Shades of Red

by T L Christianson

  But I hadn’t died.

  Someone had saved me.

  Aurev had picked me up and carried me to the shore.

  Cold, so cold.

  Pain, so much pain. Then Aurev’s lips at my neck. His touch on my skin.

  My dark angel.

  “HAZEL!” The Russian’s voice jerked me out of my reverie.

  My head jerked toward the shoreline, where that beautiful human had begun to wade in.

  What was I doing?

  I am a moroi.

  I could hold my breath for hours if I needed to.

  Kicking my feet and paddling, I struggled.

  For some reason, I pictured Aurev’s loving expression as he stared into my eyes.

  His dark chocolate eyes.

  Determination swelled and my strokes, although feeble at first, became stronger, and smoother.

  The drybag pushed up around my shoulder, sat now out of my way.

  Looking back, the Russian had walked back to the shore, arms crossed as he watched my progress.

  I could see the old moldering concrete covered structure where Amy should be, and I turned on my back to begin taking long reaching strokes.

  Alexei had become a speck on the far side, lost in the trees. My moroi eyesight picked him out among the green. His tanned arms were still crossed over his chest as he scanned the water for me.

  A sense of freedom and accomplishment filled me with pride as I crawled up onto the bank, mud caking my hands, knees and squishing between my toes.

  I couldn’t wait to talk to Aurev and tell him what I’d done. How I’d swam and not only had I swam, but I swam the width of the Amazon!

  The dock was further upstream. I kept close to the trees as I neared the grand old structure. What had this once been? The jungle had begun to overtake the stone and concrete building, pulling it back into itself like a mother claiming her child.

  The dock stood alone, its wood planks leading out over crumbling concrete pillars. The structure was surrounded by the dark green water on one side and a steep muddy slope on the other.

  A medium sized boat bobbed in the breeze under the overcast sky.

  Creeping low to the ground, I slogged through the muddy bank and up onto the pier. With silent footsteps, I made my way to the covered section near the end.

  Unclasping the drybag, I unrolled the top and opened it, pulling out the pre-written note and knife. Slicing my hand with the blade, blood welled in the cut. With the tip of my finger, I dipped my fingernail into the wound and marked the note with a large red X.

  There was no faking blood, fresh blood. She’d instantly know that I had been here.

  Watching the skin of my palm knit together and close just as quickly as I’d sliced it open I sucked in a deep breath.

  Holding the note to the pillar of the dock, I stabbed the blade through the paper into the wood. The point buried itself in the beam, and I reread my message.

  Amy,

  Sarah needs you. Please come to the Iquitos Airport tomorrow at noon. I’ll smuggle you back into the US on our Chronos jet.

  Please come.

  -Hazel

  Poor Amy, she’d been changed too young and her brain was an uneven mix of moroi intellect and human immaturity.

  As I stood there, dwelling on the girl, the sounds of the forest changed. Someone was nearby. Only one route remained—the river. Running to the end of the dock, I dove into the water. Bobbing up, I turned on my side to spy behind me at the building.

  Gazing back over my shoulder, I gasped.

  No one was there, but the blue drybag lay on the dock in the wind. It tumbled a bit before rolling off and onto the muddy shore where it lay.

  I couldn’t go back for it. The risk was too high.

  Turning onto my stomach, my body took over, and I began smoothly stroking through the water toward the far side. The current began pushing me downstream, and I let it, searching for Alexei on the other side.

  In my estimation, the river had to be around two miles wide.

  Moroi didn’t get tired, and adrenaline made me faster than I would’ve been. Before I knew it, I was being pulled from the water by the Russian.

  “You scared me there for a moment. I thought I might have to come in and get you.”

  I laughed. “I scared myself and accidently left your drybag.” I shook my head and cleared my throat. “I heard something and just bolted.”

  “Did you get the note pinned up?”

  I nodded. “I need to get dressed. We need to get out of here.”

