13

‘T he Minister of Transport and Communications, Georgi Vrabchev, was found dead at a rental apartment in a luxurious building in the Lozenets neighbourhood. He had been missing for five days. His wife had filed a missing person report on the evening of October 7 th .

The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack. The body was discovered by the landlord, who received a call from neighbours asking him to investigate the putrid smell coming out of his apartment. Vrabchev rented the residence a few months ago under an alias and, according to unconfirmed sources, was using it to meet up with call girls.

There is no evidence that he had company in the apartment, but neighbours claim they saw an unknown dark-haired female entering the building around 5 p.m. on October 5 th . Police have concluded their investigation and confirmed no foul play.

Minister Vrabchev was mentioned in a scandal involving the disappearance of over fourteen million euros in European funds…’

Zacharia shut his laptop. The only lead to Kaliope’s murder had just hit a dead end. At least this explained why the bastard was so hard to track.

He dumped his empty beer bottle next to the other three and grabbed a new one. His hybrid metabolism was fast – way too fast – meaning that to get drunk, he needed to consume high amounts of alcohol. Even when he got slightly tipsy, it didn’t last. Sometimes, he envied humans for their ability to get intoxicated.

At least he didn’t envy their diet. As a lycanthrope-vampire hybrid, his was as far from diversified as possible – a sack of blood twice a week and a little game the rest of the time to quench his basic needs.

Zacharia drank from the bottle and slumped down in the chair in front of his desk. Twenty years ago, he was living in a cottage at the foot of the mountain. When he’d been offered a security position at the Hospital, he had moved into the building. Not that he had any complaints. What more could a creature like him want in life? A roof over his head, food in his belly, a little physical pleasure now and again, and a mystery to occupy his mind.

A sudden urge to solve this devil’s riddle forced him to reach for his laptop one more time and play the video that had already loaded on the screen. The date coincided with when the box had materialised. The surveillance cameras had recorded everything around the main gate, including the road winding up to it and parts of the thick forest surrounding it. A second later, the scene was the same, except the wooden box had appeared. Even after he cleaned the images, they didn’t show anything of relevance.

He stared at the black curtains obscuring his windows. The box had indeed ‘appeared out of nowhere’ as Idiot One had claimed. No, dumbass. Someone left it. But was there a creature that could move so fast that it was invisible to the naked eye? Vampires and nymphs were quick, but not that quick.

Teleportation?

Zacharia hadn’t encountered a living being capable of it. Unless…

He played the video again, focusing on the image. The main gate was in the frame. Zacharia watched closely. He replayed it over and over.

And, he caught it.

Thousand fucking devils!

When one door closes… A portal opens?

Another beer was in order. He downed it, copied the footage on a flash drive, and headed straight for Mikhail’s office on the twelfth floor.

The manticore cast him a distracted glance. “Something bothering you, my friend?”

The hybrid arched an eyebrow. “Aside from the fact that the politician I’ve been searching for in every nook and cranny is dead?”

That drew Mikhail’s penetrating gaze. “What?”

“That’s not all. I figured out how the box materialised at the gate.” Zacharia took the flash drive out of his jeans pocket. “A portal. The box was delivered through a portal, opened for a brief second, but long enough for the box to pass through and appear on our doorstep.”

“A witch’s portal?” Mikhail frowned. “Impossible. I’ve heard that casting such spells causes all sorts of anomalies. The cameras haven’t detected anything like that.”

Zacharia plugged the flash drive into the laptop sitting on Mikhail’s desk. “It seems so. At first glance… Because we’re looking in the wrong place. The box shows up at 21:19, but if we go back to a minute earlier…” He paused the video. “What do you see?”

Mikhail observed the image of the main gate. “You’re not talking about the owl on the fence, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” Zacharia pressed play, and the bird flew away as if startled.

“I still don’t see anything…”

“That’s because your attention is on the bird. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s going on here. I will replay it, but I want you to watch closely.” Zacharia rewound the footage until he hit the frame where the bird was still perched on the fence. “Ignore the bird. Focus on the gate, in the lower right corner. Right at the edge of the wall.”

