Chapter 19
Gunnar joined the vilebloods without a greeting. He threw himself heavily in the chair across from them and slapped three mugs of Clan honey mead on the table. They huddled close, talking low as they ate their free meal, tucked in the tavern’s far corner. Black eyes watched as he made himself comfortable, slinging his fur coat over the chair back and claiming a mug for himself.
He knew his limits, knew the mead and how it might affect him. Maybe these two men were belligerent drunks, then he’d have a solid reason for Rina to pack them. Gunnar took a deep drink.
Neither man rose to the bait. The younger, Tomas, carried apprehension and fear thick on his sweat-drenched scent. Mateo kept himself better controlled, but he was nervous too.
“You need something from us?” Mateo asked, tapping his fork on his empty plate. They both still smelled ravenous.
Gunnar wiped his mouth, shrugged. Lies didn’t really suit his kind. They all knew it, and he wasn’t in the mood for anymore bullshit today. “I’m here to decide if you’re trouble.” He nodded to their empty plates. “If you’re still hungry, eat. Rina’s good on her hospitality.”
Tomas was on his feet, plate in hand. Mateo jerked him back down by his sleeve. “Relax.”
“What?” Tomas protested. “We don’t hurry, there might not be any more.”
Gunnar recognized that deep prison mentality from places like the Madagascar pen. They let the inmates run in packs and let those packs sort out their own issues. Meant starving. Often.
He waved at Aster, who’d been watching their table since he’d sat down. She headed over, smoothing her cream-colored apron over her deep blue smock. Gunnar wanted to see how they acted toward a woman.
“What will you have, Gunnar?” Aster glanced at his company, nodding. “Gentlemen.” Her ethereal gaze washed over them, polite, but quick.
“Nothing for me, but Rina’s guests are still hungry. They didn’t know they could ask for more,” Gunnar said.
Tomas hunched now, embarrassment wafting off the boy. Gunnar wondered if he wasn’t much past sixteen or eighteen. He didn’t look at Aster at all, looked anywhere else he could find.
“This is true?” Aster asked, brows raised. She did her job well, made it easy to forget she was an Aperien and not some low-level duster. Radiated human in her mannerisms, but both these vileblood should be able to tell she was more from her scent.
“Yeah,” Mateo muttered. “Free meal, she said, so didn’t want to assume.”
“It is no worry,” Aster said, waving off his concerns. Gunnar knew she didn’t give a shit about anyone who wasn’t part of Nizhny, but she took her duties to the settlement seriously. “What Rina says goes around here, so if you are hungry, eat. More of the same for you both?”
“Please,” Mateo said, Tomas nodding along.
Silence stretched after Aster left. Gunnar took another sip of mead, spread in his seat like he wasn’t there for any reason.
Mateo cleared his throat after a few minutes. “Is this an interview or something then?”
Gunnar smirked. “Not really.”
Frustration and desperation pressed Mateo’s scent now, reminding Gunnar of a nervous animal backed into a corner. Good. He needed to know if they were the kind to bite at hands or piss themselves, or whatever might go in between.
“That’s it then? Just going to sit there glaring at us until we fuck up enough you can ship us out?”
A lazy shrug. “Sounds fine to me.” He glanced up at the antique clock face near the rafters. “Only so many hours until dawn. I’ve dealt with worse.”
“I’m sure you have,” Mateo bit out.
“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?” Tomas all but whined the question, and he seemed genuinely confused. “You know what it’s like, but you fit in here. What’s wrong with us trying the same thing?”
“I don’t give a shit what you try, just don’t want you doing it anywhere near me.”
“Okay? We can leave you alone. We’re used to lying low,” Tomas went on, then kind of trailed off as Mateo scowled.
“You’re a selfish fucker.”
Gunnar chuckled. “Are what we are. Selfish for one, dangerous for another.” He quirked a brow. “Or you boys going to deny that?”
“We haven’t denied shit,” Mateo snapped, his nostrils flaring. “Yeah, I’m fucking selfish. I don’t want us to starve to death out on these damn icefields. Yeah, I’d like a bed under our backs for a change, a roof over our heads.” He scrubbed his face a few times, a snarl thickening his voice as he went on. “And yeah, we’re dangerous. And hells if it doesn’t sound nice to get to make a living off it. Is that so hard for you to get? Or maybe you’d like to ask us actual questions instead of pissing all over the place.”
Mateo threw up both hands. “We get it. You’re stronger than we are. I could smell it as soon as we stepped off the damn train. You were here first, yada-yada, so you tell me what the hells you want from us.”
Gunnar took another drink, knowing his scent must be ripe with annoyance, because Mateo was asking for exactly what Audrey had asked from him. To give them a fair shake. To hear them out before he made the judgement based on his own desires.
“When’d they get you?”
