Rasputin's Prodigy

by Michael Weinberger

  Larson looked behind him as the aircraft rolled into view, “It can be. I take it you've reconsidered? “

  I nodded weakly.

  I guess Larson couldn't resist, “You sure you want to trust me and my team?”

  I looked up at him and found the strength to say over the pain that was seeping into me, “I trust you completely,” before gesturing with my head at one of the more gruesome corpses on the ground, “because you understand the consequences of betraying my trust.”

  Larson smiled at me, turned and waved his arm at the helicopter as it landed. The moment it's landing gear hit the ground men jumped out with stretchers and their small cases that I guessed were medical bags. In seconds they had Lei and myself laid out and were inspecting each of us for whatever damage had been done.

  Larson said, “Just relax, these guys have knit me up and put me back together more times than I care to remember. I'll see to the cleanup here.”

  Concern washed over me, not for myself but for what we were leaving behind here. “Major,” I said as seriously as I could as my stretcher was lifted and I felt my body rise from the ground, “no one, not a government or an individual, should ever have access to the things in those warehouses.”

  Larson looked worried, “I have my orders Steve.”

  I let out a wet cough and my vision started to swirl, but I managed to shake my head and say, “Remember Bangkok?”

  Larson's whole body seemed to freeze for a split second, before he recovered and said, “I have my orders.” Then he gestured for his men to get us onto the helicopter. I wanted to plead with him some more, but just didn't have the strength and instead simply watched as the helicopter grew larger in my field of vision as I was carried closer and closer to its lifesaving purpose.

  The last thing I remember before passing out was Larson calling after me, “Trust me Steve, I'll take care of this!”

  Chapter 45

  Six months later.

  I have to hand it to Larson and his team. Not only did they patch me up wonderfully, but Chris and Lei appeared to have come through their injuries with flying colors as well. Alpha on the other hand was in critical condition, or at least he was until William literally ripped him off of his life support and then disappeared with Pha and Alpha's body before any of Larson's people could stop him. Now, even after all this time, there had been no communication or sign from William, Alpha or Pha, but some small part of me knew that they were all right. After all, Alpha and William had been alive over six hundred years and must have learned some personal survival tricks in all that time. Still, it would have been good to hear something.

  As for Lei, Chris and myself, we all headed back to Las Vegas and surrounded ourselves with our own kind. My people had all the medical personnel and education we would need to expedite our recoveries and rehab our bodies, but there were a few loose ends that needed to be tied up.

  First of all, there was the issue of the business Lei and I had left behind. Once we felt up to it, we made a trip to our old office space and found an Eviction notice on the door. It wasn't a surprise. We had forgotten to leave an extended deposit with the landlord before we had left for Thailand to chase after Dr. Whelan, so the lease payment was grossly past due.

  “Think they would lease it to us again?” Lei asked.

  “Maybe, if we were to make good on the months we've missed, and leave a substantial deposit.” A thought occurred to me, “Do we want to lease it again?”

  Lei looked hurt by the question, “I really liked having a place to go every morning, and I liked it when we could help someone, you know, find their kid or something like that.”

  I nodded, “I do know, but there are other things we need to talk about before we can just set up shop again.”

  Chris tried the door and found it locked, “Is there anything in there you need?”

  I looked at Lei with Chris' question in my eyes. She shook her head, “We never had a chance to clean up the mess we made when Dimitri and his people paid us a visit. I'm sure by this point the landlord has hocked anything valuable we had in there, just to pay for all the damages to his property .”

  “So we can walk away?”

  “If we have to, then yes.” Lei sounded crestfallen, but she understood. With Alpha gone our people needed leadership, and the moment the question of who that was going to be was raised, all eyes had turned to me. I suppose it made sense. The people of our collective all looked at the Hunters as the people who ran things, even if it wasn't always the case, and with my being the unofficial leader of the Hunters everyone automatically guessed that I would fill the position. Frankly I would have preferred not to be the one in charge, because I had been living outside the collective for a very long time, and going back seemed stifling, but I had agreed to do it for the time needed until someone more appropriate could take over.

  “So we’ll walk away,” Lei said regretfully, “and now what do we do?”

  “Same thing we've always done. Protect our collective and search for those like us that may need our help.”

  Chris said soberly, “You know that means taking responsibility for those who have regressed into the ravages of the disease, right?”

  Lei and I both nodded, saying in unison, “Same as before.”

  We were going to miss the life we had set up for ourselves. It had been rewarding, as Lei had stated, but the real purpose behind it was the tracking down of Whelan, killing him and preventing anyone else from utilizing what the evil bastard had created. Now that all of that had been accomplished, a general lack of purpose washed over us and we just stood in front of our office building unsure of everything.

