With these last words, the Dark Man moved back toward Rico. The dealer’s face blanched with fear. The man before him was none other than Vain. A killer above all others. His name whispered quietly in even the darkest corners, lest he appear at its mere mention, like some folklore demon.
Here stood the man who had destroyed the Romolov syndicate piece by piece eight years ago; inflicting unimaginable tortures, before finally ending their lives in the most painful ways imaginable.
Vain grinned icily. “I take it that you agree to my proposal.”
Rico experienced a new misery as his bladder released and streamed urine from his mutilated genitalia. Yet all he could manage was a weak whimper. Vain watched the trickling pool and chuckled.
The assassin twisted away from the man, abandoning him, tied to a chair, and sobbing over what remained of his wife.
* * * *
Guido Bucelli giggled like a schoolboy watching the events from the previous night broadcast on the evening news. Rico San Diablo carried from his house on a stretcher. Oh the joy of it all! His greatest rival destroyed, the entire city’s illegal drug and gun racket would belong to him. Guido giggled again, yet another body bag being carried from the ex-drug baron’s home.
He still couldn’t believe the turn of events. A month before, Guido had been in serious trouble. San Diablo had been running the north side of town for a few years and, being the two main importers in the city, they’d held an uneasy truce up until about a year ago.
Disaster had struck.
Two of Bucelli’s biggest shipments were seized when they’d entered port. The customs officials had obviously been tipped off. The question at the time was by whom? Guido later discovered his own nephew had ratted to the cops. Marco had held a lot of resentment toward his uncle since Guido’s public admonishment over the bungling of his first solo deal.
The arrangement had been simple: two hundred handguns to the Blood, in exchange for two kilos of pure heroin. The entire deal had gone sour due to Marco’s inability to control his emotions. One of the gang members had mentioned something about the guns being greasy. Marco had taken it as a racial slur. The resulting bloodbath had taken months to calm, before the Blood would even think about dealing with Bucelli again. Guido had publicly berated his nephew over the incident, and the boy had seethed at what he termed his ‘unfair’ punishment.
His final treatment at the hands of Dante had probably seemed unfair too. The mutilated hunks of flesh that remained of his nephew attested to the harshness of Guido’s justice.
After Bucelli’s shipments were seized, Rico San Diablo had taken the opportunity to flood the streets with his product, even being so bold as to start selling on Bucelli turf. Just a street or two, but Guido knew it’d only be the beginning if he didn’t put a stop to it fast.
A war was out of the question. Neither group could afford the attention at the moment. With the FBI already breathing heavily down their necks, using one of his own men to try to kill Rico was too dangerous. If the attempt failed, a war would be unavoidable. And Guido knew none of his men could succeed.
Thus the need had arisen for the skills of an outsider. Someone with supreme talent and little or no conscience. The Dark Man had leaped to the forefront of Guido’s mind. Better known as Vain, the assassin’s previous work had largely been discounted as street folklore; horror stories to keep drug dealers like Guido awake at night.
But how to find him? Even if the man did exist, nobody seemed to know how to contact him. Most assassins these days worked through extremely secretive lines on the internet, collecting contracts and payments via the tap of a button.
Not Vain.
One of Bucelli’s associates had described his own attempt to contact Vain for a contract. He had tried every known avenue to connect with the killer for over a month. From street contacts to internet ‘hit’ sites – everything short of running an ad in the local newspaper – all to no avail. Guido had laughed at the man when told of the trouble he’d gone through, all for a simple contract on a local police sergeant making life difficult for his street dealers.
Thus it had been a huge surprise when the Dark Man had paid Guido a visit in his own home, passing undetected through his guards, sitting on the man’s bed, and waking him with the point of a knife pressed against his throat. At first, Guido had not been afraid. His immediate thoughts were of the 92FS Berretta sitting in his bedside drawer, and how this man’s brains would look beside the tapestry on the wall.
