The Lights of Prague

by Nicole Jarvis

  Her distraction nearly cost her life.

  As she turned back to Weintraub, she almost met the syringe with her eye. She fell backward, barely avoiding it, and hit the floor hard. He bore down on her, but she rolled to the side. Instead of fleeing, she grabbed his elbow and yanked him down.

  Glass shattered with a sharp crack against the stone floor. Frantically, Weintraub pushed himself to his knees, desperately shaking his hands, but it was too late. The glass, covered in the hawthorn and silver serum, had sliced into his palms, infecting him.

  There was a pained grunt across the room, and Ora’s head snapped up.

  Sokol fell, white-faced, clutching his stomach around the hilt of one of his own daggers. Mayer was standing over him with a wide mouth of glinting, sharp teeth. “You always were a fool, Sokol.”

  Ora lunged forward, but was pulled short by a hand on her ankle. Weintraub had snared her in a clawed grip, his skin already turning gray from the silver working through his body. If she hadn’t been wearing her sturdiest boots, the glass shards from his hand would have pierced her skin too. She kicked him in the head, sending him flying backward. Before he even hit the far wall, the silver poison reached his heart, and he exploded into dust.

  A door at the back of the room slammed shut. Mayer was gone.

  Scrambling to her feet, Ora sprinted across the room and slid to the floor beside Sokol. The dagger was buried to the hilt just below his ribs. Had it pierced his stomach? His lungs? Using her claws, she tore a swath of fabric from her skirts and bundled the cloth against his torso, careful not to jar the blade. It was a horrifying echo of her fight to save the footman last night. How many men would bleed over her hands during her long life? He blinked up at her, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he clenched his teeth. “What are you doing?” he growled. “Go after him.”

  “And leave you to die?” Ora demanded, pressing down harder against the wound. The smell of blood was raw in the air, preventing her from retracting her fangs. Her body would not calm. There was so much. Too much.

  “Ora,” he said, and his voice was more serious than she’d ever heard from him. “I’m dying anyway. Mayer knows how to make the cure. If he gets away, he can make more.”

  “Shut up and let me take care of you,” she said.

  The scent of oncoming death roused two of the chained pijavice. One screamed, a piercing, feral sound. The chains burned their skin with every movement.

  She could hear every thud of Sokol’s familiar heartbeat. His own lifeforce was killing him, each beat keeping him alive while bringing him closer to death as blood pulsed from the wound.

  “Hold this,” she told him, pressing his hands against the makeshift bandage. Carefully, she slid her hands under his shoulders and knees and prepared to lift him.

  “Don’t move me,” he said. “It’s too late. It was my own dagger, remember?” He coughed weakly. “I know when it’s hit home.”

  “No,” Ora snarled. “Don’t you dare.”

  His chest spasmed. “When will you learn that you can’t control everything?” he asked her. He reached a blood-stained hand toward her face, but let it fall before he touched her.

  “When will you start listening to me?” she shot back, voice shaking. “I’ll call Dr. Roth. He’ll save you.”

  “Ora, listen,” Sokol said. His breathing was growing more and more unsteady, faltering and wincing. “You have to end this. I should have seen what Mayer was becoming. He’s too dangerous. This was worth it if you…finish this tonight.”

  “I will,” she promised him. “Sokol, I…”

  “I know,” he told her. His eyes were wide, pained. “Remember me. Please. You…” He winced, tried to find his next word, but it was lost on his final exhalation.

  He stilled, and his eyes lost their desperate focus on her face.

  Ora had seen death before. More times than she could count.

  But she would never forget this.

  “You can’t. Not yet,” she demanded, but he didn’t respond. He was gone, his body empty of the spirit that had laughed with her, sparred with her, inspired her.

  Ora hunched over his still body, her shoulders shaking. She had no tears to spill. She’d lost the ability with her life, but her body remembered. The grief needed to escape her, needed an outlet, but all she could do was keen quietly. “No,” she murmured, and put her forehead against his chest.

