9

Thirty minutes earlier

The polished-to-perfection 18 grey Aston Martin had a special place in the Hospital parking. She was a beauty – long body, wide, chrome-plated front grill, black wheels, two doors, four seats, chocolate-brown leather bearing the traces of his adventures. Yeah, she’d witnessed a lot in her days.

But something was off with her. Earlier today, she’d been noisier than usual while rumbling up the mountain road. And that damn rattling… It was undetectable by human ears but oh, Zacharia had heard it. Now, shoved under the car’s hood, he was desperate to figure out her ailment.

“Hey, sexy,” a female voice said from behind.

Zacharia glanced over his shoulder. Tina, his friend with benefits, was approaching him with a quick step. He took a second to rake his eyes up and down her form. “Hey right back, sexy. ”

Tina had changed out of her guard uniform into brown pants and a provocative red top, with a short leather coat over her shoulders.

Cars weren’t the only beautiful obsession in Zacharia’s life.Which reminded him… He redirected his attention back under the hood, tinkering with the car some more. In a distracted tone, he asked, “You’re off?”

“Yep, my shift is over. Come by later?”

“All right.”

Tina clicked her tongue. “I’m getting jealous of this pile of metal. You’re so focused on it, you’re not even looking at me.”

“She needs me more right now. I think she’s sick.”

“You’re incorrigible. Whatever. I recommend you tear yourself away long enough to drop by the main gate. The boys have a problem.”

Zacharia scratched his temple. “What problem?”

“I don’t know. I’d just finished my shift when I heard a clamour from the gate. But I had already changed, so I figured they could deal with whatever it was without me. Didn’t sound too serious, but might be a good idea to check up on them. Seems like someone thought it was a good idea to put the Three Idiots on the night shift together again…”

“I’ll go see them.”

Tina slapped his ass. “Later, sexy.”

When he didn’t so much as reply or glance her way, she huffed and hopped into her car. Zacharia only registered she was gone when the familiar sound of her orange Peugeot 208’s engine filled the air.

Her tail lights were disappearing into the night when Zacharia’s phone rang. Speak of the devil – it was one of the Three Idiots. “Boss, there’s a box here. Appeared out of the blue… Umm… it just, like, showed up.”

Zacharia hung up, murmuring to the car that she would have to wait. He closed the hood, threw the cover over her, and headed for the main gate security post.

He strode through the courtyard, crushing heaps of yellow leaves beneath his feet. Late autumn cold crept over his body, causing chills along his skin. Street lights illuminated the paths between the green meadows, hillocks, and tall oak trees of the yard, but Zacharia kept to the murky shadows. A sudden powerful gust of wind smacked him across the face and knocked over more leaves from the trees above. He winced at the tiny drops of rain that dripped from the sky.

The security post was to the right of the main gate – a little brick structure, equipped with the necessary gadgets to provide twenty-four-hour surveillance of the entire Hospital and its surroundings. To the side, the Three Idiots stood in a circle, staring down at something Zacharia couldn’t see.

“What’s up, guys?”

The Three Idiots raised their heads in alarm and moved aside, allowing him to spot the wooden box at their feet.

“Boss, this thing popped up out of nowhere,” Idiot One said. An inexperienced vampire, he had screwed up more surveillance shifts than Zacharia could count, resulting in him being assigned to the areas with the least likelihood of anything happening – the side walls.

Idiot Two bobbed his head. “Yeah, I saw it on the screen.” He was a witcher with a crooked nose and a tendency to watch human porn on his phone instead of surveying the main gate, as he was supposed to. “At 21:1, all clear. Then, bam ! Three seconds later, this box appears – like that!” He snapped his fingers to illustrate his point.

Zacharia tried to get their measure with a glance, but there wasn’t much to measure. “Where were the guards on the outside of the gate?”

“I was with Tony.” Idiot Three pointed at Idiot Two. “We heard a noise coming from the forest and I suggested we go check it out…”

“So, neither of you was where you were supposed to be when the box appeared?”

Idiot Three shrugged. “Well, yeah. We were in the woods, but there wasn’t anything around.”

Amateurs.

Zacharia pointed to the thing with his eyes. The square box was less than three feet by three feet. Its wooden top had a metal ring. “What’s in it?”

“We don’t know, boss. We didn’t dare to open it,” Idiot Two confessed.

“And why not?”

“What if it’s a bomb?” Idiot One’s voice was becoming shrieky.

Zacharia bared his teeth. “If it’s a bomb, you blow up.”

