Blood Hound

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “…this stuff’s so pure you won’t even know it topped you...” The snatch of conversation drifted through the room as the lull fell. I stiffened and broke off the handshake, turning while the dealer called for the next round. Mikhail was chopping lines of coke on the low drinks table in front of him.

  “I believe you, seriously, but I’m done for the weekend,” Vassily protested, but he was not moving away. “Not in front of the Mob guys, Misha.”

  I could hear the strain in Vassily’s voice. He looked over at me with feverish blue eyes.

  Across from him, Mikhail shrugged and snorted the first line with a thick sound of satisfaction.

  Lazarus shook his head. “Crazy Russkies.”

  Beefbrick with the curly hair was far more interested. I watched him silently ask for clearance with arched eyebrows and a cock of his head towards toward the table. George Laguetta shook his head, a small grimace playing over his mouth and brow.

  “You know, I need some fresh air.” I lifted my voice enough to be heard and stood, knees cracking, and smoothed my hands over my hair. “Vassily?”

  Mikhail shot me a dark look, glancing between the pair of us as Vassily wavered. Crina had frozen awkwardly, her glass held in both hands like a shield between her and the room.

  “Give my lines to someone else,” Vassily said. He moved towards me.

  “That’s awfully generous. Ain’t like you, Zmechik.” Vanya waved a fat ringed hand.

  Vassily canted his chin as he turned on the other man, and for a moment, his face was a long, hard, lean thing of pointed lines and arrogant authority. “Sure it is. I’m cutting down,” he said, in English. “So give them to someone else.”

  “Hey, lighten up. Take one and leave the rest.” Vanya was nervous under Vassily’s eye, but his grin was still wet and toothy. The expression made me look at him in a different way. Pinpoint pupils, shrunk from anxiety. Fingers, fidgeting nervously in his lap. He was worried about something—and suddenly, the pieces clicked.

  Those sons of bitches.

  “The balcony, Vassily?” I shoved my chips towards Lev, who took them without question. He was watching the exchange with a pleasant blank face.

  “Sure.” Vassily mimed a cigarette, but he was perspiring heavily.

  I could see the sweat on his lip as I drew in against his side and linked an arm through his elbow. Up close, he smelled of barely suppressed desperation. As we withdrew, I looked back over my shoulder at Vanya and Mikhail, who were trying to pretend they hadn’t noticed the intervention.

  Vassily heaved a huge sigh outside, drawing deeply of the sweaty sea air and shuddering on the exhalation. I reached up, rubbing briefly between his shoulder blades with awkward sympathy.

  “Fuck,” Vassily said. He shook his head. “I feel like a french-fried asshole, Lexi.”

  “You did the right thing.” I let my hand fall away. “They’re setting you up to fall.”

  “Vanya? Nah, man... nah. It’s not like they shoved this shit up my nose. It’s my problem.” Vassily looked up from the railing, facing the shimmering boardwalk and the sea beyond. “This…coke thing started about eight, nine months ago. That’s how I got by in there. I dealt.”

  “And used.” The realization weighed on me, and heavily. How had I not seen it? “And that is a setup, Vassily. They knew you’d use. They know what prison’s like. You should have told me.”

  “How could I tell you?” Vassily threw a hand up, his speech harsh with frustration. “I knew what the fuck you’d say.”

  That stung. I frowned. “What I’d say? I’d have told you the truth, but I’d have been there for you during the recovery. I—”

  “No. I knew you’d chew my ass out like you did this morning.”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth again. Am I wrong?”

  “No. Fuck. No. You’re not, because you’re never fucking wrong. That’s the fucking problem, Alexi.” Vassily turned on me. In the nighttime heat, he was sweating even more than he had been inside. Forehead, cheeks, throat. His hair was stuck flat to his scalp. “You always have to be right.”

  His words dried me out, making me brittle and sharp. His change in demeanor was disorienting, and my fists clenched by my thighs. “What do you expect me to do? Lie? Encourage you? Watch you destroy yourself without trying to help?”

  “Listen. You never just listen to me.” Vassily’s brow furrowed. “I was wrong, man. You have changed. You don’t fucking listen to a word I say anymore.”

