by Lisa Daniels
Ivelina switched. “Take baby. Please. Protect him. Have money.” She dug into her baggy robes, and dropped dozens of notes onto the floor of the astonished woman. “Take him. Keep him safe. I have to go.”
Without giving the woman any time to protest, Ivelina placed the baby at her feet. Then, with a heart-wrenching sob of anger and bitterness, she went back the way she came. To lure her chasers away.
The look of horror and confusion on the girl's face might have made her laugh at one time. No more laughter existed for Ivelina these days.
There was only darkness.
Chapter One
Rose Talbot didn't expect the knock, or the random baby. That strange, desperate woman who begged and pleaded for her to protect the baby, before dashing off into the night, left many questions lodged in Rose's skull, and more than just a passing sensation of hysteria. It wasn't like Rose knew how to rear a baby, either, and she certainly couldn't produce milk. The only real option would be to give the thing to the authorities. She had scooped it up from the doorstep after a few fruitless attempts to call the woman back. The crazy, matted individual had well and truly vanished into the unknown, and Rose didn't fancy the idea of chasing after her in the dead of night.
She placed the baby on the table, and tried calming herself down with a drink of water and a snack whilst she figured out what the hell she was supposed to do with it. She scooped up the money as well, not bothering to flick through it, preoccupied with bigger, pressing concerns.
I have no idea what the fuck just happened. The woman's frantic, ravaged look sprang to Rose's mind. She looked like the product of someone wasted by years of drug abuse.
Have they just dumped me with some unwanted baby? Is this how people in Bulgaria get rid of their newborns? Instead of throwing one in the trash, just throw it at someone's door for all the Vernon and Petunia Dursleys of the world to take it in?
She stared at the baby for a little while longer, heart tap dancing in trepidation, because damnit, she was a student, not a baby farmer.
Imagine explaining this to her family back home in America. Hey mom, I just want you to know that some crazy Bulgarian lady threw this baby at me and asked me to look after it and left a massive wad of cash on my doorstep.
The cash was nice, of course, though Rose saw it more as blood money than something useful. The last thing you wanted or needed when studying in another country was to draw attention to yourself.
For all Rose knew, the baby was the result of some Mafia hit-and-run, and by carrying the kid, she'd be right in their cross-hairs.
Fuck me, then. She examined the chubby, snuffling baby. He opened his eyes and blinked at her with peculiar-colored irises – one yellow, one blue. She had never seen a human with a yellow eye before, and it looked creepy.
God, what if I have, like, the Devil's child on my doorstep?
The baby made gurgling sounds, and waved his hands toward her. His toothless face opened in a smile.
Astonished, Rose watched as the baby laughed and giggled at her, the sound quietening when she tentatively let him close one chubby fist around her smallest finger. Then, the baby burbled, eyes facing the door. Rose sipped her glass of water, before freezing as a knock sounded.
Instantly alert, she released herself from the baby's grip, quickly grabbed the wad of cash the woman had left and stuffed it into her handbag, which bulged suspiciously from the paper money.
Then, paranoia racing through her, because who knocked at someone's place in the middle of the night, aside from baby-dropping mothers? – she peeked through the curtains.
A man stood at the door, his hands tucked into his pockets, a scowl upon his face.
Oh shit. Ohhhhh holy moly I'm done for.
Rose's instant reaction was to freak out. Shit! He looks like a serial killer. Is he a serial killer? Why is he outside my door? I better not answer. She caught a glimpse of a lean, predatory build to his frame. He wore a black leather jacket, blue jeans and boots, and glowered at her door. Pale eyes shone from his face, under curly dark hair.
Her first thought upon examining him was that he looked a little like one of her favorite characters from a film – Count Ademar. He possessed those same cheekbones, the rounded face, the noble lips and chin with smoky, lidded eyes giving a permanently sleepy expression.
The second thought was that Count Ademar in the film happened to be evil.
