An Easy Death

by Charlaine Harris

  “You saying that’s a dead woman?” Felicia said in Spanish. She had a shrill little voice, and I didn’t want to hear it right now, no matter what language she used.

  “That’s what I’m saying. Shut up.” I had always heard sisters were annoying.

  At least Eli was not crying anymore. But he was not speaking, either. I hoped he understood me, and I hoped he got back inside himself right now. Every bone in my body told me we needed to get the hell out of Juárez.

  “You’re the daughter,” Eli said, as shocked as if the ceiling had fallen on his head. Or as if his dead partner had just walked into the room. Evidently, Eli spoke more Spanish than I’d given him credit for.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You shot your father.”

  “He raped my mother.”

  “You shot Oleg Karkarov. The man we’ve been looking for on this whole trip. And you never told us.”

  “Yes. Can we talk about this later? Someone’s trying to kill us now.”

  Eli narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Yeah, I know, that’s always.” I took Eli’s hands and pulled. I got him standing upright. He took a few deep breaths.

  Sergei exploded. He’d been so quiet. I’d hoped he’d stay that way. “You little bitch, bringing all this to my house! What do you really want with Felicia?”

  Jesus, I wanted to shoot him. I just couldn’t take any more.

  Eli said over my head, “I ask you again, whose daughter is Felicia?”

  “Depends on why you want to know.”

  I aimed my gun at him. “No, it doesn’t. Talk.” I wasn’t negotiating anymore. I was going to start shooting again.

  “She’s mine,” Sergei said.

  I glanced at the girl as he spoke, and she looked surprised. Well, hell. “Is he telling the truth?” I asked Felicia. By that time, I wasn’t sure what language I was speaking.

  “Depends on why you want to know,” she said. I was so willing to suspend my no-killing-kids rule.

  Eli said, “If you are the child of Oleg, you can return with me to the Holy Russian Empire, and you will serve a greater purpose. You will have a good life in decent surroundings. But if you come with me, and I find out you are lying about your parentage, you will serve no purpose at all and you will be discarded.”

  That was almost as bad as shooting her, going by her reaction. Eli’s tact had flown out the window. He was at the end of his rope, too.

  “What does ‘discarded’ mean?” she asked Sergei in Spanish.

  “Tossed aside,” he replied in the same language.

  Felicia chewed on her lip, while I pulled on Eli, trying to get him to the door. Go, go, go, my brain was chanting.

  Eli was still knocked down with the shock of Paulina’s appearance. (Or maybe with knowing I’d been lying to him from the beginning. Though why he would expect anything else, I couldn’t figure. But I felt guilty.)

  “Give my friend a drink,” I said to Sergei, and he turned to get a bottle off a shelf. I could see when he considered hitting me with it, I could see him weighing the gun in my hand against his longer reach and his speed, and I could see him decide against attacking me. He opened the bottle and passed it over to Eli, who took a big swallow, then another.

  After a moment Eli’s legs worked. He was able to move with me pulling and supporting him. He was so heavy, so tall. I groaned but tried to keep it quiet.

  “Go with us, or stay?” Eli asked Felicia. “You can choose. I will not force you. I should not have frightened you.”

  Felicia gave Sergei a glance that was all one big question.

  “Whatever you wish,” he said, a cruel burden to lay on someone so young.

  “I will stay here,” she said, making up her mind. She glared at us, all bravado. “Go to hell, you two gringos.”

  “Felicia,” I said. “If you change your mind, meet us tomorrow at the train station. I think we’ll try to catch a train out of here.”

  After a moment Felicia’s head moved in a jerky nod. I realized the girl, my cousin or my sister, was terrified of the choices in front of her, no matter how angry she tried to seem.

  We began to move awkwardly toward the door. I felt like a building was leaning against my shoulder. “It would sure help if you could walk on your own,” I said, trying not to sound desperate. “But we’ll figure out a way to get it done.”

