Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Well, you are all pretty famous at this point,” I said, my eyes flitting to Sokolov, who was now in conversation with Phillips and Jackie, listening to them with stiff politeness.

  The first flashbulb reminded me that this wasn’t just a chance to meet new people and worry about their pasts. I froze, Vitalik staring straight at me, almost warmly. Almost. “Ah, the press. A curious Western sort of tradition.”

  “I’m pretty sure they have reporters in Russia now,” I said.

  “They had them before, too,” Vitalik said with a wide grin, “but they used to be so much more manageable.” Was that regret in his voice? He placed a hand on my elbow and gently steered me to face a half dozen people with cameras. “Now, smile,” he said quietly. I looked to the side to see Jackie making a similar suggestion with both fingers pointing to the corners of her mouth, which were twitching madly.

  So, I smiled. On command. Like a trained dog. Certainly better trained than my dog.

  The photos lasted about a minute, and then one of Jackie’s people funneled the reporters away from us, back toward the elevators. “Well, that’s a relief,” Vitalik said.

  “They’ll be upstairs at the party,” I said, grudgingly, and watched him steel himself.

  “In the days of old,” Leonid said, words still slurring just slightly, “these people would have been in the—”

  “Leonid, recall your manners,” Vitalik said gently, still smiling at me. “We are guests here, at this party.” He leaned in closer to me. “And what a party I am sure it will be.” He offered me his elbow. “Care to lead the way?”

  “Sure,” I said, feeling just a smidgen of unease as I guided him through the metal detector. It honked once, for me, and I smiled apologetically and pushed my free hand toward the metal chopsticks in my hair, just to reassure him. Turns out people get antsy when they know you’re armed. Vitalik nodded, and we walked arm in arm toward the elevators, that same nagging feeling tugging at the back of my mind, like it was trying to tell me that some disastrous social faux pas was soon to follow.

  25.

  There was a round of applause from the guests as we entered the reception room. Most people don’t applaud when I enter a room. Leave it, maybe, but not when I enter it. Vitalik refused to detach from my arm, not that I demanded it of him or anything. He smelled nice, not drenched in anything offensive to the nose, and he seemed genuinely glad to be here. I felt like my mind was playing shadow games with me; the cold war was long over, after all. Russia had changed, the new administration over there had been pretty docile, and their human rights record was pretty glasnost-ic.

  I still felt a nervous murmur in my stomach.

  Phillips announced each of the Russians like royalty, as I looked around the room. I didn’t recognize half the people here, and I suspected it was because they were either from the press or from Washington. You don’t throw a shindig like this without making sure some of the right people are in proximity for political purposes, and I suspected there were more than a few figureheads to spare. I recognized at least one big-mouthed senator from the president’s party as well as a couple other familiar faces that looked like members of the House. I’m no political junkie, but these were some fairly big names. Everyone wanted a piece of the action on this one, I guess, and getting a handshake photo with recently released political prisoners was probably a golden ticket to somewhere. Not sure where. Re-election, maybe. It all felt like image-work to me, attempts to look concerned without actually being concerned. That sense of nerves was now coupled with a disgusted sense that I was part of this theatrical display, and I was suddenly glad that I wasn’t wearing makeup. Maybe it’d keep me off the front page.

  “You look so uncomfortable right now,” Reed muttered into my ear. I turned to see him standing there with Dr. Perugini on his arm. She was in a dress that was tight and black and wouldn’t have looked out of place on a hooker. A classy, high-priced one, but still. He looked fairly relaxed for a guy who was standing in a stiff tux in the middle of a party like this, and I suddenly realized he was playing cool in front of his girlfriend.

  “I’m fine,” I said, in the tone of voice that women reserve for occasions when we are most definitely not fine, but don’t ask me about it. Perugini got it. She looked sour as ever, but I could see she got it.

  “What is it?” he asked, and she smacked him on the shoulder. He blinked in befuddlement.

  “Nerves,” I lied. Or was I telling the truth?

  “It’ll all be over soon,” he said. “Want a drink?”

  “N—yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Martini?” he asked.