Mikhail did. The gate, the bird… “What was that?” He shot up his finger to point at something on the screen that had caught his attention, but it had already disappeared.

Zacharia crossed his arms over his chest, a satisfied grin on his face. “That, my friend, was the opening of a portal.”

Mikhail played the video again. The wrought-iron gate hung between the two ends of the stone wall, with thick hinges on both sides. At the exact moment the bird flew away from the fence, at the other end of the gate, right between the lower hinge and the stone wall, the image flickered. The straight lines curved for a fraction of a second, as if an amateur had Photoshopped the image. In the next moment, everything was normal again, forcing the brain to believe that what it had seen was just a figment of the imagination.

“It happens so fast, it’s hard to notice. Even if you do notice it, you might well think it’s an insignificant defect of the video itself,” Zacharia said.

“Let’s say someone did open a portal…” Mikhail ran a hand over his jaw and glanced between the footage and Zacharia. “How could he go through, leave the box and return, without being detected by the camera?”

“That’s the thing. He never went through it himself.”

The manticore’s gaze narrowed on Zacharia. “What do you mean?”

“He threw the box through it.” The hybrid mimicked the movement.

Mikhail pursed his lips. “If someone had just thrown it, wouldn’t we at least have seen it flying and landing on the ground?”

“In regular circumstances, yes. But there’s a catch. Going through a portal means that an object or body breaks down to its basic components – a million small atoms – and is then carried instantaneously from point A to point B. The process is not much different from what a creature experiences during transformation. When the object or body passes through to the other side, in order for it to become whole, all the pieces need to reassemble. It’s a speedy process, but it’s not that fast. Someone quick enough reaches through the portal, leaves the box and pulls himself out before we can spot him. We see the box, but not him, because he’s just not there anymore.”

“How is it possible to leave a box when there isn’t a box? If it and the person carrying it had fallen apart into atoms?”

“Structure is determined by the consciousness of living things. If the carrier had chosen to rid himself of the box at the other end of the portal, his mind would have issued an order to his atoms to detach from those of the box.”

Mikhail frowned. “How do you know so much about portals?”

The hybrid grinned. “The traditional witch clans, especially those dealing in high-end black magic, are closed communities. They’re usually very secretive about their work. But I’ve heard things… For instance, only a witch can open a portal, but those who do it rarely beat their drums about it. It’s not exactly considered the purest of tasks. They say those who fool around with portals pay a heavy price for the ability.”

“How high?” the manticore asked.

Zacharia shrugged. “No clue. But I’ve also heard that nowadays no witch in her right mind would pay such a price just to open a portal.”

“And yet, someone agreed. There are a lot of witches at the Hospital – maybe one of them knows something.”

“Toying around with the space-time continuum is a dark deed. Nobody talks about it openly, even among their own kin. As far as I know, our witches here are what you might consider modern .” The hybrid grinned at the word. “I doubt they keep in touch with the traditionalists.”

“I’ve heard about a division among the species.” Mikhail grabbed his phone. “Let’s talk to the expert.” He dialled up Constantine and put him on speaker. As soon as the necromancer picked up, he explained, “Zacharia has a theory to explain how Kaliope’s head arrived at the Hospital. The sucker behind it used a portal.”

“Portal? As in, teleportation?” The gravelly voice asked over the line.

“Right. Zacharia spotted something on the security footage. Someone quickly dropped the box through the portal and scrammed, before reappearing on the other side or whatever it’s called—”

“I am well aware of how a portal works. But I doubt that’s what happened.”

“Why?” Zacharia joined in.

“I imagine you know that only a witch – and a powerful one, at that – can open a portal. Creatures from all species pay them for this ‘job’. But have you ever asked yourselves why the witches who open portals are so few, despite the heaps of riches this might bring them? And why they themselves don’t use portals?”

“I haven’t concerned myself with witches, nor their portals.”