  She stayed there, pressed close to the fading heat of Sokol’s body. There were things she needed to do. A mission that needed to be finished. But Sokol was dead. He deserved another moment of her endless life.

  Suddenly, the cold, bitter bite of hawthorn-laced metal pressed against the side of her neck. “Back away from him.”

  With the smell of Sokol’s blood overwhelming her nose and the screaming and clanging chains from the pijavice on the walls covering all noise, Ora hadn’t noticed someone else enter the room. She took a slow breath.

  Metal. Honey. A tang of chemicals. “Domek,” she breathed.

  Domek, holding his sword firmly beside Ora’s neck, wondered why he hadn’t simply stabbed her as soon as he’d found her at the heart of the crime. He had taken the hawthorn-coated blade when he hadn’t been able to find his confiscated stakes in his abandoned bag in Paluska’s office, but he was painfully aware how untrained he was with the weapon. Without the element of surprise, he’d have little hope of beating a pijavica with it.

  This was the woman who had invited him to the opera, the woman he had taken to bed last night. But he had never truly known her, had he? She had hidden her true nature from him as easily as Paluska had.

  Her voice, quiet and raspy, tugged at the thread inside him that still cared for her.

  “Lady Fischerová,” he said. “This ends here. These experiments, the wisps you’ve hurt—it all ends.”

  “I’m not behind this,” she said, fierce and strained. Her dress, dark blue and sophisticated, had been torn to shreds. Frills and ribbons hung loose, revealing a white silk slip underneath. “I didn’t do this.”

  “Right,” Domek said. His loyalty had already nearly gotten him killed tonight, and Ora was far deadlier than Anton or Paluska. “Let this man go.” He peered over her shoulder and realized that the man was still. There were no wounds in his neck, but a bloodied dagger protruded from his stomach.

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s already dead,” Ora said, confirming his suspicions. “It’s over. It’s all over.”

  “What happened here?” The lab had been wrecked since he had been in it only hours before. In addition to the screaming pijavice chained to the walls, there were shattered beakers, spilled liquids, and several piles of abandoned, dust-covered clothing.

  “We… My partner and I, we killed the family for what they were doing here. We knew it was a risk when we came, but we had to try. They… They were stronger than us. So much stronger.” She bowed her head, heedless of the blade to her throat, to look at the man on the floor.

  There was immeasurable grief in her voice, broken and empty.

  Another trick? When he had escaped Paluska’s house, he had been faced with a choice: go after Paluska to retrieve Kája, or follow through on the promise he’d made to Kája to get revenge on the nest. He had wanted to rescue Kája from his new master, but the wisp would have never forgiven him for that choice. Kája had made his desires clear—he wanted these experiments on his kin ended. And Domek had, finally, listened to Kája.

  If Ora was the scientist behind the experimentation, he’d be betraying Kája once again by letting her walk away.

  If she was telling the truth, he would be killing an innocent, grieving woman.

  “You have the knowledge to create monstrosities like this. You spend half your time at Charles University,” Domek said. “Humans have never appreciated your mind. The pijavice here did. They gave you an outlet for that cleverness of yours.”

  “For someone who thinks so lowly of me, you think quite highly of me. My skills have never been with exp
erimentation. You would have been better suited to these strange experiments than I. I’m just clever enough to land myself and my friends in trouble. I thought to play spy and then hero tonight, and failed at both.”

  “The evidence all points to you.”

  “I suppose it does. Maybe this was where I was always going to end up. I’ve started too late to make a difference. To save anyone.” She put a bloodied hand on the dead man’s forehead. “I should have left it to you. Promise me you’ll stop this.” She pointed toward a door at the edge of the room without turning. “Their leader, Mayer, he escaped down the tunnel. Find him. Kill him. Make it hurt.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?” he asked, his grip so tight on the sword hilt that his arm trembled.

  She sighed. “You don’t. Do what you must, if it will free you to go destroy Mayer. I’ve lived too long as it is.”

  He hesitated for another moment, and then slid the sword back into its sheath and stood up. “We’ll find him together.”

