Midnight in Berlin (12 page)

After a while, it bounded back to its pack, leaving Silke standing there alone. I wondered if I should pet her—then wondered where the hell
that
had come from.

Something caught my eyes, and I froze. I grabbed Christoph by the arm and dragged him back from the fence, my claws sinking in a little. He snarled as he turned to me but broke into a run anyhow as I urged him along. I pulled him into a pool of blackness behind the reptile house, struggling to change back to human as fast as I could. Christoph changed easily, the bastard. He stood there, his broad chest rising and falling softly from the exertion, while he waited for me to follow.

“CCTV,” I panted, when I could speak again. Silke had bounded after us and was snuffling around Christoph, ears pricked.

“I know.” Christoph’s tone was calm and somehow sad.

What the hell? “You
knew
?”

“I told you we were coming here for Silke.” He scratched her behind the ears, and she nuzzled into him. I wondered how much she understood—did the wolf brain process human speech? “I’ve been here before.”

“And?”

“The security here is run by a wolf pack. Full wolves, not wolfmen.” Christoph crouched down to encircle Silke with his arms, burying his face briefly in her neck ruff. “It’s time she was with her own kind.”

“Fuck, Christoph—does she know about this? Did you even ask her if it was what she wanted?” Shit, only a half hour ago I’d thought… He bared his teeth, but I was damned if I was going to back down. “What the hell gives you the right to just hand her over to a pack of fucking animals?”

“She needs protection.”

“And you just don’t give enough of a damn to provide it, is that it? Getting tired of playing nursemaid, were you?” It was just like when Ben died, and my parents sent me to a fucking therapist so they wouldn’t have to deal with my grief firsthand. “Shit, Christoph, why the hell didn’t you just leave her with her father?” Halfway through, my teeth lengthened, and I snagged my tongue on a fucking fang, which didn’t improve my mood any.

“I’m doing this for her!” Christoph snapped. “You’ve seen the sort of life she had with Schreiber! At least she’ll be safe with them.”

Silke whined. I put my hand out blindly to pet her as I fought back the change. “Yeah? But just what the hell do you think these guys are going to do to us? And okay, maybe I’m relying on Schreiber having told us the truth here, but I have a feeling that bit about the real werewolves hating us was the one thing he wasn’t lying about!”

Christoph snarled at me, and it hit me that maybe, just maybe, antagonizing the one guy who was nominally on my side here wasn’t the best thing I could have done. Then a light flashed blindingly. I jumped back, trying to blink the colored blobs out of my vision.

A mocking voice cut through the silence. “You’d better make up your mind,
Halbmensch
. Are we real werewolves, or animals?”

Chapter Eleven

I bristled. Literally.

I heard a low growl come from the direction of the voice—had the guy changed? No. As my vision cleared, I saw there were two of them—one human, the asshole with the flashlight, and one wolf. Damn, it was big. Silke whimpered, crouched low beside me. A snarl came out of my throat, and the wolf’s muscles bunched like it was about to spring.

“Leon!” Christoph snapped, and my hackles subsided, although it pissed me the hell off that he thought he could order me around like that. He stepped forward, hands held wide, into a patch of moonlight. The guy with the flashlight tensed at the sight of him but didn’t move. “This is Silke,” Christoph said, not taking his eyes off the werewolves. “She needs to belong to a pack. If she goes with you, will you guarantee she will be well treated?”

Wait a goddamn minute, I wanted to say. But my throat seemed to have closed up.

Flashlight Guy nodded. “Better than your pack has treated you, I think.” Hell, he wasn’t wrong there.

Silke whined, and Christoph crouched with his arms around her again. His gaze was still fixed on Flashlight Guy and Lassie. “Silke, it’s for the best. They’ll teach you not to be ashamed of what you are.”

The strange wolf padded forward, tail up. It stopped a few feet away.

“Go to him,” Christoph said, releasing her. Silke whined again, then slunk forward, tail low.

“What’s her history?” Flashlight Guy asked. He was a big brute of a man, but he looked like he’d be worryingly light on his feet.

“Her father is like us,” Christoph told him. “I believe her mother was one of you, but I never met her.” Hell, that was news to me. I’d have thought Schreiber wouldn’t touch a full werewolf if she was the last bitch on earth.

