I’d lived more than half my life essentially alone. Sometimes in the past few years, I had longed to be alone, just for an hour or two. And here I was. Alone. Sometimes getting your wish really sucks.
I still could not feel the pack bonds unless I was in a trance. My bond with Adam was faint, like a memory of the strong line of communication—or noncommunication, during its contrary moments. I tried not to notice the bond between Stefan and me, and since it, too, was faint, was mostly successful.
Adam had traveled to Washington, D.C., several times during our marriage, and our mating bond had been strong and true—or as strong and true as ever, because it was eccentric. Given the current evidence, the pack magic must have provided the power to keep our bond going over the distance.
Those dreams I’d had in the bus, I refused to believe they were only dreams. The first one . . . might have been, I admitted reluctantly. Though it had felt more real than most of my dreams. But the second one, the one with Stefan—that one was real. And if both Adam and Stefan said that they were on their way to Italy, I had to believe that was what was happening. To face Bonarata.
The Lord of Night had taken me from my mate, and now Adam was going to visit him. There was no way that was not going to be a disaster. Not at all.
What was everyone thinking to have allowed that to happen? Okay, granted that Adam made his own decisions. But Stefan had sounded so confident that as long as I remained at large, diplomacy could happen.
My husband was not overly diplomatic under the best of circumstances.
I had escaped the plans the Lord of Night had made for me. Neither he nor Adam was going to be in a good mood. I didn’t see how this was going to work out without one of them dead, no matter what Stefan said. I knew very well that my friend Stefan could lie like a carny on a bally stage. I wasn’t certain he couldn’t lie to me, too, in order to spare me from worry. My internal lie detector was very good but not infallible.
I popped up to my feet. I could not—could not—sit around all night with nothing for company but my thoughts, kept there by some vague worry about the Alpha of Prague and the probability that I was, at this very moment, the subject of a deadly hunt by the most powerful vampire in . . . well, anywhere, I supposed.
I left the backpack where it was because my nose told me that people didn’t come to that tiny forgotten corner of the restaurant grounds very often. My little bit of pack magic would have an easier time hiding me if I wasn’t doing something remarkable, like carrying a backpack around.
On four feet, I retraced my way back to the street and set out to explore nighttime Prague with the faint concealment that the remnants of pack magic wrapped around me. I was in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and I’d never traveled out of the country before—except for that one crazy trip to Mexico with Char, during which we had avoided jail by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins because of Char’s exquisitely horrible taste in men. So what if an old vampire was going to murder my husband, I was . . .
If I wasn’t going to let myself be distracted, I might as well go curl up in a miserable ball and wait for Adam (or maybe Bonarata or Whateverhisname the Alpha of Prague) to find me. Wait to be rescued, Stefan had told me—not very flattering in retrospect. I don’t follow orders, even kindly given, and I wasn’t going to wait around to be rescued like some helpless princess when there was exploring to do.
Just then, I passed a restaurant or pub or something that had a sign in the window that said FREE WI-FI in about ten languages. It would open at 11. I made note of it because my stolen e-reader and I needed free Wi-Fi. But it was a long time until 11 A.M., so I kept going.
Eventually, I found myself in the famous Old Town Square, with its fabulous clock tower that looked as though it had been transplanted from the Middle Ages. The rest of the buildings were, even to my relatively uneducated eyes, a mishmash of eras—that seemed to blend together in a . . . well, a Bohemian style. My favorite was a glorious old church or cathedral with Gothic (I think) towers whose spiky tops reached for the heavens—and promised impalement to any angel who happened to fall down upon them.
There were still a few people meandering about the open-air restaurants, though the actual commerce seemed to be finishing up. I moved slowly and stuck to the shadows, and no one stood up and pointed at the coyote in the middle of the city, so I was pretty sure that the “see what you expect to see and don’t be alarmed” part of the pack spell was working okay.
