The Wine and the Stake
The vampire didn't run when I kicked in the door, and that was my first mistake—assuming fear meant I'd won.
He sat at a mahogany table that had no business being in a converted Cold War bunker, two wine glasses catching the light from a single brass lamp. My sister's journal lay open between them. The pages were yellowed, the handwriting unmistakable—Mara's looping script that always slanted right when she was excited, left when she was afraid.
"You're twenty minutes late." His voice carried the faint rasp of old cigarette smoke, though I'd never seen a vampire touch tobacco. "The Bordeaux is ruined."
I kept the stake level with his heart. Ash wood, blessed by a priest who'd actually believed in what he was doing. The tip had already tasted vampire blood twice this month. "Nikolai Thorn."
"Miss Kovač." He didn't stand. Didn't reach for a weapon. His hands rested on either side of the journal, long fingers with calluses that suggested he'd once done manual labor, back when manual labor meant something different than it did now. "Please. Sit."
"I'm good here."
"With your back to an unsealed entrance and your heart rate suggesting you've been running?" He tilted his head, and the lamplight caught his eyes—not red, not the Hollywood bullshit, just gray like winter fog over the Vltava. "The wine is a 1982 Château Margaux. It would be a shame to let it oxidize further while you decide whether to kill me."
My grip tightened on the stake. The burn scar across my collarbone itched, the way it always did when something was wrong. "You have my sister's journal."
"I have one of them." He slid it across the table, careful not to disturb the wine glasses. "She kept seven. This is number four. October through December, two years ago."
I didn't move. Couldn't. Mara had died eighteen months ago in a warehouse fire in Karlín, and the police had ruled it accidental. Faulty wiring. The building had been scheduled for demolition anyway. They'd found her dental records in the ash, her apartment keys melted into slag, and exactly nothing that suggested she'd been investigating a vampire conspiracy.
"How did you get it?"
"She gave it to me." Nikolai lifted one of the wine glasses, swirled it once, set it down without drinking. "November fourteenth. We met at the café near the Astronomical Clock—you know the one, they serve that terrible Turkish coffee she loved. She said if anything happened to her, I should make sure you saw this."
"Bullshit."
"Page forty-seven. Third entry from the bottom."
I moved then, fast enough that a human wouldn't have tracked it, but Nikolai just watched as I snatched the journal and flipped to the page. My hands left sweat marks on the leather cover.
N. says the Consilium is fracturing. If I'm right about the blood farms, I won't make it to Christmas. Sera—if you're reading this, it means I was right about more than that. Trust him. I know how that sounds. Trust him anyway.
The handwriting slanted left.
My vision blurred. I blinked hard, forced my breathing to steady, and when I looked up Nikolai was still sitting there with his hands folded like a professor waiting for a slow student to work through a proof.
"She died December ninth," I said.
"Yes."
"You knew she was going to die."
"I suspected." He finally lifted the wine glass, took a sip that seemed more ritual than pleasure. "I was not, however, able to prevent it. A failure that haunts me more than you might imagine, given how many failures I've accumulated over the years."
I set the journal down. Picked up the stake again. The weight felt right in my hand, familiar as my own heartbeat. "Give me one reason I shouldn't put this through your chest right now."
"I have blood-memories of your sister's final week." He said it like he was commenting on the weather, like he hadn't just offered me the one thing I'd been chasing for eighteen months through every vampire haven and black market contact in Prague. "But they're degrading. Another month, perhaps two, and they'll be gone entirely. If you kill me now, they die with me."
The stake tip pressed against his shirt. White linen, expensive. No tie. The top button undone in a way that suggested he'd dressed in a hurry, or wanted me to think he had.
"You're lying."
"I have been many things, Miss Kovač. Innocent is not among them." He didn't lean back, didn't flinch. "But I have no reason to lie about this. Your sister and I were—" He paused, and for the first time something flickered across his face that might have been actual emotion. "We were colleagues. Friends, perhaps, though that word carries complications when one party is immortal and the other is investigating whether your kind is violating the Treaty of Shadows."
"The Treaty's a joke."
