Witchblade: Talons

by John Dechancie

  Wait. This was no good. She wasn’t going to break into the place. This wasn’t a raid. Couldn’t be. She didn’t have authorization to be here, let alone a warrant. This was another jurisdiction entirely. Hell, this was another state.

  When in doubt, launch an all-out frontal assault.

  She walked around the building, mounted the spacious porch, and knocked at the front door. As she did, snow began to fall in earnest.

  The door stayed shut. She gave it at least a minute, then knocked again.

  The door opened. And there stood the man who’d been reading the girly zine. “Come in, Detective.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Sara said as she stepped into a big foyer. She never seen a log cabin with a foyer before.

  “Vladimir,” he said.

  “You work for Mr. Kontra?”

  “Yes. He will see you. Come this way, please.”

  Vladimir led the way out of the foyer and straight into a huge room with an imposing fireplace, to the right of which began a sweeping panorama of windows.

  Kontra stood in the corner, smiling at her.

  “What a surprise,” he said.

  “Was in the neighborhood, thought I’d drop in,” Sara said.

  “I’m glad you did. I suppose you want to talk to me.”

  “I’m really pissed off at you.”

  Kontra nodded understandingly. “I see. I see. Well, I don’t blame you. It was unfortunate, the way it looked.”

  “That way what looked?”

  “That I used you as alibi.”

  “Ah, that occurred to you,” Sara said brightly.

  “Yes. Yes, it looked that way, but it isn’t true. Ashkenazi . . . well, I heard about him. He was my enemy. He hates me from way back. In Moscow. He thinks I killed his brother. He was thief, and his brother, too. His brother was killed in prison, and he blames me.”

  “You didn’t strangle him?”

  Kontra’s right eyebrow lifted slightly. “How did you hear this accusation?”

  “These things get around.”

  “But this happened in Russia long time ago. Please sit.”

  Sara took a seat on one of the plaid couches. “So it happened?”

  “I misspoke. It didn’t happen in Russia, long time ago, my killing him. But he died in prison. That happened.”

  “Ashkenazi was your enemy, but you didn’t have him killed?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t send Anton and Sergei to shoot him with a .22 caliber pistol?”

  “No.”

  “But now Anton and Sergei are dead.”

  “Yes. And you were there.”

  Sara crossed her long legs. “You have ways of getting information, too.”

  “Absolutely,” Kontra said. “You were there. Not only that, you might have killed them.”

  “Really. You think that.”

  “Baba thinks that, too.”

  “So we each suspect the other of murder.”

  “Looks that way. I’m wondering why you come here.”

  “I’m wondering, too,” Sara said. “Maybe it’s because I have no other way of solving this case.”

  “What case are you solving. Ashkenazi?”

  “Maybe. You wiseguy cases are all the same. It’s not so much solving the case as getting court evidence that won’t disappear or end up dead. And killing Anton and Sergei is a good way of getting rid of evidence.”

  Kontra said, “You want a drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Why did you come here? What do you think you will find?”

  “I don’t know. But I wonder what we’d find if we dug around.”

  Kontra shrugged. “Dirt. This is farm, you know.”

  “You never know what you might find in the dirt.”

  Kontra looked off. “There are roads, they run near the property. Anybody can stop, dig, bury something.”

  “You know where all the bodies are buried.”

  Kontra laughed. “Where do you think you will start? There are four hundred acres.”

  “Be interesting to see what we can dig up.”

  “Have a good time.”

  Vladimir came in and said something in Russian to Kontra. Kontra expressed annoyance and gave an order. Vladimir nodded and left in a hurry.

  “What was that all about?” Sara asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Did your guest take a hike?”

  “Guest?”

  “The black kid. Your hacker.”

  “Hacker?” Kontra echoed.

  “Computer whiz. Techno-nerd.”

  “You know, American slang is still mystery to me sometimes. There is so much of it. Russian slang has lots, too. But I think I hear new American slang every day.”

  “Romanian have slang?”

  “Not so much. More dialect, you call it.”

  “He seems to be here against his will,” Sara told him. “He been giving you trouble?”

  “No trouble.”

  “Are you going to sic the werewolf on him?”

  “What nonsense do you speak now? Werewolf. What do you think, you are in movie?”

  “I think that’s what did in Anton and Sergei.”

  Kontra frowned dyspeptically. “Now you are making me sick. You accuse some werewolf, but you did it.”

  “What in the world makes you think that? Did Baba give you that idea?”

  “She says nothing about werewolf. She says you are devil woman.”

  “I don’t know, Lazlo. Romania, werewolves. Kind of go together.”

  “Do you think we are magicians? Witches, sorcerers? Romanians are just people. You shouldn’t believe Hollywood.”

  “I don’t. But I know I didn’t tear Anton and Sergei apart. I have no motive. I’m a police . . . person.” Sara cringed inwardly.

  Kontra guffawed. “You think that makes you holy? I made inquiries into your department. You are far from holy person. You are soon to be indicted.”

  Sara looked at him calmly. But her stomach twisted. “Your sources aren’t very accurate.”

