by Glen Frost
Padilla had an entire spiel prepared for occasions such as this. He would typically give a false name to match the equally false ID of whichever government organization he was using as a cover; Alvers' death had rattled him just a little, however, and with two helicopters full of heavily-armed agents bearing down on this place at high speed, he figured it was safe to dispense with all of the usual bullshit.
"I am Supervisory Agent Juan Padilla, and I guarantee that you have never heard of my employer."
"Really?" Guskov sounded skeptical. "I am well-versed in the law enforcement agencies of the American government. Try me."
"We're not a law enforcement agency. Well, not in so many words."
"Intelligence, then."
"That's closer," Padilla admitted, "but still not accurate. Very few people even know that we exist, Mr. Guskov. Those who do either work with us, for us, or have a ridiculously high level of security clearance."
He half-expected the criminal to dismiss his story out of hand, but instead he seemed genuinely curious. "What is the name of this organization?"
"Those who know us at all, simply call us The Agency."
"The Agency," Guskov repeated. "And tell me, what is the remit of your...Agency?"
Padilla sighed. This is where it got difficult. But his gut reading of Guskov was still telling him to shoot straight with the man. "Mr Guskov, there are certain things in the world whose existence can be pretty hard to accept. Hell, I've been doing this job for ten years now and even I sometimes have trouble believing in them."
"To what manner of things do you refer, Agent Padilla?"
The SA began checking off items on his fingers as he said them. "Werewolves. The living dead. Vampires...you know, drinkers of blood that hunt the living at night?" The old man nodded, beckoning for him to continue. "Liches. Ghosts. Banshees. You name it, The Agency has fought to keep it in check. We keep the American people safe from their worst nightmares. And that, Mr. Guskov, is why I am here."
He fully expected the Russian to laugh in his face, but instead he said, "And what manner of creature brings you to my door?"
"A revenant. The word derives from the Latin term for "the returned." Usually somebody who dies with great anger or malice in their heart, and chooses to come back from the grave to seek revenge."
"Like the zombies that your Hollywood movie makers seem to be so fond of?"
"Somewhat, but not exactly. Think more of a Danny Boyle zombie than a George A. Romero zombie." The human trafficker looked confused, so Padilla clarified, "Fast and lethal, rather than slow and lumbering. These things are quick and very, very powerful."
Guskov fell silent. "I can see why the government would be interested in such a creature," he said at last.
"Okay, this is driving me nuts," Padilla said, unable to stand it any longer.
"What is driving you nuts?"
"You are. Or more specifically, your reaction to all this. I've just told you that I represent a covert government agency that protects the public from supernatural creatures straight out of horror movies. So far, you've barely batted an eyelid. Most people would have laughed me out of their homes by now. If you don't mind my saying so, you're accepting this way too easily."
"When I was a boy growing up in Russia, Agent Padilla, people from my village would disappear from time to time. Disappear without a trace. The older villagers told stories of a nearby lake, one from which all of the local children were banned from visiting."
"Let me guess. You snuck out and went anyway."
"Children are children the world over," Guskov smiled. "You are exactly right. My friend Giorgy and I snuck out after dark one summer evening and went to the lake, in order to see what all the fuss was about. You see, the village elders spoke of a creature that they referred to as a vodyanoi. Do you know what that means?"
Padilla nodded. "I'm familiar with the term. It's sort of like a...mer-man, right?"
"That is probably the closest analogy that western culture could provide," Vasily agreed. "We got to the lake shortly after darkness fell. Giorgy and I sat at the water's edge and waited to see what would happen...which turned out to be nothing. So we began to search for the flattest stones and pebbles along the shoreline and skimmed them out across the water.
"That's when he came out to see us..."
"The vodyanoi?"
"Yes, Agent Padilla. The vodyanoi. You see, he turned out to be more than an old wives' tale. No, this man...this creature was very, very real."
"What did he look like?" Padilla was curious despite himself.
