Vladimir went down for the count. I laughed at the sight of his blood oozing out from the new hole in his head via the puncture my blade made through his lower jaw, into his mouth and then into his brain. His body twitched like a junkie having an overdose, Emily was going to be pissed. The uppercut alone could have put him out, the wrist blade wasn’t necessary for that final blow.
“What have you done?” Lexi’s voice unexpectedly echoed in my ears as I stood above Vladimir’s body. “You’re making things worse for us.”
Yeah, no shit.
Emily’s winded body rose from the floor. She threw her kunai to the floor and went to examine Vladimir’s dying body. She cursed in Japanese while drilling her fist into the floor in a rage.
“Sorry, not sorry,” I said to her. “It was him or you.”
She stood and said nothing, nor looked at my face, I deserved it. I gave the suite a look, surprised I didn’t create a raging fire. I’m getting better at this. I took a glance out the windows where Charles had escaped to safety as the wailing sounds of police cars howled in the distance. Their sounds were getting louder as each second passed.
“Emily, get out of here, I’ll get Belyana.”
Emily waddled to the fire escape as the pain in her body slowed her movement. All the more reason why I needed her to leave, she would be a liability had she stayed to help me with Belyana, her mood wouldn’t have helped.
Belyana . . . fuck that was a whole other can of worms to deal with that delivered new questions. Questions that wouldn’t be answered if I left her here.
I returned to the washroom, Belyana still remained in the shower, dazed, acting weird, and enjoying the water that rained off her young, naked body. I tossed her the nightgown she had on earlier. “Get dressed, now.”
Belyana faced me with a puzzled look. “Get dressed, now?”
“Yes, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I’m hungry . . .”
“There’s a McDonalds across the road, I’ll get you something assuming we’re not being chased again.”
“You don’t understand.” Belyana stood as her drenched hands cupped my face. “It’s feeding time.” Her head tilted to the side and her face grimaced. “I suppose you will have to do . . . or maybe him?”
“Charles split, hun.”
“I meant him.” Belyana’s finger pointed to someone behind me.
And that someone put me in a bear hug.
Everything became a blur after that. I felt my body get thrown through the wall and crashed into the living room. A cloud of dust and drywall matter rose from the newly created hole. Out from the cloud stepped Vladimir, his eyes were bloodshot like the blood that still dripped out from the hole I put into his head.
I mustered what strength I could from my aching body and went to reapply my flaming veil. Vladimir had other plans and tackled me. I’m pretty sure I went through the window at that point, how else would I have ended up flying through the air falling away from the apartment as shards of glass fell with me?
I blacked out for a second or two. When I came to, I noticed that buildings of New York had streaked past me at high speeds, all becoming one continuous blur. I had fallen up top of a passing eastbound train that traveled on the overhang tracks above Brighton Beach Avenue. I leaped back to my feet, hopefully for the last time tonight, getting knocked on my ass was getting fucking old.
Vladimir stood ahead of me. He cracked his fists then tore off his top, unveiling his super-fit chest, dressed with tattoos of pentagrams, skulls, guns, knives, and an assortment of other tattoos Russian mobsters typically wore. It was like the Yakuza, though, our tattoos were straight-up body art to the max.
I drenched my body in flames and put up my dukes, still armed with my hidden blades. Vladimir’s body did the same, and by the same I meant he covered his body with a coat of flames.
He was a demon.
“So, Vladimir,” I shouted to him as the train we stood on continued to speed away. “Mob boss, pimp, and a demon, that’s one fucking crazy résumé.”
“Vladimir? Vladimir is dead,” he said, laughing sans his Russian accent. “So, I take it you are the one that killed Lucifer?”
“Here to avenge him?”
“Hardly, I should be thanking you,” the demon that possessed Vladimir said, stepping closer to me. “I’m the new demon lord in town. And, thanks to you, I don’t have to answer to anyone.”
“Except me!”
“Please, didn’t my brother tell you about me?”
“Get fucked.”
“Fucked? Why yes, I am going to be fucking your brains out when we’re done, and you’re going to love it.”
Flashbacks to my first encounter with Lucifer came into my head. I remembered the name of a particular demon he dropped that night. “Asmodeus . . .”
“Pleasure to meet you, Reika.”
A firefly dance between the two of us commenced, and it wasn’t a romantic one. It was one that made me miss Vladimir before his sudden and unexpected possession. Whoever was awake at this time of night was going to be treated to one hell of a light show on top of the train we brawled on.
Chapter Nineteen
Fireballs and lances of ice were exchanged.
It didn’t matter if I used fire-based talents or water, Asmodeus seemed to possess the same level of talent powers as I did. When a coat of water-ice crystallized my body, so did one that formed across his ripped chest and abs. When my flaming coat appeared, he either tried to take advantage of the fact water puts out flames, or leveled the playing field, engulfing his body with the glowing red-hot flames from hell.