  For a second, I honestly didn’t know what to say to him in reply. He’d slammed the door in my face, cut off my ability to respond with anything believable. He knew as well as I did that it was impossible to deny a negative. “That’s ridiculous. Vassily, you’ve hardly been home. You haven’t told me anything. You didn’t talk to me about any of this while you were in, and you’ve hardly spoken to me since you were released, and I…”

  I had been fighting. Fighting and fighting to fulfill the contract our Avtoritet had assigned me. “You haven’t been there. There hasn’t been time to tell you, and you haven’t asked, while I’ve been out on the streets getting injured, getting shot at. Working my ass off. I had another guy try to kill me today and I had one in my home yesterday. You didn't even bother to find out why.”

  Vassily turned back to glare at the ocean and fumbled at his pocket for his cigarettes. He said nothing.

  “Vanya supplied you in prison, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah.” Vassily grunted. He lit his smoke with a gold Zippo, breathing a cloud of green-smelling smoke into the dirty breeze. I adroitly sidestepped as it gusted towards me. “Him and Mikhail. They supplied for me and the boys inside.”

  “They want you to have this habit. It serves their interests to have you hooked.” Beyond telling him the truth, I had no idea what to say to him. The truth was real, and he had a real problem.

  “You don’t understand,” Vassily replied.

  “So help me understand,” I said, exasperated. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with you.”

  “No shit.” He turned on me, eyes blazing. “All you’re thinking about is the fucking coke.”

  “No. I’m not thinking about the coke, Vassily. I’m thinking about you.” My face flushed hot. My temper has never been the best, and it was rising quickly. “You accused me of not listening. So I’m listening. Now talk.”

  He paused for several long seconds, lips twitching, and then turned back towards the railing. “I can’t. Not ’til I know if what the guys are saying about you is true. About your dad.”

  My gut chilled. “What part of it?”

  “All of it.” His eyes flicked across, then back. “I know you hated his guts, Lexi, but Misha says you took him down in front of everyone. Drilled his knees out and killed him with a hammer. Is that true?”

  “Not in front of everyone.” My eyes narrowed. What was he getting at? “In private. The others heard secondhand about it.”

  “What about the drill and hammer part?”

  I couldn’t lie to him. “That was true.”

  “That’s a real shitty way to kill someone, Lexi.” Vassily’s tone turned accusatory. “There ain’t nothing bad enough for someone to need to die like that. Even your dad.”

  “Yes. There is.” I leaned in to him. Something savage and hot wound every muscle in my face until they sang. “There are things that are that bad. He made his choices, and they led him to that point.”

  “No.” He chuffed, almost laughing, but it was bitter. “There ain’t no justifying that kind of bullshit. You hated him, but he was still your dad.”

  “He was never my father,” I replied, coldly. “And just because yours was a decent man and you lost him doesn’t give you the right to judge how I dealt with mine.”

  “Choices, huh? Well, you fucking chose to get wrapped up in Lev’s bullshit. You don’t know what that’s like, to not have a choice.”

  “You shut the hell up,” I said. “Now. You’re the one that said no one cra
mmed that first hit up your nose.”

  “See? I told you that’s all you were thinking about.” His jaw set, and he sniffed, cocking his head. Just like he’d done to Vanya.

  Before I could stop myself, my hands snapped out, and I shoved him along the balcony. He stumbled, mouth agape, and I rippled through with a twitch that turned into an explosive roundhouse punch and a sharp, wordless shout.

  My fist hit the railing. The whole thing rattled under the impact.

  “Jesus, Alexi—”

  “You want to lie? You want to accuse me of lying about what I think?!” I roared, frustration and rage and insult curdling every word with a real force, anger red enough that it made Vassily take another step back from me. “You want to know what I’m like when I don’t give a fuck? Fine! You can get the fuck out of my house!”

  “Woah, hey-” Vassily’s face turned the color of milk.

  “Did I stutter?” I shouted back, lips peeled back from my teeth. “You think I’m gonna let you bring this shit into my life? You think I’m going to stand by and, and watch you lie to me? About me? I have dedicated my life to pursuing truth, Vassily, in all of its morbid, abject mortality, and if you are going to bring the lie back into my life, you can get the fuck away from me!”

