Finn nudged her and grinned. “Decided you do want to spend the night with me, eh?”

  She gave him a cold look -- or tried to, anyway. The moon would be up soon and then she’d have to concentrate every atom of her being on not changing.

  “It’s too late to start back.”

  “But you told your boss --”

  “I don’t care what I told my boss.” She nearly yanked the door off the Jaguar. “It’s too late to start back now.”

  Finn held up his hands in surrender, but she couldn’t help notice him glancing up at the stormy sky, where the moon had yet to make an appearance.

  The moon, the moon. Damn this stupid investigation for coinciding with the full moon!

  They found the sister’s residence, and despite Finn’s best efforts to engage the woman in friendly conversation, Sofie all but yanked the key from her hands and ran. A few more minutes. If Finn dawdled or they got stuck in traffic, she was undone…

  The moon made an appearance when they were five minutes from the cottage. Fighting the desperate urge to change, Sofie sat on her hands as her nails lengthened to claws and glared out the window so her fangs would be less obvious.

  I am an officer of the law, she told herself. I have control over my body. I do not need to give in to this stupid primal urge every full moon. I am a normal human being.

  There’s no such thing as werewolves!

  She was out of the car before Finn had even finished braking, and swore in seven languages at the front door of the cottage before getting it open. That her hands had turned into paws wasn’t helping matters.

  “Need a hand?” Finn asked, coming up behind her, and she turned and snarled, “No,” before shoving the door open and hurling herself through the darkened living room to the first closed door she came to.

  It was a bedroom, and she slammed the door shut behind herself, kicking off her shoes, tearing off her coat, and seeing the fur come up on her bare arms.

  “Sofie?” Finn knocked on the door behind her. She could smell his concern. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she barked. Her muzzle was growing, speech was getting harder. She wrestled uselessly with the buttons of her blouse.

  “You seem a little… upset. Do you want to talk?”

  “No!” Sofie yelped.

  The handle was turning. Dammit, why didn’t it have a lock? Why hadn’t she chosen the bathroom?

  “I need to be alone,” she tried, but all that came out was a low growl. Panic overtook her, and with it went the last of her control. As Finn opened the door, the beast inside her tore forth, ripping her clothes to shreds as her muscles and bones changed shape.

  The last thing she saw through fuzzy, colorless vision, was Finn’s shocked face, before she bounded away from him and smashed through the window, into the storm.

  * * *

  Finn stared blankly at the madly flapping curtain and shards of jagged glass that had once been the window.

  “Well, that explains a few things,” he said, to no one in particular.

  She was a werewolf! A werewolf who didn’t believe in vampires, Elves or -- rather crucially -- werewolves. Mad, and also hilarious.

  He shook his head and went in search of something to cover the window with. Taping the shower curtain in place kept out most of the rain, although the room was already soaked and freezing cold. He closed the door, the shreds of Sofie’s clothes in his hands, and looked at the ripped bits of fabric in his hands. Only her shoes had survived.

  She must go through a hell of a lot of clothes, he thought, and then he remembered how on edge she’d been all day, how desperate she’d been to get inside before dark, and how upset she’d been by her boss’s insistence that she go home to Prague.

  Well, that plan had gone to cock.

  He frowned, looking at the remains of her clothes, then went looking for a phone directory and a clothing store that might be open late.

  * * *

  Sofie was angry.

  She was angry at her boss for insisting she come down here when she should have been safe at home, curled up in her basket by the fire, in no one’s way. She was angry at this stupid Elfking for creating such inexplicable havoc. She was angry at Finn for being so damned cheerful and attractive, but mostly she was angry with herself for too many reasons to even think about.

  There’s no such thing as werewolves.

  She raced through the town, following the distinctive leather-and-oil smell of the Jaguar back t
o the hospital morgue. Of course, she couldn’t go in like this, but she sniffed around until she found a scent that was familiar --

  -- not Finn’s, ignore Finn’s scent, even if it’s delicious --

  -- that of the dead vampire, a dry dusty smell, and painstakingly traced it through the town, to a small bar that was now closed and covered with police signs. There were so many scents here it was impossible to untangle the vampire’s from all the others, find out where it had been before the bar , and the rain made everything that much harder, but she persisted.

  She sniffed around for hours in the pouring rain, cold and miserable and angry and scared, because she had no idea what she’d do when morning came and she had to face Finn again.

  She slept for an hour or two, curled up in someone’s woodshed, hating this otherness of her nature, until the sky started to lighten and she raised herself on stiff paws to trot dispiritedly back to the cottage where Finn was no doubt marveling at her insanity. Either that or calling someone to take out the wild beast that had broken into the cottage…

  Her blood ran cold. Her fur stood up. Oh God, what if he had? What if this ‘I’m an Elf’ thing was all just him messing around, and he thought she was some wild animal that had broken in?

  On edge now, she loped warily down the lane to the cottage, sniffing the ground for signs of a stranger. Other cars had been down here, but had any turned into the driveway for the cottage? The rain ran like a river down the road. Hell, she couldn’t smell anything. She was soaked up to her belly, the rain still coming down hard and fast and now accompanied by flashes of lightning and the crack of thunder.

  The storm had been blowing around all night, but now it had blown right back on top of her, and with every flash she grew a little more tense.

  The cottage was in sight now, a single light coming from the back of the house. There were no pest control vans outside, no flashing police lights, but Sofie wasn’t taking any chances. She was tensed and ready to fight.

  When a dark figure was illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning, she jumped for him, her wolf instincts surging forth to kill. Mad berserker power overtook her and she growled as she leapt, ripping with teeth and claws until she tasted blood. He didn’t stand a chance.