Page 74 of Caelum
FIFTEEN
DRE
Geneva, Switzerland
Seven wishes to destroy the Screamer,
Solomon’s ring to lure Drekavac to you,
Bucegi where he sleeps.
The translation hit us all in different ways.
The whole ‘seven wishes’ shit just confirmed that what we’d done at Caelum was actually a weapon we were going to have to use again.
And from what Bartlett and Avalina had told us, a potential three further times.
Why?
Drekavac was their grandchild.
One of the three Original Ghouls.
Who was, apparently, on our ‘to kill’ list because that was what we were doing now. Not just killing Ghouls, but Ancient ones. Ones that went so far above even the ductores we’d thought ran the roost but who, in fact, answered to one of the three Originals.
There was only one aspect of this entire shit show I couldn’t complain about—I’d feared my purpose would die the second I left Caelum. It hadn’t. I now had a deeper purpose. One that involved eradicating the world itself of Ghouls…
When it boiled down to it, this was taking my purpose to the max.
So, yeah, most of us were freaked out, a little wired about what had happened when ‘Adam and Eve’ had translated every single leaf on our Eve’s body and had come up with a riddle worthy of a treasure map, but for Stefan, it had knocked him down with the force of a Mack truck.
We hadn’t even had to Google Bucegi because, I shit you not, that was where Stefan had been born. Or, to be precise, a town near the Bucegi mountain range. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant drive down memory lane for my brother, and he’d been affected ever since our initial meeting with Bartlett and Avalina.
Said translation, however, was why I found myself in a bank vault, two weeks later in the heart of Switzerland. Around me were steel walls, with doors thicker than the Hulk himself, and more security and firewalls than the Pentagon. My bear didn’t appreciate being lumped in here, stuck inside, but neither did Eren’s Lorelei or Stefan’s Incubus.
The things we do for love , I thought with an internal eye roll.
“Which one is it?” Eren whispered into his mouthpiece as he eyed the vault, which was surprisingly boring except for the thick walls and tech that secured the place.
“Just give me a minute.” Sam’s voice was low but throbbed with tension. He’d been working non-stop for fourteen days, and though the pressure wasn’t getting to him, I knew sleep deprivation would and could knock him on his ass if he wasn’t careful.
The last thing any of us needed was to get stuck in here because Sam needed a nap.
My potential prison had a low ceiling, and in the background, there was a hum that, without Sam’s input, would have told me the oxygen was controlled in here. When we’d walked in, we’d come face to face with an L-shaped room. There’d been a huge pile of gold ingots in the corner of the ‘L,’ and to its right, there was a wall of lockers each around a square foot in size, with four to a row and eight to a column. There was a shelving unit that looked surprisingly flimsy, but one I hoped was reinforced with tungsten or titanium or whatever, which was loaded down with stacks of cash. I’d seen Stefan eye it a time or two, his pickpocketing tendencies twitching to life in the face of where we were, but thus far, he’d behaved.
Behind the shelves was a wall of smaller lockers. These were six inches by six inches, tiny in the grand scheme of things, and where Samuel, after he’d shown us the blueprints of the vault, had said Edgar Wassermann was more than likely storing some of the goods his father, a leading Nazi, had stolen from the Jews he’d helped ship to their deaths at Dachau.
I felt no guilt in stealing from a piece of shit like that, but I just wished Sam would hurry the hell up so we could get on with the stealing and get out of here.
“Okay, I’m through the firewall.” Then, he grumbled, “This place needs to work on their security.”
“Now’s not the time for a critique, S,” I growled, not using his full name just in case there was a layer of security Sam hadn’t managed to access.
He huffed. “It’s in one of the smaller boxes as I expected. Number 232.”
With the knowledge in mind, our attention switched to Stefan who, as he’d been for the past two weeks, was looking twitchy as fuck. Still, I was relieved when he didn’t flake out on us and without even a glance, headed over to the lockers, dropped down to a crouch, grabbed his gear from his pocket, and got to work picking the lock.
It blew my mind that this was how they guarded the shit inside the lockers, but it figured if you spent forty million on security, you didn’t think there was much to worry about.
Idiots.
Old-world thinking like that was why teen hackers kept getting the better of ancient politicians. Still, as I’d told Samuel, now wasn’t the time for a critique.
Within two minutes, Stefan had picked the lock and was pulling open the door. Inside, there was an internal drawer that he dragged out. The lockers were small in size but were over three feet long. The baubles we found within the unit had my eyes flaring wide in surprise and had Eren grabbing the bag from my hands and holding it out for Stefan to shove the gear into.
It took less than an hour to break into the small vault housed within a Swiss bank beloved by the very crooked. But it had taken weeks to set our plans into motion.