Mikhail’s sour comment urged Constantine to explain. “That’s all well and good, my friend, but in this case, the devil is in the details. Most of the witches don’t want to pay a double price for opening and using a portal.”

“A double price?”

“Yes. The witch pays a price for the portal, and the person who passes through the portal also pays a price.”

“To the witch?” Zacharia added.

Constantine chuckled. “Well, yes, of course, to the witch. She can ask anything of a client – their youth, eyes, firstborn child, whatever the hell she can think of.”

“I’ve heard of such deals,” Mikhail noted.

“But that’s not all. The customer pays the witch but also needs to settle his bill with the Higher Powers. Something like a thank you for being granted the ability to move through space and time.”

“And what’s the price for that privilege?” the manticore asked.

“Something that nobody takes seriously. A part of the soul.”

“Just a part?” Zacharia chimed in. “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“You have no idea, brother. Because… For what shall it profit a creature, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

Mikhail knitted his brows. “What?”

Constantine sighed. “Why do I bother to wax poetic? My point is, passing through a portal is an expensive endeavour. Despite that, I’ve heard a lot of stories about creatures who were ready to pay the price.” He was quiet for a moment. “However, this is the first I’m hearing of someone opening a portal into the present. A portal opens to the past, to return to someone whose death you can’t overcome. Or to the future, if you have troubles in your present and need to find a solution. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’ve never heard of anyone who’s done it, just so they can hop over to London or New York the quick way.”

Mikhail frowned at the phone. “And yet, this portal was clearly opened in the present.”

“This is very strange, brother… but if you are right, surely there aren’t many creatures that have just gone through a portal or witches that are currently willing to open one. Witches in regular clans don’t usually discuss these things openly—” A loud honk interrupted Constantine’s speech, followed by a string of colourful curse words. “Sorry, guys, this fucker cut me off on the highway.”

“Going somewhere?” Mikhail asked.

“The seaside.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

Constantine laughed. “I have three mermaids waiting for me.”

Zacharia perked up. “I thought they weren’t real?”

“They are real as hell in the human nightclubs. Send over the footage; I want to see that portal. Meanwhile, I’ll ask around.” With that, the necromancer hung up.

Zacharia wasted no time and loaded the news column about the dead politician on the computer screen. “Which brings us to this – Kaliope’s mystery admirer, lover, whatever he was. Police are saying the case is closed. We’ll hardly be able to get more details without attracting attention. He’s not just a regular dude, but a politician.”

Mikhail gave the article a quick read, then leaned back in his chair. “Convenient death, too…”

“You know what I think? He had the bad luck of being with Kaliope when someone decided to off her. They killed her in front of him and he got so scared, he had a heart attack. They cleaned up after themselves, took the witch’s body, and sent her head to us.”

“Possible,” Mikhail agreed. “But what was she doing with him in the first place?”

Zacharia smirked. “Eh, don’t make me talk to you about the birds and the bees… Besides, it seems highly unlikely that this mortal had anything to do with the portal stuff.” Mikhail said nothing. “What? You think the minister has something to do with this whole thing? He decapitated her, cleaned up after himself, and as a reward called over a hooker, who gave him a heart attack from all the fucking? If that’s true, then karma really is a bitch, my friend.”

Later that evening, Zacharia was relaxing on a couch in Tina’s apartment in the city.

“Have you ever been with a human?” he asked as she passed him a bottle of beer.

“Of course.” She settled next to him on the couch. “Why do you ask?”

Zacharia drank half his bottle in one big gulp. “I’m just surprised that immortal women can fall for mortal men.”

“Who knows…” she mused. “There’s something hot about knowing you have the physical advantage over a man when he thinks he can control you.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “You don’t like being controlled?”

“I like diversification. A change in the roles, on occasion.”

Tina grabbed the bottle from his hand and placed it on the table by the couch. After that, the riddle surrounding Kaliope and her mortal lover’s deaths vanished from Zacharia’s mind as he focused on solving carnal enigmas instead.