“I wouldn’t even think about moving if I were you.” The words held a steel iciness that sent a spike of fear through even Guido Bucelli’s thick skin.
“If you’ve been sent by San Diablo to kill me, you had better get on with it,” said Guido, painfully aware of the heightened pitch in his voice.
“If I were sent to kill you, you’d be dead.”
The words chilled Bucelli. The man sitting on his bed was dressed completely in black, an angular face beneath a shock of dark hair. Guido had thought absently that the stranger was even handsome – everything except the eyes. The eyes were what convinced Guido his life dangled by a thread; that his next words could possibly see it ended swiftly. This man’s eyes were dark; there seemed no distinction between the irises and pupils, almost like his entire eye was made for peering through the night.
They were the eyes of a predator.
Unable to stand the tension any longer, Guido finally swallowed his fear enough to produce sound. “What do you want?”
“It is not what I want that draws me here little man, but what you want. I believe there is a thorn in your side that needs extracting.”
“Are you Vain?” whispered Guido, expecting the man to laugh in his face at the absurdity of the suggestion.
The man had not laughed, he had simply nodded. And Guido had simply pissed his pants.
* * * *
Guido’s thoughts were interrupted abruptly and he found himself once again at the end of a weapon. A silenced Glock-20, its ten millimeter round staring down the modified barrel, pointed straight at his eye. Once again the Dark Man had managed to evade Bucelli’s guards, and make his way unnoticed into the heart of the drug lord’s compound.
“You owe me money, little man.” Vain pronounced the statement calmly, almost conversationally, as though collecting rent from a troublesome tenant, and not payment for one of the biggest hits in recent history.
Guido felt his heart begin to race. Trying to take control of the situation, he said, “There’s no need for the gun. We made a deal, and I’m obliged to uphold my end of it.”
The Dark Man simply stared emotionlessly at the drug dealer, the gun unwavering.
“Alright then; four million in cash if I remember correctly. It’s right in my safe over here, let me just get it.” Guido shuffled uneasily from the gun’s sight, making his way to the wall safe hidden behind a Picasso.
Guido collected the money – money he had placed into two large briefcases after the assassin’s previous visit – and turned back to the Dark Man. To the dealer’s shock, Vain no longer stood beside the wall where he had last seen him, but right behind him, the Glock still in his hand.
The man moved quieter than a cat!
“D-do you wish to count it?” stammered Guido, now unable to keep the fear from his voice.
“I don’t think you’d try to cheat me, do you?” purred Vain softly. “If you did, I’d have to come back to rectify the situation... and I don’t think you’d like that.”
The look in the Dark Man’s eyes spoke of pain and death and, unable to speak, Guido rapidly shook his head. Gods! The man instilled more fear with a single look than others managed with threats or violence.
Vain turned to leave, and Guido called out to his back, “How do I contact you for more work? I’ll make it worth your while if you can deal with my other problems the way you handled San Diablo.”
Without turning, the Dark Man growled over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be
seeing me again one day.” He slipped out the doorway into the corridor.
Bucelli followed him into the hallway to ask what he meant, but the assassin had disappeared like a wraith.
Chapter Two
Unwanted Memories
The room was vacant apart from a mattress in the corner, and a small table with a single chair beside it. An old refrigerator stood guard over an empty kitchen. Paint peeled from the walls in several places, and the windows were covered by a thick grime on the outside, casting the room in the perpetual gloom of twilight. Spiders clung to the corners of the ceiling amid complexly designed webs that had apparently never been disturbed.
They’ll bring good luck, she had said. Vain shook away the unbidden thought. Such strange semi-memories had become more and more frequent of late, though he couldn’t imagine why.
To the casual eye, the apartment looked and smelled like it had been abandoned for several years. Certainly nobody in his or her right mind would choose to reside in such squalor.
But one person did, and the appearance of the dwelling mirrored the bleakness that dwelled within the Dark Man’s heart.