  “We’ll see. It is funny. You come here, you charge me with killing stupid thief Ashkenazi. Mob hit, you say. But you are charged with being mob hit man.”

  “Hit person. The silly things some people say.”

  “Yes. Like you will dig for bodies here. You won’t find anything. And who will listen when district attorney indicts you? No one.”

  “I’m still going to come here and dig.”

  “Not today?” Kontra leaned forward. “You don’t have warrant?”

  “Not today. But I’ll be back.”

  “You don’t have warrant? You just come up here to talk?”

  “Pretty much. Just to let you know that I’m on to you.”

  It sounded lame even to Sara. But she wasn’t about to let her face show it.

  “Oh,” Kontra said quietly, nodding. “That’s nice.”

  Sara rose. “I’m taking the kid.”

  “What?”

  “The hacker kid. I believe he’s here under duress. I’m taking him back to New York, if he wants to go.”

  Kontra rose and shrugged expansively. “He’s not here.”

  “I saw him through the window.”

  “He left. He’s not prisoner. You are making a mistake.”

  “He ran off, probably. Didn’t you send Vladimir after him?”

  “I sent Vladimir on errand.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Sara drew her pistol. Kontra laughed at it.

  “You are silly thing. What do you think you will do?”

  “Just in case Vladimir gives me trouble.”

  “You are not in New York. This is state of Connecticut. You have no business up here.”

  “Connecticut is New York’s bedroom. So long, Laz.”

  Sara walked to the sliding glass door and yanked it open. It slid with alarming ease and thumped violently against the opposite jamb.

  “Careful!” Kontra yell
ed.

  “Sorry.”

  “Crazy woman.”

  Snow already covered the yard. It was a thick, wet, early snow, the kind that slops down in late October and tries to get a head start on Christmas. But it never works. It melts almost instantly and makes a fool of itself.

  Just like Sara now. She struck out into the yard and got to the woods in about fifty quick paces.

  The woods were snowy, dark, and deep, but Sara had no promises to keep, and she hoped the kid hadn’t run miles into the forest. She found Vladimir’s tracks easy enough. She was no woodsman, but the guy had big feet and the snow had just fallen minutes before. A blind man could have seen where he’d lit off after the kid.

  The kid. Actually, he could have been in his late thirties. “Baby-faced kid,” though, was the part he looked. Maybe it was his nerdly quality. Nerdish?

  A shot, followed by three more in rapid succession. An eight-millimeter semiautomatic, for sure. The sound was a muffled popping that somehow hurt the ears.

  Sara cut to her left. She wanted to see what Vladimir was shooting at without getting in the line of fire. She loped on into the woods, hearing some commotion off to her right and up ahead.

  The snowfall was thinner here because of the trees, but the fog was gathering. It was getting harder to see. She heard something, though. Something moving through the trees. Branches were snapping like toothpicks. It was big.

  Very big. And strong. She had no idea what it was or exactly where it was.

  More pops. Same gun, it sounded like. Vladimir was shooting at the thing, whatever it was, and he was retreating.

  Something in the woods suddenly flashed and burned. The sound was like a huge blowtorch.

  Sara thought that was strange. A huge blowtorch in the woods. One that moved. Something was moving up ahead, sliding through the trees and snapping branches. She couldn’t see anything definite, though. All she saw was a moving white-on-white blur.

  She heard a man scream. Sara stopped momentarily, then jumped to her right. She had found a deer trail, a narrow path, and ran along it toward the commotion.

  Before long something very strange came along the trail the other way, running spastically. A burning man. A man on fire, his head and entire body wreathed in flames, his hair a torch.

  He was screaming in pain and fear. Sara stopped and let him come at her.

  He was screaming in Russian. It was Vladimir, and he was burning to death. Sara kicked at his ankle as he passed and he went sprawling into the snow. She used her foot again to flip him over.

  “Roll roll, roll!” she yelled.

  He did his best, flopping over in the snow. The flames wouldn’t go out so she grabbed him and rolled him, again and again until his clothes were smoking but no longer on fire.

  His face was mostly carbonized, his hair burned away. He groaned and his eyes rolled up white.

  “Vladimir?” she said.

  He rallied to consciousness briefly, then slipped away again.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  She tried to do what she could, but Vladimir was never going to get up again. She knelt there by him, a little stunned and mystified.

  She got up. Vladimir was charred almost beyond recognition, but still had some life in him. She could only call for paramedics. Surely they had paramedics in this county. She got out her cell phone and hit the call button.

  No service. She’d have to go back to the house. She didn’t want to, but however Vladimir had conducted his life, whatever he had done in the service of some crime lord, he was still deserving of help, and she would not let him die without a call for medical aid. It was her duty as a police officer. But she had to get back first.

  Which way? Simple, follow her own tracks. But the fog grew soupier as she walked and somehow she lost her own tracks. She walked on in the only direction the house could have been, or so she thought. She tramped down a shallow depression and up again.

  The big log house wasn’t where it should have been.

  She was lost, and the fog was congealing into gaspacho; tree trunks looked like utility poles on a London street. She could see almost nothing else. Again, though, she could hear something. It sounded familiar: slavering and gibbering, with undertones of both menace and glee.

