Firstborn Read online

  Luka reaches for the door.

  “Wait,” I say.

  I turn in the seat, take in our options. A field of some kind to the right. Wooded area to the left. An SUV ambling toward us fifty yards back. I turn my attention to its driver.

  You.

  Three seconds later the SUV accelerates toward us. At the last instant, the driver swerves onto the grassy shoulder and barrels past us along the line. Shouts from the direction of the barricade.

  I swing my gaze forward in time to watch the SUV crash into the side of a police van.

  “Now.”

  We slide out the driver’s side, not bothering to shut the door. Run for the trees, crouched low.

  From the edge of the wood, I look back just long enough to see passengers emerging from their cars, some of them capturing video of the accident.

  We run, fast and blind in the darkness. I trip, stumble to my knees. Luka yanks me to my feet and pulls me on—running until my lungs burn.

  I slow near a break in the trees, lean over to haul in a coughing breath. Luka stumbles to a stop just ahead of me, breathing hard.

  “You know what?” he says, hands on his knees. “You scare me.”

  I give a mirthless laugh.

  We emerge on the edge of a shorn field. Luka points at something ahead: a barn, illuminated by wan light from within. We start out at a jog, but then Luka is shouting at me to run. I glance back, catch sight of blinking red rising up over the trees in the distance.

  Police drone.

  I will my legs to churn—faster, faster. Until I trip and go sprawling, a row of dry stubble stabbing me across the chest, scraping my chin.

  A dog sounds a frantic alarm ahead. A few seconds later the door on the adjacent house opens, throwing a sliver of light across the deck, silhouetting the man in its frame.

  Luka grabs me under my shoulders, drags me upright. Pain shoots through my ankle, which refuses to support me. He wraps an arm around my waist.

  “Come on!” he says, and I hobble alongside him like some three-legged racer.

  “Was machen Sie denn hier?” the man shouts.

  Go back to bed.

  We hurl ourselves the last ten feet to the barn. Luka slides the bolt, shoves open the door. When I look back, the form on the porch has vanished though the dog has not; it lies down, peering beneath the rail at us. But it is silent.

  I drop to the floor inside. Hay, manure, and a million microallergens assault my nostrils. Somewhere beyond us, a horse nickers.

  Luka squats down beside me. “Which one is it?”

  I point, and he gently rubs my ankle. Though my skin is cold, I’m sweating down the inside of my T-shirt. My pants, still damp, feel itchy over legs pumped full of blood.

  Is this what my life has become—what it will be? Run, escape—just to run again . . . until I can run no more? A few hours’ rest on a good night . . . capture and death on a bad one? Did I have any clue how oblivious I was to reality those short, frenzied nights at court in Zagreb?

  No. None.

  Even those five nightmarish days in pursuit of the diary, not knowing if Luka lived, were a luxury compared to this.

  Because this time, he could die in front of me.

  One of you has to survive.

  I have one purpose now, and that is to do the most damage to the Scions I can while staying beyond their reach. On the day they catch up to me, or that I can do no more . . .

  “I don’t think it’s broken,” Luka says.

  “It’s fine,” I say. I get onto my good foot, shift my weight, and grimace. He catches me by the arm. “It’s fine!” I say angrily, pulling away. Because angry is far better than afraid.

  “You can’t persuade it to heal,” he snaps and then mutters: “At least I don’t think you can.”

  Much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think I can, either.

  He swipes his forearm across his face, holds out his hand. “Let me see that map.”

  I hand him the phone. Wonder if this is karma for the damage I caused back there. No, can’t be; I’ve left plenty of others far worse in my wake these last twelve hours alone. Still, I wonder if the driver of that SUV is all right.

  I always thought of myself as some kind of conscientious objector. Funny how that changes the minute someone’s out to kill someone you love.

  Luka’s frowning, eyes ghastly in the light of the phone’s screen.

  “That blockade was here.” He points. “Which means there’s probably another here, here, and here,” he says, indicating the closest roadways. “If we keep to the woods, I think we can get around them.” He glances at me with a frown. “Can you ride?”