  “What are you going to do Chris?” Lei asked.

  “Me?” Chris sounded surprised to suddenly be part of the conversation. “Well,” he chuckled, “I don't think there's a place for me with the L.A.P.D. as a medical examiner anymore.”

  “They'd be all the better to have you.” I said.

  Chris started to laugh, but then saw the look on my face and how serious my statement had been. He responded only with a quick nod before changing the subject, “I think I'm going to go to Disneyland.”

  Now I did laugh, “Oh really?”

  “No, I'm serious. Haven't been there since I was a kid, and after I was shot and in the process of becoming...” Chris voice hesitated, “well, you know, all I could think about was, ‘Why hadn't I ever gone back there?’ I have all these memories of how much I loved the place, but I never made it back as an adult. Hell, I lived in Los Angeles for the entirety of my professional life and the amusement park was less than an hour away, so why had I never bothered? What was the reason? Did I think I was too old or something? Too jaded?” Chris paused in his rant, and I have to admit I was feeling more than a little guilty for laughing at him when he initially mentioned it.

  Chris came out of his inner reflective moment and said triumphantly, “Well after everything I have seen, done and gone through in the past couple of years, I think it's time for me to get a little dose of that side of my life's potential. A little fill up of the magic that is held by the things that are good in life.”

  “And you think Disneyland will do that for you?” Lei asked and I detected a caution in her voice that I rarely ever heard.

  Chris only shrugged, “It's possible I've romanticized the place beyond what I am hoping for it to deliver, but it's a hell of a good place to start. If it is less than I need, then I'll move on to the next spot, wherever that might be, trying again and again until I get to a place where I am so full of the memories of why life is a blessing and worth living, that there will be no room for the negative things in my head anymore.”

  Lei and I were silent as Chris smiled at us. It was such a simple quest he had set for himself, and one that, for the most part, was highly irresponsible. Chris, although born a normal human, was now one of our kind. He was also a Hunter, trained by Alpha himself, and as such had a responsibility to the collective, to protect the group's inter
ests... just the same as Lei and myself.

  I walked to my office door, putting my hand on top of the Eviction notice sticker that had been adhered to it. There was nothing inside that really mattered. No unsolved case files, no photographs, no other memorabilia that need to be reclaimed. Just office supplies and old furniture, most of which had been in pretty rough shape after our initial tussle with Dimitri and his people when they had first came calling.

  “Steve?” Lei's voice called out softly to me as I leaned against the building that represented our life together outside of the world to which we now had to return. “Are you all right?”

  I sighed, “Yeah. I'm fine.”

  I inclined my head to see her looking at me with a worried expression in her eyes, and the moment my eyes fell on her, my heart quickened. Not an unusual reaction when one was looking at a woman as beautiful as Lei, but this was different from my usual awestruck, and often lustful response. For some reason my eyes looked past the more obvious and over-exaggerated aspects of her appearance, and the physical allure fell away, leaving a shining vision of her face, as it had been when we had first met as children. Some very, very old feelings of newness, uncertainty and potential discovery surfaced in me that I hadn't felt since that initial moment so long ago. A small laugh escaped me, which made Lei frown in confusion before she asked, “Are you ready to go?”

  “Go?” I repeated, and realized that I wasn't sure what, or where that meant...

  ...And then I did.

  “Yes,” I said confidently, as I push myself away from the door, “Yes, I am ready to go.”

  Lei smiled and nodded at me as she took my hand, but froze when I said, “You know if we left now we could be married by dinner.”

  Lei's voice caught as she realized what I was saying. “What?”

  I shrugged, “It is Vegas after all. We could probably even get an Elvis impersonator to marry us and sing ‘Love Me Tender’ as the ceremony concludes.”

  “You want to take me to get married now? Just like that?” Lei said softly, more thinking about it out loud instead of asking.

  “I think we’ve waited long enough, don’t you?” I said in a confessional manner, “Look, we can do the whole grand ceremony and reception later. Make a real show of it. White dress, church, band, and anything else you might desire or imagine, but I don’t want to wait even another second to make you my wife.”

  Lei just looked at me with a bewildered expression that made her even more adorable than usual.

  I turned to Chris, “Feel like being my best man before you head out for the Magic Kingdom?”

  Chris smiled but, before he could answer, Lei said again, “You want to marry me right now?”

  “Yep,” I said, then added, “assuming you’ll still have me.”

  Lei didn’t answer as quickly as I hoped and I felt a slight tremor in my legs as she just looked at me blankly. The unease didn’t abate until I noticed tears welling in her eyes and, before the first one could fall, Lei jumped into my arms and kissed me.