"The Treaty is the only thing preventing open war between your species and mine." He set down the wine glass with a soft click. "And someone is violating it. Blood farms, Miss Kovač. Humans bred and drained in basement facilities across Eastern Europe. Your sister found evidence. Three locations in Prague alone, two in Brno, one in Ostrava. She was going to bring it to the Council of Hunters."
I knew about the Council. Every hunter did. They were the ones who'd negotiated the Treaty thirty years ago, who maintained the uneasy peace that let vampires exist in the shadows and humans pretend the monsters were just stories. Mara had wanted to join them. She'd been studying for the entrance exams when she died.
"If she had evidence, where is it?"
"Destroyed in the fire that killed her." Nikolai's voice went soft, and I had to lean forward to hear him. "Along with her research notes, her contacts list, and the photographs she'd taken of the Karlín facility. Very thorough, whoever did it. They even wiped her laptop's backup drives."
"But you remember."
"I drank from her twice. Once in November, when she needed proof that blood-memories were real. Once in December, three days before she died." He met my eyes, and I saw something in them that made my stomach clench. "She knew they were coming for her. She wanted someone to remember what she'd found."
The bunker was silent except for the hum of ventilation, the distant drip of water through concrete. I'd tracked Nikolai here through six intermediaries and a bribed city clerk who'd sold me the building's original blueprints. I'd expected a fight. Expected him to run, or attack, or do literally anything except sit here offering me exactly what I wanted.
"What's the catch?"
"You have to drink from me." He said it like he was offering tea. "Blood-memories transfer through consumption. A sip would be enough—you're not turning, Miss Kovač, merely accessing what I've stored. But it does require you to trust me for approximately thirty seconds while my blood enters your system."
I laughed. Couldn't help it. "You want me to drink vampire blood."
"I want you to see what your sister died for." He stood then, finally, and I tracked his movement with the stake. He was tall, maybe six-two, with the kind of lean build that came from a century of not needing to eat. "She spent four months investigating the blood farms. She interviewed victims who'd escaped, bribed facility guards, cross-referenced shipping manifests with missing persons reports. She built a case that would have brought the Consilium to its knees."
"The Consilium?"
"The vampire governing body. Seven members, each representing a different bloodline. They're the ones who signed the Treaty, who promised to police our own kind." He moved to a filing cabinet in the corner, pulled out a folder thick with papers. "They're also the ones running the blood farms. Your sister proved it. And they killed her for it."
He dropped the folder on the table. Photographs spilled out—basement rooms with medical equipment, humans strapped to tables with IV lines running from their arms, shipping containers marked with symbols I didn't recognize. My hands shook as I picked up one photo. A girl, maybe sixteen, with hollow eyes and track marks covering both arms.
"How many?" My voice came out hoarse.
"We estimate three hundred currently in the Prague facilities alone. Thousands across Europe." Nikolai returned to his chair, and this time he didn't touch the wine. "The Treaty allows for voluntary donation. Humans who consent to provide blood in exchange for payment. These people didn't consent. They were taken. Bred. Some of them have never seen sunlight."
I set down the photo. Picked up another. A man this time, older, with scars across his neck that suggested repeated feeding. The image blurred again and I realized my hands were shaking too hard to hold it steady.
"Your sister died getting this evidence." Nikolai's voice was barely a whisper now, and I had to strain to hear him over the blood rushing in my ears. "Kill me, and you prove she wasted her life. Or drink, and see what she saw. Your choice, Miss Kovač."
The stake felt heavy. I'd killed seven vampires in the last eighteen months, working my way up the food chain toward whoever had ordered Mara's death. Seven monsters who'd preyed on humans, who'd broken the Treaty, who'd deserved what they got. But Nikolai wasn't running. Wasn't fighting. He just sat there with his hands folded and my sister's journal between us, offering me the one thing I couldn't refuse.
"If I drink and you're lying—"
"Then you'll have a wooden stake and I'll be weakened from blood loss." He rolled up his sleeve, exposing his wrist. "I'm not concerned."
