The Lights of Prague Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Leave us a Review

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  LEAVE US A REVIEW

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  The Lights of Prague

  Print edition ISBN: 9781789093940

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781789093964

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  www.titanbooks.com

  First Titan edition: May 2021

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  © 2021 Nicole Jarvis. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  To my mom, my first reader.

  PRAGUE, 1868

  Dark water reflected the line of gas lamps along the path, the rippling lights echoing the stars stretching overhead. Fog twisted around the lamps behind Domek, the fire inside illuminating the mist like streams of smoke. The Old Town was quiet at this hour. Buildings were cramped and towering along the river, looking as though they might tip forward if not for their brothers holding them in place. Ahead, Charles Bridge arched over the Vltava toward the castle. After the recent storm, the river was swollen and heavy.

  Domek nudged the next lever with the end of his pole, and a stream of gas flowed into the lamp. Flipping the pole, he used a match and red phosphorus block to strike the wad of cotton aflame and lifted the fire to the open glass casing.

  He could tell the moment just before the flame touched gas, like a breath of anticipation.

  After a moment of stillness, the first mantle ignited into blue flame. And then, with a series of small pops, the other three burst to life. The sudden light was a welcome visitor in the dark evening. Lingering for a moment, Domek watched the flames dance inside the glass lantern. Then, he pulled away his pole, blew out the small fire, and moved on.

  Cobblestones gleamed underfoot from the rain earlier in the evening. Like a giant sated after a hearty meal, Prague after a storm was content and slow. Most of the citizens were tucked away in their homes and would stay there until dawn.

  For Domek, though, the night was only beginning.

  Domek stopped at the next lamppost and set the metal end of his pole to the gas valve, then froze when a scream pierced the night. High and shrill, it echoed across the river and cut off after a staccato burst.

  It was what he had been waiting for. Leaving his pole behind, Domek moved forward into the darkness, feet light and swift on the uneven cobblestones. The lamps ahead were unlit, and only the light from the crescent moon overhead fell onto his path. Spying nothing along the river, he slid onto Charles Bridge where sandstone and copper statues of venerated saints lined the rails, a row of guardians black-stained and decaying from centuries of pollution. As he walked, holding his bag at his side to hide its rattle, he kept a careful watch on the looming statues. Some featured only one figure, others depicted a twisting group. In the night, any could hide a monster.

  Finally, at the base of the statue of Saints Barbara, Margaret, and Elizabeth, he saw a still pair of figures intertwined in the shadows, a coarse mimicry of the statues above.

  They were difficult to parse in the night, their edges blending with the darkness, but the moon caught on a woman’s pale, slack face. A man stood behind her, one arm across her bosom to keep her pressed back against him, the other cradling her head to bare her neck.

  Moving silently until he was only steps away, Domek barked, “Hey!”

  The man jerked his head toward Domek.

  And it was no man.

  The creature’s bloody mouth gaped like a wound across its face. It blinked at Domek, and bared fangs that glinted in the faint moonlight. These were not simply elongated canines, as on an alley cat, but a mouthful of thin, razor-sharp needles erupting from a vast jaw. It hissed, and the high, eerie sound grated on the quiet bridge. Horrible mouth smirking with triumph, it leaned back toward the woman.

  Without hesitating, Domek pulled a hawthorn stake from his pocket and closed the distance between them before the pijavica could resume its meal. He grabbed the creature by its dark curly hair and jerked it away from the woman. Without its hold, she slumped to the ground, unconscious. Her neck was smeared with blood, a spreading shadow in the darkness.

  Yanking the pijavica toward him, Domek aimed his stake at its heart, but the monster used the momentum to slide inside of Domek’s reach. Its reflexes were unnaturally fast, and Domek had to drop to the ground to avoid having his head taken off by a snap of the creature’s jaws.

  His teacher would have told him to stab the pijavica immediately while it was distracted earlier, despite the risk to the victim.

  Now it was his life on the line.

  Even with his eclectic training, and even though he had at least two stone on the lithe creature, he was severely outmatched by a freshly fed pijavica. Without the element of surprise, his only advantage was that he understood what he faced. He knew the monster’s many strengths, and its few weaknesses.

  He dodged another swipe but caught a glancing fist to his ribs. It knocked him back against the stone railing. He tumbled to the ground, palms scraping against the stones. He panted, fighting for breath. The pijavica crouched over his chest, grinning with bloody teeth. “You shouldn’t have interrupted me,” the monster said, teasing its claws along Domek’s throat. The sibilant words carried the stench of hot blood from its gaping mouth. “Fortunately for you, I have places to be tonight, so I can’t drag this out.”

