Firstborn

  At first, I’m baffled. Teacups sit between them. A few cookies on a plate. A benign afternoon reunion between a young man and his mother. The set of her shoulders is narrower than I expected, clad in a nylon jacket against the threat of rain.

  And then I see his jaw, squared with tension. His eyes, the stormy blue I found mesmerizing the first time I saw them up close, are now flat and gray as flint. He glances up as I move toward the table, and those eyes widen in alarm.

  I slide directly into the seat between them.

  “Hi,” I say, turning toward his mother without smiling. “I’m Audra.”

  Only then does it occur to me that I maybe should’ve made sure she wasn’t holding a gun. But when I flick a glance down at her hands, they’re folded in front of her.

  My first glimpse of her is bizarre. With her shoulder-length hair the same shade as Luka’s—except for some gray—conservative slacks, and quiet eyes, which are a shade darker than his own, she looks like . . . a mom.

  Like a normal person who doesn’t order executions, but shops for groceries every weekend and has a library card and maybe rides horses. Because, yeah, she has that athletic look about her, I guess. Her nails are short, and she isn’t wearing much jewelry except for a simple silver band on her right ring finger, which I think is weird because she left her husband several years ago—unless her office is like some holy vocation and she’s married to the Scion god of money and power like a militant nun.

  When she turns her head toward me and takes me in, her gaze is cool.

  “Audra.” She says it as though we’ve met before at a social function. As though we were here to discuss wedding flowers. “You look well.”

  I gaze at her for a short moment and then slap her, hard across the face. Her head snaps to the side. And then she reaches up slowly, smooths her hair from her eyes and where it has stuck in her sheer lipstick.

  “I ought to kill you,” I say.

  Her gaze drifts from me back to her son. It doesn’t soften on him. But it does seem sad.

  “Come on,” Luka says, getting up. “Let’s go.”

  “And what—just leave her here?”

  “She’s done.”

  “What do you mean ‘done’?”

  “She’s over. I’m exposing her.”

  “So what—we just walk away?”

  “Do you want to kill her?” he says, pausing and gesturing back at his mother. His jaw twitches, and for a minute I think he might kill her himself.

  “Yeah, actually,” I say. “I do. Though I hate the thought of having to explain that to Eva. You know.” I glance at her. “Our daughter.”

  She closes her eyes, refuses to look at us.

  “Did he tell you about her?” I say. My hands are shaking.

  “I have no granddaughter. Because I have no son.”

  “You don’t deserve him,” I whisper.

  “He lost his calling,” she says, looking at him with a faint shake of her head.

  I lean over, get right in front of her face. Her eyes are like shards of glass. “This isn’t a calling, Eva. This is serial murder. How do you justify that? Because as far as numbers go, I think you have Bathory beat.”

  “How do I justify that?” she snaps. “How good are you at math, Audra? Do you know how many descendants six hundred slaughtered girls would have produced over four hundred years?” She regards me placidly, and I shrug. “Millions. Millions of lives lost.”

  “How good are you at history, Historian? Because it doesn’t work that way,” I say. “Otherwise let me tell you—you’re part German, right? Well, you’re in deep over Auschwitz alone.”

  “Don’t bother, Audra. You can’t reason with a fanatic,” Luka says.

  She chuckles at his statement and shakes her head. Looks down at her napkin and folds it.

  “Too bad,” I say. “I understand you really wanted my memory. Now that I have it back, I thought you might have some questions for me.”

  She looks at me. “How’s your mother?”

  I’m up on my feet in an instant, knocking over my chair, and Luka is pulling me away.

  “Audra, she’s agreed to step down. No Historian can stay in office once she’s known to a Progeny. She’s done.”

  “So what? She gets to retire to her cushy house and ride horses for the rest of her life?” I shout.

  Eva stands. She’s tall.

  “Actually, I was thinking we take her in,” Luka says.

