Polar (Book 1): Polar Night

by Julie Flanders

  He finished his dinner of blood and put the glass on the table next to him. His groin tingled with anticipation.

  He would bring Katie here, and she would be his. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. No, it wouldn’t be Katie at all.

  It would be Katerina.

  Chapter 33

  Danny walked into his Chicago apartment and was immediately hit with the smell of something delicious. That was the norm for dinner time at his home. He didn’t know how he had gotten lucky enough to find a French chef who wanted to marry him. For that matter, he didn’t know how he’d managed to find anyone who wanted to marry him.

  For most of his life, marriage had been the last thing on Danny’s mind. Years of growing up in the middle of his parents’ bitter and angry marriage, and even angrier divorce, had left him immune to the allure of the institution. He was happy with his job and, except for various girlfriends, his job was his life. But that had all changed when he had met Caroline Baudin during an investigation of a murder that had occurred in the neighborhood of her French restaurant.

  After five years of wedded bliss, Danny now loved marriage as much as he loved his wife. He couldn’t imagine how he had ever managed without her and wondered what he had eaten before falling victim to her addictive cooking.

  He headed for the kitchen and the source of the yummy smell and found Caroline at the stove, her back to him as she stirred whatever was making Danny salivate. She was dressed in her favorite attire, blue jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt and her brown hair fell in waves past her shoulders.

  “Hi, Danny,” she said, without turning to look at him. She lifted a spoon full of broth from the pot and sipped at her creation, testing to make sure she had the taste she wanted.

  Danny walked to the stove and slid his arms around her waist, kissing the back of her head. “What smells so good?”

  “Coq au vin.”

  Danny stared into the pot. “I’m guessing the vin is wine.”

  Caroline nodded. “Burgundy, to be exact. And coq is chicken. Or actually rooster if you want to be precise. It was my grandmother’s recipe and I’m testing it for the restaurant.”

  Danny’s stomach growled. “How long until I get to eat it?”

  Caroline smiled and put down her spoon. She turned away from the stove and faced Danny, her arms around his neck. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.” Danny leaned into her and kissed her lips. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “Why do you skip lunch so often? You’re too skinny as it is.”

  “I can’t help it. It was a busy day.”

  “Still the same case?”

  Danny kissed her again and pulled away from her. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a beer, twisting off the cap as he leaned against the sink.

  “Yeah. It’s driving me nuts, I admit it. Jackson and I aren’t getting anywhere.”

  “What about the FBI? Are they any help?”

  “Are you kidding? When are they ever any help?” Danny shook his head. “I did talk to John Fisher today. He’s running the files I’ve got through some of their systems, but I don’t expect him to find anything we don’t already know.”

  “Which is?”

  “That this creep’s been raping and murdering women all over Chicago.” Danny took a swig of beer and placed the bottle on the counter. “I just can’t figure out how he manages it without leaving a shred of evidence. It’s like he knows everything we look for.”

  “Maybe he watches CSI.”

  Danny rolled his eyes. “God help us.” He watched as Caroline opened the refrigerator and pulled out a puff pastry. “Ooh, desert?” he asked.

  “Yeah. It’s your favorite. St. Honore Cake.”

  “Let’s skip the coq au vin and move right to that.”

  Caroline laughed and set the pastry on the counter. She opened the cabinet to take out her mixer, and turned to Danny, her face now pale and panic-stricken. Drips of blood began to drip from her neck.

  “Caroline? What is it?”

  The blood turned from a drip to a deluge, gushing out of her neck and turning her shirt bright red. It splattered all over Danny, instantly soaking his shirt and pants.

  “Caroline!”

  “Danny? Danny, wake up. Danny!”

  Danny jumped in his chair, sending an empty bottle of wine across the room. Amanda was leaning over him with her hands on his shoulders. He shook his head, trying to wake up. Where the hell was he?”

  “Are you okay?” Amanda asked. “You were dreaming. I heard you yell.”

  Danny sat up in the chair and rubbed his eyes. “I’m okay. I’m sorry.” He looked around the living room. “I don’t remember falling asleep here. I should have gone home.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  Danny glanced at the empty bottle he had thrown to the other side of the room. “I owe you a bottle of wine. I’m sorry.”

  Amanda smiled. “It’s okay, really.”

  Danny looked down at his clothes. They were rumpled and he could only imagine what he looked like, but at least there was no blood.

  Amanda moved back to the couch and sat down. “Who is Caroline?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you were yelling. Caroline.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  “You sounded devastated.”

  Danny let out a deep sigh and rubbed his eyes. “Caroline was my wife.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She’s dead. But I’d really rather not go into any more detail about it.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Danny held up his hand. “You’re not the one who needs to apologize. I’m the nut screaming like a lunatic in the middle of the night.”

  “Not to mention throwing bottles across my living room.”

  Danny smirked. “I didn’t break anything, did I?”

  Amanda shook her head. “No. No damage done.”

