Black Werewolves: Books 1–4

by Gaja J. Kos

  “The were must have been infected,” Mark concluded, and they all knew he wasn't referring to the one who lay partially in front of them.

  Were-diseases were rare, but they had occurred before and were even successfully cured; still, this seemed different, the green oozing fluid reminded Rose of poison more than anything else. She knew how the odor of disease was normally composed; this only smelled vile. No organic undertones.

  The toxin is something you must discover on your own. The Gamayun's words echoed in Rose's thoughts, bringing her imagination to life. A suspicion roused in her that maybe the toxin the mythological creature referred to wasn't as symbolic as her first impression led her to believe.

  “I'll have it tested,” Tim offered, interrupting Rose's grim train of thoughts, for which she was silently grateful.

  Tim's human brother worked at the M.E.'s office and had proven to be a useful resource on more occasions than they could count. The extent of their supernatural abilities had a vast range, but a range that could only take them so far, nonetheless. Relying on scientific methods and discoveries had become just as relevant in the past few decades as their own augmented senses and animalistic intuition. They were lucky to have Nathaniel; otherwise, finding someone who was open enough to the supernatural community within the scientific currents could have been a strenuous effort.

  Not to mention that The Keepers weren't too keen on the idea of humans possessing knowledge of the supernatural world. It bugged them enough that vampires were widely known, but even they couldn't fight against the long vamp-entwined history of the Slavs; so they, although reluctantly, dropped the issue.

  Frank brought Tim a clean plastic bag since the Gamayun had transported the head without any protection but her wings. Tim lifted the severed body part without trying to conceal the grimace of distaste that had set on his face, wrapping it neatly in the plastic.

  “I'll get back to you as soon as Nathanial runs his tests,” he said as a goodbye, then stalked into the shadows in the parking lot that extended on the northern side of Pri Sojenicah. The deep rumble of a motorbike announced he was already on his way to meet his brother.

  Jens and Jürgen opted for another beer while Evelin excused herself to return to her family in hopes of finding at least some answers to the staggering pile of questions their bizarre meeting brought up. Mark and Rose huddled closer together, a pack impulse that tended to calm them when the tension became too substantial to simply rub it off.

  Nightfall had set completely, and Ljubljana became much quieter. Even the remote noises from the city center that still tended to occupy their senses toned down quite noticeably. Pri Sojenicah became a solitary isle in the middle of Slovenia's capital, not so much as even an odd passerby in sight.

  Rose lit another cigarette, the sound of her Zippo accompanied by a resilient flame that illuminated Mark’s features for a brief moment before they melted once again with the thick curtain of the August night.

  “I have to go to her,” she said, her voice resolute. “She's as vicious as we come. She shouldn't miss something like this. And more importantly–we'll need her set of skills.”

  He gave her a solemn nod. She had never given him any reason to doubt her actions. But that didn't mean they were past the point of giving–or needing–support from one another. He placed his hand gently on Rose's, not needing to verbalize his thought.

  Take care.

  She waved her goodbyes to the remaining three weres and hugged Frank on her way out. As she moved through the now placid streets, the air that played freely with her strawberry blonde strands, when she finally released them from the ponytail, seemed much lighter, carrying only the most resilient remnant fragrances that had survived the dispersing day. She dropped the barrier between the world and her senses, letting her surroundings surge through her in their entirety.

  Customarily, she followed the streets across the old town to the southeast side of Ljubljana, passing the sullied windows of the now-closed bar that used to cater to the queer supernatural community. Pushing away old memories of the aromatic cups of coffee she had drunk there in the past few years, she nudged herself forward, taking two more turns before stopping in front of an aged, eggshell-white building.

  Three flights of stairs up, she found herself knocking on a door she once had the key to. A tall feminine figure appeared in the ray of light that spilled from the apartment, leaning against the doorframe, her messy shoulder length chocolate-brown hair spread against the white wood of the entrance.

  “Rose.”

  “Zarja.” Rose took a step forward as Zarja's movements revealed her intent to let her inside her apartment. It still smelled just as she remembered it, lavender with the faintest hint of roses. It reminds me of you, Zarja used to whisper, her words sending vibrations down Rose's skin. Rose wondered if the faint scent still reminded Zarja of her, and if it did, what memories it now carried.

  Zarja threw herself in the antique burgundy armchair that was placed by the living room window overlooking the inner courtyard and flicked her hand so Rose would do the same.

  Too passive, Rose thought as she observed the woman who was known among their kind as one of the most lethal beings. She trusted her gut, biting down the bitter recollections that made her skin want to recoil, and leaned over to gently place her hand on Zarja's knee.

  The were didn't rebuff, didn't even flinch at the affection she might have perceived as unwanted ever since their fight, the one that had proved to be the deciding one in their relationship. Warmth flowed through Rose as she began to relax after her gesture hadn’t been perceived as intrusive. “What's wrong?” Zarja's grip tightened on her hand. Sadness protruded from her deep brown eyes, which were sprinkled with the most delicately-spaced specks of dark, yet vivid, gold.

  “The Double-Tailed pack. More than two-thirds are missing.” Rose felt her stomach clench. Zarja's cousin was the second-in-command of the Double-Tails.

