Chapter 8

if you want something done right…

Less than an hour outside of Prague, a black SUV with dark tinted windows pulled up to a quaint stone farmhouse. As the driver stepped out, all that could be heard was the earliest of early birds singing well before dawn. He walked to the rear of the vehicle and the moment he opened the door a large, dark brown wolf with tan legs leapt out of it and trotted to the back of the house.

“Welcome back, Pavlo. How was your meeting with la familia Teodora?”

Pavlo’s hazel eyes drifted from the wild ivy growing up the porch to a robust, middle-aged thug leaning against the doorway, propping it wide open.

“You’re letting in mosquitos,” he observed as he shooed one away. “And I don’t recall giving you permission to use my given name, Tony.” While there wasn’t a trace of irritation in his youthful, boyish face or in his lively accent, there wasn’t any playfulness either. Tony had heard rumors about his relatively new employer; rumors that proved to be true the longer he worked for him. Just then the wolf came around the corner of the house and sidled up to Pavlo, making him look even shorter and slimmer than he already was. Without bending, he reached down to scratch behind the wolf’s rusty-red ears, and looked up at Tony with the most subtle expectant expression.

“Sorry, Captain Pyrzynski—it won’t happen again,” Tony apologized, desperate not to appear as flustered as he felt. He quickly shut the door and collected a suitcase from the SUV before following his capo back into the house.

While the wolf headed for a dish of water in the rustic kitchen, Tony followed Pavlo to an office located in the back of the house. Unlike the warm, homey décor everywhere else, the only furniture in the room was a simple metal desk, a chair, a large safe, and a file cabinet. There was absolutely nothing warm or inviting about the space. There were no pictures on the walls; not even so much as a rug adorned the hardwood floor.

“So uh…how did your meeting go with Teodora?”

“Not as well as I hoped, although they seemed intrigued by the proposal,” Pavlo replied as he set a briefcase on the desk. His nimble fingertips began turning the combinations as he spoke. “They’ve agreed to arrange for distribution through their established networks, provided that the other families are in agreement.”

“So…what’s the catch?”

“The catch is that they aren’t interested in investing anything. On the contrary, they want an exorbitant percentage of our profits, and they want the negotiated amount finalized by the end of August, otherwise their distribution services are off the table. The same goes for la familia Dominika and Serafina, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you-know-who receives a similar response in Berlin. The heads of the other families are becoming too complacent in their old age. They all insist on doing things the way they’ve always been done merely for the reason that it’s how things have always been done. None of them can see the larger picture. They’re in denial of the future.”

“That’s exactly why we need youngsters like you in power, with all your fresh ideas.”

“You’re more than twenty years younger than I am,” Pavlo reminded him in a bored tone. Instead of opening the briefcase he merely pushed it aside. “Where are all of your fresh ideas, Tony?”

“Hey, if you want fresh ideas, you’re askin’ the wrong guy,” Tony said with a shrug. “We don’t do all this formal song and dance bullshit back in Brooklyn. Nah…if we want something bad enough, we just take it.”

“Yes, I do appreciate your American sense of entitlement,” Pavlo said tiredly, noticing a thick folder in Tony’s fat sausage fingers. “Keep thinking like that, and someday you’ll be captain instead of me.” Oblivious to the blatant sarcasm, Tony puffed out his chest with pride.

“Actually, I was thinking, and it kinda sounds like the other families already had a meeting without you or the lieutenant, and they already decided they don’t want to help us out, but they don’t want to rock the boat either. That’s why they gave you such a short deadline. So nobody would have no broken feelings when the deal falls on its ass.”

Pavlo looked Tony up and down. He wasn’t the most refined soldier under his command, but he was the most devoted and eager to please. He had potential.

“That’s exactly what I suspected,” Pavlo finally murmured, curious to pick his brain. “What do you think the motive could be?”

“That’s easy,” Tony chuckled. “Money. They want to take over our operation and cut us out of the profits.”

“And instigate another turf war? That wouldn’t be very wise.”