I guess I should consider myself lucky, for he did have a weakness, that being whenever he was in his fire attunement I could counter with water. Keeping him attuned to fire, was an entirely different challenge, one I wasn’t in the mood to fuck with as I looked beyond and saw how far away the apartment was. Belyana was still alone, spaced out, with the cops minutes away from charging inside, I needed to get back. Oh, and my katana was still there, I’d like to have that back too.
Looking back, I found my escape, the westbound train running on the adjacent track. Asmodeus and I continued to fight, using our magical talents to keep each other at bay. I periodically looked back at the incoming westbound train, creeping closer to the edge of the train we stood on. I had one chance to make this happen, and because I stood so close to the edge, I ultimately gave Asmodeus a chance to push me off to my death.
He came at me rapidly, launching a barrage of ice missiles at me. I tossed a well-timed shuriken onto the roof of the passing train. It sped past and away from the eastbound train we had shared, key word had. My blink placed me on top of the westbound train. I followed up with a glacial shield to rise before me, ensuring he didn’t try something similar or chuck more ice missiles at my body speeding away from him in the other direction.
The eastbound train vanished into the lights and sights of New York as I turned to face the apartment I was pushed out of when it neared. Below me were the streets of the city, and lines of speeding police cars that came in and out of sight. I had, at best, two minutes to get back inside, retrieve Belyana, my katana, and flee before the boys in blue arrived.
It was leap of faith time. I jumped off the speeding train and a sheet of ice formed below my feet during my fall, creating a huge slide for me to ride down to the streets. A snap of my fingers forced the slide to shatter into pieces as I ran back to the apartment, tossing a shuriken upwards to blink onto the fire escape platforms Charles and Emily had used earlier.
I was back into the warzone of a suite seconds later, climbing through the shattered window Asmodeus had pushed me out of. There were no cops, not yet, at least. There was also no Belyana. The roaring shower had been shut off, and her gown was missing. The dead and dismembered mobsters had been turned over as if someone was examining them. Either Belyana snapped out of it and took off, or Vladimir called in for backup before he met his end.
The banshee
wailing noise of police sirens outside told me it was time to leave as they were making plans to charge up, assuming they weren’t in the elevator already. I went to grab my katana and Belyana’s phone before I did that, as there might be a clue as to what the fuck was going on. I couldn’t find her phone in the mess of the place, I did, however, find Vladimir’s phone. The call he had made was still in progress, and it needed to stay that way, or I’d have to risk dealing with a password to access it, assuming he had one.
I snatched it, not giving a fuck I was once again lifting evidence from a crime scene. I went to the windows and used my shuriken in conjunction with my blink talent to teleport onto the rooftops. The cops busted in through the door seconds later, I heard them shout a few what the fucks at the makeover we gave the suite.
I was safe, for now, staring at the evening splendors of New York, high up on top of the apartment. I took a moment to catch my breath and pretend the pain in my body wasn’t real as I took a quick vape. I was surprised that damn thing was in one piece after all that bullshit. Storm-cloud-like puffs from my vape session blew away in the June winds while I tinkered with Vladimir’s phone with my free hand.
He had an app running in the background, some kind of fancy GPS tracking system. The screen of the phone turned into a top-down satellite view of the city. A pulsing yellow blip moved away from the apartment I stood up top of, heading northbound on Ocean parkway. Looking over the rooftops, I caught glimpse of a speed demon of a car driving in the most unsafe manner, swerving around cars before it moved out of sight.
My face went back to the GPS app, while I calmly took another hit of my vape. The blip on the GPS and the speeding car were one and the same, it was a tracking device. My money was on that car being the one that took Belyana away. I enlarged the map of the city on the GPS to satisfy my curiosity and winced at the dozens of other blips that dotted this side of Brooklyn.
Naturally, most of Vladimir’s text messages had been written in Russian. I couldn’t make head or tails of it . . . Good thing Emily can.
I replaced my vape with my own phone and made a call to my favorite Bakeneko.
She picked up.
“Where you at?” I asked Emily.
“Taking Charles home, poor guy just experienced the worst date of his life.”
“I snatched Vladimir’s phone, there’s a bunch of messages written in Russian on it.”
“I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.” Emily’s voice had a pinch of bitter sprinkled on it, pissed off about the whole not killing Vladimir plan I guessed.
“Lit.”
“So, let me guess, you need me to translate something written in Russian?”
“Bingo. And get this, there’s a crazy app on his phone, tracking a bunch of targets throughout the city, and possibly Belyana too. I want to know what they’re up to.”
“What if they’re tracking you with that phone?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Can you do it or not?”
“I’ll be at his place in a few. Afterward, I’ll come back to take a look.”
“I guess I should start paying you.”
“Fifty percent.”
“Get fucked.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Reika.”
“And, hey,” I added, trying not to sound too emotional. “Tell Charles I said I’m sorry.”
“Okay, who are you and what did you do to the real Reika? You never apologize.”
“Our missing girl is a succubus and we used him as bait. He made the right call not jumping in the shower with her or sleeping with her for that matter. He’d be dead now if he had, just like Sokolov.” And probably Wayne too, let’s not kid ourselves, Jim did say Wayne went to a call girl. Wayne must have booked an appointment with Belyana the day he met his end.