"From the waist up, a man; on first inspection, at least. His skin was black, as black as midnight. He had a thick beard and two glowing red eyes. Between his shoulder blades was a big fin, like that of a shark, and from the waist down he had a large tail instead of legs; a tail covered in fish scales."
"Jesus Christ."
"Jesus Christ was not there to protect us that night. The vodyanoi did not come alone, you see. He had companions. Six or seven of them, I'm not sure which. I'm sure that you can guess who they were."
"The missing people," Padilla said quietly. Vasily nodded.
"Yes, just so. They had all drowned, you see. Knowing what I know now, I believe that the vodyanoi lured them into the lake. They were horribly bloated and pale, covered in fronds like seaweed. When they opened their mouths, nothing but water came out. The drowned people splashed out of the water toward us, their arms outstretched. It was obvious what they wanted."
"Company."
"Yes, company. They wanted us. We ran back toward the village. I was a faster runner than Giorgy. I always was. That night, he paid the price for that. Even when I heard him screaming, I didn't turn back. I simply kept my eyes on the road home and ran for all that I was worth."
"The drowned people got him?"
Vasily nodded sorrowfully. He lit a cigarette without bothering to offer Padilla one and took a long drag. "He never came home. I snuck back into my bedroom window and lay there all night, playing the events of the lake over and over in my mind. When the sun came up the next morning, Giorgy's parents found that he was missing. No search was put on. It was simply assumed that the vodyanoi had taken him."
"What about you?"
"Me? I kept my mouth shut, and kept the fuck away from the lake. Shortly afterward, my parents brought me to America. Even today, I do not like standing bodies of water. So take it from me, Agent Padilla, I have no trouble believing in the existence of your dead girl walking. My only question now is: what does this 'revenant' want with me?"
"We're not one hundred percent sure, but we believe she was a hooker working for a pimp named Piotr Blinov." Padilla watched Guskov's face as he said the name. He had to hand it to the Russian, he didn't so much as flinch at the mention of the name. "We have it on good authority that Blinov in turn worked for you."
Vasily remained poker-faced. "I have no recollection of somebody by that name being in my employ."
"Look, let's cut the shit, Guskov. One of my men is lying dead on your fucking property because of your dumb-fuck trigger-happy goons. The revenant damn near broke your pimp in half and one of his little buddies ended up smeared across the front end of an eighteen wheeler. Now she's coming for you, probably because she blames you, as Blinov's boss, for him being free to murder her."
"Either that, or she wants something from me..." Vasily rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"What do you know?" Padilla demanded.
"I...received a phone call, not long before you arrived. From a woman. She would not give her name, but she claimed that she had killed Piotr, just as you said, and was on her way here."
"Did she say what she wanted? Which would be your death, if I had to guess."
Vasily shook his head. "Not if she was being truthful. She wants her daughter to be smuggled into the United States from Russia. Apparently she believes that I can do such a thing."
"Can you?" Padilla as
ked pointedly.
"I have my ways and means," the trafficker admitted.
"Then will you?"
The old man smiled thinly. "I could. But I do not cave in to demands, particularly when the blood of my extended family has been spilled. Piotr Blinov was an arrogant little prick, but he was our arrogant little prick. There are consequences to what she has done, and revenant or not, I have sixteen heavily-armed men at my beck and call...more than enough to take care of one woman."
Padilla opened his mouth to retort, but was cut off by the sound of automatic gunfire and breaking class coming from the floor below. "Too late."
"That came from the swimming pool," Vlad said. He opened a kitchen closet and took out a shotgun, pumping it once and producing a metallic click-clack. Two of Guskov's men appeared from elsewhere in the house. Both carried Kalashnikovs. Vlad slapped the first on the shoulder. "Dmitri, get Mr. Guskov and our guest upstairs. Nikolai, you're with me. We'll show this whore exactly who she's fucking with..."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The side door had been locked, but forcing it had been child's play. The simple mortise lock splintered on the first pull. Anya slipped inside. The garage was gloomy, but there was enough light coming in through the snow-coated windows for her to make out the general lay of the land. There were two cars parked inside, one with an Aston Martin logo and the other a Dodge Ram pickup. The air smelled dank and musty, just like every other garage she had ever been in.