  She begins to laugh, the sound like bubbling water. Like mania.

  “They can’t arrest me,” Eva says, as though he were a child. “And if they did, they couldn’t keep me.”

  “You’re right. The police answer to the Scions, which is why I’m taking you to a mental ward.” Luka smiles blandly. “A nice Eastern European backcountry psychiatric hospital. I don’t recall a lot of Scions going into mental health.”

  Her head snaps toward him.

  “Think you could persuade a nice orderly to get her into a straitjacket?” he asks me.

  “I think so,” I say, nodding.

  “You have what you want. Just go,” she hisses.

  “We don’t have anything close to what we want,” Luka says. He takes her roughly by the shoulders. Marches her toward the entrance.

  I follow as she moves stiffly in his arms. But when he opens the door, she shoves him away with surprising strength. I lunge for her, but she bolts out of the hotel and runs down the street.

  We take off after her as an SUV coming the other way squeals to a halt to avoid hitting her.

  She turns in the street, something in her hand.

  “Audra!” Luka shouts.

  Screams from the sidewalk. I drop to the ground.

  But the gun she raises isn’t pointed at him. Or even at me.

  She holds it to her head and shouts: “I will have justice!”

  Before it can fire, her chest explodes in a spray of crimson.

  Luka staggers back, horror etched across his face, and pulls me behind a parked car.

  48

  * * *

  My breath is heavy against the back bumper of the car as I try to reconcile the figure of the Historian—Luka’s mother—unmoving on the pavement. The SUV that came to a halt behind her. The shooter, emerging from the driver’s side.

  I glance at Luka, eyes wide.

  He creeps forward around the corner of the car, but I tug him back.

  I glance around us, spy a car coming from a side street.

  You.

  Shots fire. A car swerves.

  I lean out in time to see the gunman fire again, in the direction of oncoming traffic.

  Meanwhile, a second man gets out of the SUV and walks over to pause before Eva.

  Serge.

  He tilts his head. Seems to regard her for a solemn moment.

  There’s something in his hand. A document.

  Serge squats down, reaches for her wrist, and lifts it. Her fingers dangle limply as he dabs them in the gore of her own chest and then carefully presses one of them against the page in his hand.

  “What is it?” I whisper to Luka.

  “Document of succession,” he says tightly.

  But that can’t be. Because the document naming Eva’s successor is with . . .

  . . . the lackey Serge just killed in Nové Mesto.

  No, no no.

  Serge never meant to abolish the Scions—only the Historian . . . in order to seize her scepter.

  He straightens, the page dangling from his fingers, and looks dispassionately back at the body on the ground before raising his head to survey the square.

  “Luka!” he calls. “Luka!”

  He’s calling Luka out as a loose end. Ready to end him now, before Luka can hunt him down for the murder of his mother.

  I grab Luka, hold him tight, determined that he’ll have to run out there dragging the full brunt of my deadweight if he gets stupid. His muscles tense and bunch against me, ready to spring, but he squeezes his eyes shut, s
tays still.

  Serge takes a last look around, barks a short laugh.

  “He’s letting his Progeny wife save him,” he says loudly enough to carry as he walks back to the SUV. “She won’t be able to protect you forever.” A minute later the vehicle’s doors slam shut.

  My legs are screaming at me, muscles petrified where we kneel by the time the SUV backs up and starts to speed away.

  And then Luka’s running for the form on the ground and dropping to his knees.

  “Don’t look,” I say, pulling him away.

  “I’m not. That’s not my mother. Not anymore,” he says, hoarse. He pries the gun from her fingers.

  And then we’re racing for the car.

  49

  * * *

  I’ve been in this position before. Skidding onto the highway, Luka at the wheel. Getting shot at.

  Except this time it isn’t Rolan shooting at us, and I’m actually buckled in.