Just before Rose backed away and whisked the surprise baby away, the man called in a perfect English accent, “I know you're in there. I can hear you breathing.”
Fuckity fuckity fuck. Shaking violently and holding her breath, Rose said, “What do you want? Because no offense, but you look fucking scary.”
The man's gaze trained upon her at the window. She gave a little yelp and pulled away.
“Okay,” he called, “let's do it this way.” His deep baritone voice sounded exasperated. There was a rustling sound, before he said, “Don't worry about opening the door. I'm Sebastian Gregorovitch. I'm here looking for my cousin, Ivelina Lubanov. I know she's been here. I want to know if she's with you or has spoken to you.”
“What does she look like?” Rose asked, still deeply suspicious, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The I.D. card showed the man's name as Sebastian Gregorovitch.
“Dark-haired, amber eyes. Short. Terrible English accent.”
Despite herself, Rose smiled. “I might have had someone like that at my door.”
“Might have?” Sebastian repeated. “Is she no longer with you?”
When she replied no, he cursed.
“Damn! Did she speak to you, at least?”
“Yes,” Rose said, anxiety tingeing her voice. Her heart beat hammered faster as she wondered if what she was thinking was a bad idea or not. “She also left me something.”
“She did? What is it? A note?”
“Not exactly...” Rose hesitated, before telling the stranger, “she left a baby.”
There was dead, baffled silence. “She what?”
“She left a baby.”
After another brief pause, he asked, “What color eyes does the baby have?”
Finding the question odd, she replied, “Blue and yellow.”
“Can I come in to see for myself?”
“No offense, but I still don't trust you.”
A grunt of irritation came from outside. Rose edged nearer to the door, her limbs shaking. Serial killers would say anything, wouldn't they, to get in. For all she knew, this Sebastian Gregorovitch was the one chasing the woman in the first place.
“Sorry,” he said to her, his voice now grating and harsh, “but I think I need to come in now.”
The door burst open in an explosion of splinters. A snarling monster emerged from the broken pieces, nothing like the man who had been standing outside, and Rose instantly screamed. Her scream was short-lived, however, since the creature bounded towards her and muffled her mouth with a hairy paw.
Dragging her along, the creature moved to examine the gurgling baby, now smiling at the monster who towered before it.
“Sorry,” the creature snarled, though obviously an apology wouldn't cut it at this point. A short, sharp blow sent Rose straight into unconsciousness.
Chapter Two
When Rose woke up, the red velvet drapes of a four-poster bed greeted her. She lay snug between thick red blankets, and she stared at the ceiling through the gap in the bed. A dull ache throbbed at the back of her skull, and the memory came back to her in a flash.
A monster, ripping through her door as if it was made of matchsticks. The weird apology just before the monster then proceeded to knock her out. The monster had been wearing the same clothing as Sebastian Gregorovitch, so Rose had to assume that they were one and the same.
Her eyes drifted to the glass of water lying by the side of the bed. Her throat felt parched, ragged. The surroundings, honestly, appeared grand and gothic, with the sort of architecture one might expect to find in an eighteenth
-century building. A mahogany dressed table sat on one side of a huge wardrobe, with three mirrors framed by sculpted patterns of birds decorating the top.
The circumstances in which she had arrived here, however, were less than ideal.
Doesn't matter how pretty the place is, if I'm a prisoner. Rose expected herself to start panicking and hyperventilating, but she didn't. Something in her mind told her that if someone planned to do creepy, serial killer stuff to her, they wouldn't dump her in a four-poster bed, leave a glass of water, and leave no bindings on her arms or legs.
These observations alone bled the terror out of her system. Even the way that creature had said sorry, before clouting her on the head, added to the conviction that maybe not all was bad.
Just as more questions erupted in her mind, the door leading into the bedroom opened, and the kidnapper in question stepped through onto the green-shaded carpet, carrying a tray of food.
