by Gaja J. Kos
“It was only after Psoglav had glutted on the bodies and the true carnage began that my father was strong enough to be able to leave the underworld for short periods of time. He had to track the creature first. Psoglav was, after all, part demon. It had been the godly, yet human part that had slowed him down, kept him bound to the earth. However, the demonic abilities allowed him to elude my father to a certain extent. After a few days of shifting between the world of the living and the underground realm, my father caught up to Psoglav as he gorged on a small settlement of people. The flesh kept him occupied, allowing my father to get closer than Psoglav would have wanted...” Veles fell silent, inhaling a long whiff of air before releasing it as Rose gently stroked his shoulder.
She buried her lips in the sleek darkness of the god's hair, her kiss long and gentle on the top of his head. “He defeated Psoglav in that village?” Her words came like soft whispers.
“They were two sides of a coin. Opposite, but with a common base. They shared the same weaknesses...”
Rose held her breath. “What could kill Psoglav could also destr—”
“Yes.”
The god turned to her, his gaze locking on her eyes. “My father turned his power towards Psoglav, and in effect, towards himself. He burned them both.”
Chapter 30
“She's cozying up to her god.” Sebastian grunted as he stood awkwardly by the now-empty examination table.
Nathaniel could tell there was something else lurking behind those pale blue eyes. He realized the Kresnik was hurt, but they weren't friendly enough for him to seriously consider offering solace. There was still a line between the mortals and immortals, especially if you were nothing more than a regular human.
“Frank said we could have the back room at Pri Sojenicah for ourselves. Can you tell them to meet us there in two hours? Or at least tell Rose to call me as soon as possible, in case they can't make it.”
Sebastian gave a reluctant sigh, but he nonetheless nodded in silent agreement.
“Thank you,” Nathaniel managed to say before the Kresnik marched out of his lab. He glimpsed a shot of Sebastian's stout figure filling the doorframe before the immortal disappeared around the corner, the office suddenly feeling more spacious.
Nathaniel slumped back in his chair. In his head, he kept going over and over the notes he had taken, trying to find any additional link he could present to the pack when they met. But even without it, what he had found so far put them in a better position than they had been before. Not that it was particularly difficult to do so, since they had been almost without any leads. Maybe, just maybe, Veles and Rose had some luck. Maybe they would bring that one odd piece of information to the table that would join everything together in a logical whole. Or maybe he was the one carrying that odd piece. To Belobog he prayed one of those scenarios came true.
Rose breathed in the scent of Veles's skin as the weight of his body pressed her onto the cool sheets of the four-poster bed. The high noon sun caught in his hair. Her fingers entwined in the shining deep black color. She felt the gentle brush of fang when he took her lips, causing her to moan as her whole body shivered with pleasure. The god laughed into her mouth, leaning into her to give her a full grasp of just how much her response delighted him. She needed the feel of skin, the warmth radiating from his body. But she didn't long after it only for the oblivion from reality that it offered. An inexplicable sensation of safety wrapped around her as they entwined their bodies, and the soft, yet vibrant trickle of power surged between them with every brush of their skin.
The experience of touching the souls wasn't as shocking as the first time she had done it, and she was even more at ease with the sensations that accompanied it since she had connected with one completely on her own. However, there was a subtle difference between the two experiences. With Veles's link, she felt more “other” inside the body, like an observer, whereas touching the soul on her own made them almost meld together, causing them to relive the final moments as a symbiotic whole.
She wrapped one of her legs around Veles's waist, holding him against her body. She could feel the smile spreading on his lips, his fangs catching on the delicate flesh as she brought him into a deep kiss.
“It's so nice to see you two are having fun while the world is going to shit.”
A violent pulse of energy took Rose by surprise when Veles snarled at the intruding voice. The inhuman speed of his reactions reminded her anew of just how powerful, how godly the man beside her truly was. He spun off her body, instinctively shielding her behind his back. Even though she couldn't see the expression on the god's face, she knew it must have been anything but pleasant.
“I will have your hands for this,” he hissed. “You don't seem to need them for knocking anyway.”
Rose would have smiled at the remark if it hadn't been for the lethal tone of his voice; the coldness of it revealed he had every intention to live up to the words if his patience was pushed even an inch farther. However, all Sebastian did as he stood in the doorway eying the two of them on the bed was shrug.
“You might want to push the torture further down the schedule. You're both wanted at Pri Sojenicah in less than two hours. My hands will wait for you, lord.”
Rose placed her arms on Veles's shoulders, pressing her body tightly against the nude flesh of his back. The god had undoubtedly reached the limit of his patience now, if he hadn't before, and after all that had happened, she didn't want to deal with a potentially deadly escalation of events between her partner and her protector on top of everything else.
“Thank you, Sebastian,” she managed to utter before she watched her friend walk away for the second time in one day.