  Luka returns fire, sends the SUV skidding. A second later, our windshield shatters as a bullet punches the backseat. A semitruck pulls onto the highway ahead of us. You. Within seconds, it’s accelerating straight toward the SUV.

  Serge’s gunman—Scion, I know that for sure—fires out the window. The semi skids off to the shoulder, into the ditch, and jackknifes. The cab unhitches and rolls.

  I shove up in the seat and look back just in time to see the driver open the door.

  “I can’t keep sending trucks at them,” I gasp, my vision blurring.

  “No,” Luka says grimly. “I know.” He falls back five more car lengths, then ten.

  “They’re going to the airport at Trencin.”

  “We can’t follow—”

  “We have to!”

  “They’ll just keep shooting, and I am not going to lose you. So what if he makes himself Historian? There won’t be anything left. Call Jester. Tell her to hit the button, release the information, now. All of it.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not? He’s not going to find Eva for us anyway!”

  “He’s going to kill Eva, Luka, if we don’t give him Jester!”

  “What?”

  “He knows, Luka. He’s the one who told the Historian where to find Brother Daniel. Because he tracked me all the way to Košljun. He knows!”

  Luka veers back into the left lane, accelerates.

  “Grab the wheel.”

  I do, and he leans out the window, firing at the SUV.

  The gunman shoots back and our front tire blows, sends us swerving. I grab Luka by the belt as he slams against the car door.We’re decelerating, a nasty whump whump with every rotation of the tires by the time we steer the Zafira off the Trencin exit on fumes and rims.

  The car limps along the airport drive, and I point to the tarmac. The first plane is gone, but the one I arrived in is slowly taxiing to the runway.

  Luka floors the gas, and we roll past the hangar—straight for the tarmac as the plane begins to turn.

  “We’re too late,” he says, pounding the wheel with a sharp sounding of the horn.

  I shove open my door and get out. And then I’m running down the runway. At the other end, the plane is rolling forward, picking up speed as it accelerates right toward me.

  “Audra!”

  I hear Luka yelling, chasing after me. Shouting, screaming my name.

  It comes in a rush—the torrent of air propelled toward me. Hard enough to glide beneath metal wings, to make the implausible happen. To do, beyond reason, what the mind cannot grasp . . . to make ordinary the impossible. To fly.

  The plane lifts, soars over my head, wheels folding up. The fierce wake sleeks back my hair as the plane climbs, overhead.

  I remember what it is to die. To be afraid. To hate. To want to kill. To compel out of need, or want, or fear. I know what it is to let the extraordinary destroy you. When a gift becomes a weapon and a legacy of hate.

  But I also remember what it is to live. To love and surrender. To wonder and believe.

  I watch the plane ascending toward the clouds.

  Luka runs up to me and grabs me, holds me tight against himself.

  “What were you thinking? What were you doing? Audra!”

  But I am throwing the heftiest persuasion yet.

  Effortlessly. Without pain. And with far more strength than I’ve ever summoned out of self, panic, or any face of fear.

  It’s soft as a sigh. But it feels like a roar.

  Luka turns to follow my gaze. And I hear him gasp as the plane banks, too sharply, to the right, careening toward the hills.

  The impact shakes the ground beneath our feet.

  But my eyes are on the sky.

  50

  * * *

  Rolan is restless as he paces in the outer room. He’s been different since that night at court three weeks ago, though it’s been good for him to locate others of his kind. I’ve recommended him to the Center in Illinois, told him there’s no sin in forgetting. And after all, he knows how to get there.

  But he’s intent on New Mexico, and studying under one of his idols—some monk famous for his books on second-stage-of-life faith. Not that idols are really allowed when you’re a Franciscan.

  “You know, you’re making me nervous,” Piotrek murmurs from where he sits on my sofa. Rolan exhales and sits down after that, but he’s staring out the window. He leaves tomorrow, and I know he’s anxious to go.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I say, as we wait for the screen to connect. “But I swear you’ll love the Southwest. I’ll even come visit you and we can hit some New Mexican restaurants. Assuming, of course, that’s allowed.”

