by Ana Calin
“A knife, maggot? Who did you intend to use it on? Me?” He gave a short, rusty laugh of contempt. Then anger crept back into his now almost fluorescent eyes. “Alice?”
My scalp prickled. “Damian, don’t. He didn’t—”
But Damian’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Did you threaten her with it?”
Tony’s eyeballs seemed to push out of his head, his tongue out of his mouth, and his face went red as a lobster’s from Damian’s squeeze.
“Please, Damian!” I cried.
“Why won’t you let me destroy him, Alice?” he hissed. “He tried to blackmail you into running away with him, and he would’ve forced you to be his!”
I shook my head. “You know about the blackmail?”
Damian glanced at me. A hint of apology cracked his icy composure. “I don’t normally do this, but after you ran away, I activated the spy-software on your cell phone. I read his texts and listened to your voice mail.”
Fury began to boil inside my head. “You activated the what?”
“I didn’t install the software recently, Alice, if that’s what upsets you so much. My people bugged every phone you’ve ever had ever since I first started monitoring you. It’s the procedure.”
Damian released Tony, who collapsed to the floor, taking in sharp gulps of air that sent him coughing and constricting on all fours.
“I told you I wasn’t sure about those big brains of yours, Tony,” I mocked, feeling avenged.
“I won’t rest until she’s mine again, you psycho,” Tony croaked with a red glare at Damian. A reckless surge of nerve. Damian grabbed him by the lapels and pushed him to the wall.
“Tell her,” he demanded, “tell her how BioDhrome first contacted you. Tell her how you sold her to them.”
Tony clenched his jaw defiantly, and Damian slammed him against the wall, causing a muffled boom, and bits of plaster to dribble to the floor. “Talk.”
Fear won, and Tony started babbling. “I... I... I first saw that agent, Varlam. He played the guitar and wrote some shitty poetry. After awhile he told me what I had to do. He said I’d never have a care in the world again if I won back Alice Preda’s trust for myself and for them. For BioDhrome.”
“Why did they need my trust?” I narrowed my eyes, barely keeping my tone in check.
“Alice, believe me, when I saw you on that bus, things changed,” Tony pleaded, his brows up in a begging expression. Tears welled up in his eyes, his cheeks red from Damian’s grip on his jaw. “You were—”
“Why did they need my trust?” I cut him off in a voice that scratched, balling my fists to keep my nails from following suit.
“To...” He glanced at Damian fearfully. “To use you against him.”
“Tell her about the pictures you later maneuvered into her hands,” Damian ordered.
Tony tried to speak, but all he managed was babbling between terrified sobs.
Damian let him slump to the ground, on his knees, and took some distance. “Is this enough for you to start talking? Or should I add some pecuniary incentive?”
“Swear you won’t touch me again. Swear you won’t hurt me,” Tony blurted, crouching on all fours and drawing nearer to the wall like a scared dog.
“I won’t hurt you.”
“Swear!”
“He doesn’t do lying,” I intervened, my tone as bitter as the grin that curled my mouth. “So talk.”
Tony closed his eyes and focused to control his breathing. The sight of his face going Zen would’ve made me laugh under any other circumstances, but right now I barely refrained from less amicable reactions.
“Varlam had me get close to you in order to regain your trust, Alice,” he said. “He offered me money in exchange. But then I realized I was in love with you. When I saw you on the bus, you were so different from last time, you—”
“Save it,” I said dryly.
“Yes, Tony, save it,” Damian added in his dark and dangerous frequency.
Tony looked down and nodded. “I understand you don’t want to hear this. But it’s the truth.”
The memory of how he’d seen Damian and me naked after a night of wild love-making thrilled me the way a pimple on a rival’s nose would a cheerleader.
Damian grabbed him by the upper arm and hurled him out of the room, right into his men’s hands.
“You have no one but yourself to blame for what’s coming at you, maggot.” Then, to his men, “We’re extracting him. He’ll never see Constanta or his mother again.”