  “Except to my ego.” Danny forced himself to get up from the chair and walked to the window, where he stared out into the night. The snow was still falling, now even faster than it had been earlier. “Jesus, is it ever going to quit?”

  Amanda joined him at the window and peered over his shoulder. “It’s a terrible night, no doubt.”

  Danny walked back to the couch and sat down with a thud. “If I haven’t already imposed on you too much, can I sleep on your couch? I really don’t want to drive in this.”

  Amanda sat down next to him. “Of course. I don’t think you’d get very far if you tried to drive home anyway.”

  “Thanks. No more screaming, I promise.”

  “It’s okay. I know all about nightmares.”

  Danny turned to face her and gently pushed a strand of blond hair out of her eyes. “I’m sure you do.”

  “I’m actually glad you’re here. All this talk about Aleksei has my nerves so frazzled. I don’t want to be alone.”

  Amanda stood up and extended her hand to Danny. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch,” she said.

  Danny started to tell her he most certainly did, he had already broken enough rules and she was a victim and a witness for his case, but his mouth never formed the words. Instead, he took Amanda’s hand and got up from the couch. He pulled her towards him and gently kissed her lips.

  “I don’t want to be alone either,” he said.

  Amanda took his hand and led him into her bedroom.

  Chapter 34

  Aleksei stood outside Maria’s room, and listened. He heard nothing but the sound of her breathing, so he felt confident she had fallen asleep and wasn’t attempting anything stupid. Not that she had any means of getting out of the room anyway.

  He put his hand on the doorknob and considered going inside. His plans for Katie Bailey had excited him and he considered making use of Maria while she was here. His hand lingered on the doorknob, but he finally decided against going into the room. He felt nothing but disgust for Maria
and he had no desire to ruin the good mood he had found himself in while developing his plans.

  Making his way back to his study, he settled into his favorite chair once again. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He had gone way off track when choosing Maria. He needed to remember his Natasha if he was going to succeed in finally finding his new companion in Katie.

  It was January and Aleksei couldn’t believe he had survived to see 1916 end and 1917 arrive. His nurse couldn’t believe it, either.

  “I’m amazed at how well you’re doing,” Natasha said as she brought him a crust of bread and a cup of water, which had nearly frozen to ice.

  “I’m starving,” Aleksei said.

  “I know. We all are.”

  “Any news from the front?”

  “Just that everything is chaos. The troops are in disarray, there have been mutinies.” Natasha paused. “It’s like here in Petrograd. Everything is falling apart.”

  Aleksei shuddered. “I don’t want to go back there.”

  Natasha put her hand on his arm. “I know. I hope you don’t have to.”

  “I want to stay here with you.”

  “Well, you can for now. They can’t send you back to the front when you can’t even walk yet.” Natasha patted his arm and stood up from the cot. “I’ll be back to check on you later.”

  Aleksei watched as she walked to another soldier’s cot and brought him his lunch, and frowned as she turned toward the entrance to the hospital tent and smiled. He felt his stomach tighten in knots that were beyond his hunger. He knew who that smile was for.

  Natasha walked to her visitor and kissed him quickly on the lips. The two left the tent hand in hand.

  Aleksei knew just who the interloper was. Maksim Bodrov, a soldier who had been assigned to guard the Petrograd barracks. A pathetically easy job while Aleksei and others served as cannon fodder at the front. He hated Bodrov, and hated that Natasha couldn’t understand she deserved better than him. She deserved so much better than all of this.

  He sighed and shifted on his cot, immediately feeling a burst of pain in his leg. He deserved better than this, too. Even if he didn’t have to go back to the front, he knew he would eventually die here. They all would. They were starving, and freezing, and there was no food or warmth to be found.

  Aleksei’s mind drifted to his family and he wondered if any of them were still alive. His brothers had gone to the front at the same time he had, in different regiments, and he’d never heard a word about them since. His parents were most likely safe in their Petrograd home, not even particularly far from where he was now, but they might as well have been a million miles away. Aleksei felt no connection to them anymore. Although if he was being honest with himself, he knew he never really had. Once his grandmother had passed away, his interest in his family mirrored their interest in him, which meant that it was essentially non-existent. Now, his only interest was in Natasha and his plan to get out of this hellhole.

  Aleksei already had the plan in place and he couldn’t wait to share it with Natasha. He had seen the vampires haunting the hospital at night, looking for easy prey, just as he had seen them hunting along the front lines. He knew what they were as his grandmother had told him all about vampires when he was young. She had told him the tale of the man who encountered a vampire on the way back to his grave after the vampire had drained all of the blood from two young boys in the village, and how the vampire’s burial shroud had brought the boys back to life. His grandmother had warned him to always be on the look-out for the creatures that belonged to the night, those who retained their human forms but were anything but human. They were the undead.

  He had been afraid of them then, but now he welcomed them, and knew he would soon join them. He just needed his leg to heal and then he would offer himself to the vampires when he heard them rustling in the dark outside the tent. He would beg them to make him one of them and he’d never have to worry about being cold or hungry again.

