Though her aim had been true, Crane just winced and stepped back rather than dissolving into dust. He pulled the stake from his chest, slick with blood from a recent meal, and threw it to the ground. “Idiot girl,” he said as the wound healed. “I’m not a normal pijavica anymore. You can’t fight me.”
“Girl? I’m older than your grandmother,” Ora snarled.
She tried to lunge away when he attacked again, but he was stronger and faster. He had been going easy on her during their earlier brawl, and she had barely managed to keep her feet then. Her power had always been her mind, not her body.
Using one arm and his body weight to pin her against the bridge wall again, Crane’s other hand came to rest against her neck. He moved casually, easily—he knew he had nothing to fear from Ora.
Of all the ways for her to die after more than two centuries of survival, she had never predicted being beheaded on a beautiful bridge only blocks away from her home.
She spat in his face, but he just smiled. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent, enjoying her fear. She slipped a bare leg between his and then twisted, trying to knock him off-balance. He stumbled, and she lurched toward freedom, but then he leaned into her with even more weight. With the water soaking his clothing and the natural chill of the pijavice, it was as though a statue were crushing her. She tried everything she knew, twisting and snapping and clawing the way she’d escaped a hundred men seeking to end her life, but this time, she was stuck. Her sedentary life had made her soft, weak, and now she would die.
He opened his mouth, jaw unhinging to gape and display his row of needle-sharp teeth. He met her eyes, and then lowered his mouth toward her bared neck. She might survive having her throat torn out, but she was sure he would finish her off before she could heal. He was playing with her, drawing out the inevitable.
There was a crack in the night air, a loud sound that echoed across the stream. A gunshot.
Blood sprayed from the nicked vein in Crane’s neck. It was warm against her face, too warm to have been in the pijavica’s veins for long. He dropped her, stumbling sideways, but the wound was already closing.
Ora turned to face her rescuer, half-expecting to see Domek. It was her driver, Hackett. Of course. Domek would have just as soon shot her as Crane.
Pale and wide-eyed, Hackett looked between the smoking gun in his hand and Crane’s healed wound.
“Run!” Ora ordered.
Hackett, recovering quickly, shot Crane again, this time in the chest. At such close range, the bullet made Crane rock backward with the force, but the wound healed just as easily.
Hissing, Crane lunged at Hackett, using one hand to grab the gun and push it away while the other reached for Hackett’s neck. Then, Crane jolted back, desperately shaking the hand that had grasped the revolver’s barrel. He hissed again, this time in pain.
Hackett shot him a third time.
Ora slipped behind Crane during the commotion. Her hands moved with delicate precision, like a musician testing the untuned strings of a violin. She slid them into place along Crane’s neck, which, though healed, was still smeared with blood.
Crane tensed a moment too late. She twisted her hands sharply, snapping his neck. Without his spine to slow her, she jerked her hands again to decapitate him.
“Not as smooth as when you did it, but I haven’t had the practice,” she snarled at the pile of dust on the ground. “Let’s see you heal from that.”
“Lady Fischerová?” Hackett breathed.
She looked down at her hands. Her claws were still out. She could feel the extension of her jaw, her fangs exposed to the night air. She swallowed with difficulty, and her face reverted to normal. Revenge for that poor human girl and the brave outspoken pijavica had been satisfying for those heady few seconds, but now she felt ill. She’d torn his head off. Did Judith feel this way after her bloody decapitation of Holofernes? Or even during?
Clenching her fists, she turned to her driver. The gun was still in his shaking hands. “Please don’t shoot me,” she said. “I can explain all of this.”
“I’m not sure I want you to,” he said, looking down at the pile of ash and clothing that had been Crane.
“What is that made of?” Ora asked, staring at the glinting gun. Crane had not flinched from a bullet wound or a stake to the heart, but this weapon had hurt him.
“Iron alloy,” Hackett said. He did not make a move to lower it.
“That’s not iron,” Ora said, pointing to the decorative filigree on the revolver’s barrel and handle.
“Silver, I think. It was a gift,” Hackett said. He swallowed. “You’re trying to distract me.”
“No matter what you saw tonight, you know me,” Ora said, keeping her hands raised. “I’m just the same old Lady Fischerová.”
“You’re a demon.”
“Hackett,” she said, taking a step toward him, hand outstretched.
A gunshot cracked. A bullet slammed into her shoulder. She was knocked back against the bridge railing again. She stared down at the hole in her skin, revealed by the torn sleeve. Her body’s attempts to heal her burnt hand had drained her, and she had not been able to replenish with enough flesh and blood. Her wound did not heal as Crane’s had; instead, dark blood dripped sluggishly from the hole. The lifeblood of a pijavica was borrowed from other creatures, propelling them forward through immortality.
“I always knew you were strange,” Hackett snarled, “but this is far worse than the spoiled rich bitch I assumed.”
“Hackett,” she breathed. Her driver had been quiet, but she had never noticed this level of simmering hatred beneath his bland expressions. She reached up to feel the bullet wound, but left her hand hovering above it. It would not kill her, but she could still feel pain. Perhaps it was not as ferocious as it might have been for a human, but she had never been shot before.