  Eli stood free of me and took up his suitcase. He left Paulina’s bag. I didn’t know why he’d brought it this far, except maybe out of sheer cussedness. Not wanting Señora Espinoza to have Paulina’s things. My little personal bag went over his shoulder. We were set to go. Then he staggered.

  “Shit,” I said. While he leaned against a wall, I reloaded both Colts. I gathered up my gun bag and put the long strap of it over my left shoulder so it’d hang to the right.

  “Open the door,” I told Felicia, and she leaped to do it. Finally she was willing to cooperate.

  Putting my left shoulder under Eli’s right armpit, my arm around his waist, we lurched forward, turning sideways in the doorframe to fit through.

  The alleys were narrow and my burdens were heavy. I was as tired as I had ever been in my life. I wasn’t happy about anything or with anyone. At least I hadn’t had to clean up the remains of whatever had looked like Paulina. Maybe it had been Paulina, reanimated. Or maybe it had been a likeness. “Fuck it,” I said, and Eli laughed like a coyote. “You’re feisty,” he said.

  “I’m a gunnie. I have to be feisty.”

  “Where are we going?” Eli asked after a few more yards of lurching. I was staggering a little myself.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and that, too, was funny to my companion. I was glad someone was laughing. I wondered what he’d drunk. “What did your drink taste like?” I said.

  “Like fire.”

  “Do you drink much alcohol?”

  “I never have. We’re not allowed.” He laughed.

  Things just got better and better, didn’t they? “Eli,” I said, having just enough spare wind to speak, “if we see any other grigoris, you have to kill them.” It was late afternoon, so we had hours of daylight left. The only way we were going to hide was to find a house or hotel we could shut ourselves into. Eli was shocked, drunk, or a combination of the two.

  “All right,” Eli said, giving the top of my head a kiss. Jeez. “I will.”

  And he did.

  They came around the next corner, looking for us.

  They were as surprised as we were.

  I shot the woman on the right—she was stout and old—and she went down with a gurgle of surprise, though it was a gutshot, so she was still alive. Eli withdrew the blood of the middle guy, a man with skin so black it was like coal. I shot the man on the left in the head, and whatever spell he’d had prepared went wide.

  It was over in less than five seconds. I ended the woman as we stepped over the bodies. What was one more shot now? I could hear people moving around, and voices calling out, but the inhabitants of this corner of Juárez had retreated inside whatever door was nearest when they’d heard the first shot. They weren’t coming out until they were sure the shooting was over.

  We ran. It was awkward as hell, but we had to move fast. We were the most suspicious spectacle possible, we didn’t belong here, and it would be amazing if we didn’t have blood spattered on us. I didn’t have time to check. We kept moving in the direction of broader streets and shops, the major thoroughfares.

  Until I wondered why we were heading for the lights when we were really blood-spotted, dirty, and suspicious-looking. We couldn’t stop now, but we had to talk about that as we moved forward.

  “Eli,” I said in as low a voice as I could manage. We slowed to a shambling walk. “We have to decide if we’re going to try to find a hotel, or if we’re just trying to find a park or something to spend the night outside.”

  “A hotel,” he said instantly.

  “Okay, great.” That solved one problem, though I thought it was odd he was
so firm. “Got any idea if we’ll see more of your grigori buddies?”

  “Maybe they’re all dead. That was the biggest team I’ve ever seen for any job.” He didn’t sound too certain, and I wasn’t counting on us finally having some luck.

  “All right, then, we’ll keep moving,” I said. We set off, sighting on the streetlights of the best part of town. Eli wasn’t leaning on me as hard, but he wasn’t letting go, either. It would be great if he could carry the bag of guns, too, but I wasn’t going to ask him. He was doing so well.

  “I don’t know how come there’s no crowd.” Even if this was the kind of place where people hid from trouble, it was weird how empty the alleys were.

  “I’m sending a stay-away message,” he said. “But I’m getting weaker.”

  No wonder he was having such a hard time walking. Doing magic; being shocked several times over by attacks, deaths, deception; alcohol; and no sleep . . . “Keep up the good work,” I said.

