The Progeny (16 page)

I lean over, cover my face. Steps sound across the floor. And then he’s kneeling beside the chair and clasping me tightly by the hands.

“You were supposed to be safe here. As soon as we figure out the passport thing, we leave.”

“To go where?”

“The Australian bush. The Maldives.” He brushes my hair from my forehead. “I’ll build a hut. You’ll dive for oysters. Or a rain forest in South Africa. Where the biggest thing we’ll worry about is getting worms under our skin.”

“That’s so gross.”

He laughs softly.

I look at him. “And they wouldn’t find us there? In the jungle?”

He’s quiet.

“Does it even matter where we go?”

“We’ll move around. But right now, we just need to get you to the underground or wherever Claudia and Piotrek can keep you out of sight until we get those passports.”

“Us, you mean.”

“They may not trust me. They probably won’t. And they’ll be able to protect you right now better than I can. Much as I hate to admit it.”

“You’re a very convincing liar,” I whisper.

“Because I’m telling you the truth.”

My gaze settles on his lips. “I want to know something.”

He looks up at me.

Courage fails. “Can I have the first shower?”

I lock myself in the bathroom. By the time the spray hits my hair, my face has already crumpled. I slump against the fiberglass wall.

My name is Audra Ellison. I am in a country I do not remember, with a man I barely know and who, by all accounts, I should not trust. My only tie to real answers has just died because of me. Does that make me an accomplice to murder? Am I naïve for wanting to believe Luka—not because he says he’ll protect me but because having no one to trust is worse than the thought of dying? I thought yesterday I had never felt so alone. But now, in this tightening knot of pretenses, I feel more alone than before.

No wonder I wanted to forget it all. Given the choice, I’d go back and forget these last five days and wake up in a hut on some beach, none the wiser.

But despite the fact that I can’t imagine another day like this—let alone a year or an entire life . . . I also can’t imagine dying without answers.

Or living with this much fear.

Today I spoke with a man in the last hours of his life. Tomorrow that could be me.

The TV is on when I emerge from the bathroom. I haven’t allowed myself to consider the thing I nearly asked Luka before I locked myself in there. But I am painfully aware that life is far too short.

I find him slumped in the chair. I think he looks nearly as lost as I felt sitting there.

“Before I went into the Center,” I say, finding it much easier without him looking at me, “what were we—”

“Audra,” he says, sitting up, gaze riveted to the image on the wall. “Is that him?”

I glance at the television and have to stare to reconcile the picture with the grizzled man I met. The man in the corner of the screen is clean-shaven with hair neatly cut. More hot college professor than hermit.

Go, Ivan.

“Yes.”

Though I can’t read Croatian, the name beneath the photo is plain enough: Imre Tomić. I glance at Luka, puzzled.

So I’m not the only one living under an alias. ’Course, Ivan’s not exactly living anymore.

The image shrinks as the telecast shifts to earlier footage of the ferry: a lone, white Peugeot in the hull, paramedics packing up. Luka slides to the edge of his seat.

There’s a woman being interviewed as blue police lights flash in the background. Though I’m weirdly picking up a few words—a remnant from my time in Croatia before?—I can’t make it all out. “What’s she saying?”

“A man tried to revive Ivan—Imre.” He pauses a moment and then translates: “And when he failed to resuscitate him, stayed to comfort him as he died. She doesn’t know who it was, he left as police arrived. She’s calling him an angel.”

The video shifts to a still shot taken from a security camera. A man in the act of fleeing, only part of his face captured on camera.

But I know the angles of that face. Recognize the curve of that ear.

Rolan.

Luka gets to his feet, paces away with a curse.

“I knew this was off,” he says. “One hunter, one mark. Rolan was hunting
you
. But if he’s just killed Ivan . . .”

“Then someone else is hunting me.”

Either that, or there is no need for a replacement. I slide a glance to Luka.

“Something’s wrong. Something changed,” he says. He’s agitated, head bowed, knuckles pressed against his lips.

“The woman they interviewed,” I say slowly. “Why would she think that, about Rolan being an angel?” I recall the way he recited from the Book of Daniel, the way I equated Watchers with angels.