“A succubus prostitute, that’s bad, like really bad.”
“And being pimped out by the Russian mob. We’re going to start seeing a whole lot of dead Johns in the coming days if they get a piece of that forbidden pussy.”
“Terrific, anything else I should know about?”
“Vladimir’s a demon,” I said, looking at my blood-coated blade, a blade that had been contaminated with my own blood before I shanked him.
“What?”
“Whatever questions you wanted to ask Vladimir, you’ll need to direct them to Asmodeus. He’s in control of his body now, and whatever memories in his head.”
I heard her sigh, I had doubts it was one of relief. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You can say that I fucked-up royally.”
“You fucked-up royally.”
“But you have a second chance now to get the answers about your father, just bear with me.”
That’s when I realized the severity of the situation. I just handed the body of a Russian mob boss and pimp to the demon of lust. Fuck me, right?
Going back to the safe house was risky while I was still in possession of Vladimir’s phone. There was a good chance the GPS tracking app on it worked in reverse. Given my past experience, I’d rather hold onto phones that belonged to me, and not being tracked by a third party.
I met up with Emily at the beach later that same night, after she brought my car there. I handed the phone to her, and her hands went to work scrolling through its contents, reading the messages and the incriminating details it may contain.
“You were right,” Emily said. “Looks like this group of the Russian mob specialized heavily in human trafficking. That Russian Dolls website was just one of the many operations they controlled.”
“Trafficking . . . so we’re talking girls forced into the life of a sex slave?”
“Yeah, it’s big business for the mob, low cost, high profit. They grab girls from Europe, smuggle them into the country, and force them into that life. Occasionally, they’ll kidnap runaways as well.”
“And then they use this GPS to track where all their girls are. What a bunch of fucking assholes.”
“Sad thing is, you can fit a GPS chip into anything now, bracelets, jewelry, inside clothing—”
“Hidden phone apps.” I should know a lot about that one.
“And they’re on the move.” Emily eyed the app intently. I stepped over to her and took a peek and watched multiple blips on the GPS app move to a central location within the city.
I grimaced. “Something is up.”
“Might explain why Vladimir showed up when he did,” Emily said. “They must have wanted her and the other girls to gather there for whatever reason.”
“And now Vladimir is a demon.”
Emily gave me a hearty pat on the back. “Good job on that.”
“Fuck off.”
Though she was right, my actions just made matters worse. Vladimir was just a mobster slash pimp doing his thing, now he was the demon of lust. The mob having access to a succubus was bad enough, but now? Things just went from bad to worse, and it was my fault.
It was time to take corrective action.
I took Vladimir’s phone back and held it until the flames that imbued my fists reduced it to melted wires, plastic, and smoke, then dropped it and made my way back to my ride. “Let’s go,” I said, beckoning to Emily.
“I’m still not budging from fifty percent,” she said, following behind as the two of us made two pairs of footprints on the beach. “I might have to ask for danger pay too.”
We drove to the location all the blips on the GPS had been gathering, based from memory of course, since the phone had long been destroyed at that point. The location in question was an abandoned warehouse with a few shady cars parked in the back, most likely owned by the mob. There wasn’t much activity going on, we probably got there too late. Destroying the phone cut us off from further information, though, it was necessary due to the risks it carried had we kept it on us.
“So, now what?” Emily said with a wincing glare.
I pulled out my phone to snap photos of the dark and gloomy warehouse. “Let’s se
e what Jim has to say.”
Chapter Twenty
It was well after midnight when we arrived back at the safe house I’d dragged Jim’s busted ass to. The fast-asleep people of the community were oblivious of the girl with demonic powers and the Bakeneko slither in to meet a notorious fixer.
“Jim, you still alive?” I shouted upon entering.
“I’ve had better days.”
We followed Jim’s tired voice into his room where he rested on the bed. His bare and enticing chest was dressed in bandages with a touch of dried blood on them. I pulled up the pictures I took of the warehouse, showing it to Jim. His eyebrow lifted.
“Russians are moving their trafficked girls to this location, any idea why?”
“Ah shit, Reika. What did you do?”
“I’ll explain later. Right now, I need to know what’s going on, and how to get in and out of that place without a bullet in my head.”
“You don’t, unless you’re invited,” Jim said, reclining back on the bed. “They do this every so often when high-profile celebrities are in the city. They round up their best girls and sell them to the highest bidder.”
I took my phone back and resisted the urge to snap it in half as I held it at both ends. “Fuck.”
“They’ve asked me in the past to work as a bodyguard or help with security for these events, but I turned them down,” Jim said. “I indulge in all things illegal, but there are some lines I refuse to cross, and human trafficking is one of them.”
“Yet you rail sex workers on a regular basis.”
“The girls I deal with are independent and willfully do it. There’s no harm in helping a college girl pay for tuition and bypass the exorbitant interest student loans slap you with. These girls the Russians have are forced into it and would rather not be there. There’s a difference, Reika.”
Wrath of the Demon Girl Page 12