  The plan was the only thing that got him through the days of hunger and the nights of ice. He wished he could tell Natasha, but he knew she wouldn’t understand yet. Eventually, she would, and she would be part of his new life.

  He would bring her with him.

  Chapter 35

  Danny walked into the police station and stamped his boots on the carpet to shake off the snow. He had left Amanda's place a few hours earlier, thankful she was still asleep so he could slip out with nothing more than a note to let her know he would be in touch. He wasn't good at morning after conversations.

  He was also thankful that the snow had finally stopped and the plow had come through during the night to do its job. That was one way Alaska reminded him of Chicago. In both places, snow rarely stopped people for long. Dealing with it was simply a way of life.

  Danny hung up his coat and walked to his desk, unsurprised to see several more people in the office today than had been there the day before. The Christmas holiday was over.

  He waved at Tessa, who was across the room talking to a fellow detective, and sat down at his desk. Before he had a chance to boot up his computer, Tessa was back at her own desk beside his.

  “How are you doing, Danny?”

  “I'm fine. Why?”

  “You don't look fine.”

  Danny looked down at his clothes, surprised. He had gone home and taken a shower after leaving Amanda's, and had changed into clean clothes. He even considered them his best clothes, black pants and a grey crew neck sweater over a white oxford shirt. For him, he was dressed up. What was the problem?

  “I don't?”

  “No. Look at you. You've got circles the size of Texas under your eyes. And you look so drawn and pale. I don't think you're taking care of yourself.” Tessa paused. “That two day old beard doesn't help.”

  “I'm sorry I don't meet your Tim Gunn standards.”

  “It's not that and you know it. I'm concerned about you. Ever since we started on this missing person's case, you haven't been yourself. You’ve been behaving strangely and you know it”

  “Hate to break this to you, but you don't really know what strange is for me. You hardly know me.”

  Tessa folded her arms across her chest. “I know you well enough.”

  Danny sighed and pushed his chair back. “Maybe I just don't like the holidays, ever think of that?”

  “That's still not a good reason to walk around looking like a combination of a corpse and a bum.”

  "Nice visual. Thanks. And here I thought I looked quite sharp today. This is my best outfit, and I was certain I’d earn your approval.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” Tessa snapped. “I'm just concerned, that's all.”

  Danny wheeled his chair back to his desk and logged in to his computer. “Don't be. We've got more important things to worry about than my appearance. Anything new on Maria?”

  Tessa shook her head. “No. I went over the security camera footage from the lot where we found her car again, hoping I'd catch something new, but there was nothing.”

  “Still just see her walking towards her car?”

  “Yeah. And the time lag is just so weird. It's like one second she's there and the next she's not. Like she saw someone and followed them maybe, got out of the range of the camera.”

  “Or someone followed her. Someone who wouldn't show up on the camera.”

  “What? Who wouldn't show up on a camera?”

  Danny waved his hand as if dismissing the thought. “Oh, no one, I don't know. I was just thinking out loud I guess. Wondering if the camera could have just missed someone because of the time lag.”

  Tessa stared at him, obviously unconvinced.

  “It's weird though, isn't it? The time lag, I mean. Normally those cameras are running constantly.”

  “Right, but the tech explained that. There was some kind of glitch.”

  “Of course there was.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Nothing, I told you.”

  Tessa co
ntinued to stare at him.

  “What?” Danny said. “I was just thinking out loud like I said. You got anything else?”

  “Not really. I went through a bunch of those old cases your friend sent you. I can't see anything to link the girls.”

  “Except the way they look and the time they went missing.”

  “You know we need more to go on. We don't have anything to pin this on your Arctic guy.”

  “I'm gonna talk to the family members from some of those cases. See if those women ever went to Nechayev's house of horrors.”

  “I think that's smart, but I don't think I'll be able to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “They're taking me off the Treibel case. Moving me to a homicide that came in this morning.”

  Danny nodded. “The holiday's over and people hurry and get back to murder, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “I'm not surprised. The Treibel case has gone cold, except for Nechayev.”

  “And as far as the Captain is concerned, that's gone cold, too.”

  "That's because he hasn't met Nechayev."

  “Danny...”

  “You don't need to give me another lecture. I know we don't have any evidence on him. Doesn't stop me from also knowing that he's guilty. And, no one is gonna convince me a woman walks to her car on her way to a job she was excited about, and then just out of nowhere decides to abandon the car and run off instead. She didn't go missing by choice.”

  “You know I agree with you. I just don't know how to prove it.” Tessa got up from her desk. “And with that I should probably get started on the new homicide and see if I can do a better job on this case than I did on Maria’s.”

  Danny watched her, remaining silent as she put on her coat and walked out of the station. He knew she was right and he had absolutely nothing to go on, but that wasn't going to stop him from finding Maria Treibel and any other victims of Aleksei who might still be alive. He thought back to the barren landscape of Coldfoot, and shuddered at how easy it would be for Aleksei to hide his victims there. For all Danny knew, he somehow kept them in storage.