“Mr. Belikov asked me to come see if you felt up to having dinner.”
Nadya nodded, feeling sudden hunger flair up inside her.
When was the last time I ate?
She couldn’t immediately recall, so it had to have been a while. “I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”
The maid nodded. “Take your time,” she said. “Dinner won’t be ready for another half an hour.” She turned away.
“What about Ulbrecht?” Nadya asked.
The maid turned back to her, a blank look on her face. “Who?”
“The guy I came here with,” she said. “The doctor.”
The maid shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she replied. “You’d have to ask Mr. Belikov.”
Nadya nodded. “I’ll be sure to do that.” She watched the maid depart, unable to shake the tingle of dread in her gut.
Chapter Thirteen: Bad News
Nadya didn’t bother waiting for dinner to be ready. She left her room and headed for Vlad’s office. She assumed he’d be there. It’s where he usually was when he was home. Crime organizations didn’t run themselves, or at least that’s what Vlad kept telling her. Although he was well connected and well off enough to keep his underlings’ bank accounts flush with cash, it seemed like he constantly had to stomp out some petty dispute or another.
And after the events of the previous night, Nadya assumed he had more than a few disputes to handle. The Hunters Guild would no doubt be pissed that one of their members had been brutally decapitated. Then there was the whole matter of why one of Vlad’s crews had been targeted for death so that a Summoner could pad her résumé. Nadya was curious who the Summoner was trying to find work with. A rival crime family made the most sense, but there was no telling for sure.
The criminal underworld was a shady and chaotic place. The underworld of supernatural critters roaming about was even more so. Then there were the less secretive but equally shady corporations who enjoyed hiring supernatural creatures for security purposes, or research, or both. Nadya didn’t know much about the companies. She wasn’t a fan of reading about businesses and Vlad did his best to steer clear of them.
“I may be a criminal,” he’d told her once. “But those people are fucking monsters. Can’t be trusted. Can’t be dealt with.”
The fact that Billy Blob had tried to kill her before she’d even known about the Summoner hadn’t escaped Nadya. Everything had flown by so quickly during the night that she hadn’t had time to think about it, but the memory had crept back into her head while Ulbrecht and she had been driving to Vlad’s.
The thing had caught her completely off guard and she knew the only reason she’d gotten out of the alley alive was due to her Molotov cocktail wielding savior. She had no idea who the person was, but as far as Nadya was concerned, she owed them several shots of very expensive alcohol.
She owed Ulbrecht even more. Despite being so absolutely useless in a fight, he’d managed to save her life more than once. Plus he’s cute, a small voice whispered from the back of Nadya’s mind. She told the voice to shut up. Ulbrecht’s aesthetics had nothing to do with it. She owed him a debt for saving her life, just like she owed Vladimir.
She remembered the brief kiss they’d shared and felt her cheeks grow warm. Shared, my ass, Nadya thought. He surprised me with that shit. I definitely wasn’t giving him any signs to make out with me. She forced the memory away. It’s not sexual, she told herself firmly. I do not have a crush on him. I’m Nadezhda fucking Valentina. I don’t have crushes. I kill things.
Confident in who she was and what she did – and did not – do, Nadya reached Vlad’s office and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she heard Vlad call from the other side before opening the door and entering the office. Vlad sat behind his desk, phone to his ear. Nadya stood in front of his desk and waited as patiently as she could for him to finish up. Nadya could hear a raised voice on the other end of the phone conversation, but she couldn’t make out the words clearly enough to follow along. She could tell by the growing tension on Vlad’s face that whatever was being said wasn’t pleasant.
Vlad took as much of the tirade as he could handle before responding. “How much?” he hissed into the phone. “I should be the one charging you for my services. From what I hear, the only assistance your Hunter provided was the silver bullets in her gun. If you think I’m going to give you hazard pay because your woman lost her fucking head while doing her damn job, you’re going to be very fucking disappointed.”
Vlad paused to allow the party on the other end to reply.
“I don’t give a fuck if she took the job off the books,” Vlad snapped. “Last time I checked, your Guild was in the business of dealing with these sorts of things. I had a problem involving a werewolf. I hired one of your Hunters to handle it. She fucked up and got herself killed. In the future, I suggest training your people better so this doesn’t happen again. Consider it a very expensive learning experience.” Vlad slammed the phone down before he could hear any more from the irate person on the other end. Nadya was fairly certain that the reason why Vlad kept the landline telephone was to angrily hang up in a more visually effective method. Normally, it amused her to watch her boss do so, but she was too distracted by Ulbrecht to smirk.
Nadya waited for Vladimir to take a couple of breaths. She watched as the anger in his face melted away and as he looked to her, a gentle smile formed in its place. It would have been startling to see the rapid transition of emotions, but it was far from the first time Nadya had witnessed it.
“Where’s Ulbrecht?” she asked, cutting right to it.
“He’s in quarantine.”