  She turned around, blinking up at him. Her mouth was distended by fangs. Her hands were red with blood, just as they had been when she had desperately tried to help him save the footman the night before. “Why?”

  “Most guilty people don’t ask for death.” He nodded to the fallen man. “He was your friend?”

  “He was an utter bastard,” Ora said with a harsh laugh. “And one of my dearest friends.” She stood up. “I should go hunt Mayer. Maybe he won’t have gotten far.” She looked back down at the still form of her partner. “But I can’t leave him here.”

  “I can find Mayer.”

  “Then I hope that’s silver and not only tipped with hawthorn,” she said, nodding toward his sword. “Otherwise, it won’t work.”

  “He’s not a pijavica?”

  “He is—and more. They’ve taken a cure, something that makes them immune to hawthorn and sunlight. Silver is their only weakness now.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t even be able to catch up with him now. I’m injured, and he’s enhanced. And if I can’t outrun him, you certainly can’t. He’ll be gone by now.”

  A pijavica that could walk in the daylight. One that could not be killed by hawthorn. The serum made from the dissected wisp had made the monster that had killed Webber. Abrahams had been right—it was a pijavica, but warped beyond their understanding.

  Domek looked to the tunnel, and then glanced around the room again. “I have an idea. If I can work quickly enough, I might be able to stop Mayer—there are some deaths nothing can survive, and either way, we can’t leave this lab for anyone to find. Take care of your friend. I will finish things here.”

  Carefully, she scooped up the body, as easily as picking up a child. She was so much stronger than she looked. “I promised him I would end this,” she told Domek.

  “We will,” he assured her.

  She nodded and turned toward the steps.

  “Wait,” he said. She glanced back over her shoulder to him, her face solemn and drawn. “The things the pijavice were doing here, that was only the start. Someone else got hold of…what they were experimenting with. He’ll be going after the pijavice first. Be careful.”

  She blinked at him. “How can this person use the cure to kill us?”

  “It’s complicated, but you’re in danger,” Domek said. “He’s reckless, and he doesn’t understand the power he’s using.”

  “You know where this man is?”

  Domek nodded.

  She hesitated, and then stepped toward the stairs. “I need to take care of Sokol. Do what you need to down here.” After a beat, she said, “These pijavice in the chains, they hurt innocent people tonight. Destroy them all.” Then, she was gone.

  Three of the five dangling pijavice were awake. Though they were all, like Ora, dressed in posh, urban clothing, they were snarling and growling. They were lashing against their chains, and their eyes were locked on the staircase where they’d last seen the blood-covered body.

  Domek ignored them and started to examine the lab equipment that was still intact on the center table. After all his years working with his uncle, he was more of a tinkerer than a scientist. The Zizkovs, as Ora had called them, had technology more sophisticated than the run-down gadgets in Zacharias’s shop. Still, he understood how things fit together. He knew tubes and chemicals and standardized reactions, not betrayal and mystery. This, he could do.

  Sniffing some vials, he cranked a dial to send a liquid flowing through the bronze piping that looped over the table, and then added a second to it. Carefully, he used the butt of his sword to break off a valve, letting the resulting gas mixture loose in the air.

  He opened the door that led into the tunnels, and then threw a second container of his caustic mixture down it. It smashed in the dirt, swirling and hissing.

  He needed to move quickly. His hands were shaking slightly as he jogged over to the stairs. He looked back over the basement once more, though the gases were already rising to sting his nose. The cruel, delicate machine that had ripped apart the remains of the wisps’ spirits glinted on the table. The pijavice dangling around the room hissed at him, still lurching against their chains.

  Ora had told him to destroy the remaining pijavice, that they had blood on their claws from that very night. This house had evil seeping through the cracks in the floorboards. There was nothing worth saving.

  He took the stairs two at a time, fumbling into his bag as he went to pull out the gifts he’d gotten from his uncle. He dropped a scarf as he went, but left it abandoned on the wooden steps.

