Ring of Madness

by Royden Labrosse

  Werewolves froze for a moment.

  - It could have been," admitted Leonidas. - But it doesn't make us feel any better. We'll interview taxi drivers, passers-by, salespeople... This thing couldn't have messed with everyone's head!?

  I shook my head. I could, I couldn't...

  How much this unknown creature of strength from the same Alfonso drank - it has enough strength for the Kremlin to pass through. I don't know if a poll will do anything...

  - Yulia, is there any way you can't feel Nastia? She's got your spell on her," Valentine shyly asked.

  I shook my head.

  - Alas. The city. People. There's only one thing that makes me happy. Apparently, all the sacrifices were made in the evening. At sunset, just after sunset. There's still time. So look for it.

  - What are you going to do? - I was wondering about Valentine.

  - And I'll be thinking.

  * * *

  While everyone was rushing around the apartment, I grabbed Charles's hand, dragged him into the kitchen, and sat down at the table. I took the photos of Lavric's accident. With Alfonso. And I also started to draw a circle, a triangle and cuts on paper. It turned out very well. And what's next? I put three sheets in front of me and stared at them like a sheep at my ram. Waiting either for an epiphany or a hoof under my tail.

  - Can you find anything familiar here?

  - No, I shrugged half a dragon. These drawings are disgusting. They're ugly. And they make me dizzy.

  I couldn't find anything new either.

  Three triangles. Circles. Unexplicable symbols that look like scraps of lines.

  Why!?

  Is this a call?!

  But - what? If something comes, where are the symbols designed to hold the essence inside the drawn triangle?! And why a triangle, anyway!? Isn't it easier to take a pentagram? It's more reliable, that's for sure. That's how much I know about all this demonology!

  These lines and dashes can't hold anyone.

  What can they do?

  Why do you need them!?

  If people's strength was drunk out of their hearts, why all these drawings!?

  I've been spinning them around like this, trying to find something.

  Where's that? Not with my stupid brains!

  Charles was doing the same thing next door.

  - I don't understand," he confessed. - Something is spinning. But that's what!? It's like a feather in the air - it's twisting, but it's not!

  Leonidas looked in the kitchen.

  - What? - I jumped in.

  - Zero so far. What about you?

  - Shit! - I scolded while throwing leaves on the table. - I'm no better.

  And I froze.

  The transparent pebble managed to slide onto another sheet. She covered it and the two corners of the triangle merged. And if it was three!? The triangle has three sides. And all three can be equal to each other. Or maybe...

  How are the murders going to get on the map of the city!?

  - Charles!

  I looked at the triangle. Charles.

  On Valentine. On a triangle.

  On Leonidas. On Constantine. And again to the drawing in front of me. And she screamed at me.

  - Find me a paper map of the city immediately!!!

  The map was on my desk after fifteen minutes. And we started to mark the points where the dead bodies were found.

  Three dots. Three murders. The triangle. The first stable system. And the easiest. Is it easy to sit on a three-legged stool?

  More than!

  We carefully measured the triangle and found its center. Although I had to raise my geometry books for that. But - the enemy will be defeated and the victory will be ours! We found the middle of the triangle, so I stuck a pin in it.

  - Uh, yeah...

  There was a sports palace under the pin.

  It's also an old story. There used to be an old church standing there. Our town is four hundred years old. And in that time, something that hasn't been destroyed in it. Including her. They built a stone church when the city was founded. And then it was destroyed three times. The first was in the fire. The second was when Napoleon came to Russia. The French came to us for a fire, too. And being people who were not laborers, they quickly missed the fire. And we also had a few streets burned out. Well, not the capital, we're backed up. And for the third time, the church was demolished under Soviet rule. And a sports complex was built out of bricks (what good is it?) and partly on the old foundation.

  And he was still standing. Despite all the vicissitudes of perestroika and democracy. Our attempts after the 90s wanted to shake the rights, say, give them the sanctified land, we will restore the temple again!

  Where's that? At the time, Viti Boxer's group was hanging out at the sports complex. And when he heard that they wanted to deprive him of his almost native hall, Vitya gathered his bulls - and went to the local diocese building. He came to visit. Talked to him for life.

  And you know, the good word worked. The Holy Fathers quickly remembered that the Lord commanded to share, not only to gulp at three throats and six hands - and settled down.

  But whatever with him, with the palace. Is this system exactly a triangle? Basically, a square consists of two triangles. A pentagram of three or four, depending on how you draw it. And this triangle, though equilateral, is not a guarantee. What if it were a square? A rhombus? At least an octogram!

  We don't know what the psycho is thinking. I'm sorry.

  And we have no right to miss. Nastia and her two children. Constantine. To whom, by the way, I owe my life.

  But how do you test algebra harmony? Or epiphany by logic? We looked at each other for a few minutes in silence.

  - Guys, suddenly Charles fell out, and how were these bodies oriented around the world? А?

  Leonid silently snapped and rushed to the room - to clarify something through e-mail.

  We got the results an hour later. And they made us very happy.

  Lavric. Dot one. The body lies from east to west. So head to west, feet to east. And so strictly that no compass is needed.