I should have walked away. Should have taken the journal and the photos and brought them to the Council myself. But Mara's handwriting kept pulling my eyes back to the page. Trust him. I know how that sounds. Trust him anyway.
"One sip," I said.
"One sip."
I lowered the stake. Didn't put it down, just shifted my grip so I could reach across the table. Nikolai offered his wrist, and I saw the faint scars there—thin white lines that suggested he'd done this before, that blood-sharing was something more than just feeding for his kind.
"It will taste like copper and roses," he said. "Don't fight it. Let the memories come."
I pressed my thumb against his wrist, feeling for the pulse that shouldn't exist but did anyway, slow and steady as a funeral drum. Then I bit down.
The blood hit my tongue and the world inverted.
I was standing in the café near the Astronomical Clock, but I was seeing it through Nikolai's eyes. Mara sat across from me—from him—with her laptop open and her terrible Turkish coffee going cold. She looked tired. More than tired. Haunted.
"They're breeding them," she said, and her voice carried the same clipped cadence as mine, the same refusal to waste words. "Not just taking people off the streets. Breeding them. There's a facility in Karlín with medical records going back fifteen years. Genetic profiles. Bloodline optimization charts."
"Mara—" Nikolai's voice, but I felt his throat move, felt the weight of centuries behind the concern in his tone.
"I have proof." She turned the laptop around. Spreadsheets, medical records, photographs that made my stomach turn even filtered through someone else's memory. "The Consilium is running it. All seven members. They've been violating the Treaty since before the ink dried."
"If you're right—"
"I'm right." She closed the laptop with a snap that echoed through the memory. "And they know I'm right. I've been followed for three days. Black sedan, tinted windows, changes drivers but never the license plate. They're not even trying to hide it anymore."
Nikolai reached across the table, and I felt his hand close over hers. "Then stop. Bring what you have to the Council of Hunters and let them handle it."
"The Council is compromised." Mara pulled her hand back, and I felt the loss of contact like a physical ache. "I have evidence of that too. Two Council members taking payments from Consilium accounts. Another one who disappeared after asking too many questions about blood farm locations."
"Then what's your play?"
She smiled, and it was the same smile I'd seen a thousand times growing up—the one that meant she'd already decided, already committed, and nothing I said would change her mind. "I'm going to the facility tonight. Getting video evidence. Then I'm going public. News outlets, social media, every hunter contact I have. They can't kill all of us."
The memory shifted, jumped forward. December sixth now, three days before Mara died. Same café, different table. Mara's hands shook as she lifted her coffee cup.
"They took my backup drives," she said. "Broke into my apartment while I was teaching. Didn't take anything else. Just the drives."
"You need to run." Nikolai's voice carried an urgency I hadn't heard in the present. "Tonight. I have contacts in Berlin who can hide you—"
"I'm not running." But her voice cracked on the last word, and I felt Nikolai's chest tighten with something that might have been fear or might have been grief for something that hadn't happened yet. "I have one more copy. Cloud storage, encrypted, hidden behind seven proxies. If something happens to me—"
"Nothing is going to happen to you."
"If something happens to me," she continued, and her eyes met his with the kind of certainty that only comes from accepting your own death, "I need you to make sure Sera sees it. She'll come after you. She'll think you killed me. Let her. And when she's ready, show her everything."
"Mara—"
"Promise me." She reached across the table, grabbed his hand hard enough that I felt her nails dig into his palm. "Promise me you'll make her understand. The blood farms have to end. The Consilium has to fall. And Sera's the only one angry enough and stupid enough to actually do something about it."
The memory fractured, and I was back in the bunker with the taste of copper and roses fading from my tongue and Nikolai watching me with those winter-fog eyes.
"She knew," I said. My voice sounded distant, like it was coming from underwater. "She knew they were going to kill her."
"Yes."
"And you let her walk into it."
"I tried to stop her." He pulled his wrist back, and I saw the bite marks already healing, the skin knitting together with the unnatural speed of his kind. "I offered her protection, offered to go to the Council myself, offered to kill every member of the Consilium if that's what it took. She refused. Said if I moved against them, it would start a war. Said the only way to end the blood farms was to expose them, to make it impossible for the Consilium to operate in the shadows."