“Hello,” he said, as if there was nothing wrong about the situation at all. Rose glared at him.
“Explanation,” she said. “Now.”
“Sure,” he replied, placing the tray on the empty space next to her. “First things first, I'm a werewolf.”
Rose watched in utter bewilderment, and a shiver of fear as he morphed in front of her, fur growing on his hands, face elongating into a snout, and his odd, silvery eyes shining with an ethereal glow. He gave her a literal wolfish grin, then melted his face back into those handsome human features.
“And, to answer any extra questions you might have – yes, werewolves are real. No, I don't know about any other supernatural creatures out there. No, we don't only shift at full moon, and we're totally cool with silver. And yes, I've kidnapped you to protect our super-secret secret.”
Most of this went over Rose's head. The panic did, however, recede slightly, and she fidgeted under the bedcovers as she scrutinized the calm, almost amiable figure of Sebastian Gregorovitch. He slowly morphed back into human form.
“Can you, like, repeat that again, and slower, so I understand it better?”
Sebastian sighed, but complied.
Bitch better not be sighing. I'm the one taken prisoner here. After someone decided to drop a baby at my doorstep.
Rose contemplated the possibilities of escaping. She also contemplated the fact she had just been inadvertently dumped into a supernatural world, expanding the width of her personal universe. Maybe Sebastian had her here for some initiation rite or something.
“Are you going to turn me into a werewolf because I know your secret?”
Sebastian blinked, momentarily confused. “Well, no. We can't turn humans into werewolves. Sorry. But we're going to make you swear vows of secrecy and the like, under a slight hint of death. Just a slight one, though.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Over the course of the next few hours, Sebastian Gregorovitch patiently explained to her the mechanics of the werewolf world, smiling as if enamored by her.
The biggest overture Rose heard was that her life as a university student was likely to be grinding to a halt after this. Not to mention that her home had a stuffed bag of cash, and she didn't know if Sebastian had taken the keys with her when he decided it would be a good idea to burst into her home and take her prisoner. Not that she needed keys, given that her door now lay on the ground in pieces.
He admitted he scooped up a bunch of her belongings, the bag and some keys before tossing her into his four-wheel drive and chugging along to the Gregorovitch family estate.
Estate. He says estate. Lordy me, now I'm in some fancy castle with a beast. Funny, that.
She breathed a sigh of relief that her most important things were with her. Now that she scoured the room better, she spotted her handbag and some clothes folded upon the dressing table chair.
The information about the werewolves, which Sebastian acted willing to distribute, helped calm down her sense of unease. The nibbling despair at the notion of being captured warred with the intrigue felt from, well, being captured. By a werewolf. After having a random werewolf baby dumped at her feet.
“So, let me get this straight. You have a cousin. Who ran away...”
“Well, we thought she was dead. Turned out to be alive. As things happen.” His nonchalant attitude offset the mood of the whole encounter. To comfort herself, Rose began biting into the food offered – a cheese and pickle sandwich.
The pickle added such a strong, pungent taste, that she needed to gulp down a whole glass of water. Tears sprung to her eyes from the foul texture. “God. That's awful!”
“Have a cookie,” Sebastian replied with a smirk, pointing to the selection of dark cookies on her tray. She gladly complied, before offering him the sandwich, which he accepted.
“Okay,” she said. “Dead cousin who turned out to be alive. Why was she meant to be dead?”
Sebastian gave a small shrug as he chewed through the sandwich, and the motion arrested Rose's attention. There was something graceful yet powerful in his body language, something that spoke of menace and amiability at the same time. “Because the Lubanov werewolves did something bad some years back. They slaughtered a whole village of humans. So the other werewolves punished them. We never found her body but we assumed she was amongst the dead. Well.”
Rose hesitated. “I think I see a slight problem then.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “She assumes that we're going to kill her on sight. When we realized she was still alive a few months ago, we tried tracking her down. There is no more blood-desire for vengeance left in the families. She doesn't know that, however.”
