“It might only have been a few minutes or hours for Mason. Onset of the symptoms might vary from person to person,” I said. “We can’t let Duke inside. We need to call Jenner. Can you talk to the others? Stitch and Marcus?”
The girl swallowed, chewed on her lip, then straightened. “I’ll try and explain it to them. And I’ll call Jenner. Will he be okay if we get to him quickly, I mean… and what about you?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a Weeder. Maybe it won’t infect me at all.” Haltingly, I reached out and patted her shoulder with my better hand. It was not something I’d ever done before, not with a person as unfamiliar to me as Talya, but I couldn’t deny that something about her made me feel protective. Fraternal, maybe. “I’m going to go and talk to Vanya while there’s time. Before I go do that, I want to go check something on Angkor.”
“No worries. If we get him now, we should be able to do something.” She smiled, wanly this time, and returned the pat on my forearm before we broke for the front door.
The two Tigers were smoking and watching TV in the back office of the parlor. Talya split from me and went to talk while I headed for the door leading down and tried to summon energy I simply didn’t have. Usually, I could mine myself for momentum, but it was all I could do to shuffle down each step. My chest was tight, my body was wracked with sharp pain, and I was burned out. Tired… very, very tired.
The Tigers had stripped Vanya and chained him on his feet, arms raised overhead. His wrists already swollen and bloody from the handcuffs keeping him fixed to one of the overhead beams. He was precariously balanced on a short plastic footstool, wobbling as he continually tried to find leverage against his bondage and a comfortable position for his injured leg. Neither were possible. He could barely fit one foot on the stool, let alone two. It was an agonizing way to position someone, and my regard for Zane rose a notch.
“I hoped to never have to see you in your underwear, Uncle Vitas,” I said, using the nickname he’d earned so long ago. We were both Ukrainian by blood, and we both spoke Surzhyk, the hybrid dialect common to the part of the continent where we drew our blood and history. “It’s an unfortunate sight. You look… itchy.”
Vanya spat at me, but even that motion threw him off balance. The mucus landed on floor to my right.
I watched him for a few moments, tapping the Wardbreaker’s silencer against the palm of my other hand. Exhausted as I was, seeing Vanya like this – sweaty, his remaining hair plastered to his face, bloody and stripped of his dignity – was gratifying. He was used to being on the other end of the stick. “As much as I hate you, I have to admit. You’re smarter than I ever believed. What do you think of chess, Vanya?”
“I think you’re fucking dead! Sergei’s coming after me. The Deacon’s comin’ after me. You’re dead!”
“No,” I replied, watching him steadily. “I’m not. Not for lack of trying. Because you’re smart… but your plans were based on a flawed premise. You believe all men are like you.”
Vanya continued to curse and writhe, but the struggle was wearing him out beyond endurance. I walked up to him, circling around behind him slowly. His skin tensed. I saw it in his tattoos, the way his scars and flab changed shape.
“So… you have been part of the TVS for long enough to go through an initiation,” I said, from behind him. “And Lev was almost certainly involved. Did Jana bring you in, or was it the other way around?”
“Fuck off,” Vanya replied.
“Sergei must know, but it’s not our Pakhun’s way to serve anyone, not even the NO,” I continued, keeping my voice down. “So he sanctioned you and Lev as long as he got his due.”
“Fuck off!” Vanya roared, rattling his cuffs. He nearly lost his balance on the footstool, unable to find purchase with his gun-shot leg. From the back, the flesh of that leg was purpling… not something that put me at ease.
“He sanctioned you because Jana knew that the Gift Horse Mare was here.” I drew around beside him, and began to pry and poke at him with the point of the knife, digging it in without drawing blood on his waist and groin, which made his flesh flinch and further destabilized him. Pain was a terrible way to get information, and beyond sadistic vindication, I had no desire to beat him. “And that’s what Sergei wants. The Mare. As long as he gets her, he didn’t care if you wore a purple dress and let Lev fuck your ass under the full moon.”
Already furious and getting angrier, Vanya spat like an angry camel as he twisted and thrashed. “I’ll fuck YOU in the ass, you stupid piece of shit!”