Narrow cobblestone streets led off from the square in a higgledy-piggledy fashion that had nothing to do with convenience and everything to do with their medieval origin. Charmed, I started down one at random.
Like the square, the street was cobblestone, the “road” barely wide enough to accommodate a single car or small delivery van. My feet, still sore from running from the werewolf, would have preferred a nice grassy verge to the granite cobbles. But the rest of me? The only thing that would have made my first exposure to medieval Prague better would have been if Adam were by my side.
I was in Prague, walking down cobblestones through a street that probably looked a lot like this a thousand years ago. Granted, it wouldn’t have smelled like this. Medieval cities had to cope with the waste of horses, cattle, sheep, and geese, not to mention people, and mostly, by modern standards, they failed. I was most content with this version of the Middle Ages. My tongue lolled out in pleasure not even sore feet or being hunted by vampires could impact.
Cobblestones had been necessary in the Middle Ages—a huge upgrade from dirt/waste/mud. Cobbles could be washed clean and swept. They didn’t get the nasty ruts that could deepen until they trapped any cart with the misfortune to fall into them.
I trotted past closed tourist shops filled with an unlikely mix of chandeliers and alcohol and T-shirts situated next to antique shops—Good heavens, was that an absinthe shop?—and jewelry stores that specialized in amber and garnets. The absinthe shop had a neon-green T-shirt in the window that read ABSINTHE MAKETH THE HEART GROW FONDER, which was a little too close to my situation to be comfortable. There was a lot of English around, from the T-shirt to the signs in the windows.
There was a lot of graffiti, too, which surprised me for some stupid reason. In the Tri-Cities, we fight the good fight against graffiti. Most of it is gang-related, but some is just teenagers striving to make their mark in an indifferent world. I guess graffiti seemed like it was exclusively a New World problem—which was a stupid assumption. I knew that there was graffiti that dated back to the Romans and said largely the same kinds of things that our modern graffiti does: your sister sleeps with gladiators, I was here, Flavius is hot—that kind of thing.
Maybe the narrowness of the street had to do with defense. You wouldn’t have to do much to block such a narrow lane and keep armies trapped in small spaces, where hot grease or tar and arrows or rocks could be flung on their heads with very little work.
And right in the middle of envisioning medieval battles, I caught the scent of werewolf in the air, musk and mint and . . . yeast, which wasn’t a usual werewolf scent. I turned and trotted as silently as I could back down the street, but I wasn’t silent enough.
Someone trotted after me, a fit, young-looking man in baggy pants and a skintight muscle shirt. I was suddenly glad the pack magic that kept people from noticing me was as thin as it was, because though most werewolves can’t actually feel the magic that makes their lives so much easier, if I’d been covered with it as I might have been in the Tri-Cities, he probably would have noticed.
As it was, he saw me plenty clearly. I hadn’t seen a single stray dog since I’d started my adventure tonight, though I could smell that there were a lot of dogs around. I think that’s what he thought I was. He was being a good citizen and helping the poor stray dog, nice werewolf that he was.
He sped up, and I didn’t dare do so. Never run from werewolves; it only makes them hungry. He said something soothing.
It might have been in Czech or Slovak, but “Here, puppy” is a phrase that needs no translation.
A four-board-wide fence spanned a rare space between two buildings. I’d paid little attention to it when I’d passed it the first time except to note the dark green splatter of graffiti that was no more legible for being in Czech than the graffiti was at home. Now I was happy to note that the fence was level, top and bottom, but the ground had a little swell on one side. So there was a space just big enough for a coyote to slide underneath with enough panache that it looked like I’d done it before.
See? I am a dog going home, not the foreign mate of a foreign Alpha running away from a nice werewolf.
I found myself in a garden that was much bigger than the four-board fence had made it appear, because the garden extended along the space between the two buildings and into a back area that was pretty and green.
There was a dog in the garden—a very big dog who couldn’t have squeezed out the hole I’d squeezed in through. The large female mastiff came around the corner of the building just as my follower grabbed the top of the fence and chinned himself up to look over the fence.
