by M. J. O'Shea
“Hey, did you hear something?” My father’s voice was right beneath me.
I opened and closed the bathroom door firmly and mussed up my hair like I’d been sleeping. “Are you guys still up?” I asked. I have to say my tired charade was convincing.
“We’re heading up. Go back to sleep, Charlie.”
I nodded and shuffled back to my room and my cold unused bed. My head was spinning. I had my opportunity. Something I could do. Just go find some werewolf and bring him a piece of paper? I could do that. Problem was, I had to find the lycan council and convince them of the same. I had no idea what time Xan would be back, but plan or not, I had to move. He’d never let me out of the house. I shoved some clothes in a backpack along with my toothbrush, ID, and my passport, just in case. I needed to grab a bus to the city and somehow get a location on the lycan council building. Maybe if I could go find this werewolf and get him to sign their treaty, then my family would take me seriously, then Xan wouldn’t look at me like something he had to protect… then I could feel like more than just scrawny Charlie Fitzgerald who never really did anything.
I crept down the stairs and through the door and without a backward glance, I was free.
IT ALWAYS shocked me that even in the middle of the night, New York wasn’t quiet. I walked through the streets, scanning for all the usual suspects—robbers, muggers, anyone pale with sharp shiny teeth. I didn’t like the city when I was alone. I would’ve felt a hell of a lot safer with a few months of training behind my back. I glanced at the slip of paper in my hand again, then back up to the building in front of me. Noah’s address. I thought I’d been mistaken. The building was okay but nothing special. I knew the Harpers had money, more than we ever had. I’d expected a ritzier address than a plain brick building in the middle of college-student country. In a moment, I sent off a text to Noah to let him know I was there.
Noah came trotting down the stairs not long after that, with a smile. “Hey, Charlie! It’s great that you’re in town.”
“Thanks for taking me,” I told him after a short hug. “Colin and I kind of got into it the last time we talked and, well….” I hated lying to Noah. He’d always been so cool to me. But there was no way in hell I was going to have Colin sticking his nosy ass into my business and most likely calling Mom and Dad.
“It’s fine. I totally get it. So you’re looking into NYU for the fall?”
I nodded. It was bad enough lying over text. I sucked at it in person. Other than the outright lying, the rest of it was way too easy. Either Noah thought I was useless like everybody else, or he trusted people he shouldn’t, because I managed to easily steer the conversation to the lycans and get him to tell me where their council met. I guess the wide-eyed innocent act worked well for me. My utter lack of usable knowledge did lend realism to my performance. Then, all I had to do was wait for him and his boyfriend Zack to take off—they were meeting the others at a bar for the evening—pretend to be sleepy from a long day, and sneak out of his apartment with a note apologizing for tricking him. I didn’t say exactly how I tricked him, of course. They’d figure it out eventually, and hopefully by then I’d be long out of the country.
THE LYCAN council building was far more imposing than Noah and Zack’s cozy apartment. The lycans were an affluent race, had been for centuries, and it showed. After passing through what I assumed was a front of some sort, a boutique selling bags and accessories, I slipped into the elevator and hit the button for the third floor. Noah had told me the council was active at night, as lycans tended to be nocturnal, just like wolves and vampires, for that matter. My nerves built on the short ride up, but I knew what I was going to say… if they’d let me in to speak. I was banking on the fact that the lycans were too desperate by that point to say no to an untried kid. There wasn’t a better chance for me to get in and prove that I wasn’t the helpless baby my family seemed to think I was.
When the elevator door slid open, my insides fluttered, but I stepped resolutely onto the plush navy carpeting. There was a long reception desk with a young man behind it typing into a computer. Everything looked so normal. I didn’t know what to expect, but your typical office reception area wasn’t it.
“U-uh, I’m here to speak to the council,” I muttered.
“Do you have an appointment?”
Of course I’d need an appointment. “No. But I’m here about the Silivasi job.”