I tried to intervene. “Damian, you can’t—”
“Nothing bad is going to happen to him, Alice,” he reassured me. “But he won’t have it cozy either, not for what he did to you. And sure as hell not after he tried to come between us.”
As we reentered the café through the same semi-secret tunnel Tony and I had used, patrons gawked wide-eyed at the scene: the outrageously handsome Damian with his arm around my shoulders, his black clad squad dragging Tony behind us.
I felt like the date of a movie star. Girls’ eyes licked Damian up and down, measured Tony with a certain amount of pity – almost everybody knew him here – and they inspected me with the same puzzlement my peers at the cafeteria did lately. They recognized me as Tony’s long-dumped girlfriend, and yet they stared in some kind of perplexed awe.
The ogling guys reminded me of the gas that had given my brain the necessary kick to transform me into a temptress, which I wasn’t exactly grateful for anymore. I’d desired it my whole life, true, but now it made me uncomfortable. Damian’s eyes hammered the guys in their seats, silently stating his claim on me. His glare went particularly metallic on Mr. Dimples as we passed him by, frozen mid-order with a small notebook and a pen in his hands.
Black cars waited in a row in front of the café. Damian opened the door to the limo in the middle and held it for me, then followed in, while leather-gloved hands shoved Tony in across from us. Damian’s attitude was as crushing as the opulent display of his true power – no, he wasn’t a broke student living near the shipyard. He was the Executioner, and he had abundant resources.
Tension spiked, sufferable only because Damian busied himself making calls, speaking in the Northern language he’d used before. I strained, anxious to know where he was taking us, but failed to understand at least a bit of what he said. The smoky windows didn’t reveal much besides fuzzy contours outside.
Tony fixed Damian with powerless anger, his fingers curling into the leather seat, knuckles white on elegant beige. I couldn’t stop staring at him. This man had betrayed me in such ways that right now, he didn’t seem any less a monster than BioDhrome’s killer Upgrades.
The car came to a stop. A spraying sound hit the frame like thunder, making me jump out of my skin; a smell of paint made it through.
“What’s happening?” I clung to Damian, not even trying to hide my anxiety.
“We’re changing color and plates.”
“What? Why?”
“Losing BioDhrome if they follow.” Then, with steely eyes on Tony and a bloodthirsty grin, “They’re moving full force on us, thanks to this pig. It’s time we pull out our big guns, too. We’re finishing this once and for all.”
Tony rose from his seat suddenly, bumping his head against the ceiling. He desperately struggled to open the door, cheeks red and eyes bulging, while Damian’s chest vibrated with a vicious laugh that made my skin crawl. The doors were locked. Tony had no way out.
“There’s no escape for you, now, maggot. I’d gladly go all the way and break your neck, but luckily for you, Alice makes demands on the remains of my conscience.”
The car’s springing back on track threw Tony floundering all over. Damian watched with cruel eyes how the poor guy struggled to get back in his seat, which took several moments of scrambling. The anxiety and the chemical smell of paint planted me a headache.
“You’d better fasten your seatbelt,” Damian sneered at Tony, leaning back, the black pants stretching over his powerful thigh
as he rested his ankle on his other knee, and wound a rocky arm around my shoulder.
His wooden scent began to calm my aggravated nose, while the warmth and feel of his body exhilarated me. I tried to fight the sensation away, since this was hardly the time, but it proved resilient. I felt like a child held by a titan. Jealousy fired in Tony’s eyes as Damian stroked my hair and inhaled my scent, as if savoring the scent of high quality scotch.
“She’s exquisite, isn’t she?” His breath sent a tingle to my earlobe, his deep voice stirring the butterflies.
Tony’s hands clawed into the seat.
“And she’s mine.” Damian bent slightly forward, and Tony winced.
Damian gave him a bully grin.
“Don’t worry. I promised I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said. “And I’ll keep my promise as long as Alice holds me to it. But, I demand full honesty from my protégés. So tell us, Tony. How much was it?”