“Yeah, but if they’re all against us, it would be over before it began,” Tony explained, pausing to recollect his courage before he went on. “It wouldn’t take nothin’ to rub us out. The other families used to be afraid of Vladislav…but…you know…”

“Go on. Enlighten me.”

“Uh, well…we all know there’s rumors that la familia Vladislava ain’t what it used to be,” Tony admitted with a tentative shrug.

“Could you be more specific?”

“Well, uh, they say we have the weakest army. They think all we do is move the kinda shit you find in a bodega…like booze and pixie dust.”

“And yet here you are…importing and exporting for Vladislava instead of Dominika,” Pavlo remarked curiously. “Why did you choose us when their army’s the strongest of all?”

“Because I hear a lot of rumors,” Tony explained with a nervous grin. “I saw an opportunity I wanted bad enough, so I took it.”

“Yes you did,” Pavlo mused. “What other rumors have you heard?”

“Well…rumor has it that it might be a good time for regime change.”

“How long have you been hearing these rumors?”

“I don’t know…a while now,” Tony answered, feeling more confident. “And every time I hear that conversation, it’s always the same name that keeps popping up again and again. You know who I’m talking about.”

Pavlo rested his bony hands on his narrow hips, and gave a faint smile of approval.

“You’re right. I do know who you’re talking about, and it is time for a change. It won’t be much longer now.”

“So there’s a plan?”

“There’s always been a plan,” said Pavlo, glancing around at the bare walls of the room. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. If only Aristotle knew how appropriate his wisdom would be regarding our future.”

“Yeah but we’re running out of time to get this place fully operational,” Tony pointed out. “And money. We can’t do it all by ourselves. I thought that was the whole point of meeting with all the other families.”

“It served more than one purpose,” he replied, and slipped his hands into his pockets. “It made us appear exceptionally weak and vulnerable to our adversaries, which was part of the plan, although it was a miserable task. When I was speaking with the heads of Dominika and Serafina, I felt less like we were proposing a way to strengthen and unite all the families, and more like I was passing around the offering plate at church.”

“Wait a minute…at church?” Tony asked. “No kidding? And here all this time I thought you were Jewish.”

“What gave you that impression?” Pavlo asked, somewhat amused by the comment. Tony seemed more than a little hesitant to answer the question as he tried not to stare at Pavlo’s gaunt face. He knew Pavlo’s opinion about repeating himself, and refusing to answer was not an option.

“I heard a rumor that the reason you’re so…uh…skinny, is that you were in a concentration camp right before you were turned,” he said with a shrug as he stood up straighter, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. Still looking mildly entertained, Pavlo smiled just enough to put Tony at ease.

“You hear a lot of rumors. So far they’re all true, but Hitler murdered five million people who weren’t Jews,” he explained. “I was a good Catholic boy when they got ahold of me…though I don’t consider myself one anymore.”

“Me neither. I can’t remember the last time I went to church,” Tony said, looking relieved as he leaned against the door frame again. “It might be funny to go to confession after all this time, just to hear the priest’s reaction. I wonder how many Hail Mary’s I’d have to say for the amount of shit I’ve done over the years.”

“You’re welcome to ponder that thought in any other place besides my office. I’m going to lock up early for the day.”

“Really? It won’t be dawn for two more hours.”

“I’m well aware of that fact, and I’m also aware that I haven’t slept for the past week,” said Pavlo, giving Tony a warning look. “So unless you have something of interest to say that’s worth keeping me awake any longer than—”

“Actually, I do,” Tony interrupted, grinning so wide that his long fangs gleamed eerily in the light. “That doppelgänger you guys hired came by while you were out of town. Are you interested in that?”

“Stephan was here? Already?”

“Yeah. He came by about an hour after you left for your business trip and dropped off this file about the Paris embassy’s fire investigation. Look how thick this motherfucker is,” he boasted, walking across the concrete floor and handing over the heavy folder. “I tried to read it so I could give you the run-down on how much they know ‘cause it looks like a lot, but the whole damn thing’s written in Crisco.”

