“My dear, whatever rumors to the contrary—I’m a legitimate businessman who happens to run a concern built largely on cash transactions. What you see here is merely an … accounting meeting.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not interested in your money laundering,” I said. “I’m interested in the girls that you’re selling overseas.”
Rostov shrugged broadly. “Girls? I’m lucky if I find myself a date on [http://www.match.com] match.com, Officer.”
“Okay,” I said, sitting in the offered chair and propping my feet on the table, sending cash to the floor in a minor snowdrift. The heavies traded glances but Rostov waved them off. I said, “I have a proposition for you.”
Rostov seated his bulk in another chair. He wasn’t fat, just solid—twenty years ago he might have been a heavyweight boxer or just one hell of a big guy, but he had run to softness around the eyes and jaw, and he looked like a mopey cartoon character. “I am listening, Officer.”
“It’s Lieutenant,” I said. “Lieutenant Wilder.”
“Whatever flips your skirt up,” Rostov said, and suddenly he was no longer a friendly Santa but one of those innately creepy ones you see on Dateline exposés.
“Here it is,” I pressed on. “You admit to killing Lily Dubois…” I took out the picture and shoved it across the table at him, “and I’ll let you tie up the case the feds are making against you with local prosecutors for a couple of years. You plead guilty and you’ll serve your time at Los Altos instead of some federal hellhole.”
“I do not know this girl,” Rostov said dismissively. “She is not my type.” He shoved the photograph back at me.
“Too skinny. Too pale. I require something to grab on to when I fuck them.”
I had planned to stay cool and calm and to whittle Rostov down with common sense instead of threats. All of that flew out the window when I got a look at the gleam in his eyes.
“Although in a pinch, I would have taken her on trial basis,” Rostov continued in a clinical manner. “Some men’s proclivities are not the same as mine. Her youth could have served her’” He let out a yelp when I came across the table and grabbed him by the neck, squeezing down on either side of his windpipe, burying my fingers in the space between the thick cords of his tendons.
“Word of advice,” I snarled, feeling the sting as my eyes changed color from gray to gold. “I’m real, real low on patience these days.” Hex me, this was not how things were supposed to go. I didn’t lose it and jump the gun anymore. I was in control of the were, not the other way around. The crippling rage stayed locked in a box in the dark part of my mind, not always prowling the surface.
I heard noise behind me as the heavies fumbled for their weapons, their eyes wide with shock. Rostov fumbled for something in his waistband and I beat him to it with my free hand, grabbing a Browning pistol and tossing it over my shoulder. “Here’s how it’s going to go,” I growled. “You’re going to tell me who killed Lily Dubois and why. Then I’m going to arrest you and drag you out of here, and everyone is going to be happy. Except you, because you’ll be rotting in jail for twenty-five to life.”
Rostov laughed wetly under my hand, his face turning purple-red under my ministrations. “Even if you live to walk out of this place … you think the FBI will let me serve a day in prison? I will turn on my bosses and I will go into Witness Protection. I will retire to someplace like Tucson, where the sun is warm and the women wear halter tops, and street cops like you will never be able to touch me again.”
I used my were strength to leverage Rostov out of his chair and slammed him into the wall of the freezer, hard enough to shake the calendar of topless women circa 1991 loose. “That day? It’s not today. Now tell me about Lily.”
“Nikolai…” said the largest of his buddies. I turned on him with a snarl.
“You shoot at me, you hit your boss,” I said. “We’re having a private conversation. Shoo.” They were scared enough by my eyes and fangs to be hesitant, but for how much longer?
“Go,” Rostov croaked. “Let us speak.” When his goons retreated, he turned his eyes back to me. “I will tell you nothing. You’re just a whore like all the rest of them,” he grunted. “A whore who doesn’t know her business.”
Black closed in on my vision, my animal side taking over with a vicious snarl that ripped out of my throat. I shook Rostov like a rag doll, impressing myself with my own strength. “Call me a whore one more time.”