  “Ride what?”

  He goes to one of the stalls, and I exhale a laugh because I think he’s kidding. Until I realize he’s not.

  “What? No!”

  “You told me once you could,” he says lightly.

  “Well if I did I don’t remember!”

  He opens the stall door, slips inside. A metal light flickers on. Clink of metal bits. He emerges a minute later leading the horse by the bridle toward a bale of hay.

  My mouth falls open.

  “What? My grandfather had a farm. Come on.” He steps up, grabs a handful of mane, and swings onto the horse’s back.

  “Luka, there’s no saddle—”

  “There’s no time!” He reaches toward me. I limp up onto the bale, hook my arm through his.

  Seconds later we break from the barn in an all-out gallop.

  I close my eyes, arms clasped tight around him. The ground rocks the breath from my lungs with every stride.

  We dash for the tree line, Luka low over the horse’s neck, with me glued to his back. I squeeze my eyes shut against visions of us being thrown to the ground and paralyzed. I don’t care what he says I told him; nothing in me is at home on a horse.

  The minute we enter the woods, the air changes. Colder, tinged with earth. We slow, picking our way over rocks and bramble, and I swear I can smell the sap in the pinecones. The spruce needles, broken underfoot. Hear the wind rifle through beech boughs overhead.

  Luka turns, looks around us, his hair against my cheek. I tighten my arms, breasts pressed against the heat radiating from his back. I wonder if he can feel my heart pounding against his spine, as I can feel his, beating beneath my palms.

  He stops to check the map. I note the little blue dot that is us and feel a laugh well up inside me at the ridiculousness of our bareback GPS system. At how stupid we must look in our rugby and oversized shirts.

  But also because we’re alive. Stupid shirts or not, I am acutely aware of him—from the scent of his nape in my nostrils to his hips between my thighs.

  We made life together once, in the face of pending death.

  “I love you,” I whisper fiercely. He turns his head and his arm tightens over mine, pulling me firmly against him.

  He guides the horse up a small ridge, and we emerge near a road.

  “Audra,” Luka says, nodding toward a bank of blue lights in the distance. The last roadblock is a half mile back. Luka glances toward the overcast sky. Not even a bird.

  We pick our way along the edge of the wood past the next bend, and stop. I slide down awkwardly, my legs trembling from the exertion of hugging that barrel-chested horse. Luka dismounts more gracefully, and the horse turns toward home.

  There’s a sweet-looking Mercedes coupe coming at us from the east. I glance at Luka.

  A moment later we’re nestled in leather bucket seats, waving to the driver on the side of the road.

  Headed west, toward Munich.

  11

  * * *

  Munich is flooded with people, tents, and parties. A city in the full swing of Oktoberfest.

  We ditch the car on the outskirts of town, climb onto a party bus packed full of college kids, where I manage to acquire a blond braid wig and green felt hat off some drunk chick.

  Club Anarchy, just off Ottostrasse, is not the kind of place I imagined fo
r this reunion. Music pounds out the crowded entrance onto the street, where a line goes all the way down the block. I check the address again, look at Luka, who shrugs.

  A group of girls in matching purple wigs yells at us as we skip past a line that is two parts Goth cirque, one part Burning Man. Several more heckle the bouncers as I persuade them to lift the rope and let us in.

  “It’s the underground German underground,” Jester said on the phone.

  “How do you get more underground than the underground?” I said weirdly.

  “You go to an aboveground court with no prince. Run by a commoner named Arrick Drexel, who is in love with Progeny culture.”

  “What do you mean a commoner in love with Progeny culture?”

  “Rumor has it he had a Progeny lover, who told him everything before she died in a car accident before her memory could be taken.”

  Car accidents can be faked. I ought to know. I have to wonder if this Arrick’s lover is actually dead, or walking around protecting a kid somewhere in secret.

  “Look for Arrick. We’ll find you.”

  “How will I know which one is Arrick?”

  “You’ll know.”