  Natasha. Dot two. From west to north.

  Alfonso. Dot three. From east to north. An equilateral triangle. Classic. And if you lay out the sides in vectors, it all adds up. And if you count the center of the triangle again, it's in the sports palace.

  But - how!?

  - It's Sunday. How does he expect to spend the sacrifice there?

  - So the sports complex was closed for repairs. Last week, - shrugged Gleb. - You did not know?

  I didn't know. How would I know? I only go to the private gym, to the furry and hairy ones.

  - Why would I do that?

  - That's where it happened, almost killed the baby.

  - Oh, yeah?

  - Julia, you know that our utilities at least in the receipts and put "maintenance and repair of housing", but the repair and now there - said Valentin. - And they didn't block the goddamn roof of time there. So it turned out that the mother and child are walking, the child runs under the roof, a piece of cornice breaks off and falls on his head.

  - It didn't?

  - The baby's not. But the director of the complex was barely ripped out of the hands of an angry mother.

  I snorted. If my baby had been attached like that, the principal wouldn't have left alive. And then I would've gone to the management company that runs this building. And there'd be nothing left but ruins. Anyway...

  It's all a-a lottery!

  This is how much you are charged per month for maintenance and repairs, and what is meant by this?

  The janitor? The janitor? We pay for them ourselves. Roof replacement? It's past again. We haven't shut it down in ten years. Replacing the pipes?

  Ha!

  If you were even three times a psychic! But your plumbing and sewerage will leak and leak!

  We do. I have about 300 apartments in my house. Five rubles are taken from a square meter of the apartment. There with kopecks, but let's round it
up... The average area of one apartment... let it be fifty square meters? Okay, forty. We multiply it, we get what? Two hundred re from the apartment. Two hundred multiplied by three hundred more. Sixty thousand! Get out of the house! A month! Multiply by twelve months. And the total is 720000 rubles. And it's still very rounded.

  And now, a scary question for backfill. Is it impossible to change at least one sewer riser in a house once a year for seven hundred and twenty thousand rubles?

  Or to grease the gaps between the panels? Or the balconies at the bottom?

  Anything at all! It's not like that! Everybody to zero, everybody to nowhere! Who the hell are we holding!? A gang of gangsters!? Seven hundred thousand a year from one house. From ten to seven million!

  All right! Minus the salary, all sorts of things. What's the cost of housing and utilities?

  So be it. Minus three million a year. With an average salary of ten grand and even stealing...

  What!? Four lemons isn't enough!? Even for balcony repairs!?

  Shit! When are we gonna stop being a flock of rams and start counting on a calculator!?

  - Yulia, - Valentine's voice distracted me, - what are you thinking about?

  Telling the truth didn't drag me away. I had to shake my head.

  - We should ambush...

  Constantine was leaning, but he immediately laid on his shoulder heavy leonidas.

  - You. Nowhere. I'm not. You're going.

  And I understood him very well. In American cinema, everything looks beautiful and fun. Husband saves his wife or kids, his grandmother's relatives, his favorite dogs. And they conquer evil in a friendly way, pulling out from under the nuclear blast at the very last moment and squeezing snot out of the sensitive ladies. Looks beautiful. But in reality...

  No one will ever let a man save his family. Just because...

  When it comes to the people we care about, we are too unpredictable. And we will not be able to act calmly and reasonably, with a cold head and steel nerves. Constantine can't go. Neither can Gleb. They're too close friends.

  And from our perspective, the werewolf knew it himself.

  - I'm going to go crazy!!! - tried to protest Konstantin.

  - Gleb stays with you. And we're going to call the cheerleader now, I "comforted" him. - So I don't do anything stupid. And if you want to get away, the vampires will wake up at sunset. They'll find you without much effort. Okay?

  - I'll ask my friends to come," sang the bear, pulling out the phone. - It won't come out of us.

  Constantine fell in the chair and stared out the window.

  - That's a good one. Charles and I are going into an ambush.

  - Shaz!

  - Bullshit!

  - No!

  The men were surprisingly unanimous. Even Charles, who, in response to my surprise, explained..:

  - You're not going. I'd rather go alone...

  - For bread? - I did. - You guys are talking nonsense. You don't know what you're going to face!

  - Do you know? - If Leonidas was hoping to eat me up with this question, he miscalculated a lot.

  - Well, I already know. Valentin will confirm.

  - And what will I confirm?

  - That I was able to protect you and your grandfather, then, in the square, I shook my shoulders.

  - You really did something," Valentine agreed. - Only... what makes you think it would be the same?

  - Because on the second murder, this creature left its guards. Not even keepers, but a trap designed for people like me. You wouldn't even see it.

  - And why do you see that? - I asked Leonidas.

  The question was a logical one. But the answer is...

  - Lyonya, with all the war secrets are kept secret. Medchislav will throw up our legs later...

  The shape-shifter took a hint.

  - Then you two go, I'll, uh, I'll call a couple of strongmen now. Or better yet, ten men.

  - – А…

  Valentin wanted to be outraged, but where is it going?

  - Val, tigers are stronger than foxes," just said Leonidas. - So you wait for the vampires to wake up and you send them to us to help. Is that clear?

