Dark Protector
Page 15
I searched his eyes and relished in their kindling. I understood he’d done this to “help” keep Tony away from me, but I didn’t really care. He wanted me, I’d sensed that. As I sensed he fought back lust. I can give him a hard-on like Beauty-Queen, too.
“Yes, that should do it,” I whispered, referring to the gratification of knowing I had him hooked at least for a few moments. But he surely thought I was talking about Tony.
Only after Damian pulled away from me and walked out the gate did the winter air begin to cool me down. Until I closed the door behind me he hadn’t driven away though – probably making sure I wouldn’t leave again once he was gone.
I slapped my back against the door and trickled down with a drunken smile on my face. I stayed there on my butt, a fantasizing idiot, until Mom found me. She was so eager to know how my evening with Damian had gone that she unwrapped the shawl and took off my coat herself, then led me to the couch.
The TV was on. Leona kept Mom company. A pleasant surprise to see George had joined them as well, even though he still wore the same pajamas he had the entire week, his hair a rumpled heap, his narrow face drawn and pale.
Too ecstatic about tonight, I couldn’t keep the main part to myself, and told them about the kiss over jasmine tea, my cheeks burning in the homely warmth. Mom clapped her hands and giggled like a schoolgirl, while Leona was torn between smiles and frowns. George gawked, confused.
“So you’re with Damian Novac now?” he inquired.
“Well, I don’t think I’m ‘with him’,” I said, reality striking back. It wasn’t welcome, I wished I could’ve dreamt a little longer. “I mean we kissed, but from that to being together. . . It’s a long way.”
I immediately regretted having spilled the beans. I’d made tonight look like a date, which wasn’t the case, and now everybody, especially Mom, had expectations. So I changed the direction of our talk using Damian’s strategy – I started asking questions, addressing most of them to George. In the end, this was the first time he joined us since we’d returned from Brașov.
“The nightmares are lighter,” he said. “I know I have the medication to thank for that, but –” He looked sideward at Leona and took her hand. “Being with Leo seems to be the best kind of therapy.”
He even laughed a few times. He looked carefree those moments, yet not the same young man he used to be. He appeared older.
As for Leona, she gave George half-hearted and, I daresay, fake smiles. Maybe she had trouble forgiving him for the incident in the mountains but, when we finally had time alone much later that night – she had to share George’s couch until he fell asleep – it turned out something else held priority on her mind.
“Hector needs your help,” were the words that startled me from my fantasies of Damian at around two o’clock, when Leona barged into my room.
“Geez, you scared the life out of me!”
“Then brace yourself, for what I’m about to tell ya will send quite a few nightmares down your street.” She dropped on the bed by my side and glanced to the window behind her as if somebody might be spying on us. “Hector says Novac’s patrons, the Order of Lords, are just as dangerous as BioDhrome. Under their umbrella, Novac plans a bloodbath against BioDhrome’s people. Hector doesn’t know exactly when and where, but there’s no doubt that in such a confrontation many innocent lives will be lost. But there’s hope! Hector’s convinced Novac has a thing for you, and he wants you to help prevent the slaughter.”
I stared at her in shock. “What is this, freaking James Bond on S.F. scale?”
“Damian Novac is no less a villain than BioDhrome. Talk to Hector, have him show you everything he’s shown me. Damian Novac runs dirty affairs, Alice, even with the government.”
“What?”
“Just a few nights ago, the Minister of Defense himself came to Constanța in complete secrecy, only to have a private meeting behind steel doors with none other than Damian Novac.”
The info stuck like too big a bite in my throat, and prevented me to make a sound.
“As the agent who knew Novac’s case and the man himself best,” Leona continued, “Hector went with something like a S.W.A.T. team to bring Novac in at around midnight. The Ministry has such special interest in the man because of what BioDhrome made of him, something that became a matter of national security a decade ago – the Executioner.” She paused for the effect. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it was stubborn.