“Why?”
“He was infected by that werewolf you killed last night,” Vlad explained. “He had several scratches along his back.”
Dread filled Nadya.
Quarantine was just a friendly way of saying he was locked up until the virus took full effect. And then he’d either be broken to serve Vladimir or – if that didn’t work – executed. Werewolves were notoriously hard to train, especially young ones.
Ulbrecht didn’t deserve either fate, as far as Nadya was concerned.
“I owe him,” Nadya told Vlad. She knew she needed a better argument than that, but she couldn’t come up with the right words. She was far more accustomed to convincing people to do what she wanted in a much more physical way. And she wasn’t about to beat the shit out of Vlad. She just hoped that he understood her well enough to know that she couldn’t allow Ulbrecht to suffer and die without doing something to prevent it.
“Look, I know he helped you last night,” Vladimir replied. “But having a werewolf working for me is too good an opportunity to pass up. Besides, if I let him go and he turns, someone else might recruit him. And if last night proved anything, it’s that we can’t afford to have more werewolves working against us.”
“Why would he work against us?” Nadya asked. “I thought he was on your payroll. Besides, from what I could tell of him last night, I bet he’ll be the world’s first vegetarian werewolf. He’s a doctor, not a fighter.”
“He’s not a doctor,” Vlad replied.
Nadya shook her head. “Medical student, then. Whatever. He’s not going to cause you any trouble if you let him live.”
“It’s not as if I’m planning on killing him,” Vlad argued. “He’ll have a chance. If we can tame the beast he turns into, then we can use him.”
“We both know how well that’s worked in the past,” Nadya snapped. “Do you have any reason to think this time will be any different?”
Vlad didn’t have an answer. His jaw firmed and he narrowed his eyes at her. “This is happening, Nadezhda. I understand that you owe him but this is one debt that I’m afraid you won’t be able to clear. You’re just going to have to accept that. Now why don’t you go get ready for dinner?”
Nadya realized there’d be no convincing Vladimir of doing anything different. That left only one other optio
n, as far as she could tell.
Break Ulbrecht out of quarantine and leave the only place she truly felt safe, most likely forever. Betraying Vlad in such a way would probably end badly for her. It was uncharacteristically stupid of her to even consider doing such a thing, but it was the only solution she could think of.
She’d heard rumors about a cure. A werewolf cure.
If she could find it and give it to Ulbrecht then maybe Vladimir wouldn’t care so much about what she was planning on doing.
At least, that’s how she hoped it would play out.
Chapter Fourteen: Breaking Quarantine
Nadya had spent a great deal of her time exploring all the nooks and crannies of Vlad’s estate. Even as a traumatized thirteen-year-old, her urge to explore the massive compound that had become her home was strong enough to get her out of her bleak mood.
There were hidden passageways, secret weapons caches, and trapdoors all over the place and she knew where they all were.
Some of the secret passageways pre-dated Vlad’s occupancy of the estate. She wasn’t sure if he even knew about them. She’d seen more than a few infected men and women dropped into the quarantine room, so she knew how to get there.
The guards weren’t going to let her just walk in and take Ulbrecht for a stroll, so she’d have to stop by one of the weapons caches and grab a gun or two. In her battered state, she didn’t look forward to doing much hand-to-hand combat. She’d left Vlad’s office and headed back to her bedroom, hating herself a little more with each step as she considered what she was about to do.
She knew it was wrong. She knew she should accept what Vlad told her and write Ulbrecht off. She hardly knew him. But doing that felt even more wrong than betraying Vlad. She soon grew tired of all the self-hatred and doubt coalescing in her head and pushed it all aside. If she looked at it as just another job, it became a whole lot easier. She didn’t have to consider deeper meanings or bitter betrayals. All she had to do was focus on what steps she needed to take to achieve her goal. She was good at that.
Once she got back to her room, she grabbed a small pack and filled it with a few necessary items. She found a small throwing knife under her bed that she must’ve forgotten when she moved out and tossed it in with everything else. She grabbed some socks and another pair of combat boots that weren’t as worn as the ones she’d left at Ulbrecht’s flat and put them on. She grabbed her jacket and tossed it on then slung her pack over her shoulder and headed for the door.
Peeking out briefly, she saw the hall empty and entered it, shutting the door behind her. She went down the hall and rounded the corner, going over to a statue of a nude woman. The statue was about a head taller than Nadya and she was arching her back, pushing her marble tits out for any passersby to admire.
Pinching the statue’s left nipple and giving it a twist resulted in a low rumble and then a section of wall behind the statue lifted away to reveal a weapons cache. She moved forward and grabbed a pair of pistols. They were smaller and fit into her hands smoothly. She snatched several extra magazines.
She loaded each of them and pulled the slides back to chamber rounds then she slid one into her waistband and took hold of the second. Twisting the statue’s nipple in the opposite direction closed the wall back up and she continued on her way.