The con, I was relieved to say, was on.
Now we just had to get out of here.
“You have the gear?” Samuel rasped in our ears, his fatigue sounding even more evident to me. Eren too, I thought, because he shot me a concerned look after he shoved the diamonds in my backpack.
We’d decided I was the safest carrying the stolen items. Mostly because I could stun the shit out of any police or security by shifting into a bear. Shock value would hopefully give me time to get away .
Gone were the days where we hid among the shadows, where our races mingled silently among the humans. Change was coming, and we’d signed Drekavac’s death sentence as well as millions of Ghouls’ tonight.
Sneaking out was easier than getting in, but no less fraught with tension.
The bank was in a shopping mall of all things, an ancient one in the center of Geneva, but a mall with neighbors nonetheless.
We’d broken into the coffee shop beside it—a place that also stole from customers with coffee at ten goddamn euros a cup—had taken advantage of the ancient plumbing this unit shared with the bank, and had torn through the bathroom wall to make it into the bank itself. All the while, Samuel had been fiddling with the security systems so that when we made it inside the building, we could get through the nine-strong levels of security the alarm system, Inferno, likened to the nine circles of hell in the eponymous Dante novel.
That whole ability to code Malbolge came in handy tonight. Seemed like part of the security system had been written in it.
With the gear stored away, Stefan, Eren, and I nodded at one another and made our way out of the vault. As we headed to the bathroom, we came across the three security guards Stefan had lured our way and that Eren had then sung to sleep at the beginning of our journey.
Stepping over them, we made it back into the coffee shop, and within three minutes, were in our getaway car that Frazer was manning in the area the mall used as a loading dock for its tenants.
All was going according to plan, until, of course, all hell broke loose.
Behind us, Samuel had finally triggered the alarms and the sound had my bear whimpering in dismay, which was exacerbated by the tires squealing when Frazer shot off from our hidden parking place and down the street.
“Couldn’t you have waited a few more minutes?” I snapped into the headpiece we were still wearing.
“No.”
Well, that was short and definitely not sweet.
Rolling my eyes at Samuel’s curt response, I grabbed the backpack and settled it between my feet in the back seat of the car. Now we were away from the built-up area, Frazer suddenly turned into a frickin’ speed demon. As he drove, he released a bark of laughter that went in time to his overloading the engine and us hitting a hundred-twenty on the speedometer.
Stefan, Eren, and I all jerked forward then back as he ramped up the speed .
Sadly enough, I was getting used to this treatment.
The man drove like he intended on dying today. That made being his passenger very goddamn uncomfortable, but his propensity for speeding was what made him a good getaway driver.
More’s the pity.
“Everything go according to plan?” the lunatic asked, his eyes catching mine in the rearview mirror.
“Couldn’t have gone better,” I replied, tugging off my balaclava as my brothers did the same.
“Good.” He released a breath and his shoulders sagged slightly with relief. “Should hit the news within the hour.”
“How long until we contact the fence?” Eren questioned, though we all knew the plan backward and forward, so I didn’t know why he bothered wasting his breath.
“Tomorrow. We need to give it some time to make the theft look authentic.”
I snorted. “Nothing more authentic than breaking into a fucking bank to steal something that isn’t there in the first place.”
For whatever reason, Frazer grinned at that. “That’s the beauty of the crime.”
Though I rolled my eyes, I had to agree with him.
Seven wishes to destroy the Screamer,
Solomon’s ring to lure Drekavac to you,
Bucegi where he sleeps.
The treasure map inked onto Eve’s body had given us some answers, but it had mostly led to an epic to-do list that made the workload at Caelum look like a walk in the park.
Once she’d revealed the translation’s meaning, Avalina had explained that Solomon’s ring had been used to seal ‘written commands of good and evil.’ She’d posited that Drekavac might be lured by its abilities as Solomon had been able to command the Jannah with them. Which gave us a whole host of nightmares to deal with.
Did Drekavac know that a Jannah had been born?
If he did, and if he ever got his hands on the ring, did that mean he’d be able to call Eve to him?
Of course, we’d gone the easy route first—had tried uttering the wish back in Bartlett and Avalina’s office, but when the world hadn’t gone to hell, we’d figured nothing had happened, and we’d realized we needed a plan.
Could nothing ever be simple? I thought grumpily.
Leaving the first of the first truly mind blown, Samuel had immediately gone on the hunt for more information. He’d run several searches on Solomon’s ring which was, apparently, forged of iron and brass, but—thank God for Google—his searches had heralded more than just a Wikipedia page, and thereafter, with a theory in place, Sammy had turned to the Dark Net.
