by Glen Frost
Padilla shook his head. "Blinov's tongue was ripped out and he's in a medically-induced coma. No useful data there. There's not much more the cops can tell us. As you already pointed out, if the revenant wanted Blinov dead, then he'd already be dead. I doubt he's in much danger at the hospital."
"Which leaves us with what, sir?"
"Guskov. We sound him out, spin him a tale about some psychopath coming after him. If we can get him to agree, we can emplace an Agency capture squad at his place. Then, assuming that your theory is right of course, they can take the revenant down when she turns up. We'll have her in the bag."
"I doubt she'll come quietly. Revenants hardly ever do."
"Quietly doesn't matter. Just as long as we don't have to damage her too badly. I'll call higher and have a squad put on standby. Once Guskov gives us his okay, we'll fly them in and set the trap."
Alvers nodded his approval. "Sounds like a plan, sir. What's Guskov's address?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Anya spent the rest of the morning brooding. Lounging on the lumpy old couch, she kept on turning the events of the last few days over and over in her mind. This was the first real opportunity she'd had to stop, think, and digest all that had happened to her.
The more time passed, the firmer her convictions became. Emily made one last-ditch attempt at convincing her to abandon her current course of action, but Anya stonewalled her. Finally, shaking her head in sadness, the white-robed English girl disappeared into thin air.
Lydia didn't stick around much longer after that. She wished Anya good luck, promised her balefully that her master was going to catch up with her in the end, and vanished in the blink of an eye.
By early afternoon, the black cloud that had been hanging over her all morning seemed to have lifted. Her mind was made up.
Physically, she felt fantastic, stronger and more invigorated than she ever had before. None of her three abductors had died easily. A lot of blood had been spilled. Every single drop that had touched her body had empowered her further, its blood magic breathing fresh life into her cold, dead limbs.
Moving from body to body, Anya had stripped away the clothing from each corpse and sorted it into two piles: one with clothing that was so bloodied and torn that it was basically unusable, and the other with the leftovers that were still somewhat wearable. From the latter pile, she was able to cobble together something that resembled an outfit: a shirt and the single unsullied pair of baggy cargo pants.
When she slipped them on, the pants immediately fell halfway down her ass, even with the belt tightened as tightly as it could go. The seat of the crotch sagged down toward her knees. Anya frowned. There was no way they were going to work out. She knew that there was violence in her near future, which meant that she would need something which allowed her to move quickly and fluidly. Shrugging her way out of the pants, she slipped the shirt on over her head. The baggy arms sagged over the ends of her fingers, while the hem came down past her thighs. It looked more like a nightdress than a shirt, she realized, and quickly tossed it away.
Picking up her formerly white shirt and leather skirt, she made her way to the bathroom. The mirror above the sink was badly cracked, but there were enough facets left intact to show Anya just how much blood she had gotten on her. The vast majority of her skin had gotten splashed, and had now dried and begun to flake off. She couldn't afford to be seen like that out in public. Somebody would call the cops and have her picked up in no time at all.
There was a grimy bathtub, which came with a cheap length of rubber hose attached to a bracket-mounted shower head. She turned the hot tap on, and was rewarded with a gush of dark brown water. After letting it run for thirty seconds or so, she tested the stream with one hand. It was stone cold, but at least the water was flowing cleanly now. The cold didn't bother her any more. Unzipping her boots, she set them to one side and stepped gingerly into the tub.
The water felt good on her naked body. Anya closed her eyes and allowed it to splash across her upturned face, running down her body and taking flecks of dried blood along with it. She rubbed at some of the more stubborn areas with her hands, gradually working them clean again. Although her nerves seemed incapable of sensing pain and discomfort any longer, she was pleasantly surprised to find out that the same could not be said for pleasure. When the fingertips of one hands brushed against one of her nipples, waves of pleasure coursed through her breast.
