Page 39 of Overexposed

“You followed us?” I asked.

Lucas pointed up. “Via drone. We don’t like getting too close on account of the fucking Gladius people. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t have a ton of agents, but they always have their henchmen, especially around Kutna Hora. It looked like the one you caught saw you’d compelled the janitor or whatever he is, and that got the agent very interested. We can show you the footage.” He motioned at Danielle, who pulled out a phone, tapped that, and handed it over to Auris.

I watched over his shoulder. It was an aerial view of the cemetery and the ossuary at its center and showed Christian tapping the groundskeeper on the shoulder, then waving his hand in front of the other man’s face before strolling into the cemetery, which prompted the groundskeeper to walk ahead, likely to alert us. The whole scene had the greenish tinge of night vision.

“We lost you in the city,” Lucas went on. “Prague is just fucking big, but we figured the agent had tricked you into taking him in, from the looks of things, and so we did do our best with airports and the train station.”

“Thank Brexit and Covid for making tracking people easier,” Danielle said.

Lucas waved at her vaguely. “She does all the tech thingies that no one really understands, and she assures us that the pandemic is the best thing ever.”

Danielle shrugged. “I always qualify. Death is bad, so it’s bad, but there are good things.”

“This seems very involved,” Auris said. “I was not aware that shape changers were so many and clearly so involved in security issues as you are.”

“You’re old, aren’t you?” Lucas said, folding his hand in his lap.

Auris crossed his legs, making sure to rock his museum-socked foot where they all could see. “I am.”

“We don’t see many vampires that are very old anymore. There are two branches that we are in contact with, but the oldest vampire there is, I don’t know, maybe three hundred years? One branch calls itself the Baltic Tribe, and the other is something more like a family. The woman who’s the primogenitor of most of them is called Ana, and she offered her blood to those otherwise destined for death, first during the Spanish flu, then later during World War II. Other than that, we have stories of very powerful, very old blood drinkers. And no one has seen one in generations.”

“You’re supposed to have died out,” Matheo said and crossed his arms. He was almost taking up as much space as the other two combined.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Auris said.

Lucas lifted his hands palms out again. “He means to say he is very happy, as am I, that we get to make your acquaintance.”

“Wait,” I said, finally catching up. “If you were there last night, at the museum, and if you saw those six guys go in there after us, is there any reason you didn’t, I don’t know, come in to help?”

Lucas lowered his head. “There is. Mostly fear of dying. The Gladius are notorious for being ruthless killers, but also good at it. If they do not kill, they take prisoners to do heavens know what to them.”

“For the record, I would have gone in,” Danielle said. “I wanted to.”

“Yeah, and for the record, I’ve seen too many people end up with bullets in their heads, and I would have sat on you,” Matheo said. Then, with feeling, he added, “Idiot.”

Lucas leaned forward. “Ignore them. I gave the order to wait it out. And I thought they had killed you when the five clerics came out. I only realized my mistake when you walked out with the agent all bound up like a Christmas present.” His green eyes glanced at me before he looked down again. “That doesn’t happen. Most vampires can compel one or two clerics long enough to get away. Five of them? Not so much, and while I don’t understand why, the agents seem to not surrender to compulsion at all. We were working with a vampire to find out how they managed that, but he got taken. If the Gladius agent is still alive, we would ask for a chance to interrogate him. We’ll share what information we have that is useful to you regardless, because one way or the other, we are on the same side in this. And one way or the other, we’d like closure about our vampire friend. If they killed him, we just want to know.”

A shiver went down my spine, and before I could, Auris asked, “Your friend. What’s his name?”

“Jonathan,” Lucas said. “Jonathan Wells.”

“Fuck,” I said.

Auris let out a slow breath. “I cannot be certain, so take this with a grain of salt. But what the agent we know as Christian gave away leads me to believe that the vampire you call Jonathan is still alive.”

“He basically told us he was Jonathan’s boyfriend. And chew toy,” I said.

Matheo snorted. “He fucking wishes.”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “Half an hour, Auris. That’s all I ask.”

I shook my head and looked at Auris. “You think he’s still alive?”

Auris cocked his head. “Looking back, I think Christian thought so. His heart rate would speed up when he spoke of Jonathan in the past tense sometimes. I took it as the aftereffects of the entrancement, but it might have been duplicity. Last night, he told me that I would end like all the others, serving my purpose. It did not sound like he would have wanted to outright kill me.”

“Fuck,” I said again.

Matheo and Danielle exchanged a look.

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