  Our pace back to the lodge was a bit slower, because of Alexei. However, I didn’t know a human could run that fast for as long as we did. I judged the distance around forty miles round-trip.

  As we neared the camp, I whispered, “Someone’s been here.”

  Slowing to a walk, and then to a stop, he slouched over. With his hands on his knees, he looked up at me red-faced.

  “What do you see?”

  Two unknown scent trails wove their way off a path to the west. They intersected our route and led to our destination. “Two moroi. A man and a woman. It could be your friends.”

  Alexei jogged down the trail a bit closer before making a bird whistle using two fingers to his mouth.

  When a similar call answered back, I followed him into the courtyard. The smell of cooking food came from the kitchen.

  A blond woman, wearing black combat pants and a camo tank top sat on the steps to the screened in porch, scraping mud off her boots. She had wide-set blue eyes that shrewdly assessed me as we neared.

  “So, you took my spare boots.” Her mouth twisted after she spoke, her English words heavily accented.

  “Alexei let me borrow them. Thank you.”

  She ignored me but spat out a long string of Russian at the bounty hunter.

  I speak five languages, but I couldn’t understand one word she said.

  Okay, I take that back. I knew the “F” word, and “Alexei.”

  Making my way through the dining room, toward the glorious smell coming from the kitchen, I peeked inside. A tall man with a military haircut stood at the stove—that must be Roman.

  “Hi there, I’m Hazel Richards.” Holding my hand out, he shook it, before continuing to fry up some chicken and onion in the pan.

  “Roman Orlov. Where have you both been?”

  I outlined my plan, watching him scratch his week-old beard with his thumb and grunt.

  A cigarette dangled from his lips as he spoke, “You think it’ll work?”

  Frowning, I nodded, “I believe it should. Tell me what happened here at the lodge.”

  “Vasiliev—Alexei left to get you. Maria and I returned after seeking out some donors, Viktor had been shot and Rodrigo, the lodge-keeper, had been taken.” I began to speak, but he held a hand up, “Maria and I grabbed our weapons and followed the attackers. We waited to see if they were involved with the Butcher, but it became apparent that they were hunting her also. By the time we freed Rodrigo, he was very weak.

  “Maria gave him some blood and implanted some fake memories about a party and heavy drinking.” Roman motioned to the other rear cabin. “He’s sleeping now.”

  Relief washed over me. “What about the other bounty hunters?”

  “Gone, we don’t have to worry about them anymore.” Breaking eye contact, he turned the gas off on the stove and stubbed out his cigarette. “I know Viktor died. We smelled his death and his grave as soon as we returned.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I told him automatically.

  He ignored me and busied himself with the meal preparation, losing himself in his task.

  I began to set the table as Evy had for breakfast.

  The night was a somber affair, with two large bottles of vodka and whole conversations that were spoken entirely in Russian.

  I began to pass when offered my sixth shot. As a moroi, I had a high tolerance, but I needed to be clear headed. So I left the Russians there to drink and smoke themselves into
oblivion. Entering my small cabin, I stripped down and pulled on clean underwear and a satin camisole. The air was warm but pleasant.

  Sitting on my bed, I pulled the mosquito net around the edges of the mattress.

  Sarah hated the heat; she would’ve loathed this place. My betrayal of her friendship with Amy loomed heavily in my mind.

  This would hurt her when she found out.

  People claim that lawyers lie for a living, but that wasn’t true for me. This note I’d sent Amy though, this lie that could finally put her into GC hands, was difficult to swallow.

  Moroi didn’t put people into prison, we either executed them or entombed them underground for fifty-year periods.

  Amy would be killed. She had to be. Too many laws had been broken, and she couldn’t be ignored any longer.

  I sighed, nearly jumping when Alexei coughed outside the cabin on the porch.

  “I didn’t know you were coming back.”

  A bitter laugh escaped his lips, “I shared a room with Viktor next to Maria and Roman’s room on the other side of the cabin. I…I can’t go back in there.”