The young man, lycan I presumed, stood quickly. “Please have a seat. I’ll be back in a moment.”
When he returned, he beckoned me to follow. “They will see you,” he said. Silivasi’s name had done the trick. I was led down a long quiet corridor flanked by luxurious offices until we reached a conference room. The young lycan cracked the door open and gestured for me to go through.
“This is the boy who inquired about the position,” he said quietly, respectfully.
“Thank you, Aaron. You may go.” A red-haired man, one who looked not much older than Colin, beckoned me closer.
“You’re the one who is going to speak with Silivasi? You’re just a boy.”
“A Fitzgerald, sir. My family has been in the business for a long time.”
“The Fitzgeralds are rogue hunters—warriors. They’d never stoop to being emissaries. You do know what this job entails, yes?”
“I do. Carry a treaty to Andrian Silivasi, the werewolf. Get him to sign the treaty. Bring it back. And yes, my family does hunt. But times have been hard for everyone. The fee for this job was generous, and bounties aren’t as large as they once were.” I was lying my ass off about that part. I had no idea what the payment would be. I honestly hadn’t even given it a moment’s thought.
The lycan nodded his head. “You think you are capable of the task?”
As far as I was concerned, anyone could carry a piece of paper on an airplane and hand it to some grumpy old European werewolf. Well, I was a bit less sure of that last detail, but I nodded anyway. A door in the corner of the room creaked open, and an attendant came in holding a thick file.
“And you have your travel documents?” He motioned to the attendant to bring him the file.
“Yes. I am ready to leave at your convenience.” The sooner the better, before Noah figured out I’d gone and called Colin.
“We can have a car ready to take you to our hanger at Teterboro in minutes.”
I nodded. “My bag is right outside the door.”
THE YOUNG lycan who’d been at the front desk briefed me as we drove toward the airfield. I’d be flown to Paris, then on to Bucharest. From there, a train would take me to a small town close to the woods where Silivasi’s house was purported to be. After that, other than the information file and some operating cash, I was on my own. The lycans wished to be contacted after I spoke with Silivasi and showed him the treaty. They would help me make my way back to the United States with the successfully signed treaty in hand. It should be fairly straightforward.
As soon as I sat down on the plane, my phone buzzed in my pocket. News of my imminent departure had caught up with me.
“Um, hi, Noah.”
“This is Colin.”
And I’d fallen for it.
“What the hell did you do?” he said. “‘Sorry I tricked you’? What does that mean?”
The note. Colin saw the note I’d left for Noah. I took a deep breath and hoped like hell there wasn’t a chance of them getting to the airfield before it was time to take off. “I took the Silivasi job. I’m in a plane about to take off for Paris. You can tell Mom and Dad that I’m fine.”
“You did what? Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
I held my cell away from my ear and let him scream and swear as much as he wanted to. It was too late. There was nothing that Colin, his vampy friends, or any of the rest of my family could do.
“I have to go, Colin. The plane is taxiing. I need to turn off my cell.”
“Charlie! You stop that plane. Get off. I—”
I clicked off my phone. The pl
ane gathered speed slowly until that telltale lightness dawned in the pit of my stomach. We were airborne.
I was really doing it. Really freaking doing it. The plane was in the air, small but exquisitely appointed, and I had the thick file on Silivasi in my hands. My bag was stored and I was a good hundred miles out over the Atlantic. They couldn’t stop me. I allowed myself a small smile.
I could only hope everything would go as planned.
Chapter 8: Alone
I’D NEVER really been anywhere on my own, not farther than the store for some soda or maybe the arcade if I was bored—and usually Xan was with me. But I sure was on my own now, in a foreign country with a pocketful of money I didn’t know how to use, on a train zooming north into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. It was the last place on earth I’d imagined being. There was another name for the land north of Bucharest: Transylvania. I shivered at the thought of heading right into somewhere that legendary for creepiness and tried not to picture barbarians and brooding, bloodthirsty nobles not too unlike the one I was trying to find. Part of me wondered if I’d gotten in over my head. Okay, lots of me wondered if I was so far over my head I’d already drowned, but it was too late. I’d already cost the lycans a lot of money in airplane fuel alone. There was no way I was turning back, tail between my legs, without even trying to talk to Silivasi.