  The werewolf was now stalking her.

  The fire for Vladimir; for her, getting torn apart in a rustic setting. How quaint, how positively quaint. She began to run. The snow was not yet deep, and she managed a good pace.

  She ran for a good five minutes, crossing tracks at right angles twice. At least she was staying in the same general area. She ran through a patch of still-smoking woods where all the snow had melted. Tree trunks smoldered. That had been one powerful blast. More than enough to toast Vladimir.

  She took a hard right, the lupine gibbering and slavering still at her heels. The thing could move fast, at least as fast as she could run. And she was now running with all her might.

  The thing was gaining. Its insane chortling came closer and closer. She strained to get some distance between her and it.

  The inevitable trip and fall.

  She had seen it in countless movies. A female runs from the monster; she trips and falls, automatically. A movie trope if there ever was one. The chick can’t get three steps before—whoopsy daisy.

  And neither could she. Her right foot hit an especially slippery patch of snow, whipped out sideways, and sent her tumbling. She rolled three times and ended up sitting. The werebeast ran full tilt right at her.

  She raised her arms to block a lunge for the throat.

  Out of the way, bitchface.

  The shaggy creature leapt over her and continued running.

  Astounded, she got to her feet and followed it. Very soon she came out of the woods, into the yard, and she saw the critter lope across the garden, mindless of the onions and cauliflower, cross the lawn, bound across the deck, and throw the glass door open. The furry thing moved like nothing she had ever seen.

  She heard Kontra scream.

  Breaking into a dead run, she heard him begin to scream again, a horrible truncated exclamation of terror that terminated in a gurgle.

  When she found him on the other side of the couch, there was less to do for him than for Vladimir. His throat was missing and a river of blood was flowing across the beige carpet. The beast was nowhere in sight. As if it had evaporated.

  “Lazlo?” she said feebly. He could not answer. She fumbled with the cell phone, then remembered it was useless.

  The Paunescu son barged in as she was dialing the house phone. He caught sight of Kontra’s body and froze. Then he fixed Sara in a horrified stare. He turned and ran out of the house like a horse from a burning barn.

  She hung up the phone, deciding she did not want to deal with Connecticut authorities. She hadn’t identified herself to Paunescu. Who’s to say she’d been here at all?

  She did not want to be put into the position of explaining the unexplainable again, and especially not for strangers. Siry and Jake and even Seltzer were one thing; hick cops or state troopers were quite another.

  Speaking of explanations, where was that little twerp?

  Well, he wasn’t little, not actually. But he was twerp-like, for sure. What the hell was his story?

  There was yet another mystery to put with all the others. The Witchblade had been strangely silent throughout all this. She had felt a dull throb or two, but that was all. As if the Blade had seen it all before and was not impressed. Even when the Werewolf was almost on her, it fairly yawned, as if it knew the Werewolf had no intention of attacking it, knew the creature had been charged with a more pressing assignment and was not about to bother with an adversary it could not best.

  A flicker of a shadow. She turned, and there on the deck stood the twerp, looking in. He smiled sheepishly as he slid the door aside and stepped in.

  “This your handiwork?” she asked him.

  The kid inched closer, mesmerized by the sight of the man
gled body, the blood. He seemed ambiguous about his feelings. Something like shock and a morbid glee vied for registration on his face. “No, man. Jesus, all that blood.”

  “The human body has quite a lot. You should have seen Anton and Sergei’s apartment.”

  “Oh, man. Oh, man. That’s really disgusting,” the kid said, not able to shift his eyes away. “Almost took his head right off.”

  “Was this any of your doing?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, no. I didn’t do it.”

  “But did you conjure something that did?”

  He looked at her. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m totally serious. You do magic, don’t you?”

  “I dabble. It’s long been an interest.”

  “But you can do real magic.”

  “I can do some things. But stuff like that? I can’t do that.”

  She tried to gauge his sincerity. As far as she could tell, he was truthful. “Well, something did it. And that something wasn’t normal. It was paranormal.”

  He asked, “What was it?”

  “You didn’t see it?”

  “No. I heard some kind of animal noises. But I didn’t see anything. Was it some kind of bear or something?”

  “Bear? Hardly. It looked to me . . .” Sara scratched her head. It sounded so goofy. “You think you might possibly have conjured a werewolf?”

  “Jesus Christ! Nothing I’ve been doing would conjure a freaking werewolf. Where did that crap come from? You sayin’ a werewolf did this?”

  “Same one I tangled with in the Russians’ apartment. I think.”

  “You tangled . . .” He stepped back a few paces. Brood­ing, he walked slowly toward the windows. “Jesus. I don’t know what the hell is going on. I gotta think about all of this.”

  “What went on in the woods?” Sara asked.

  “That I have no idea. Some kind of big fire. I took off out the window, and that big dude was chasing me. Then I heard some kind of explosion, and I could see the woods burning.”

  “The big dude burned, too,” Sara told him.

  “I know. I saw him layin’ out there. He’s dead, too.”

  “What could have done it?”

  “Have no idea.”

  She looked at him levelly. “We need to talk.”

  “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”