AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes.”
He studied the ticket. “Ardis, have you heard anyone talk about taking the 71?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
“It’s a euphemism for death. The 71 line has a terminus in the Zentralfriedhof. The grandest cemetery in Vienna.”
My blood chilled. “Was the ticket a threat or a promise?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his beard. “Wendel may intend to lure out the Grandmaster.”
“But why would he give me this ticket?”
His face tightened with a curious mix of hope and despair. “I would interpret this as a warning. He’s telling you to stay away from him and his fight with the Order.”
“I won’t stay away. I refuse to abandon him.”
“I understand your loyalty to him. But the Grandmaster and his assassins might kill you. Consider that carefully before you do anything regrettable.”
“You know what I would regret more than anything? Leaving Wendel to die, knowing I could have saved him. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
He nodded with quiet resignation. “I know.”
All the air left my lungs. “Thank you, Konstantin.”
“For what?”
“For being my friend.”
“No need to thank me.” He smiled. “And what I said earlier still stands.”
“What was that?”
“Stay alive.”
My laugh sounded reckless, even to my own ears. “I wouldn’t dream of dying.”
45
Vienna floated in mist, the highest of its towers and spires lost to the walkers below. Snow sifted from the sky. It was a day closer to Christmas. I sat near the back of the 71 tram, swaying as it clattered along the tracks. I hadn’t slept since my nightmare in the apartment, but a cold clarity sharpened my senses.
The 71 whined to a halt at its terminus.
I leapt out on stiff legs and looked around. Just shy of six hundred acres of land sprawled before me, populated with the dead. More dead than any other cemetery in all of Europe. This was the Zentralfriedhof.
“I hope you’re here,” I muttered to myself. “I hope you’re waiting for me.”
And I hoped the Grandmaster wouldn’t find him first.
Starkly black trees veined the sky. Gravestones reached from the snow and tried to touch the heavens. The sun arced in its short-lived flight above the earth. I knew the sunlight would die at four o’clock. I had only a short day to find Wendel before the darkness overtook us. My sigh fogged the frigid air.
A crow flew overhead with a rowdy caw. A second crow, and a third, rushed above me on the rustling of wings. Crows foreshadowed necromancers, didn’t they? I chased the birds deeper into the cemetery.
Snowfall erased angels and monuments, white on white, but couldn’t diminish an ancient gnarled oak. Crows perched in its branches, blinking at me with their black glittering eyes. I circled the tree and tried not to hope.
A man in black left the shadow of a mausoleum and walked down a row of graves.
Wendel.