“You have to hold the head in your hands,” he murmurs. “That’s why it looked like he was comforting him.”

An angel of death, then.

This is on me. It’s all on me.
I
called Ivan from Rolan’s phone—and then came straight to Croatia to meet him. I’ve seen no trace of Rolan since we ran him off the road, but all that tells me is that he isn’t acting alone.

Why, why did Ivan arrange to meet me? Luka was right: He knew the dangers better than anyone, especially where I was concerned. Why would he risk his life?

I’m sorry,
I whisper, if only in my mind, not knowing if he can hear me.

I’m already beneath the covers of the top bunk when Luka emerges from his shower. I watch him pad to the door, check the lock, and then wedge the desk chair beneath the handle. Does he do this every night before he sleeps?

“Luka,” I say as he reaches for the bathroom light. He glances up.

“Am I safe with you?”

“With me, or from me, you mean?” He sounds worn.

“Either.”

He looks away. “Yes.”

I turn onto my side facing the wall, pillow already damp beneath my hair.

“Wake me up if you can’t sleep,” he says and turns out the light.

He undresses in the dark. The frame of the bunk shudders briefly as he slides into bed. I listen to him sigh. Imagine, even, that he has folded his arms behind his head to stare up at the bottom of my mattress. And I wonder if I’ll ever be free from fear again.

19

B
reath cools my ear in gentle waves. I am instantly awake, staring wide-eyed in the darkness. Aware of the arm beneath my head, the one curled over the coverlet around me. Smell of skin.

My name is Audra Ellison. I am in a marine hostel in Rijeka, Croatia . . . and I am not in bed alone.

If I close my eyes, I can almost pretend that these arms are as safe as they feel. And I do, for all of three seconds. Any longer and I will stay.

I inch up with supreme slowness, glance back with only my eyes, not daring to turn my head. Slide out from under arm and coverlet both. Reach a foot for the ladder, find the floor instead. I’m on the bottom bunk.

But I’m clothed, at least—having gone to bed fully dressed beneath the covers.

Luka’s breath is slow and even. I ease up from the edge of the bed, swipe my sneakers from the floor nearby. Glance at the clock.

6:11
A.M
.

There’s a light blinking silently on the phone—a message I don’t dare check. I pad to the door, feel for the chair. Lift it out from beneath the handle and set it carefully aside. Grab my hat off the desk, pull it onto my head. Turn the lock with painful slowness and a soft, alarming
snick
before depressing the handle.

I slip out the door and catch it until it quietly clicks. The moment it does, I turn down the hallway—

And run right into Claudia.

She’s leaning there, shoulder against the wall. Her arms are crossed. Gone, the sweater dress, replaced by a pair of jeans rolled around the ankles and a simple shirt I recognize as Piotrek’s. All of it is. His fedora dangles from her fingertips.

“Good morning, Audra,” she says and smiles. Her hair is wet. “I take it you’re not just slipping out for coffee.”

I purse my lips.

She lifts her chin, glances at me sidelong, and then sets the fedora on her head. “We’d better hurry if we’re going to make the first ferry,” she says and starts off down the hall.

After a stunned beat, I tug my shoes on and start after her, noting that her butt looks better in her brother’s jeans than most women’s do in yoga pants.

There’s a cab waiting at the bottom of the ramp. A moment later, we’re headed down the road.

“So . . . was Piotrek planning to cross-dress today?”

“It will keep him put until we get back. There’s a message waiting for Luka when he wakes up. Maybe it will stop them both from running off and doing something almost as stupid as we are.”

“How’d you manage to shower without waking Piotrek?” I ask.

“I didn’t.” When I look pointedly at her wet hair, she smiles. “I enjoy a bracing swim before dawn. Don’t you?”

My adrenaline is running high by the time we arrive at the ferry. The line is shorter this time, the ferry itself—industrial white with Korean lettering on its side—open for business as though it had never stopped for the night. The driver takes the cab directly into the hull as more cars file in behind us.

We climb the metal stairs to the main deck. I glance below just once, picturing an old white Peugeot sitting alone in that metal cavern, a body slumped at the wheel. I can see the spot from here.