The werewolf probably thought I smelled weird. It is hard to smell yourself—but I’d been in an accident, been hauled to Italy, smuggled myself aboard a diesel bus, then traveled halfway across Europe. “Interesting” was probably a light word for what I smelled like. Maybe he’d caught a whiff of pack, but since I could hardly feel them, I didn’t think so.
The mastiff, bless her, welcomed me into her yard like a golden retriever welcoming a burglar into his home—that is to say, with a wagging tail and licks of affection. That is not my usual experience with mastiffs, but I wasn’t going to complain. The werewolf in human form laughed, dropped off the fence, and patted it. He said something cheerful and quiet—and he left.
I snuggled against the lonely mastiff for maybe a half hour before getting up from her side and sliding back under the fence. She didn’t notice my going. Her quiet snores made me feel guilty, like a lover who sneaks away in the night. I was comforted by her sleek, well-groomed body; someone loved her.
I checked the fence from habit—and yes, I’d left some fur behind, but that couldn’t be helped short of changing back to human and cleaning the bottom of the boards—naked. So I ignored it and walked off thoughtfully (and painfully—I was becoming less pleased with the cobblestones with every step).
I probably would have returned to my camping spot, but I didn’t want to go straight back to where my purloined backpack was. I was being paranoid, but paranoia was a good thing. The Lord of Night was after me.
The circuitous route back to the restaurant took me through the old Jewish Quarter—I knew that because there were lots of signs for lost English-speaking tourists like me to follow. And because of the Old-New Synagogue.
The Old-New Synagogue was about six hundred years old or so, which made it the oldest operating synagogue in Europe. I only remembered all of that because I thought the name was funny. I’d wondered about the Old-Old Synagogue, but I guess the name was a translation error and there wasn’t one. Still, it was an awesome name—and the building was interesting-looking.
Six hundred years old. I stared at it and tried to imagine how it would feel to be Bran or the Moor and look at such things and remember before they were built. To look around the city and realize that the oldest thing in this old city was probably you.
Adam would be there someday, assuming nothing killed him before then. I don’t know about me. I don’t think anyone does. My half brother, who is also Coyote’s child, says that sometimes we live a long time, half-mortal and half-avatar or manitou or whatever Coyote and his kindred spirits are. Coyote told me I was too caught up in naming things—which is an excuse to not understand them. I had a few names for Coyote that I was too polite to use.
I was trotting down a very narrow backstreet, this one less touristy than the first few I’d found, when, between one step and the next, every hair on my body rose.
I shrank down against the wall I’d been walking by, trying to hide myself between a step and a garbage can. Magic swept through the street and paused by me. Magic and something that called to my supernatural nature in a way I’d never felt before.
My hiding place had not worked, so I stepped out to face . . . a ghost.
I have an affinity for ghosts, something I inherited from my father in addition to being able to change into a coyote. I see them when other people don’t. I used to think I knew a lot about ghosts, but I’d started to believe that no one did. I generally tried not to pay attention to the ghosts because it made them pay attention back.
This one waited with the same utter stillness I’d seen in Stefan and a few other vampires. But it wasn’t the ghost of a vampire—yes, there are such things. It wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. I’d never seen a ghost that could hold as much magic as this one did.
Darkness gathered around it, giving it size without form. Ten feet at least, maybe a little more. There was a heaviness about it—it felt dense. The weight of the magic it held, a weave of magic filled, in part, with a kind of power I’d never felt before, made it difficult to breathe.
Some of the energy felt very familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t fae magic or witchcraft. Maybe if it hadn’t been entwined with the totally alien feel of the other magic, I could have placed where I’d felt it before.
I took another step, and the mist of magic touched my feet, washing over me with a strange, clean warmth. It should have scared me, that feeling. Whenever any magic feels good—that’s the time to worry.
