Only Ashes Remain

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  From the outside, of course, the building looked like nothing more than a normal condo complex. No way to know you weren’t supposed to be in there. No way to know that if you screamed, no one would come for you.

  Nita planned for a lot of screaming.

  Her phone buzzed—not Reyes’ phone, she wasn’t foolish enough to try using it again. She’d snagged an old, slow smartphone on the way out of Adair’s pawnshop and then gone to the store and bought an overpriced data plan for it with the last of Kovit’s cash. Reyes’ phone was safely tucked away in pieces in her bag.

  She checked the notification. Payment had gone through, and the game was on.

  Nita had officially sold her own location on the black market.

  First—and most pressing—problem solved. Now she had some loose cash. Well, cryptocurrency, which she could convert to cash.

  More importantly though, it meant that soon the black market associates of the man who’d attacked her on the subway would be on their way to the empty apartment condo she was sitting in.

  She swallowed, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeggings. This was her plan. There was no need to be worried. Everything was under control.

  “Nita?” Kovit came around the corner from the other room, pausing behind the cream sofa, the only furniture in what Nita assumed was supposed to be the living room.

  “Yes?”

  “Did they take the bait?”

  She nodded. “They’re on their way here now.”

  Kovit watched her, his dark eyes unreadable. He had a crease between his eyebrows, and he hesitated a moment before asking, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  She looked away. “Of course.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t sound very sure.”

  She sighed. He was right. She wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But she didn’t know what else to do.

  She’d initially considered turning on Reyes’ phone again and luring every dealer in Toronto into the building and then blowing it to kingdom come. Down they’d all go in one fell swoop. Along with some innocent passersby and Toronto’s air quality.

  But she’d decided that blowing up would be too risky. It would be hard to control all those people going in and out, getting the timing for the explosion right would be impossible, and what if the different groups started fighting with each other before she was ready and the police were called? It wasn’t contained, like the market in Peru had been. There was too much uncertainty, too many ways for it to go wrong.

  And even if it did go exactly according to plan, a lot of people would die. It was a bit much, even for her. Which, she thought, was practically a good deed. All those people she might have killed but wasn’t going to.

  That was how good deeds worked, right?

  Yeah, not even you believe that, Nita.

  Shut up.

  She forced her thoughts away from that. “I’m open to other options.”

  Though it would have been nice if he’d mentioned his other ideas before she’d set everything up with this black market group. But she still had time to ditch the building, take the money, and run if he had a different plan.

  “How about leaving?” He leaned forward. “Look, we have a safe place to hide. We could lie low for a bit, get out of town, and just forget this. Leave the black market behind. Use the money you just got selling your location online and buy a ticket somewhere.”

  “Kovit . . .”

  He could hear the rejection in her voice, and his became a little more desperate. “We can live anonymously. Disappear with me,” he pressed, leaning forward, close enough that Nita could feel the heat radiating from his body. “We can vanish. They’ll never find us.”

  She shook her head slowly. “They will. The world is too small to hide from the internet.” Nita’s voice was firm. “The black market will still be hunting for me. I can’t just play the victim. I have to do something. Waiting around to be found and killed or hiding for my whole life isn’t an option.”

  “I get it. I do.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “But this feels very . . . not you, Nita. Luring people places to murder them?” His mouth curled in a tight smile. “I thought I was the one people were supposed to be afraid of being locked in a room with.”

  Nita snort-laughed, even though she knew she shouldn’t, knew exactly how horrifying Kovit could be. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Well, they are coming here to kill me.”

  “But you set the bait and the trap.” He frowned, humor vanishing from his face, and something solemn taking its place. “It’s different. It’s not like in the market, where there was only escape or death. Everything there felt like self-defense. This is an attack.”

  “I like to think of it as preemptive self-defense,” she said with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.

  Kovit glared. “You know the only place that uses that term is the Dangerous Unnaturals List, right?”

  Her smile fell. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.” He leaned against the back of the couch, fingers digging into the top of the cushions, and tipped his head up. He was silent for a long moment before he asked, “Did you ever think about making rules? Like I mentioned in the Amazon?”

  She hesitated, then looked away and nodded. “Yes.”

  He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “Did you make any?”

  “Yes.”

  He watched her, waiting for her to elaborate. But she remained silent, eyes turned away. She didn’t want to tell him her rule.

  Because if she told him, he’d realize she’d based it off him. Not based it off the rules he’d made—based it on not becoming him.

  Nita was willing to do whatever it took to protect herself, to keep herself safe now and in the future. But she wasn’t willing to become like Kovit, like her mother, hurting others simply for the pleasure of it.

  That was the line she’d decided she wouldn’t let herself cross.

  She turned away from him, almost afraid he could see that truth in her eyes. More than anything, she never wanted him to see this truth, because she knew it would cut him deep. “I made my lines.”

  “And this doesn’t cross them?”

  She met his eyes square on. “No.”

  His eyes were dark and worried. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel the doubt radiating off him as surely as if he’d spoken.

