by Dima Zales
Vlad must’ve done this over and over. Shreds of hospital gowns and a variety of Koschei and Johnny body parts cover every surface—making the battlefield look like the playroom of a serial killer surgeon with a penchant for modern art.
Even the ceiling is covered in blood.
What I can see of Vlad’s arms through the camera is also not looking great.
His clothes are torn and his pale skin is covered with multiple layers of viscera—hopefully none of it his.
A muscle-bound Johnny tries to get uppity and grabs Vlad’s shirt, so Vlad rips into his throat with his teeth.
“Is he drinking blood in the middle of all this?” Felix mutters, his face pre-fainting pale.
“He might need the extra calories or whatever it is the vamps need from blood,” I reply. “Turn that off or you’ll faint.”
Felix dismisses the grisly feed but still looks like he might pass out at any moment.
“Where are we headed?” he asks, probably to distract himself.
“Vlad clearly lied about the ease of escaping that room to make us leave.” I take a deep breath. “So, though I hate to have to do this, I don’t see any other choice.” I decelerate and make a sharp turn. “I’m going to ask Nero for help.”
Felix exhales a relieved breath, and I debate if I should call him a traitorous Nero sympathizer or a—
A Johnny uses my decrease in speed to his advantage and bumps us from behind, giving my already miserable neck whiplash.
“Hit the gas,” Felix says and shoots his energy at the upcoming red light.
I do so, and the stoplight changes from red to green.
“Shouldn’t it be called ‘the buzz’ in an electric car?” I ask, mostly so that I myself don’t pass out from the pain in my ribs.
“The official term is ‘the accelerator,’” Felix says, and makes the streetlight turn red behind us.
The Johnny—or Baba Yaga controlling him—doesn’t heed the red-light and promptly gets skewered by a huge truck that was probably headed for the many warehouses surrounding the place.
“Dude.” I give Felix a worried glance. “Don’t hurt innocent bystanders.”
My friend takes out his phone, does some technomagic, and says, “The driver is fine. He has good insurance. We can send him a big check later as well.”
“Good,” I say. Then to my own phone’s AI assistant, I reluctantly issue a verbal “Videocall Nero” command.
Felix is so eager for me to talk to Nero that he moves my call from the phone onto the dashboard screen.
The phone rings and rings.
Oh, no.
When I stormed into Nero’s office the last time, Venessa said he was in Europe for a few days. Is he still there?
Racking my brain for a plan B, or even C, I come up with bupkis.
The engine-revving sound is back.
I go on full alert and spot two Johnnies in two different muscle cars, one in each rearview mirror.
“Use your gun,” I tell Felix. “It’s silent.”
“But deadly,” he says, pulling out his Gomorrah weapon.
I floor the buzz/gas pedal.
Felix rolls down his window.
A Johnny tries to slam into us on the right.
Felix’s gun beeps.
The death ray must hit the rightmost Johnny; his Jaguar slams into a row of parked rental bicycles.
“Duck!” Felix yells.
“How can I duck and drive at the same time?” is what I want to say, but I comply instead.
The leftmost Johnny bumps against our side.
If we survive all this, will Vlad kill me for the damage to his fancy car?
Felix’s gun beeps again.
I lift my head and spare the leftmost Johnny a glance. He slumps onto the steering wheel, his sunglasses gone.
The driverless car goes wild, veering toward us.
I accelerate.
There’s a screech of metal and plastic as it scrapes our back flank.
Yep. Vlad will not be pleased.
Flooring the accelerator again, I fly onto the highway ramp and dodge a Toyota Camry as I switch into the middle lane.
“I’ll take over driving for the time being,” Felix says, his tone subdued. “You might want to actually talk to your Mentor.”
I’m glad Felix takes over, because what I see on the dashboard makes me let go of the wheel.
It’s Nero, his face dark with fury.
“You’re bleeding,” he says in a voice that brings to mind a hangry Tyrannosaurus.
“Worse than just bleeding,” I croak out. “I need help.”
“First things first.” Is that worry on Nero’s features? I must be concussed. “Detail your injuries.”
“My ribs hurt,” I rasp out. “My ear is cut and my—”
“That’s enough,” Nero says. “Where are you?”
“Driving on I-278 East.”
“Let me rephrase,” Nero says impatiently. “Where are you going, and when will you be there?”
“Our apartment, and we’re fifteen minutes away, depending on traffic,” Felix says. “But we could come to your—”
“Go home. I’ll meet you there,” Nero says sternly. “And make it ten minutes.” He locks eyes with Felix.
“Yes, sir,” Felix replies immediately. He visibly concentrates for a moment, and the car torpedoes forward.
“I need to get some things in order,” Nero says. “Will call back as soon as my arrangements are made.”
“Wait—” I start, but the call is already disconnected.
“Don’t kill us,” I whisper to Felix as I watch the other cars and the trees whoosh by.
Ignoring the stabbing sensation in my ribs, I buckle my seat belt.
Felix doesn’t slow down. Whatever threat he saw in Nero’s eyes must scare him more than the prospect of a mere car crash.