  “Ugh, yuck, no,” I said. “Something sweet. I’ve had enough bitter for a while.”

  “Jagerbomb?” he asked, and I gave him a look. “Err, I’ll see what I can do. Something sweet.” He wandered off toward the bar that had been set up in the corner, a white-jacketed caterer moving around behind it. Dr. Perugini followed, still on his arm. She hadn’t said a word to me, and I think we were both happier that way.

  “You look nervous,” Vitalik said, sliding back up to me. I hadn’t noticed, but apparently Phillips had finished with his little speech. Day two of knowing him, and I could already tune him out. There was mingling going on now, and I felt a sudden desire to entirely down a drink I didn’t even have. The room was crowded, packed full of people in fancy clothes. This was not my jam. I could feel the souls moving around here in this confined space, the cocktail party from hell. Volkov circled nearby, watching, and then wandered into a circle of reporters who proceeded to ask him a question, which he began to answer loudly, trying to make himself sound profound.

  “I’m not really a party person,” I said to Vitalik, trying to focus on him and ignore the noise of the party and the thoughts rattling in the back of my brain.

  “I understand completely,” he said, and his hand landed on my shoulder, keeping his fingers on the strap rather than letting them touch me on the flesh. I looked at it, but withheld the usual ire that would have left him with the impression that he could lose the hand or lose the hand. I’d get no points for that, not with reporters present. “I’ve recently spent a great deal of time with almost no company at all. To be thrust into circumstances such as these, with so many people in a confined space … it’s an adjustment.” His eyes bored into mine. “I’ve known succubi and incubi before. Do you … feel the presence of all the people here?”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely curious or pressing for something more. “I can sense the people around us, yeah,” I said. Of course, I didn’t know if that was normal or not, since I’d never really had much in the way of a mentor for my powers. I think my mom had expected me to just figure it out on my own, because even in the months when we worked together she hadn’t exactly been free-flowing with the advice.

  “I hear it’s worse in crowds,” Vitalik said with a slow nod. “Almost like you can feel the souls without a touch.”

  “I felt that in New York,” I said. “I don’t get out much.”

  I was trying to find my way to extricate myself from the conversation with Vitalik when the quiet guy, Miksa, came wandering up. He moved slowly, just drifting along like the wind was carrying him gently on a current. When he parked himself next to us, I felt Vitalik’s hand fall off my shoulder.

  “Did you know Liliana Negrescu?” Miksa asked, his voice low and polite.

  I blinked at him in surprise, an action I saw mirrored on Vitalik’s face. I got the sense that Miksa didn’t talk much. “Uhm …” I started to answer, and honesty popped out. “Briefly.” Where the hell did that question come from?

  Miksa nodded, slowly. “Did you kill her?”

  That froze me right in place. I’d run across Liliana Negrescu almost a year ago, in London. She’d been working as a hench … woman? Person? Whatever. She’d been the knife hand for a guy named Philip Delsim, who was a real piece of work. Liliana had been his aide, his trained killer, and I’d left her splattered against
a wall in a basement in central London.

  But I didn’t think anybody knew that. I hadn’t even mentioned it to law enforcement over there because they’d already been pretty cross with me over my breaking Philip Delsim’s neck.

  “Uhh,” I said, searching for an answer. Behind Miksa’s dull stare was an energy, and he was wholly focusing it on me. I didn’t get the sense he was emotionally invested in the answer at all, but appearances could be deceiving. My lies were almost always transparent in any case, so I went with the truth. “Yeah,” I said. “She fought me, and I killed her.”

  Miksa nodded absently, like this was just some minor detail he’d filed away. “Okay,” he said and wandered off before I could recover my wits and ask him a question. Which would have been, “What was Liliana Negrescu to you?” Stranger? Lover? Friend? Enemy? Based on his reaction, I wouldn’t have guessed any of those.

  I glanced at Vitalik, who still looked … shocked, really. “I’ve never heard him speak so quickly to someone he didn’t know,” Vitalik said.

  “Clearly a pressing question on his mind,” I said. “Were they friends?”