“It’s pronounced Karsikko,” Pavlo corrected him. He recognized the official seal of the Estellian Empire on the front of the folder, along with a word stamped in huge red letters which he knew meant ‘confidential.’ The cover page of the contents had the same embossed stamp on London embassy letterhead, which guaranteed that he was looking at genuine documents.

“Yeah, Karsikko, whatever,” Tony repeated, rolling his eyes. “Either way, the whole thing’s written in that backwards elven shit, so me and the guys couldn’t figure out a damn thing about how much they know in London. But you wanna hear something off-the-wall? The dumb broad who hired Stephan literally put this file in his hands!”

“Now that is impressive,” Pavlo murmured with deep interest as he flipped through the papers. “I heard he was talented, but I didn’t realize how far that talent extended.”

No sooner had he spoken the words that he flipped to the second page of the file, which didn’t say one word about a fire at the Paris Embassy. Instead, it gave an unusual amount of detailed information he wasn’t expecting to see, all underneath a wide black stamp that read ‘DEACTIVATED’ in Karsikko.

Operative name: Talvi Marinossian

Height: 198 cm

Weight: 84 kg

Hair color: black

Eye color: blue/green

Distinguishing marks, scars, tattoos, etc: none

Languages spoken: Fluent in Karsikko, Fae, Víla, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, Japanese. Partially fluent in Vrusżka, Patuliak, Hindi, Latin.

Weapons used: Long bow, cross bow, compound bow, sword, knives. Skilled with blades of any and all kind, poisons, hand-to-hand combat, rope, garrote, revolver, various assault rifles and handguns, etc.

Accuracy: 98.7%

Specialties within field: mental manipulation, seduction. Highly effective at both.

Relevant personal interests: see above

By the time that Pavlo realized what he was actually holding in his hands, his mouth had become pinched to keep it from frowning any more. His narrowed eyes fixated on the black stamp for a brief moment before he flipped to a random place in the thick file. He spread the pages apart and instead of finding information about a possible arson investigation, he found himself reading a formal reprimand for improper use of government property. Behind that was another formal reprimand for excessive damage to government property. Turning the next page, he discovered yet another reprimand for failure to return government property. On and on it went, for at least an entire chapter of the tome he was holding. The next page was a formal complaint from the forensics lab…something about contaminating a work station with DNA from multiple individuals.

“Would you like to see just how talented Stephan is?” Tony grinned even wider, if that was possible.

“Talented?” Hoping that his lack of sleep was masking the frustration in his face, Pavlo’s lips barely moved as he asked, “Is that the appropriate adjective for his efforts?”

“Oh yeah—but you gotta come downstairs and see for yourself,” Tony said, nodding his head. Pavlo dropped the file into his briefcase and locked it in his safe, then followed him back into the kitchen. Tony pushed a button underneath the countertop, at which point the butcher block island in the center began to slide to one side, gently nudging the wolf’s water dish out of the way. In its place was a stairway made of cinderblock that Tony enthusiastically motioned for Pavlo to follow him down into. They walked through a maze of halls until they were in a concrete and metal facility underground. There were no windows at all, only the glare of unnatural fluorescent light. They walked down another flight of stairs which led to a metal door. They knocked twice, waiting for the armed guard on the other side to unlock it.

“Good evening, Captain Pyrzynski…Tony,” said the guard, acknowledging them with a nod as they stepped past him. Tony held out his hand until the guard produced a set of keys and a flashlight. He motioned for Pavlo to follow him down the artificially lit subterranean hall, where they stopped at a gate made of iron bars. The sour reek of rotting flesh was all Pavlo could smell, and the incessant buzzing of flies was all he could hear. Tony passed him the flashlight and unlocked the gate, holding it open for his boss before following him into the dark and filthy prison cell. After surviving a death camp, Pavlo had a good idea of what he might see when he switched the flashlight on, but it didn’t make the acrid scent any more tolerable. With his free hand he pulled the pocket square from his jacket and held it over his nose as he took in the view. The carcasses of half a dozen lambs lay in a festering heap to the left, rib bones jutting through their coats where the maggots had eaten through the skin. He looked down at his loafers and found he was standing in a shallow, sticky puddle of partially dried blood. He stepped to the right, wiping off his shoe as best as he could on the concrete floor, and nearly tripped over what appeared to be a human leg chained to the wall by the ankle. He realized there was a body attached to the leg…a naked, female body. Her matted hair covered her face, and her filthy skin was so discolored with hungry flies, dried blood, bruises and teeth marks that she appeared to have been dead for days.

