The Progeny (25 page)

In the periphery of my vision I spot a camera along the wall. Tibor and Nikola and who knows how many others, monitoring an underground more tightly controlled than the streets above.

With a sweep of my arm I tear off my mask. Toss it high over the milling mass of Progeny. The gold hairpiece gets flung against the wall. Last of all the wig, hurled directly at the camera. It snags, obscuring the lens. I don’t care if my hair is mashed, or if the scar from my procedure is visible through the patch of hair behind my ear. In fact, I hope it is.

Luka swiftly pulls me down. He’s shouting, and though I can’t hear him, I make out the shape of his words.

What are you doing?

The music drives on, but all around me people have frozen in place like pillars.

I want to announce, maniacally, that the rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. I laugh, but no one around me is smiling. It is a private joke between fate and me. I will soon be disappearing, for good this time no doubt, and the Historian already knows I am here. The charade, at least for me, is over.

Luka tugs me toward the exit. Farther back, Claudia and Piotrek are worming their way toward us through the stunned mass, Ana and Nino in their wake.

I turn back at the door one last time and, after winking to the nearest camera, bow grandly before Luka drags me out by the arm.

The butler in the cell outside stops us as we make for the main tunnel.

“This way,” he says, leading us in a different direction. He slips a package into my hand. And then we rush through a narrow passage to come up into a decrepit building.

When we emerge onto Visoka Street, I turn my face to the starless sky.

It is raining.

*  *  *

W
e range farther through the city than we ever have, Claudia chattering in outrage and then awe at my actions earlier. The outrage, I expected. Even anger. The awe, well, I didn’t see that coming.

“It’s like you gave fear, life, everyone the finger,” she says with relish. “I wish Ivan were alive to see it!”

Me, too.

Claudia talks about how some girl dancing next to her started to scream the minute I took off my mask as though she had seen a dead body.

She might have,
I think.

We end up on the edge of the city, where we race up a fire escape, free-climbing the last story to the rooftop to take in the lights of Zagreb. And I know it’s the last time I’ll see them.

“How many Progeny are in the city tonight, do you think?” I say.

“Two hundred,” Claudia says.

“Three,” Nino says.

“And they’re all talking about you,” Claudia says.

Luka reaches down and takes my hand. Our heads turn in unison at the sound of running steps. Nino, sprinting for the edge of the roof. I scream, and Luka lets go of me to hurry after him. I follow suit, already afraid of what I’ll see. But before I reach the edge I hear Nino’s whoop from somewhere below. Luka stops on the edge of the roof, shakes his head. A second later, Piotrek blazes past us. Ana pulls off her shoes and lobs them one at a time onto the neighboring roof before following suit.

Claudia catches my arm when we’re the only ones left.

“You met him, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Not just him. Nikola was there, too.”

Her eyes widen.

“Luka and I have to leave, Claudia. And so should you and Piotrek.” I give her a slight smile. “It’s time for that trip to China.”

Shouts from below, calling us.

“They want you to find it, don’t they? What you forgot.”

“If I don’t, they’ll come after us.”

She nods, squinting toward the east, which is just turning the color of denim. “Ana and Nino can go where they like. But Piotrek and I . . . we’re coming with you.”

“Claudia, I can’t find it. Whatever it was is gone.”

“We stay together.”

“It’s not safe!”

“Screw safe! We’re family.”

“You can’t speak for Piotrek.”

“He’ll tell you the same thing himself when we get back.”

And then she’s running off the edge of the building.

Thirty minutes later, Nino has hijacked a Vespa, which he plans to take to some skateboard park.

“It’s his new thing,” Ana says with a laugh before climbing on the back. I’m going to miss her.

“Meet us at the flat before dawn. It’s important,” I say before they speed away.

We leave Claudia and Piotrek to talk in private near a low bridge over the river, where I know she’ll end up diving into the muddy water. A last burn before we pack up and go. But I can’t fathom jumping into even a tributary of the Danube. Not after my conversation earlier tonight.

Instead, I
persuade
an off-duty cabdriver to drop us off near the funicular. I’ve been silent all this time, Luka worrying his lower lip between his teeth. Now that we’re finally alone, I begin to shiver violently in the rain.