She let the other hand wander down over her flat belly to linger between her legs. Combined with the steady stream of water, the expert ministrations of Anya's fingers upon her clitoris caused her to shudder and groan with bliss. She worked herself with greater urgency, masturbating herself to the point of climax as quickly as possible.
When her libido was finally satiated, Anya uttered a sigh of contentment and began to work on her hair. Clotted blood had matted some of the long strands into ugly clumps. With the patience of a saint, she slowly pulled the sticky bundles apart, teasing the coppery gunk out until the hair resembled something of its old self again.
A pool of water was starting to rise up around her ankles. Looking down, Anya saw that a thin layer of scum was floating on top of it, leaving a murky line of grime around the edge of the tub. The drain was plugged with blood and hair, but at least her body was relatively clean once more. When she had become distracted by the thrill of her orgasm, Anya realized that she must have inadvertently dropped her psychic mask. Her flesh was revealed for what it truly was, bloated and pale in some places, an angry purple color in others.
Stepping carefully out of the bathtub, she looked in the mirror once more. A leering death's head stared back at her, a bone-white skull surrounded by ragged strips of flesh and connective tissue, like a Halloween mask or horror movie makeup job. A gaping black hole had been drilled in her forehead, left by the fatal bullet that Piotr had fired.
She hated the way she looked now. Hated it.
With a deliberate act of concentration, Anya willed her psychic mask back into place. In just a fraction of a second, the old Anya was staring back at her from the mirror: drop-dead gorgeous, without a single blemish or scar to mar her beauty.
The reality didn't matter. All that mattered was the mask.
Perception IS reality, she smiled to herself, using the dead mens' clothing to dry herself off. Anya pulled her skirt up over her curvaceous hips and buttoned it around her waist. The shirt came next, dirty and creased, followed by the knee-high leather boots.
She checked her reflection in the mirror once more, offering herself a coquettish smile.
Ready for war, honey. Ready for war...
Her next task was a simple one: tearing the house apart. That took her the better part of two hours to accomplish. When it was done, Anya had found what she believed were the majority of the drug addicts' secret stashes of cash. Despite Creep One’s whiny-ass claims of their being broke, she found that bundles of crumpled bills, mostly in $50 and $20 denominations, had been cached beneath the stairs, under a loose floorboard in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and taped to the back of the couch, to name just three hiding places. She laid the bills out by denomination on the coffee table, flattening, straightening, and counting the value of each one in turn, adding it to a running total.
$380. Not bad at all for a house full of junkies.
Putting the cash into a tight roll, she tucked it securely into her cleavage, pushing it far enough down for it to be out of sight. Anya reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper given to her by Piotr. Along with a pair of bloody fingerprints, the pimp had scrawled down the address and phone number of his employer.
Evergreen. She did some mental math. It was out west, if her hazy sense of local geography was correct. Not all that far. Certainly not $380 worth of far, as the taxi went. She'd have plenty of money to get her where she needed to go, and after that...well, if things worked out the way she planned, her money worries would be over forever.
&n
bsp; Terry's body was still laying where it had fallen in the hallway. Now it was stiff and rigored, one arm flexed in the air at a ninety-degree angle, its lifeless fingers stuck in the high five position. His face was a mask of congealed blood, thanks to the jawbone that impaled it. He was naked from the waist down; his had been the relatively bloodless pants that Anya had tried on and found to be too baggy. She guessed he must have been a 'go commando' sort of guy when it came to underwear. But what interested her most right now was the square bulge in the breast pocket of his shirt.
She fished out an iPhone 6 and thumbed the unlock button. Naturally, the phone was security locked, and she had no idea what the six-digit code could possibly be. She was about to toss the phone back in disgust when an idea suddenly struck her. It had worked with Donnie’s phone, after all, so why not Terry’s? Squatting down on her haunches, Anya pushed the dead man's right thumb firmly against the fingerprint-sensing button.
