Page 88 of Besieger
“He’s always serious,” Vasili chimed in.
Stefan waved his hand dismissively and started towards him, but stopped, remembering he had to reset the timers and take off his apron. He dropped the garment on the counter and adjusted the sleeves of his shirt, lifting his hand to untie his hair. He ruffled the red locks, the grin never leaving his face.Would our sour wolf be partial to going drinking tonight?Stefan wondered; he really wanted to bargain for some lemon tarts for his shop, and Victor looked like he could use a drink.
“Vic—” He started to say when he noticed a figure behind Victor, the door still hanging open.
Vasili moved first and pushed Stefan back, positioning himself between him and the bar. The shadow behind Victor wound itself around him and moved forward into the electric light.
Over the years Stefan had slowly mastered the artistry of lycanthropy, willing himself to shift without the guiding hand of the moon. He wanted that power so he would never find himself in another basement, so that whatever little surprises Krum had left in his wake, they would not tear and rip as deeply as the first time they met. The line between man and beast had blurred, allowing Stefan to predict when a creature was about to lash out or snap its jaws at him. There were signs in the eyes, the snout, the ears, the fur. With humans there was no prerequisite to the violence; they were harder to predict, yet their blood rose to a boiling point, and their breath caught. Humans were manageable beasts.
The creature standing in the centre of Stefan’s shop was no man or animal. It looked like the former by the way it had dresseditself. Its suit was dark green, the cotton far too thin for the cold weather, fitted nicely over a tall, slim frame. It wore the face of a young man, mouth-wateringly beautiful, and definitely not a lycan.No,thatis something else,Stefan mused.
The door closed on its own. Vasili tipped his head towards the sound. In a blink the thing disappeared and reappeared a few metres further into the shop. It looked around the chairs stacked on top of the tables, then at the wall art. It lifted a hand and brushed the leaves of a plant. It sniffed the air and its nose crinkled as though it had smelled something foul.
The thing spoke under its breath, the sound of its voice deafening in the silence. Stefan did not catch the words, he was lost in the melody of the voice, the vowels spilling out of the creature’s mouth. A full-body shiver ran down Stefan’s spine and he fought back a groan. The skin on his forearms tightened with gooseflesh and his pulse quickened.
Like a siren’s call. Stefan was a good swimmer; he knew when to get out of the water once the waves pulled hard and there was only darkness beneath him. With this voice however… with this thing, he did not know where the sandy bottom of the ocean lay. It could be within reach of his hand or far below—down, down into the black salt.
Stefan inhaled, expecting to be engulfed by the stale smell of coffee and bodies, but there was another scent. Smoke and flowers, and blood; it oozed from the creature. A cloud of it clung to Victor. As if the two had spent days together without interruption.
Victor usually smelled of vanilla; his natural scent lay beneath layers of vanilla and icing sugar, and a faint whiff of salt. Stefan found the scent maddening. It was sweet and it made his nose itch. It stirred a craving for something sugary, but every time Victor came to the café with his trays none of the pastries satisfied Stefan. He munched on the buttery leaves of a croissant, eye trailing Victor, inhaling that sweet, sweet smell of vanilla, and grew ravenous. Now Victor’s scent was ruined.
Stefan had never pried into Victor’s personal life. He knew, of course, that Victor rented a flat in the building where Stefan had once lived as a student. He knew that when bureaucracy called, Victor made trips to Germany, before resuming work at the bakery. Stefan knew Victor’s employer and colleagues. He knew that when Victor shifted, he roamed the woods as a monster of a wolf, its pelt white and eyes glowing in the same fire as Stefan’s eye. What Stefan did not know was this thing.
“What have you brought, Victor?” Stefan rasped, still tracking the figure as it examined his shop.
“That’s—” Victor opened and closed his mouth. He looked from Vasili to Stefan, struggling to find the word for it.
The sensation of insects crawling in the crown of his hair and down his neck made Stefan shake his head. He winced, and the thing was suddenly in front of him, somehow having bypassed both Vasili and the counter. Its resemblance to a man was off-putting: there was no life in the black eyes, no life pulsed under the sun-kissed skin; the sheen of the long dark hair was unnatural, and the body moved like a doll mimicking its puppeteer.
“Are you the leader?” the creature asked, its voice honeyed with deceit.
Stefan nodded, fighting back the urge to strike and push it away. The thing was standing too close. It smiled, flashing fangs.
“I believe introductions are in order. You may call me Emerick Gabrielli.Marquis,” the thing added the title as an afterthought, as though it had momentarily forgotten about it as part of its presentation. Its smile curled into a sneer, and its dead eyes looked Stefan up and down, appraising him.
Years ago, when Stefan, Irena and Vasili had been climbing out of the ruins of the basement, Irena had made a strange assessment of their situation.
“It would have been better if we had been kidnapped by vampires,” Irena had said, more to herself than them.
Stefan had not questioned the existence of vampires, at that moment he was ready to believe in anything. If there were shapeshifters and cults to animal gods, why not blood-drinkers? It had been a long day then, and he had yet to get home and explain to his parents not only where he had been all this time, but why his eye was missing. Stefan’s day was about to go from bad to worse.
Oblivious to his trepidation Irena went on:
“Don’t worry, there are only lycans in Bulgaria. The vampires are in Greece.”
“And Romania?”
“Not that I know of. They should tell us if they have claimed it as their territory. Then again, these borders were charted centuries ago by the All Father and whoever the pack leader in Bulgaria was at the time.”
“Why should it matter which creature hunts where? There are plenty of people everywhere,” Vasili asked.
Stefan had not yet reached the point of questioning what being a lycan actually entailed—what game did their…hiskind hunt: people, animals, each other?
“For diplomacy’s sake, I think.” Irena shrugged, making a rough guess. “For protection? Vampires and lycans coexist with humans, but they hide their true nature.”
Back then, Krum and the wolf cult were one of Stefan’s many concerns. He did not pause to think about skin-walkers orothercreatures. He was tackling the early stages of lycanthropy while being a university student, trying to woo his future wife, and keeping his small pack together in Tarnovo. He ruled as pack leader, undisturbed and unbothered for years. Fewer than a dozen lycans answered to his beck and call, Krum and his goons had not resurfaced, and that had been enough for Stefan.
But Irena had been wrong. Watching the thing move around his shop, Stefan no longer thought it would have been better to be kidnapped by vampires. He was also grateful Irena was not here tonight, closing shop with Vasili.