At least the road is clear; otherwise, we’d crash for sure. As is, we just have a ninety-five-percent chance of crashing—give or take a few percent. Mostly give.
When we whoosh by the toll station before the tunnel, I fully expect to slam into one of the booths, but Felix somehow manages to pass by them.
In the rearview mirror, I spot a sports car with three Johnnies passing the turnstile without paying.
Unfortunately, no one stops them—though whoever owns the car will get a juicy ticket in the mail.
“I can lose them in the tunnel,” Felix says, shooting the Gomorrah gun at the pursuers without much luck.
My phone rings. It’s a video call from Nero, which I accept.
Felix puts the call on the screen again.
“Hello?” Nero says. “Sasha?”
“We’re in the tunnel,” I say. “Might get disconnected at any moment.”
“Sasha?” Nero says louder. “Tell me how you got hurt. Who do I—”
He gets cuts off, so I have no idea if he was about to say “kill” or “call” or “thank.”
“Baba Yaga,” I reply, just in case he can still hear me. “Did I lose you?”
Nero doesn’t reply. His video image is pixelated and frozen on the screen.
Judging by that one frame of the video, Nero is inside a limo with two people: a man and a woman. The unfamiliar man is pale and wearing all black with sunglasses that I’ve come to associate with Vlad’s Enforcers.
Is Nero bringing a vampire to help clean up my mess?
The woman, on the other hand, looks familiar, though all the adrenaline makes it hard for me to recall where I’ve seen this bewitchingly exotic beauty.
Then it hits me. She’s the doctor (or maybe nurse) who always comes to the fund during the free cholesterol checks and other preventative health initiatives Nero’s HR people regularly organize. I’ve always seen her in scrubs instead of the cocktail dress she’s wearing, which is what threw me off, but this is her.
The last time I saw her was during a blood drive a few months back.
Was she collecting blood for vampires, by any
chance?
“Take over the driving for a sec,” Felix says, bringing me back to the reality of our high-speed pursuit. “I want to get them off our tail.”
Even grasping the wheel hurts my stupid ribs, but I ignore the pain and glue my gaze to the road in front of me.
Felix points his gun behind us and curses.
In the rearview mirror, I see the car with three Johnnies behind a minivan.
We slow down, even though I didn’t touch the brake.
I guess Felix only gave me the steering.
The Johnnies/Baba Yaga must know what Felix is up to, because they slow down and put a sedan between us.
Felix trains his gun on them, speeds us up, and waits.
The Johnnies slow down again, putting another car between us.
“Fine,” Felix says. “We’ll just lose them then.”
The speedometer threatens to roll over as we leap forward at NASCAR speed.
My road intuition hands in the towel, and I readjust my earlier crash probability estimate to 99.999999%.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Felix miraculously passes every car in front of us without crashing.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel—unless, of course, we’ve already crashed and that’s the other kind of light at the end of a tunnel.
We whoosh out of the tunnel in an eyeblink.
Felix signals a right turn and slows down to just five times the speed limit.
We fly through the turn and barrel down a street at the same breakneck pace.
With a rev of engine, the car with three Johnnies appears on our right.
My phone rings again.
Felix shoots his gun at our adversaries, and one of the three falls inside the car—except it’s not the driver.
I tell my phone’s AI to accept the call without looking.
“Sasha,” Nero’s voice says from the screen. “What—”
I miss what Nero says next because the Johnnies ram us from the right.
The force of the impact jerks me in my seat, and my ribs crack in a few new places.
Favorite episodes from my life swirl through my adrenaline-soaked brain.
Felix and I must be sharing control of the wheel; that’s the only way to explain why we don’t steer off the road.
The Johnnies slam into us again.
The passenger-side windows shatter into little pieces.
Nero is yelling unhelpful curses and chilling threats from the speakers.
With rubber burning and pieces of Tesla falling off, we careen onto our street.
The Johnnies follow.
Felix speeds us up.
If Vlad feels murderous about the condition of his poor car, he might not have anyone to take the rage out on.
The revving of the Johnnies’ car gets louder.
We’re half a block away from our building’s entrance when the non-driver Johnny starts to climb out of the back window of their car—the one nearest us.
The wind resistance blows his sunglasses away, but Baba Yaga doesn’t care, so his body climbs farther out.
Then the driver pulls on the wheel, and my road intuition—or common sense—predicts what’s about to happen.
He’s about to—
The driver-Johnny rams us again, which, as I feared, causes the stunt-double Johnny to fly from his car window into what’s left of ours.
He lands in the back seat of our car, and Felix turns to shoot the newcomer.
The Johnny grabs a jagged piece of crumpled metal separating the ruined windows, showing no sign of pain from it cutting his hand to the bone.
“Felix, duck!” I scream, but it’s too late.
The Johnny slices through Felix’s gun-holding hand with the sharp piece of debris.
Felix drops the gun, and the Johnny slashes his face.
Felix screams in pain, clutching at the bleeding wound.
The Johnny’s makeshift blade swipes at my neck next, missing by a hair.