The phone unlocked itself, taking her to the home screen. She grinned. Her hunch had been right: why bother having to remember an entire six digit number when you could set the iPhone to use your thumbprint instead?
Selecting the green telephone icon, she punched in the number Piotr had supplied her with.
Let's see what this 'Mister Guskov' has to say for himself...
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vasily was buried balls-deep inside one of the slave girls when his cell phone rang.
He had spent the better part of an hour directing Vlad in his chosen methods of disciplining all seven of the girls. Then had come breakfast. He had worked up quite the appetite, and after one of his guards had cooked him bacon and eggs, the human trafficker had wolfed it down like a man that hadn't eaten in days, washing it down with three cups of French Roast coffee.
If Vasily had lived in a more accessible location, he would have spent the morning with The Denver Post; as things stood, nobody was willing to deliver newspapers to a place this isolated, especially in the middle of a snowstorm. He didn't hold with tablets and computers, so he did the next best thing to get his news fix: watched the morning edition of Fox News. It filled him in on the bigger national and global issues of the day, rather than wasting his time with any of that local shit, and besides, the female newscasters might have been dumb as a box of rocks but they were really, really fucking hot.
A couple of hours later, he'd had his fill of current affairs. Vasily took a shower and got dressed while Vlad used the time to hit the weight room, getting in his daily workout. Stretching out on the bed for a power nap, the old man soon lost track of time, and before he knew it, it was early afternoon. He awoke with a raging hard-on and a desire to hurt something, so back down to the basement he went.
Lyuba was the target of his ire this afternoon. Dark-haired with disconcertingly thick eyebrows, the girl was nineteen years old and pleasantly plump. While Vlad stood silently in the corner with folded arms, a not-so-gentle reminder of what would happen if the girls tried to interfere, Vasily used a thick wooden paddle embedded with metal studs on her buttocks. She was strapped face-down to a metal frame padded with leather, her arms and legs secured in the shape of an X.
The girl yelped and whined as the old man paddled her ass, which he found pleasurable at first; the noise soon outstayed its welcome, however, and so Vasily instructed his glowering enforcer to shut her up.
"But don't damage her too much," he cackled, spanking her ass even harder and extracting the loudest yipe of pain yet. "I may still want to put her on the streets when I'm done with her."
"Of course, Mr. Guskov." Vlad rammed a ball gag into the squirming girl's mouth, working it into place between her teeth. Her high-pitched cries were transformed into muffled grunts, interspersed with sharp inhalations through the nose as she struggled to breathe.
The metal studs had left a pattern of imprints on Lyuba's butt cheeks. Initially a series of raised welts, the paddle had now succeeded in breaking the skin, causing them to trickle blood. Guskov liked drawing blood even more than he liked beating his women into submission and compliance. A malicious sneer spread across his face, growing wider with each passing blow. He loved the way this one writhed, bucking her restraints while he disciplined her.
He entered Lyuba from behind, still enjoying the boost provided to him by the Viagra he'd taken earlier that morning. Taking a firm hold of her buttocks, Vasily pulled them onto his crotch. His hips weren't in the greatest of shape after all these years, but the sight of those bleeding buttocks quivering in time with his every thrust was proving to be one hell of a motivator.
Then his phone rang.
"Goddammit!" Vasily had never bothered to change his phone's ringtone to anything other than the default. The sequence of musical chimes coming from the hip pocket of his pants was probably meant to be soothing and unobtrusive, but the longer it went on, the more off-putting he found it to be. It was putting him off his stroke, drawing his attention away from the sweating, quivering lump of restrained flesh that he was fucking.
Finally, he could stand it no longer. Pulling out the phone, he looked at the incoming number on the screen and frowned. A local area code, but an unrecognized number. That was strange. Nobody that wasn't on his contacts list should even have this number.
"Hello? If this is a motherfucking telemarketer..."
He was answered with a laugh; cynical, scathing, and very, very female.
"Oh please, Mr. Guskov," said a heavily-accented voice. "Give me a little more credit than that."