I got off the train at the stop that was detailed in my file. It was cold, snowy, and dark when I left the station, even though it was the middle of the day. The town was small, clearly only there to cater to farmers and the ski resort that was another hour or so up into the mountains. There was a little alpine shop selling camping gear and cold-weather clothes. I awkwardly counted out the money for a sleeping bag and a larger backpack that would carry my stuff more easily. I may have paid twice as much for what the items actually cost, but I felt better when I was out on the street, map in hand, flagging down the bus to the national park near Silivasi’s forest.
MY CONFIDENCE lasted until it got dark. Any day-hikers I’d run into had disappeared hours before, and the slight warmth that daylight had provided had long since seeped out of my bones. I was freezing and scared, whipping my head back and forth and trying to see into the dense trees. I stopped by a large evergreen, glad for the denseness of the foliage and the dry ground beneath it to dig out the map the lycans had provided in their file. There was a black X in the area where they thought Silivasi’s house might be, near the intersection of two trails. I thought I was on one of the trails—I had been earlier in the day. It was hard to tell in the dark. I shivered, pulled my new waterproof jacket closer, and huddled against the tree trunk in a ball.
What have I gotten myself into?
I sat there shivering until daylight, too worried to get out my sleeping bag and go to bed, too cold to stretch out on the ground. I thought I might actually die out there in the dark old forest, too inexperienced to save myself, too idiotic to have let someone know where I was. I’d never been more relieved to see dawn in my entire life.
The morning was slow going. I was stiff and hungry for some real food. I’d bought a few trail bars, but my stomach growled around them. I would have been capable of killing for a decent burger right about then. After consulting my trail map at least five times and comparing it with the map that the lycans gave me, I headed off through the frosty wilderness in what I assumed was the right direction. And I walked, and walked… and walked. I swore I’d passed the same landmarks more than once, but it was getting hard to tell. Everything in the forest looked exactly the same—cold, frozen, and dark even though there was still a few hours of daylight.
By dusk, I was hungrier than I’d been when I woke up, nearly out of food. I knew I must be close to where the lycans had indicated Silivasi’s house on the map, but I couldn’t see anything looming through the trees. This place was supposed to be huge—nearly a castle. How could I be wandering in circles and missing it?
The last fading light took away with it any vestiges of warmth, and I tugged the hood on my coat even closer. I would’ve thought all the hiking would’ve kept me warm. Not even close. Only the high-tech hiking gear that I paid lord-knows-what-for was doing anything to stave off my descent into icicle-hood. Finally, it was too dark to keep going. And too dangerous.
Part of me wanted to press on, find the manor, get in out of the cold. However, the smart part of me, the tiny little fragment that thought I’d still be successful and not a big joke to my family and all Colin’s friends, knew it was dangerous in the forest at night and I needed to keep still instead of wandering and potentially getting my dumb ass killed.
I was in an area where campfires were prohibited. It didn’t matter, since I had no effing idea how to make a campfire anyway. As the darkness grew, so did my sense of unease. There were noises in the forest, crackling branches, owls, and I swear the sound of breathing came from behind, then in front of me, then off to the side. My heart raced. I tried to calm myself down—of course, the idea that it might just be some forest animal didn’t make it better. I sat with my back to a huge tree, holding a branch shaped like a baseball bat. It was the only weapon I could find, and it wasn’t a very good one.
I’m going to die out here.