  She tilted her head back and let the fluorescents blind her for a moment. “I need to prove to the market once and for all that I’m not someone they should take lightly.”

  Kovit was silent, but his chin tilted down, casting shadows across his face.

  Nita swallowed and pressed on. “I need them to understand that anyone who messes with me will regret it. I want them to fear me so much they won’t dare hunt me.”

  Then, and only then, would they leave her in peace.

  Kovit’s hair fell in front of his face, and she willed him to understand. Wasn’t that what he’d done to survive in the mafia? Become so much the monster, played up every one of his misdeeds so that people whispered in terror about him?

  “This group is already hunting me, and they’re probably angry I killed one of their own. I need to get rid of them. If I kill them, I can use it as a building block for my reputation,” Nita continued, her sweaty palms slippery on the too-shiny kitchen counter. “El Mercado de la Muerte’s destruction was one block. This will be another.” She swallowed and forced her voice to sound determined, as if making herself sound sure on the outside would make up for all the doubts she had inside. “And I will make as many bricks as necessary to build a wall to protect me.”

  Kovit’s face was still as he examined her, and Nita had the disconcerting feeling he was wondering what he had gotten himself into. If he had traded working with one monster for another.

  Both of them had always been surrounded by monsters. Perhaps there was no one else they could empathize with, no one else who would empathize with them. Like calls to like, and Nita wa
s beginning to wonder day by day if she wasn’t just as much of a monster as Kovit, but in a different way.

  He was silent a long time before turning away. He looked out the window, down at the entranceway below, and whispered softly, “They’re here.”

  Seventeen

  THEY TOOK THEIR POSITIONS in practiced movements. Kovit went to stand in the small closet by the door, shielded from view of those entering, and Nita crouched behind the kitchen counter.

  The seconds ticked by. Nita’s breathing was fast and sharp, anticipation making her leg shake and her hands tremble.

  Was Kovit right? Was this a bad idea?

  Well, it was too late now.

  The door didn’t crash open, but whispered, as though the people were hoping to surprise her. She slipped silently forward, knife ready.

  She peered around the corner, and there they were. Three of them, two men and a woman, spreading out across the apartment. One was still by the door, one was approaching the kitchen, and the third had gone to the window.

  Nita let her eyes wander over them. Her research had indicated that this group was actually pretty infamous. With the dead man on the subway, that made four people. Too few, she suspected, to wipe out the group entirely, though maybe enough to wipe out everyone who’d come to Toronto. But that wasn’t really the point of this, though it would have been convenient.

  She watched them walk, trying to figure out who of the group was in charge.

  Nita’s eyes narrowed as the tall man by the window gestured at the woman by the door, waving her toward the bedrooms.

  A smile curved Nita’s lips. Found you.

  In the closet, she could see movement in the shadows, and she nodded at it.

  Now.

  She was moving, lunging for the man on the other side of the kitchen counter, knife raised. He never had a chance. Nita’s blade took him in the back, right in his upper spine, instantly paralyzing him. Spinal fluid blended with blood and oozed from the wound as the man crashed to the floor, screaming.

  Nita didn’t care if he made noise. It was more important that he didn’t feel the pain. The last thing she needed was to incapacitate her partner.

  While Nita had been pouncing, Kovit had come from behind, and slit the throat of the woman near the door. Her body lay in a growing pool of blood, and by the time Nita looked up, Kovit already had the third man, the leader, kneeling on the ground, arm twisted behind his back and knife at his throat.

  Nita pulled the kitchen knife from her victim with a squelch and stepped over his dying body to help Kovit.

  The man on the ground turned his head, even as Kovit twisted his arm tighter. The man gasped, and his eyes fell on the two dead bodies of his comrades. For a moment, his face was transformed by grief—his mouth turning down, eyebrows falling, lip trembling—before it hardened as he gasped in air, as though steeling himself for what was to come.

  The man shook, and he met her eyes with his own watery brown ones. “Look, I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement.”

  Kovit snorted. “That’s how you know a black market businessman. Always trying to make a deal.”

  The man’s eyes flicked up to Kovit. “I think anyone would try to make a deal in these circumstances.”

  Nita couldn’t fault him for that.

  “I have money—”

  “Hush, now.” Nita put a bloody finger to her lips and smiled.

  He blanched, and immediately went silent. Nita got a little thrill, enjoying how fast fear silenced him. Fear of her. He couldn’t see the nerves churning underneath, just the front she presented. And that front scared him enough to obey.

  Energy buzzed through Nita. Kovit was wrong. This was exactly the right plan. She could already see it working. If she could just make the whole world see her like that . . .

  There was a gun at his belt he’d never had time to draw, and Nita casually pulled it out and shoved it in the waistband of her pants, like she saw in the movies. It was a lot less comfortable than it looked, the metal digging into her skin.

  She ignored it and patted the man down. He tried to move, but Kovit twisted his arm tighter and dug the blade into his throat hard enough that a fine trickle of blood dripped down and spattered the floor.