  We held the kiss, even as Chris began making “eww” noises through his wide smile that spoke of his true feelings on the matter. When we finally parted Lei wiped at her eyes and grew serious, “Steve, the collective. Our people…?”

  I cut her off, “Have survived for decades with the rules that are in place. A couple of weeks, or months, isn't going to make that much of a difference.”

  Lei seemed unsure.

  “Besides,” I acquiesced, “We’ll have our cell phones with us if there are any real emergencies, and we'll be close by, only a couple hours away, if we are truly needed.”

  Lei shook her head, “I don't have any clothes or...”

  “Not a problem.” I said quickly.

  “Actually, that makes this even more interesting!” Chris got a quick slap on his shoulder for that one.

  “Don’t worry about any of that, I’ll take care of everything. All you need to do is think about what you want to do for a honeymoon.”

  Lei looked skeptical, “We get to go on a honeymoon?”

  “Disneyland’s close,” Chris volunteered.

  Now it was Lei's turn to look aghast, “Me? Disneyland?”

  “Why not?” Chris challenged.

  “Because… it’s my honeymoon!” Lei whined as if the answer was obvious.

  “And?” Chris looked at her seriously, “are you trying to tell me you don’t want to go?”

  The smiles on their faces as they began to argue were endearing and I just sat back to watch the show. Listening to the banter, and the frivolity underneath the words was something that had been lacking in all three of us since we had returned home from Nazran. It filled me with hope, and I got the sense that despite the difficulties we were going to face in returning to our old lives, everything was going to be okay.

  I turned one last time to the office door and noticed something small that had been wedged between the door and the door frame. I pulled the small piece of cardstock out and looked at it, expecting to see a flyer for pizza or some such thing. Instead, I found myself looking at a business card. The embossed logo was of a metallic, gold policeman's badge, just like I used to carry when I was with the LAPD. The word over the badge was “METRO” indicative of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and the name on the badge read “Detective Angelo Dunn, Homicide.” There were also phone and fax numbers, along with an e-mail address, printed in the lower right hand corner. I turned the card over and saw a few hand printed words on the back.

  “If you ever return, please give me a call. - Angelo”

  I knew Detective Dunn from the times when we had worked on some missing child investigations. I always thought he was a pretty decent guy and totally dedicated to his job. I felt he was one of the good guys that was always looking to make a difference wherever he could.

  “…pretty little princess,” Chris sang in a high mocking voice as my mind returned to the moment.

  Lei looked as though she was about to start her retort, when she caught me looking at the card and asked, “What's that?”

  “Nothing important for now,” I made a mental note to call Detective Angelo, but not until after we got back from Disneyland or whatever it was that we were going to do. Lei and I were going to live for a very, very long time and we had earned the right to spend a little of it on ourselves.

  Joining in the frivolity I said, “So? Anaheim?,” and took Lei's hand in mine. She responded by leaning in and kissing me softly as we walked toward Chris' Hummer H2.

  “Now you two can't be doing that the entire time we're at Disneyland okay?”

  I looked down into Lei's beautiful face and said, “No promises Dopey.”

  “Hey!” Chris protested, “I never said I was going to be Dopey!

  In unison, Lei and I both said, “Too late.”

  ###

  About the Author

  Michael Weinberger graduated from University of Pacific after earning his undergraduate degree in Sports Medicine and then went on to the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic where he earned his Doctor of Chiropractic degree in 1993 at the age of 25. He returned home to Las Vegas and operated a successful chiropractic office until the fall of 2000 when a severe arm injury forced him to step away from his chosen profession. It was during his recovery that he began writing.

  His first novel, “Blood Harvest: Book 1, The Hidden Amongst Us” won a 2012 Next Generation Indie Publishers Award for Regional Fiction.

  His second novel and sequel “Madman’s Monster: Book 2, The Hidden Amongst Us” won Best Book of 2013: Paranormal Genre’, from the IndieReader Discovery Awards.

  Michael Weinberger enjoys writing, archery, martial arts, deep-sea fishing, movies and is a self-confessed “foodie.” He lives in Las Vegas with his wife and two daughters where, when not otherwise engaged, can usually be found shooting arrows into the garage from the custom archery bows he makes in his spare time.

  Website: Weinbergerbooks.com

  Facebook:
MichaelWeinbergerBooks

  Other works:

  Published:

  Blood Harvest: Book 1, The Hidden Amongst Us

  Madman’s Monster: Book 2, The Hidden Amongst Us

  Rasputin’s Prodigy: Book 3, The Hidden Amongst Us

  Coming Soon:

  Adult Fiction (Scifi/Fantasy): The Last Warden

  Children’s Picture Book: Oogie the Bear’s Rainy Day Adventure