  “Libor?” She barely uttered the question.

  “Missing with the rest of them.” Rose had known about the uprisings in the Czech were community. Power battles not only between Moravia, Silesia, and Bohemia, but within their respected territories as well. However, a pack as solid as the Double-Tails never had any trouble overthrowing even the strongest of threats. As the name implied, they were Bohemia's ruling weres, considered almost a dynasty among the supernatural society.

  “I found out this morning,” Zarja answered Rose's question that hadn’t needed to be phrased. “Apparently, it happened the night before. They were drawn to the outskirts of their territory by a pack of frenzied weres who decided to play dirty. They were slaughtering innocents as they made their way towards the Double-Tails' stronghold. The pack felt compelled to set out, stop the butchery before it progressed even further. Only the alpha and the necessary few guards remained behind. And those are the ones accounted for.”

  Zarja shuffled her hair with her free hand, the other still firmly gripping Rose's. Their relationship may have fallen apart, but they could and would still anchor each other during difficult times. Zarja's fingers traced her skin with a particular kind of warmth. Gratitude, she thought. Allowing the affection to flow freely through their bodies for a while longer, Zarja managed to compose herself.

  “It's been shitty beyond reason lately, but I'm glad to have you here,” she admitted, squeezing Rose’s hand for a final time. “However, you must have had a particular cause to come here in the first place, didn't you?”

  No judgment, only a query resonated in her words. Rose ran her hands through her hair, bringing her curls over her shoulders, and leaned back into the velvet comfort the antique armchair offered, pulling up her legs so she could cross them in front of her. She eased Zarja into the whole Gamayun ordeal, being careful not to leave out even the slightest detail.

  “I knew I had to come to you straight away. This isn't something you should be excluded from for any kind of reason. We need the whole team,” Rose said. “I actual
ly thought Jens and Jürgen might have had something to do with your absence tonight, since they do know basically everything...”

  Rose had spent quite a few nights at the twins' apartment when things had gotten rough between her and Zarja, which meant drinking a beer or two with the Double J team and quite a lot of babble that followed. But she now knew her personal past had nothing to do with Zarja's nonattendance and felt slightly ashamed she even considered it in the first place.

  “I couldn't. Not with Libor missing.” A confession of weakness, but Rose couldn't perceive it as such. She had long stopped believing in the dated rules of how a were should act. Admitting vulnerability showed more strength than hiding behind a facade. “But I'm with you. There is no way in hell the Black weres are going into this any other way than united.”

  Zarja flashed a vicious smile, holding a promise of battle and–more importantly–a promise of victory. “What's the first step?” Words filled with anticipation and intrigue, but also a deep gratefulness.

  Like Rose, Zarja was inclined to occupy herself with taxing assignments when she needed to get her mind off something. Those assignments were the ones that made her the most lethal, and lethal was something they desperately needed.

  Chapter 4

  Nathaniel was sitting behind his desk, his white coat and short blond hair reflecting the artificial light inside the space, when Tim walked into the lab, the smell of disinfectant prickling at his were senses.

  “You've got to clean this place up.” He wrinkled his nose, making a wide grin spread across his older brother's face.

  Nathaniel stood up from behind his desk, taking a few steps towards Tim. “You're so messed up.”

  They both laughed, pulling each other into an embrace composed of strong pats over their shoulders, which served as a hello.

  “Good to see you.” Tim took a seat next to a counter filled with bottled chemicals and neatly cleaned epaulets. He glared at the concoctions, shaking his head. “This place is going to be the death of me.” With one final grimace, he swirled around in his chair, the mixture of smells dispersing in the small currents of wind caused by the circular motion.

  “I guess that bag is a surprise for me.” Nathaniel nodded at the plastic swinging from Tim's hands.

  He handed the disturbing package over. “You're going to love this.”

  A tight expression of distaste took hold of Nathanial's features as he looked inside, sending his brother a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look. Tim shrugged his shoulders in answer. A snap of latex gloves being pulled on cut through the silence, and in the next moment, the severed head lay carefully in the middle of an empty workstation. Nathaniel's broad shoulders pressed against the seams of his lab coat as he examined the body part from different angles.

  Tim thought about the irony that his human brother had a much more muscular build, yet his DNA was the one carrying the prominent werewolf gene.

  “The green liquid...?” Nathaniel asked, bringing Tim back to the reality at hand.

  He dragged his chair closer to the workstation. “Nothing known–to us, at least.”

  They all thought of an infection at first; however, since the pus-like liquid remained untouched on the edges of the mark while the rest of the head continued to decompose at a regular rate, the theory simply didn't add up.

  “I'll need to test this.” A statement followed by immediate action. Nathaniel gently brushed a cotton swab against the peeled-away layer of skin and dripped a few drops of something that burned fiercely through Tim's nostrils on it. Putting the swab away in a plastic tube that was placed in a pulled-out compartment of a machine Tim had no idea how to name properly, Nathaniel took a new one from the box, repeating the process on a different part of the mark.