I could’ve sworn I heard the heartbeats of the animals, the way the forest creaked around me. It felt nothing like Xan’s forest, where there was light and happiness. It was scary and ominous. Its eyes were watching me. I knew it. And then I saw them, real eyes glowing from the darkness between the trees—one pair, two pairs, then they were surrounding me. Golden glowing eyes coming closer, attached to pointed lupine faces, brawny gray shoulders, paws the size of tree stumps.
Wolves. Five or six huge ones. I couldn’t tell if they were wolves or lycans. Didn’t much matter. They looked like they were about to eat me.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. “I just want to talk to Silivasi.” I stood, shaking, more scared than I’d ever been in my life. If they were lycans, they could understand me and might not hurt me. If they were simply hungry wolves, I was done. They drew closer. I gripped my stupid branch and prayed to survive. I stepped forward, and one of them snarled. The loud noise ripped through the eerie quiet of the forest.
“S-sorry. I won’t move.”
They drew closer. Closer. Until I was pinned up against the tree, trembling, sweating, and sure I was about to die. One of them grabbed the branch in my hand with its teeth and tossed it into the snow. They were lycans. No wolf would ever do something that calculated. At that point, I couldn’t decide if that made my predicament better or worse.
“Please, don’t hurt me. I’m not going to do anything to you.”
I thought they may have backed away imperceptibly. The one who’d taken my weapon nodded his snout slightly. Were they going to let me go? Just then, there was a crash from behind. Something big and dark had fallen from the trees. The lycans turned, ready to fight. A branch swung out through the air, scattering the lycans in all directions. I couldn’t see at first, just a dark blur and whimpers from the wolves, but then he came closer and I did see… Xan. He was there, somehow, in some impossible way, and he was trying to save me. But he was making it worse. I had to get him to quit.
“Xan, stop! They’re lycans. They weren’t going to hurt me.”
He whirled around and struck again with another branch. The crack echoed loudly in the night. One of the lycans squealed and limped off into the trees.
“Xan, stop!” I lunged forward and tackled him until I was lying on top of him in the snow.
“Charlie, what the hell? They’ll kill both of us!” He tried to toss me off.
“No, they won’t. I would’ve been dead already if they were going to kill me.”
Xan growled. “Does your stupidity never cease? I swear you’re trying to die.”
“Screw you.” The lycans drew closer. Slowly they shifted, drawing weapons that were tied to their legs. Even naked in the snow, the lycan men were daunting.
“
Get up,” the leader said, his English accented and guttural. He had scars on the sides of his face that made him look harsh, even though he couldn’t have been much older than Xan or I.
“I just want to see Silivasi,” I said quietly. “Can you take me to him?”
“Get up,” he repeated. I rose slowly and pulled Xan up. I held onto his wrist to keep him calm, although I had no doubt that if he really wanted to fight, he could easily shake me off. The leader twitched his head at two of the others, and they rushed forward to tie leather straps around our wrists, tight enough to hurt.
The leader spoke to one of the others in a language I didn’t recognize. The man rushed forward, picked up my pack, and hoisted it onto his shoulders. I could only assume they were hoping there would be something of value in there.
“Is this why you didn’t want me to fight?” Xan gritted out sarcastically. “They sure do seem like they aren’t going to do anything to harm us.”
“You didn’t have to get involved,” I hissed back. My pride was bruised and I hated the way he was speaking to me, the rough angry voice that was nothing like the Xan I knew. The straps on my wrists were yanked.
“Quiet! Both of you. Walk.” We were nudged, none too gently, onto a barely beaten path through the trees.
“I’m working for the lycan council,” I told the leader. He was right in front of us, big muscular back blocking the view of the path ahead. “I’m with your people.”
They yanked my wrist-ties again. Hard.
“Silence! The lycan council has nothing to do with us. We work for Silivasi.”
Lycans working for a werewolf? That was unheard of. I knew there had to be more to the story than I’d imagined. “Are you taking us to him? To Silivasi?”
“Do you not understand silence, human? One more word and I will gag you.”
“N-no. It’s okay. I’ll be quiet.”