Page 76 of Besieger
Stefan pulled at the front of his shirt and blew air down it, panting. Victor had seen Stefan naked; he knew what lay under those clothes, yet every time he saw a glimpse of the scars crisscrossing the brown skin, his eyes lingered there a moment longer, searching, wondering. Claw marks ran down Stefan’s face, most of them hidden behind the fabric of the eyepatch.There were lacerations around the bridge of his nose and some that pulled at his mouth, splitting both the upper and lower lip. It was thehiddenscars that interested Victor—the ones too numerous to count that mapped Stefan’s back, his collarbone, legs and arms.
He did not know when Stefan had been turned or how. He only knew the animal into which Stefan shifted, not bound by urges or the coming of the moon—no; he could turn whenever the fancy took him. A trick which Victor had learnt out of necessity and fear. It was one of the few things he and Stefan had in common.
Stefan propped the mop against a table and leaned towards the display case. He squinted in the light, frowning. His mouth moved, but Victor heard nothing. Music still blared from the speakers, growing even louder; the vocals were atrocious. He was not sure what language, if any, the singer was using; it rather sounded like a troll grunting through a very wide pipe.
“Turn that off,” Victor did not bother raising his voice. He pointed in the general direction of the ceiling, then to his ears. He did that twice before Stefan rolled his good eye and pulled a remote from his back pocket.
With a single click, the silence of the early morning crashed down on them, and Victor could hear himself think again.
“Do you need anything else?” he asked.
“It’s muffins tomorrow, right?” Stefan did not wait for Victor to answer. He went to the back of the counter and began working the machines there, arranging cups and pitchers, pressing more buttons on the espresso machine. “Can you make banana bread?”
“I can. The bakery can’t.”
“Add it to the menu, what’s the problem?”
They had been over this before. Sometimes Stefan came to him with a list of pastries and treats that Victor knew how to make but the bakery where he worked did not offer. They specialised primarily in classical and local breads, plus a few types of pastries. Nothing fancy. Nothing extravagant. Anythingout of the ordinary they made as part of their arrangement with The Coffee Bean, and only if Stefan ordered in bulk. Danishes, muffins, cinnamon rolls and croissants were what Victor prepared and delivered to the shop. And sometimes, when Stefan was struck by inspiration, or jealousy of another café, he asked for French macarons, tarts and tartlets, and even petit fours.
“You are a coffee shop, not a patisserie. You serve coffee,” Irena, Stefan’s best friend and business partner, tended to remind him, being the only voice of reason in the shop, besides Victor’s.
The days when Irena was the one on shift and opened the shop were always better, calmer. Victor preferred being welcomed by the industrial humming of the air conditioning and the coffee grinders, rather than Stefan’s obnoxious taste in music and obscene dancing.
Weary of the North, Victor had come to Eastern Europe, surprised to find others like him. Shifters who turned into foxes, bears, and wolves. Beasts with thick and colourful pelts, claws and fangs that tore through cliffs as they climbed the mountainside, eager for the hunt. Victor knew his time in Bulgaria would be short: it was only a matter of time before Stefan and his peers noticed how inhuman he was compared to them.
Until then, until he could no longer pass as thirty, he intended to make the old capital Tarnovo his home, baking the occasional pastry for a lunatic.
The screens blinked and the letters and numbers rearranged themselves in unison, the information was refreshed. Destinations slid up the column, while others froze in place, blinking with empty promise. Victor scanned them, searching forhis flight and gate, as the noise of the Berlin airport washed over him.
Every few years, when his passport was due to expire, he made the trip to Germany. He filled out paperwork and waited in administrative buildings, let the modern machines take his photograph and fingerprints, and stayed for a few days in modest hotels, waiting some more, until it was time to return home. He no longer signed documents with Victor Schwarzschild; that name had been completely erased, with no one left to continue the line. These days, he went by Victor Forsberg. The name his employer at the Tarnovo bakery knew him by and signed the payslips. The name the pack called him by.
Around him people moved in swarms, stopping by the screens or staring into their phones, running between the information desks, already queuing in line, or making their way to the security checks. The airport was a buzz of motion and hustle, anticipation and giddy panic.
A man stopped beside Victor, standing a little too still, a little too silent as he gazed up at the boards. He studied the screens intently, with childlike wonder and fascination. Out of the corner of his eye, Victor noticed that the man’s hair was long and fell down his shoulders and back. He wore no overcoat, only a suit. It looked expensive in a frustrating, wasteful kind of way. The cotton was a green so dark it might have passed for black.
Before he could stop himself, Victor frowned and huffed, confused by how irresponsible this man was, dressed so lightly. He must have spoken aloud because the man turned to face him, eyebrows raised in question.
Victor’s frown deepened as it slowly dawned on him that he knew the man. His whole body responded at the sight of the slightly hollowed cheeks, the full lips now curled in a smile, the black eyes. When Victor had first met him decades ago, the man had sported short hair, but it was the same person regardless. Victor never forgot a face. Years under the schooling of theWehrmachthad taught him to remember meticulously, vehemently.
“Can I help you?” the man asked in German with a slight French accent, and the back of Victor’s mind reverberated with thunder: the echo of bombs raining over Berlin. Destroying one building after another, life after life after life after life. A room thrown into chaos; a sickbed, the septic stench of death and blood crawling over the sheets and walls, and this very man, sitting on the edge of the bed, talking.
Victor knew this man. His name—it was on the tip of his tongue, eager to spill out.
The man was staring at Victor now, expectant, head slightly tilted, his smile touched with concern.
“I…” Victor looked around. “I’m looking for my flight.”
He pointed a little too fast and clumsily with his hand at the big screens above them. The letters blinked and changed in rapid succession to announce the next flight.
“Yes,” the man said slowly, voice trickling through the noise. He folded his arms across his chest. The sleeve of his blazer pulled at the fabric and Victor now noticed that the shirt was not entirely buttoned. He frowned at the patch of tanned skin. “I believe this is what these monitors are for,non? Which flight is yours?”
“Sofia—” Victor blurbed out, tearing his gaze away before forcing himself to focus again on the man’s face. Heknewhim. Seventy-odd years later, he was sure it was the same man. “Sofia, Bulgaria.”
The man’s eyes widened at the mention of the country, but the shock quickly vanished and he gazed up to scan the screens; a low hum escaped his lips.
“Interesting choice. Bulgaria.”
“I work there. I’m a baker,” Victor added quickly, all of a sudden feeling compelled to speak, to say more.