“Why would Stephan bring us a human?” Pavlo asked, his unemotional voice muffled by the cloth over his nose. “We’re more than capable of feeding ourselves.”

“He didn’t bring her for us,” Tony explained. “He said he had other plans for her, but then one of the guys had a taste. It hit him so hard that he offered half his salary to buy her off of him right there on the spot. Then a few other guys had a taste, and then they were all pulling out their wallets. I guess we made Stephan an offer he couldn’t refuse, because he took the money. But he also took a lot of pictures of us drinking her before he left. The guy’s kind of a sick fuck, if you ask me,” Tony added with a disturbed frown. “Either way, I don’t think he knew what he was dropping in our laps, because this isn’t any ordinary broad.”

“If you ask me, she seems less than ordinary,” said Pavlo, poking her calf with his shoe. Strange, he thought as her leg moved. Rigor mortis should have set in by now.

He crouched down for a better look at the abused body on the ground. His detached, unemotional eyes studied the distinct patterns left on her skin from multiple vampires feeding on her, and he took a silent inventory of the damage done. All of the wounds had been reopened again and again, which he found equally odd. He’d seen so many unspeakable horrors in his life that nothing fazed him anymore, but a victim this severely chewed up was both unusual and rare. Typically vampires went straight for a main artery or a vein; they didn’t waste their time teething on the rest of the body.

Ignoring the flies, he reached for her limp left wrist and turned her cold and clammy skin over in his hand. He was surprised to feel a pulse. It was faint, but it was there. That’s when he noticed the platinum ring on her finger, and his own heart nearly stopped. It really was no ordinary woman lying there in front of him on the very edge of death.

“How is she still alive?” he whispered through his clenched teeth.

“I don’t know. It’s not like we didn’t try,” Tony chortled in the background, undisturbed by his filthy surroundings. “There’s something different about her blood. Whatever it is that’s making her taste so good isn’t as strong as it was when she got here, but you’ve still gotta try her out. I know it’s nuts, but her blood reminds me of my first meal after I was turned, except better.”

“That’s impossible. There’s nothing better than your first meal after being turned.”

“Go on and try her, and you’ll see what I mean. It doesn’t take much to do the trick. I’ll let you have some privacy.”

“Why would I need privacy?”

Tony snickered to himself and sighed happily.

“Trust me, boss. You’ll want some space.”

Pavlo shot him a skeptical look over his shoulder, but Tony was already walking back down the hall. He turned back to Annika, conflicted whether or not to sample her blood. She’d already lost so much. He quickly decided to allow himself the smallest taste, if only to help him understand what Tony and the rest of the crew found so appealing.

As he brought her wrist closer to his lips he wrinkled his nose in disgust, trying to locate a new spot from which to feed, but there weren’t any to choose from. He finally settled his mouth over an open wound on her inner elbow, sucking as gently as he could, but no fresh blood came up. He tried a second time, pulling harder, but all he could taste was the venomous saliva leftover from the previous vampire. It wasn’t until he drove the tips of his fangs into the moist flesh that he was rewarded with that familiar sensation, and when the hot blood came forth, his eyes all but rolled into the back of his head from sheer ecstasy. He moaned as his mouth slowly filled with her heady elixir, oblivious to everything in the prison cell except this intimate moment. It was like discovering the fountain of youth, and as he swallowed half of that modest mouthful, he imagined electricity spreading throughout his entire body, electrifying him completely. Twenty minutes ago he’d been ready to catch up on a week’s worth of lost sleep, but now he found himself wide awake, feeling more alive than he had in decades.