“Hector had to escort Novac to a block of flats by the seafront,” Leona went on. “He and his men waited on the landing on the highest floor while Novac spoke behind soundproof doors with the Minister. There’s something huge going on here, Alice. Something that will cost many innocent lives, like it almost cost us ours back in the mountains. But even though the Executioner has the support of corrupt ministers, Hector and his people from the R.I.S. are willing to fight and take down the hydra. And you could play a huge part in it.”
I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to the side, inspecting Leona. “And how come he told you all this? Hector, I mean. No offense, but you’re just an anonymous student, a civilian. It’s not common to trust civilians with this kind of information.”
She smiled with deeper meaning, then sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Hector and I, we’re both gypsies, Alice, and, as you know, blood runs thick for us.”
I smiled. “You think he has a thing for you?”
“I hope he has a thing for me.”
That yanked the curtain of doubt aside. “As you do for him.”
Leona’s cheeks went dark cherry. She looked to the window, hiding her eyes.
She didn’t talk about her feelings that night, though. I guess she wasn’t ready. We chewed on the story she’d presented until she was lost to exhaustion and light snores. I’d had a long day and the hell of an emotionally demanding evening myself, but I barely managed a few hours of sleep.
Dawn washed over the bald contour of the knotty old apple tree, and the first feeling I felt when I opened my eyes was ecstasy unleashed at the memory of Damian’s kiss. Only for Tony’s eyes, I remembered, the morning happiness deflating, and my brain switching on.
I took a quick shower, brushed my teeth and struggled with my hair. I finally managed to restrain it in a ponytail, jumped in a fluffy black knit mom had gotten for me, and a pair of comfortable jeans and boots. I grabbed my coat and backpack, and dashed out the front door before breakfast or seeing anyone’s face. I texted Leona from the bus, a concise message: “Library, checking Dr. N. Sinclair.”
The county library is one of the most impressive buildings in town. It’s big, cubic and ugly, inside-out white and massive with stone that looks like – but I doubt actually is – marble. To me it had always been a graveyard for books with a far too complicated search system.
It took a while to find the right little drawer where they’d listed Sinclair’s name and his only two titles, “Facets of the Nuclein” and “Psychology and Physiology, unlikely Twins” in the forest of boards. They were so low in demand that they hadn’t been introduced in the digital system, the staff explained.
I removed the slips and took them to the front desk, ordered them both, then took the stairs to the second floor to wait for the delivery. The books were allegedly too old and fragile to take home, and therefore could only be examined on site.
I waited, tapping the desk with my fingers, surrounded by tall bookshelves and a grave-like silence. There wasn’t a soul in the room besides me – no secret that barely anybody read outside the exam months. So I had the ticking clock and the rapping of my fingers on the desk as sole companions until a groomed librarian with long fingernails finally brought the books.
“Sorry for the delay, but they weren’t easy to find. We don’t get requests for the older editions much anymore,” she admonished rather than apologized. She scowled at me, making it clear that she didn’t appreciate me having made her search the deepest and – judging by the eat
en covers and her smell – mold besieged basements of the county library.
She lingered a few moments, allowing me the chance to ask for forgiveness, but I was much too fascinated by the ancient appearance of the books. The leather covers, black and eaten by humidity and time, looked medieval rather than nineteenth century. Jewels, neglected gems. The pages were yellowed and caked together, so I was extra careful when separating them. The Romanian library didn’t make a safe place for such treasures that too few people knew about, and I instinctively wondered how many valuable pieces had been lost to negligence and decay all over the world. How much information had been out there that was forever out of our reach, forever destroyed?
The bits of intelligible content – much of it was faded and destroyed – read complicated and elaborate, not to mention much more advanced than what I imagined they knew back in 1891, when the book had been published. I barely made it through a few pages, but I gathered that “Facets of the Nuclein” furthered the work of the German Dr. Friedrich Miescher. It talked about how genes regulate the kind and amount of protein cells produce in order to complete different tasks.