The moment the cab pulls away, I collapse to the wet pavement with a shudder.

“Audra!” Luka slides an arm around my middle.

“He killed her.”

“Who? Killed who?”

“Nikola. He was there tonight. With Tibor. He killed Amerie. He killed my mother!”

Luka pulls me to my feet. But I curl in on myself, sobbing. Finally, he just lifts me into his arms.

I can smell him even in the rain. The scent that is a part of him as much as his eyes. His hands are strong—enough to kill—but gentle as they hold me to his chest. He touches a kiss to my temple as he carries me into the building, down the stairs of Claudia’s flat.

“We have to leave,” I say. “When Claudia and Piotrek get back.”

“All right.”

He doesn’t bother to get a towel, wraps a blanket around me after he’s peeled away my wet clothes, setting the package beside the bed.

His hands know me. His mouth knows me. And, impossibly, his heart knows me, too.

Better than my own.

I lift my face as though he were sun, rain, air. Tell myself there is no future and no past. Nothing but the soft sound of his groan. The ragged hiss of his breath. The whisper, when it comes.

I love you, Audra.

Words are eternal.

The moment, however, is not.

28

“S
omeone else just got back,” I say.

We lie, limbs twined, after the final burn of the night. It’s nearly dawn. I felt the first couple return hours ago. I can hear them, talking in the front room.

Luka smells like sweat and skin. I know this scent, though I don’t remember it. I love it—and him. I know that, too, though it’s only been days. But experience is not love.

And I am done with logic.

We talk in the darkness of the purple lamp, and I tell him everything. He’s quiet the entire time.

“I haven’t been afraid since the day you walked into the Food Mart,” he says at last. “Not really. Not until now.”

Claudia’s words ring through my mind:

I want to live.

I straighten against Luka’s chest, lift my head to look at him.

“Then we’ll go until we aren’t afraid,” I say. I roll toward the package on the bed stand, tangled in my obi.

Luka’s fingers light on my spine.

“Audra . . .” he says strangely.

I peer inside the package and then curse. It’s full of cash, no passports.

“What’s this, on your back?”

I crane around, not knowing what he means.

A scream erupts from down the hall. At first I think it’s an obscene laugh, or a screech from the kitchen, maybe the coffeemaker. Until it comes again, horribly human and hysterical.

I shove my arms into Luka’s damp dress shirt and run into the front room after Luka, who is still buttoning his jeans.

Ana is swaying on her feet; Piotrek grabs her by the waist. Claudia, pale and frozen, holds her phone in a shaking hand.

“What’s going on?” Luka says.

Claudia turns the phone toward me.

I cup my hand around hers to steady it. A picture on the screen—a video. A human form, bound and badly beaten. I take in the angle of the shoulders, stymied by the blackened eyes and swelling cheek. But I recognize the aubergine jacket, which I last saw riding away on a Vespa.

Nino.

I turn away. But I can’t unsee it, or stop staring even after it’s gone from sight. A groan from the video. He’s alive, if not conscious. And somehow the sound makes it worse.

“Nino never showed up,” Claudia says faintly, holding the phone out for someone to take it. Luka does and, mouth grim, turns away to replay the video.

“Why? Why? Nino!” Ana cries, splintering my heart.

And I know, without being told, that this is because of me.

I convinced Nikola I needed Luka. Thought as soon as we left we’d all be safe. But the Prince of Budapest never meant to let me go without collateral.

How long have they been watching me? How easy was it for him to see my soft spot for Ana, for whom the moon rises and sets on Nino?

“Which of them did this?” Piotrek demands.

“Nikola,” I say, hoarse.

“Where would they take him? He can’t be that far.”

“Listen.” Luka turns up the volume. Drone of an engine.

I move toward him, force myself to watch the full twenty-two seconds from the beginning, to take in the dark interior, the jostle of the phone recording the video, the metal floor beneath him. “He’s in a semi trailer. He could be anywhere.”

I press my fingers against my eyes. One toss of my mask. A grand-bow exit. Claudia’s wrong—I didn’t give the finger to everyone, just to Nikola.

