I scanned our surroundings, searching for a silent observer. If someone was following us—someone who had found a way to write their prophecies straight into my laptop—I had to find them, fast. I sharpened every sense, trying to detect the intruder hidden among the diners, though I kept being thrown off by Ildar's scent. The presence of another familiar vampire made it nearly impossible to identify an outsider. Still, I tried.
"You could've lost a leg like that," Mark groaned, rubbing the toe of his boot, which had caught on the edge of the manhole during his fall.
"If only that were the worst of it," I murmured, still scanning the shadows of the forest for movement, praying the stranger would reveal themselves. I didn't believe in coincidences—especially not ones that appeared first as text on my computer and then began to happen in real life.
"Come on," I said finally, tugging at his arm. "Let's find the others."
When we returned to the little restaurant, Yesenia and Ildar were nowhere to be seen among the diners—neither on the veranda nor inside the hall. Mark asked the gray-haired man at the serving counter about them, and from my description he immediately understood who we meant. People our age must be rare here.
"They ordered a few dishes to go and left," he said, gesturing toward the door just as a group of tourists were politely saying their goodbyes and filing out. "It'll be ready in five minutes — come back then. We'll pack it up quick and I'll throw in a couple of pieces of our signature dessert, on the house." He winked at Mark conspiratorially and gave me a broad, good-natured once-over, then sighed with a fond, melancholy shake of the head. "Ah, the bliss of youth and its carelessness." With that he returned to his work. Mark and I exchanged a look and fell silent in the way of people who have the same thought but don't voice it.
Out on the front steps we soon found the pair across the road. Yesenia stood hugging herself, looking contrite, while Ildar paced and gestured wildly as he tried to make his point.
The more I saw of him, the less I liked him. He had the face of a vampire — pale, pronounced veins — but none of the restraint, none of the mannered reserve I expected. Who had raised him? It seemed unlikely he was kin to any clan elder; his story about foster parents and a handful of siblings felt thin and contrived. What clan would gather an unruly brood of vampiric children and raise them while they bumbled about learning the rules and limits of our kind? The handful of laws every vampire knew sufficed: don't kill in view of humans; don't stage mass slaughters unless you've arranged to clean up afterward; don't entangle yourself in real relationships with other species if you plan to sire offspring — and a thousand little edicts against showing off your power where mortals might notice.
I pulled my phone out of my dress pocket and texted Karina. I didn't go into details — I asked her to look up our neighbours: where they were from, whether Ildar belonged to any clan, and to comb the area for any other strangers like them. It was time to bring resources to bear. Two coincidences were already too many.
Mark waved, trying to catch their attention, but they were lost in their private argument and didn't even glance our way.
"Hey, you two," he called. "What's with the takeaway? Weren't we go—"
The roar of brakes cut him off. A tourist coach came hurtling straight toward Mark, who stood frozen. He watched, frozen, as the heavy vehicle began to skid. Even with the driver's reaction, Mark remained directly in its path.
I knew I had to act — and fast. How many witnesses were there? Twenty? Thirty? To move with force in front of them all would mean breaking the rules, exposing myself. I would have to use violence in full view; I would have to pay the price for that choice with lives. Twenty people for the life of the one I loved — it was, in the cold calculus of my heart, not too high a cost. The question was whether Mark could ever forgive me for it.
Deep down I knew he would hate me if I did it. Still — better his hate and distant worship for the rest of his days than the thought of him dying while I stood and watched.
I summoned all the power I had left from my last feeding and set my foot for the leap. I pushed off the ground and was already gaining speed when the coach's wheels seemed to lift from the tarmac, as if some other force had taken hold.
"Mark, duck!" Yesenia cried from nowhere, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him down. Like a marionette, he collapsed toward the ground; the bus thundered over his head. It landed further down the road with a sickening crash. Passengers screamed; the driver had jammed the brakes so hard the wheels locked. Black smoke billowed up, and the sharp scent of burning rubber hit the air.
I stared, genuinely bewildered, at the scene unfolding before me and could find no explanation for it.
Mark had stepped off the curb — and into the path of the bus.
Three grim predictions out of three, and each one had come terrifyingly close. Someone was definitely trying to kill Mark — but how? How could anyone arrange things with such precision? The coach driver, full of elderly passengers, surely hadn't meant this; he would never deliberately do such a thing — he'd be exhausted from calling ambulances for half the village afterward.
