Page 34 of Overexposed

There was no aim to our exploration. I enjoyed the building as much as the slices of history, had fun reading the info on my phone when things really intrigued me, and of course, I had a vampire with me who tried explaining what the past had been like. Mostly, there’d been less running water, which Auris had not enjoyed.

“You made them dim the lights,” I said. We were walking through prehistory and new shadows.

“I did. For added romance.”

I kept my camera in its bag so we could walk hand in hand, something we hadn’t done too much since we’d first gotten to Prague. I loved the glass cases and the decorative ceilings, the glass roof, the red carpet on the stairs.

“I think I owe you a kiss, for payment,” I said somewhere not too far away from the mammoth and pulled Auris toward me, wound my arms around his neck, and waited for him to close the distance.

He never did. The shift in Auris’s mood was pronounced, and therefore, it pulled me right out of the romantic mindset. His head jerked up, and his arms around me tightened. He walked me backward and pushed me down behind a bench between two glass cases.

I looked around. I wouldn’t stand out much here, and it wasn’t lost on me that this was a hiding place, the shadows of the large display cases making the bench vanish into the background, and me with it.

I dared no more than the smallest whisper. “Auris --”

“I hear them. This will be fine. Just stay here until I come for you. I need to know you are safe while I deal with this. Do not move.”

I nodded once, and he left me there. I’m not sure how long it took him to come back to me. I didn’t want to pull out my phone and give my hiding spot away, and I didn’t want to call out for the same reason.

Waiting was the worst, of course. My imagination went right back to Jonathan, because I had exactly no doubt at all that this was more priests, that they had found us, tracked us somehow after the episode at the ossuary. After all, they would have known someone had found them out and stolen their vampire skeleton. We’d have to check on Charlie in case they were after him, too.

My mind pulled me deeper into twisted memories. A rough cross mounted in a torture chamber in the basement, a dark green toolbox sitting on a workbench, bones laid out. I almost laughed out loud. There were bones all around me, prehistoric ones, but bones were bones. What if they took Auris and I was left to search for him, only to end like Charlie, crying at the sight of a charred skull?

I spotted a moving shadow from my left, but the shadow was soundless.

“Auris!” I said and jumped to my feet.

“No need to worry, my sweet, come here,” he said, but I was already throwing my arms around his neck.

“What the fuck?”

He pulled away from me, although he didn’t let me go. “That is indeed the question. Come, you will find this interesting. I find it very interesting.”

“Who? Who’s here?”

He took me by the hand and walked out of the lost world with me. “The church. And a free agent, it would seem. I didn’t want you to worry and leave you here any longer, so I haven’t started the questioning yet.”

I nodded. I was trembling all over -- nerves, worry, all of it. The memories flooding back, the ones of the bathroom, moldy grout, nicotine breath, hands pushing me under.

“It’s fine. You are safe. There is nothing to run from, nothing to fight,” Auris said.

I focused on the melody of his voice, on his hand around mine. I nodded. All the rest of me -- my racing heart, my forehead beading in perspiration -- it took longer to get on board with that. “Way to ruin date night,” I mumbled out of an attempt to be funny.

“We will make up for that,” Auris said as we headed down the stairs, those wide, imposing stairs that made me feel like a servant who’d been asked to the ball by the faerie prince.

I nodded. My teeth chattered. I hated this.

There was, however, no other way out of this but through, and I forced myself to think, to acknowledge that Auris was next to me, that he was unhurt, that I was unhurt, that it was night when he was strongest. Instead of fighting against what my body was doing, I told myself, over and over, he’s safe and so am I. I concentrated on breathing, on taking deep breaths instead of shallow ones. And I held tight. It meant so much, that Auris was there, not fussing, but silently allowing me to squeeze his hand as much as I needed.

“Are there… any more of them?” I asked when we got to the ground floor where the entrance was. The luxurious museum felt too big all of a sudden, and the dimmed lights turned simple shadows into maws of darkness from which armed priests might spill any second.

Auris spun me around to face him and cradled my cheeks in his hands. “Ethan.” He narrowed his eyes. Tears welled up in mine. “Ssh, it’s fine. It’s a small group of them. Five, plus… that independent agent. They had one person wait outside in order to report if the others had failed or rush in to support them. There is no one else, but the museum staff I didn’t send home, and I have those enjoying a relaxing cup of tea in the breakroom. You know my sense of hearing is much better than yours, and I would be able to hear heartbeats that do not belong. Do you understand?”

I nodded. My skin still itched, and I still wanted to run. I didn’t. I breathed, held tight. Auris squeezed my hand, and we walked into the café.

The welcoming, bright space with the dinosaur skeleton looked far less welcoming for the group of black-clad people seated around a table, and when one of them, sour-faced, looked up at me, I gasped.

There, sitting with a group of dark-clad mercenaries with the crucifix club, was none other than our most unpopular houseguest.

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