An article in the New York Times that was the basis of this theory recounted the tale of a certain businessman, Mihai Adamescu, who had an obsession with religious artifacts—Solomon’s signet ring, in particular. Subsequent research gave us what we needed to know.
Adamescu had mafia ties, and his base was in Ploie?ti—the Bucegi mountain range overlooked the damn town. In certain circles on the Dark Net, there was talk of a reward if someone came across Solomon’s ring, and there was information on how to go about receiving that reward.
What had sealed the deal?
When Samuel had looked into the guy’s past, he’d come across a bar that was in the businessman’s name.
That bar?
It was called Drekavac .
That was what had started this crazy as fuck ‘adventure.’
We had no idea where the ring was, just knew that it truly had existed because after explaining our intentions to the professors, Bartlett had emailed us a drawing of it—the guy actually remembered what it looked like—because Samuel had come up with the notion that we didn’t have to possess it to use it as a lure. And so, our hustle had begun.
Our to-do list was:
·Steal from the son of a Nazi officer purported to have robbed from his Jewish prisoners at Dachau.
·Create a fake ring that was good enough to pass the test of Abraham Ibramovicz, a fence with a rep that was beyond repute.
·‘Big up’ said ring and sell it as Solomon’s signet ring.
·Lure the apparently obsessed-with-religious-artifacts Drekavac to come to us.
Simple .
Ha.
Scraping my hands through my sweaty hair, I mumbled, “I need a shower. I sweated buckets in there.”
Eren laughed. “I’m relieved to know that even you are scared of bank robbery. ”
“Not scared of the robbery,” I argued, but I grinned at him. “Just getting caught. Especially with so much at stake.” We both sobered at that.
The stakes were beyond high. They were everything.
Just thinking of what we had to do was enough to make me feel nauseated.
“Do you really think if we kill Drekavac, it will decimate his line?” Stefan’s voice was pensive enough to make me gnaw on my bottom lip. I wanted to answer but couldn’t. Had nothing to say really. No way of replying in the positive or negative.
Frazer, on the other hand, did—bighead. Hey, just because he was a brother didn’t mean I thought the sun rose and set on his ass. “If what Bartlett and Avalina had to say is the truth, and if their translation was accurate, I don’t see why not.”
“If it is the truth,” I retorted. I was still on the fence, even if it was only out of obstinacy. Their tale had resonated with me in a way that discomforted me, and the fact Bartlett had handed us a drawing of Solomon’s ring? Meaning that he’d been in Solomon’s court? It just blew my mind.
And the change in Eve was remarkable too. It was like what they’d told her had strengthened her somehow. To the point where it was difficult to explain how she’d changed.
I had to admit, she was no longer as useless as she’d been back at Caelum.
Whatever this Jannah crap was about, learning of her heritage had made her embrace her true self. So, whether it was bullshit or not, it had made her believe, and through that, the leaves and branches on her body had stopped glowing so much—something we could only see as being a sign of things to come.
By the time we pulled up to the house Samuel had rented for us in Geneva—a small chalet that was an hour away from the city—we were all whacked. Samuel had gone radio silent, so I hoped that meant he was getting some rest, and I knew that the second I could, I was getting between the sheets too.
As I stared up at the house, I had to admit it was both cute and disconcerting. Disconcerting because it looked like the gingerbread houses I’d seen in movies as a kid—the Hallmark Christmas ones that were shipped around the world—and cute because, fuck, it looked like a real-life gingerbread house.
It was three stories tall and thin with it. Two windows and the door were stacked in vertical alignment beneath a flat roof that pitched down on either side. The windows had little Juliet balconies that were decorated with wooden moldings, and in the light of day, it was painted a cheery yellow color. A bit like custard. In fact, now that I thought about it, it was definitely like custard—the flans my abuela had made when I was a kid for special occasions. Back before she’d turned into an outright bitch.
As the car doors closed, the front door to the chalet slammed open. Eve stood there, her chest bellowing like she’d run a race as she stared at us. With a squeal that would have had any neighbors protesting if we weren’t in the middle of goddamn nowhere, she hurled herself at Stefan, then after he’d squeezed her, kissed her until she turned pink, she rammed into Eren. Another hug, another kiss. Then onto Frazer. Same treatment.
I wasn’t sure why I watched, because it was an effort in torture, but I kind of wanted to know what she’d do with me. After she squeezed Frazer until he looked like he was being choked by an overlarge octopus—not that he seemed to mind—she turned toward me and bit her bottom lip.
There was a longing in her eyes that made me ache inside, but just because she wasn’t useless anymore didn’t mean?—
Fuck.
It didn’t mean shit.
My dislike and distaste didn’t mean shit either.
She was mine.
Fuck a duck.
