The Crown and the Key

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by Andrey Vasilyev


  Vika swallowed some cognac, some color flooded back into her cheeks, and she pulled a mirror out of her bag, only to make a face into it.

  “What do I even look like?”

  “A panda,” I replied automatically. You can’t change the kind of person you are.

  It was true, anyway. Her mascara had run, leaving black blotches around her eyes, and there were icicles hanging off her frozen hair. In a word, a panda. Okay, maybe a Rastafarian panda.

  “Idiot.” Vika pouted and didn’t say anything else until we got to Raidion.

  We walked in through a back entrance. At least, I assumed as much—I’d never been there, but that was what I assumed the underground parking garage was.

  “We never should have left,” Vika said grumpily. Like all women do, she’d blocked out all the terrible happenings of the night. It’s a blessing—womp, and they’re back at home, remembering nothing. Lucky…

  ***

  The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and we stepped out into the reception area we’d traipsed through so happily a couple hours before. Life is like a swing: first, you’re up there, just a short reach away from the sky, high above everyone else, and then another movement takes you plummeting down to earth with the sky hidden from view. That’s how it was with us.

  “Vika, what happened?” the girl at the desk said, staring in amazement at my rumpled girlfriend. That made sense—she was always well dressed, and right then, she looked more like a tramp they dragged in off the street. The fitted coat was stained with who-knows-what, half the buttons were missing, her hose were in tatters, her boots were white from the salt, and her face was grimy. She was a sight.

  On the other hand, I probably looked the same way… The only difference was that I had a pistol in my pocket.

  “Kif, you’re here already?” Azov stepped toward us, Zimin and a wobbly, drunk Valyaev behind him. They looked to have just gotten out of another elevator.

  “Whoa,” Valyaev yelled when he saw Vika. “Wow, what kind of roleplaying did you decide to try? The gentleman and the whore from Whitechapel? You two have quite the imagination.”

  “Nikita, shut up,” Zimin said sharply.

  Valyaev grinned. “Or what? You’ll shake your finger at me? Give me a slap on the wrist? Ah-h, you think that making it into the inner circle like you did today means that you can talk down to me? You’re wrong there, my friend.”

  “Nikita, Kif was attacked!” Zimin said, grabbing him by the shirt. “He barely got away from them, and nobody knows what they wanted. I don’t know, and Azov doesn’t know, either.”

  “What could they want from him?” Valyaev laughed loudly as he swayed. “Love? Nobody needs him, that piece of mediocrity. And, as far as Azov goes, he doesn’t seem to know anything, even though that’s supposed to be his job.”

  “Drunks say what’s on their mind…” the leather jacket standing next to us said to Azov.

  “That’s if they have one,” the latter, who was already dressed in a suit and tie, replied with a wave. The only thing that clued me into the fact that he’d been drinking was the slight reddish hue his face had assumed. Zimin was completely sober. “That character never really has.”

  “What are you talking about, bastard?” Zimin was pulling fewer punches. “Get out of here, and don’t forget to apologize when you wake up.”

  “Screw you,” Valyaev shot back, shaking a fist at us and heading over to the reception desk. “Hey, girlies, come on with me—I’m in a good mood. Whoever does the best job will get a promotion tomorrow! You have the word of an aristocrat that I’ll take care of it with that Gorgon of yours.”

  “What an idiot,” Zimin said as he came over. “Don’t mind him. Wow, Vika, you really took the brunt of it. And your knees are all messed up, too.”

  “I fell,” Vika replied, embarrassed. “It was so scary, Maxim!”

  Vika clutched her face, demonstrating exactly how scary it was.

  “I see that,” Azov replied, looking us over. “I’m just glad you’re alive. Kif, where did you get the revolver in your pocket?”

  “You won’t believe this, Ilya, but it’s yours.” I pulled the Nagant out of my pocket, noting to myself that he had both noticed the pistol in my pocket and recognized the shape. “One of your guys gave it to my wife.”

  “Are they crazy?” Azov glanced at Zimin angrily. “Our Nagants are all accounted for and in storage. Vika, which one of them gave it to you? Could you recognize him?”

  “Just you wait, Ilya,” I said, deciding to pull out the showstopper. “Look at this.”

  I pulled a bullet out of the cylinder and showed it to the pair. Zimin whistled; Azov turned purple.

  “Fun, huh?” I slid it back in, wiped the whole thing down with a handkerchief I pulled from my pocket, and handed it to Azov. “I’d figure out what’s going on there as soon as you can.”

  “Oh, I plan on it,” Azov replied with narrowed eyes. “We’ll find a place for you to stay, and then I’m going to go find out who’s the one being so generous around here.”

  “What place?” I asked.