  We were steering in a straight line, more or less. Surely a hotel had to be close. Maybe I could get a room without anyone seeing Eli. We could sleep and get clean and eat, all three things I wanted so badly.

  But then we ran into the chief of the grigori hunting party. He was a stocky, bearded man in a dark suit, and his face was covered with ink. He was waiting for his crew to return triumphant, I guessed. Eli and I were the last two people he expected to see.

  It was also lucky that he looked at me first, so he didn’t recognize Eli for one important second. In that second I stabbed him. But as he was falling, he opened his hand, and something terrible happened to me. I felt a huge blow. I saw the ground getting closer. I didn’t pass out completely, which was a pleasant surprise. Lately, I’d been unconscious way too often. But it would have been nice to be out of it for the next half hour or so. I was aware that a man in a grubby shirt was looking at me with the leer of someone who thought I was about to be taken advantage of, and I felt stairs under my feet, and I felt the huge relief of seeing a bed, being able to fall on it, having a soft surface under my back.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When I woke up for real, it was hours later. I could tell by the feel of the night.

  It hadn’t been only a happy dream. I really was on a bed in a large room. There was a ceiling fan, and it was rotating in a lazy circle. I was glad of the cool air moving over me. I glanced to the right, to see a dark window. It felt like past midnight.

  Eli was lying beside me, sound asleep. The bed was so big we weren’t even touching. His nose was pointed straight up at the ceiling. He was breathing so quietly that I put my hand on his chest to make sure it was rising and falling. His eyes opened and slewed toward me.

  “You lived,” he said with groggy relief.

  “You kill that guy?”

  “I finished what you started.”

  “What did you do with him?”

  “Left him where he lay. No choice. We had to get out of there.”

  I thought this over. “I don’t remember much after that. How did you get me here?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine.

  “Hell if I know. I had bag straps hanging all over me, and I hooked my hands under your arms and just started dragging. I didn’t stop for anything, and I couldn’t focus on my magic anymore, and I think people were asking me questions. I just said I didn’t speak Spanish, that we’d been attacked by a grigori for no reason. They were glad to believe that. Some of them offered to help me carry you. I said no thanks.”

  “Nice of them,” I said, finding I wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming.

  “It was. But inconvenient. I told them we were close to home, and our mother would be very angry if we asked others for help. Eventually we were on a halfway-lit street, and the first hotel I came to—this one—I told them you were dead drunk and asked them if I could get a room where you could sleep it off. It’s a pretty fancy place, but when I showed them the money, the bellboy and the desk clerk agreed to accept us, since they had an empty room. They took extra money in case you puked, but the desk guy helped me get you up the stairs. Then I got him to forget what we looked like. Magic, not money.”

  That was a lot of talk for Eli. “What did he do to me? The grigori?”

  “A stunning spell. He didn’t want to kill you, or maybe it was me he was aiming for. How did it feel?” he asked with professional interest.

  “Giant hammer.”

  “Lucky it didn’t strike you over your heart. It would have stopped it beating, whether he meant to kill you or not.”

  “Yeah. I’m really lucky.”

  He moved a little. I could hear his hair dragging along his pillow. “I feel you are being sarcastic.” He sounded almost playful.

  “You’re real smart.”

  “Very sarcastic.”

  “What do you intend to do?” I was tired of dreading the question.

  “Intend to do? I intend to help you to get us out of Mexico. I hope I never come back here.”

  That hadn’t been the question I was asking, but I would go with it. “But the bad stuff has been due to the people after you, and they could be anywhere.”

  “You’re right. You’re nearly always right,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it.

  “I should have told you about my father. I didn’t like Paulina, and she didn’t like me. She would have hauled me off to Holy Russia without a second thought. And taken all my blood.”

  “That’s what you thought she would do.” He didn’t seem shocked or angry, though.

  “I sure did.”

  “I think you’re right.” It was a big admission.

  “So, what about you? You going to tell your wizard buddies about my blood?” I should have been ready to kill him, but instead I only felt tired.