Anya worked her way along the far wall. Behind the pickup truck were three steps that led up to a plain white paneled door, which was not locked. She turned the handle and pushed the door open. It led to what looked like a laundry room, if the washing machine and dryer were any indication.
She passed through into a tiled corridor, which passed in front of the laundry room door at a right angle. To her left was a flight of stairs leading up to a closed door; to the right was what looked like a den or a man cave. A pool table and massive flat screen TV flanked a bar and kitchenette.
Directly in front of her, clearly visible through a series of glass windows, was an indoor swimming pool. The pool itself had a royal blue cover over it. Palm trees were positioned around the three sides that she could see.
Although she doubted that Guskov would be downstairs at this time of the day, Anya knew that it was only prudent to clear the ground floor first. Then she would work her way up, floor by floor, until she found the son of a bitch.
Walking as stealthily as she could manage in knee-high leather boots, Anya decided to start with the den. The lights were off in there, but as she drew closer to the doorway, her eye caught a blur of movement from within the darkness. Acting completely on instinct, she threw herself to the side. A triple flash of light came before the roar of the Kalashnikov putting out three 7.62mm rounds in rapid succession. They cut through the air where Anya had been standing just a split-second before, taking a chunk out of the wooden doorframe and shattering one of the windows that looked out onto the swimming pool.
Although Anya had no way of knowing it, many of the men that Vasily Guskov hired were former military. Rather than adopt the 'spray and pray' mentality of the amateur, these pros exercised admirable restraint and restricted themselves to firing three-round bursts. She had dodged the first such burst, and Anya was determined that there would not be a second.
Launching herself from the balls of both feet, the revenant hurled her body through the doorway, leaping up and over the high-backed leather couch. The gunman was just a dark outline, but that was more than enough of a target for her to aim at. She slammed into the figure at high speed, knocking him to the floor and straddling him.
The man tried to use his assault rifle as a shield. Anya ripped it out of his hands and used the stock to batter the brains right out of his skull. On the third blow, the back of his head came apart, spilling chunks of brain matter all over the thick shag carpet. The man's feet danced spastically. Rising smoothly, Anya ignored the soon-to-be-corpse and considered the assault rifle she held in her hands instead. She knew next to nothing about guns beyond 'point, pull, and shoot,' but she figured that it wasn't going to be particularly efficient to handle all of Guskov's goons purely by hand.
The door at the top of the staircase flew open and slammed hard against the wall. Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs. Anya took three steps to the side and brought the assault rifle up into the aim position, or at least as close an approximation as she could recall from having seen it done on TV. As soon as a man's figure appeared in the hallway, she lined the iron sights up as best she could and jerked the trigger hard.
A stream of rounds exited the barrel of the Kalashnikov. Although Anya was strong enough to withstand it, the sheer force of the recoil took her by surprise. The muzzle climbed higher and higher with each successive shot, stitching a line of holes along the corridor wall and then blasting a big chunk of plaster out of the ceiling of the den.
Fortunately, the second bullet had hit the man in the crotch. When Anya took her finger off the trigger, she watched with great satisfaction as the man squirmed on the tile floor with his hands between his legs and his knees drawn up to his chest.
A nut shot. No way he'll be coming back from that.
Above her head, the thud of boots on floorboards told her that more men were mobilizing. Getting trapped down here in the basement was probably not the smartest tactical move in the world, she figured; time to get out of here. She gave brief consideration to rushing the staircase straight on, but before she could come to a firm conclusion a second gunman appeared behind the pool room windows.
He fired the shotgun from the hip, shattering the floor-to-ceiling window and blasting chunks of leather and stuffing from the back of the couch.