I came around enough that he could see my face again. I never liked looking at other people’s faces for too long, but I was a master at using my own for effect. My eyes are nearly white, and one of the advantages of being short is that I can put them in shadow under my brow and wield them like flashlights, a predatory focus that never fail to make bound men jump. When I angled my head and flicked my eyes from floor to face, Vanya flinched.
“Lev knew where to find me after that first meeting with Sergei, Vanya. He knew I’d rescue Vassily and choose him over the Organizatsiya and the Fruit. He knew I’d do anything for Vassily, whatever it took to save him, because he and Sergei had raised me to do that exact thing.” Almost idly, I pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the swell of Vanya’s tiny, flaccid cock. He flinched again, trying to put his bad foot up onto the stool, and his gathering confusion and fear were enough to steady my tongue for the next words. “You arranged to have Vassily raped and infected in prison, didn’t you?”
He didn’t say anything until the trigger clicked into position.
“Little fuck deserved everything he got,” Vanya hissed. It wasn’t hot in the room, but sweat trickled down his body.
“It was easy to hook him after that,” I said. And I couldn’t keep the bitter sorrow from my voice. “But it couldn’t have been you who thought it up. You’re not creative enough. It must have been Nicolai.”
“It was Lev, you dumbfuck. Same with Rodion. Same with everything.” Vanya said. His voice radiated a perverse smugness, his pride in justifying the intelligence of the little man in the course of the grand game. It was exactly what I’d hoped he’d do. The Reid Technique depended on pride. “The Deacon bought Jana in, she bought Lev in, and he bought me in. Neither of you little faggots ever saw it coming, haha.”
“And Carmine nearly ruined everything, didn’t he?” The insults rolled off me like beaded water. Everything he said was a loan, a mark on the tally. I’d be able to claim soon enough. “Jana tried to get him to join, but she couldn’t control him. Not like how she controlled you.”
“Bitch didn’t control me,” he sneered. “Women don’t have no place in the Organization, and-”
“So it was Lev who dealt with Wolf Grove?” I cut him off, withdrawing the pistol. Now that he was talking, I didn’t want him thinking about his body. “Lily and Dru Ross? Was it spur of the moment, killing them and taking the kids? Or did he plan it out?”
“Lev couldn’t fucking organize shit,” Vanya said, bitterly. “Soft-handed little fuckup was too busy sucking Sergei’s cock. He forgot his duty to the All-Father, and so did they.”
“They got soft-hearted after their initiation, didn’t they?” I locked my feelings down behind the mask. “They got rid of their infection, somehow. Who tried to bring them back into the fold, Vanya?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“It had to be someone from your kiddy porn ring who they still had regard for. Who was it? Michael? Aaron? Ayashe? You’re not the kind of man who could pull that off yourself.”
Vanya looked down his beaky nose at me. He was sweating so much that it dripped from his chin, and turned my stomach more than any words he could have expressed. “You fucking implying something, faggot?”
“That you’re too stupid to murder two shapeshifters and leave cute coded messages on the walls?” I had to restrain myself from putting the gun to his crotch and blowing it off like a crushed snail, and the effort made
the parasite churn and twist deep in my guts. “Absolutely.”
“You don’t fuckin’ know nothin’, Alexi, and you ain’t never gonna find those little fucks. Even if I told you, Sergei’s coming for you. All-Father’s coming for you, and you’re never gonna even see it.”
Vanya’s eyes flicked up for a moment, glancing up over my head in a flash so brief I almost didn’t see it. I heard a single heartbeat thump against my eardrums as I spun and twisted back into his bulk, away from the hatchet coming down at my head.
Chapter 33
Vanya snapped at me like a dog as I fell to the side, orientating on my attacker. It was Duke. He was purple in the face, eyes wild, a fireman’s ax in both hands.
“Duke!” I barked out, dodging as he brought the ax around and lunged for me a second time. Vanya began laughing hysterically, a sound cut off into a squeal of pain as I dove around him and Duke slammed him aside, knocking him off his stool in his eagerness to get to me.