This is my fault.

I take it all back—the bravado, the insinuation. The accusations, the snark.

I have to find Nikola. To say I’ll do it. I’ll find it and give it to him, say I’m sorry—whatever he wants to hear.

Claudia’s phone rings in Luka’s hand. She stares across the room at it, face stricken.

“Answer it,” I say. She takes it from him as one in a trance. Answers, and then holds it toward me.

“It’s for you,” she whispers.

I snatch it to my ear. “Who is this?”

“Audra.” Tibor.

I move out of earshot of Ana. “Where’s Nino?” I hiss.

“Is it true what you said?”

“Yes,” I say, not knowing what he’s even referring to, trying to replay the conversation now jumbled in my head. “Isn’t it obvious that he’s playing you? We just got a video of Nino beaten half to death in a truck! If you think for a minute that I’m going to do anything to help you—”

“I didn’t know about your mother. What Nikola said about murdering her . . . Progeny don’t turn on their own.”

“Nikola’s a killer, Tibor. Criminally insane. Where’s Nino?” I demand.

“I don’t know! I just heard that he was taken near the edge of the city.”

“Then tell me where to find Nikola.”

“You don’t just find Nikola! He finds you! Forget Nino. He’s as good as dead.”

I spin away, out of earshot of Ana. “Don’t say that!”

“I’m sending you Jester. It’s the best I can do.”

“I don’t want Jest—”

The call clicks off. I stare at the phone and then throw it across the room.

When I turn, even Piotrek’s face is white.

“We have to go,” I say.

We leave ten minutes later, Luka practically carrying a catatonic Ana to the car.

“Where?” Piotrek says as we leave the old upper city.

Behind darkened glasses, I mentally search the map I saw in the back of the in-flight magazine. The Budapest court, once our next destination, is now last on the list somewhere below Afghanistan. Which leaves Bosnia to the south, Slovenia to the north, and Italy to the far west, given our lack of passports.

“Go north,” Luka says.

No one speaks. Ana sags against the corner of the backseat beside me, doped up on something Claudia gave her. Whatever it is, I wish I had some, too. I can’t stop shifting, my legs too restless, my skull pounding so hard I think I may be sick.

Luka lays his arm around me, but it doesn’t help. I am replaying my conversation with Nikola last night, my unfortunate exit from court. Wishing I could redo it, sneak out the back, that we had all left within the hour. I cannot erase the image of Nino beaten nearly beyond recognition. Between him and Ivan, I wonder if I will ever be free of guilt.

Hell must be like this.

So this is what it has come to, the search that first brought me here: all of us in a crowded Skoda on the run to nowhere.

This time there is no mention of the mafia, no talking around what we are in front of Luka, and Ana is too doped to notice.

“Audra,” Luka murmurs near my ear sometime later. Claudia and Ana are dozing, Piotrek fixed on the road, his gaze miles away. I lift my head, realize belatedly that I must have dozed, too.

“I think I know what goes with your key.”

29

W
e stop a couple hours later at a hostel in Graz, Austria, where Piotrek books us a six-bed dorm room under the name Franz Müller.

We promptly pull the shades, put Ana to bed. Sometime after the others have gone to sleep, Luka gets up, rummages through the pack Claudia loaned us, grabs the little pad and pencil off the desk, and gestures me into the bathroom.

Inside, he switches the lightbulb in the fixture with the purple one from Claudia’s flat.

“What are you doing?”

“Take off your shirt,” he says.

“Seriously?”

“Just do it.”

I tug the back of it over my head, and Luka swivels me away from the light.

“Can you see this?” he says. I glance back in the mirror.

“What is that?”
There’s a line of six symbols glowing down my spine like some alien street sign. None of them are familiar, but something about the boxiness of the figures is.

“I just noticed these this morning.”

“You know every scar on my body and you’ve never seen these before?”

“It’s not like I’ve seen you under a black light till this week. Didn’t even notice them until this morning. Look. They’re sharp—can’t be that old.”

He starts to copy them onto the pad. I strain the other way in front of the mirror, flipping the images in my mind.

“I think I know what that is,” I whisper and tug his phone from his pocket.