He forced himself to pull out of her before draining any more of her precious fluid, though it felt miserable to do so. He swallowed the remaining blood in his mouth and licked the place where he’d been joined with her body only seconds earlier. Then he pressed his pocket square against her inner elbow to stop the bleeding, sucking on his tongue to analyze her complex and exotic taste. His breathing grew harder as a sensation he hadn’t felt in ages rose up in him like thunder racing through the clouds. He fell forward onto his knees, panting while supporting himself with his free hand, squeezing Annika’s arm tight in the other. He closed his eyes while the thunder tore through him again, and with a euphoric gasp, he found himself reeling from the most intense pleasure he could recall.

The aftermath that followed filled him with warmth and life and so much alertness that he could feel his muscles and connective tissues tingling and humming. He felt as weightless as a feather drifting on a summer breeze, clear as crystal, sharp as glass. He opened his eyes and noticed he was still holding onto Annika, although much more gently than before. He heard the shuffle of feet approaching, and then Tony was there, looking over his shoulder with a stupid grin on his face.

“What do you think, boss? It’s pretty fucking amazing, isn’t it?”

Pavlo could only nod in agreement as he tried to collect himself. He focused on slowing down his throbbing heartbeat and heavy breathing, but when he glanced down at his pants he was taken aback by the physical response her blood had caused in his body. He set Annika’s arm gently to the ground while clutching his pocket square tight in his hand. Then he discreetly adjusted himself out of Tony’s view and stood up, lingering as he stole one last long look at her ravaged body.

“If Stephan had any idea that he was selling us a goose that lays golden eggs, he would’ve held out for a lot more money, eh?” asked Tony. “But that got me thinking—we’d have all the cash we needed and then some if we could figure out what’s making her taste like that and clone it in the lab. Do you have any idea what it could be?”

“No,” Pavlo lied, licking his lips clean before standing up and heading for the gate. “Who else knows about her?”

“As far as I know, there was the guard and me, plus four of the crew,” Tony said as he followed Pavlo out of the cell and locked the door. “I don’t want to throw nobody under the bus, but it’s been hard to keep this on the down-low.”

“It will be harder to make any profit from her if she dies,” Pavlo said quietly, folding his bloodied pocket square and tucking it back into his jacket. “Find the others and gather them in the next room. We need to have a discussion about how we’re going to protect our investment.”

Ten minutes later, Tony, the guard, and four other vampire thugs walked into the room, chatting among themselves about Tony’s brilliant money making scheme and the effect that Annika’s blood had caused in Pavlo. He waited patiently until their banter died down and all eyes were on him.

“With all the social calls you boys have paid to our prisoner, I’m disappointed that none of you thought to bring her something to eat or drink. That’s no way to treat a lady,” he said, unbuttoning his jacket. “I also thought it was common knowledge that a prisoner is only useful when they’re alive, just like the goose that laid the golden eggs. Perhaps I’m the only one here who’s read Aesop’s fables? Well, I can assure you that it didn’t end well for the goose. Her owner was greedy like all of you.”

Even though they were all bigger and broader than Pavlo, the men averted their eyes in submission.

“I counted at least nine different sets of teeth on her skin, and there are only six of you,” he went on, walking slowly in front of them, pausing to look at each of the men. “Who are the other three that visited her?”

The men were silent as church mice. Pavlo was unimpressed with the response. He stopped in front of the guard and looked up at him.

“Since you were on watch the entire time, you should be able to recall who you allowed into her cell,” he said, motioning to the massive key chain attached to the guard’s belt. The guard frowned anxiously, and beads of red-tinged sweat broke out on his forehead.

“I may have not been on watch the entire time, Captain Pyrzynski,” he said in a skittish voice, afraid to look at his boss. “I may have stepped out for a smoke.”

“You may have stepped out for a smoke,” Pavlo repeated coolly.

“Well you said there’s no smoking allowed in the building because of the lab, so I was trying to keep that in mind,” said the guard, offering a nervous, hopeful smile.

“So it’s my fault that you had to leave your post?” Pavlo asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“No sir—no, it’s my fault,” the guard said, shaking his head vigorously. “I thought it was smarter to smoke outside than risk starting a fire so close to the lab.”