The man who’d fought alongside Jenner and Zane and taken a blade for them was no longer there. He charged me heedlessly, driving me back into the basement. I barely dodged the swipes in the darkness, trying to get the gun between us. I stumbled, and Duke swung the ax, as fast and strong as only a Weeder could be. There was just enough time to roll my head out of the way, and then kick him squarely in the balls. It sent him staggering back, but it didn’t put him to the floor. I, on the other hand, put too much weight on my injured leg and went down as my thigh shuddered and buckled.
“My hands!” Vanya was screaming. “My fucking hands! Cut me down!”
Duke eyed me like a furious bull: the whites of his eyes showing, erection raging, body pouring sweat. He turned back and sprinted to Vanya’s side, too fast to be human, and swung the ax into the chain of the cuffs. Vanya dropped to the floor like a plate of blancmange. I was only just getting to my feet, too dizzy to run, by the time that Duke was chasing ahead of Vanya and out the door.
I swore and fired after them. One bullet caught Duke in the shoulder, but it didn’t even slow him. Vanya was pumped with adrenalin and Duke was… whatever he was. He’d caught the same infection as Mason, Lily and Dru. It hadn’t even been five hours since he was stabbed.
I floundered up the stairs as quickly as I could, but not in time. There was a high-pitched scream from inside the parlor. It was too high to be Jenner’s smoke-and-whiskey voice. Talya was still here.
The raw cry of pain spurred me on to greater speed. I staggered up the stairs, jamming the pistol into my belt and pulling the knife. If Duke was infected with Morphorde, the last thing I wanted to do was shoot him somewhere vital. I turned the blade as I rounded the corner to see…. Blood. A lot of blood, spattered and oozing across the floor from the two dead bikers and Talya. The men had been hacked to death. Tayla was sprawled against the cash counter in her sundress and cardigan, panting with an awful wet rasp. Her fingers hovered and twitched around the ax handle buried in her chest.
“Talya.” I limped towards her as a whine grew in my ears, drowning out the sound of the street. Duke had buried the weapon so far into her body that I could only see a hint of metal. “Hang on… just… we’re going to count through this. We will count together and relax your chest.”
The girl shuddered. Her warm brown skin was milk white with shock, her lips bubbling with dark red blood. Her eyes met mine from across the room, startlingly gold through the wet mess of her silverish hair.
“G-go,” she rattled. She warded me back with a trembling, bloody hand. “Get… out… run… RUN!”
Confused, I backed up towards the entry to the parlor. I ran for the door and flung it open, just as the Buick tore past and gunned for the main road. Duke was white-knuckled on the wheel, his face an expressionless bloody mask, and Vanya was laughing. Even at high speed, I heard it in passing: the same horrible, forced, ‘HAH HAH HAH’ he’d made in the warehouse.
There was no stopping them now. I couldn’t run. I pushed my hands back over the stubble on my head, bleakly watching on as the car turned the nearest corner and vanished.
And then, from right behind me, came the impossibly deep-throated snarl of a huge, angry animal in pain.
For the first time in many years, I froze. Truly froze. I froze because I realized, in that moment, that I needed to run. Leave. Leave Angkor, who I didn’t even know, and Talya, and the Tigers, and the faceless horde of idiots gathering in the sidewalk across from the store, their voices burbling static. I could jump ship and never be seen again.
A shadow fell over me from behind, and I turned and looked up to see a cat the size of a small bus looming over the parlor.
Talya’s Ka was strange, primitive looking lion with a short, stiff, bristly mane. She staggered up to her feet with damp fur, but no excess Phitonic jelly rolled down her flanks. She was gray and white, with a taller, leaner build than any African Lion in the world, but the square face and heavy jaw were unmistakable, as was the blindingly loud roar she made as her flesh rejected the ax still buried in her chest. There was no humanity in her blazing yellow eyes. No control.
“Talya… Talya, it’s Rex…” I circled slowly towards the entry to the apartment stairwell, the knife held up, hand outstretched. Against a DOG, a knife worked just fine. Against this? This lion was at least two thousand pounds of muscle and claws. “Kitten, remember Rex? Zane?”
She dropped her head between her shoulders, and began to pad towards me in a slow stalking crouch. Just before she leapt, I threw the knife at her, end over end. It hit her in the shoulder, point-first, bounced, and clattered to the concrete floor. Fixated on my movements, she didn’t even seem to notice.