  He’s nervous, I know, about reentering the order. Worried about being accepted. As a murderer. A Scion. A sinner.

  “That first confession is going to be hell,” he said to me last night.

  Aren’t they all?

  “How do you join an order of action and contemplation?” Piotrek says. “Isn’t that kind of a contradiction?”

  “I am a monk of many talents,” he murmurs. And I know he’s going to be okay.

  The chat app blooms, and there is Jester, waving, dreads piled on her head.

  “How’s life in the Fortress of Solitude?” I say.

  “Oh, you know.” She shrugs. “The usual. Updates from all over the world.”

  Luka comes to sit beside me, and she breaks out in laughter.

  “Is that a beard?” she says, peering at the screen.

  “You don’t like this?” he says, rubbing his chin between his fingers and thumb. “I’m trying to be wise. Like Rolan. Since I’m soon to be oldest person here and Audra’s giving me so much grief about turning twenty-four.”

  “Well,” Jester says, “I’ll have you know that my birthday is next week.”

  “What? Twenty-nine again?” I tease.

  “Twenty-nine, on the dot.”

  I blink and then stare. “You’re joking.”

  “No, actually,” she says. “And I think I’m getting younger. Wait—there’s someone coming to join us.”

  Claudia appears on the screen, a little square in the corner. I squeal and wish I could hug her.

  “I miss you!” she says and then pans the camera. She’s standing on a steep incline. “Can you tell where I am?” She beams.

  Piotrek comes to peer over my shoulder, and she kisses the screen.

  “I’m on the Great Wall!” She laughs. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s more than I imagined. Bigger than I thought. And steeper, too.”

  She’s wearing my jacket.

  Luka blows her kisses, and Piotrek says he’ll see her next week. She signs off with a laugh, saying her phone service is costing her a fortune.

  “So we’ve got Senator Borghi and the IMF under investigation,” Jester says. The last of the leaks—for now, at least—broke a week ago, and for as much as we thought we’d follow the news, Jester’s is the only update we follow.

  “There were three hunter murders last week. On
e Progeny killed,” she says.

  I look down and then at Luka, who nods.

  “In other news, a few Progeny are claiming the Zagreb underground has reopened. What say you, Prince?”

  I sigh. “I say I’m out of outfits since Claudia left. Seriously, I don’t know where she stowed her stash.”

  I don’t ask about the thing that is on both our minds. But after Piotrek goes to make coffee, Jester leans in toward her camera.

  “I’m still trying,” she says, her face softening.

  “I know,” I whisper, as Luka’s hand covers mine.

  51

  * * *

  The coffeemaker is leaking all over the counter. I glance around for Luka in time to hear him start the shower, and then sop it up with the dish towel. Just like I did yesterday.

  He’s promised me every day of the six months since we got this flat that we’d buy a coffeemaker to go with our new place. And every morning I plug the old one in and start it up, optimistic as the day before—only to end up staining a dish towel and, lately, getting out Piotrek’s electric kettle.

  I think of him every time I use it. The way he smiled and acquiesced to every demand of Claudia’s and tried to understand our bad jokes.

  It’s been three weeks since his body was found in London just blocks from the safe house he established there.

  Claudia returned from London last week. Four days ago, we convinced her to come stay with us.

  It’s too late by the time I realize she’s up; she comes into the kitchen, takes a look at the kettle, and bursts into tears.

  I hold her and rock back and forth against the counter before Luka and I leave for our jobs at the Children’s House of Hungary.

  Two days later, Jester surprises Luka and me with a link to a pair of tickets.

  Italy, somewhere on the Amalfi coast.

  I call her up immediately, not even knowing where I’m connecting to except that her skin is shiny and I haven’t seen her in anything other than tanks and camisole tops for weeks.

  “What’s this?” I say, holding up my phone.