Page 84 of Besieger
She could not remember anything from tonight. The last thing she registered was shoving at the newborn shifter as hard as she could, ramming him against the wall, again and again, until the black feline collapsed onto the floor. He was now lying on the very spot where Irena had left him. There were bite and claw marks across his back and torso. Apparently, she had added to his newly growing collections of scars.
Or have the curs done this?
The kid was alive; the smallest of his wounds had already healed. She left him to sleep it off; there was no point in waking him up now.
Like a nymph risen from the foam of blood and bile, Irena searched through the rooms and corridors. There was no sign of Krum. Either his worshippers had had enough and consumed him in the frenzy of the shift, or he had escaped. A shiver ran down her body at the thought of him being somewhere out there. She did not like the idea of constantly looking over her shoulder, anticipating the next attack, waking up at a new altar of the wolf god.
In a locked room at the end of the corridor she found the sleeping form of a man. He was strangely intact, only wearing a slick membrane of mucus, a clear sign that he too had shifted sometime during the night but was not able to pull the latch and get out.
“You must be theothershifter,” Irena murmured. “How many of you are there? How many did Krum need for this sick ritual?” she hissed his name.
She was far too dizzy and angry to sit and speculate over Krum’s schemes. Whatever he had planned—whatever special kind of torture he had set aside for his vixen—must have involved more than the mutts who had captured Irena. Before they chained her to the wall, she had caught glimpses of the cell holding the other prisoners. At first, she had thought Krum meant to use them as replacements for her, other sacrifices meant for a lycan deity. Yet Krum had talked about birthing wolves, carving out gods, giving them flesh, making them transient… through Irena. She hissed again, overcome by the sick irony that, despite everything, Krum had succeeded in giving life to lycanthropes tonight. He had turned the boy at the altar and the stranger in the locked room. Neither of them was a god—there were no gods in this hole—but Irena had somehow spared them in her frenzy.
She had to get out of here and warn her parents. There were no lycans in Vratsa, not that she knew of, and now they were even less, judging by the bodies down here.
Her family would need to move. They had never run from humans; in fact, they had never harmed any human. Lycans did not need to kill and feed off people…unlike vampires, her father used to say, and Irena had scoffed. Of course, there would be vampires. If there were lycanthropes—creatures who shed one skin for another—why would there not be immortal blood drinkers? Her father had told her tales of orchards with golden apples. As Irena grew older she was disappointed to discover that the mountains held no hut standing on hen’s legs, nor didsamodivibathe in the cold springs. No one had welcomed her as she shifted and ran through the woods. She did not need the tales to be true,shewas real and supernatural enough.
“I hope you are somewhere down here, Krum.” Irena spat, the taste of salt and copper no longer bothering her. She dusted off her hands and went back to check on the kid. “And I hope you stay down here.”
IRENA, 2010
The music was loud and atrocious; the only positive thing about the place was that it was too dim to make out its interior. Irena had been in her fair share of shady bars and rundown clubs, but this bar’s gory décor and broken tiles were born of penny-pinching rather than any deliberate sense of style. The mirror behind the bar was cracked and covered in dried splashes of alcohol and beer foam, a motley collection of stickers and taped-up receipts crowding one corner and a set of dried-out fake flowers in the other. The bar’s patrons looked like ghouls in the glass, their reflections smudged and disjointed, as though they had stepped into a hall of mirrors. Sasho, the establishment’s owner and occasional barman, was busy taking orders. He was known to be a gossip who watered down the drinks, but the place kept late hours and his prices were cheap. He also worked at the strip club next door and rented rooms to students in the flats upstairs.
One such student was vigorously retelling the Big Four thrash metal concert he had attended last month in Sofia. Irena had already heard the story—multiple times. On the day after the concert andeveryday since. Stefan had called her immediately after leaving the stadium, reciting the setlist for all four bands in a voice so low and hoarse that at first Irena thought something had happened, that her idiot friend had gotten himself in yet another row. Vasili, who usually accompanied him, had refused to go the distance and spend hours trying, and failing, to escape the mosh pit. It had taken Irena three attempts to get Stefan to shut up about riffs and solos, and about how some guy had elbowed him in the ribs for a guitar pick, before he finally confirmed that he was all right and on his way to the hotel. Hewas getting on the first bus in the morning and would call her when he arrived in Tarnovo.