The ride to Cres isn’t half as magical for us as it seems to be for the couple snapping photos from the railing. The island, obscured by haze, creeps closer until it becomes a hulking coastline of stone and shrub.

Claudia’s phone rings. Standing three feet away, I can hear the irate enunciation of every word on the other end. Piotrek.

Claudia’s tone is strangely conciliatory—even as what sounds like a chair crashes in the background.

“How mad is he?” I say when she hangs up.

“He’ll let Luka know you’re with me. And he’s very mad. Rightfully so. On top of everything, I took his phone since I got rid of mine. We’ll have to get rid of this one now that he’s called it from the hostel.”

“He’s your brother. He has to forgive you,” I say. “He’s probably more mad about having to wear a dress.”

She turns to face me against the rail. “You don’t know anything, do you? His job is to protect me. With his life, if necessary. And I’ve just thrown that in his face. For you.”

“I didn’t ask you to come!”

“Yes, but now that Ivan’s dead you need me.”

“He’s your brother, not your warden.”

“He’s my sibling. Not my brother.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I have no brother. He’s my sibling by choice.”

“I don’t get it.”

“The hunters target females because the legacy passes through them.”

“How can you say that? They just killed Ivan.”

“Yes, for what he knows! You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” I snap.

“A male line dies on its own—any children he has with a normal woman are not Utod. His only value to the hunters is what he may know. They will always target a female first to halt the legacy—the gifts she passes to her children. So she adopts a sibling if she doesn’t have one to protect her. And that bond will be deeper than if they had come from the same womb.”

“Do they ever get . . . involved? I mean if they’re not really related?”

“Sometimes, of course. But it becomes complicated. And makes both parties vulnerable.” There’s something like reproach in her gaze. I haven’t forgotten her statement that I wasn’t worth risking more lives.

I decide to just come right out with the question. “How did we know one another, Claudia?”

She studies me for a moment.

“We met in the Budapest court—”

“Court . . .” I recall Ivan using that term as well.

“The Utod underground.”

“Which is in Budapest.”

“In many cities. But Budapest, naturally. And Zagreb. The Prince of Zagreb himself sent me to Opatija to see for him if it is true that you are alive,” she says with a tilt of her chin.

I lift my brows slightly. “Why would he care?”

“Really, Audra, why did you do this?” She truly seems troubled. “No. You don’t know,” she answers for herself and shakes her head.

“No,” I say quietly. “I don’t. So we met in Budapest.”

“Through a woman named Katia, yes. Piotrek was her biological brother. Her twin.”

“Then why is he with you?”

“Because she’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

Claudia leans her forearms on the rail, lifts her face to the breeze. “I had just run away from home. I was sixteen. Katia found me digging in trash cans for food. She felt me in that alley, knew what I was. I remember that night, so perfectly. She had just come from court, and I thought she was the most glamorous and exciting girl I had ever seen. She taught me how to survive. I loved Katia. But you were important to her in ways I never understood. I looked to her. She looked to you. I could tell there were secrets between you I never knew.” Claudia glances over her shoulder at me.

“What happened?”

“You were the last person to see her the night her hunter found her. You came and took me into hiding with you. Three weeks later, you were gone. But you brought Piotrek to me first, and for that, I suppose I should thank you.”

I hear her words, yet somehow I feel like “you’re welcome” might get me slapped.

“You don’t approve of Luka.”

“I saw him with you once, before you disappeared,” she says.

“You did?”

“It was obvious you were lovers.”

I don’t move. I barely breathe.

“It’s amazing what you learn living as an adopted stray, always looking in from the outside. I had seen Luka with you. I thought he was your hunter. I even warned you.”

“Why? Why not wait to see if you were right?”

Her head swivels toward me. “I’m not a murderer, Audra. I only wanted you to leave. And after Katia was killed, you did leave. Two more Utod died—friends of Katia’s—three months later. And then Andre, Katia’s lover, disappeared. I thought he was dead until we heard this summer he committed suicide before his memory could be stripped and served to the Historian like meat.” Her lips curl. “A month ago, everything in Zagreb fell apart. And I realized it wasn’t because Katia or Andre was dead, but because
you were
.”