  Vassily took another step back. Whatever he saw in my face must have frightened him. “Lexi, I—”

  “I nearly died three times this week, and do you give a fuck?” I advanced as he retreated and shoved him bonelessly into the railing. Vassily hit it without protest and bounced, too startled to do anything except gape.

  His fingers twitched up, and for a moment, I thought he was going to draw on me. Instead, the nervous energy in his limbs drained out, and he turned back to the balcony door. “You get one good fuck, and this is what happens?” He sneered. “I don’t need you.”

  I was horrified, and horrified by the feeling that welled up helplessly in my stomach and throat. Disgust. I wasn’t supposed to be disgusted by Vassily. “Is that what this is about?”

  He whirled, eyes blazing, and jerked his head at the doorway. “Is what about? It’s not my business who you screw. I’m going inside.”

  My disgust intensified. Vassily was wrong: I hadn’t changed, but he had. I looked at him, and I couldn’t see anything other than the lie. A void, a shell that covered a sucking black thing of need and fear. “Crina’s a beard, Vassily. She’s in it for her own reasons.”

  “She’s a hooker. And what does she do? Heroin?”

  “Books,” I replied stiffly. “She’s a literature PhD.”

  “Her and every other crab-riddled bitch from the Balkans. They all say the same thing. They’re here to study, get work.... whatever. It’s all bullshit. She got brought over here to make money. You want to lay shit on me for a couple lines of coke—”

  “Bags, Vassily. Bags of coke.”

  “Then you better fucking lay it on her junk-shooting cunt, too.” Vassily glared at me with feverish eyes and stalked off back into the casino.

  Lying. He would make up whatever stories made him feel better, and this time, it was me who backed away. I was certain the tight ringing in my gut was from panic, but I couldn’t find a way to explain the subtle terror Vassily’s denial of reality caused me. It felt sick, the way that Yuri and Nacari and the hit man that looked like him felt sick.

  I turned to the Atlantic, to the curve of the seashore reaching back up along the coast to home. Miserable, polluted water.

  “Alexi?” It was Crina, speaking from the entry to the balcony.

  I grunted back wordlessly in reply.

  “Is something the matter? Vassily just pushed on by. He looked pretty pissed off.”

  “He is.” And so was I.

  “He seems a bit prickly, doesn’t he?” She tapped her way across to me and leaned beside my shoulder.

  “Long story,” I replied. “Let’s… talk about something else for now. Like The Red Book. Have you seen it yet?”

  Crina’s face suffused, lips curling, eyes lighting up. “Yes. I saw it this morning, while I was in class. It’s… it’s more than anything I ever dreamed. You’re going to love it.”

  That made me smile, however briefly. “Translated?”

  “No, it’s still in German. But I can read that just fine.” She looked down. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “At my house. I insist.”

  Crina didn’t really laugh so much as catch a single heated sound of pleasure behind her teeth as she grinned, her eyes half-closed. She pushed back. “Then it’s a deal. But not a date. Come on… Mr. Mollusk was asking about you.”

  “My goodness. You didn’t really just call him that, did you?” Amused and dismayed, I followed her back inside.

  “I absolutely just did. But you won’t tell him I said that, will you?” Crina glanced back over her shoulder. She was trying to cheer me up, and it was an earnest effort. Not misplaced, either. There was no place for showing weakness here.

  We walked back into the hot parlor, and I caught Crina’s arm, halting her in the doorway. I saw Vassily, Mikhail, Mikhail’s girl, and Vanya bent over the coke table, while the Laguetta meathead cheered them on. George was deep in quiet, drunken conversation with Lev. The other goons were clustered around the poker table.

  I paused there, watching them as a stranger might. Something in my heart sealed over, hard and bleak and lonely. Very lonely.

  "Alexi?" Crina turned back to me. "Come on... we should go back inside."

  I nodded, but I had to pause to take a deep breath before we did... and that moment of hesitation was the only reason I didn’t catch a bullet as the parlor door burst in in a spray of machine gun fire and broken glass.