  Vitalik shrugged, a blanket falling over his face. “I have no idea. I can’t say I’m familiar with this Liliana. It’s not as though he talks about himself.”

  A waiter came by bearing a tray of canapés, and I snatched one off and tossed it in my mouth to keep. I was hungry, and I had yet to see a buffet table. I frowned as it hit my tongue. It tasted awful. I searched the room for a trash can, for a stray napkin, for anything, catching the amusement from Vitalik all the while. I finally caught sight of someone’s discarded drink sitting on a table, and a cocktail napkin was left behind underneath. I made for it at just below meta speed, pushing the glass aside and raising the napkin to my lips. It wasn’t ladylike, but it had to be done.

  I looked up to see that Vitalik had followed me through the crowd. “I take it the catering is sub-par?”

  I ran my tongue all over the inside of my mouth. “I wouldn’t hire them again. I think that chicken was raw.” It had been slick and slimy, and not in the good way, like sushi.

  Vitalik nodded. “I guess I’ll avoid that, then.”

  “I would,” I said. “It’s not good.”

  “Probably still better than what we were spoon-fed in prison,” he said with a little amusement. I looked past him to see Volkov detach himself from the group of reporters he’d been holding court with and start to stagger our way. That made me just a little uneasy.

  I looked for an avenue of escape and found the place pretty well and truly blocked. We were beyond capacity, a surprising number of people in here considering how few of them worked here. Caterers made their way through the crowds awkwardly, their trays held high. I caught a glimpse of someone else making a face as they took a bite of something, then remembered I was looking for an exit route. Two sides of the room were glass, windows that looked out on the snowy campus. Darkness had swept in early, as per usual in January, and only the faint light of some lamps in the distance gave hints of what lay outside in the night.

  “You,” Volkov said, plainly tipsy. The guy didn’t even have a drink in his hand. He came at me without any sort of hesitation. If I had to guess, I would have thought he’d mainlined a couple shots in the interval between his arrival and now.

  I withheld any scathing rebuttal to that somewhat accusatory calling and smiled politely. It was something I hoped I was getting better at, but from the way Vitalik flinched, I guessed I’d have a ways to go. “Hi,” I said.

  “‘O for a muse of fire,’” Volkov said, leveling his eyes on me.

  I frowned. “Why are you quoting Shakespeare at me?”

  He looked a little surprised. “You … recognize that?” He was damned tipsy.

  “Henry V,” I said, still a little baffled. “Not really sure what setting the stage for sweeping drama to follow has to do with me, but …”

  “A muse of fire,” he said weakly. How drunk was this guy? “That would scorch us all.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him, and looked toward Vitalik, whose face was curtained off from expression. “You think I’m going to … scorch you?” I certainly had that power, but was this the rambling of a drunk man?

  What the hell was going on here?

  “He quotes from literature constantly,” Vitalik said under his breath, face still shrouded. “It’s what he does.”

  I blinked at that. The context was just … strange. But drunk people do weird things, I suppose. “Okay.”

  “You,” Volkov said, stumbling closer. The group of press he’d been standing with earlier stood there, watching our exchange. If I acted the fool, this would definitely meet the objective definition for failure for the evening. I held my tongue and let him come closer.

  “Still me,” I said, smiling politely. Or wolfishly. Something.

  “‘The apparel oft proclaims the man,’” Volkov said, now only a few feet away.

  I racked my brain. It was a short search. “Hamlet,” I said. “Polonius’s goodbye to Laertes.” Mom made me memorize scads of Shakespeare, quizzed me on it at the end of each day with punishments for failure and no reward for success. It kept me occupied when she locked me in my house for a decade. Whiled away the dull hours.

  Volkov seemed surprised, again. “Clothes make the man,” he said, like I needed a translation.

  “I like to think that skin and bone make the man,” I said, my patience with whatever game he was playing dwindling fast. “His clothes just keep him from showing his ass.” I eyed Volkov, as though I could transmit by thought the obvious follow-up: Though they’re not doing a great job of keeping you from showing yours, drunkard.

