The Hunt

9

River drifted out of an uncomfortable sleep. His clothes clung to his body. Slowly coming to his senses, he found himself in complete darkness. He remembered the previous night and carefully felt around – the bed beside him was empty.

“I’m not allowed out of this room, now, am I?” he asked into the blackness. “I’d like to take a shower or at least drink a bit of water.”

“You’ll get breakfast in time,” Andreji’s voice sounded out of a corner.

“What time is it?”

“Half past eight in the morning.”

River sank back onto the pillow, rolling his eyes. A whole day stuck in a pitch black room with a vampire – great! Then again, he was stuck anyway. There was no way back into his old life, and even when Andreji left with him in the evening, it would only be to take him to a different place in which River would be stuck.

He took off his clammy shirt. What did it matter if Andreji saw him? He was at his mercy anyway.

“When we are back in the caves, what will happen to me then? Will I become one of their - I mean of your - servants, or…?”

“I thought we had discussed that yesterday already. I do not see any reason to change my attitude towards you,” Andreji replied calmly.

“I’m still your fledgling?”

“Of course. After all, you are going to become a beast hunter, or – as I prefer to call it – a mediator, who will undoubtedly get into difficult situations and needs stamina to get out of them alive. I would have doubted your aptitude for the job if you had accepted the fate that was forced upon you without contradiction.”

River turned to the side. “So back to hitting the books…” He sighed.

Before Andreji could give one of his taunting replies, the clicking of a door lock caught their attention. A moment later, the door closed again. River heard the curtain being pushed back.

“Could somebody turn on the light?”

River quickly slipped his shirt back on, leaving the buttons open. A standard lamp was switched on by Andreji.

Emily whistled admiringly as she saw River. She winked and set a tray down on the bedside table. “I’m meeting a friend for breakfast in the city; can I leave the two of you alone for a while?” she asked.

“Of course,” Andreji answered. That surprised River.

He took to his breakfast while Emily left and could be heard in the corridor as she got ready to exit the flat. When the apartment door clicked shut, he turned to Andreji. “Aren’t you a little careless, now? What if she tells anyone that you’re here?”

Andreji smirked amusedly. “That would turn out to be interesting…”

“Aren’t you afraid of anything?”

Andreji leaned back. “What should that be?”

“Death. Pain?”

Andreji shrugged. “Pain and death are parts of life; why fear them?”

River did not know what to reply to that. It sounded totally strange, yet he felt Andreji had a point in what he was saying. He took his time breakfasting. After all, the day was still young and there was nothing else to do.

“You said something about delivering something yesterday,” he finally took up the conversation again, “what did you mean?”

“I need to earn money, somehow, to pay for the blood I need and whatever else accumulates, so I decided to take advantage of my skills as smith and made myself a name amongst lovers of old weaponry. Some of my clients are hunters who need new swords, daggers or similar items; some are just collectors or salesmen who need something restored. It is quite profitable.”

“So you forge the weapons with which your kinsmen get killed,” River concluded.

Andreji smirked. “If they are inattentive, that could happen, yes.”

“No remorse?”

Andreji’s only reply was a sharp gaze. In combination with the smile that still lingered on his face, it left River with the impression that the cynical man not only had no second thoughts about his actions but that he was gaining some sort of satisfaction out of the thought of what they might result in. River would have loved to dig deeper, to find out what drove Andreji, but he sensed he would receive no answer. River had not exactly proven his trustworthiness in the past days.

The day passed by slowly. River drifted off to a light sleep every now and again. Once, he awoke to find he had an arousal again. He saw nebulous pictures of himself in Andreji’s arms before his inner eye, but the more he tried to remember them, the farther the dream drifted away. He turned around and pretended to go on sleeping, glad that he was covered by a blanket. This really started to annoy him.

In the evening, he was finally allowed to take a shower. “Do not take too long; I have an appointment,” Andreji said.

Twenty minutes later, they left the apartment. They went to a station where Andreji retrieved a small package out of a locker. At the ticket office, he bought two tickets for a late train.

“That does not leave much time for your appointment,” River annotated.

“It is just around the corner and will not take long,” Andreji said curtly as he put the tickets into his mantle pocket.

They entered a small Chinese restaurant. “Order something you can eat on the train,” Andreji suggested and went to a table in a corner where his client already waited. The client scrutinised the good closely before he shook hands with Andreji, apparently very satisfied, and got up to leave. Andreji took care of the ‘forgotten’ envelope on the table and came back just when River was paying his meal.

In the train, they had a compartment to themselves. Somehow, River had given up on any thoughts of escape. He had wasted his chance and by the looks of it, he had gotten away without any harsh punishment. Right now, it was smarter not to provoke Andreji unnecessarily. By his terms, he had been very fair, even kind. When the train inspector entered, River did not even look up from the share of the news paper that Andreji had handed him.

When the inspector had left, he gazed out of the window instead, where dark shadows flashed by.

Andreji put his news paper away and leaned forward. He placed his left hand gently on River’s cheek and turned his face. River stared at him saucer-eyed. Since he knew who Andreji truly was, the man had been distant. He had only touched him to keep him from fleeing. The sudden change in his behaviour startled River, alarmed him.

“The life that lies before you is not as dark and empty as it seems to you, now, I promise,” Andreji said softly, holding River’s gaze.

River goggled at him.

After a moment, Andreji let go of him, leaned back, and took up the newspaper again as if nothing had happened.

For some indefinable reason, River’s heart hammered loudly.

A taxi took them to the village and from there they walked. In fact, it was a calming atmosphere – the waves were small and licked the beach gently, the cold moonlight was reflected by the water. It was an ambivalent situation. The sea was a symbol for freedom, and yet River was a captive and was walking towards an existence in darkness again. He needed to arrange himself with Andreji or else he would be completely alone.

Eventually, Andreji halted and looked up.

“Is it here?” River asked. From the beach the rocks looked all the same.

Andreji nodded.

“There is nothing up there…”

“Up there?”

River hesitated. “I…,” he bit on his tongue. “Well, to escape I needed something like a rope so I made something out of bed sheets. It’s not there anymore.”

Andreji smirked. “What did you think?” He stepped closer to the rock face. “Climb onto my back,” he ordered and knelt down.

River hesitantly brushed Andreji’s hair aside, placed his arms around Andreji’s neck, and wrapped his legs around Andreji’s hips. His Master pushed him further up. “Do you feel secure?”

Not really. “I think so.”

Swiftly, Andreji climbed upwards. River decided to shut his eyes. For his taste, Andreji moved too fast; he would have felt safer with a more moderate tempo. Soon he was dropped on the tunnel floor.

River glanced at the sea once more; then they went inside. As always, the tunnels were deserted. Halfway, they met Griet.

She eyed the two of them, probably assessing Andreji’s mood. “I have discovered the sheets and removed them without rousing any attention,” she whispered. “However, it has not gone unnoticed that River has not been in your chambers.”

“I see,” Andreji said, seemingly unmoved by the news, and went on.

They descended further and further. Having reached the level on which Andreji’s chambers lay, they heard someone call out to them. “Andreji.”

The white haired man turned around and bowed lowly, fixing the floor. “Master.”

“Follow me.”

“As you wish.” Andreji straightened up. “Go ahead into my rooms,” he ordered River and left.