Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(64)

Given the stench of vampire, I thought the werewolves’ focus on me was weird, but I couldn’t ask them about it. I rounded a corner, and there it was, just across the street.

There was a huge park. Any open land I had seen in Prague was covered in lush green, whether tended park or wild riverbank. It wasn’t as overwhelming as the greenery in Seattle or Portland, where they fight a losing battle against the blackberry bushes that threaten to take over any spot with more than an inch of exposed soil. But it was very green.

This one reminded me of Howard Amon Park at home. Huge old trees shaded graceful paths and lots and lots of grass—most of the parks I’d seen here had more flower gardens. The whole park was carefully tended until it wasn’t. As if there were an invisible fence, a sharp line marked where lawn mowers stopped, and beyond that line was a jungle of overgrown grass and brush.

In the center of the overgrown area was one of the ubiquitous off-white apartment buildings I’d been walking past. This building wouldn’t look at home in Paris, any more than it looked at home in the neat and tidy (with graffiti) streets of Prague: it was in terrible shape.

I stopped, standing on the tidy side of the demarcation line. I’d spent the better part of the hour with the coyote in charge of the human because the trail had not been an easy one. I was puzzled by the situation with the grass and a little uneasy, and that started to bring my human side out. I didn’t think that I was as dual-natured as the werewolves, but when I operated on instinct for a while—it sometimes took me a moment to think like a person again.

In the center of the wilder area, the ruined building was, as far as I could tell, something that should have been used for a horror film about vampires in Prague. And no one had checked here to see if, maybe, possibly, there were vampires tucked in here? And not just any vampires—these were filthy, degenerate vampires.

Marsilia’s seethe was clean enough that I’d feel comfortable eating off the floor. Even the freezer (serving as a jail cell) at Bonarata’s had been pristine. This place smelled like those photographs of people who were found to have two hundred dogs and forty-five cats living in their house in itty-bitty cages that no one ever cleaned. And Libor’s pack had no idea it was here?

I didn’t know if Prague had been bombed during World War II, but the building in the heart of the wild looked as though it had been bombed—and then simply left where it stood, including the broken bits of the apartment buildings whose walls it had once shared. Unbelievable that it had just been left here among the meticulously maintained streets of the Jewish Quarter. Maybe it was a war memorial, or something like, a memorial filled with vampires. Somehow, it didn’t seem likely.

I was just getting ready to change to human so I could ask Jitka and Martin what was wrong with the collective noses of their pack when something moved inside the building. It was just a glimpse, but it was enough to tip the balance back. The coyote had been hunting or hunted by vampires all night, and she stuffed my human reasoning aside because she could see our prey.

I crossed the invisible border from tended lawn to wilderness, instinctively trying to blend in, though the coyote’s coat, a mix of beiges and grays that served me well in the dry scrublands of the TriCities, wasn’t as useful in the lush green of Prague.

I crouched low and wiggled my way into the underbrush, leaving the trail of the female vampire entirely. I had the sense that we weren’t very far from the parking garage where we’d started, though her trail had led all over Josefov.

Hidden in the greenery, I stared at the building, but the figure that had caught the coyote’s attention was gone. About that time, I realized that I was alone in the middle of vampire territory. Impossible that I’d lost two werewolves while I was doing nothing more taxing than following a trail at walking speed or a little less. Impossible that they hadn’t known about the seethe. Impossible, unless . . .

A cold chill slid across my spine as I realized what had happened and how much trouble I was in right now. Stupid, imprudent coyote had gotten me into the vampire seethe without backup.

I tried to be silent as I withdrew from the bushes I’d buried myself in. It took longer to get out than it had to get in, but as soon as I was out of the undergrowth, I spotted my werewolves. I’d traveled farther than I thought I had.

Martin and Jitka were pacing uneasily back and forth along the line that demarcated the change in territory from city park to vampire seethe, maybe half a football field away. I’d seen that sort of behavior, or something very like it, before, though the sheer power necessary was something I’d only seen from the fae lords, and the magic here reeked of vampire. And witchcraft. In fact, now that I was paying attention with my other senses instead of only my nose, there was a huge amount of witchcraft all around me.

I knew what this was.

Mary or one of her minions was a witch. I really hate it when the bad guys double up on powers. To my sure and certain knowledge, it was forbidden to turn anything other than a mundane human into a vampire. That witch had set up a barrier around the seethe that kept it safe from prying eyes, noses, and anything else. Martin and Jitka had not smelled the vampire seethe—or they hadn’t known that they were smelling a vampire seethe.

That sounded more like it.

A spell that affected anyone in the area, that kept them from realizing they were sensing the vampires, was much less magic intensive than an actual barrier of the type the Gray Lords of the fae had placed around the Walla Walla reservation. Anyone who ventured into the area wouldn’t sense vampires, wouldn’t pay attention to anything the witch who set the spell didn’t want them to notice. Passersby probably saw the battered apartment building—they just didn’t notice it.