With throbbing temples and a grumbling stomach, I took a break around noon. I got a bagel from a nearby baker, then went back to the library and on to the second book in the reading room. It was a bit lighter than “Facets of the Nuclein,” being divided in what resembled a “hardware” and a “software” part. I got most of the software – the psychology part – but physiology stretched out of my brain’s reach. I eventually gave up with an exhausted groan that scratched the silence.
It was past seven P.M. when I left. It had started to snow again, the first layers of sludge already in place, the evening mist glistening in the streetlights. I passed by the windows of busy cafés with the coat wrapped close around my body, and my chin tucked in the scarf, watching the boisterous groups inside. Girls were overly groomed with strident eye makeup and inflated lips, while boys acted the rich gangsters with golden chains, their napes folding with fat.
I took the bus home, half expecting him to emerge at any stop from around a dark corner or from the crowd. But, if he was anywhere close, he didn’t show himself even as I walked up the street to my parental home. Vasile and Chanel flanked me again, their tails still waggling as I closed the gate on them – with every intention of coming back, which they knew.
But, as I returned with a tray of chicken leftovers and bread in tomato juice, the cobbled street was empty and dark. Not a soul up or down, nothing but the ghostly street lamps that seemed to have swallowed my two scruffy old friends, and gave the night an air of Londoner danger. The bulb hanging from the overhang of the dump swayed alone in the wind.
A chill went through me from head to toe. I shuddered, as if Jack the Ripper might emerge in a blink from the haze and slit my throat. It was a premonition much stronger than anything I’d had before, a premonition of a danger that felt no lesser than the peasant in the mountains.
I dropped the tray by the gate and hurried to the house. Wrong move, it turned out. As soon as I closed the door to the vestibule a hand covered my mouth and nose with a stinking cloth. I was yanked backwards into a fleshy body that soon seemed to coat me completely. Vision darkened, and my head began to spin. I blacked out.
Chapter Fourteen
It took a few seconds until my sight cleared on a pair of legs and boots. Mine.
I lay crouched on the back seat of a car, the sound of the sea a muffled roar outside. A leathered hand held a small bottle that looked like cologne at my nose, but stunk pungently of sulfur.
As I recognized Officer Sorescu in the driver’s seat, I panicked and scrambled to sit up. My eyes must’ve spoken volumes, since he hurried to explain himself.
“Don’t worry,” he said, palm up as if to stop me from screaming. “I mean no harm. Agent Varlam wants to see you.”
The slightly anxious tone and soft brown eyes confirmed that he posed no danger. This situation wasn’t any more pleasant to him than it was to me. Fear subsided.
Rubbing the back of my neck I said, “What the hell did you do that for?”
He looked down, mien guilty. “It wasn’t my call, Miss Preda.”
“Hector’s call, then?”
But he wouldn’t lose a word on it. He helped me out of the car into the roar outside, and kept me in balance as I stepped on the brink of an earth cliff above the raging sea. My hair whipped against my face in the wind, the cold infiltrating through the loops of my knit and biting me all over. Grains of sand and hair stuck to my lips.
That Hector wanted to talk at the sea front in such weather struck me as weird at the very least. For all I knew, Hector Varlam could be as dangerous as any thug. I didn’t trust him, he wore too many masks, and something told me he was using Leona. He messed with her mind and exploited her vulnerabilities.
I braced myself in a futile attempt to keep some of my body heat that quickly lost the battle with shivering when Sorescu put an arm around my back. It helped, warmth spreading along my spine as I managed my first wobbly steps through the frosted shrubbery towards the front line of apartment buildings, spotted with lights at scattered windows. As we walked, the man brought his body closer, and I gave in to his warming arms. His presence felt somehow reassuring, but then Damian’s warning flashed through my mind. I loosened myself gently from his embrace, as if Damian could pop out of nowhere any second, and punch the man senseless.