“Very well then.” I said aloud. And then I ran for my life.
Talya charged me in perfect silence, and however fast it was she was moving, thirteen feet to a second seemed fairly apt. I made it to the door of the stairwell just as she smashed it in behind me with a paw the size of a dustbin lid. Dodging claws, I charged up the stairs, driven by primordial fear so deep and so innate that pain became meaningless. Talya’s size was advantageous outdoors, but a liability in closed spaces. As I careened off the wall and ran, hopped and crawled to the landing, Talya clawed and swiped the spot I’d been seconds before, roaring in frustration as her head and shoulders got jammed between wall and door. She lunged up at my heels, only barely able to fit in the narrow stairwell.
I twisted the handle on the front door and shot inside, slamming it behind me. It wasn’t going to do anything to help me, but I felt slightly safer as I limped and ran down the hall, around the corner, and began to throw things in the desperate search for the Glock and a fresh clip. There was no way the 9mms in the Wardbreaker would bring Talya down, but the frag rounds stood a chance.
I could hear Talya ploughing through plaster and mortar on her way up the stairs, and emerged back into the hallway just as she tore the door off its hinges and lunged through half-way, bellowing in rage. She pushed forward with a snarl of frustrated hunger and struck the ceiling overhead, sending a rain of plaster into her own eyes. The bedroom door was open. I caught the jamb, spun around, and slammed the door closed with my back against the wood, until I thought better of it and stumbled away, as far from the entry as I could get.
“Ikun mohya?”
I jumped so hard that I gave myself whiplash, gun pointed at the ready. Angkor was sitting upright, bare-chested, his blanket pooled in his lap. His face was a pale mask of shock.
“What the Hell?” he said.
“LION,” I blurted.
Talya’s bulk struck the door and nearly rattled it from its frame. I scrambled up, and with a flush of manic strength, seized the legs of the nearest bed and dragged it across. Then the dresser, then the wardrobe. The door banged in a second time, the hinges straining. Angkor staggered out of bed, barefoot and in shorts, and crossed the distance to help me pull anything and everything across to block the door.
“Lion? Who?” Angkor’s voice was thick with fatigue. He looked like
death warmed over. “What?”
“Talya. It’s Talya.” I retreated to the back of the room and slammed the new clip into the Glock as Talya began to strop the door with her claws. Wood splintered, and the junk pile swayed. “Can you use a gun?”
“Yes… NO! We can’t kill her!” Angkor withdrew from me and flopped to the bed with his face in his hands. “Wait wait wait, let me think of something…”
“Think quickly!” While he wracked his brains, I racked a bullet into the chamber and set a second clip just beside me. “We have about five seconds.”
“Okay! I’ve got an idea!” Angkor flapped his hand, leaning against the leg of the bunk bed as it jolted and shuddered behind him. “Can you piss?”
“What is… the hell kind of question is that?” My accent was bleeding through with stress.
“We need urine. Scent-marking. If he smells a lion bigger than he is-”
“She. Female lion.”
“-No, freaking listen to me. Talya’s Ka is a male lion, trust me. I know lion spunk when I smell it. If we create a territorial scent, he will cut and run. So can you piss or not?”
The man was insane, too screwed up from concussion to think clearly. “No, I can’t fucking piss on command. Get out of way.”
“GODunderfoot.” Angkor groaned, backpedaling, and sniffed. Then he sniffed again. “Hey, I smell cat shit. Is there a cat in here?”
“Yes, there is cat in here, and there is cat out there,” I snapped. “Now get fucking gun and shoot fucking lion before we die, please.”
“Hang on.” Angkor scrambled out of sight, just as the bunk bed toppled over and a gray paw shot through the gap in the door, patting around, then flexing in and tearing the wood like paper.
Angkor whooped behind me. I glanced back to see him lift his hands, poised like a dancer or a stage magician, and then refocused on the lion’s groping paw, sighting down. Breath in, breath out, breath in…
Gravity in the room sucked backwards for a moment, a gathering rush of power, and then one of the worst smells I had ever experienced in my life flooded the room.
Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2) Page 30