  “It’s okay, you can stay here again,” I told him.

  “You seem distracted. What are you thinking?”

  Eyeing the small pieces of leaves that stuck to the top of the netting over my bed, I sighed, “Sarah and Amy are friends. I suspect that they’re still somewhat in contact, I just haven’t caught them. And when Sarah finds out that I used her to get Amy, it will... She’ll hate me—for good reason.”

  A quick glance told me Alexei lounged on his bed in only his boxers.

  I continued, “Also, apparently, according to Aurev, my boss…”

  The Russian barked out a laugh, “Yeah, I know who the New York Clan leader is…so does probably every moroi in the world.”

  “Well, apparently, I’m burned out. Apparently, I need a break to figure out my life again.” I huffed indignantly.

  His bed creaked, so I turned toward him to find his silver eyes on me.

  “So…this is what the sabbatical is about? Did you ever stop to think that he might be right?”

  My mouth dropped open, “What? I’m very good at what I do.”

  “I know you are.” His hand reached up and straightened his mosquito net. “It’s probably not about your performance. The question is, ‘Are you happy?’ I’ve heard Aurev is a good leader; that much of his prosperity is due to the fact that he makes sure his people are happy and satisfied.”

  I sniffed. “It doesn’t make me happy to learn, ‘surprise, I’ve killed your lawyer identity, and instead of the adult attorney identity you planned on using, I’ve made you seventeen again!”

  Alexei’s bed shook with his silent laughter. “That’s cold. He made you a child?”

  I let out a small chuckle myself. “That was supposed to be my next identity.” Sucking in a deep breath, I thought about what Alexei had said.

  When he spoke, his voice was calm and sober, “You didn’t seem very happy when I found you after the trial, and you’d won.”

  “Things were complicated,” I told him.

  “When are things simple?”

  I smoothed the sheet over me with one hand. “I’ve been working for Aurev since he turned me. I’ve been busy for so long, I just don’t know what I’ll do now.”

  “Have you traveled?”

  “For work,” I said just above a whisper. “I don’t take vacations, we’re too busy. It seems Chronos is always tied up in a lawsuit…But, I don’t know, maybe I need a break.”

  He nodded, his head shifting on the pillow. “I know what you mean. I’m tired of my Clan. I’m tired of the pressure to learn to be my father’s Second. I’m tired of being pressured to get turned. Everyone has plans and expectations for my future, and they don’t care what I think or what I want. But what if I decide to not get turned, like my grandmother? What if I want children and to grow old…” He trailed off, knowing those things weren’t available to me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay, I’ve lived two lifetimes. I’m not complaining about not aging, and I have a child—Sarah. She’s all grown up now.”

  Silence hung in the room, well as much as it could with the ever-present jungle noise.

  I turned onto my back, then Alexei spoke again, “I think that the more they try to make me into one thing, the more I fight them and want to be something else.”

  “Who?” I asked gently.

  “My parents, the elders of my Clan, my dad.”

  “Hmmm…Have you always lived in St. Petersburg?”

  “When I was sixteen I went to the U.S. as an exchange student,” he sniffed a quiet chuckle. “The only English I knew was from my x-box, Grand Theft Auto, GTA.”

  “I don’t know anything about video games,” I said.

  “Yeah, I was walking around saying, ‘what’s up my nigga?’ You could say that didn’t go down well.”

  I gasped, “That’s terrible! What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. In Russia, the word for a black person is literally ‘negry.’ We never had a history of slavery or whatever like America. In Russia, my ancestors were the slaves, working in the fields, day and night. Starving. Poor.”

  My bed shook with my own mirth, “Oh my God, that’s crazy. I never would’ve thought about that.”

  He laughed again, “And the crazy part is that it was white kids that tried to beat me up. I don’t think the black kids even cared, they probably thought I was just some stupid foreign kid, which I was.”