“Why can’t he listen to something nice that involves sitting on plush seats?” Vasili sat next to Irena at the bar and tipped his head in the direction of the small group gathered around their friend at the back of the club. Even over the music, they could hear him yelling his way through the story.
“I bet he headbangs to Vivaldi,” Irena huffed and took a sip of her drink.
In the two years since the attack, Stefan had dyed his hair a dark shade of red and continued to wear jeans and band T-shirts. He had a toned physique which normally would not have been anything special for a man who frequented the gym, were it not for the scars that ran down his face and arms. His eye had not healed—lycanthropy was not regenerative—and instead of opting for a glass eye as the doctors had suggested, Stefan wore an eyepatch.
He looked ridiculous, with his towering height, red hair and topography of scars, he stood out far too much. Working at a strip club did not help either. Everyone with no morals and a lot of sticky singles in Tarnovo had seen Stefan turn and twirl on the pole. He was the club’s only male stripper, too. He claimed to have taken the job to pay for his university fees, but Irena had checked how much a semester in architecture cost, he also had a stipend. Irena hoped there was another reason Stefan needed the money, otherwise she would think he was enjoying the attention and exhibitionism of that sad spectacle.Why is turning into a panther the most normal thing about him?Irena sighed and watched Stefan leave his groupies to join her and Vasili at the bar.
He was flushed from all the talking and there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He leaned on the counter and gestured for Sasho to come over.
“That young woman, with the dark hair?”
Sasho looked over to where Stefan’s gesture was pointing, at a group of women at the other end of the counter. There were plenty of dark-haired women, but Irena knew instantly which one he meant. Leitian was a regular and a fellow student at Stefan’s faculty. Tonight, she had pulled her wavy long hair into a high ponytail, exposing her neck and the low neckline of her top. The loose fabric revealed one of her shoulders and a sliver of her back. As she swayed with the music, parts of a circular tattoo on Leitian’s back vanished and reappeared. Without the high heels Leitian would probably stand slightly shorter than Stefan, the top of her head barely reaching the tip of his nose. Despite herself, Irena had to admit there was something alluring about the woman’s elegant gestures and milky complexion, in the sharp lines of her eyebrows and the way she held herself within this gauzy interior. The clothes she wore complemented the curves of her body, a hint of an hourglass silhouette, soft hips, and a slim waist Irena could see her hand snaking around and pulling close… if Leitian had not already set her mind on someone else. And besides, the last thing she wanted was to fight over a woman with Stefan.
“Fix her another of whatever she’s having. On me.” Stefan grinned. Sasho nodded and turned away, reaching for a few bottles and a mixer.
Irena watched him prepare and pour the drink into a tall glass and garnish it with a slice of orange before sliding it along the counter towards the young woman. He pointed over his shoulder at Stefan, who was still grinning, standing on his tiptoes to see better.
It was not the first time Stefan had mentioned Leitian or tried to get her attention. Irena had listened to countless descriptions of the woman, what she had done in the lecture hall, and Irena had even seen rough recreations of Leitian’s sketches and designs of buildings that Stefan had done on napkins and stray pieces of paper. There was always a note of reverence, a tremorof fear and admiration when he uttered her name—Leitian, Leitian, Leitian...It was obvious he liked her.
“Ask her out,” Irena used to urge him. She might even give him tips if he behaved.
When he did not answer, she asked:
“Worried she does not like you?”
“Worried she might like me,” Stefan replied and the harshness in his tone gave her pause.
She recognised the unspoken dread in Stefan’s words. Both of them had had their fair share of relationships and casual flings. It was hard to open up and be vulnerable with a partner when the most vulnerable thing within you was a beast that crawled out now and then. Overexcitement and pain could trigger a partial shift or a full transformation. Irena had had her whole life to prepare and control her emotions; she knew the signs of an early shift; she either forced it back in or manoeuvred away from anyone she might end up hurting.
Stefan had been a lycan for just two years, he could not shift at will, but he had adhered to a routine based on the cycles of the moon, always shifting in Irena or Vasili’s company. He rarely had outbursts or cause to turn bestial. With a few more years and enough discipline he would learn to shift when and how he wanted. Until then, Stefan exercised caution and discretion.
The only place Irena could not go and guide him was the bedroom. Early on, she had warned him that it was possible to show signs during sex. It was the overstimulation, sheer intensity of the act, the exchange of fluids. If he ever felt himself losing control, he was to break it off immediately. As awkward as it might be to kick out a lover mid-intercourse, it was better than waking up in a pool of entrails and splintered furniture.