“Stay back,” Hackett said, walking back toward the carriage without turning from her. As painful as the bullet had been, the gun was no true threat to her. If she wanted to overtake Hackett and drive away herself, she could.
She didn’t. The disgust in his eyes held her in place.
“You can’t leave me here,” she pleaded, glancing back toward the bridge. At this angle, the Zizkov house was out of view, but her enemies were close.
He just shook his head and retreated into the carriage. He whipped the horses into a quick trot away, wheels rattling on the cobblestones.
She rubbed her hands over her face, but she knew she had no time to grieve her driver’s disgust. The Zizkovs trusted Crane to be their muscle, but would realize soon that he had lost the fight. Would they consider that the gunshots could have been aimed at him? They posed little threat to a pijavica in full health. She had to run. She needed to find help. The Zizkovs needed to be stopped tonight.
She pulled her heeled boots off and flung them into the stream. They were lost in the dark waters in an instant. Freed from the trappings of society, Ora sprinted across the square. She started up the street toward the castle, then looked down at her dress, dark with river water and blood, and shredded into strips that clung to her legs. Her bare feet were pale on the cobblestones.
Perhaps a stop home first was in order after all.
They made it safely back through the kitchen door thanks to some sort of commotion toward the front of the house that kept the pijavice occupied, and began walking toward Paluska’s house. Though there were still a few hacks on the street, despite the late hour, Domek couldn’t imagine sitting down. Overhead, the stars were gone, overtaken by a ripple of dark storm clouds.
They walked in silence for several blocks, taking a twisting route until they reached Charles Bridge. It was well past midnight, and most of the city’s residents were tucked away in their homes until dawn.
Once they crossed the river, they emerged into the streets surrounding the Old Town Square, which were some of the widest in the city. Domek kept to the side streets. The vial he was carrying in his satchel was
undeniably dangerous, and walking under the towers of Týn Church with it seemed like asking for trouble.
“I appreciate your agreeing to help me,” Kája said quietly.
“As I said, this issue involves humans as well.”
“You could have sent me back into the jar as soon as you’d gotten the information you needed,” Kája said. “You didn’t need to keep me here beside you.”
“You’re the expert on what this serum could do,” Domek said. “Besides, my battle is your battle too. You deserve the chance to fight back when someone attacks your own.”
“I don’t know many other spirits,” Kája admitted. “But that in there was wrong. We’re not meant to be caged. I thought that was the worst possible fate until what we saw tonight.” His light, still invisible to passersby, flickered. “The pijavice are playing a dangerous game. Infusing another being with witch magic is like…attempting to shake hands with a bolt of lightning. It takes a vodník to contain our energy. Attempting to put our untamped power in a physical form without our will to control it… I would have said that it was suicide.”
“Even for a pijavica?”
“Especially for a pijavica,” Kája said. “They’re more powerful than most humans because they lack the functions of life. They subsist on the energy—the blood—of other creatures and simply continue to exist. When witches die, we become wisps or other powerful spirits. Only normal humans become pijavice. They shouldn’t survive this.”
“We don’t know if they’ve succeeded yet,” he said. “They’ve been trying to get you back. They still need you. Maybe they haven’t finished their experiments. From the look of that cellar, they’ve already killed several pijavice trying.”
“If it wouldn’t mean more senseless deaths and mutilations of innocent slaves, I’d be happy to see the pijavice waste through their entire race trying to conquer this,” Kája said.
“We’ll find another way to make them pay,” Domek reassured him.
* * *
It took less than fifteen minutes for Ora to run through the alleys from Kampa Island back to her own house. The short distance had aided her, but had alarming implications for her safety against the family. No one had followed her, but she would not be safe for long. Rather than wake and alarm Lina, Ora managed to wipe off the worst of the mud and pull on one of her simpler dresses on her own. She rolled her aching shoulder to test its range of movement, and chose boots that would not slow her down.
She waited on her front step for a minute before she left again, expecting Darina to emerge and laugh at her misfortune. She would be delighted to learn that the ‘dull social function’ she had pawned off on Ora had ended up nearly killing her. However, she was left alone in the silent and cold night.
From there, it was another ten minutes up the hill to the government office where she’d met Sokol yesterday. The narrow street was quiet this late, and storm clouds had swept in from the west. So far, there was no sign of pursuit. If fleeing with the information of their cure had not been enough, killing one of their members would undoubtedly put Ora on their list of targets as soon as they were ready to storm the daylight world. Though they did not know her true name, she doubted that would save her for long.
She needed Sokol’s help. If his resources were as extensive as he had claimed, the humans could wipe out the family by dawn and neutralize the threat, sparing Ora and the rest of the world from the invulnerable pijavice. If they moved quickly enough, they may even be able to prevent the conversion of the dozen new recruits.