"Who is this?"
"My name is not important. All that you need to know about me is that I am an employee of yours, in a manner of speaking."
Guskov frowned. The pace of his thrusts was beginning to slow. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"I worked for one of your junior associates. A man by the name of Piotr Blinov."
Now this mystery woman had his attention, whoever she was. This wasn't a wrong number. The bitch knew his name and the name of one of his bottom feeders, the street pimps who made him a sizable chunk of his income. Her accent was definitely Russian.
"What is it that you want?"
"Have you seen the news this morning, Mr. Guskov? Have you seen what happened to poor little Piotr?"
Vasily maintained his silence for a moment. He pulled out of the girl, unable to ejaculate now that his mind was racing at a thousand miles per hour. Who was this woman, and what the fuck did she want with him? If she really did work for Piotr, then that made her either a drug runner or a whore...more likely the latter of the two, because most of Piotr's runners were male.
"Well, Mr. Guskov? I'm waiting for an answer."
"No," he ground out irritably, "I have not seen what happened to Piotr. But I assume that you are about to educate me."
Laughter again. "You can obtain full details from 9-News."
"I presume that he is dead?" Vasily did his level best to keep his voice level and devoid of emotion.
"No. Not dead. Merely crippled. He was lucky. I was in the mood to let him live. You, on the other hand, may not be so fortunate."
Vasily could feel his grip tightening involuntarily on the phone. He tried to will himself to relax. He hadn't reached the top of the ladder in life by allowing himself to be goaded into taking angry, precipitous action. "That sounds a lot like a threat."
"Oh, make no mistake, Mr. Guskov, it is a threat. I killed that pig Marko, and took Piotr out of the gene pool. From the sound of you, you are no spring chicken, as the Americans like to say. Imagine what I could do to you."
"I will ask you one final time. What. Do. You. Want?"
"It is perfectly simple. I know how it is that you make your fortune."
"Do you really?" Vasily sneered. "Pray tell."
"Drugs. Prostitution. And most relevant of all, human trafficking." There was a long pause. "I can tell from your silence that we understand one another. Now, here is the good news. I am not out to burn you. I will not tur
n you over to the authorities...if I get what I want, that is."
"Get to the fucking point already!" Vasily blurted angrily, all control suddenly gone.
"Very well. I shall. My daughter lives in Khabarovsk. I want her to be brought here to the United States."
"I am not the immigration service."
"No, you are not," the voice agreed. "For one thing, you have no paperwork. No inspections. No agents. No red tape. You can cut through all of the bullshit."
"Yes," Vasily agreed warily, "I can. For a price."
"The price I offer you is a bargain."
"How much?"
"Money? Nothing. Instead, I offer you something much more valuable. Your life."
Now it was Guskov's turn to laugh. "If you knew even the first thing about me, you would know that I am surrounded night and day by armed guards. You wouldn't even get close."
"I'm well aware of the quality of your men, Guskov. After all, I killed one of them last night and crippled the other. With my bare hands. Think about that for a moment. I ripped Piotr's eyes out and shoved one up his ass. Imagine what I would do to you, if I don't get my daughter back."
Vasily paused. He needed time to think, to plan. If what she said was true, then the bitch was psychotic. Only a fool would dare to attack him here, in what was basically a fortress defended by a small army of heavily-armed guards, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He had to stall, talk to Vlad. Not to mention tucking his dick back inside his pants.
"Something might be arranged," he replied noncommittally. "Why don't we arrange a meeting. Discuss it face to face. Somewhere neutral."
The girl laughed again. "I think that is a wonderful idea."
"Name the time and place. I will be there."
"Very well. Your living room. In one hour. You see, I am already on my way to visit you. We will discuss the specifics of bringing my daughter to the United States. And now, a word of warning, Guskov...if you have more than one of your thugs with you when I arrive, I am going to kill every last one of you motherfuckers. Don't say you haven't been warned."