But, alone in a strange city, with the monsters hunting me, I closed my eyes, and the shadow pulled away the weariness, the pain, and the fear that I’d been battling since I woke up in the house of the Lord of Night. It fed me comfort and energy and light—and it fed from me, too. At the time, caught in its magic, I didn’t care. I felt the magic brush the bonds I shared with Adam and the pack and hesitate on that other bond.
Impulsively, I took my human shape and stood before the ghost of Prague’s past with my hands open and outstretched. “I mean no harm to you or yours,” I told it—it did not feel male or female to me. To my human eyes, it was even less clearly defined.
There was no reason to suppose that it spoke English. But the words had come to my tongue by instinct—as a coyote shapeshifter, I trusted my instincts more than most people did. Ghosts generally could understand me no matter what language I spoke.
It contemplated me for a moment more, then cried out hoarsely, a sound of rage and frustration and loneliness that should have shook the windows in the nearby buildings but didn’t. No one came to see what caused the noise.
Runnels of magic slid down my face, as if it had taken a swipe at me with claws. The sensation dug into my bones like hot metal—almost as shocking as the wrenching twist from warm delight to fear. Then the whole thing, magic and all, slowly dissipated. For one instant, I glimpsed something glowing on the center of its forehead, letters that disappeared before the last of the magic. Not letters in any alphabet I knew, though they resembled two oddly written “n”s and an “x.” It could have been Arabic or Russian, but I was pretty sure it was Hebrew and that the three letters together spelled emet, truth.
Because I had just met the Golem of Prague—or what was left of him, anyway.
What other giant ghost would be wandering the streets of Prague in the Jewish Quarter in the middle of the night radiating magic, but the most famous local legend?
In the sixteenth century, a revered and learned rabbi named Judah Loew ben Bezalel, disturbed by a series of attacks on the people living in the Jewish Quarter, created a golem, a giant creature made of clay. On the creature’s forehead he inscribed the word for truth. In so much all of the accounts agreed. The end of the story was another matter.
In some versions, the rabbi lost control of the gol
em and was forced to destroy it. In another, the creature fell in love—and nothing good ever comes (in stories) from a monster’s falling in love. In yet another variation, when the rabbi died, the golem retreated to the attic of the Old-New Synagogue and lay down to wait for his master to return. A lot of the stories end with the golem’s clay body remaining in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, a room reachable only from the outside of the building. I thought it unlikely that it was still there (if it ever had been). Prague had been occupied by the Nazis, after all. Hitler, who had been obsessed with all things magical, must have looked for it there.
I stared into the night and shivered. I was very glad that I had not been in this city when the golem wandered the streets in its physical form.
—
IT WAS AS NEAR TO NOON AS I COULD RECKON BY THE sun when I strolled into the restaurant that had offered free Wi-Fi. I’d brushed my hair and braided it, securing it with the band I’d stolen from the person I’d taken the money from. I walked directly to the doors marked WC, having read just enough British mysteries to know that WC stood for water closet, which is a bathroom. The women’s restroom door had a doe-eyed woman in a pink dress painted on it by someone who was better than an amateur.
The bathroom was clean and bright and had plenty of soap and paper towels. I looked in the mirror and saw that I had a large bruise down my face on the opposite side from my scar. My eyes were shadowed, and my cheeks were hollow. Coyote me had helped herself to the mastiff’s food and a couple of rodents of unusual shape, but that was all I’d eaten since the vampires had taken me. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious.
I looked like the victim of domestic abuse. I smiled experimentally—and to my surprise, that helped a lot.
—
IN PRAGUE, APPARENTLY, THEY DO NOT USE EUROS. They use something called koruna. Also in Prague—or at least in the little Wi-Fi restaurant in Prague—people are kind.
There were ten people in the restaurant, including the staff: five Czech women, three Czech men, and two Russian tourists, both women. We spoke roughly a dozen languages between us, though I might have missed one or two, but no one spoke English.