  The moment I limp inside on Luka’s arm, I stare. The ceilings are rough and rounded like caverns. A strobe flashes overhead, not unlike the one in Zagreb’s underground court. But whereas Tibor’s bank of televisions was housed in a separate room, screens here are everywhere, openly surveilling the costumed crowd.

  The entire place smells like smoke machine and perfume.

  I pull my hat lower, help myself to the cape of some gilded disco queen sporting a hot pink afro. A tattoo artist works in the corner, but unlike Progeny courts, bars line every wall. A DJ plays on a stage at the far end of the main room, lit up in so much red the walls seem to drip with it. Overhead a purple-haired mermaid lounges on a daybed suspended on steel cables, tossing glitter on partygoers below.

  I glance at Luka, who looks like he just ate something weird, and look out across a crimson crowd tinged purple from the LED glow. Past psychedelic pirates and leather Cinderellas, sinister clowns and living dolls with oversize eyes. Half of them are painted with fluorescent neon designs—stars and hearts and wannabe tribal tattoos.

  My eye lights on a tuxedoed witch doctor. But it’s not his feathered top hat or the skull on his lapel or the black Joker-like mouth that catches my attention. It’s the neon dragon painted around his eye. The dragon, biting its tail.

  It’s a cheap, juvenile imitation, like plastic knight armor on Halloween night. But so is this entire place—from the “blood” on the walls to the revelers dancing not from the sheer exultation of being alive, or even to chase life’s frenetic energy, but in booze-deadened states, falsely animated by the liquor thinning their blood.

  He’s listening to something some masked tiger woman is whispering in his ear, laughing intermittently, but the minute I start for him, his eyes fasten on me. His gaze flicks once to Luka and back as he says something to the tigress, which she accepts with a visible moue. And then he’s crossing the floor to meet us.

  “Come,” he says, taking each of us by an arm, leading us the other direction. Back, toward the corner, to a door he quickly unlocks. Luka frowns and I hesitate, but the witch doctor leans in and shouts near my ear over the din.

  “I am a commoner. Do you actually think I would try to keep you in? Come. Quickly.”

  His accent is heavily German, but his English is as precise as the trim on his sideburns.

  We step onto the landing of a metal staircase lit by fluorescent lights. The minute he closes the heavy door behind us, the drone of industrial music dies to a smothered hum . . . replaced by unmistakable energy of another kind from somewhere beyond.

  “Who’s here?” I demand, turning on him.

  He’s not a short man, and now that he’s standing a foot away, I can tell that he’s also not as old as I first took him to be behind the white makeup that has carefully concealed a neatly trimmed goatee.

  He smiles broadly. “If you pass the test, you will see.”

  Luka grabs him by the front of his tux and shoves him against the stair rail. “She’s not here to pass tests.”

  Arrick, pinned in place, exhales a high-pitched laugh. “All the better,” he says. And now I know something with him isn’t right. He’s enjoying this.

  I turn toward the Progeny presence and descend several steps, leaning heavily on the handrail. For all I know it could be Nikola waiting below to kill me.

  “You’re injured,” Arrick says soberly. “I can send someone to you.”

  I glance back at Luka. “Bring him with us.”

  “Trust me,” Arrick says, hands lifted. “I have nothing but your interest at heart. Hers, that is,” he says as Luka lets him go. “I have an eye for her kind.”

  “He’s one of us,” I say, indicating Luka. “And you can’t tell by looking.”

  Arrick tugs down his jacket with a vehement shake of his head. “Oh, but he’s not. As attractive as he may be.” He looks Luka over and then stares intently at me with near-scary fascination. “You’re easy to pick out in a crowd for anyone who knows how to do it. To look for the shimmering coin out of a riverbed of stones. He did not catch my eye—not like you. Not at all, in fact.”

  The way he looks at me makes my skin crawl.

  “Walk,” Luka says, following behind him.

  I hobble to the lower level, try the handle of the metal door at the bottom of the stair. Finding it unlocked, I shoot Arrick a warning glance, and pull.

