“So what do you think, Martin?” she asked. “Are the two seethes working together?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “You think that the vampires who attacked the bakery and the ones who attacked us here are two different groups of vampires?”
“Yes,” said Jitka.
“We know they are,” said Martin. “The thing is, having them fighting on the same team is like . . .”
“Bosnians and Serbs,” suggested Jitka helpfully. “Russians and Germans—or cowboys and Indians.”
“I get it,” I said. “Would they both follow orders from Bonarata? Cooperate by mistake because they are doing what Bonarata tells them to do?”
Both shook their heads, and Martin added, “No.”
“Kocourek is the Master of Praha,” said Martin.
“Prague,” said Jitka. “Americans call her Prague.”
“Prague,” agreed Martin. “Yes. He is the Master of Prague, and like all the Master Vampires in Europe, he obeys Bonarata. Otherwise, he is destroyed.”
“Not like the Marrok,” Jitka said disapprovingly. “Bonarata protects no one. He just dictates, and they do or they die. Kocourek has been Master here for longer than I have been alive. Only Libor is older than Kocourek. Kocourek would not dream of disobeying Bonarata. Kocourek is a survivor. Vampires who defy Bonarata die.”
“Ivan belongs to the other seethe in Prague,” Martin said. “The woman who rules it calls herself Mary.” He said the name with a decided English twist. “She’s been gathering the scum of the vampires to her for the last four or five decades. As best we can figure it, she must have come in at the close of World War II. But we only noticed her in the middle of the fifties, when Kocourek blew up an old factory trying to find her and kill her and her people. He’s been trying to run her down ever since.”
“Someone is helping her,” said Jitka.
“Yes, I know,” Martin returned in an exasperated tone. This, it seemed, was an old argument. “But we have no clue as to who it is, right?”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “I could go find a hotel—a hostel, something. I honestly didn’t expect to run into trouble here. Prague is a long way from Milan. I figured that I could hit up Libor—your pack—for room and board for a couple of nights. I didn’t intend to get anyone killed.”
“No one’s been killed,” said Jitka.
“Four vampires here,” I retorted, “who would have been running around free and clear if I hadn’t come to Prague.”
“Didn’t sound like you had much choice,” said Martin.
“That lot isn’t worth anyone’s time mourning,” said Jitka at the same time. “Mary’s vampires go out and harvest food wherever. They take more than they need because they have to replenish the vampires Kocourek’s people have destroyed. They are somehow tied up with the drug trade here, too. Most of their vampires are young, see. They haven’t accumulated wealth, and so they are going in some nasty directions to get it.” She looked at Martin.
He sighed and shrugged. “I’ve told you before—Libor is letting the vampires feed on each other. Eventually, either Kocourek will find them all and eradicate them, or they’ll weaken his seethe, and Libor will finish them both off.”
“Lots of folk dying and hurting in the meantime,” Jitka said.
Martin nodded. “But Libor is old and slow to act when it is something outside of pack that is wrong. He doesn’t view humans as people, much. Like as not he’s right to sit this out. If Kocourek can’t find Mary’s people, there’s nothing saying we could, either. Let Kocourek do the work.”
“He cared about people during the war,” she said. “During World War II.”
“No,” Martin disagreed, his voice soft. “He just hated the Germans. Hated to see Prague under German control. It was when his wife died and Radim, his son, left.”
Radim, I thought. Zack’s real name is Radim.
“Look,” I said. “All this is well and good. But it appears that at least two groups of vampires are after me, here, in Prague. They are attacking your pack. I need to leave before someone else gets killed.”
They both looked at me as though I was being ridiculous.
Martin said, “Kocourek attacked the pack stronghold, Mercy. Whether you are here or in Germany, there will be more blood spilled between Kocourek and our pack. As for Mary’s seethe . . .” He shrugged. “They have been launching offensives at us ever since one of them seduced Pavel and tried to turn him into her servant. We think that somebody decided that the reason Bonarata was so scary was because he drinks werewolf blood.”
Jitka shivered. “Bonarata is scary because he is scary. The werewolf thing . . . that he could do that to an Alpha and his mate is scary. But—” She looked at Martin.
“It is also a weakness,” he said in a low voice. “I remember when no one thought he had any weaknesses. When the Lord of Night had his Blade and the Soldier and the Wizard . . . it was like the Avengers—except they were bad.”
Vampires did the one-name thing before Madonna and Prince. The Soldier, I knew, was Stefan. The Wizard was Wulfe. The Blade had to be Marsilia.
“I’m not that old,” said Jitka. “They left a hundred years before I was born. But I know that anyone who has an addiction as strong as Bonarata’s must have more weaknesses.”
“At any rate,” Martin said briskly, “an idiot is born every minute, and someone in Mary’s seethe—possibly Mary herself—decided that werewolf blood would make vampires stronger. So they got a pretty little thing to seduce Pavel.”
“Not difficult,” said Jitka. “He’s a good man, but”—she smiled wryly—“he has a weakness for women.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Libor happened,” said Jitka at the same time as Martin said, “Libor killed her and forbade sexual congress with vampires.” They spoke over the top of each other without really noticing it, so it must have been habitual.
“And how does he enforce that?” I asked.
They both looked at me incredulously. “He can tell through the pack bonds.”
I blinked. “Libor knows if his wolves have sex with a vampire through the pack bonds?”
Martin nodded. “It’s part of being the Alpha. And it’s not just sex—it’s anything very intense. Grief, joy, horror—he gets it.”
I was pretty sure that Adam wasn’t that connected with his pack. Almost sure. Because . . . ick. Invasion of privacy didn’t even begin to cover it. Maybe he just hadn’t told me because he knew how I’d react.
I was tired, and they must have been, too, because we kept wandering away from the point.
“What do I do to keep your pack as safe as I can?” I asked.
Jitka snorted. “Not your job, by my reckoning. Libor gave you three days of pack protection. Your job is to let us keep you safe.”
Martin grinned at me. “But if you want to behead a few vampires with a scythe, that’s okay, too.”
“It was only the one,” I said.
But he was looking at Jitka. “She got one and a half. I got two halves, and you got one and a half.”
Jitka shook her head. “No. I got one—I just finished off the one you’d already done.”
“So one and a half vampires for the poor weakling who matched or beat the scorecard for the werewolves.” Martin gave me a look. “All luck, was it? Luck didn’t kill those vampires, did it?”
“Martin,” Jitka said mildly. “We need to find all of us someplace safe to rest.” To me she said, “We didn’t think any of the vampires knew about this place. I only just moved out here, and Dobrichovice is pretty far out of their usual haunting ground.”
“We need to find a safe place for Mercy to sleep the rest of the night,” Martin said.
I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I mean, that’s what I’d been doing since I got to Prague, right? Finding a safe place to wait for Adam.
But we’d just killed four vampires. I wasn’t helpless. Helpless people get hurt.
And just for a moment, I flashed back to the time when I had been rendered helpless by a fae artifact and a creep named Tim . . .