Mateo leaned back in his seat, his scent and expression cautious. “I was around seven. Shoved me in the youth section in Manhattan. Moved into the open population when I was twelve. There were a few more vileblood, and they let me run with him.” He lifted his chin at Tomas. “He was born inside.”
Tomas shifted in his chair, and when Mateo glanced at him, he nodded.
“They threw a woman in about four months pregnant. The guys I was with got her right when they dumped her, smelled her from miles off. A whore from some dark rites brothel in York, and when they found out the father was a vileblood,” Mateo shrugged, “she traded sex for protection and made us promise we’d take care of her kid if it was a boy, kill it if it was a girl, and put her down if she didn’t die during the birth.”
“Fuck of a thing, watching her get all twisted up as the days went by.” He shook his head, then went on. “After Tomas was born, she went batshit, and they killed her. Two days later, the guards came and wanted to take him away. They caught me with him, offered me a room back in the youth prison if I’d take care of the baby.” Mateo grinned over at Tomas. “Was better being a big brother than the low man of the pack.” His expression sobered. “They were all gone once Tomas hit twelve and they shipped us back out into general. Dead most likely.
“Then what, six years later? They come down, tell us shit changed, and let us out the front door.”
Tomas stared at the wall now, his expression vacant, no hiding the bitter guilt from his scent.
Gunnar sighed before he said, “Human women never make it out if they get pregnant from our kind. It’s the curse, the whole point.”
Tomas winced, but his scent was curious now. They really didn’t know shit about themselves, did they? Most days, Gunnar wished he knew less.
He added, “Maybe the kid lives, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s not like we can do shit about being born.”
“How do you know all that?” Tomas asked, brow furrowed.
Gunnar chose his next words carefully. “I met the archivist who changed the Vilestars Accord. Got to learn a whole lot about our history, more than I really gave a shit about, to be honest. And like you said, the Accord changing didn’t do much aside from us being thrown out on this side of the bars.”
“Do you know what we are?” Tomas pushed. Gunnar got the impression Mateo didn’t much give a shit about heritage, but Tomas’s interest was genuine.
Aster came back with the food, they thanked her, and she was off again. The men both dug in, unashamed, and Gunnar figured it didn’t hurt to share the knowledge Theo and Audrey had imparted upon him.
“You know anything?”
Mateo snorted. “Devil spawn. Demon blood. Monsters.” He waved his fork. “Not much else for conversation when everything is trying to knife us for our food in the pen.”
“Lucifer Morningstar and Lamashtu, goddess of monsters and beasts, got together and made a go at snuffing out humanity. Twelve Vilestars, six men and six women, each infused with a different animal nature. The women were all twisted on the outside, ran around eating babies and shit. Real nightmare stuff.
“The men, they were beautiful like their father but hungry for violence like their mother. While their sisters hunted down pregnant human women and newborns, the men seduced or raped human women to start new bloodlines.” Gunnar spread his arms, indicating the three of them. “Backup plan. If eradication failed, they’d corrupt the rest of humanity and bolster their numbers.
“The war to end them was one of the biggest calamities after the Aperien event. Good won in the end, but it took years. Lucifer, Lamashtu, and the twelve Vilestars all fell, but they’d done a lot of damage first. Crippled the human population for one, nearly made them extinct. And they made us.”
“So we’re part animal and angel and . . .” Tomas grinned a bit. “And god?”
Mateo snorted into his roasted potatoes.
“Don’t get too excited,” Gunnar drawled. “Pretty sure we didn’t get much of that last part, but you can understand almost any language you hear, speak it with a little work?”
They both stilled, Tomas with a mouth full of food and glancing at Mateo for direction. The other licked his lips. “Yeah, that’s a thing.”
“Polyglot,” Gunnar offered, “from angel blood, no matter how thin.”
Mateo made a thoughtful noise as he kept eating. “You said the men were rapists.”
“That part of what you had to do to get by?” Gunnar asked, flat out.
“No,” the reply came fast from both of them, not a lie, but Mateo elaborated, “Strong drives, though. For sex and fighting.”
Tomas cleared his throat. “I heard someone talking about there being a brothel here, but you don’t pay, you just let them feed on you.” The kid’s cheeks flushed now—because he was, Gunnar realized, not much more than a damn kid. “Feedings like take energy out of you, so maybe it would be really good for the itching Mateo is talking about?”
Gunnar was not about to share anything personal with these two. “Already said we’re different, you’d have to figure that out yourself if you end up staying.”
“You’re considering it, then? Us staying on?” Mateo sat up, his plate forgotten. His black eyes held Gunnar’s, that desperation in his scent dusted in hope now.
Fuck.
All I ask is you give them a fair assessment.
Yeah, he’d done just that, hadn’t he?
Gunnar sighed and took a deep, deep drink of his mead.