  The space before me opens into an elaborate sunken sitting room a story and a half tall. A giant glass lantern hangs from the ceiling, throwing tiny panes of color along the curtained walls. Iron balconies on both sides overlook the low, sprawling sofa, the oversize ottoman, carpets, ornately carved tables. Staircases line the front and back walls, ascending in opposite directions. Silk curtains gather in the corners to pool along the floor. And across the entire far wall a painted lattice “window” looks out at a subterranean garden of candlelit palms as though we were not beneath the street in downtown Munich but in a Kasbah somewhere in Morocco.

  “You like it?” Arrick says.

  “It’s very . . . uh . . .” The words “hookah lounge chic” come to mind.

  “Welcome to my home. It is yours,” Arrick says and then raises a finger, points above us to the twin balconies, where I see now that there are three curtained doorways on each side. “If . . . you can tell me which door the Progeny prize is behind.” His brows lift.

  “I don’t like games,” I say.

  “Indulge me,” he says and smiles.

  Go away.

  He gives a shallow gasp, eyes wide as he backs to the door.

  “I am your servant,” he squeaks, barely getting the words out before he exits.

  The minute the door shuts, Luka checks to be certain we aren’t locked in and I limp toward the far staircase. Luka comes to help me, and I point to the middle arch above.

  He moves up ahead of me, reaches past the curtain to the door, and shoves it open.

  I arrive on the balcony, but do not find the friends I expected. In fact, it takes me several seconds to identify the tall form seated in front of the small fireplace in the grungy black jacket, sleek ponytail gathered at his nape.

  But I know the extreme arch of those brows as they regard me. The lips turned up in a mirthless smile.

  “Audra,” he says, all pretense of his former madness gone.

  Tibor. The Zagreb Prince.

  12

  * * *

  “Isn’t today just full of surprises,” I say.

  I move toward the nearest seat. Can practically feel Tibor take in the stupid green hat, blond braids, disco cape, musty pants—and equally musty-smelling me. The myriad scrapes and cuts across my arms and chin.

  “You look . . . well,” he says, nearly as droll as I. He slides a gaze to Luka, who comes to stand beside me. “Though you could use some new acces
sories.”

  “What are you doing here, Tibor?” I say, dragging the hat and wig off my head.

  “Is that any way to greet an old friend? You didn’t miss poor Tibor?” he says, with a touch of the old lunatic swagger.

  I tilt my head, waiting, in answer.

  “I’ve come to talk. But not in front of him.”

  “He stays.”

  “There’s nothing I don’t know,” Luka says.

  “Well then, you and Arrick should get along famously,” Tibor says, eyes wide.

  I practically feel Luka glower at him in response.

  Tibor looks down, brushes imaginary lint off the knee of his charcoal gray pants. “When Nikola first told me what he thought you were, I didn’t believe him. Even when you sensed him. I should have known. Nikola probably knew it all along. He knows many things he has not shared, I fear.” He raises his eyes. I remember them as hard and glittering, but at the moment they seem far too human, fragile without their sinister eyeliner, the red-and-black samurai mask I last saw him in. The only time I ever saw him—at least as far as I know.

  “What do you want, Tibor?”

  “So flip! So disrespectful of your prince!”

  “You’re not my prince!”

  He sits back as though wounded. “Don’t forget I sent Jester to you,” he says, but the anger in his eyes is already gone.

  “Thank you. For that.”

  He crosses his arms around himself.

  “I’ve come to tell you: do not return to Zagreb. It isn’t safe,” he says. “Court broke a few days ago when Nikola had me declared outcast.”

  I had seen Nikola threaten to do this very thing to Tibor just weeks ago—the same night Nikola threatened to kill Luka if I wouldn’t find what I had discovered before I erased my memory. Days later, I discovered why: Nikola’s been working for the Historian all this time.

  “I didn’t know.”

  He shrugs as though it were nothing. But then he looks at me, his gaze more earnest than I have ever seen it, at least in recent memory.

  “I know you don’t trust me. But you should. I loved Ivan. Ivan loved you. Not like he loves you”—he waves a hand at Luka and rolls his eyes—“but as the sibling, the brother you never had. He idolized your mother, you know. As Nikola did, once. As he does, still.”