  “You are just full of interesting surprises. What other skeletons are in your closet?”

  “Yeah, you mean living with blood slaves in my house? My life was far from normal. Normal kids bring friends home. I never did because I lived in a house full of vampires, who could compel them or drink them.”

  I sat up. “That’s illegal—to drink from minors.”

  Alexei tilted his head and raised his eyebrows, “It was done in Russia. Why should my father and his people change their ways just because the GC says so? His words, not mine.”

  “Hmm…it’s becoming harder and harder for the old moroi to hold onto their ancient ways.”

  “Yeah, like protecting the Butcher. She’s one of them, and they turned a blind eye to her killing sprees, worse than that, they protected her.”

  “Until now. Until she created the disease.”

  The Russian grunted.

  “So, born half moroi. When did you find out about everything or did you know it all from the beginning?”

  A sardonic smirk formed on his mouth, “What do you mean? Vladimir changed my mother when she was pregnant. I’ve grown up surrounded by moroi. I thought it was normal to drink blood. Until…I realized that I was different and didn’t need to.”

  “I know your father. We met shortly after I was changed.” I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t put two and two together when first meeting my bounty hunter. However, Vladimir was blonde and blue-eyed, but the resemblance was there in the cheekbones and an occasional expression both men made.

  Alexei nodded. “Ahh…so you’ve met him. ”

  I responded, “Mmmm.”

  More time passed, and I closed my eyes and tried to push away the guilt that hung heavily on me. After I thought the human had fallen asleep, I turned on my side and watched his chest gently rise and fall with each slow breath.

  What did this mean if he was telling the truth of his parentage?

  Could moroi actually have children?

  And if they could, what exactly were they?

  All of us had awoken around 4 am to the sounds of Rodrigo, the owner of the lodge, bumbling about in the kitchen. The thin, uninsulated plywood walls were no match to a hungry, bear-like man looking for a meal.

  We gathered in the courtyard with our things to leave this place for good. The sky was a deep black velvet sparkling with diamonds above us.

  I’d been too inundated to give the sky a second glance when I first
arrived, but as the four of us floated in the canoes and headed down the small river, the sight took my breath away like it had the first night.

  “I’ve never seen so many stars in my life,” I told Alexei as he rowed the boat.

  His silence worried me. Finally, the low baritone of his voice broke the quiet, “We’re gambling a lot on your plan. If she isn’t coming, then she’s likely gone on the run again. We may just have to kill her instead of bringing her in alive.”

  “She’ll show,” I told him, hoping I spoke the truth.

  I hated the way this stress affected him. I wanted to see him laugh and be cocky, the way he had when he’d come to find me in Denmark.

  Who was I to judge though? My own demons plagued me as well: the loss of my job, the loss of my place at Chronos, maybe even the loss of Sarah after she found out about what I’d done.

  The worst was the loss of Aurev. He’d been my closest friend other than Sarah.

  That had hurt me. Did he want me out of his life?

  My gaze refocused on the ripples the paddle made and the drops of water that fell from it into the boat when Alexei switched sides.

  “How hungover are you?” I asked the Russian, trying to lighten the mood.

  He shrugged and grunted in his usual way. “I can see it in your eyes, you’ve got something on your mind.”

  “And you don’t?” I asked.

  “No. I’m completing a plan. Right now, the plan is to get back to Iquitos.” After a moment of silence, he said, “Talk to me, tell me why your face looks so unhappy.”

  I wasn’t used to opening up to strangers, but Alexei’s open expression seemed to pull it out of me. “Same thing I talked about last night. Aurev told me that I was burned out. That I needed a break to figure out my life again.” Clearing my throat, I continued, “I’m fine though. I don’t need a break.”

  Raising his eyebrows, he bit his lip ring with the top of his teeth. “You didn’t seem okay that day I met you after the trial.”

  It was my turn to shrug.

  The Russian continued, “My grandmother always said I had the gift.”