“Excuse me?” Tony babbled.
“How much did BioDhrome pay you?”
“I... I....”
“Come on, don’t be shy.”
“Damian, I don’t like this,” I intervened.
“What is it? Don’t you want to know what you’re worth? How much he sold you for?” He sounded annoyed. Spiteful.
“I’m not curious. I know what to expect of him.”
“You didn’t seem to expect it these past months, Alice. You accepted his company, and you even protected him from me.”
“I was just trying to make you jealous,” I let out the confession and dropped my gaze to my shoes. I was afraid of Damian’s reaction, of the embarrassment that would come with it. The pause hung between the three of us for what seemed an eternity until Damian’s voice broke the silence.
“You were doing what?”
“Please, don’t make me repeat,” I whispered, eyes still down.
He pulled me into his chest, his warmth and the scent of young fir going to my head. By God, this man could do whatever he wanted with me.
“When we first went out together you told me something else,” he said. “You told me you accepted him around because it was simple and familiar and pleasant.”
“I never said pleasant. As for the rest, I lied.”
“Lied?”
“Yes. Tony came looking for me at the cafeteria, and I took the chance to see how you’d react if I got close to him. Afterwards he kept coming to see me, and the only reason I accepted his company was to.... I’ve already said why.”
Damian lifted my chin with two gentle fingers, his eyes searching my face. My heart went crazy, and I opened my mouth to beg him to drop the subject, but his lips claimed mine in a kiss. He pressed me to him, the hard contours of his body digging into mine.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Tony exclaimed. Damian fired a nasty glare at him.
“Is there something you’d like to say to me, maggot?” he hissed at Tony.
Fear seemed to resume its grip on my ex. “No. I just—”
“Get one thing inside your head once and for all. Alice is my woman, and I’m free to manifest my affections as I please.”
Tony fell introspective with his head bent until he mustered the nerve to speak his mind, keeping his eyes down. “You and Alice, you’re a thing now. I understand that. But please, understand me in return. I love her, and that won’t change on command.”
It sounded like a plea. Painful and, yet, honest.
I sensed Damian starting to boil. He kept his voice low, but the way he spoke the words made his indignation impossible to misinterpret. “Where was love a year ago, maggot, when you left her? The whole time you had the privilege of having her, a privilege for which I’d now gladly slit you open like a pig, where was your love? You love her now, after she’s become a goddess. You rotten piece of shit.” He made a move to grab Tony, which set off my red alarm.
“Damian, you promised,” I shrieked, grabbing his forearm.
He stopped mid-way, paused, and eventually leaned back, stern and domineering. His eyes burned, fixing on the shivering Tony.
The ride came to a stop. I heard the driver’s door, then the one on my side open, and a man-in-black helped me out while another one reached in for Tony. We stepped onto a road of beaten earth in what must’ve been one of the villages bordering on our town.
The smell of winter and burnt wood filled the air. Picturesque little houses with smoke curling up from chimneys seemed asleep among bald trees. Damian’s arm wound around me, strong and possessive.
Infatuation stirred the butterflies in my stomach. It should have begun to level out, but the closer Damian and I got, the more it intensified. To be frank, it began to worry me. I feared I was suffering from a mental condition.
Damian’s men-in-black walked ahead of us, pushing a wooden gate open and hurrying down a path flanked by banks of frosty mud to a door that made me think of the Hansel and Gretel story. It opened slowly as we approached, the black inside yawning bigger until a face came into sight. When we got close enough for me to recognize it, my eyes blasted wide.
“You?”
Chapter Seven
A shiny head with beady eyes peered out. I immediately recognized the features, as well as the meticulously groomed Poirot-style pencil moustache. Dr. Barbu. Dressed in a cherry silk robe and holding a mug of steaming coffee, he let us in with the detached face of someone who either experienced this every day, or refused to show himself impressed. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.
