Dracul (28 page)

But if there’s any chance the female beside me is a dragon, then there’s no way I can let her leave without trying to meet her and get to know her and possibly learn if we might actually be the same species, as I suspect.

She might be the one. So I simply can’t let her walk away.

I clear my throat.

She doesn’t look up.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered a basilisk before.” I try to keep my voice non-threatening.

She freezes.

For a second, I’m sure I’ve terrified her and she’s going to take the next stop even if it’s not really her stop. But then she speaks without looking up.

“Of course not. If you had, you’d be dead.” She has a slight accent. Russian is my guess.

I chuckle, mostly from relief that she not only spoke, but spoke wittily.

Still, she has yet to look up. I’ve got to keep talking.

“I can only assume you haven’t met one, either, then?”

She slips a bookmark into place and closes her book before turning to look up at me. Her eyes are blue—the purest, most vibrant blue. “Either that, or I’ve outwitted every one I’ve met.”

My mouth has gone dry. I have no words. I may be grinning like an utter idiot.

She isn’t a child at all, but a young woman. Her face looks like that of a twenty-year-old, though her eyes hold a wisdom and wit that seem older than that.

She’s perfect.

No, she’s not. She’s actually pale and anemic-looking, with dark shadows haunting her eyes and a blueish tinge to her skin, as though she hasn’t ever seen the sun and has insufficient circulation.

But other than that, perfect, with a pert nose and small mouth and those eyes.

Those eyes.

She’s looking at me expectantly, and I realize it’s my turn to speak. After all, she closed her book for me. It would be rude not to talk.

“I’m Felix.” I lower my right hand from the handle above, and somehow slip it through the cram of people toward her.

Something like fear flickers across her face and she looks at my hand.

We’ve reached the next stop and people are filing off the tram. She glances at the open door.

She’s going to flee.

But she doesn’t. Instead she slips her book into her left hand and lets her fingers disappear into my handshake. Her palm is tiny, but warm.

She’s not a vampire, then. Vampires are cold to the touch. But why is she so pale? And how can her eyes be that bright, but yet not be luminescent? Dragon eyes are bright, but they glow. We can’t go out in public without color-dulling contacts. I have in a pair right now that make my scarlet eyes look brown.

Her eyes are so vivid. Maybe she’s wearing specialized contacts.

Or maybe she’s not a dragon.

She pulls her hand from mine and hesitates another couple of seconds before offering me her name. “I’m Lilit, but you can call me Lil.”

“Lil,” I repeat, and then physically clench my jaw to keep from making a joke about her size and the fact that L’il is short for
little
. Instead, I say, “That’s a lovely name. Fitting.”

She scowls. “Do you mean because I’m little?”

“No. Fitting because you’re lovely and it’s a lovely name.” The tram doors close. She’s not going to run away now, but she could easily decide to stop talking to me. “There’s a restaurant a couple of stops from here—Jitrnicka’s—have you tried it?”

Lil starts to shake her head.

She’s going to turn me down.

“They have dining al fresco,” I mention the outdoor seating in case she’s afraid of going inside somewhere with me. “It’s a nice place. Some say their steaks are the best in town.” I don’t mention that part of the reason the steaks are so good, is that I cut them myself with swords. The restaurant belongs to the same butcher who once employed my parents. I’ve worked for him for a couple of years now.

But Lil only shakes her head more firmly. “I don’t eat steak. I’m a vegetarian.”

Chapter Two

For a few seconds, I don’t know what to say. I have never met a dragon who didn’t eat meat. Dragons love meat. We’d live off of it exclusively if we could get away with avoiding the other food groups all the time.

Dragons
can’t
be vegetarians.

I don’t think it’s physically possible.

Maybe she’s not what I thought. Maybe this smell isn’t a smell, maybe it’s another overwrought delusion brought on by my obsessive quest to learn how to make gold.

But even as I think that thought, the smell tells me differently.

I can’t give up. “They have salads.” I wrack my brain for items from the vegetarian column of the menu, which I’ve always ignored up until now. “Eggplant Parmesan, kolaches, pierogis.”

“I love pierogis,” Lil’s face brightens.

“Please come to dinner with me.”

“Why?” Her blue eyes are full of misgivings.

I open my mouth to respond, but no words come out, because honestly, what can I say?
I think you might be a dragon? You smell good?

These are not logical reasons for asking a girl to dinner, especially when I’m not so sure about whether she really could be a dragon, and the smell is not really a smell.

What else is there? I can feel the hope fading from my face, and I offer the only remaining reason I can think of, pathetic though it is. “I get tired of eating by myself all the time.”

Understand wells in her eyes for just a second before she blinks it away. “Are their pierogis good?”

“I have no idea,” I admit. “But if you try them, you could tell me, and then I’d know.”

She closes her eyes for a second, like she can’t quite believe she’s accepting my answer. “Okay. I’ll go.”