Dimly, I realized that I was losing control, lack of sleep and stress and rage creating a perfect storm in my hindbrain that had allowed the were to rip free of the tight harness I’d maintained on it since I’d phased and ripped a murderer to shreds, nearly two years ago.
But I can’t say, in that moment, that I really cared. I just wanted Rostov to pay for all of my frustration and anger and for the visions of Lily that danced in front of my eyes.
It made me sloppy. Rostov wriggled an arm free and drove a fist into my gut. He was, as I’d predicted, disproportionately strong and I felt all of my air sing out of me.
I sagged, my grip on his throat loosening, and Rostov grabbed me by the scruff and tossed me like one would a bag of garbage. I went backward over a pile of pallets, landing in a heap.
Shit, Wilder. Get yourself together. Rostov came over to me, his feet in my field of vision, cheap shiny patent loafers that I could see my startled face in. He picked me up again. I struggled, but after the rush of the were it was a pitiful fight. I was disoriented and the animal in me was panicking while the cop in me was watching the whole thing with a resigned sigh.
This was why there are procedures. If you go off half-cocked, you just end up on the floor, getting beat to shit by a mob enforcer with terrible taste in footwear.
Rostov gave a grunt, and breathed in my ear: “Whore.” Then he heaved me away from him, and I went through the freezer door, plastic sheeting shredding around me. I landed in a cutting room, with long metal tables, rusty hydraulic scissors hanging from hoses, knives and meat hooks piled in the sinks along one wall.
The three heavies came after me, their steps deliberate. They gathered in a half-circle, looking down, waiting for Nikolai’s order as patiently as Rottweilers trained to attack. I gave them a weak smile. “How’s it going, fellas? You get good dental in this line of work?”
Rostov brushed off his hands. “She’s a filthy, disrespectful cop. Anton, deal with her. You two, get back to the count and don’t let me find it fucking short tonight, eh?”
Anton, the one who’d been staring at me with such intensity, came over and got me up, even though my legs wobbled. The other two retreated, opaque plastic whispering shut after them like a shroud. Anton put me in a police hold with remarkable efficiency and shoved me down onto the cutting table, grabbing my legs and laying me out flat like I weighed nothing.
“Oh, good, torture,” I said. “You in the secret police or something before you came to the bright lights of America to seek your fortune?”
Anton grunted. “Shut your mouth.”
He went to a row of metal equipment lockers and pulled on a plastic apron stained dark purple with animal blood, and heavy gloves, never taking his eyes from me or giving me a chance to be sneaky. This whole situation couldn’t have telegraphed body disposal any louder if there were bright flashing lights.
So this was it. This was where they’d find me, days later, when someone finally retraced my last steps. If they found me at all.
“You women are all the same,” Anton said, reaching into his waistband. “Putting your business where it should never be.” I heard the click of a pistol’s safety coming off. “Turn your head,” Anton ordered. “Away from me.”
I twisted my neck around so he’d have to look me in the eye. “No.”
Anton snarled, and I saw with shock that he had twin fangs growing from his top row of teeth. Another were who didn’t smell like a were. What was this, my lucky fucking day?
“Don’t look at me, bitch,” he ordered again, and cuffed me in the
jaw, drawing blood from my lip. It was either be executed like a good little girl or end up too beaten for an open casket.
“I hate this,” I sighed. Another reason why I’d stopped kicking down doors that I had no business kicking down. More often than not, I found situations like this on the other side. You never really learn, do you, Wilder? “Shut up, will you?” I told myself crossly. Anton raised an eyebrow.
“Are you a crazy woman on top of it?”
“Quite possibly,” I agreed. “But not as crazy as you are to shoot a cop in the head.” The metal was freezing under my back, and the small .32 pistol Anton held looked disproportionately large so close to my face.
“One cop,” Anton said, raising his pistol. It was shiny and nickel-plated, one of those penis replacements gangsters like to wave around. “Lots more where you came from.”
So much for scaring him straight. He was the one who was armed, so I would have to be the one who was faster.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Shoot me so that they can have an open casket? My mother will kill herself otherwise.” I cut a glance at him, putting as much sincerity in my voice as I could muster in my current state of Oh crap oh crap I’m going to die.