The two wolves were sniffing each other out. “Why don’t they change back to people?” I asked. I mean, hell, she could actually talk to these guys then. Although I guess they’d all be naked, which might not make for the easiest of conversations on her part.

Flashlight Guy kind of snorted, like it was the stupidest question he’d heard all night, and my skin started to itch. I clamped my teeth shut to try to stop them from getting any funny ideas about turning into fangs.

Christoph answered me softly. “The change can be painful for the full wolves. Not something to be done lightly. And I think there are other reasons. Social reasons.”

“You’ve done your homework,” Flashlight Guy said neutrally.

“How come it hurts for them and not for us?” I asked. Not that I had a problem with any lack of pain on my part.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Christoph murmured. By which I guess he meant, not in front of these guys.

Flashlight Guy must have been listening in. “Pain is natural. Children suffer growing pains. Childbirth is the most painful process most women ever go through.” Like he’d been a mommy in a previous life or something. “When doctors intervene, they try to take away the pain. As if pain is not part of life. Natural life.”

“Let me guess,” I said to Christoph out of the corner of my mouth. “He’s one of those guys who stubs out cigarettes in the palm of his hand to prove how goddamn manly he is.”

“I could try it with you,
Halbmensch
,” Flashlight Guy said mockingly. “Let’s see how manly you are, shall we?”

Christoph growled. I was breathing hard, and my claws were out. “Enough with the fucking insults already!” I snarled.

Silke broke off from rubbing noses with her fellow wolf to whine softly. The strange wolf took a step toward Flashlight Guy, its tail stiff and its ears high.

A muscle twitched in Flashlight Guy’s jaw. “I apologize,” he forced out stiffly. You could have fit the amount of sincerity in his voice on the head of a pin and still had room for an army of angels to get their groove on, but it was enough to pacify my inner beast. I breathed a little easier.

“Leon, we should go now,” Christoph said, and I had to agree. I just didn’t like leaving Silke there with these guys.

“Silke?” I said, and she turned her muzzle to look at me. I crouched down, and she came to me. As if in this form, she wasn’t afraid anymore. “Are you okay with this?”

She turned to look at Christoph, and he nodded. Her tail wagged softly as she padded back to Flashlight Guy and the strange wolf. I felt cheated—was that any sort of answer? Shit, she was still just doing what she was told. “What about Jon?” I asked, and she whined, her head low. I felt like a bastard.

“Come,” Christoph said. Flashlight Guy and the wolves stood aside to let us pass.

I went. What the hell else could I do?

“I’ve planned this for a long time,” Christoph said as we walked toward the exit, a big, fancy archway flanked by stone elephants. I jumped every time a camera whirred, proof that back at wolf central, they were making damn sure we didn’t get any ideas about hanging around.

When we got to the heavy gates that were supposed to stop people like us from getting in here after hours, another guy in a security uniform came out of the gatehouse and unlocked it for us, then stood back to let us pass. All without saying a word, like those scenes in old Cold War movies when they used to do spy swaps at Checkpoint Charlie. The ones where the camera tracks the good guy as he makes the long, slow walk to freedom, and all the time you’re waiting on the edge of your seat for some asshole to shoot him in the back.

“Why?” I asked bitterly as the space between my shoulder blades itched so bad it hurt. “Why the hell couldn’t she have just stayed with us?” Shit, what was I going to say to Jon?
Oops, sorry, seem to have mislaid your girlfriend. Yeah, that’s right, we sent her off with a couple of scary dudes none of us had ever met before. You got a problem with that?

Christoph was silent a moment. I turned away from the lights of the human city to look at him. I had time to notice his scars were looking a hell of a lot older than they’d done only hours earlier, as if maybe changing form had helped them heal, somehow. The raised, unstitched edges didn’t look a hell of a lot prettier, though, and now it was way too late to do anything about them.

Finally he spoke. “Because she’s been brainwashed all her life into thinking she’s of no account, a mistake, an abomination. She needs to be with her own kind. To learn to be proud of what she is.” He paused. “And because I’m going to kill her father.”

