Midnight in Berlin (13 page)

I could have told him that wouldn’t end well.

I didn’t realize I’d started to change until Jon’s eyes went wide and he backed off a step. “Dude, your face—what’s up with your face?”

Think human… I wrestled my features into something approaching submission. “It’s a… Shit, Jon. Something happened to me.” Fucking Christoph happened to me. And I don’t mean that in the good way. “I just—sometimes I freak out a bit, now. Literally. Christoph too. Silke’s the same, only…kind of not.” My voice was getting thicker.

“What the hell is this? She’s like you, but she’s not like you? You mean, she’s got this…face thing too?” Jon was backing away hysterically. It didn’t make getting my shape under control any easier, that was for damn sure, and I could feel the hairs springing out all over my body. “What are you, anyhow?”

I tried to speak, but my mouth had gotten too damn distorted to form words and it came out as a growl. I thought Jon was going to piss himself. He stank of fear, which only fuelled the transformation. My claws slid out like they were itching to slash something.

“We are werewolves,” Christoph said curtly from behind me. “Leon, change back!”

I wasn’t any too happy about him snapping orders at me like that, but it seemed to do the trick. My teeth shrank, and my face morphed back to human.

Jon had his back against the wall, his mouth hanging wide open like his jaw had come unhinged. He was trembling. “It’s some sort of drugs, right? You gave me some bad shit, and that’s why I’m seeing things.”

“No,” I said hoarsely. “It’s real. We’re monsters.”

Jon slid around the room with his back to the wall until he reached the heap he’d left his clothes in last night. He kept his eyes on us all the time as he grabbed them with shaking hands and fumbled his way into them. “There’s no such thing as monsters,” he said like he was trying to convince himself.

Christoph cursed softly—and freaked out. Literally, I mean, not as in had a panic attack. It occurred to me that all through all the shit that had happened lately, the most agitated I’d ever seen him was the night we met. The night he made me a monster. I wondered if that was significant as he slowly let his inner wolf out to play, showing the kind of control I’d be willing to bite my own arm off to acquire.

Well, somebody’s arm, anyhow.

As Christoph morphed from freaky-looking human to full-on freak and then back again, the sound of breathing from across the room turned harsh and ragged. The stench of fear intensified. “I can’t… I can’t deal with this, man. I’m out of here.” Jon turned and fled from the room. When I looked out the window thirty seconds later, he was running down the street.

Shit. There went our chance of getting enough money to make it out of Berlin. I slumped down heavily on the bed Jon had just vacated.

Might as well finally get some sleep before they kicked us out of here.

Chapter Twelve

When I woke up, I felt fuzzy and disorientated. Daylight was coming in through the narrow window, but I didn’t have a clue what time of day it was. My mouth tasted foul, and the clothes I’d fallen asleep in were wrinkled, sweaty and uncomfortable.

And I hadn’t even had a single drink last night. Let alone gotten laid.

I was on my own in the room, I realized. My heart jumped. I tensed and scrambled out of Jon’s bed. Where the hell was Christoph? Shit, had he gone off to try to make good on that crazy threat to kill Schreiber? Did the guy have a death wish or something? We hadn’t talked about it—I mean, hell, I’d thought it was just one of those things guys say, like he was planning to do it someday. With someday meaning maybe around the time hell froze over or the head of the Westboro Baptists came out as queer.

If Christoph had left me all on my own with this goddamn curse and gone off to get himself killed—

The door opened, and my favorite freakazoid walked in. “Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.

“You were worried?” Christoph sounded amused. Fuck him. “I think I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah,” I snarled back at him. “I take one look at what used to be your face and I think, there goes a guy who can take care of himself.”

Christoph didn’t look like he was amused anymore. On the minus side, though, I felt like a total asshole. “I needed to think,” he muttered. “You were asleep, in any case.”

“Think about what?” I sat back down heavily on the bed, which creaked underneath me. I could still smell Jon on the sheets. Damn, I was hungry.

“Money.” Christoph flopped onto the other bed, the one that would’ve been Silke’s if we hadn’t left her with the wolves. Or maybe not—I wasn’t sure how far this
trust
thing she’d had going with Jon had gotten. “You were right. I should have considered your situation and waited to take Silke to the zoo.”