The thought of hospitals made my knees go weak. Adrenaline shook through me; my mouth felt dry. I had poured too much power into that failed impulse and was now paying the price. Every vampire needs blood to live, in small measures. The catch is that if you want to call on abilities far greater than mere survival among mortals, you must pay with far more blood. Nothing in this world is free; life had just put a bill on my table that I could not pay, even on credit.
I dropped to my knees and pressed my palms into the rough asphalt. Thirst blurred my vision; I could not focus on the monochrome tableau before me and held myself up by sheer force of will. How could I explain what had happened without arousing suspicion? The rented cottage was too far away. I had no confidence I could persuade everyone to drive me straight there, lock myself in the bathroom, fish out the hidden pack of blood and replenish myself. Far likelier was that Mark would ignore my protests and insist I be taken to a hospital — and that idiot probably hadn't even recognized me for what I was; he would sweetly do as asked. I had gotten myself into a mess at the worst possible moment.
A shadow flickered near me. Someone knelt down and pressed something to my lips. With the next breath my throat was scorched by an infernal flame.
Blood. Someone was trying to give me blood.
"Come on, hurry up, before anyone sees," Ildar said; for a moment I was surprised — so maybe he wasn't such a blind fool after all.
Without another second's hesitation I bared my fangs and bit deeper, trying to drink as much at once as I could. Ildar yelped from the pain.
"Hey — easy! Don't go so hard. I don't have much left after that push."
I took a few deep swallows and forced myself to stop. It wasn't difficult: drinking a second-rate, already-tapped pool of another vampire's blood is no pleasure. It sustains you far less and tastes worse than the frozen donor packs or synthetic substitutes — the modern boon of our kind. Nothing is sweeter or more life-giving than the warm blood from a body in full heat, but in my state I had to accept less.
"When did you realize?" I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, trying to remove any trace.
"When we got into the car," Ildar said, looking into my eyes. "Your scent gave you away."
I snorted.
"Yours gave you away the moment you walked up to the reading room. And your girlfriend — is she—?"
"Now's not the time for that," Ildar said, rising and beckoning me to follow. He threw on a mask of astonishment and began to shout something indistinct, flailing his arms toward the bus.
Mark bent forward, hands on his knees, while Yesenia softly stroked his back with genuine concern. Surprisingly, her gesture did not awaken jealousy in me; rather, I felt gratitude she was already by his side, when I myself lay helpless on the ground, drained of strength.
Did Yesenia know what Ildar really was? The question tormented and angered me. The likelihood that she had, by intuition, reacted at the precise moment Ildar managed to lift the bus even briefly into the air — that it had happened as mere instinct — seemed almost zero, if not impossible.
Ildar moved toward the bus as its passengers began to disembark. The driver looked dazed, baffled by what had happened. Snatches of his words reached my ears.
"I thought I'd run him down, and then the vehicle… I don't understand… it just — there was nothing for it to hit, the road was perfectly even," he mumbled in genuine bewilderment, while Ildar expertly soothed the man, offering explanations like a dishonest witness who rewrites the facts to suit himself.
"Mark, darling, are you all right?" I caught Yesenia's eye and stepped in at her side. The moment I touched him I realized he was trembling all over.
He didn't answer. Breath after breath he drew in through his nose and blew out loudly through his mouth, as if trying to slow his heart and digest what had just occurred. Under the pads of my fingers I could feel the blood racing through his body, and I withdrew my hand when my throat clenched with thirst. I was far too weak now to endure that sensation.
Yesenia joined Ildar in calming the elderly passengers, who were still reeling from the shock. The restaurant owner came out carrying a stack of blankets and began handing them out; waiters followed with thermoses and paper cups. Gratefully, Yesenia wrapped the passengers and made sure each of them had a warm cup of amber liquid. Ildar sat the driver down on the bus's boarding step and started making calls on his phone. That was exactly what I would have done myself — call Karina and start covering tracks, make everything look right. So Ildar had someone for that too.
I watched them, silently letting Mark absorb what had happened, planning to speak only when he was ready to return to the world of the living. For the first time I found myself thinking that humanity might not be as hopeless as I had believed: people rallied, offering help without asking anything in return. No one leapt to assign blame; while some recovered from shock, others looked for practical solutions and helped. For a moment every stranger stopped being a faceless "breakfast" to me — until a passing breeze brought with it the scent of blood.