He’d cautiously made his way through the front entrance, wary as a cat. Even in his own home Vain couldn’t forget who and what he was; in fact the apartment reminded him of it every day. Dumping the black bag on the floor, he moved silently to the opposite wall, instantly finding the hidden switch that slid a section of the grim paneling away. Behind it lay his tools of pain and death.
Many problems had been dispatched using the instruments now racked on this wall: Guns with silencers, blades from around the world, all crafted for different purposes – just like any other tradesman’s tools. Hacking weapons, like his double bladed axe, joined the finest surgical scalpels, each sharp enough to delicately slice a man’s skin as though it were butter. Various other items awaited their use on an assortment of jobs, including the blowtorch and hacksaw he’d just put away. These featured among his most useful tools, providing the best results when it came to extracting information from an unwilling participant.
Vain replaced the rest of the gear from the black bag before locking the panel back into place. He moved away from the armory and over to the mattress in the corner – slipping the two silenced Glocks from his belt and hiding them beneath the mattress before lying down for what he hoped would be a dreamless night’s sleep.
He knew it wouldn’t happen. The dreams were the only things in this world he couldn’t kill.
* * * *
Vain wrenched himself awake and choked back a sob. His entire body drenched with sweat, he felt frail as a two-day-old kitten. Steeling himself, he tried to remember what the dream had entailed, but felt it slipping from his grasp just when he reached for it.
Damn the dreams, he thought to himself, they belong to the living, and you left that realm a long time ago.
All that Vain had now were the dead – and the soon to be dead. He peered through the filth-smeared window and saw it was completely dark outside – time to go to work. Climbing from the mattress, he collected his guns and replaced them in the waistband of the black pants he still wore from the night before. He also collected two razor-sharp knives, placing them into hidden sheaths in his black boots, and two sets of studded knuckle-dusters which he dropped into his pants pockets, one in the left and one in the right.
Moving out onto the streets of New York, Vain instantly blended with the late night crowds. Not drawing attention to himself, he purposefully made his way to the neighborhood where the lowest of degenerates congregated at a criminal cesspool called Mason’s Lair.
Once the booming nightspot of the city, Mason’s Lair had boasted three floors of DJs, live music, and girls gyrating in cages, setting businessmen’s hearts afire every night.
Times had changed. Now the music was loud and ugly, and the women weren’t much better. The clientele were no longer Wall Street businessmen; these days there were more addicts and dealers than cockroaches – and there were a lot of cockroaches.
Even amid the scum of Mason’s Lair, the Dark Man stood out like a lion among sheep. Nobody knew who he was, but they all moved aside when his dark figure approached, none looking him directly in the eye, lest they draw his attention. The man carried an aura that reeked of death, and despite the squalor of their lives, those in the bar felt no desire to meet that death just yet.
Vain gazed through the crowd. He knew the little drunk hid in Mason’s somewhere and he needed the information he could provide. He also knew the man wouldn’t want to be found and that would be why he loitered in such a public place. He would expect Vain to avoid Mason’s because of the amount of people gathered here; he knew the Dark Man’s abhorrence of crowds.
What he did not know was that the Dark Man would go to any lengths to get what he needed, and right now he needed to find the man known on the street as Squirrel.
Vain found Squirrel in a darkened corner booth nuzzling up to a toothless prostitute who looked like she’d recently devoured an entire buffalo. Either he nuzzled up to her or she was simply so enormously fat that he had to squash his face into her ample bosom to avoid being dumped onto the floor. Vain approached them, smoothly gliding through the crowd. Squirrel looked up and very nearly swallowed his tongue at the shock of seeing the assassin standing before him.
“Leave us,” commanded the Dark Man without even looking at the hooker.
“Why should I, cutie? The three of us could have a great party together.”
“If you don’t leave now, you fat slut,” whispered Vain venomously, “I’ll cut off those lumps of lard you call tits and feed them to you raw.”