  Fortunately, when Anton had taken his supplies, he hadn’t noticed the extra matches tucked in the pockets of the bag. Carefully, he struck one matchstick against the strip of phosphorous. The chemicals dragged against the ragged red surface. Fire burst into life at the tip of the wooden stick, crackling unfettered and burning its way toward his fingers.

  Deftly, Domek flicked the match down, sending the small flame spiraling over the steps. Before it could land in the heavy gases Domek had flooded into the cellar, he slammed the door and sprinted toward the front entrance.

  The explosion, when it caught, was momentous. The floorboards under Domek’s feet seemed to lurch with the force of it, the sound shattering the air around him. He nearly fell through the front door when he reached it, heart pounding in his ears.

  He stumbled onto the front lawn in the pouring rain, his boots slapping on the slick, muddy grass. He turned around at the street to look back at the house. The explosion had been mostly contained to the cellar, as he had hoped, but he could see fire crackling in the sitting room. The nest’s lush décor blackened and shriveled under the flames.

  As the flames licked toward the window, the heavy rain hissed against them through the broken glass, beating them back. He hoped it was enough to prevent it from spreading through the entire neighborhood.

  Perhaps the fire would make it to the top floor before the rain could beat it into charcoal. The maps and papers up there could still be dangerous in the wrong hands, even if the nest and machinery were destroyed.

  Ora stepped up beside him, watching the house burn. She had gotten an umbrella from somewhere, and held it partially over his head as well. Her blue dress was stained dark with the man, Sokol’s, blood.

  “Incineration. Bold choice. Let’s hope the bastard couldn’t outrun the explosion.”

  “If he did, we’ll hunt him down. He won’t get away with this. What did you do with…?”

  “I paid our hack to deliver him to my house. Lina will see that he’s…taken care of. The driver was not happy, but has been warned that any deviation on his part will not end well for him.” In the light of the fire, she seemed a warrior queen.

  “Why not go with him yourself?”

  “I’ve been alive long enough to know that there’s nothing to be done for the dead but follow their last wishes. Sokol’s soul will move on. It has to.” She seemed to be convincing herself as much as Domek. For Ora, death had not been the end.
Those who died without settling their debts were cursed to live on in mangled forms, like the screaming White Lady, the lost wisps, and the bloodthirsty pijavice. “If you’re going after someone who stole the family’s research and is planning on using it, I want to help stop them. If you would accept the help. I’m ending Mayer’s legacy tonight. He’ll be wiped from this earth.”

  Domek took a deep breath. If he was wrong to trust Ora, he might be leading a pijavica straight to the last wisp, but Paluska had already gotten the better of him once that night. He had a potential ally, and he couldn’t bring himself to doubt the grief and fury in her eyes. He couldn’t turn her away. “Then let’s end this.”

  “Come. The storm will have scared away any remaining hacks, and I seem to have sent mine away. We’ll have to walk.”

  * * *

  Despite the blows she’d taken while fighting Weintraub, Ora walked without a limp. She would heal by next week, and until then, she could ignore the bruised bones, the headache, the sun-blackened hand, the gunshot wound, the blood the rain hadn’t washed from her hands…and the empty space in her heart where Sokol had once resided.

  Her mind wanted action, to rend and tear the world apart until Sokol’s task was completed. Her body craved blood to fill her veins and repair some of the recent damage. If she’d been home, she would have gone to the cellar to drink some of the cow’s blood they’d gotten from the butcher yesterday. Instead, she was on the empty streets of Prague, ignoring the steady pulse of Domek Myska’s heartbeat beside her. They were pressed close under the umbrella, which he held high over their heads.

  It had been decades since Ora had partaken from a human. When she’d left Czernin, she’d continued to dine upon human blood on occasion, though she had never killed to find it. She’d left that behind with Czernin. Money built up over time, and with enough of that, one could find people willing to do just about anything. Then, she’d met Franz, and the very idea of acting as a predator to man’s prey repelled her. She’d known if she’d asked, her husband would have let her take blood from him. She never asked.