“Have you ever heard of a thing called chewing tobacco?” Pavlo asked, looking at the other men. “There’s even a nicotine patch that’s been available for quite some time. I’m sure any of the boys would have been happy to find some for you, if only you’d asked.”

The other men glanced around nervously, afraid to make eye contact with Pavlo.

“I’m curious what the point is of having a guard that leaves his post. Can someone please explain how this is logical?” he asked, reaching into the left side of his jacket and pulling out a 9mm handgun. He kept it pointed at the ground while he waited for an answer, but none came. “Since it appears that no one thinks this is logical, I see no choice but to terminate you for incompetence.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” the guard answered, watching his boss reach into the other side of his jacket and withdraw a silencer. “I’ll see to it that the visits end.”

“No you won’t. I’m going to see to it that the visits end,” he replied, screwing the silencer onto the end of his gun. “I want all of us to learn something valuable from this experience. Think of this as your exit interview. What final words of wisdom do you have for us before you leave?”

“Damn—I don’t know,” the guard shrugged, sweating profusely.

“Well that’s not very insightful,” Pavlo observed. He squeezed the trigger and put a hollow-point bullet between the guard’s eyes with hardly a sound. A spray of blood and sections of skull splattered against the wall behind the rest of the men. None of them dared move a muscle, not even to wipe the red globs of grey matter sliding down their faces.

“Does anyone think they can do a better job than him? It seems we have a vacancy.”

Two of the men immediately stepped forward, avoiding the headless corpse on the floor.

“Good thinking, boys. Two heads are better than none. I hope you keep using your brains, otherwise they’ll end up on the wall like his did,” Pavlo replied nonchalantly, unscrewing the silencer and slipping it into his jacket, then putting his gun away. “Now we all know how I feel about having to repeat myself, so I hope you boys leave the prisoner alone from now on. Since it’s obvious that none of you know how to take care of a woman, I’ll be the only one feeding her, grooming her, or exercising her. No one is to step foot into her cell unless I am present—do you understand?” He paused to look at his two new recruits and they nodded obediently. “Then what are you waiting for? Take his keys and his gun and go to your post.”

Even though he hadn’t raised his voice once, the men scrambled to obey his orders. Pavlo buttoned up his jacket and motioned for Tony to follow him as he headed for the door.

“Let the other two clean up this mess. I have something else in mind for you.”

While Tony and the rest of the crew carried out his orders, Pavlo returned to his office to make an urgent phone call. He knew that dawn was approaching fast, but there just might be a chance that the one he was calling was still awake. After what seemed a short eternity of ringing, the phone finally picked up.

“This better be important,” came a very thick, very annoyed Slavic accent on the other line. A female voice complained in the background before being told to hush.

“It is,” Pavlo replied. All the patient nonchalance had left his voice, replaced with an acute sense of urgency. “Do you have any idea who is lying half dead in one of the cells downstairs?”

He was silent as he listened to the annoyed recipient on the other line.

“Yes, it’s absolutely someone important,” Pavlo replied. “It’s Annika Marinossian.”

A stream of explicatives was hurled through the receiver in response to this information.

“Zamknij się!” Pavlo hissed through his gritted fangs. “I’ve already made an example of one associate, and even if I were to kill them all I can’t guarantee her safety much longer. If you want her alive, we need to get her out of here immediately.”

While the voice on the other line devised a plan in a Slavic staccato, Pavlo reached into his breast pocket for the soiled silk square. He brought it under his nose, inhaling it like a bouquet of wild roses before slipping a corner into his mouth. That flavor. That scent. That arresting ambrosia. It coaxed him out of his body while rendering him as self-possessed as ever; toying and teasing him like the predator he was. A predator having had a taste of his coveted prey. After a time, he pulled the silk from his lips, smiling faintly as that new sensation seeped into his bloodstream once more.

“You don’t understand, Konstantin. When I said I couldn’t guarantee her safety, I meant it,” he explained, feeling much calmer than before. “She’s not safe here. Not even from me.”