  Nita found a wallet and cell phone, which she pocketed, and another gun, which she shoved in Kovit’s waistband. He gave her a look like, Why are you shoving guns down my pants? And she just shrugged like, Well, where else do I put it?

  He looked meaningfully at the counter, and she rolled her eyes and took the gun back and put it on the counter.

  Kovit never moved his knife from the man’s throat. Their captive’s brown eyes followed every movement Nita made, and his eyebrows pulled together. He licked his lips, and his eyes kept flicking to the dead bodies of his friends. Probably thinking of what he could bargain with.

  But this wasn’t a negotiation.

  Nita turned away and took her phone out. She padded over to the other two dead bodies. The one Kovit had killed lay by the door, her face resting beside a sign asking people to take their shoes off before entering the apartment. Her eyes were large and glassy, and she smelled awful already.

  Nita snapped a photo.

  She went to the next one, the one she had killed. She felt a strange hesitation to approach, but she wasn’t sure why. He was dead. It didn’t matter. She’d killed before.

  She shook her head. She was being foolish. She knelt down, took a picture of his face, then turned away sharply, back to the kitchen.

  Kovit had taken the time to bind the man with duct tape to one of the kitchen chairs.

  Nita frowned. “What are you doing?”

  Kovit blinked, and gave her an innocent look. “We’re going to kill him, right?”

  She nodded, once.

  He grinned, cruel and crooked and violent as he plucked the cheese grater from the shelf. “Then I want to have fun first.”

  The man turned his eyes upward, saw the cheese grater, and began to scream. Clearly, a threat of impending torture was scarier than Nita and her bloody request to keep quiet.

  “Please,” he begged, eyes flicking between Nita and Kovit. “Anything you want.”

  Nita swallowed, trying to look anywhere but the cheese grater.

  Kovit was still smiling, and he leaned over the man and whispered softly in his ear. “Sadly, you have nothing we want except your death. And I’m hungry.”

  The man’s eyes got huger, and in horror he whispered, “Zannie.” His eyes flicked to Nita. “Please. Please don’t let it hurt me.”

  Kovit’s smile didn’t waver, but his fingers clenched tighter on the grater.

  The man was shaking, his eyes on the cheese grater, as though he was imagining exactly what kinds of things could be done with it. Nita was too, but she didn’t let that show.

  “Well,” she said, taking the man’s wallet from the counter and pulling out his credit cards. “A PIN number for these would be a nice start.”

  He gave it immediately, his breaths coming in soft sobs. Kovit pulled out his phone and typed them down.

  The man swallowed, gaze focused on Kovit like he was afraid he was one of the weeping angels from Doctor Who, always moving closer the moment you looked away from them. His eyes turned to the cheese grater, slowly, like he was turning his head to see the monster behind him.

  Finally, he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

  Kovit jerked suddenly and spun to the man, swearing, even as the man emitted a moan that sounded more like a suppressed scream. Kovit grabbed the man’s jaw and tried to pry it open while Nita stood there staring.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  The man’s body jerked and spasmed and his eyes rolled toward Kovit, red-rimmed and scared. Blood bubbled from between his lips.

  Kovit finally managed to open the man’s mouth and a torrent of blood streamed out, a wash of red covering the bound man and spattering across Kovit. So much blood.

  “He bit his to
ngue off.” Kovit’s voice was inflectionless. “He’s drowning in his own blood.”

  Nita stepped forward, but there was nothing to be done. The tongue had an artery, and if you bit through it, it could kill you, albeit more slowly than if you cut the artery at your throat or your groin. Which was probably why the man had decided breathing in the blood and drowning himself in it was the better way to go.

  Kovit was pounding on the man’s back, trying to get him to cough up the blood, but he’d closed his mouth again and continued to inhale blood to prevent himself from coughing it out, even as his chest spasmed, choke reflex trying to save him.

  Nita stood still. It was pointless to stop him from drowning when the blood loss would kill him soon anyway. Besides even if she could help him, she wouldn’t. She was going to kill him anyway. If he wanted to spare himself from whatever Kovit planned, she couldn’t really blame him.

  Kovit shivered softly as the pain flowed through him, and the man choked on his own blood, gasping and retching. This continued for seconds, minutes, a horrifying tableau that Nita was frozen in.

  Finally, the man died.

  Kovit let out a small soft sigh when it happened and looked mournfully from the cheese grater to the man.

  Nita held back any signs of relief. She hadn’t wanted to see the results of Kovit’s experiments with the cheese grater. She let out a short breath and took a picture of the dead man’s face. She needed to finish the plan.

  She turned on data and opened the browser that would allow her access to the darknet. Her whole body relaxed and a gentle smile crossed her face when she saw the pale, stylized onion in the corner. It was familiar, a relic of her childhood. She’d been working on this internet for as long as she could remember. This was her world.

  She made herself a new account in the major black market forums. Her fingers hovered over the username box until she finally typed in SCALPEL.

  Kovit looked over her shoulder as she wrote. “Your username is Scalpel?”