Page 36 of Overexposed

Ivan turned his head toward me although his eyes were unfocused. He nodded.

“That’s cold,” I said.

Ivan’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Tell me,” Auris said, “before Brother Christian pointed you toward me, was there another demon who came to the ossuary, looking for a fallen brother?”

“I have not been stationed here long,” Ivan said. “We do not talk about those things with each other. I was told the posting was important. I was told there would be fighting ahead of me, and that I would help put down such beasts as would kill and harm the meek.”

“The rest of you?” Auris asked, and the other four priests, except for Christian, turned toward us.

“We hunted a volkodlak three years ago,” one of the others said.

“What’s that?” I asked Auris.

“A werewolf, possibly,” he said, writing it down. “What else?”

They all remained silent.

“How long have you been on this particular mission?” Auris went on.

As all of them confirmed, this particular posting, supporting the Gladius Brotherhood at the ossuary, was not one that lasted for a long time at all. Five years at most, often shorter. Ivan told us only the Gladius Brotherhood knew all the details of the operation, and I took that to mean that these priests were simply the support team. Or the cannon fodder. Or the cleanup crew. And foolishly, I’d thought they were the worst that was out there.

All through this interview, Christian seethed. His withering glances were directed at me most of the time, either because Auris was not easily fazed and hardcore ignoring him or because Christian figured I was the weak link here. Which… if that was the case, I really couldn’t fault his logic. He was an unsettling little prick.

Auris was interrogating the other priests about how their presence here had gotten arranged when I’d had enough.

“Just out of curiosity,” I said to Christian. “Say I’d done what you told me to and had left Prague and Auris, what would have happened? Would your friendly brotherhood have picked me up?”

Auris glanced at me. Then he looked over to Christian. “He asked you a question. Answer it.”

What had held Christian back and kept him silent left him in a rush, and the first thing out of his mouth was a spittle infused, “You fucking demon fucker!”

My jaw dropped. Christian strained against the tape binding his hands behind his back, and I wondered whether he knew any tricks to get them off. I hoped he did. He wasn’t as fast as Auris. He just looked undignified and angry, the way his spittle had landed on the table in front of him and on the side of Ivan’s face, and so I laughed. I laughed and laughed.

“Better a demon fucker than whatever you think you are,” I said. “Hell, I’m proud to be a demon fucker. You look like a monk. Jealous much?”

Christian looked very, very mad at that, but all I thought was, bottled up sexual withdrawal. “People are going to come for me. They know where you are, and they know where you live. We will exterminate you, burn you like poison to clean a wound,” Christian went on.

Auris tapped his stolen notepad. “I have not heard of your Gladius Brotherhood before, and yet I have met those who wish to harm me before. I have survived them. I wonder, Brother Christian, are you perhaps new to the demon hunting business?”

Christian chuckled. “We are old as justice itself, and our justice will find you. My brothers will avenge me.” A dark sneer curled his lips. “If you give up, demon, vampire, whatever you want to call yourself, we’ll let your little fuck toy go. If you really have any shred of humanity left, any shred of decency and humility in the face of god’s grace, you will do that much.”

“Oh, fuck you very much, you and your decency,” I said. I got up and headed toward the counter to make myself something to drink. I got lucky and found a bottle of rum, two-thirds full, and if anything, that was a divine sign right there.

Auris had clearly entranced Brother Christian again, or as much as that was doable. Christian looked red-faced and pissed-off. I wondered when he’d get scared. For now, I enjoyed that he was shutting up.

“Hey, I’ll, uh, go for a walk,” I said to Auris and pointed to the café’s exit.

“You and your bottle of rum?” he asked.

And this really wasn’t funny, because a bunch of people following you into a museum to murder you and your vampire lover wasn’t funny, but then again, I chose humor. Everything else would just give Christian some dark satisfaction, and I didn’t want to give him that much. I didn’t want to give him anything. He could go and die with all his bottomless hate bottled up inside him for all I cared.

“It can’t be how our next date night ends,” I said, tapping the neck of the rum bottle. “You have to prove to me that you can outperform a bottle. Like, this one wasn’t even full. The bar is really low here.”

Auris nodded. “Then I shall pass with flying colors. My sweet, don’t wander too far.”

“Can I get Eva stuff from the gift shop?”

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