If she hadn’t seen the proof, she would have said the entire situation was ludicrous. No matter which school of thought one adhered to—the one that explained away the creation of pijavice with science, the one that traced their curse back to Lilith, or one of the others—there was no force on the planet that should have been powerful enough to change the face of reality. What science or magic could they be using to do that? How had they lost their vulnerability to hawthorn and sunlight, and why had it seemingly given them a weakness to silver? Silver was the weapon for spirits, the incorporeal remnants of human souls. Pijavice remained in their bodies—they should have been immune.
Even if Ora was right about Crane’s reaction to the silver, pijavice able to brazen the light of day would make them nigh unstoppable. It was no wonder Czernin had emerged from his self-imposed retirement to support their experimentation. With the Zizkovs’ cure and Czernin’s mind for tactics, they would be unbeatable. Humanity was ill-prepared for a daytime predator, and once the secret was out in the world, it would be impossible to take back. The family needed to be stopped tonight.
But Ora remained furious that Sokol had used her husband’s death to manipulate her. How long had he been waiting for an opening to pull her into his fight? She undeniably was on the side of humanity against the Zizkovs—she simply wasn’t sure if Sokol was on her side.
Ora took a deep breath and entered the building.
Sokol’s office was on the ground floor of the building near the rear. Ora slipped through the dark hallways quietly. Everyone outside of Sokol’s ministry would likely be home at the late hour, but government employees could be testy. When she knocked on his door, it took him nearly a minute to finally answer.
“I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. He was wearing a pair of wire glasses, delicate on his strong face. It was strange to remember that he worked at a desk.
“I went to the gathering.”
“Come in,” he said, and closed the door behind her. “You did?”
“It was a trap,” Ora said.
“Are you all right?” He stepped close as though to check her for injury. She had chosen a dress in a dark navy fabric to hide the blood still sluggishly dripping from her wounds. “Why are you wet?”
Ora skipped back. “Don’t worry; I escaped. No thanks to you.”
“If they managed to do this to you, they would have killed my men,” Sokol said. His quick retort hung in the space between them. “I would not have encouraged you to go if I had known it was a trap.”
“I believe you, of course,” Ora said, waving a hand and sighing. “Even if you have been using me for years, at least I can be sure that you wanted me alive.”
“Did they know who you were?”
Ora shook her head. “They’re looking for recruits. Walking through that door was considered volunteering.” She summarized the events of the night, including the demonstration Mayer had done of their miraculous cure. As she spoke, Sokol’s expression darkened.
“You’re sure it wasn’t a trick? They’ve truly found a cure?”
“I stabbed one of them myself with a stake. I know hawthorn when I feel it. He didn’t even flinch.”
“This is bad,” Sokol said. She snorted at the understatement. “If more of them take this cure, we’ll lose our only advantages in this fight. It needs to be destroyed.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Ora said. “Can your ministry do it?”
Sokol hesitated. “You can’t do it on your own?”
“They nearly caught me tonight, Sokol. I almost died. It’s clear that doesn’t matter to you, but there’s only so much I can do, even when I’m willing to help. They have at least a dozen members now, and none of them will be vulnerable to our usual weaknesses by morning. I’ve been on this planet for…a long time, but I’ve never seen something like that.”
“Bringing the ministry into this is not a good idea.”
“Sokol, you work for the emperor. Isn’t this the entire point of your operation? This is what you’re paid to do. Stop trying to trick me into doing the heavy lifting.”
“Well…” Sokol said. Ora narrowed her eyes. Sokol never prevaricated. “I’ve been having trouble mustering the support we need.” Ora waved her hand, prompting him to continue, “Not everyone in the government is informed that pijavice are a real threat. I’m fighting with the police for members and resources, and not everyone in charge of budgeting
understands why I need them. The emperor is still taking away some of our strongest men for his wars. My team’s job is to gather information, but the lamplighters are the ones following up on the ground level.”
“So you don’t actually do anything,” Ora simplified.
“I’ve been trying to build this team for years,” Sokol said. “So far, Válka is the only one I trust. The rest are bureaucratic, retired to our ministry because they weren’t of use to the emperor in any other capacity. We’re fighting an uphill battle. Until we find evidence that more support is vital to the country’s safety, we have to make do.”
Ora folded her arms. “Evidence has been acquired.”
“They’re old and skeptical. The word of a pijavica won’t do much. That’s part of the reason I never asked for your help before.”
“But these are desperate times,” Ora said. “If there were ever a time to challenge them, it’s now. You have to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t treat me like an idiot, Sokol. You know better.”
“Do you want me to apologize for using every tool I can find?” he asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t see me as a tool at all,” Ora snapped.
“Don’t take it like that,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I never lied to you. You’re my friend, but I’m trying to save this city.”
“You used my dead husband to make me do what you wanted,” she hissed. “What kind of friend is that?”
“The kind without nearly enough resources for the job he has to do. The kind whose own masters are his biggest hindrance. The kind that sees your potential being wasted on literary salons and gambling dens,” Sokol said. “You’ve tried to stay out of this fight, but it’s here. If those monsters find a cure, you’ll be affected too. It’s not time for you to sit back.”
“Your ministry can’t sit back either,” Ora said. “You’re worried that they won’t listen to the word of a pijavica? I promise you I can convince them that the threat is real.”
The Lights of Prague Page 26