The next stop was a large painting – roughly four feet by three feet – of a forlorn woman in a blue dress sitting in a chair. The piece was called Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, Nadya remembered. A Russian avant-garde artist by the name of Nathan Altman had painted it in the early 1900’s. She briefly remembered Vlad taking her on a tour of the complex and giving her the history on each of the many works of art he’d collected over the years.
“The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg has a very lovely replication of this piece,” he had told her with a knowing smile and a wink.
The memory only made her focus on the betrayal she was currently committing, so she pushed it aside.
Tapping three separate spots on the frame in a specific order caused the painting to snap forward an inch or so. She pulled the painting from the wall. It swung on hinges and revealed a small passageway behind it. She slid into the wall and pulled the painting closed behind her.
The passage was pitch black. Nadya reached into her jacket pocket and pulled her Zippo out, lighting it and holding it in front of her. The small flame illuminated the passage with flickering light. She moved forward along the brick path through numerous twists and turns until she reached an opening in the floor about the size of a manhole.
Flicking the lighter closed, she put it back in her pocket and slid the second gun in her waistband next to the first. Going down the ladder in the dark was a slow journey, especially with her busted knee, but she managed to get down without incident.
She pulled her lighter and gun out again then turned right and started down the new passage.
Reaching a section of wall where the bricks were a slightly lighter color than the rest, Nadya stopped. The hatch would put her in one of the basement hallways, a little ways from the holding chamber she was heading to. She flicked the lighter closed and readied herself to exit the secret passage but paused momentarily.
There was no way to tell if there was anyone in the hall or not. She didn’t want to kill anyone here. Most of the guards she knew on a first name basis. She decided she’d use the guns only if she had to and – if she did have to – to only injure.
But seeing Nadya popping out of a wall was nothing new to the guards, so there was no reason to go out with weapons at the ready. She slid the gun into her waistband and zipped the jacket up to conceal the weapons then pushed a brick on the wall, feeling it shift a few inches inwards.
The wall slid open in front of her, bathing the dark hidden passage in light. She squinted her eyes and stepped out, hearing the wall slide close behind her. She looked from side to side and saw the hall vacant. Turning to the right, she started towards a set of thick double doors at the end of the hall.
There was an electronic keypad set into the wall next to the double doors. This would be the first tricky part of the whole plan. Vladimir changed the code every week or so and Nadya had no idea what it was. She’d have to knock and hope the guard that came to see who it was knew her. Otherwise getting inside would be a bit more difficult.
She stopped at the doors and stood on the tip of her toes to look through the thick glass set in them about head level. She could see the guard standing off to the side, but his back was to her so she had no idea who it was. Taking a deep breath and settling back on her feet, she reached up and gave a brief knock on the door. She heard shuffling feet approaching and then a stern face looked through the window, taking a moment before thinking of looking downwards to spot the short young woman on the other side.
His face brightened a bit, as did Nadya’s. She knew the man almost as well as she did Vladimir. He was one of the older guards in his employ – a man named Sven with thick shoulders and sandy blonde hair. She saw his face disappear from the window for a moment then heard the ding of the lock being deactivated. The door opened and there was Sven, giving her a friendly smile.
“Nadya,” he said. “Long time.”
She shrugged. “Only a couple months. You look well.”
Sven nodded. “So do you, all things considered. Heard you got shot.”
Nadya motioned to her wounded shoulder. “Shot-ish, nothing permanent. A few other bangs and bruises, but I’ll heal fine.”
“That’s good to hear,” Sven said, a genuine look of relief on his face. The expression was quickly replaced by confusion. “But what are you doing down here?”
“I came to see the guy you’re guarding,” Nadya replied. “He helped me out a lot last night.”
“Oh,” the burly man said, his face growing a bit grim. “He’s infected, you know.”
She nodded.
“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt anything for you to visit with him for a bit. Besides, I wouldn’t want Mr. B
elikov finding out I turned you away.”
Nadya gave him a lopsided grin. “I’d never go tattling to get you in trouble.”
Sven stepped aside and let her enter the room.
“Thanks,” she said, walking in and looking around. She’d been in this part of the quarantine section a couple times. It was an observation room. The actual chamber was further in, separated by a thick wall made of Plexiglas.
Supposedly impenetrable.
She’d seen her first werewolf in that room, pounding on the thick walls. Whether or not the walls were actually impenetrable was up to debate, but she knew it took a lot more strength than the average werewolf possessed. Which was a considerable amount.
She approached the thick wall and spotted Ulbrecht lying on a small cot towards the rear of the room. The containment room was air tight, with small vents cycling the oxygen inside. If it came time to terminate the occupant, the air cyclers would be shut down and the werewolf inside would suffocate. Lack of air wasn’t enough to kill the beasts but it was a good way of rendering them unconscious. After that, men went in to finish the job.
Nadya's Nights: Road to Vengeance Page 9