  “A normal one,” Zimin replied and grimaced. Valyaev had found out that none of the girls were in a hurry to show him the pleasure of sex, and he was thoroughly and loudly trying to figure out why that was. “You need to live somewhere, right? Preferably, somewhere we know you’ll wake up in one piece. You’ll be staying here.”

  “It’s like a fortress, complete with a guest house,” Azov chimed in.

  “We have a home,” I said darkly. That’s always been a quirk of mine—I don’t like spending the night at other people’s places. Even then, realizing full well that we had nowhere else to go, I put up a symbolic fight.

  “Right, the one where you got jumped twice, and where they did their best to kill you today?” Zimin replied sarcastically. “What a great home! Home, sweet home!”

  “How is Alexey?” Thinking about our apartment, I remembered the short guy in the coat who’d done his best to the very last to make sure someone he didn’t know survived. “Is he…?”

  “Yes,” Azov said, rubbing his face with tired hands. “I’m surprised he was able to walk back out of your building—his neck was shot clean through.”

  “They were waiting for us in the building?”

  Azov sighed. “That they were. Everyone in there, he… Well, you get it. But someone managed to get a shot off at him. They could have gotten him more than once, too. He was wearing body armor, but there are still six bullets in him besides the one that went through his neck.”

  “What about Oleg?” Vika sobbed, tears running down her dirty face. “How is he?”

  “At the hospital.” Azov held a handkerchief out to her. “Two bullet wounds. But he’s a tough guy—he made it to us, and he made it to the hospital, too. Tough as nails, that one.”

  So, Alexey really was killed.

  Something deep inside me changed forever. I’d seen death before, my profession being what it was—I’d seen all kinds of things, in fact. But that kind of death? Someone dying for me, paying the ultimate price to save my skin? That was a first.

  “Hey!” My cheek stung from a hit. Azov was looking closely at me. “Stop thinking like that. It was his job, he was paid to do it, and he was paid very well, believe me. Yes, it’s a shame—he was a good guy and a professional. But he was already dead, and you’re still alive. Let the dead be; the living need to live. I don’t want to hear any nonsense about how you can’t live with that now, got it?”

  “Ilya is right,” Zimin said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Completely right. Some of us go, some of us stay. It’s always been like that.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

  They were right, I had to admit to myself. And who was Alexey to me? Just one of the many people I’d crossed paths within the long road of life. And if he died so I could live, I needed to remember him well and keep living. Otherwise, he would have died in vain. There was no
point beating myself up about it—I couldn’t change anything. They’re right. The living need to live.

  “Excellent,” Zimin said, apparently reading my facial expression. “Okay, let’s head up so you can see where you’re going to live.”

  “Are we taking that one with us?” Azov nodded at Valyaev, who had decided to dance something to his own whistled accompaniment.

  “Yeah, right,” Zimin replied with a wave. “What’s the point of that?”

  The living quarters had their own elevators with a special key. It wasn’t even some kind of plastic card; it was an actual key, complete with teeth and everything.

  “Safety,” Azov said, holding an index finger aloft. “It’s our number-one concern. That’s especially true for employees the company particularly values.”

  It’s always nice to hear that you’re valued, even if it’s awfully late and in the context of a situation like that.

  The elevator doors closed, and we started upward.

  End

  Fayroll:

  More Than a Game

  The Road East

  Winds of Fate

  Gong and Chalice

  Sicilian Defense

  Under the Black Flag

  Different Sides

  The Crown and the Key

  Word and Steel

  Book Recommendations:

  Thank you for reading Fayroll! The saga is far from over, but there are other great stories I wanted to tell you about!

  Andy finds himself in a life and death struggle as he must adapt to his new environment and undergo the ancient ritual to become a Dragon to survive after accidentally falling through a portal to another world. Read this exciting adventure now by the best-selling author Alex Sapegin available on Amazon:

  Becoming the Dragon

  Wings on my Back

  A Cruel Tale

  Crown of Horns

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  * * *

  [1] Dastarkhan: a Turkic word meaning "tablecloth" or "great spread".

  [2] Humbert Humbert: A character from Lolita, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

  [3] Casus belli: an act or situation provoking or justifying war.

  [4] Budenovka: A cavalry hat worn during the time of the Civil War in Russia.

  [5] Gimnasterka: An article of Armenian clothing worn between the 1920s and 1940s.

  [6] Komsomolka: A member of the youth organization in the USSR.

  [7] Papakha: A hat made out of wool.

  [8] Atilla: A jacket that was part of cavalry uniforms in the 19th century.

  [9] Telnyashka: A striped shirt worn by Russian sailors.

  [10] Proletkult: An organization designed to promote proletarian culture in the 1920s.

  [11] Khrushchyovka: A slang word for apartment buildings designed and built in the 1960s.

  [12] Brezhnevka: A slang word for apartment buildings designed and built in the 1980s.

 

 

 


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