“Yeah. You should have,” I said, but it came out weak, like my voice figured my heart wasn’t really in it. “So what are you going to do about it?” I asked, managing to inject a little more aggression into my tone. I didn’t want him thinking I was letting him off the hook because of a half-assed apology like that.

He nodded. “There is a way. My credit card, my bank cards—they’re all back at the house. Except for one.”

“And where’s that?” I prompted after I’d gotten tired of waiting for him to finish.

“My desk drawer at work.”

“What? Why the hell didn’t you mention this before? You could have just walked in and picked it up the minute we got out of that place! Shit, all this time I’ve been worrying where our next meal’s coming from—all this time we’ve been hanging around Berlin waiting for Schreiber and the gang to come and wipe us out—” I stopped, breathing hard. I’d gotten up from the bed and was staring down at him, my fists clenched.

The bastard smiled. “You’re still human.”

“What the fuck?” I looked at my hands and I realized they were just that—hands. I hadn’t freaked out. It took the wind right out of my sails. I sat down heavily, glaring at him. “So why didn’t you mention this before? The credit card, I mean.”

Christoph looked away. It meant I got to see his bad side full-on. His scars looked almost healed now, without a trace of infection, thank God. “I…” He paused, then looked straight back at me. “I preferred not to let my colleagues see me like this,” he said, like he was daring me to call him a coward.

I felt hollow. Hunger again, I figured. “Christoph…” I swallowed. “You said you were planning on going back to your job, right? They’re going to have to see you like that sometime.” I pushed aside all the thoughts that came along with that, like how the hell he was going to go back to his job with Schreiber still gunning for him.

“You’re right.” That made it twice inside of five minutes. I started to wonder if Christoph was feeling okay. I stepped back from the bed as he pushed up into a sitting position, then swung his feet to the floor. “We will go now.”

Whoa. “Right now? What time is it, anyhow?”

“It’s almost four.”

Jeez. I’d slept most of the day. Again. No wonder I felt like crap. “Has Jon been back?” I asked, but I figured I already knew the answer.

Christoph confirmed it with a shake of his head that sent his long hair swinging to cover his scars for an instant.

They weren’t the only things around here that were better off hidden. “Shit. You think we’re safe here? I mean, do you think he’ll tell anyone about us?”

A shrug. “He’s your friend.”

“Yeah, but I’ve never broken the news to him I’m a freakin’ werewolf before.” He’d been fine about me being gay, but this was a way bigger deal. “I guess we shouldn’t stay here,” I admitted reluctantly. It wasn’t like I’d been planning on hanging around anyhow, but it would’ve been nice to feel safe for another night.

Christoph nodded. “You should bring your things.”

I guessed that was my cue to grab my backpack, so I shoved my feet back into my sneakers, crossed the landing to our room and swung it onto my shoulder. “How far is this place?” I asked as we headed back out into the hallway.

“Perhaps an hour’s walk from here,” Christoph said as if it was nothing.

I made a snap decision and slung my stuff back where I’d found it. “I’ll fetch it later.” It’d be okay. The guys here seemed honest enough.

Christoph gave me a look, but he kept
stumm
.

As we beat our way down street after street, my head started to clear. I started to regret leaving my backpack, and wondered why I hadn’t suggested we take the subway. Yeah, it’d have cleaned us out, but we were on our way to get more funds, so why worry?

Hell, maybe Christoph wasn’t so big on confined spaces these days. The thought made me smile, in a grisly kind of way.

“Something funny?” Christoph snapped. The guy needed to chill.

“What, since I met you? Not so much.” Okay, so maybe I needed to chill too.

We walked on in silence for a while.

Our route took us through the Brandenburg gate. Back in the Cold War days, it was a symbol of a divided country, standing just to the East of the Wall and patrolled by guys with guns. A gate to nowhere. These days, you can walk right on through, although as we did so more than one tourist paused in the act of clicking a picture and waited, embarrassed, for the scenery to improve. Stupid fuckers.

“My mother always wanted to do this,” Christoph said, out of the blue. “But she never got the chance.”

I glanced over at him, but his face was as unreadable as ever. “She, uh, passed away?” I asked, feeling awkward.

Christoph just nodded.

“I guess you were pretty young, huh? I mean, if she died before the Wall came down.”

“I was nine. She lived to see the Wall come down, but she was too ill for the trip. My father kept promising her we would go when she was well again, but…” He shrugged stiffly.