  - I suppose you could use a couple of bears, too," the bear just said. And I started to wonder if I knew her name. I came up and looked at her.

  - Why are you helping us?

  The question was posed in a bland way, but she understood. They don't owe us anything, they could have waited, seen who, who and what...

  - I have a friend. She's a journalist on local television," just said the bear.

  And I stroked myself on the head in my mind. How clever of me to cure that girl.

  - What's her name? Does she need help?

  - You were treating her the very first day," said the bear.

  We were drilling each other with our eyes. And I didn't lie.

  - Lyoshka asked me to.

  - And you wouldn't just help her?

  I sighed.

  - I would. Could've put it off and rested a little, could've put it at the top of the list, but it would've helped.

  - Why?

  - Cause...

  There was no other answer. But that winter, when I met Daniel, came back to my eyes again. And there was blood on the basement floor.

  I was killing then. Innocent people. whose problem was that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yeah, vampires needed blood at the time. Yeah, I didn't have a choice. Yeah, if I hadn't put Boris and Vadim on their feet, we'd just have been killed. I don't think Danielle could have helped me then...

  I don't know if I had any other choice. Could I run to a blood transfusion station and ask them for a couple of bags of plasma?

  I don't know.

  I killed one man myself. I just drank out of it my whole life like a vampire. And one memory still made me nasty. And it's nice. The feeling of power is an amazing feeling.

  But that's not the point. To save myself, I killed others. Well, let him who voluntarily gives his life and the lives of his family throw a stone at me. Well, let him.

  And if I could help someone else now, I was trying to help.

  I didn't give the last one. I didn't break myself. I didn't sacrifice my life or my health. Well, there you go. Let them say this help doesn't count, it doesn't cost me anything. But I wouldn't get past it either.

  The bear kept looking into my eyes. And I answered briefly:

  - Do good, throw it in the water.

  - Did you expect it to come back to you?

  [19]

  - No.

  The bear nodded.

  - Wait a minute, I'll call ours.

  Two hours later, we were ambushed.

  I strongly suspect it's being done in a different way. But we sat in the security office and looked at the video cameras. We're me, Charles and Leonidas. We had four other tigers with us. Anatoly (just call me Tolyan!), his alter ego - Kolyan, Dmitry (Dima, for you - Dima and on "you") and Sergei Petrovich (with your permission, Sergei Petrovich... - I willingly allowed, especially since Sergei was like sixty years old and in reality could even compare a hundred. Werewolves live longer than people once in two).

  They got the radios and scattered around the complex. Here they are, sitting in an ambush. Leonidas was in control of the whole thing, including several foxes guarding the entrances to the complex. And we just waited by the sea for the weather, mocking the director's computer at the same time. Charles had already managed to get into porn sites a couple of times, and the screen was decorated with new wallpaper. Such, porno-virus, which are prescribed bride where and not deleted without formatting the hard drive.

  At lunchtime, one of the tigers brought us some boxes of pizza and Coke. And at four o'clock, Rokin called.

  - Julia, good afternoon.

  - I don't know, I haven't been informed yet.

  Rokin laughed.

  - Consider it reported. Tell me, did you notice anything else?

  - No, I lied.

  Did they unde
rstand something - or are they just trying to test me?

  - Yulia, are you sure? Our psychics can't even count individual traces...

  - What's that got to do with me? I did what I could for you.

  - Julia, if you're hiding something, you better say it now. Then it'll be much worse...

  Is that a threat? But to ask was to show your fear. And what am I going to tell them? The whole truth? Yeah, right now! I'd rather shoot myself right away! It's painless!

  - I have nothing to hide," I said pathosly.

  Rokin was quiet for a minute.

  - Okay. I believe you. We're just afraid of more murders. So please, if you notice anything...

  - I'll be sure to call you. If I can. If I'm alive.

  I tried to speak cheerfully, but either the phrase was unsuccessful, or the IPF back smells lies... Rokin was clearly worried.

  - Yulia, are you sure you're all right?

  - Everything," I reassured him. - And a little more from above. It's so easy, the depression is overwhelming...

  - If you want, you can come to our temple for service - from the bottom of your heart suggested IPF. - Depression and sadness as a hand will take off. It's tonight, at...

  I broke it off.

  - I'd rather eat chocolate. The result is the same, and the taste is better. But for the offer, Merci.

  - It always remains in force.

  - I'll remember... Goodbye?

  - Goodbye, Julia.

  Before I could press the off button, the phone rang at Leonid's.

  The shape-shifter listened for a few minutes, then answered with solid interjections, and then pressed the back and turned to us too.

  - Missing Dosya Shiny.

  - What!?

  - How!?

  - Who the hell gave up on that fool!?

  The last statement was mine. And then I shut up and looked at everyone with my square eyes.

  - Guys, she could have taken Nastia!

  Werewolves nodded. I saw that they thought almost the same thing. I was just the first one to voice that version. And it wasn't because of the speed of my mind, but because I used to give out everything that was on my tongue - and immediately. And the werewolves were trained by Andre to think first, then not say, and then not do. Or do it quietly.