  Volkov stood up straight, adjusting his tie, which was loose around his collar. “‘And this above all else … to thine own self be true.’”

  I stared at him, still not sure why he was spitting these random quotations at me. “I’m not sure what you’re going for here.”

  “You must forgive my friend,” Vitalik said, stepping between Volkov and I. He had the solicitous look of a man who was trying hard to stave off some embarrassment. “He’s clearly … impaired.”

  “I see clearly,” Volkov said, wobbling closer. “I see who you are.”

  “Who I am?” I asked. I saw movement in the crowd; Natasya Sokolov herself was threading her way through a knot of reporters, her eyes fixed on me. I glanced back at Volkov. “Who am I?”

  “You …” He broke into a grin. “You’re ruthless. Vicious. Unrelenting.”

  “You are insulting our hostess,” Vitalik said, suddenly urgent, like he had to get this mess cleaned up before Sokolov came over. I doubted he’d be able to finish in time, because Volkov looked like he was about two steps from drooling and toppling onto the floor. “This is unlike you, Leonid. Don’t be nekulturny.”

  Volkov’s head snapped back at that, like Vitalik had punched him in the face. “You call me that? You’re sitting here speaking to an oppressor of the people like she’s a comrade you want to lay.”

  I felt my face burn. “Hey! I don’t hear anyone crying out, ’elp, ’elp, I’m being oppressed! while I’m walking around town.”

  Volkov stared at me, utterly without comprehension. “What?”

  “It’s a movie,” I said. “Probably came after you went into the gulag. Which, BTW, I’m starting to see why they stuck you there.”

  Volkov just stared. “What is … ‘BTW’?” He stared at me with watery eyes, still seemingly unsteady on his feet.

  “It’s called English,” I said, annoyed enough to start being a jerk. Then I rethought what I’d said. “Sort of.”

  Sokolov was still threading her way forward, stopped by a reporter with a camera. That same damned senator put an arm around her shoulder and I saw the flash, the hint of loathing, the desire to break that arm off and hand it back to him. It looked familiar. But she just stood there and posed, stiffly, as a waiter strolled by with his tray tilted at an angle on his shoulder.


  What the hell?

  I watched the waiter striding off, and it occurred to me for the first time that there were legitimate reasons why this was all damned wrong. The waiters were moving like they’d never carried a tray before. It was awkward, and I would have been prepared to accept it from one of them. Training a new guy, right?

  Not one of them moved like they had a clue what they were doing.

  My eyes locked on Volkov as he staggered to within inches of me. I didn’t like having him this close, but it was the last worry on a pile that was about to catch fire. “I heard you can fly.” He reeked of vodka, like he’d spilled it on himself. He probably had, come to think of it. “If God had meant for man to fly, he’d have given him wings.”

  I stared at him in utter disbelief. Vitalik did much the same just over his shoulder, and I could see he was very close to intervening on my behalf. Or maybe on his drunk friend’s behalf. “I’m not a man,” I said curtly, “so I figured it out for myself, no wings required.”

  Volkov let out a low grunt of amusement at my reply. “I like you. But I don’t.” His face changed in an instant, from the drunken smile to a look of something darker. More angry.

  Savage.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been face to face with someone who meant to kill me, but it came as a surprise how quickly it occurred to me that this was what was about to happen.

  And then something exploded in a rush of air near the elevator bank, and blue smoke hit me in the face, setting me to coughing immediately. My nose registered something like rotting flowers, sweet and yet foul, and it crept up my nostrils and stayed there. I coughed twice, looking into the face of Volkov, who reached out and grabbed hold of my throat in his fingers.

  I returned the favor and wrapped my fingers around his neck, meeting his gaze with a furious one of my own. So this was how he wanted to play it. All thought of the blue smoke and playing nice for the press vanished the instant he laid a hand on me.

  He pushed, hard, and I felt myself lose my footing. He ripped me from the ground and carried me forward like the bear of a man he was. I felt the window shatter behind me as he carried me out into the night, the stinging of glass mingling with the first sharp shock of the winter air as we plummeted three stories toward the ground.