  Domek bucked but had no leverage against the creature. Taking a steadying breath, he twisted the stake in his hand inward along his forearm and bent his arm sharply. The carved hawthorn tip sliced through the fabric of his coat at his elbow, piercing his skin underneath.

  At the smell of fresh blood, cloying and metallic on the damp air, the pijavica jerked its head sideways, pupils ballooning. It knocked the hawthorn stake from Domek’s hand, sending it clattering on the cobblestones. Domek used his other hand to grab the monster and flip them both sideways so
that Domek could move again. The pijavica, still distracted by the scent of his bloodied arm, didn’t notice Domek pull out his second stake. It was slenderer than the hawthorn, made of a pale wood whittled from the trunk of a kalina bush.

  Domek lunged and used both hands to ram the thin stake into the demon’s chest, aim true from years of practice. The pijavica’s eyes widened, and it fell back against the ground. They stared at each other for one brief, tense moment.

  Then, the pijavica reached down to its chest and pulled out the stake, slick from the blood of its victim. Its smile was triumphant and horrible, gaping from ear to ear.

  Swearing, Domek scrambled away across the cobblestones. The monster leaped after him, tackling him to the ground. Domek twisted and rammed the fallen hawthorn stake into the pijavica’s neck, feeling the sickening crunch of its spine.

  There was a brief moment of suspense, like the catch of a lamp igniting, before the hawthorn did its job. One second, the monster was crouched over him, open mouth dripping venom and painted with blood. The next, it dissolved into dust, leaving its clothes to fall onto Domek’s chest.

  Domek resheathed the hawthorn, bundled the abandoned clothing in his blood-smeared arms, and stood. He wavered on his feet and blinked to focus. The clothes had been expensive—made of a better material than Domek’s uniform—but torn and covered in the pijavica’s dust they were now worthless. Worse, bloodied clothing without a body would raise questions that could lead ignorant authorities his way. He shoved the bundled clothes into his fallen satchel.

  Something heavy fell from the pijavica’s coat, and he fumbled to catch it before it hit the cobblestones. It felt like a small flask, just big enough for the palm of his hand, and was tightly wrapped in a dark cloth. Considering pijavice couldn’t stomach human food or drink, it was likely filled with something even more suspicious than the abandoned clothing, so, despite his distaste, Domek put it into his satchel as well.

  Domek retrieved the kalina stake from where it had been abandoned, glinting dark in the moonlight. Scowling, he chucked it over the bridge’s railing, sending it spiraling toward the Vltava below.

  He went over to the injured woman, who had regained her consciousness, if not her feet. He knelt and examined her wounded neck. The dark had made it seem worse than it was. Blood pricked from dozens of small points, but the fangs had not cut deep. Pijavice could bite their victims and barely leave a mark; the toxin in their teeth had a powerful anesthetic that impaired memory. If they could control themselves, a pijavica’s victim would wake up none the wiser with only a spread of needle pricks on their neck and a slight headache. However, most pijavice lacked such control, and their extended jaws could rip a throat in half in one bite. Tonight’s victim had been lucky.

  “Are you all right, madam?” he asked.

  “Someone attacked me,” she said. Her hand shook when she went to check her neck, but Domek intercepted it. Feeling the blood would just make her panic. He grabbed the pijavica’s shirt from his bag and wadded it into a makeshift bandage. “Hold this to your neck,” he instructed, setting it carefully against the wound.

  “Did you see where he went?” she asked. Her gaze was unfocused, her mind struggling against the numbing effects of the shock and the venom.

  “He was gone by the time I arrived,” Domek told her. “Are you missing any valuables?” He knew the answer before she patted down her pockets. The monster hadn’t been interested in petty cash or false jewels.

  “Is there somewhere I can take you?” he asked.

  “No, no,” the woman said. She allowed him to help pull her to her feet, but she stepped away without leaning on him.

  There was a movement in his peripheral vision, and Domek whirled, stake in hand. There was a pale woman in the shadow of the looming tower at the base of the bridge, watching him with eyes like the night sky, the only disruption of a flawless white image.

  She was floating a meter off the stone, her dress fluttering in an absent wind.

  “My husband can help me,” said the victim, diverting his attention away from the apparition.

  “I can at least get you safe off the street,” Domek said. He glanced back down the bridge, but the spirit was gone. Still clutching his stake, Domek focused on the other woman. “You shouldn’t walk alone. You lost a lot of blood, and you were unconscious when I found you.”

  “I’m awake now,” she replied, holding the bundle of cloth tightly to her neck. “I can handle these streets fine on my own. I’m not far from home.”

  “You’re injured,” Domek argued. “I won’t be able to sleep unless I’m sure you’ve made it to safety.”