“Well, yeah, but seeing as how we’re no longer immortal and stuff…”

Why was he even bothering to train such imbeciles? Maybe it was time to add some humans to his security team. Good thing there wasn’t much to protect the building from, otherwise, they’d be screwed with these cowards on duty.

“Why are you three on this shift, anyway? I specifically left orders to never assign you together.” He leaned closer over the box, inspecting the light-brown polished wooden surface.

“Well, Tony couldn’t do tomorrow, and I was already—”

Zacharia ignored them. As a half-lycanthrope and half-vampire, he had the monstrous power of the former, the high speed of the latter, and his own extraordinary intelligence. On top of that, his senses were more heightened than most immortals’. Which was why his nostrils had no trouble detecting the familiar smell of death. Whatever was in the box, it wasn’t alive.

A flash of lightning brightened the entire courtyard as if to foreshadow something dreadful.

He was suddenly keen to get the box as far away from the Three Idiots as he could, to better inspect it. “This is for the surgeons, boys. I remember now, Nyavolski told me he was expecting something.”

“Ah, all right. That explains it. They could have at least left a note…” Idiot One mumbled.

Zacharia shoved the box under his arm. “Get back to work. I’ll take it inside.”

“But, boss…” Idiot Two scratched his forehead. “How did it just materialise out of thin air?”

“Clearly, it didn’t.”

Idiot Two’s face suggested that the wheels in his head were turning. But then he must have remembered something about a new porn movie, because he gave up on the thought and forgot about the box.

Zacharia’s ice-blue eyes scanned the courtyard, making sure nobody else was around. Thunder pierced through the air. The wind compelled the leaves in the tree crowns to dance and swirl.

He headed further into the yard, under a giant oak that should have shielded him from the downpour. Nonetheless, his black pants and leather jacket were soon soaking wet. Water dripped down his face, plastering his hair to his forehead.

He enjoyed a good storm. The loud noise always offered protection from prying ears. After all, he had no idea what might jump out of the fucking box once he opened it, so he appreciated any sort of cover.

He clasped the metal ring, lifting the top. The disgusting smell of decomposing skin filled his nostrils, as if he was entering the Hospital’s autopsy room. At the bottom of the box, something black twisted in bundles that could be confused with wrinkled fabric. When Zacharia wrapped his fingers around it, his suspicion was confirmed – it was hair, matted with dry blood. He tugged on the strands, and the decapitated head was next to come up. Lightning struck at that moment and allowed him to examine it closer. Black lipstick still covered the frozen lips. He lifted it higher, observing the immaculate incision running through the neck.

Zacharia knew who the head belonged to, of course. Kaliope Gazis. A clever, powerful witch, with centuries of experience, a direct approach, and a genuine concern for the wellbeing of her fellow witches. A member of the Council of the Twenty. He had seen her yesterday in the Hospital, before the evening meeting.

Zacharia wasn’t a forensic doctor, but he had smelled enough death in his life to be pretty sure she’d died no more than twenty hours ago. Possibly right after she’d left the building, following the Council meeting.

Not all too unusual… The smell made him wince. Every ancient creature was bound to have accumulated enemies throughout the years, and the Changes provided a very good opportunity for revenge. Obviously, someone got fed up with Kaliope.

He inspected the box, gliding his hand over the insides of the walls.

On reflection, that clean cut would have carried her off before 1744. No creature had been known to regenerate a whole head, even when immortals had had their full potential.

Something wasn’t adding up.

Zacharia placed the box on the grass and grabbed the rain-soaked head to hide it back inside. As he held the lid, he turned it upside down.

Thousand fucking devils!

His blue eyes stared at the few jagged letters written with blood. The rain was pouring over them, spilling the blood and creating little red streams down the wooden surface. He read the inscription before it washed away:

YOU’RE DONE.

This was a warning, then.

No. Not a warning. If someone wanted to make a statement, they could have just slaughtered one of the Three Idiots at the main gate. At the thought of their stupid faces, he recalled their claim that the box had materialised out of thin air. If that was the case, then they were dealing with a perpetrator who was into theatrics. Mysterious manifestation, chopped off head, bloody letters…

Korovin was going to love this.

Zacharia closed the box tight and called Mikhail, but the manticore declined his call.

I guess you’ll be sleeping in my room for now.

Zacharia took the box under one arm and headed towards the building. Wherever the rest of her body was now, the witch was surely twisting and turning with affliction at the thought of her head spending the night in a room with a hybrid.

His nostrils caught the smell wafting out of the box. Well, the joke was on him, he supposed.