I felt bad for this woman I’d never know, desperate to see her country united again. “How about your father? Is he still around?”

“He lives in Düsseldorf now.” Christoph caught me off guard with his next question. “You have family?”

“Uh, just my mom and dad. Well, you know, the usual aunts and cousins and all that crap, but we’re not that close.” Understatement of the year.

“Family is important,” Christoph said vaguely.

Yeah, right. Because without family, who’d there be to tell you what a loser you were?

“So you’re an only child too?” he persisted.

Damn. “Yeah. Kinda. Yeah.”

“It’s not a difficult question.”

“I had a brother, okay? He died. Can we not talk about this?”

Christoph’s hand rested briefly on my shoulder. It felt warm and solid through the cotton of my shirt. Comforting. “I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “It was a long time ago. Are we close to this place yet?”

The hand went away again, making me wish I hadn’t been so abrupt with the change of subject. “A couple of streets.”

I guess Christoph finally figured out I didn’t want to talk about Ben, as he quit with the interrogation. He was a damn liar, though. It was a good twenty minutes and one of my sneakers was giving me a blister by the time we rounded a corner and Christoph stopped dead. He pointed to a building halfway down the street. “It’s here.”

He didn’t make a move. “Did we come here just to look at the place?” I griped. Then I turned to look at him, somehow aware there was something off about him. I drew in a breath, about to speak—and that’s when I realized what it was.

It was fear. I could smell it on him.

I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I tried to imagine what it must be like for Christoph, to have to go in there and show these guys he worked with what had happened to him. Hell, maybe there was someone in there he had the hots for—maybe even someone he was involved with.

How the hell was he going to feel if they took one look at his face and recoiled in horror?

And if I was really, brutally honest with myself, how was I going to feel if they didn’t?

“Listen, why don’t we come back here after hours? When it’s dark?” I suggested, before I could talk myself out of it. “Hell, we got into the zoo—how hard can it be to break into this place?”

For a moment, Christoph seemed to be wavering. “It’s not worth the risk,” he said in the end. “Getting arrested would be a bad idea. And it’s possible Schreiber may have the place under surveillance.”

Shit. I looked around hurriedly. Sniffed the air. Nada.

I guess Christoph figured out what I was doing. “He would not dare to act by daylight. We should be safe, as long as there are people around.”

Maybe. Just how far gone did a psycho have to be anyway before he stopped caring about all that shit? “So, we’re going in now?” I asked, my throat dry.

Christoph nodded. “You don’t have to come.”

I searched his face, trying to figure out what would be the best thing to do. Would it just make it worse to have me around, or could he use the moral support? I’d never have put Christoph down as a moral-support kind of guy, but I guess I was finding out I didn’t know him any too well. “I’ll come,” I said. “Just in case.”

He didn’t ask, “In case of what?” He just stood up a little straighter and set off down the street. I took a deep breath and followed.

Chapter Thirteen

The receptionist was the first hurdle. Her over-made-up face froze on the “o” of “
Guten Morgen
,” and she stared at Christoph for a long moment, scarlet lips wide.

“Frau Müller,” Christoph said, formal as all hell. It seemed to snap her out of it.

“Herr Schäfer! I didn’t expect you in today.” Her eyes were locked on to his scars like a missile sight. I guess in normal circumstances, she’d have been wondering why he’d come to the office dressed like a bum, but with his face looking like a car crash, the clothes probably didn’t even register.

“I won’t be staying,” Christoph told her curtly as he strode past her desk to push open a door. Figuring the last thing I wanted was to hang around and field her questions, I followed him, catching the door just before it swung shut.

The office was modern and quietly bustling. Most of the drones had their heads down, so our entrance didn’t cause a stir. I guess I’d been subconsciously expecting something a little more old-fashioned, with antique furniture and clerks scratching out Gothic script with fountain pens, but it was all clean, utilitarian lines and what looked, to my untrained eye, like the latest in office hardware. The only note of whimsy was the collection of oil paintings on the walls. They looked like they’d all been painted by the same hand and showed forest scenes—dark and gloomy yet somehow majestic. An old-fashioned style of painting. I liked it better than the over-bright colors and too-clear lines a lot of artists seem to go for nowadays. “This way,” Christoph said, shepherding me through the open-plan bit before I could finish looking at everything.