“Thank you.” I want to say something more, something impressive or sparkling or captivating, but I can’t think of anything. My brain has been taken over by the scent that’s not really a scent, and the possibility, unlikely thought it may be, that I may have found a female of my own species.

So we ride the tram in silence for a couple more stops, and Lil tucks her book into the knapsack at her feet, and then we reach the stop closest to Jitrnicka’s, and suddenly I’m afraid she may have changed her mind. “Here’s the stop.”

She nods silently and follows me off the tram, keeping extra distance between us so we don’t bump together in the crush of the crowd.

Jitrnicka’s isn’t terribly busy tonight. It’s a Wednesday. Not a huge night for them.

Of course they all know me there because not only do I cut their steaks, but I eat there several times each week. Zusa, the hostess, is kind enough not to say anything about the fact that I’m usually alone.

“Felix!” She greets me with a smile. “Your usual table?”

My usual table is in back, near the kitchen. “Something outside tonight. Děkuji, Zusa.”

Zusa leaves us with menus.

“Will it make you uncomfortable if I order steak?” I ask Lil.

“I’m not offended by meat,” she assures me. “I just can’t eat it.”

Unsure whether it’s safe to ask, I hesitate a moment before giving in to my curiosity. “Why can’t you eat meat?”

She fiddles with the napkin in silence, and I fear I’ve asked too personal a question. But then she admits softly, “It doesn’t agree with me. I have a physical reaction.”

“Like an allergy?”

“Kind of like an allergy.” She nods, but her expression is blank.

Weird. I’ve not heard of anyone being allergic to meat before. I guess it’s possible, though.

We sit in awkward silence until Zusa returns and takes our orders. Then I attempt to make conversation, which ends up feeling a bit like an inquisition. Lil admits she’s from Russia, but studied at a boarding school in London.

“My mother went to a boarding school in England.” I smile broadly, hoping she’ll feel some connection.

Instead she frowns. “I didn’t like it.”

“Neither did my mother.”

We’re quiet a while longer. “So, what do you do in Prague?”

“I work in a bookshop.” Lil almost smiles. “It’s over—” Lil seems to catch herself, and waves a hand vaguely. “That way, a ways. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a butcher.”

Lil’s been fiddling with her napkin again, and all the utensils fall out with a clatter. She glances up at me with an inaudible question clear on her face.

Are you some kind of serial killer?

Much as I’d love to assuage her fears, since she didn’t ask the question out loud, I suspect it would be even more alarming for me to try to answer it. Instead, I try to normalize my profession. “I come from a family of butchers. My parents taught me the art. They used to work for Jitrnicka’s when it was just a butcher shop. Our waitress, Zusa, worked with them. As Prague became a fashionable tourist city, the Jitrnickas realized they could do better in the restaurant business than as a meat shop.”

Lil sips her water, eying me warily. “Do you like being a butcher?”

How do I admit to a vegetarian that yes, I love my job? I love that it’s hard, physical work that keeps in me shape. I love that I get to use my swords for most of it, which works out to be excellent practice, not that I’ve had to use swords against any enemies since I slayed a bunch of vampires four years ago.

But of course, I can’t tell Lil any of that.

“It’s not bad. Nobody bothers me.”

“That would be nice. The only downside to working in a bookshop is that people come in and interrupt my reading. And also, my boss doesn’t like me reading, so it’s no fun when she’s there.”

“Your boss doesn’t like you reading? At a bookshop?” I’m puzzled. “Isn’t it helpful for you to be familiar with the inventory?”

“That’s what I told her. But she always wants me to dust and clean the windows. We have the cleanest windows of any bookshop you’ve ever seen.”

Our food arrives while Lil is finishing her sentence. We dine mostly in silence. Lil informs me that the pierogis are, in fact, quite good.

I try to eat politely, cutting my meat into small bites and chewing each several times, instead of scarfing everything down as I would if I were alone. Still, I catch Lil staring at me, watching my steak (which is bloody, dripping rare) as I pass my fork from my plate to my mouth. You’d think she’d look disgusted, but she actually looks distinctly…hungry.

“Did you want to try a bite?” I offer after I catch her watching me for the third time.

“I…no. Thank you anyway, no.” She shakes her head hard, as though to erase the expression on her face, which is a starved sort of look that appears to eagerly accept my offer. “I can’t.”

We finish our meals quickly, in spite of all my efforts to eat at a moderate pace.

“Thank you for dinner. I need to go,” Lil excuses herself as soon as she’s swallowed her last bite.

“Can I walk you home?”

Terror flashes across her face. “No.”

“Can I give you my phone number?” I’d prefer to ask for hers, but she doesn’t seem receptive to that request.

“Really, no. I just need to go.” She scoops up her bag, thanks me again, and hurries away.

The scent fades into the distance as she climbs aboard the nearest tram, and it whisks her away.