I stood up. The bunker spun, and I grabbed the table edge to steady myself. "Where's the cloud storage?"
"Destroyed." Nikolai's voice was flat. "They found it two days after she died. Very thorough, as I said."
"Then we have nothing."
"We have my memories. We have the photographs I managed to save. We have the facility locations and the shipping manifests." He stood too, and suddenly the table between us felt like the only thing keeping me from doing something stupid. "And we have you, Miss Kovač. A hunter with nothing to lose and every reason to burn the Consilium to the ground."
"You want me to start a war."
"I want you to finish what your sister started." He moved around the table, and I raised the stake again but my hands were shaking too hard to aim properly. "The blood farms are still operating. Three hundred people in Prague alone, remember? Every day we wait, more humans die. More children are bred into slavery. Your sister gave her life trying to stop it. The question is whether you're brave enough to do the same."
The stake tip wavered. I wanted to drive it home, wanted to make him pay for letting Mara die, for sitting in this bunker with his expensive wine while my sister burned. But her voice echoed in my head—Trust him. I know how that sounds. Trust him anyway.—and I couldn't make my hand move.
"What do you get out of this?" I asked.
"Revenge." He said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The Consilium killed someone I cared about. I've been alive for two hundred and forty-three years, Miss Kovač. I've learned patience. But I've also learned that some debts can only be paid in blood."
"You're a vampire. You could take them yourself."
"I'm one vampire. They're seven, each with their own bloodline, their own resources, their own private armies." He stopped just outside striking distance, and I saw something flicker across his face that might have been respect or might have been calculation. "But a hunter with proof of Treaty violations? A hunter with blood-memories and photographs and shipping manifests? That's a weapon even the Consilium can't ignore."
The ventilation hummed. Water dripped. My sister's journal lay open on the table, her handwriting slanting left with fear and right with determination, and I realized I'd already made my choice the moment I'd bitten down on Nikolai's wrist.
"I want everything," I said. "Every facility location. Every name. Every piece of evidence you have."
"Done."
"And when this is over, when the Consilium falls—" I met his eyes, and this time I didn't look away. "You and I are going to have a conversation about why you didn't save her."
"I look forward to it." He smiled, and it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. "Truly."
He turned toward the filing cabinet, and that's when I heard it—the soft scrape of metal on concrete, the whisper of movement from the unsealed entrance I'd left at my back. I spun, stake raised, but I was already too late.
The woman in the doorway wore a red dress that probably cost more than my annual income and smiled like she'd just found a lost puppy. "Oh darling," she said, her voice honey-sweet and patronizing in a way that made my teeth ache. "You didn't really think we'd let you two plot in peace, did you?"
Behind her, three more vampires filed into the bunker, and I recognized the tallest one from the photographs—Cassia Vex, Consilium member, blood farm architect, and the vampire who'd signed the order for my sister's death.
Nikolai moved to stand beside me, and I felt rather than saw him tense for a fight. "Cassia. How unexpected."
"Is it though?" She stepped fully into the room, and the other vampires fanned out to block the exits. "You've been quite sloppy, Nikolai. Meeting with hunters, sharing blood-memories, keeping evidence you should have destroyed. The Consilium is disappointed."
"The Consilium can go fuck itself."
Her smile widened. "Oh darling. You misunderstand. I don't hate humans. I simply know their place." Her eyes shifted to me, and I saw hunger there, and amusement, and something worse than either. "And their place is certainly not standing in a bunker with stolen evidence and delusions of revolution."
She moved, faster than I could track, and suddenly she was right in front of me with her hand wrapped around my throat and my feet dangling six inches off the ground.
"Now then," she said, her voice still honey-sweet even as her fingers tightened and black spots bloomed across my vision. "Let's discuss what happens to little hunters who—"
The bunker door exploded inward, and the last thing I saw before the world went dark was a figure silhouetted against the sudden flood of daylight, holding something that burned with the kind of light that made vampires scream.