Anton muttered something in his native language. “Please,” I said again. “Right through the heart. Kill me just as fast as in the head. I’m not wearing body armor. You can check.”
“You have no leverage to make demands of me,” he snapped.
“Anton,” I said, putting as much sincerity as I could into my voice, considering that I was panicking on the inside. “All I want is to have my cousin and my aunt and my mother be able to say good-bye to me. Iknow what’s coming. I’m not going to fight you. Just shoot me in the heart. Please.”
Anton’s nostrils flared. He was tall and thin compared to the pudgy thugs in the other room, and his face was drawn with blue varicose veins snaking across his cheeks, burst vessels in his nose. An ex-junkie, maybe, certainly not current, but his eyes had that blankness that comes with witnessing too much that people aren’t meant to see.
He dropped the pistol, reaching out his free hand, patting me down. “Roll onto your stomach.”
I did as he asked and he felt down the length of my back. He touched my Sig and threw it away from us. “You think you’re smart, huh? You think you’re going to grab your police gun and shoot me instead?” He grabbed my hair and slammed my face into the metal table. “Deceitful whore. Now I’m going to do it right between the eyes. For your mother.”
“No,” I said, “No, you’re not.” I grabbed his wrist, twisted the hand holding my hair, and bit him. Hard.
Anton screamed as my fangs sank into the fleshy part of his thumb, the blood coursing over my tongue driving me straight back into that black pit that lurked in me, where the monster waited, pacing and chained.
I shoved him away from me and he windmilled, bleeding, the gun moving away from my head. I snatched my holdout weapon from my ankle and went after him, instead of shooting him on the spot like I should have. I was lost in the lust for the hunt, and I hit Anton in the midsection, tackling him to the tile with a grunt from both of us.
Straddling his torso, I pressed the snub .38 against the soft part of his jaw with a growl. “Shoot me?” I demanded, pulling the hammer back. It was a double-action revolver, so I didn’t need to cock it to fire, but the effect of the chambers rotating scares the piss out of anyone with sense.
“I … I’m sorry,” Anton muttered thickly. Blood dribbled from his mouth. He had bitten his tongue when he went down. I bared my own bloody teeth at him and he gave a shiver. For such a big bad werewolf, it sure didn’t take much to break his dominance.
Then again, having a gun pressed against your chin has that effect on most people. “You’re damn right you’re gods-damned sorry,” I told him. “Who killed Lily Dubois?”
“I got no idea what you’re even talking about,” Anton hissed.
“Right, because I totally and completely believe you,” I said. I pressed harder, curling my finger around the trigger. “You have three seconds. One.”
“I don’t know!” Anton panted. “There are a lot of girls. Nikolai ships them by the week. I don’t know her!”
“Two,” I snarled.
“I don’t know her!” Anton howled. He latched his hands to my shoulders and tossed me off of his torso. I went tumbling to the floor, the .38 skittering out of my grasp. He was strong, too strong for his size, and I hit the floor hard enough to crack tile.
Anton scrambled for his pistol and I grabbed for the .38, and we both brought the guns to bear at the same moment. He was back to smirking. “You like to be in charge, eh? Think you’re getting what you want and you go soft.”
“You’re a very good actor,” I said. “You might have a career if you quit your day job.”
Anton spat on the ground. “You put that gun down.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, backing up slowly. If I could just get some cover between us, I could make a run for the Nova. That was a hell of a big if, though. “I’m going to keep holding it, and we’re going to work out our differences like adults, and not little kids playing cops and robbers.”
“I’ll shoot you in the fucking head!” he yelled, obviously fed up with my mouthy ways.
I risked a quick look over my shoulder. There was a dark hallway and a set of stairs beyond, dark and slick with mildew and moisture as the cold air ended and the dank smell of below ground began. I snapped my head back to Anton. “If you’re going to shoot me in the head, then do it,” I growled.