Her look of enticement turned swiftly to one of terror, glimpsing the fury within the Dark Man’s eyes. She almost tore the diminutive figure of Squirrel apart in her haste to escape. Vain calmly took the seat she had so agreeably vacated and sat in silence, pinning the fretting young drunkard with a withering glare.
“Well, um, ah, sir. What brings you to this part of the neighborhood?” Squirrel asked nervously.
“You do,” said Vain simply. This increased the sweat popping from the rapidly sobering Squirrel’s temple.
“Ah, me, um, ah. What can I do for you today?” Squirrel was clearly uncomfortable in the Dark Man’s presence, but the scrawny little man would never find the balls to refuse him, Vain thought contemptuously. Something about Vain made normally brave men think of mortality. Men who weren’t so brave, like Squirrel, turned to water at the mere sight of him.
“Why are you trying to hide from me, little man?”
“Hide? Me? From you? No, um, no sir. I’m simply laying low after your most recent exploits – I mean your last job,” he corrected hastily.
“You call this laying low? And why would you need to lay low after a job of mine?” inquired Vain quietly, casually scanning the room for anyone who might be watching them. No eyes met his.
“Well, sir, some people might think I knew something and come after me for information,” said Squirrel.
“You know nothing of my actions, or me, so don’t try to bullshit me with those stories. Save them for your drunken friends. Why did you try to hide from me? Or should we dispose of the Squirrel’s nuts?” Vain pressed a short bladed knife against the squirming man’s testicles, pricking the skin through the cloth of his pants.
“No! God no!” squealed the little man. “Dante has been contracted for you! He’s been paid to collect your head, and has sworn to kill anyone associated with you. That’s why I’m hiding. I swear it,” he finished huskily.
Vain drew back the knife and considered Squirrel’s words. Dante’s exploits were well known as both effective and painful, almost as notorious as his own. Unlike the Dark Man, however, he reveled in his kills and enjoyed the notoriety his position entailed. Everyone from the lowest drug dealer to the Mayor of New York knew who he was, but no one had ever been able to touch him. The man had an almost sixth sense for traps and danger of any kind. Thus, even though eli
te task forces and assassins had been deployed to entrap him, he always escaped, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
“Dante is hunting me?” Squirrel nervously nodded and the Dark Man chuckled hollowly. “How unfortunate for him. Has he come to see you yet?”
Again Squirrel nodded, “But I told him nothing, I swear.”
“Of course not. Like I said, you know nothing about me. However, you must have given him something for you to have enough money to entertain Big Bertha there. What did you tell him?” asked Vain.
“Nothing, I promise you, sir,” Squirrel began, but at a dark look from Vain he flushed. “I might have said you were looking into the Marcello contract, but that’s all, I swear on my pecker.”
“You must know more than even I give you credit for Squirrel. Only a select few have even heard of the Marcello contract, let alone know who’s been contacted for it.” Vain offered no hint of emotion. “However, for your own sake, I’d try to keep that sort of thing to yourself from now on. Don’t you think?” He punctuated the last comment with a sharp jab from the knife still in his hand. Not enough to wound the man, just enough to make his point. Squirrel swallowed heavily.
Without another word, Vain rose from the booth and started toward the exit.
“Wait, sir, one more thing before you go.”
Not turning, the Dark Man grunted, “What is it?”
“It’s said that Dante is staying at the Royal Hotel. Possibly on the sixth or seventh floor, in case you were wondering.”
“I might just pay him a visit,” whispered Vain maliciously, striding out into the night.
Chapter Three
Only Second Best
Dante lay awake in the deluxe seventh floor suite of the Royal Hotel, his mind churning with plans and possibilities. After he killed Vain, he would be the number one assassin in the city – if not the country. His prices would climb to almost unimaginable heights and he could afford the lifestyle he’d always dreamed of.
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