I spend the next several evenings trolling all the tram stops, sniffing the air. The second evening it rains, which makes it difficult to smell anything, so I look up book shops, but all the shops I find are closed by that hour, and as far as I can tell in the rain, all have equally clean windows, which makes it difficult to narrow down which shop might be the one where Lil works.

That same evening, I might have caught a whiff of yagi scent, but when I looked around, I didn’t see anything but shadows and rain. The raindrops wash the air as they fall, so if I did smell a yagi, you’d think it would have to be close enough for me to see it.

Unless it was hiding.

Which I suppose they do.

The third evening is a lovely night. It’s a Friday and Jitrnicka’s is busy. I get there late after sniffing around town in vain. The only available table is near the street, lit by candles and streetlamps since darkness has fallen. I’m halfway through my steak, absorbed in eating, when I smell Lil.

I look up and watch her approaching my table warily, her face turned to watch the street behind her. She doesn’t even look at me until she lowers herself into the empty seat across from me.

Her face looks panicked. “Don’t make it obvious, but look behind me. Is there a creepy guy?”

I look behind her. The outdoor eating area is separated from the street by narrow hedgerows on wheeled planters, which block my view. I half stand in time to see a figure in a fedora and trench coat as he steps into the shadows of an alley across the street.

“Trench coat, collar pulled up, fedora pulled low, can’t see his face?” I relate what I’ve seen to Lil.

If possible, her face goes even paler.

“Do you know wha—who it is?” I correct my question almost too late.

She shakes her head. “I’ve seen them every couple of days for over a week. It’s like they’re following me.”

“
Them?
I only saw one.”

“I’ve seen one far behind me, and then again ahead of me. I can’t imagine it was the same one. Nobody could move that fast. There have to be at least two of them. Maybe more.”

I’m tempted to ask her what they smell like, but she’s already frightened enough, and I don’t want her to be any more scared of me.

And anyway, I know what they smell like.

“Can you see it now?” She doesn’t turn around.

“It ducked into the alley across the street. Want some pierogis?”

That hungry look crosses her face again. She looks so frail, but she shakes her head at my offer. “I should get home. I just—they were following me, and I came this way, and you were here. I—I mostly wanted to ask, to see if you saw what I was seeing.”

She looks like she’s ready to leave.

I’m nearly positive those are yagi that are following her.

And yagi track dragons.

I’m far from certain about what she is, but I know beyond a doubt I don’t want her to fall prey to the yagi.

“Let me at least walk you home.” I scarf down most of the remainder of my steak.

She looks behind her, to the darkness where the coated figure disappeared. Then she looks at me again, obviously torn between walking home with a butcher or being followed home by a yagi.

I try not to take her indecision personally.

“Let me at least walk you to your tram stop.” I pull out my wallet and toss money on the table.

Lil looks like she’s ready to bolt. “Tram stop,” she affirms, rising.

We round the hedgerow planters, and I can see the tram down the street, already pulling away from the stop. “It’s going to be a bit of a wait for the next car.”

“Let’s walk, then. We can catch one at another stop. I don’t feel comfortable standing still.” She sets a surprisingly brisk pace. As she walks, she pulls out a key ring and places the keys each between her fingers, blades extended, tips out, so that if she were to punch someone with that hand, the keys would rip into them.

She looks ahead with a determined glint in her eye.

Something swirls inside me. I’m not going to lie—I’ve been attracted to this female since before I saw her face, ever since I smelled her. But seeing the way she soldiers forward in spite of her fear, the way she sets her keys, feeble weapon though they might be…it makes me feel things I’ve never felt.

I’m a big guy. Sure, my older brother has always been bigger than I am, and I’ve lost nearly every wrestling match between us, but even then, I didn’t have to fear for my safety or my life.

Much as I’d love to wrap my arm around Lil and protect her, she seems almost as afraid of me as she is of the yagi, and I don’t want to frighten her further. I wish I knew what to do.

I also wish I had a sword with me, because about the only way to kill a yagi is to slice its head off, and if I had a sword right now, I’d charge down the alley and decapitate any yagi I might find.

Since none of those things are options, I settle for walking alongside Lil and sniffing the air.

I can smell them. Even over the alluring scent of Lil, I smell yagi. They’re close, maybe even getting closer.

Jitrnicka’s is a couple blocks south of Prague’s Old Town Square. Lil turns west, toward the river. I’m not sure if she’s headed home or hoping to come to another tram stop, or just walking away from where we last saw the yagi.

We reach an intersection and she starts to cross the street, but I see a familiar figure in the shadows ahead.

“Lil.” I grab her sleeve.

She looks up, freezes, turns the corner, and hurries down that block.

I glance back in time to see the yagi turn the corner after us.

And I nearly I am certain it’s a yagi. They have a fluidity of movement that’s not human, a stature that may be human in size, but is distinctly cockroach-like in form, if a cockroach were to rear up on its hind legs and walk with its head up, like a human.