I realize I’d already started screaming a few seconds ago, so I just scream louder.
“Whoever you are, this is Nero Gorin speaking.” My former boss’s voice booms over our screams. The adrenaline must be playing tricks with my mind because Nero’s tone seems more frightening than our situation. “You will cease your aggression against me and mine right now.”
The Johnny freezes.
His black-filled eyes stare at Nero’s image on the screen intently; then Baba Yaga shouts something through the man’s lips in Russian.
Nero barks something back—also in Russian.
I steer the car toward our quickly approaching apartment building and fight the urge to ask someone why and how Nero speaks Russian.
Baba Yaga’s speech speeds up; she sounds conciliatory but firm.
Nero’s seemingly fluent replies are as scary as the prospect of the crash.
Baba Yaga says something challengingly.
Nero’s next reply is shorter, and this time, he tones down the violence in his voice by a small fraction.
“Fine,” Baba Yaga says in English as the Johnny faces me. “Looks like you managed to be useful to me, after all.”
Before I can reply, she causes the Johnny to slice his own throat with his makeshift weapon.
His colleagues’ car’s brakes screech, and at the same time, my earbud hisses.
“They all stopped fighting,” Vlad says in a confused tone. “Even Koschei. Whatever you did—”
I don’t hear the rest of Vlad’s great news because I see a ten-year-old boy jaywalking right in front of us in a typical New Yorker manner.
I try to brake and find that I can’t.
“Felix, brake!” I shout.
He doesn’t.
I spare him a glance. He’s passed out from either the blood loss, or the sight of said blood.
I jerk the wheel as far left as my ribs allow—which puts us on a trajectory to collide with the doors of our apartment building.
I pump the brakes.
Nothing.
I scream for Felix to wake up.
Nothing.
Nero calls out blood-chilling threats at Felix if he doesn’t brake right now—but even that doesn’t work.
The front entrance of my building grows to encompass the whole universe.
With a shower of broken metal, plastic, and glass, we slam into the doors.
My head whips forward from the impact as the airbag punches me in the face and the seatbelt crushes my aching ribs.
The mostly glass door doesn’t slow us, however, and our car rockets through the lobby, right into the wall with the elevator door.
The sound of metal and plastic compressing is apocalyptically loud.
“This isn’t survivable,” I’d say in that last moment if I could still talk.
Instead, I blank out.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
An army of nails claw at a planet-sized chalkboard.
Am I dreaming, or are these the sounds you hear in the afterlife?
Masculine fingers gently brush my face.
That’s not very afterlife-like, but who knows.
A pleasant energy flows through me, and I feel my broken bones begin mending.
Then my cuts and bruises get erased in a familiar sensation.
I felt this kind of warm energy after I battled Beatrice—when some anonymous healer made me look presentable for the Council.
My ear becomes whole again, and my neck bruises and broken ribs are but a distant memory.
The pleasurable relaxation spreads into every repaired muscle, and I exhale a relieved breath.
“That’s it,” Nero croons nearby. “Isis will take care of you.”
ISIS? Like the terrorists? Is Nero saying that my long abstinence has turned me back into a virgin, and that I’m in Heaven to be an ISIS member’s reward? Doesn’t that make this Heaven a Hell for me? And why would anyone want virgins in Heaven in the first place? If my version of Heaven had to include forty sex objects—which is
a big if—they would have to be hot dudes with a ton of varied experience, but without STDs and with—
My concussed mind gets clearer. It’s as though I’ve gotten a massage, used a banya (one not owned by Baba Yaga), and then slept for fifty hours, all in a span of seconds.
The fingers on my face add to the slew of pleasant sensations as they send sparks of purely feminine awareness down my body.
I sigh in pleasure.
Someone clears her throat.
I open my eyes as Nero, who’s crouching next to me, pulls his hand away.
He was the one stroking my face?
I take it back. It wasn’t as pleasant as I thought.
It didn’t turn me on. Nope.
I turn my head slightly and see the nurse/doctor from Nero’s limo. She has a Mandate aura and is shooting an arc of golden energy at me.
She must be a Cognizant healer, judging by how that energy makes me feel.
The Enforcer from the limo is here too, his reaction hard to read with the sunglasses and the stone-carved face.
Basking in the glow from the healing energy, I glance around.
I’m still sitting in the driver’s seat, buckled in, but there’s no car around me. Instead, what remains of the Tesla looks like a paper that’s been run through a shredder over and over by a spy who wanted to make sure the secret information would never see the light of day.
In fact, I’ve seen shredded chunks of matter like this before—only it was orc flesh instead of Tesla remnants.
Did Nero do his claw-ripping thing to get to me? Were those the sounds that woke me?
Before I can ask him, my gaze falls on Felix, and the pleasant relaxation evaporates, replaced by an arctic chill in my belly.
Still in his own seat, buckled in like I am, Felix is covered in blood, with his limbs at odd angles.
If he saw himself now, he would definitely faint.
Forgetting Nero and the golden energy still being shot at me, I unbuckle my seatbelt and jump up to check on Felix.
His shallow breathing is slowing with each faint inhale.