  Tim silently watched his brother work. He always admired Nathaniel's skills and his devotion to his profession. Nathaniel may have worked for the M.E.'s office, but he didn't stop at the monthly paycheck; he was a brilliant scientist who devoted every minute he could get off work to research and experiment with whatever tickled his mind at the time. Needless to say, the awareness of the supernatural community and phenomena had broadened his field quite extensively.

  Finishing with the swabs, he opened a drawer and procured an assortment of small scrapers. Carefully, he peeled a few flakes of skin from the open wound within the mark, advancing to the flaring green layer, and finalizing with a small amount of relatively untouched skin near the woman's ear. With all three samples placed securely on glass trays, he moved towards his microscope, sliding them under the magnifying glass with smooth, fluid movements.

  “Odd,” he muttered under his breath, repeating the process two more times.

  Tim noticed his brother had spent a significant amount of time examining the final tray. Aside from the occasional mutter from behind the microscope, neither said a word. Tim stood perfectly still at a little distance behind Nathaniel, picking up his emotional responses. Agitation. But he knew his brother could draw motivation from that kind of emotion.

  A piercing mechanical beep broke both of the brothers' concentration. Nathanial reluctantly stalked away towards the machine that had finished analyzing the cotton swabs, sending one final glance at his microscope before recollecting himself and shifting his focus completely to the newly instated task. Removing the plastic tubes, he moved over to his computer, studying the results that showed up on his screen.

  An overwhelming amount of coded names and percentages that seemed crushingly chaotic to Tim held Nathaniel's attention for a further few minutes. Finally, he turned around, facing his brother.

  “All of this is fucked up, bro.”

  It was close to midnight when Rose finally left Zarja's apartment. An intimate warmth spread through her as she thought about the few hours they had spent together; it was the first time since their breakup that being in each other's company hadn't resulted in a full-blown argument.

  Zarja had always been more aggressive by nature, something Rose had been undeniably drawn to, but ever since their relationship had turned into an indisputable dead end, that aggressiveness had done more harm than good, leaving Rose with more than just a bitter taste in her mouth.

  She took her time walking the nearly deserted night streets with a deep sense of content that came from the realization that the pack would stand united and– without any colossal illusions about winning back what was lost–that maybe at least something in her relationship with Zarja took a turn for the better.

  Just a little over half an hour later, she found herself sitting in front of her computer screen, booking a flight to New York that would leave in two days, which gave her just enough time to meet with the pack before her departure and exchange any new information that the weres might have dug up. She would have to wait until she got back from the States to toss in anything of importance herself, but whatever intel she could gather beforehand would act as a more than welcome help when it came to her own inquiry.

  The Gamayun may have been elusive when it came to facts, but the pack would never plunge into a mission without doing extensive research beforehand. If the mythological creature of knowledge wasn't prepared to share what was supposedly her main trade, they would do the digging themselves.

  Once the transaction for her plane ticket went through, Rose dragged her body–the pressure of the whole day had begun to show–to the bathroom and let the scalding hot water cascade into her French bathtub. She eased herself out of her shorts and top threw them into the wash basket, and secured her hair tightly with a jaw clip before slipping out of her underwear.

  Slowly, she submerged her naked form almost to the lower tips of her earlobes, cherishing the burning caress of water on her skin. She closed her eyes, already flirting with the sweet sensation of sleep that would overcome her the instant her head touched the pillow.

  Rose wasn't particularly surprised to see Sebastian standing on her doorstep the next morning. She greeted him in boxer shorts and a faded graphic tee, her strawberry b
londe curls wildly disheveled. He’d seen her in worse shape; he’d live.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  He had caught her in the middle of breakfast, just as she was making a fresh pot. She let Sebastian pass with a gesture that pointed towards the dining room, although he wasn't in need of any guidance. She ran her hands through the relentless mass of her hair, waking herself up slightly further.

  “Don't spill the damn thing.” Sebastian's rich voice boomed throughout her apartment as she wavered from the kitchen, placing the coffee pot in front of her protector, but not without a scowl. “You'll get wrinkles if you keep that up.” A cheeky laugh, followed by the alluring smell of freshly poured coffee.

  “Like I give a fuck. You'll see me drowned in wrinkles whether I scowl or not.” Kresniki were one of the rare immortals within the supernatural community, and just because Sebastian looked her age, it didn't mean he would continue to do so throughout the years.

  “Your mother is already expecting you,” he said between one sip of coffee and another. The morning light ricocheted off his short sun-kissed hair, making Rose painfully aware of just how very human she looked compared to him.

  She finally allowed herself a sip of coffee. “I didn't expect anything else.”

  Her mother had one of the most profoundly developed were senses when it came to Rose, or maybe they were just brilliant motherly instincts. Luckily, at times, it was a two-way channel, cutting down any unnecessary conversations. She was, however, surprised as usual that her protector moved with such speed.

  It was incomprehensible to her how one was able to keep track of so many people spread throughout the world. Granted, there weren't many of her lineage left, but despite that, it was still a lot of ground to cover for one single Kresnik.

  Sebastian gazed at his ward, studying her features; she imagined she seemed tired and tense, her mind clearly dealing with everything she had learned the previous night in its background. She never knew how to camouflage her feelings, not from him, at least.