Page 38 of Overexposed

Auris opened his mouth to say something when there was a knock on the door. I was confused at first, because Eva wasn’t scheduled to come up today, and she didn’t come up in the evenings, not unless she was supposed to cook dinner. Auris looked annoyed for a second, then suspicious with a vicious protector instinct rearing its head.

“How unusual,” he said, and headed to the door.

I followed, and the lacking grace, the noise I made in comparison to him had never been more obvious than when I was trying to keep up with him. In the central hallway, Auris stopped dead about four feet away from the door. I stopped by the doorway to the first sitting room. He eyed the front door for a long time, and his body language reminded me of a cat, ready to pounce. Quite slowly, he stalked forward and opened it.

“Hello,” said a man standing on the other side.

The hallway light had gone off, and he’d been standing in the darkness, waiting. Past Auris’s back, I saw spiky black hair, and striking green eyes set in a swarthy face. The guy wore a leather jacket that wasn’t really made more suitable for the weather by the dark green infinity scarf around his neck. He also had both hands up, palms facing outward. Auris didn’t fidget, but this guy seemed to be standing very still.

“Walking up to someone’s door is an interesting choice to make their acquaintance, particularly when it is unclear how you came to know this is my door,” Auris said, sounding a lot as if he were discussing the weather.

The guy on the other side of the threshold grinned. “Right. Failing manners. My name is Lucas. And I’m sorry, but I’m sure you can tell that my heart is racing. I walked up here thinking there was a good chance you wouldn’t just stand there. I’m really glad you’re just standing there, believe me. And profound apologies for intruding and following you, but there’s a reason for all that. You managed to survive a Gladius agent last night, and unless I was seeing some sort of mirage, you took him alive.”

“Gladius agent?” I asked. “Brother fucking Christian is an agent now? Well, fuck me.”

The new guy, Lucas, didn’t look at me, looked at the ground and in my general direction instead. “It’s what they call themselves sometimes. You know, I’m sure there is a lot of information we have that you don’t, and perhaps we could share? We mean no harm, not to you or him, I promise. I waited until after nightfall to come to your door to show you that we mean no harm, that we want to bring no violence.”

“What are you?” Auris asked.

“Ah. I’m a little surprised you can’t tell by scent. I’m a bear, and the two downstairs are wolves.”

My jaw dropped, and I took a step closer to the door.

“I never had the pleasure of meeting one of your kind, I’m afraid,” Auris said. “Tell your friends to join us. Perhaps a conversation is in order.”

The staircase of the apartment building was echoey in the way that a lot of staircases in a lot of apartment buildings are. I didn’t miss the small detail that I heard no footsteps and that no one bothered to hit the light switch, but after not all that long, two more people crowded behind Lucas.

Auris stepped aside. “Please, enter our home and be welcome,” he said.

“We honor your hospitality,” Lucas said and walked in ahead of the other two, which were an odd pair, to say the least. “These are Danielle and Matheo.”

From among the three of them, Matheo looked like the bear, towering a head above Lucas and even a good two inches over Auris. Danielle had dark blonde hair in a tight braid. I could see her Adam’s apple bobbing when she looked around, then wondered why the smaller girl was standing in front of the much taller and broader Matheo. Then she looked at me, and her dark eyes seemed to size me up all at once. Maybe there was a reason they were keeping this girl in the front.

“I’m Auris, and this is Ethan,” Auris said. He closed the front door and led the way for our guests, likely an opportunity for him to take me by the arm and pull me along.

“Why is it all black?” I heard Matheo mumble behind us, some accent I couldn’t place slightly coloring his consonants.

“I told you it looks like a lair,” I said to Auris, and Lucas was the first to laugh.

It seemed to put the other two somewhat at ease when we settled on the couch in the sunken living room.

“So, I just want to be clear here,” I said and pointed at the three of them. “You are a were-bear, a berserker, and you two are werewolves. Real, actual werewolves. Who turn into wolves. Do you need a full moon for that?”

Lucas said, “Yes, we are that, but we prefer bear or wolf, the animal we can turn into. Were-anything sounds silly, and when normals overhear it, they think we’re weirdos. And by normals, I mean humans. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

“And we can shift at any point, some faster than others,” Danielle added. My ears wanted her accent to sound French, but it wasn’t really that. Lucas was maybe Canadian, but I wasn’t sure about where any of the three were from at all. Europe was a wondrous place like that, I was beginning to learn.

“Of course, we do not mean to shift in your home,” Lucas said, bobbing his head in our direction. I filed away that there were social rules to where you could shift.

Just when I was about to ask them more questions, I could tell the exact moment when Lucas spotted the museum socks on Auris’s feet, because his green eyes went wide, a grin almost catching his mouth and pulling it bow tight.

I giggled, which earned me Auris’s arm around my shoulder.

“How did you do it?” Danielle asked without preamble, her eyes narrowed on Auris. “We watched the six of them go after you, into the museum. Six armed men with experience in how to kill things. How did you walk out alive and make them walk out alive?”

Lucas cleared his throat. “We had wondered. I’m sorry. We followed you since the bone church, because we know they use it to lure people in.”

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