  The woman laughed, and then winced. “Haven’t you heard? Nowhere is safe in this town.”

  There was something melancholic yet comforting about a silent library. So much knowledge sat unlearned. Books without readers were only paper.

  Ora Fischerová sat on a plush, velvet-lined chair in front of a table piled with texts. By candlelight that night, she had immersed herself in a fascinating botanical treatise from a professor in Bologna in the original Italian. No doubt inspired by Charles Darwin’s book published a few years earlier, the man had taken a similar approach to the evolution of flowers. It was impressive how dull the professor had made the subject sound. If anything should have contained some inherent romance or a touch of the sentimental, it should have been flowers.

  She sighed and laid the book on the table. Academics were so intent on proving that their thoughts contained only mathematics and Latin that they could squash even the most interesting subjects into tedious boxes. Despite their dull approach, she was constantly amazed by the speed with which their scientific breakthroughs changed the world before her eyes. Acquiring such knowledge was worth slogging through a professor’s written efforts to pat himself on the back.

  Sometimes she wished she could spend all her time in the library, but then she could have become as dreadfully boring as the men whose work she read.

  Ora was many things, but she refused to be dull.

  She blew out her candles and stood, her skirts swishing loudly in the dark room. She frowned toward the windows, hesitating. The sky outside was a dark purple, already beginning to lighten to gray along the horizon. She’d been reading longer than she had thought. She had arrived well after midnight, restless after an orchestra concert and unwilling to hide in her home the rest of the night. The librarian was a friend, and would reshelf the books before the library opened for the day. He was fastidious in maintaining his illogical bibliographic system. Ora had learned it was easier to let him take on the extra work than attempting to return the books herself. By day the Charles University library would be filled with students far clumsier with the books than she.

  She left the library through a service entrance, taking a staircase down, down below the city.

  The tunnels beneath Prague were as much a feature of the city as its heavy fogs, cobblestone streets, and dark spires. Well before Ora’s time, the Old Town had been nearly six meters lower than today’s street level. When the regular flooding became too much for the citizens to bear, they began a century-long project to raise the city. Houses and streets were buried beneath a layer of earth, and the new city was built on top. The underground had been used for centuries as cellars and dungeons for the buildings above. The long-abandoned passages that connected Prague’s basements were a secret city for those wishing to remain out of sight. The ground, a blend of forgotten streets and the interiors of abandoned homes, was made of rounded river pebbles, uneven beneath her slippers.

  The remains of the underground not absorbed into modern basements were poorly maintained and notorious for cave-ins. The pale rock had withstood centuries of pressure, but nothing could last forever. There were stories of those who had been lost underground, having gotten disoriented, fallen into one of the deep, empty wells scattered throughout, or trapped behind a cave-in. However, for someone like Ora, the dark labyrinth under the city was worth the risks.
Dawn would be cresting over the horizon now. Without the tunnels, Ora would have been trapped inside for half of her life.

  Underground, everything was almost silent. Almost, but not entirely. The meters of dirt all around muffled the daylight world, but created an echo of anything within the tunnels. Every scratch of a rat’s foot, every exhalation from hidden men, seemed louder and closer than they were in truth.

  Her townhouse was across the river, so she’d need to traverse the entire city via the tunnels. If she had realized tonight was going to include such a long trek underground, she would have dressed for the occasion. Her evening gown had been lovely for her night at the orchestra, but the bell skirt made traversing the tunnels more difficult. She wished she’d brought a change of outfit so she could spend her morning somewhere closer—and less boring—than home. Unfortunately, she couldn’t have her carriage wait for her overnight, despite the convenience. Her driver needed to sleep, even if she didn’t.

  There was a scuff on the ground ahead of her, and she froze. It was pitch black in the tunnels. The nearest exit, which was a set of stairs just ahead, led to the street directly, but a tightly sealed door prevented sunlight from seeping through. Even with her eyes, it was difficult to make out shapes in the darkness at a distance.

  The scuffing resolved into unmistakable footsteps.

  Ora wasn’t the only one who used the tunnels. One lesson she had learned over the years was that those who spent their time underground rarely did so for the pleasure of stale air and mud. They needed the darkness.

  She pressed against the side of the tunnel, wincing as she felt the slime at her back. The walls were coated in mold and damp this far below ground. Lina would have her head if she ruined another gown. She took a deep breath, and then cloaked herself in the darkness. Though she couldn’t hold it indefinitely, she would seem invisible to anyone who passed. Her nature clung to the shadows.

  The approaching footsteps were erratic. At moments, the other person in the tunnel broke into a sprint, and then subsided into a meandering, confused zigzag. They moved like a leaf in a storm wind, erratic and difficult to trace.