Rose digested the information, mulling it through her brain. Listening to the small-time politics of the werewolves was like listening to local town municipalities debating over whether they should upgrade the dumpsters for easier trash collection or not. Except, these lonely gods seemed to gleefully murder each other, or eat humans, and generally live the kinds of lives more suited to the Dark Ages.
It also disappointed her to hear she couldn't just be converted into a werewolf. Being something more than human appealed to Rose, given that she spent most of her childhood watching fantasy shows, including her favorite of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That kind of show ran rife with vampires, werewolves, demons and inter-dimensional beings. It excited her to have the possibility of supernatural beings actually in this world – to watch the magic it contained unravel before her human eyes.
Her thoughts kept bouncing from her beleaguered mother and father dealing with show quotes, before she developed an interest in travel and exploration – to her current plight.
She was imprisoned. No matter how much Sebastian smiled at her, and brought her food and drink, it still didn't conceal the issue that freedom and blabbing about werewolves might not be allowed on her future plans list.
Sebastian stared at her with those peculiar silver eyes, making her mind flit yet again.
What did he think and see, behind that charming face? Did he dream of running in the forests, howling at the moon, with the wet taste of animal meat exploding in his mouth? Or perhaps werewolves did not dream of anything at all. He might not have a soul, or feel empathy the same way a human did. He might smile and nod at her whilst simultaneously plotting her demise.
If he had really wanted her dead, though, she certainly wouldn't be lying here now.
“Will I be allowed to call my parents? They usually expect a call with me once a week on Skype.”
Sebastian shrugged. “I don't see why not. You can use my phone if you want, but I'm going to be in the room with you when you make the call.”
“Fair enough,” Rose conceded. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure if breaking down her door and knocking her out might have been entirely necessary. If anything, he could have just left her and taken the baby. Instead, he brought her to this estate. She checked the velvet layered curtains, seeking a glimpse of the outside, wondering what sort of views lay before her.
In quiet response, S
ebastian got off the bed and slung open the curtains, greeting Rose to a view of soaring heights, snow-capped mountains with tufts of snow spiraling down from crystallized-foam clouds. Nimbostratus. Abandoning her cookie breakfast completely, Rose heaved herself out of bed, noting she wore the same clothes as last night, and she ventured to the window, bright in interest. The view itself was obscured by thousands of pine trees formed on rocky slabs of mountain. An entrance with four cars parked on gravel revealed a sign with both the Bulgarian and English versions of Gregorovitch Estate. A couple of stray dogs padded over the gravel, rooting for scraps.
A narrow pathway curved out of the estate, leading to a choke-hold of trees. Snow drowned many sections of earth, which reached around ankle high. When Sebastian opened the window, a cold chill swooped into the room, making her cheeks feel like frozen chunks of meat.
“I should probably close that, sorry,” he apologized, shutting the window again. “We're over two thousand meters high. We're on Pirin, near the Todorka peak, and one of the many eyes of the mountain.” He indicated a clear pool of water. “My family helps run tourist designations over the lakes, and for skiing. And we're seated safe and snug in our home – which happens to have a few European wolves and bears roaming around. Actual wolves. Not us.” He gave a crooked smile.
Rose inhaled the sharp, crisp tang of high-altitude air, devoid of pollutants, blasting out her lungs with the cold thrill of it. She smiled at Sebastian, liking the way his eyelashes curved out of his face, longer even than hers, contributing further to his sleepy expression. His was the kind of face that put anyone at ease, and the melodious rise and dip of his baritone as it formed words in that neutral European accent made her want to prompt him to keep talking. Just so she could keep listening, and perhaps fall asleep to that voice.
Most Europeans always held an accent relevant to their native language, simply because they grew up hearing their native speakers practise English, so they learned to copy it in turn. Neutral inflections sounded oddly cute, sometimes with obvious American flavor to words, sometimes even with British or Australian pronunciations.