THIRTEEN NIGHTS AGO

The branches reach out for him like the grasping limbs of dead souls. Withered, rotting things that cling to his cuffs and his hands and his hair like the forsaken. He thanks God that he cannot see their faces and that they cannot see his. He has sent a lot of people to hell and he does not doubt they take it personally.

He brushes the thoughts away, crashes past the branches and the spindly leaves, pushing onward, his boots thumping down through the thick snow and striking the hard earth beneath. He can hear his own blood banging in his ears. The sound of the gunshots is still echoing in his skull and the flashlight in his hand jerks up and down with each urgent step.

“Here, you old fuck,” comes a voice filled with laughter. “I see you. Follow the light.”

Claudio curses and raises a hand to his face as the glare of the flashlight skewers him. He is still wincing when the younger man emerges from the tangled pocket of evergreens and walks slowly toward him. He still has his gun in his right hand. Claudio holds a knife, its hilt thick with blood, in his left.

“You catch him?” asks Claudio breathlessly.

“Fuck no. Prick was fast.”

“Faster than a bullet?” he asks irritably and wipes the sweat from his forehead, leaving a smear of crimson upon his skin.

“What you wanna do now?” comes the reply. “His accent was Russian. Somebody’s fucking us around. This is a setup. There might be more of them.”

Temper overwhelms Claudio. None of this was supposed to happen.

Crisp.

Efficient.

Clinical.

That is how he made his name and kept himself alive these past thirty years. The younger man is all bravado and front, with his soft calfskin coat and his sweatpants, his white sneakers and his gold chains. His name is Luca and he may have just gotten them both killed. Claudio chews on his lower lip with his one remaining incisor.

“Stop that, man,” laughs Luca. “You’re like a fucking vampire. And these woods are creepy.”

Claudio makes a fist, then takes a deep breath, trying to rein in his temper. He was supposed to be pretending to be a traffic cop, for fuck’s sake. And he’d arrived in sneakers and sweatpants! All he had to do was keep them quiet until Claudio arrived. But he couldn’t help himself. Had to show off. Had to show he was a man that mattered.

“I’m sure I clipped him,” says Luca. “You hear all that bullshit? Did he look important to you?”

“You know the Russians—everybody says they’re somebody important,” says Claudio quietly. “I know that accent, though.”

“Doesn’t mean he mattered.”

“Something’s gone wrong here,” whispers Claudio, suddenly aware of the absolute silence of the woods. “This wasn’t the job. I smell lies. And now there’s nobody to ask because they’re fucking dead.”

Luca shrugs. He doesn’t much care. He’s enjoyed himself tonight. He’s had a chance to hurt somebody. There’s a light in his eyes as bright as the blood upon the snow.

Claudio shakes his head again. “There’ll be repercussions. I don’t like repercussions.”

Luca rolls his eyes like a petulant teenager. He turns his back on Claudio and starts walking back to where he left his car.

Claudio stands still. It could have all gone perfectly. It was a good plan. A perfect pincer movement, followed by enough layers of rumor and speculation to ensure that nobody ever guessed at the truth.

He watches the younger man trudging away through the crow-black woods. He’s struggling through the thick snow and cursing the cold. His gun is hanging loosely from the hand he is using for balance as he totters precariously in front of an old oak with a long, splintered branch . . .

Claudio has stayed alive far longer than he has any right to expect. His longevity has given him a curious kind of sixth sense, a skill for reading situations and staying a step ahead. Perhaps it is his many years in the shadows that have taught him how to read darkness. He does not care to overthink it. But when he feels the air behind him change shape and texture, some primal force takes over and he drops to his knees. Instead of slamming into the back of his head, the branch merely clips him on the top of the skull. He does not make a sound as he topples forward, collapsing onto the tree roots and the hard snow with his arms outstretched and his legs out straight behind him. Christ-like, he lies immobile, only half seeing out of one eye as the man from the trunk, the man who fled into the woods, steps over him and runs lightly toward Luca. Claudio tries to speak but cannot seem to make his lips move. He feels wetness upon the back of his neck.

“Come on, old man, we’ve got to get busy.”

Luca is a few feet away, struggling through the snow. Claudio’s world is black-and-white, a photographic negative, a snowstorm of newspaper print. In its center a silhouette, an inky blob that crosses between himself and his companion in purposeful, efficient strides.

Helpless, feeble, he watches as the man who has attacked him moves toward Luca. Quickly, silently, he darts forward and without another word he grabs Luca by the collar of his stupid calfskin jacket and pushes him forward. The branch goes into his chest just below his rib cage and exits between his shoulder blades. There is a sound like somebody has snapped a dozen small branches and then the soft hiss as the air in his lungs gurgles upward through bloodied lips and into the cold night air.

On the ground, Claudio breathes out, slowly. He tries to become a part of the forest floor. He does not want the man to come back and finish him off. He knows that were the roles reversed, it is what he would do. He is a killer. He takes no pleasure in it but it is his life’s work to stop human hearts. He came here, to this lonely place on the road to Crow, to kill two men. He has done what he was paid to do. He wasn’t expecting the third, who took off into the darkness as soon as Luca pulled the trigger and the big dark Irishman fell forward onto the snow-covered earth.

Claudio watches as the man who killed Luca disappears into the trees. After a moment he begins to move. Slowly, soundlessly, he checks himself over. There is a gash to the top of his skull and there is blood in his mouth, but apart from a ringing sensation in his ears, he is unharmed. Damp and cold, he pulls himself upright and leans against a tree. He reaches into his pocket and finds his cigarettes. Lights up, and breathes out a cloud.

“Fuck,” he whispers, to himself. It covers the majority of his feelings.

Pissed off and sore, Claudio consoles himself with the thought that it is not his fault. Luca fucked up, not him. And nobody had told them about the Chechen. He did his job right and then other forces got in the way. Even as he thinks it, he finds himself shaking his head. He has seen men killed for so much less. He has killed men who had perfectly good excuses for their screwups. He closes his eyes and searches for comfort. Finds it in Belle. The little girl is the only light in the blackness inside him, but she is a light that grows brighter every time she holds his hand and looks at him as if he is something other than a monster. For her, he would stop all this. For her, he would try and be a better man. But neither she nor her mother knows how he earns the money that sustains them and he never intends for them to find out. He lives on borrowed time. For forty years he has been waiting for it all to stop.

As he stares at the body of the young man impaled on the tree, Claudio feels a shiver of premonition. He suddenly fears that he is at the start of something that could lead to his end.