Sebastian wasn't present at the meeting, not that she expected him to be. Still, that didn't mean she couldn't silently hope for her protector to have a change of heart and cease with the hostilities towards Veles. The god, on the other hand, wasn't even remotely bothered by the Kresnik's absence. He greeted the werewolves and Nathaniel in good spirits and seemed to ooze the comfort he felt in their presence, especially when it came to the company of the twins. It helped lighten Rose's mood, but it couldn't make her stop worrying about Sebastian. Even if she didn't agree with the Kresnik completely, she understood the concern towards his ward; but his actions were working against her, not for her. Not to mention he hadn't asked, not even once, how she was dealing with all these changes...
A warm grip around her waist drew her away from the murky thoughts, grounding her anew. The familiar scent of Pri Sojenicah filled her senses. Frank's rumbling voice came from the outside, not overly satisfied with some of the patrons, it seemed. Mark and Evelin huddled together on the wooden bench, clearly not so careful about concealing their relationship as they were before, even if every member of the pack knew about, or at least suspected, their involvement for quite a long time. The twins took the chairs to their right, while Tim and Zarja sat around the corner of the table on the left. Nathaniel was occupying the chair that faced the whole company, two vacant seats by his side.
Silence fell when Rose and Veles finally joined the table after they were done with the greetings, and all eyes turned to Nathaniel; he was the one who had called the meeting, which in pack-terms meant he should be the one to speak first. Veles reached for Rose's hand under the table, their fingers entwining just before Nathaniel began.
“You were right, Rose. There are at least two variations of the toxin. The toxin was present in the WV's system, but there was nothing visual to indicate it. The puncture mark showed only blood and the rest of the body appeared ordinary if you didn't know what to look for.”
“No traces of the green liquid around the wound like the rest of them had?” Rose asked.
“No. Nothing. But it was, or should I say is, present within the body.” Nathaniel paused. “It didn't change once the flesh was dead, so we can rule out the idea that the toxin transformed once the werewolves were slaughtered.”
“But the base was th
e same for both?” Veles asked, a flicker in the olive green of his eyes.
Nathaniel nodded. “From what I could gather and, well, speculate, there is one primary toxin that exists before it's injected into the victims. That's why the base is the same in both cases. However, once it touches the flesh, it either turns into the stale one we encountered first, or the one that carries that essence of liveliness, as Rose had put it.”
“That makes sense,” Rose breathed, leaning with her right elbow on the table as she turned sideways to face Nathaniel. “But it doesn't change immediately. It feels out the body first, to see if it's suitable.”
All eyes shifted to her; Rose realized she hadn't yet told the pack about the souls, not the ones Veles had shown her, and not those she had found on her own. She glanced sideways at the god who discreetly but firmly nodded in return. She released a long breath and finally told the werewolves everything that had happened to her, leaving no more secrets stored inside her to act as a burden and making her tiptoe about any delicate information she might have had and wished to share with the pack.
“That's how I know it takes some time for the toxin to decide whether to turn stale or not,” she added after seeing none of the weres had any intention of commenting on her story just yet. She used the silence that followed her confession to think further on the subject; something had been picking at the back of her brain the whole time she spoke of her recent experiences. And somehow, the random pieces began to flow together, slowly organizing themselves into something bigger.
“We already discussed that the confused souls are probably an attack on your realm.” She turned to Veles, catching his gaze with her eyes. “But I think it's still only a side effect. An intended one, but a side effect nonetheless. The toxin is supposed to turn into a living thing inside the body. It's supposed to entwine itself with the flesh...and remove the soul that inhabits it. I felt it, its urge to develop into something living and fulfill what it was designed for.”
“Nadia said the vetalas must have entered the body immediately after death for it to show no signs of decomposition,” Nathaniel offered, peering around Veles, who sat between him and Rose.
She nodded, her eyebrows knitted together in thought. “The toxin allows the demon to slip into the flesh the very second the soul departs from it and damages the soul before it has the chance to cross into the underworld. But when a body is incompatible with the toxin, which probably means it wouldn't serve well if a vetala tried to squat inside it, the venom not only destroys the victim but confines the soul somewhere inside this realm at the same time.”
“Of course,” Veles said, his voice lethally sharp, “if the vetala-toxin combination doesn't work on a particular body, the victim would die anyway, leaving the soul perfectly intact, as if with any other death, even a violent one. They had to engineer something in order to cover their tracks...and to make use of an otherwise failed experiment.”
The silence was heavier now, filled with the rising power of The Dark Ones. The wolves had been quietly connecting among themselves with each spoken word that had filled them with hatred, filled them with a wish to taste the flesh and blood of everybody standing behind these attacks.
Mark shifted in his seat. “What about the vetalas? Why would they stay inside the bodies we had slaughtered?”
“Vetalas enjoy death, but are not keen on experiencing it themselves.” Veles sighed, slight annoyance showing on his face. “If the toxin is as powerful as we presume, it is possible it binds them to the bodies they inhabit.”
“But wouldn't that be a shitty move to make?” Jürgen growled. “If you supplied enough corpses, you could have a never ending army with the vetalas shifting from one carcass to the next...”
“True,” the god admitted, “but the vetalas are unpredictable. Binding them to a specific body could be the key to controlling them.”
