Her tone conveyed confusion rather than derision, so I answered her. It was probably stupid on my part, but I thought if she understood, she might trust me to do what I promised: find the men who killed that poor girl. “I married Clive, a man I love very much. The vampire part isn’t the important piece—well, I take that back. If he weren’t a vampire, he never would have lived long enough to meet me.”
“They’re evil, sick predators.” She shook her head. “I’ve been watching you all afternoon. You’re polite. You step to the side to let others go. You hold doors open. You offer to take pictures for families.” She stared at me. “You did it three times.”
This conversation was quite odd. “That’s the bare minimum of being a decent human being.”
“Are you aware of how many people smile after interacting with you? Even the ones who don’t speak English, who had no idea what you were saying to them, they smiled and watched you walk away. But you’ve tied your life to a filthy bloodsucker.” She turned her head to stare at me. Her blue eyes were familiar, but I couldn’t place why. The look of disgust on her face was all too familiar.
“Vampires, like humans, come in a wide spectrum,” I said. “Some are monsters, and some are like my husband. He’s kind, considerate, and there’s no one I’d trust more at my back in a fight. He’d lay waste to legions to keep me from harm. More than that, though, he’d step back if he knew it was something I had to face on my own.
“Warriors wade in, swords drawn, and that’s him. An ancient warrior who’s had to suppress that drive to give me the room to grow and learn.” Looking down at my wedding ring, I felt so lucky. “The fact that he survives on blood is the least interesting thing about him.”
Viktoria turned away, staring out over the hills and river, her brow furrowed. “Then he is a rarity. The rest should burn in hell.”
A silence grew between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable or hostile, just sad.
“This isn’t only about that poor girl in the park, is it?” I asked.
She was quiet a little longer and then said, “My lover. Mira. She disappeared one evening. We were at that Bloody Ruin bar you were at last night. She went to the toilet and never came back. I went looking and smelled vampire near the toilet door.
“I panicked. Others had disappeared from an area that smelled like vampire. I called László and the pack helped me search. We scoured the town, went up into the hills, nothing.”
Hands shaking, she stuffed them into the pockets of her jeans. “We found her the next morning. In an alley. Her shirt was inside out, her bra missing, and she stank of vampires. Multiple vampires.
“I took her to the clinic. They said she was fine. Anemic but fine.” Viktoria turned her head to glare at me again. “She wasn’t, though. She had nightmares. Every night she woke up screaming and talking about black eyes surrounding her, grabbing her, groping her, and her inability to move, to fight them off and get away. She was stuck in a body that wouldn’t move.”
She angrily brushed away tears. “It was too much. She couldn’t live with the nightmares.”
I understood being plagued by nightmares, as well as the impulse to make it all stop. “I’m so sorry. For you and for Mira.”
She nodded slowly, staring out at the purpling sky. “They’re all monsters.”
I thought about it for a while. “Yeah. Some of them. But some of us are too. And some humans and some fae. There are all kinds of monsters in the world. Our job is to battle them when we find them.”
“But you won’t give us the information to do just that,” she threw back at me.
I started to pull up my sleeve and then remembered. “I used to be covered in scars, from my neck to my feet. Horrible, thick scars. A wolf did that to me. He raped and tortured me for hours. There are lots of monsters.”
Viktoria watched me. “And did your husband hunt him down?”
I shook my head. “I did. The wolf took me again. I was older, though, stronger. I wasn’t a seventeen-year-old grieving her mother anymore. I broke free of his restraints and tore him to pieces.” I took a deep breath. “One less monster in the world.”
“Good,” she said with a growl in her voice, happy I’d killed my rapist. After a moment, she asked, “What happened to all the scars?”
“I’ve had a very weird life and have met some very powerful people. One of them erased all my scars as a thank you for helping his son.”
I studied my bare legs. “This is the first time I’ve worn shorts in almost eight years. I know the scars aren’t there anymore, but I still feel them.” I studied her a moment. “Can I ask? I don’t meet many female wolves. How were you turned and how did you survive it?”
She let out a gust of air. “Wrong person. Wrong Place.” She rubbed her forehead. “I was rebelling, I suppose. My parents were very strict.” She glanced back at me. “I’m older than I look. Anyway, my parents adopted me from an orphanage in town. You asked me before if I’d always lived in Budapest. I didn’t. I grew up in a village about ten miles to the north. My birth mother was from here.” She pointed back toward the Guild. “From that big, condemned building on the hill. I was able to get that much information from the orphanage. They’d apparently told my parents the same. By the time I was looking, the asylum had already been closed down and boarded up.”
She shook her head. “My adoptive parents were good people. Kind, but they didn’t know what to make of me. I always knew how I felt about other girls, but I could never tell them. When I was a teenager, I was seen kissing another girl behind the barn.
“The uproar,” she continued, staring up at the twilight sky. “My father tried to erase it by marrying me off right away. I refused. There was lots of anger and gossip in the village. They all knew I’d been adopted from the asylum and therefore assumed I’d inherited my birth mother’s insanity. Our neighbors, who’d known me all my life, now thought I was sick or possessed.
“Budapest, even more than a century ago, was a big city. I could lose myself here. And I did. Eventually, I even found a nightclub and a community for others like me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t alone or broken. There were others like me, and they welcomed me in.” She took a deep breath and blinked her eyes rapidly. “I’d found an accepting home. Other than missing my parents, I was happy.
“When I was in my twenties, I met a woman. Beautiful. Long dark hair, golden brown eyes, and a dimple. Just here,” she said, pointing to her cheek. “We hit it off immediately. Love at first sight and all that. One night, we were in bed, and she bit me. I honestly didn’t even realize it was that hard. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. Anyway, after she left, I realized there was blood on my thigh, but all I could think was that I needed to tell her to be more gentle next time.”