  Chapter 15

  Split seconds. It was Crina who dragged me to the ground as the room turned into a haze of blood mist and shattered furniture and glass. The guys at the roulette table weren’t fast enough: three of George’s men and the dealer went down like ragdolls. I heard Vassily drop with a scream of pain to my right, and my blood turned to ice.

  I flung myself against the nearest baccarat table, dragging Crina behind the cover as the dealer, screaming and panicked, ran out into the room and bolted for the balcony entry. I didn’t see what happened to her: I drew my non-enchanted pistol, and Crina motioned at me with a grabby hands gesture, wide-eyed. She wanted a gun. I gave her mine and drew the silenced Wardbreaker instead.

  “Keep them busy!” A horribly familiar voice called out from the entry.

  “Carmine,” I grunted. “GOD dammit.”

  “Who?” Crina’s hands were shaking, but she checked and took position like a soldier. East Germany. Of course.

  “He’s—” Shots rang out, deafening, and then the machine guns. The guys at the door were taking turns: two guys firing, two guys reloading. “—a spook! Go to the bar, get Vassily. I’ll cover you!”

  Her eyes widened even more, but this table wasn’t big enough for the pair of us. Bullets chewed up the sides, spraying wood past us in a stinging cloud. The bar was safer. I backed up in a crouch as Crina kicked her heels off and hitched the hem of her short silk dress up to her waist so she could move. She crawled around me and then dashed low to the ground as I knelt up and fired over the table, drawing the next hail of bullets over my head. I wouldn’t be far behind her: the firing squad was advancing, fanning out to start a search of the tables closest to the entry.

  There was no time for fear. I pulled out my pocket mirror and looked around the edge of the table. Mikhail lay still on the ground, his swept-back hair a wet and bloody sprawl on the carpet. Worse was Carmine, bent in deep concentration around his pentacle ring. I felt something buckle and twist in the room, like my ribs were sucking in towards the inside of my chest. Carmine was the nexus of a small storm that rumbled, darkening the air around him as it began to coalesce into large, canine forms.

  There was nothing we had that could stop those things once he got them started. But what did I have to head
him off? I looked down at the Wardbreaker, its engraved glyphs of power. If I could defuse a ward, I could break a spell, but I needed the sacrifice. Death was everywhere, but not death spoken with the words of power I needed. Which left me.

  Broken glass was scattered everywhere on the floor around me. With full intent to suffer, I seized a shard of it and stabbed it into my knee, the one that was still healing. The pain was raw and hot: I screamed, fighting to focus all my rage, all my pain, into the blood that burst out, and clapped the gun down against the fresh wound.

  Blood whipped out into fine tendrils that wrapped into the grooves along the sides of the barrel, loading the charge with a ferocity and concreteness I had never felt before, a real push, like a hand behind the bullet as I reared up, took aim, and fired straight at Carmine’s smarmy fucking face.

  The bullet blew out with a sucking sound I’d never heard before, a phwoomf of backed-up force, and Carmine threw his hands up with a shout as the countermagic I’d spent so many patient years cultivating, sacrificing to, broke the spell he’d been weaving and sent him stumbling back. Whatever he'd cried out, it spun a kinetic web of force in a moment. The bullet zinged off his Phitonic shield and shattered it.

  Crina, George, and Lazarus came up blazing from behind the bar, picking off two guys too slow to sense the shift in the battle. In between bursts, I heard shouts and screams from out in the hall behind the Manellis. The guards were here. The Manellis fell back as one: I got up to one leg to try to blast Carmine again but dropped when I saw him throw something into the room. It hit the wall and bounced with a tinny metallic sound. A grenade? I covered the head of the man next to me, burying my face against the floor with my arm wrapped around my ear.

  The air sucked in as it detonated, spraying metal and wood over our heads. A sharp pain lanced through the left side of my face, but when I rolled up and felt for blood or a wound, there was nothing. My ear was ringing, and everything on that side sounded fuzzy. I could smell smoke, and it was getting hot...The building wouldn’t burn down, but the inside of the room would, and that was enough to kill the lot of us.