I ran a hand through my sweaty hair again, tipped my chin up and mumbled, “Hey.” Before she could say anything, or before the others could glower at me too hard, I spun on my heel and headed through the open door. I needed to process this before I made a move, process what this meant to me and how I’d cope with the ramifications.
Spotting Reed at the dining table, I cocked a brow at the splintered wood around him. A small lamp and, by the looks of it, three chairs hadn’t survived his wrath.
He shrugged at my questioning look. “Temper got the better of me.”
I snorted. “Good thing we can afford the security deposit.” Dude had a habit of breaking shit wherever he went. It was like living in a china shop and inviting the bull inside for afternoon tea.
“Eve was freaking out about all of you being gone, and my Hell Hound doesn’t like it when she’s uneasy.”
I eyed the destruction around him. “Ya think?”
He pulled a face then asked, “Everything go well?”
Having hauled the bag in with me, I nodded, stepped over to the dining table, and dumped it on there. I really wanted to crash on the sofa I’d just passed, but I didn’t. I behaved .
“Sammy still awake?”
“He napped once we knew you were on the road home, but he set an alarm for ten minutes before you were due to arrive.” At my frown, he shrugged again. “Brother does what he wants. Anyway, he’s in the shower. Should be getting out soon.”
Sighing, I nodded then opened the zipper and grabbed the shit inside the bag. There’d been some stuff loose in the drawer, but most of it had been in velvet pockets for safe keeping.
As we opened up the loot, Reed whistled as Frazer, Eve, Stefan, and Eren walked in behind me to study our ill-gotten gains as well.
Upstairs, a door banged, and we looked at the ceiling like it could give us some answers.
“It’s Sammy. But don’t worry, Nestor’s watching over him,” Reed reassured the others. “In case he passes out.”
A pained sound escaped Eve. “I’ll sleep with him tonight,” she said with a low voice, her features flickering with tension as though Samuel’s habit of overworking physically hurt her too—why that messed with my insides, I didn’t know. “I want to make sure he gets some rest,” she ended, jaw clenching.
Frazer squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks, love.”
Her smile was gentle as she reached up and grabbed his hand. “He’s my Chosen.”
The simplicity of her words struck me as though she’d used a dagger against me and it had slid into the softest part of my belly. It hurt. In fact, no, it fucking caned. Enough so that I had to grit my teeth as I stared down at the jewels in front of me.
“There’s a couple of million here,” Stefan commented after a few minutes. He’d know, considering he’d been Oliver Twist back in the day. “Easy. Look at the size of that sapphire.” He whistled as he palmed the ring with its cabochon setting. “That’s half a million on its own.”
“Not to be sneezed at,” I said wryly. “I wish we could return them to the original owners instead of just giving it to a Holocaust charity.”
Samuel’s voice was husky when he said, “I’ll try to source what I can because that’s a nice idea, Dre.”
Did it piss me off that he sounded amazed I was capable of being nice? Sure it did, but I understood. Most people mistook my personality as attitude. I wasn’t about to correct those fuckers either. If they thought my attitude stank worse than four-day-old horse shit, screw them.
In my Pack, it wasn’t as cut and dry, and with Eve around, I was having to face facts .
I couldn’t stay as I was if I was ever to become an integral part of the unit. If I remained like I was now, I’d forever be on the outside and, truth was, I didn’t have to fear these guys tossing me out. They’d never abandon me. It wasn’t how we rolled. Not even Frazer, Reed, or Samuel would dream of dumping me, leaving me behind, even though we’d spent most of our schooling loathing one another.
The most I had to fear was never being accepted, and that? Well, that was more than I thought I could stand for a lifetime.
“We’ll need to hand some over to Ibramovicz,” Reed cautioned. “He needs to see the rest of our haul to trust us.”
I shrugged. “Shouldn’t be difficult. The joy of this scenario is that no one knows what Wassermann was storing in that bank vault, just that he was storing a lot of jewelry with dubious Jewish heritage.” Cocking a brow at him, I murmured, “If Sam’s links get us a ring that could match up to what Bartlett and Avalina described, then we should be okay.”
When making forgeries, it was definitely handy to have people around who’d seen the original.
With Sam’s father working in the jewelry industry, and with Sam’s obsessive-compulsive habit of watching his family like some kind of Peeping Tom without the heavy breathing and jerky right hand, he had access to all his father’s contacts. Getting a ring made of brass and iron was piss easy considering the metals were easily sourced and there were no precious gems to worry about.
If things worked out well, we’d be getting the ring and would be seeing the fence tomorrow.
Tomorrow could very well be Ibramovicz’s last day on this earth if he didn’t fall in line with our plans. I hoped, for his sake, he believed our forgery was authentic; otherwise his hump day would be even worse than usual.