"You killed Nikolai, bitch, and I'm assuming that Ilya is dead as well. Let's see what my pump-action friend here does to your whore ass."
Anya dove flat and lay prone on the floor behind the couch. The truth was, she had no idea exactly how much trauma her body could take since her return from the grave. She really had no desire to find out. A second blast shredded the furniture's high back, missing her head by a mere six or seven inches.
Keeping as low a profile as she could possibly manage, Anya slithered backward until the corner of one wall was between her and the man whose name, although she did not know it, was Vlad. A third volley of buckshot shattered the mirror behind the bar, along with a handful of liquor bottles that had been lined up beneath it. She glanced around, looking for a distraction, and found it in the form of a wall-mounted rack for the pool cues. Selecting one at random, she threw it in the direction of the pool room like a javelin.
The cue hit the tiles with a clack and skittered across them, rolling onto the heavy plastic pool cover. Reacting purely on instinct, Vlad pivoted on the balls of his feet and blasted it to smithereens. That was all the delay that Anya needed. She closed the distance between them in three graceful bounds, ducking into the pool room just as Vlad realized that he'd been fooled and began to turn back in her direction. Her booted foot hit him squarely in the crotch, dropping him to the tiles like a sack of shit.
Anya stamped on his right shin, shattering his tibia and fibula with a sickening crunch. Vlad threw back his head and screamed. Unfortunately for Anya, his head wasn't the only thing that came up and back. So did the shotgun. He pulled the trigger. Buckshot tore into Anya's chest at point blank range, a hailstorm of lead riding a concussion wave of propellant. Her arms were thrown out to either side in a Christ-like gesture, her back arching as her body was thrown backward through the air, straight through one of the few surviving plate glass windows.
Caroming into the pool table with the force of an artillery shell, Anya's body skidded to a halt on top of the green baize. Her stilettos ripped the felt away, peeling it back like the uppermost layer of an onion. She lay there for a moment, stunned by the sheer force of the impact; yet strangely, her chest did not hurt, despite the massive amount
of trauma that had just been inflicted upon it. Anya looked down, saw black viscous fluid leaking from a mass of perforations where the white shirt covered her chest and abdomen. It ran in thin streaks, like a slow oil leak beneath a car, soaking into the cheap cotton fabric.
Concentrating harder for a moment, she topped off her psychic mask, willing the gunshot wounds to disappear. They did. As soon as she engaged her mind, the shirt appeared good as new again, as pristine as if she had just gotten it dry-cleaned.
From inside the pool room came the sound of a shotgun being racked again. Anya pivoted off the table, landing in a crouch with catlike grace. The second click she heard proved that this was unnecessary; it was the sound of the trigger being pulled on an empty weapon.
"Unlucky, asshole." She strutted toward the fallen Vlad, who was frantically attempting to re-rack the shotgun. "Empty is empty."
"Stay the fuck away from me!" The words sounded ridiculously hollow even to Vlad's own ears.
The revenant laughed, her own firearm swinging idly from her right hand. She stood on the very edge of the pool, staring down at the injured man. He had slithered backward in a vain attempt to put some distance between them both, and was now laying on top of the pool cover, which rippled gently beneath him as the twitching of his limbs made a series of tiny waves on the surface of the water. Vlad struggled to get up, one hand still cupping his balls protectively.
Anya extended her right arm, pushing the muzzle of the Kalashnikov against his right knee, and pulled the trigger. Vlad shrieked. His kneecap exploded, spraying blood and bone fragments in all directions. The spent bullet passed cleanly through the back of his leg and punched a hole in the pool cover. Water began to leak out, mingling with the blood that was streaming from both the entrance and the exit wounds.
"Oh no," Anya tut-tutted with mocking sympathy, "That looks like it really hurts. Does it, Vlad? Hurt, I mean."
"Fuh...fuh...fuck you, you fucking slut!"