The sun had started to come up by the time we made it back to Kreuzberg, but then we weren’t exactly hurrying. It was too early for anyone to be at work apart from night-shift workers who’d be on their way home soon, but there were a few groups of partygoers who’d stayed out all night, lurching home and blinking at the daylight like hordes of the undead. A tired-looking hooker in gold hot pants called out something from a street corner, then gave us the finger when we didn’t answer. I didn’t bother going over to explain we weren’t exactly her target audience. One of those little street-cleaning wagons with the rotating brushes rumbled past, picking up cigarette butts and leaving a damp trail behind it. Sanitizing the city for the daytime people. When I first got to Germany, I thought I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in Canada, the streets were so frickin’ clean.

“You want to see if there’s anywhere open we could grab a coffee?” I asked. My voice sounded rusty. Christoph had been giving me the silent treatment since we’d left the zoo. Left Silke.

He glanced at me for a moment, then looked away. I was struck again by how perfect, how unblemished, the right side of his face was. “This isn’t going to get any easier.”

“If you ask me, most things are easier after your first cup of coffee.” Or your first shot of bourbon, but I figured it was a little early in the day to be seeking out that kind of comfort. Maybe not too early to earn a buck; there was an old homeless guy picking up used beer bottles from around a trash can to take back to a supermarket for the deposit. Most people don’t throw their bottles in the trash around here, just leave them standing next to it out of consideration for the
Flaschensammler
. “Hey, there’s a cafe over there that looks like it’s open.”

Christoph half smiled. “We don’t have any money, remember?”

“
Shit!
” I stopped dead in the street as a hollow feeling opened up inside of me.

“What is it?”

“Jon was supposed to be getting us some money,
remember
? Just how fucking keen do you think he’s going to be to help us out now? Shit, couldn’t you have kept Silke around for one more night?” The
Flaschensammler
turned around to gape at the loudmouthed American shouting at the disfigured man. I bared my teeth at him, and he stumbled backward, eyes wide—then turned to run down the street, his bags a cacophony of clinking glass, leaving a faint stench of rotting food and unwashed human behind him. A hand grabbed my arm, hard.

“Leon! You must control yourself!” Christoph hissed.

I damn near took a swing at him. I don’t know what stopped me. Made me lower my head and take a few deep breaths. “Sorry,” I said, surprising myself. Where the hell did that come from? But he was right—we were on a public street, for fuck’s sake.

We walked on, silent once more. It didn’t look like I’d be getting my coffee, and maybe not any breakfast either—hell, for all I knew, we could be looking for a new place to stay a half hour from now.

I just hoped Jon was going to take this better than I thought he would.

Jon didn’t take it any better than I thought he would.

He was asleep when we got back to the hostel. I was dog tired, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be getting to sleep after the night I’d had. Luckily the family who ran the place were early risers. We sat in their kitchen for an hour or more drinking sweet Turkish coffee while fat women in headscarves bustled around us. They clucked over Christoph’s face—God knows what the hell they thought had happened to it—and served us platefuls of eggs and spicy sliced sausage, cooked all together in a pan with about a gallon of oil. It was damn tasty, but it wasn’t like any breakfast I’d ever had in Turkey. Maybe it was some regional variation. Or maybe they were just trying to be Western about it for our sake.

We mopped up some of the grease with sour white bread. On top of what I’d eaten last night—shit, don’t think about the raw duck—as long as my stomach didn’t rebel and barf it all up, I’d be set up for about a week now. The women didn’t seem to know much German—at least, they could only speak it in one-word sentences—but even so, we didn’t talk much.

I guess we were both thinking about the guy upstairs. We hung around the kitchen as long as we could, but there came a point when, even with the language barrier, we could tell we were in danger of outstaying our welcome. Christoph touched me on the arm. “We should go and wake Jon.”

I felt like saying, “Hey, you go ahead, I’ll follow you up there,” and then making a run for it, but at the end of the day, Jon was my friend, not Christoph’s. I figured I should be the one to tell him Christoph had given away his girlfriend.

Like I said, he didn’t take it too well.

“What the hell? What do you mean, she’s not coming back? What have you done with her?” Jon flung himself out of bed and, wearing only his boxers, marched up to me until he was shouting in my face.