“So the demons are, what, captives?” Jens joined in, an expression of distaste pulling his lips in a slightly downward curved line.
“They are. But it's a punishment well deserved.”
The werewolves didn't have nearly enough knowledge of the vetalas to pass judgment, but no one disagreed with the god. They belonged to the race of demons, which meant corruption by default. The vetalas were, in a way, the lesser spirits of the supernatural world, but they clearly had no qualms about participating in a slaughter. The vetalas had willingly gone into battle. No toxin could have forced them to inhabit the bodies, so nobody was exactly planning to lose sleep over them being imprisoned and, as such, sentenced to death.
“How does the toxin kill those who are...unsuitable for it?” Evelin spoke quietly as if her words were meant for Rose's ears only.
Rose wanted to lower her eyes but fought the impulse and kept her gaze fixed firmly on the dark-haired werewolf's delicate features. Even if she didn't know the depths of it, she would be a fool not to see the care in Evelin's eyes when it came to the White werewolves. And she would be a fool to think this question didn't relate to those they had found in the Czech Republic.
“They died because the souls weren't simply separated from the bodies, like with those who became WV, where they had to be careful not to fracture the corporeal form...” Rose fell silent, feeling the weight of Evelin's emerald green eyes. “The werewolves that weren't compatible with the toxin... The souls were ripped from their flesh.”
Chapter 31
Veles cocked his head to the side. “You haven't told me that.”
A wave of silence washed over the pack with Nathaniel sitting perfectly still behind Veles's back. However, they tried giving them the illusion of privacy by minding their own business. Quietly.
Rose bit her lip. “I didn't realize it until Evelin asked me...”
As lousy as the answer sounded, it was the truth. Rose had been aware of the peculiar sensation she had experienced to some extent, but she hadn't truly thought about the manner of death in such detail before, hadn't considered that the very last second of dying carried more weight than all the various sensations the body had experienced before that exact moment. In a way, she had simply thought of it as death by toxin, the lack of knowing what to search for when touching the souls causing her to not pay enough attention to the actual cause of death.
“Let's step outside for a moment,” the god suggested, already slipping out of his seat and towards the door.
Rose grabbed a cigarette, lighting it on her way out. Frank wouldn't give her a hard time for smoking indoors despite the annoying prohibition that had been enforced on all public establishments, especially not since she was only crossing the bar for the few seconds it took her to get outside. Veles held the door for her in a gentlemanly manner, waiting for her to catch up.
They walked a short distance away from the babbling patrons, keeping just out of the werewolves' hearing range, which wasn't particularly hard, since Pri Sojenicah was nearly bursting with the numerous voices of enjoyment after a long day, and mixed with the well-picked music, courtesy of Frank.
She stood facing the god, the subtle olive embers of his gaze searching her face with something close to admiration. She dragged on her cigarette, still not certain how to answer the questions that she knew would undoubtedly follow. However, he remained silent, only that peculiar gaze still lingering on her features.
She exhaled the smoke that had filled her lungs, cherishing the relaxing effect of it before she crushed the cigarette underneath the sole of her boot. She observed the god's prominent cheekbones, wanting to brush her fingers down the sharp line, but found herself speaking instead.
“Evelin's question triggered something in my memory. It brought back the sensation I felt at the very last second of the souls' memories. That final moment was identical with every one of them. I guess I thought at first that's simply how death felt like, but when Evelin asked me, I remembered that first soul you showed me, the one that had become one of the vetalas...”
“It felt different to you?” There was an uncertai
nty in his voice, causing her to step closer.
The warm breeze that still spoke of summer despite the rapidly approaching climate of fall ruffled his hair, bringing a strand across his sharp cheekbones. His gaze never faltered from her face, something godly radiating from him in the way he ignored the triviality of a noncompliant strand of hair.
She ran her hand down the side of his arm and locked her fingers gently around the god's wrist. “It didn't for you?”
He didn't reply, didn't need to. She read the solemn no from the darkness of his eyes; however, she wasn't certain of the consequences it brought.
“How is it possible for us to experience it so differently?”
Something softened in the god's gaze, that peculiar feel of silent admiration creeping back into his eyes, keeping the darkness at bay. He raised his hand, gently pressing his fingers to the side of her cheek.
A soft smile, lined with something that could have been respect, tugged at the corners of his lips. “It appears we are two sides of the same coin.”
“Like Psoglav?” Rose gasped, the tales of the cannibalistic chimera echoing in her mind.
“No.” The god laughed, and the sound was warm, comforting. She could almost feel the rumble of his chest acting in unison with the entrancing sound. “You won't have to change your diet to human flesh.”
He pulled her in, both hands now resting on her cheeks. The smooth feel of his lips touched hers, and he parted them to feel her taste on his tongue. Their powers rushed through them, playfully entwining as they held on to the kiss.
His olive embers danced wildly when he pulled away, and she could feel the gold filaments in her eyes shining with the same sensation, their energies calling to each other. He took deep breaths, gradually calming the flames until he regained his ability to speak.