As we reached the entrance to a tower-shaped block of flats close to the cliff, my heart raced like a rabbit’s. The place looked sinister, doors and railings creaking in its hollow, obscure heights. Elevator broken, which was a tragedy considering the ten stories we had to climb. They seemed deserted.
We reached the highest floor panting. There were no apartments here, only a set of double doors cast into the long wall, apparently made of steel. They were closed, massive and forbidding, like the entrance to a vault.
“What is this?” I asked Sorescu, puzzled.
Sorescu didn’t reply. He just pushed a button embedded in a metal panel that looked like a high-tech interphone, much resembling the one at Dad’s lab. The heavy steel withdrew sideward into the wall with a high-tech sound worthy of starship Enterprise, making my jaw drop. A freaking penthouse bunker in what looked like a ghost block in Chernobyl?
A disappointment to see we now stood before a spacious room with floor-to-ceiling windows across from us. It seemed they hadn’t been washed in months, but they were surprisingly well insulated, the roar of the sea barely audible. Only our steps reverberated across the bare-walled space, the concrete smeared with what looked like rudimentary graffiti and cusses written in coal, resembling the ashen skin of a heavy smoker covered with tattoos.
Hector Varlam looked out one of the dirty panes of glass. He stood with hands in his pockets, a thick coat covering him to the knees, the collar straight up, concealing his nape. He seemed a cold war, James Bond character.
The door behind us slid shut with a thud – incredible, all the technology deployed only to hide an empty room in dire need of renovation – and Agent Varlam turned around to face us. A surprise to see he’d shaved, revealing olive skin with vestigial craters – maybe from chicken pox? His aquiline features were even more pronounced without the beard, expressing cunning, and the dark eyes focused, his hair slicked back.
He wasn’t close to Damian’s league, but he was a good-looking man nevertheless. Robust and masculine. I imagined a hairy, nicely formed chest and rough hands that would make Leona’s body vibrate.
“He meant every word,” Hector said, his voice an echo in the hollow space.
“What?”
“Novac. What he told you about his feelings at the café, he meant it. It wasn’t just a point he made about your ‘susceptibility to lies of passion,’ as you told Miss Ignat. He really is strongly attracted to you. Miss Ignat told me all about your evening with him, I hope you don’t mind.”
“I do mind, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, I believe you, but I have a hard time trusting you.”
“And why is that?”
“You threatened to lock me up, along with my dad, remember?”
“You have me all wrong. I assure you that was not my intention.”
“Are we playing games now, Hector? Are we going to pretend that we didn’t share that train carriage? The cottage? The cold? The dread? That you didn’t speak those words at the hospital?”
“It’s not like we shared all that as best friends, is it? Our exchanges were few, so you can’t claim to know me as well as a friend.”
“Back at the hospital you would’ve had me believe so to get info out of me. And, truth is, we did go through things that would create a bond between even the most distant of people. Our lives were threatened in the same place, in the same way. So. What happened to babe?”
He smirked. “Don’t tell me you’d like me to call you that again?”
“I’d like to keep our relationship authentic, if we’re forced to have one at all.”
He nodded, inspecting my face. “I knew it had to be more than looks that got Damian Novac hooked.” Then, addressing Sorescu, “Leave us.”
The man turned and walked away, but lingered by the door, his fingers missing the code on the panel several times. A low cuss.
Hector gave him the combination. The metal doors thudded shut behind Sorescu, and Hector and I were left alone, facing each other.
“You must make him nervous, poor Sorescu,” Hector said.
“I think you intimidate him.”
“Never enough to make him lose his focus. He might not be the brightest, but he’s a well-trained man.”
“Then I must make him nervous indeed,” I replied in the most defiant tone I could, chin up. “And I’m certain you know it was BioDhrome’s gas that brought about this . . . attractiveness. It made my brain activate it. As you know I didn’t always possess it.”