Damian ushered me into a small living room; Dr. Barbu’s spot was marked by a dip in the sofa cushion. A cigarette smoked away in an ashtray on the coffee table next to an open book. But that was all the environment did to confirm being inhabited by an intellectual. China crystal and not books filled the bookcase behind, while an obsolete TV served as support for a vase with plastic flowers. It didn’t go with Dr. Barbu at all.
The way this place looked and smelled, it made me think of the average village widow living for the kids’ visits. Now, with men in black rolling down the shutters, one of them spitting “safe house” into a small high tech device that connected his ear with his mouth, its true use became clear. The only one who still looked at a complete loss was Tony. He stared around with a dumb expression on his face and an open mouth.
“It’s time,” Damian said to Dr. Barbu.
“It’s long overdue, if you ask me,” Dr. Barbu retorted as he dropped on the sofa, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable with the book. He glanced at me over the rim of his glasses. “It took you quite a while to make the right decision, Executioner.”
Damian didn’t say anything. Dr. Barbu lowered the book and jutted his chin out at me. He addressed Damian, though. “You should have used her ever since she hi-jacked our plans on Saturday night.”
“You mean I should have fed her to the wolves?” Damian’s voice went down to threatening bass.
Still, Dr. Barbu kept his ground. “It might have been a solution.”
“I doubt the Viscount would have approved.”
The what?
“The Viscount didn’t become head of the Order because he recoiled from nasty decisions,” Dr. Barbu said, glaring at Damian. “He can be a hard-skinned villain too when the situation demands it.”
“I’m not going to use Alice as bait,” Damian snapped. His jaw rippled as he struggled to restrain his anger. As for me, I was just baffled.
“You’ll have to reconsider, Mr. Novac.”
“I don’t have to anything.”
The matter hung thick in the air. Damian approached and sat across from Dr. Barbu, the plush armchair warping under his weight, his pants stretching over the rocky contours of his legs. He looked at Dr. Barbu without blinking, and leaned forward with elbows on his knees.
“I need to meet him. Now.”
Dr. Barbu snorted. “You don’t just meet the Viscount, Executioner, you know that. You have the Cleric at your disposal, the best fighters, the strongest weapons ever engineered. That’ll cert
ainly suffice, no matter how reckless your plans.” He waved a hand in elegant dismissal.
“This plan is particularly risky, Dr. Barbu.” Damian’s voice charged with gravity. I’m going to see the Regent again face to face. And I’m going to need special help when he’s done with me.”
“Done with you?” I cut in. But Damian didn’t react. His gaze frozen on Dr. Barbu.
Dr. Barbu’s eyes widened, and his voice jumped out of control, high-pitched. “Wha—You’re going to – You’re going to – yourself? Willingly?”
“What?” I took a hasty step forward. I could make way too little sense of their coded exchange. The two men probed each other’s gazes without even blinking.
“That is... quite something,” Dr. Barbu eventually whispered. Damian remained motionless, and I despaired even more.
“What? What is quite something?” I shrieked. One of Damian’s men caught my arms, gently, but determined, and held me back.
“Wardens,” Dr. Barbu called, not once looking my way. At first, I panicked, thinking he’d summoned them for me, but no. Tony trembled and whined, thinking himself the reason, but, again, no.
Two men in dark robes glided in from the back, each hand tucked in the opposite sleeve like medieval monks. But they darkened the room like living demons. Icy fear stung me all over, and I couldn’t really tell why.
Dr. Barbu introduced them as Clerics. They seemed a dangerous creation. Not entirely good, rather a frail balance between good and evil that infected me with fear that froze the very nucleus of my cells.
Their shadow took over my mind. My throat dried up like a forgotten well, and all I could do was stare with my mouth agape as they escorted Damian back the way they had come, like prison guards removing a convict. A black tunnel opened further and further as they advanced, a secret passageway that appeared to stretch endlessly to the back of the house. My body turned to jelly, and I collapsed in the guard’s arms.
“Damian! Where are they taking him?” I cried pathetically, an arm escaping the guard’s hold and stretching ahead as if that could help stop the procession.