  “I am not Paulina. But I know my duty. You’re sure you are the daughter of Oleg Karkarov?”

  “I’m sure. That’s why I killed him.” It was oddly cozy, talking (finally) frankly to Eli in the quiet of the dim, twilit room. The ceiling fan was making the open curtains ripple.

  “You shot your own father.”

  “He raped my mother and left her to raise me on her own.”

  “Did he ever know she was pregnant?” Eli said.

  “Why would he care? He raped her. A ten-minute relationship.”

  Eli rolled to his side to look at me. “I don’t know how to feel about you.”

  “I’ve saved your life about ten times.” I was arguing my own case. But without a lot of passion. “I did lie to you.” I would have shrugged, but lying down, that just felt strange.

  “True.”

  “You’ve saved my life maybe three times? And you lied to me, too.”

  “Also true. Wait, how have I lied to you?” Eli had the gall to sound indignant.

  “You knew there were people who didn’t want you to find the blood the tsar needs, people who don’t want him on the throne.” I looked up at the fan, just able to make out the shape of the blades. The city was quieter, but it was not completely asleep. Somewhere blocks away, a band was making music. “A group that backs this Grand Duke Alexander. And they’re passionate about thinking he’d be better for the job than Alexei, because he has a guaranteed backup in his legitimate son, who already has a male heir.”

  “It didn’t seem necessary to draw you into our politics.”

  “Didn’t seem necessary to draw you into my personal life.”

  “You have a point?” he asked. Not sharp, but curious.

  “Yeah. I want to take off my clothes and kiss you.”

  “I have no problem with that. At all.” And he began taking off his clothes first. “That’s why I wanted to find a hotel.”

  “Give me a minute to feel clean.” I wasn’t going to kiss anyone feeling this grimy and nasty. Eli had already removed my boots and socks. I got up and struggled out of the damn skirt and blouse and my underwear.

  “Look,” Eli said, smiling, and pointed to his left. “Open that door.”

  I did,
because I wanted to see what had made him smile. I looked back at him lying on the bed. “Oh, Eli . . . that’s amazing.” We had our own bathroom. No going out in the hall. There was a shower, a toilet, and a sink. Everything! I turned on the water after a careful examination of the handles, and in no time I was under a torrent of water. It was blissful, and I was clean in two minutes.

  “Leave the water running,” Eli called.

  I stepped out and began toweling, and he came in naked to take my place under the water.

  Eli, dressed, was flat-faced and hard and gawky. Eli naked was a god with broad shoulders, a neat patch of hair between his nipples and one around his dick, and muscular thighs and arms. He had a fine ass, too. I thought my mouth would water.

  Three minutes later a damp Eli slid into the bed beside me, very ready.

  I’d seen a nitwit use gasoline to set a fire, and I’d been impressed by the result. That was what touching Eli was like. Despite our battered condition and our wounds and our weariness, this was what we were supposed to be doing. He had a few rubbers, which just proved men were natural optimists when it came to opportunity.

  Hey, I’m going down into Mexico with my big-sister grigori, and we’re traveling through hick towns on a desperate secret mission. I may get killed. But who knows? I might also have a chance to have sex.

  I’d had sex with two other men. This was nothing like that, like them. Galilee had told me the way sex should be: all in, shameless, demanding and giving. This was all that . . . and it was with Eli. The combination set me off like a shotgun. I have always been a quiet person, but I was not this night, and neither was Eli.

  After an hour we were asleep before we’d pulled the cover up all the way. Eli woke me up a couple of hours later, and we did it again, slowly. I climbed on top; I am short, and it was like riding a horse, a bit. I had to bite my lips to keep quiet. He made a sound so primal I thought he’d sprout hair all over.

  When we finally got moving around noon the next day, I was saddlesore but happy. And more relaxed than I’d been in . . . forever. Every time I looked at Eli, I thought of how he’d been in bed. How we’d been together.

  It was sad that we had more important things to do. While Eli dressed, I thought about the day ahead of us, or what remained of it.