His finger tightened on the trigger, and in the second between my taunt and his gun firing, I ducked and ran. One bullet dug into the wall next to my head, another into a pile of sawdust pushed into the corner with a puff of air and wood fibers. One thing was to my advantage—angry weres don’t make the best shots.
I lost my balance on the second stair and pitched forward into the dark, tumbling, limbs cracking against the cement stairway and metal railings until I landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. “Graceful,” I grunted, pulling myself up.
I fumbled for my penlight and flicked it on, flashing it around the basement. Rusted piles of metal, old hooks and saws, pallets and cages for chickens, stacked like steel cairns to a dead civilization. The witch’s alphabet cascaded across the walls, the standard language of spells for caster and blood witches, and most disciplines in between. I pointed the light at the floor and breathed a sigh of relief when I wasn’t standing on another binding ward or in a circle.
Then I’d really be Hexed.
Anton shouted from above, in Russian, and I heard him and at least two other bodies start down the stairs.
There were showers and lockers at the far end of the basement, ribbons of rust staining the wall beneath the taps, and I doused my light and dove behind the half-walk, crouched in the damp, smelling the mildew from the drains. I tried not to breathe too loudly in the small pit of decay where I’d landed, and to still myself. If they lost me here, I could double back and get to my car.
Way to go, Wilder. You play the sheriff and now you’re screwed.
This was why cops didn’t go Lone Ranger, unless they wanted to end up dead. This was why my monster was rarely a real asset to my job. It might make me stronger or faster, but there were plenty of days when it just got me stuck in a creepy basement chased by a bunch of Russian gangsters.
Anton’s footsteps and his panting breath were fast behind me, and another flashlight beam glanced off the wall above me.
“Nothing here,” one of the heavies wheezed. “You prick, Anton, you let her get away.”
“She has to be down here,” the other said. “There’s nowhere else to go.”
“Shut up,” Anton said. “Just go back upstairs.”
“But Nikolai…” the first heavy whined.
“Nikolai ordered me to deal with her,” he snarled. “And I will. Leave. ”
They retreated, cursing, and Anton snapped off hi
s light. I heard him draw in a ragged breath, his wiry frame cutting off the light from the stairwell like a living scarecrow. “I know you’re here, wolf girl,” he singsonged. “I can smell you. I can taste you.”
I held on to my Sig like a drowning man would clutch a piece of flotsam.
“I can hear your heart beating,” Anton hissed, and then with a whisper of air he was standing over me. “And I see you.”
Trapped, I goggled up at him, at the gun. Not my most proactive response by a long shot. How had he seen me in the pitch dark that even my eyes were having trouble penetrating? How was he so goddamn fast?
“Nothing to say this time?” Anton said. “Perhaps you have something you would like me to tell your family when Nikolai kills them as well?”
It didn’t really matter how Anton had managed to find my hiding place—he was about to kill me and something needed to be done about that.
So I resorted to that old staple of fighting dirty, and lashed my foot out as he prattled on, kicking him squarely in the balls.
Anton doubled over, but he didn’t lose his grip on the gun, and I cursed silently, raising my own. I aimed for his shoulder, just something to put him down long enough for me to get the hell out of the warehouse.
I squeezed the trigger, in the half-dark, and Anton flowed to the left, out of the way of the bullet, and came upright as if he’d never had a steel-toed boot to the testicles in his life.
Well, shit.
Anton let out a low laugh. “You won’t get me that way, bitch.”
The only thing I’d seen even close to Anton was a Wendigo, and he wasn’t that, thank all the gods. If he were, I might as well give it up. You couldn’t kill Wendigo except with fire, and I was fresh out of flamethrowers.
I stood up, slowly, holding my gun out to my side. “All right, Anton. Here’s the thing—I’m leaving here one way or the other. You can let me go quietly, or we can fight, and you can lose, and I can hurt you. Your choice, since you started this.”
That was a lie, of course. Anton had about six inches and fifty pounds on me, and while that would normally just make things more fun, he had also proven himself to be faster, freakishly strong and nigh-on impervious to pain. I really hate it when the bad guys have all the aces in their hand.
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